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The Go Set and me

The_Go_Set_-_The_Hungry_MileIt seems somehow amiss to ponder the mystery of how music may move and motivate us to action when so much of the planet and its people are in unimaginable crisis. Yet I will share this anecdote, as I am sure it is somehow linked to an ongoing process of thinking and acting that can go towards making useful changes.

We were walking towards the festival exit when we heard the bagpipes and a frenetic beat that turned us around again and led us to a place where there was no other option than to jump into the air as much as we could and bit by bit shed our warm layers into a pile by the pylon and keep leaping into the air smiling with the space around us enjoying the mix of years in the crowd who registered their cause being belted out from the stage where the energy behind the band’s sweat made us want to jump with joy and body memories of every struggle and the times when folk got together trying to defend the voice of someone being kicked down and silenced.

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Written by Sharon Callaghan on 25-03-2011, 2 user comments

My (not so) secret poetic shame

I’ve heard so many writers wax lyrical about their early poetic influences and, indeed, I've done it myself in interviews. Musicality plays a great part in my poetry and some time ago, a young writer asked me what the first album I bought was. They might have been expecting Tracey Chapman, or perhaps even Gil Scott Heron, The Last Poets or Public Enemy – and indeed, they did come later. But here, ladies and gentlemen, for your viewing pleasure, is my ultimate secret shame.

bobby-brown-my-prerogative-239516In 1989, I bought my first ever cassette tape album: Bobby Brown’s gem Every Little Step I Take. It played on loop on my sunflower yellow boombox till the tape got twisted and Bobby began to sound chipmunk-like. Whitney Houston and Brown hadn’t hooked up yet and I knew deep down that somehow, Bobby and I were gonna marry someday. Bel Biv Devoe and Arrested Development were soon to follow suit, though none of them would steal my heart anywhere close to the way that skinny-legged black-shoulder-padded-tux-with-bare-chest-underneath Bobby did. ... read more

Written by Maxine Clarke on 9-03-2011, 6 user comments

In defence of the rock critic

Lester Bangs‘Your mileage may vary’, Georgia Claire’s recent piece on the worthlessness of rock criticism, gave the impression of an archaeologist stumbling across a snippet of text from some curious – if clearly uncivilised – tribe. (Which, in fairness, isn’t an inaccurate description of most rock critics.) How funny these people are, with their made-up words and grammar-bending syntax!

Her point, of course, was that a description of Sydney band The Laurels, and rock criticism at large, make no sense. On at least one level, she’s absolutely right. As an example of the English language, it’s simply not much cop. What exactly is a psychedelic juggernaut, if not a garishly painted road train? ... read more

Written by Myke Bartlett on 21-02-2011, 4 user comments

Your mileage may vary

Graphophone1901I made my first foray to the Oxford Art Factory this week to see a gig by Jenny Lewis’ new band, Jenny and Johnny, who were quite decent. They were supported by a band I’d never heard of called the Laurels, so, in preparation, my companions and I looked them up online to learn a bit about them. I shall now quote from the Triple J website to make sure I get the phrasing of this description exactly correct.

The Laurels are a shoegaze band from Sydney whose psychedelic juggernaut has accumulated accolades, guitar pedals and fans in approximately equal proportion.

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Written by Georgia Claire on 11-02-2011, 15 user comments

Writing without fear or favour

A few years ago I was doing some analysis of blogging as part of a PhD examining different forms of alternative media amid claims that the internet would lead to a reinvigorated public sphere. In that analysis I was critical of blogs, arguing they were spaces where like people had like conversations that usually ended in furious agreement. But the Overland blog – where there is often furious disagreement – proved me wrong. Overland bloggers might identify as lefties but don’t assume this to mean they speak in one unified voice. In fact, I’ve been challenged by the many different perspectives of the community of writers and readers that make up Overland on topics ranging from politics to literature. ... read more

Written by Trish Bolton on 29-11-2010, 12 user comments

A pedagogy of pop? Contemporary popular, protest music, and social change

You say you want a revolution
Well you know
We all want to change the world
– Lennon and McCartney, 1968, ‘Revolution’

My research locates and engages with a ‘popular myth’ that occurs in contemporary mass-mediated culture: that popular music can and has inspired or led people to think and act to change the world or bring about social change. That it has inspired and motivated people to question, challenge and confront authority. That it has informed and inspired people to act on and redress social injustices and inequalities; and that this has led some to act in processes for social change. At the core of this largely mass-media propagated meta-narrative is the notion that some popular music in the last half of the C20th (and today) contained significant angst, social protest and reactionary politics. This has, the myth goes, manifested over time as rebellion against parents, social norms, institutions, the government and even subversion of dominant paradigms. ... read more

Written by John Haycock on 12-11-2010, 5 user comments

Victoria, when are you going to support your arts?

'Save art' -- by hmmlargeart This year I have harshly come to the realisation that our government doesn’t care about art, well, not unless you’re Tim Winton, Nicole Kidman or the Australian orchestra. To them, emerging artists are just the people on the sidelines who should get their act together and get a real job. We are the annoying buskers on Bourke Street outside Myer, the poet reading at shady pubs in front of ten people, the TAFE students who should be getting serious and studying at university. After all, isn’t university the place artists go to become ‘real’ artists? To learn all the rules there is to learn on how art should be created? Then all of us artists can keep producing and reproducing and regurgitating the same art again and again and Australian culture can stand still forever. Yes, that’s exactly what we need as a society: to be unchallenged. ... read more

Written by Koraly Dimitriadis on 10-11-2010, 18 user comments

Dylan, the Devil and Judas

Bob DylanWhile many have searched for religious themes in Dylan’s lyrics, what has often been overlooked is the astonishing amount of times Dylan has scripturally referred to Satan. Furthermore, the unsavoury characters of Judas and Cain have also made regular appearances. Satan is usually portrayed as the great deceiver, the man of peace masquerading as an angel of light, while Judas and Cain are invariably metaphors for betrayal and guilt.

i) The Devil
Dy

Written by Damian Balassone on 29-10-2010, 5 user comments

Ode to ‘Nude Woman Reading’

When writing music reviews I often use the term ‘psychedelic’ as shorthand to describe those transformations to familiar sounds which are unexpected and unusual to the extent that the senses become favourably stimulated, and otherwise hidden dimensions of the world are revealed through a desirable glimpse of freedom. And there doesn’t have to be some big mind-blowing catalyst to set it off. Psychedelic enlightenment is there for the taking from something as simple as that tingling rush when lips are locked with a good kisser or possibly the distorted guitars and sexy vibes on Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Foxy Lady’.

It is common knowledge that the onset of mind-expansion sometimes follows the ingestion of certain lysergic substances, but when it comes to musical adventures listened to in the right setting and mood, a profound and immediate impact can occur without chemical enhancement. I know that when I signed up for the inner journey that flows from such a majestic piece of music as Pink Floyd’s ‘Echoes’, all I had to do was allow myself to focus on sounds that are in turn ethereal and strange, and it wasn’t long before I was taken somewhere outside myself, and somewhere so pleasant, it was almost a shame to come back to everyday experience sadly defined by habit and routine. ... read more

Written by Dan Bigna on 26-10-2010, 1 user comment

The best thing on the internet by far

Without a doubt the best discovery I have made on the internet of late is Gogol Bordello.*

Gogol Bordello

Here they are with ‘Immigraniada’:

Written by Jacinda Woodhead on 8-10-2010, 9 user comments

White people: what the hell is your problem?

That's a clip from a Fear of a Brown Planet live show. In Overland 200, Jacinda Woodhead investigates the FOBP hip-hop workshops in Footscray, Melbourne. ... read more

Written by Editorial team on 17-09-2010, 2 user comments

Anorexia, capitalism, riot-grrrl

In Overland 197, Anwyn Crawford contributed a devastating critique of Nick Cave, one of the most-discussed articles we’ve published in the past year or so. For Overland 200, she’s written a much-needed intervention tackling some of the major issues in contemporary feminism. It begins like this:

A chart hung above the chalkboard in Mrs Brandie’s classroom, written in the patient, legible hand of a primary school teacher. Black marker on white card, two columns: name, weight – Anwyn Crawford, 34 kg.

I’ve forgotten the name of the lightest member of the class, but not her figure, the lowest weight on the chart: 18 kg, limbs like kindling. My maths, at age eight, was good enough to know that I was nearly double this. I knew enough to know that I was fat and she was thin, and I was utterly ashamed. ... read more

Written by Editorial team on 13-09-2010, No comments

Father’s Day

Storms around Nimbin often come from the south-west, rolling in from behind Nimbin Rocks with a sound like that of some weird, mysterious train.

From the verandah, where I’m sitting, the thunder in the mountains seems like the echo of events taking place in another country. When I think about some of the things that have happened to me in this bizarre experience called Life, to date, I couldn’t be more surprised than if, say, a giant cicada suddenly ate the suburb of Five Dock. Hunter S. Thompson repeatedly said that life could never get weird enough for him. Well actually it did, Hunter. That’s why you topped yourself, you dickhead. ... read more

Written by Stephen Wright on 3-09-2010, 21 user comments

The Muslim voice pushing through

The politically conscious hip-hop group The Brothahood ask ‘Why?’

Five Muslim spoken-word/rap artists born in Australia with Lebanese backgrounds, The Brothahood are smashing stereotypes with their album Lyrics of mass construction, and tracks like ‘Why?’ When I accidentally stumbled across them a few months ago I was asking myself why haven’t I heard of these guys? All of Australia needs to turn off their televisions and listen:

Now if a wake up one morning and grow myself a beard /
people start talkin and getting themselves scared /
but – Mr Goldberg he lives down the block /
when he grows a beard no-one ever gets a shock /
why when my sister walks properly dressed /
she wears a headscarf they think she’s oppressed? /
then you got the nuns dressed in black and white head to toe /
but no-one questions them – why – i dont know

Hesh, Ahmed, Moustafa, Jehad and Timur work full-time jobs, live on opposite sides of the city in suburbia and struggle to find time to come together, but when they do, they produce raw and confronting material that challenges the propagandist mainstream newsfeeds the Australian public sees every day. They may not have flashy video clips but the content is honest and allows the Muslim voice in Australia, commonly silenced by fear, to be heard.

Only recently introduced to their work, by the Nothing rhymes with RRR podcast, my initial reaction was: why aren’t these guys funded by an arts council? Why do these guys have to struggle to create? Governments complain of the racism in Australia but do nothing about it. Why not start by funding people like The Brothahood and other diverse voices from different backgrounds? Only through art can we appreciate the many cultures we have in Australia.

The Brothahood began their career years ago as spoken-word artists performing with a beat boxer and have since incorporated music in their performances. Their track ‘The Silent Truth’, a response to the Cronulla riots, was featured on Triple J’s Unearthed in 2007:

I can feel ya eyes on me but i aint in the wrong /
keepin to yourself scared that my beard hides a bomb /
tensions climbin higher than that ape king kong /
label me a thug coz i'm from Lebanon /
butcha WRONG, im like any other aussie /
try to ride a train but u always gotta stop me /
coz of 9/11 now you all wanna wanna drop me /
little do you know that your thinkins kinda sloppy

But The Brothahood don’t only write about issues faced by Muslims in Australia. My favourite track is ‘Act on It’, which voices anger over the state of Israel and the suffering of Palestinians:

It was born on injustice, theft and murder /
Driving Palestinians out further and further /
Now don't get me wrong Judaism ain't to blame /
But we must understand that Zionism ain't the same /
Now I know you're mad at me, blunt brutality /
The Z ain't got no links to Jewish spirituality /
Huh, now you wanna twist, call me terrorist /
Yes, I'm anti Zionist, Expect me to resist

This Thursday morning, 15 July from 9–9:30, I’ll be interviewing Jehad from The Brothahood on 3CR’s Spoken Word program (855 AM). We’ll be discussing spoken word, lyrics and politics. You can also listen online at www.3cr.org.au

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Written by Koraly Dimitriadis on 12-07-2010, 8 user comments

On art, music and thoughts in between

RANDAL: I’m not going to miss what is probably going to be the social event of the season.
DANTE: You hate people.
RANDAL: But I love gatherings. Isn’t it ironic?
– Clerks

I enjoyed a sweet taste of alternative artistic expression on two recent occasions which made me feel better about the way things are going in the art world, and maybe even in the world more generally. It would seem that a commitment to free creative expression is still running strong outside the mainstream entertainment industry. I can therefore forget all about the stuff that doesn’t matter, and instead focus my attention on seeking out things of aesthetic value that might also tell me a bit about the inherent strangeness of the world, as did an odd juxtaposition the other day when I was sitting on the front porch with some searing Japanese psychedelic rock from the 1970s on the headphones while a neighbour sullenly wheeled his recycling bin towards the kerb – a somewhat random, yet interesting coming together of the exotic and the mundane. ... read more

Written by Dan Bigna on 29-06-2010, 2 user comments