British Chums In October, my former band mate and fellow life soloist Lucy alerted me to the existence of an on-line dating site that had the allure of an inbuilt screen against right wing loony romeos. This site hung off a highly respected and internationally distributed left-leaning paper based in the U.K. Unlike other swollen [...]

America votes “They accuse us of discrimination. Of being against the poor, of being racist. But I say the real problem is ‘soft’ discrimination. Giving welfare, hand-outs to the poor. That’s soft discrimination!” Virginian Christian radio announcer and GOP supporter, Nov 2. My car radio broadcast that comment, as well many other similar sentiments, as [...]

I may not be a Connecticut Yankee in Camelot, but shortly I will be something even stranger: an Australian raver in Nashville. A trip I have been dreaming about ever since I got to the Eastern seaboard is about to happen: an Americana music road trip through the Appalachians. An old friend and former band [...]

Science fiction My Brisbane school mates and I spent our tweenage years crimping our hair, slathering on make-up and trying to pass for drinking age to get into outer suburban discos. At around the same time, Eric Zala and his friends were spending their Mississippi tweenage years making a blockbuster movie in their backyards. I [...]

You’ve never seen anything like it The agent at the booth to the right of me was doing brisk business. Behind him was a plastic banner displaying a photo montage of musicians heavily jowled, paunched, but still throwing their silver hair around under purple stage lights: Eric Burdon and The Animals, Foghart, Joan Jett, Mickey [...]