Time Since Britpop

Can it really be 10 years, since I ended a blog post on this very site with the statement Can it really be 10 years since the day Blur and Oasis released Country House/Roll With It on the same day… Well there’s still nothing that highlights the passing of the years to me quite like Time-Since-Britpop™. Those heady mid 90s days when any group of lads with a couple of guitars who’d been to The…

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Oh Man. Twenty Years. Where The Hell Did That Go?

It has come to my attention that the third Manics album, The Holy Bible, was released twenty years ago today, on the 29th of August 1994. I have a clear memory of catching the bus into Southport, as a spotty 16 year old, to go and buy it from Our Price. It was the first CD that I ever bought with my own money. Of course I’d bought records before — so, so many embarrassing…

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I’m Not Doing Requests

This is a bit weird, innit? You all sitting down like that… So says Mr Gallagher, three songs into his set, to his hitherto entirely seated audience at St Kilda’s The Palais theatre. Do you have to sit down? I mean, have they told you that you have to sit down? <pause> Well stand up then… <audience rises en masse…> Thanks Noel. Someone had to say it. Thus began an entertaining hour and a half…

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Do You Remember The First Time?

So asked the giant green letters scrolling across the roof of Melbourne’s oddly shaped, boxing ring slash gig venue Festival Hall on Friday night, shortly before Jarvis and his reformed Pulp took to the stage to ask the same question in song form. Well yes, Jarvis, I do actually. For me it was the 23rd February 1996 (15 years ago–gosh does that make me feel old…) half a lifetime ago on the other side of…

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Having The Most Successful Show On Australian TV Must Be Such A Pain

Funny. Only the other day I was reading an interview in the weekend paper with the host of Channel Ten’s long running weekend morning music video show, Video Hits, which mentioned how profitable it is for the network: At Ten, Video Hits is seen almost as part of the furniture, having been on-air in various guises for 25 years. “It’s one of the most profitable shows on the network”, she says. [The Age Life And…

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