Tag: Rock and Roll

Thou shalt not listen to rock’n’roll

It’s almost a year since I discovered the wonders of Jacob Aranza’s Backwards Masking Unmasked. If you’ve missed the anti-rock paranoia of those heady days, here’s a “sermon” for you.

Muse: An iPhone Video

It’s almost a week since Robyn and I went to see Muse. It was a pretty amazing concert. Here are some of the bits of lighting magic I managed to film before my phone went flat. The sound quality is awful. It is, afterall, an iPhone video. And we were sitting a long way away. As I write this I’m watching a Blur: Live at Hyde Park concert on ABC2. And I’m thinking “wouldn’t it be amazing to have musical talent and be in a band so you could perform to tens of thousands of screaming fans”…

A world gone topsy turvy

I woke up this morning to a world I scarcely recognised. I drove to work in autopilot, stopping and starting at traffic lights without registering an inertial change. I was shocked out of my malaise when I drove past a newsagent and saw the headline on the Courier Mail’s bulletin board. “Warne: I’d like to coach England”. My jaw dropped. I was aghast, agog, agape… all somewhat at once. Treachery. Treason. Tyranny. How could one so comprehensively turn on one’s own country to fight for the “old enemy” no less. Warne is lucky the death penalty for treason was abolished in 1985. For consistency’s sake I should also point out that former Australian internationals Tom Moody and Greg Chappell currently coach Sri Lanka and India respectively. Greg Chappell’s downfall is particularly poigniant. Chappell was once so fiercely competitively patriotic that he ordered his younger brother to bowl an underarm delivery in order to prevent New Zealand securing an unlikely victory. This passion dissipated somewhat when he took up his post with India, but he has done his best to sabotage their status as an international cricketing superpower in his tenure at the top. If Warne’s desire to take the English position is actualised it will be another event in a long string of distasteful career highlights for the Tweak Sheik.
But that’s not all. Having mildly recovered from the onset of shock and nausea at the idea of one of our own crossing over to the dark side, I was left to pick up my jaw from the floor once again when reading through the Entertainment news on the Sydney Morning Herald’s website. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will announce its inductees for this year today – and a Hip Hop artist looks set to join the prestigious list for the first time. Grandmaster Flash, while a groundbreaking musician in his chosen field, has no place in a list of “rock and roll” musicians.
What is wrong with the world today?