​I remember once a little while back talking to an eminent Australian rock critic/historian of my acquaintance and he said to me, I think you’ve overrated the importance of the Young Charlatans. To which I replied, Actually, I think I’ve underrated them!
            And so it was a privilege to be asked to write the liner notes when Dave Lang at Eminent Vinyl took on the poisoned chalice of putting out an anthology LP of the Charlatans best surviving recordings from 1978. I was always familiar with some of these recordings, demos and live stuff, and so I knew they would stand as a fair-enough testament to this amazing band that was killed equally by its own internal volatility as well as music industry inertia. At a time when post-punk had still barely been recognised, they were a definitive post-punk outfit who showed how rock could re-start after punk had wiped the slate clean. After American pre-punk bands like Pere Ubu, DEVO, Suicide, Talking Heads and Television were actually a punk era transition to post-punk, new British bands like Magazine, Joy Division and the Human League may have set a certain new bar, but as ever the Australian component has never got its full due. And if Australian post-punk is supposed to have come down to bands like the Models, Hunters + Collectors, Pel Mel or the Machinations  – that’s if bands like the Birthday Party, the GoBetweens and Laughing Clowns aren’t counted as such – then the Young Charlatans preceded them all and were at least their equal if not, given the degree of difficulty they faced, their better. Even listening through the tin-can cassette sound of this album, that should be pretty evident. On vinyl, these tracks sound better than I’ve ever heard them, and the presentation of the whole package is just superb. All I can finally say – apart from, Get in while stocks last – is, Job well done you Eminent folks, very well done.

​I have very mixed feelings about this just-published  book, in which numerous (seven) pieces of my journalism are reproduced (in full) along with five photos I took (which are incorrectly credited not to me). My feelings are mixed because, as the lawyers like to say, permission to do this was neither sought nor obtained. The same as it wasn’t for any of the rest of the material in the book, which amounts to around 100 items of contemporary journalism on the Laughing Clowns, written by around two dozen of the usual suspects, from the late Andrew McMillan to Craig N. Pearce and Barney Hoskyns to the late Wanda Jamrozik.
                  So while I might be nominally pleased that such a book exists as a document of the Laughing Clowns and as an addition to the bibliography of Australian music, and even if it is reasonably well-balanced, all this is undermined by its unethical approach, some preposterous conceits, and the number of conspicuous howlers it contains. Even if you accept that it’s a virtual bootleg – and even if, given its tiny print-run, it’s the sort of thing that many of us unconsulted ‘contributors’ would ordinarily just have let through to the keeper – a cover price of $60 is just the least of the reasons why we are all pretty peeved.
                  The book was published as a companion piece—not a catalogue but an adjunct—to an exhibition called “When What You See: The Art of Laughing Clowns,” at the Brisbane gallery Pestorius-Sweeny House, opening in December 2025. I am prevented from providing any substantial background on the book’s genesis and its editor, David Pestorius, for legal reasons, or rather illegal reasons. 
                  The book is only linked to the exhibition via a short introductory piece by Pestorius. As an example of art theory overreach it is typical, superimposing layers of meaning on a few early Clowns gig posters and photos that amount to sheer misinformation. I mean, if the Clowns had any sustained visual identity, it was the artwork of Ed Kuepper’s partner, Judi Dransfield Kuepper – but she gets short shrift. Even Kuepper himself is bemused by some of the connections Pestorius has forged. But that’s the art world – never let the facts get in the way of a good theory. The Clowns’ first manager, the late Ken West, is grossly misrepresented, and I’m more than qualified to say that as an old friend of his and the editor of his as-yet unpublished memoir Controlled Kaos, in which he goes into deep detail on his salutary time with the Clowns. But it’s easy to distort Ken, because he’s no longer here to defend himself.
                   The anthologized material is drawn from the vast and comprehensive archive of the Boswell of the Brisbane Sound, Donat Tahiraj, but—sadly and stupidly—Donat has subordinated his material and good intentions to an editorial agenda not of his own making. I do appreciate his efforts to try and maintain some balance, but still, it’s an indication of further misrepresentation when right at the top the book claims with no small fanfare that the first published written words on the Clowns were by Andrew McMillan, in the form of a short news item run in RAM in October 1979. When in fact, as a matter of public record, the first published written words on the Clowns were by me, in a major feature in Roadrunner magazine spread across two pages in September ’79. I can’t help wondering if it suited the book’s argument better that the first bit of Clowns coverage in the press should express bamboozlement rather than enthusiasm.
                    The book also, ironically, almost inadvertently contradicts another of its own claims—a claim that some of the ex-Clowns themselves sometimes make, too—namely, that the band hasn’t got its due. But how many Australian bands have had exhibitions in galleries dedicated to their visual imagery (however wayward)? None that I can think of offhand. How many Australian bands have had a scrapbook of their press-clippings published? Only Radio Birdman, I think. And apart from the fact that it’s not for my want of trying, it’s hard to imagine a collection of tearsheets as voluminous and quite as glowing as this one. 
                    The Laughing Clowns deserve better than this. I did my bit, as a sometimes probably too shrill a champion of the band in real time (the seven pieces of journalism reproduced here wouldn’t amount to a third of what I wrote about the Clowns), as well as and through my 1981 book Inner City Sound and subsequently my 1996 book Stranded. But if I’ve moved on since then and it’s now up to others to take on the task. I just wish they’d do it, so it’s done once and for all.

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.

​… in this day and age? in a music magazine? a thoughtful, considered critique of a book? when a fair bit of the general talk at the moment is about how the whole idea of criticism has become redundant in the present-day media… but Rhythms magazine’s Des Cowley has established himself as a thoughtful and perceptive critic of music and music books, and he has been kind and of course savvy enough to say some complimentary things about my work in the past, and once again he’s found a bit to like in my Saturday Night Fever 33er. It’s worth noting too how pleased I am that the book and its subject is being taken seriously and no longer just gets the whole mocking ‘Death to Disco’ treatment, which obviously just couldn't fly any more… and for me, as with any book I can spend sometimes years living with in the process of writing, if the music itself couldn’t hold up during that time, I doubt that I could have finished the book in the same conclusive way. I’ve never tired of listening to the Bee Gees and so much more deep disco over the last few years, and as much as anything I hope this book will have a similar effect on readers as the music has had on me...

Andrew Ford’s The Music Show on ABC Radio National might have been renamed The Disco Show when I appeared on it the other week, talking up The Soundtrack from Saturday Night Fever. “We’ve got to stop meeting this way,” one of us quipped, since it happens only every couple of years, but with regularity, when I have a new book to flog and this estimable show has me on as a guest. They must have liked it this time, since I enjoyed the rare privilege of hogging the whole hour to myself – thanks guys! Click on the image below to go to the page where you can listen to a stream of the hour:

Well, it's starting to hot up, get out there. The weekend Australian ran an extract the other week, but since it's behind a paywall, and since it is, after all, just an extract from the book you can buy, there's no (need for) access to it for the meantime

But the publisher Bloomsbury has run a little form-Q&A interview with me on the 33 1/3 blogsite and you can read it here at 333sound.com/33-1-3-author-qa-a-closer-look-at-the-soundtrack-from-saturday-night-fever/. More to come soon.

Out now world-wide, available wherever you prefer to buy books whether online or off the shelf. To see an entry I've written for the 33 1/3 blogsite, go to 333sound.com/an-introduction-to-the-saturday-night-fever-soundtrack/...

I was assigned the song “Rock’n’Roll” that Mandy used to sing, because I’d always loved it. Deb was assigned another of Mandy’s specialties, “Easy,” and AB, who was a member of the band in its latter days anyway, played mandolin and/or violin on a few of the songs she always played on.
            Across three sets at the GBH, it was just back to so many of the great, great songs that Tom wrote for Love Me. As good a songwriter as any that emerged in Australia either side of 2000 was Tom, but of course just being good is never enough to ensure success in the fickle world of pop. But Love Me were a huge success to the extent that they produced a great body of work, and that the fans that loved them treasure the memories we share.
            And so at the GBH it was a bit like Mandy’s wake all over again but with better backing, less sadness and more celebration. Well, just fun, the band just steaming on these songs, which will never not be in part inhabited by the spirit of Mandy. Fortunately for me I haven’t been in showbusiness for nearly 50 years without learning a few tricks, and so I got away with my first-ever public singing performance because I knew it was a lot less about carrying a tune than selling the song. “It ain’t rock’n’roll/If it don’t drag on all night.” (It ain’t rock’n’roll/If it don't buy a round... It ain’t rock’n’roll – they oughta start a competition!)
            The night was great and the good news now is that thus encouraged, Love Me may well carry on… after firstly a Japanese tour taking in the legendary Halloween Ball in Oasaka… I’ll be sitting here by the phone, guys.

... I did an interview for the recent Birthday Party documentary Mutiny in Heaven? which was included on the extra disk of extras with the DVD release of the film... Well, I'm still not sure that I did, as such, since I think the interview material included was originally shot for an early attempt at a Rowland Howard doco... maybe. But who knows? Who cares?