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Suggs: My Life Story in Words and Music

Enmore Theatre

Sydney, AU

April 19, 2017

In Suggs: My Life Story in Words and Music, Graham McPherson, the frontman of the seven-piece ska pop ensemble Madness and sometime DJ and television host, takes to the stage in an amusing, and a times moving, theatrical solo show that combines elements of comedy, a play and music hall.

Suggs’ performance feeds of his willingness to open up and his no-holds, tongue-in-cheek approach to story telling, whose starting point is the demise of his father, a man he hardly knew.

We are catapulted back to the grime of the streets of 1970ies Soho, his acent to rockstardom and entertained by insider stories that shed light on what really happened behind the surface.
Underlined and accentuated with the musical emissions and uncalled for interjections by his sidekick Deano, Suggs reminisces, tells funny anecdotes and performs cover versions and stripped down renditions of his own emissions.

McPherson’s charisma along with his experience as a performer and raconteur carries the autobiographical monologue along and makes it an engaging show, which is in essence an intimate memoir with an emphasis on personal revelations.

McPherson’s reflective, self-deprecating, often ironic yet never sarcastic take on things and his cheeky swagger lend the stories authenticity.

His anecdotes are well-paced / phrased, calibrated to circumvent nostalgia and sentimentality and his punchlines are delivered with the timing of a seasoned standup.

Suggs: My Life Story is a theatrical companion piece to the Madness shows, who are currently touring Australia, and while ample references are made to the constituents of his outfit, being a connoisseur of the band is not a prerequisite for having an enjoyable evening with the insights of Suggs.

My Life Story in Words and Music will be in Perth at the Astor Theatre on Saturday April 22 and in Melbourne at the Comedy Theatre on Monday April 24.

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Image from Suggs McPherson website

Cool for Summer Festival

Olympic Park Sports Centre

Sydney, AU

April 15, 2017

Ah, social media.

Rooted in the broader Web 2.0 landscape, it helped engineers, entrepreneurs, and everyday people reimagine the role that technology could play in information dissemination, community development, and communication.

While the technologies invoked by the phrase social media have a long history, what unfolded after the dot-com crash pretty much reconfigured socio-technical practices in significant ways and opened doorways to new worlds of interactivity, reflecting values and norms of the network and users who embrace the tools.

Cool For Summer is a festival for what is euphemistically referred to as  “connected generation”, i.e. the youngster who cannot put away their mobiles. 

Featured performances included American violinist, dancer, performance artist and composer Lindsey Stirling, BBC presenters Dan & Phil, internet personality Nash Grier & Friends, Australian YouTuber Tyde Levi and In Stereo, electronic music act Mashd N Kutcher, Vine alumni Hayes Grier, musical artist Mahogany LOX, vocalist and Viner Alec Bailey, composer and Emblem3 frontman Wesley Stromberg, YouTuber Tana Mongeau, Marcelo, teen boy band Kid Zr0 & Take Two plus local influencers.

Each artist had their own full set and it was an interesting spectacle especially since literally all protagonists had been unbeknownst to your humble narrator, which after exchanges with some of which did not prove to be a massive loss.

However, the target audience of the event, that being underaged enthusiasts most of which under the careful watch of their parents, were thrilled to meet their heroes in the third dimension, with reactions ranging from uncontrolled shrill screaming to their parasympathetic receptors being activated by the neurotransmitter acetylcholine and resulting in their lachrymal glands welling up, i.e. tears of joy were commonplace.

The event was both a celebration and testament to digital life having become an alternate universe with real life implications in everyday life and the reach blogebritiies and status internet personalities and their social media emissions have.

Bad Friday Festival Block Party

Railway Parade

Marrickville, AU

April 14, 2017

The etymology of the term “good” in the context of Good Friday is contested: Some claim it is meant to simply mean pious or holy, i.e. of a day or season observed as holy by the church, while others content that it is a corruption of “God Friday” to commemorate the crucifixion of JC and his death at Calvary.

Be it as it may, Sydney’s got itself a massive block party that goes by the antonym of the former to celebrate the beginning of Easter by showcasing the crème de la crème of Sydney’s Inner West talent.

Having first incarnated at the Annandale Hotel in 2010, 2017 saw the festival take over Railway Parade in Marrickville.

Newtown locals Scabz kicked off the proceedings with their catchy, skulking, fuzzed-out odes to favourite Australian pastimes, e.g. the surf and Victoria Bitter consumption.

Next up was Flowertruck delivering their light hearted, saccharine low-fi garage pop with dual vocals and a well-measured dose of melancholy.

Got a weak spot for Blondie, Kate Bash and War on Drugs? Reformed folk singer and Wollongong artist Bec Sandridge had you covered, evoking the ghost of the 70ies and 80ies with her swagger and velocity.

Green Buzzard proved that they are more than a 1970s inspired garage rock epigone, adding their own flavour comprised of melodic punk rock grit, early 90s Brit-pop exuberance and a penchant for writing a good tune.

Shining Bird is an experimental dream pop band from the coastal town of Austinmer in New South Wales and entranced the audience with their layered synth pop.

The female poet and singer-songwriter Sampa The Great hails from Africa the motherland, and based her musical endeavours on the search for creativity, laughter, purpose and rhythms by weaving dense lyrical mazes with her verses, drawing listeners into a lush, imaginative world. , Backed by DJ Rodriguez she ran the gamut from spoken-word to more traditional hip-hop rapping, with stops at psychedelic and bluesy waypoints in between, the audience lapped up a set that seemed strangely familiar but also new.

Royal Headache is Sydney punk rock royalty with soul and a penchant for romantisches Loosen while conveying that there is a glimmer of hope in that uncertain future of yours. Too melodramatic? Well, their intense set had a sense of urgency with their raucous punk rock and singer Shogun’s soulful, melodic vocals and dedicated performance.

DMA’s took the stage to dish out their bolshy, well-crafted, catchy tunes, refurbished 90ies Brit-rock inspired catchy and at times spacey tunes including its pub poetry and no fucks given attitude: A quality stoic live performance with great stage presence and the band’s focus on the songs while holding the audience firmly in the palm of their hand, which embraces DMA’s wholeheartedly.

After an ambient intro, The Jezabels took over the stage with front woman Hayley Mary dominating proceeding with her dynamic, provocative and powerful presence and her elevating vocal delivery evoking singalongs from the audience while Heather Shannon on the synth provided the foundation with 80ies vibrations that have become a trademark of the band.

2017’s Bad Friday Festival was its eight incarnation and the Music and Booze co. managed to raise the stakes and organize the event at a much bigger scale than in previous years without diluting its DNA.

The audience was varied in age and appearance, food stalls from local outfits provided sustenance and the DJ team of local institution Sound of Seduction provided party vibes when a breather was needed from the onslaught of live performance.

A unique fest that has organically grown to a big event without sacrificing the essence of what it started out to be by honouring the local context and talent, most of which have become successes on not just on Australian turf but global territory.

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Photos by KAVV

Explosions in the Sky

Jannus Live

St. Petersburg, FL

April 12th, 2017

Explosions in the Sky are a rarity in the day and age of the “right now”, with information at everyone’s finger tips, all the time There seems to be a slight movement away from music that might take a minute to make an impact and breathe life into anticipation. Sometimes anticipation is the thing that makes it exciting….

Explosions in the Sky are masters of this. The Austin, TX band have been doing it for nearly 20 years with mini-symphonies that sit the listener on the edge…. With heaping doses of anticipation. It’s no different in a live setting. The band stopped by the shores of the Gulf on the stage of Jannus Live in the heart of the St Petersburg downtown area on April 12th. The band walked out to at least 500 screaming fans, more than I think they had expected, and played until the curfew made them stop.

For a band with no lead singer, they captivated the attention of the entire crowd moving through their instrumentals as if we were watching a movie, captivating the audience with very little downtime, the music bleeding through as the band switched instruments, turned on pedals, and moved around the stage in a blanket of multi--colored smoke.

They played songs from most of their seven studio records and various soundtracks and compilations, but I believe that didn’t matter, they could have been playing the Brady Bunch theme song and the crowd would have ate it up. Guitarists Mark Smith, Munaf Rayani, and Michael James, stalked in unison on stage, simultaneously telling their story, and summoning demons. The band totally and completely immersed themselves in the audience, I have yet to go to a show where this has happened ad length. It might be for a song or two, but this was the entire set, let alone without a front man to focus on. The absence of that front man allowed the band, and the audience, to connect on a much deeper level. With no narration, the band made the music more personal, telling a different story to each listener.

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Photo by Brian Furman

Drift Magazine

Not sure how you roll but in my world and that of Drift Magazine, coffee inhabits not an unimportant role, which is why Drift  is relevant to my interests.

Its central themes revolve around all things coffee, the people involved with it and their spatial contexts. It sheds light on a coffee drinking city at a moment in time.

The drive to source the best dispensaries is the compass that charts the geography of the cities Drift Magazine covers. 

They accomplish their mission by making the beautifully printed (both ink and paper have a nice quality to it), ad-free Drift Magazinelook more like a coffee table book than a mere periodical.

The target audience for the bi-yearly released Drift is people infatuated with caffeine and a desire to get to know a city through unconventional means with each future issue to be focused on one specific place – by way of the relaxed process of meandering as the name Drift suggests.

The issue at hand focuses on Melbourne, the unofficial home of the flat white, chia seed pudding, and avocado toast, Melbourne has been declared by many of the coffee world as a coffee capital, boasting one of the highest concentrations of coffee shops pax on this planet and its character merits  the intense focus this issue of Drift casts on it.

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Photo from Drift website

Editor note: The original post was updated on April 13, 2017.