Notes from Pig City - Archive of author and journalist Andrew Stafford

Phil Collins: How I learned to love the Dad of Dad-rock

Music / May 21, 2019 / 5 minutes of reading

This is the story of how, against all odds, I learned to love Phil Collins, the Dad of Dad-Rock and the Norm of Normcore. Alternatively: how I found myself dancing like a loon to Su-Su-sudio, one of the most evil earworms of its benighted era – a song which I had valiantly tried to purge from my memory shortly after its release in 1985, now stuck in my head again, this time for all eternity. Oh no!

Whether you missed Collins or not during his brief retirement, one thing is for sure: it’s quite a shock to see him. His first Australian show in more than 20 years, in Brisbane, sees him near the end of his wryly titled Not Dead Yet tour, named after his 2016 autobiography. He hobbles slowly on stage with the aid of a cane. It’s no act. Collins is 68, and frankly he looks in rougher shape than several older rock & rollers who are far more fortunate to still be walking among us.

In conditions somewhere between steamy and equatorial (definitely no jacket required), Collins is dressed in a half-zipped-up sweater over a crew-necked shirt. He sits down awkwardly on an ordinary swivel desk chair, next to a side table carrying a bottle of water and a folder full of lyrics.… Read more..

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A new chapter

Miscellaneous / May 21, 2019 / 4 minutes of reading

It’s hard to believe that a military campaign resulting in such catastrophic loss of life as Gallipoli could come to be known colloquially as the “Last Gentlemen’s War”. Yet, for Turks and Australians, acts of respect and even care on the battlefield have come to symbolise the regard between the two nations today.

On 24 May 1915 – almost a month after Anzac forces landed on the beachhead – a temporary ceasefire was declared to enable both sides to bury the thousands of dead and recover their injured. Anzac and Ottoman troops worked together from 7.30 a.m., until the fighting resumed nine hours later.

But the ceasefire wasn’t the only gesture of almost surreal civility amid the carnage, as Turkish and Allied forces dug into trenches that were sometimes only metres apart.

“Australians left home with an image of the Turks as barbaric animals, because we were fighting with the Kaiser,” says Mehmet Evin, president of the Turkish chapter of the RSL.

“But once they actually got to Gallipoli they realised, hang on, Johnny Turk’s not too bad after all! They would exchange gifts over the trenches – Australian Johnny would throw over a packet of cigarettes; Johnny Turk would throw over fruit or whatever.… Read more..

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Three of the best Australian albums of 2018

Music / May 21, 2019 / 2 minutes of reading

Gurrumul Yunupingu

Djarimirri (Child Of The Rainbow)

At a time when cultural appropriation is a hot topic, Gurrumul’s Djarimirri (Child Of The Rainbow) showed how a cross-cultural collaboration could be done with respect and spectacular results. A fully sanctioned blend of traditional Yolngu songs set to string arrangements inspired by minimalist neoclassical composers Philip Glass and Arvo Pärt, Djarimirri drew upon the cyclic repetition of both musical traditions, with the pulse of the didgeridoo replaced mostly by cellos. The late singer’s angelic voice floats above it all. His friend, producer and arranger Michael Hohnen says that Gurrumul’s music was about bringing his culture to the world; his family broke with cultural tradition to allow his name and image to be used, to preserve his memory and giant legacy.

Camp Cope

How To Socialise And Make Friends

One of the best music stories of 2018 was the growing international acclaim for Melbourne’s Camp Cope, whose album How To Socialise And Make Friends was the perfect soundtrack for the #MeToo moment it spoke to. Even before the album’s release, the single The Opener had lit the touch paper on the endemic sexism of the rock festival circuit and the Australian music industry generally.… Read more..

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Jimmy Barnes calls for kids to be removed from Nauru

Australian Politics, Music / May 21, 2019 / 4 minutes of reading

The Australian rock musician Jimmy Barnes had some strong words for the Australian government ahead of a rally on the Parliament House lawn in Canberra to remove children and their families from indefinite detention on Nauru.

Tuesday’s rally saw the delivery of a petition of 170,000 signatures to the government by the newly elected member for Wentworth, independent MP Dr Kerryn Phelps.

Barnes pointed to his own heritage: “I’m an immigrant,” he said. “I came to Australia in a boat. We were running away from poverty and violence in Scotland, and what we fled was nothing compared to what these people have tried to get away from.

“We should be helping them. Taking these people and sticking them on an island, indefinitely, is not the Australian way.”

Since the launch of the Kids off Nauru campaign three months ago by refugee advocacy groups, around 110 of the 119 children and their families had been brought to Australia after five years in detention on the island.

The Asylum Centre Resource Centre estimated only 40 percent of Australians were aware children were being held in detention at the time the campaign was launched. Many had spent their entire lives on the island.… Read more..

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“I hoped it might drive home the words a bit more”

Music / May 21, 2019 / 3 minutes of reading

What does it mean to be a “good citizen”? The question was on the mind of queer Melbourne songwriter Cash Savage last year, as national debate over the marriage equality postal survey roiled around her. Until the survey, she says, she never felt any different from anyone else. Suddenly, in the words of her song Better Than That, every day brought another intrusion.

At the time, her partner was pregnant with the couple’s first child. “To be having a debate around whether or not queer people should get married and connecting that to whether or not they should raise children, at the same time as planning ahead and being excited about bringing a child into the world, [made] the cut a little deeper,” she says.

The experience fed into the writing of Savage’s fourth album, Good Citizens, with her band the Last Drinks, and when it came to making a video for the title track – written in about 10 minutes – Savage had an unusual idea. She wouldn’t appear in it, or even sing her own song. It would, instead, be sung live by a group of 18 men: the “Good Citizens Choir”.

The song’s lyrics are, at least in part, an oblique critique of the codes and rituals of Australian masculinity.… Read more..

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The Grates’ dream team is together again

Music / May 21, 2019 / 3 minutes of reading

It’s a cliche that bands are like marriages. But for irrepressible Brisbane three-piece the Grates, it was a cliche they embraced, right up until drummer Alana Skyring left the band to become a chef in New York in 2010.

At that point, singer Patience Hodgson and guitarist John Patterson, who are married with two young daughters, took the next step: sought counselling.

“I guess we were all family, and it was like a break-up,” Patterson says.

Hodgson counters, “it’s like a different kind of divorce,” as Soda (aged three) and Fade (11 months) squawk and chirp in the background.

Patterson adds: “I guess we were kind of lost.”

He and Skyring, in particular, had been close friends since their early high school days. The psychologist’s advice was firm: after eight years in the hothouse of a touring band, it was time for a long break.

“He said, do not do anything together, be totally separate, give it a good amount of time and then come back together, and you will be different people,” Hodgson says.

“So that was it. We just sort of didn’t do anything. Alana knew that side of it, we told her, and then she was like ‘all right, I get it, sure thing, let’s just give that a crack.’