I received a copy of the new album by British band, The Fouls, the other day and I’ve been giving it a listen.  Review to follow, but thought you might like to consider the bullshit press release that accompanied the album: The story of Foals’ second album could not be told without the victories won [...]

So Yusuf Islam, aka Cat Stevens, is touring Australia.  Well, I hope he has a lovely time.  Ticket prices are not atypical, but certainly pretty steep: For those sorts of prices, you could buy nearly all of Salman Rushdie’s novels. Or this many copies of The Satanic Verses:

Ever since rock music began, there have been those out to destroy it.  The history of rock n’ roll is littered with examples of so-called concerned parents, scared authorities, fire-breathing preachers and other self-appointed guardians of what the hell you can do with your life lining up to tell us that this is the devil’s [...]

It seems clear that the correct music to play when sharpening a knife is side one of Keith Jarrett’s 1975 live recording, The Koln Concert.  It’s a little too long — that is, you will be finished with the knife before the music finishes — but that is better than rushing the sharpening in order to [...]

It seems obvious to me that Dennis Shannhan, the Newspoll entrails reader at The Australian, needs a soundtrack.  What long-running soap opera can survive without one?  Every fortnight, the tireless Den is wheeled out to cast his Betty Davis eyes over the results of the polling-they-own and come up with a few hundred words that [...]

Borders bookstores and others in favour of protecting the Australian book industry are going to be angry at me for this.  I offer no excuses. Here’s the sad truth: increasingly, the only reason I go into a bookshop is to take notes about books I might want to buy elsewhere. Specifically, I jot down titles [...]

Part one (albums edition) is here. I’ve done a separate list of my favourite songs for the year because a bunch of these tracks show up on albums that didn’t make the other list.  Plus, given we all live in an iTunes kind of world, you might like to purchase these one-off tracks instead of [...]

Johnny’s in the Basement is barely six months old so it seemed it a bit pretentious to get all preachy about the best albums and songs of the year.  (I try not to do “preachy” at the best of times!)  Nonetheless, there is something irresistible about looking back over the year (or half-year in this [...]