Even as one of the longest-serving contributors Australian Rolling Stone has had, in all that time between the late 70s and late 90s, I could never quite shake off a certain feeling of interloperliness. Unlike Toby Creswell, the editor there for a lot of that tenure, who grew up steeped in Stone and its music and mythology, I was never greatly enamoured of its whole West Coast sensibility. But the point about the Australian edition as it entrenched a local profile in the 80s was that indeed, it was very localised and really quite different to the parent American edition. Jan Wenner, what a knob he was and gets worse with his every pronouncement… But if Australian Rolling Stone was a small powerhouse that way outlived its nearest rival RAM, but then started faltering in the face of the digital revolution, I couldn’t be happier to see its latest resurrection looking quite strong. Power to The Brag for producing a hard-copy magazine in this day and age that looks great and still seems to have some concern left for journalism and for pop culture that isn’t entirely corporate/celebrity-driven.

​And so it is that I’m chuffed to have an extract from my Saturday Night Fever 33 1/3 book run in the current issue. Check it out here or for just a few dollars more than the price of the magazine, get a copy of the book!

I am a big fan of Chris Gill. I have been a regular listener to his 3RRR radio show Get Down for many years, bringing the best in soul, jazz, funk, disco and the good groove every midday Thursday from not just Melbourne and Australia but the whole world, and when I visit back down south to my original hometown I love popping in to his landmark Northside Records store in Fitzroy. I also understand he can be pretty handy on the footy field – but I’ll believe that when I see it. Meantime, I was chuffed to be an interview guest on Get Down, in a metaphorical chair that’s been graced by so many so much more worthy than I. At a time over the last couple of weeks that’s claimed a string of giants - Roberta Flack, Jerry Butler and Roy Ayers - little old me was squeezed in to talk about my latest book, about Saturday Night Fever. Fever wasn’t the selling-out of disco, it was its supernova, and the universal impact it had opened the door to a much broader conception of dance music that wasn’t limited in terms of race, gender, technology or anything. We talk about that and other things for the last half-hour of the show, which you can link to by clicking on the image above. Long live public radio! and thanks Chris.