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It is one of the great opening lines, by anyone: “Each evening the sun sets in five billion places, seen by 10 billion eyes, set in five billion faces.” The words are from Heavenly Pop Hit by the Chills, a

I am about midway through my interview with the Church’s Steve Kilbey when, without warning, he morphs into AC/DC’s Brian Johnson. “She was a mean machine, she loves me, aargh!” Kilbey squeals. He might be misremembering the opening line of

The Saints – the Brisbane band who jump-started the punk movement in Australia with their hot-wired debut single (I’m) Stranded – have announced a national tour in November with a new five-piece lineup, more than 50 years after their rough beginnings. Joining founding guitarist

It was 60 years ago today that the Beatles arrived in Australia. For those of us who weren’t there – even those lucky enough to see Taylor Swift’s Eras tour – it’s hard to fathom the level of hysteria that

The acclaimed Gumbaynggirr-Yamatji soul singer Emma Donovan has alleged she was refused service by multiple taxi drivers at Perth airport, with one driver allegedly telling her that he didn’t serve her “kind of people”. Donovan, who had flown to Perth after launching

There’s a classic Looney Tunes cartoon where Daffy Duck presents an act no other performer ever dared to emulate. Warning those with weak constitutions to leave the theatre, Daffy – dressed in a Lucifer onesie – consumes gasoline, nitro, a “goodly

Mick Harvey is looking back on the showreel of his life. It’s the video for his song When We Were Beautiful And Young, where startlingly intimate images – of his parents, backyard cricket, through to lifelong partner Katy Beale and

When a band that calls itself Regurgitator has managed to stay together for 30 years, you can’t really complain when they return to their own vomit. That’s just nominative determinism in action. So, a warning: their 11th full-length recording, Invader,

Shane Chidgzey is talking a mile a minute, sounding half street hustler, half tech bro. “I didn’t come from the music industry initially,” says the Sydney-based entrepreneur and owner of Brisbane’s The Zoo, one of Australia’s longest-running music venues. “I

Fifty years after their formation in Sydney, the vastly influential punk band Radio Birdman are preparing to call it a day, with a final series of Australian shows over winter culminating with a farewell gig in their home town. But

Ross Knight – bass player, singer and mainstay of Australian punk heroes the Cosmic Psychos – tells a good yarn that deftly illustrates his group’s public image. The Psychos, who are celebrating 40 years since their humble beginnings in central

Outside the Fortitude Music Hall in Brisbane’s biggest nightclub strip, two hours before showtime, a long line snakes up and around Brunswick Street Mall. It’s been well over a decade since the Cruel Sea played here, and the 3,000-capacity venue

In 1981, at a garbage dump on the outskirts of Melbourne, a band is making a video. The idea is to recreate a vision of hell. A cartoon death’s head with six limbs flashes on the screen. We see a

At first, all is darkness. There is a hiss of cymbals, followed by a rude bang, thump and wallop. The lights go up. We see the late Australian music mogul Michael Gudinski, sitting at a drum kit, pounding the skins arrhythmically

From around 1984, after the release of their perfectly titled debut single Out Of The Unknown, Died Pretty were the inner-city Sydney group to see. “They were a dangerous band,” Paul Kelly wrote in his memoir, How To Make Gravy. “Some nights they

Picture the scene. It’s 1982 and Australia’s future prime minister Bob Hawke – then the shadow minister for industrial relations – has accepted an invitation to launch a mini-album by an emerging Indigenous rock-reggae band called No Fixed Address. Hawke’s

Stephen Cummings was disembarking from a flight into Brisbane when everything went sideways. He steadied himself against the wall of the aerobridge. An anxious flyer, he assumed it was the after-effects of a Valium he’d taken to calm his nerves,

Since 2010, New Zealand singer and songwriter Hollie Fullbrook has been creating immersive, introspective folk music under the name Tiny Ruins. The very name suggests something intimate and irretrievably broken, but it also invites you to take a closer look.

You know you’ve made it in Australia when the most successful thing you’ve done becomes the butt of jokes. For Frente!, the indie-pop band formed in Melbourne by Simon Austin and Angie Hart, their moment came when Accidently Kelly Street

It’s often forgotten that the Greek tragedy of Midas, the man with the golden touch, is actually a cautionary tale of being careful what you wish for. Mojo Ruiz de Luzuriaga – the Filipino-Wiradjuri artist better known as Mo’Ju, formerly

There is a well-known Māori proverb: Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au. Translated, it means “I am the river, the river is me”. For the Māori of Aotearoa, rivers are roads, supermarkets, home. The proverb can also be applied

For a brief moment in the mid 1980s, when huge crowds packed Australian sporting stadiums for 50-over cricket matches, signs reading “Like Wow – Wipeout!” began appearing in the outer, usually when a six sailed into the crowd. It was

Back in the early 1980s, Kim Salmon once claimed his group the Scientists played the devil’s music. Over a couple of chords and a minimalist beat, they could whip up a furious storm approximating the title of one of their

A quick perusal of the history of rock & roll will tell you that most songs are concerned with three things: getting laid, getting dumped or getting cheated on. Rare is the songwriter that explores the challenges of commitment, fidelity

Renée Geyer was many things in a career that spanned 15 studio albums and 50 years, and she continued singing to packed houses up to only a month ago. She was surely the finest white soul singer, male or female,