DELICATELY POISED BUT OH SO perfectly positioned, part one of this interview with that towering figure of Australian music, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, Kutcha Edwards, finished on him remembering a special day when he was only six. Caught mid-song, it was a moment of reverie that was beautiful and at the same time suffused with pain as, with eyes closed as the band played around him, he went back to a moment seeing his mother for the first time in years in her kitchen, kno

T & C of TLC say ladies, never mind your Ps & Qs. It’s almost exactly a decade that the unlikely happened not once but three times. Like some Biblical prophecy? A reverse garden of Gethsemane even? Well, maybe not quite, but it did feel touched by some special power. First TLC, or at least the two-thirds still with us, announced a return to partnership, then a tour of Australia, and finally, new album. The gods had spoken, saw that it was good, as did we, and everyone was hap

Johnny Took is ready for his close-up as the DMA's play The Metro. Photo by Charlie Hardy DMA’S Metro Theatre, March 27   THOUGH MATTERS WERE HELPED by several nights of unforgiving lashing rain, mixed fortunes in the footy, and what seasoned meteorologists call a really bloody cold March day, creating Manchester-by-the-harbour is no small feat. In a conundrum as hard as deciding whether you are red or blue, do you go for the swagger and psychedelic dance, or the insolence an

History man Kutcha Edwards. Photo by Benny Clark YOU DON’T ALWAYS KNOW where you’re going to end up when you start talking with Kutcha Edwards – you can’t really claim that it’s an interview in the old sense of the word given you’re not really guiding this thing – but you can sure it’s going to be fascinating getting there. The singer/songwriter, cultural leader, family figure and Mutti Mutti, Yorta Yorta and Nari Nari man, ostensibly is on the line from his home in Melbourne

If you don't need a prod to dance, but you do like a good hat. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN Take a turn around many more dancefloors with hundreds of playlists from me at Spotify.

CLAIRE EDWARDES Dual Attractor (ABC Classics)   MUSHROOMS ARE SO PASSE now, Beef Wellingtons having settled that issue for a while. But curiosity is not so easily sated. How do you die if you are poisoned with nightshade? Or hemlock? Or Crocus sativus? No, I’m not asking for a friend, chef, true crime podcaster, or indeed anyone with access to the White House kitchen, as appealing as that may well be. I am not sure I have the complete answer after listening to a three-part pi

Shadings and more. Chrissy Amphlett by Stuart Spence. WHAT COMES TO MIND …CHRISSY AMPHLETT THROUGH GLASSES DARKLY Here we have the next instalment in What Comes To Mind, an alternative series in the Wind Back Wednesday space, based on the work of the brilliant photographer Stuart Spence. Each time, he will dig out a photo from his archives going back almost 50 years and challenge me to respond with what comes to mind when I look at that image. It might be serious or ridiculou

Nearly the full squad, waiting for epiphany. IT’S OLD STYLE VALUES at play here. The good ones. Proper ones, of respect, dignity, communal responsibility, bloody good shows, reparations, forgiveness, and ideas you remember no matter how much, or how little, you’ve drunk because they’re worth it and no one either on or in front of the stage needs to pretend. Not about questioning Australia and the myths we tell, masculinity and the bullshit we cover it with, or rock with pop h

There is no rush, there is only the satisfaction of music done well. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN Find musical creatures of all sorts in hundreds of playlists from me, at the musical zoo that is Spotify.