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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I Am So Angry I Made A Sign

We heard them before we saw them. We were cutting through Parliament Gardens on our way to the city when we heard the muffled sound of a loudspeaker. “Is that the Grand Prix?” I wondered aloud to Sal. A reasonable assumption I thought, given that the bee swarm like buzz of the cars whizzing around Albert Park had been clearly audible across much of inner Melbourne for the last few days. But as we turned…

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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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MWF 2011

As someone was pointing out in The Age the other day, this city sure loves a festival. Pick any time of the year at random and you can be sure that a festival of some kind will be taking place at that very moment. Just as some world cities are on a permanently heightened terrorism threat status, Melbourne seems to be on perpetual risk of festival. Careful where you stand now–some culture might break out…

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