All posts in Music Journalism

  • The Vine live review: Soundwave Festival Brisbane, February 2013

    A festival review for The Vine. Excerpt below.

    Soundwave Festival 2013
    RNA Showgrounds, Brisbane
    Saturday 23 February 2013

    This is the paragraph for the requisite context-setting that precedes every festival review ever. Soundwave is now easily bigger than the Big Day Out. They’ve long since sold out all five shows on this tour. This is where the real money is spent and earned each year as far as the Australian rock festival circuit is concerned. Each year Soundwave drops a line-up that’s more bloated with international talent than the last. Twenty-thirteen is no exception.

    James Hetfield of Metallica at Soundwave Festival Brisbane 2013, reviewed for TheVine.com.au by Andrew McMillen. Photo credit: Justin Edwards

    THE LOSERS VS INDIFFERENT VS WINNERS SCORE CARD:

    The Losers 

    Playing their first Australian show in nine years, A Perfect Circle had a fantastic opportunity to crowd-please in a late afternoon slot. They dropped the ball. We got a languid 50 minute set that drew heavily on material from eMOTIVe, their so-so covers album from 2004. Only one track from their 2000 debut, Mer de Noms (‘The Hollow’) – a disorienting remix of ‘3 Libras’ notwithstanding – and two from Thirteenth Step (a great take on ‘Weak and Powerless’, and ‘The Outsider’, wherein the guitars were barely audible).

    They did play a new song, ‘By And Down’, right near the end, but by this point the crowd’s energy had sapped considerably and most people inside the D barrier just stood there, staring, confused as to why they were choosing these songs. Far too earnest for their own good, this was by far the most disappointing set I witnessed all day. I had way more fun at Puscifer the night before – the other other band of APC/Tool singer Maynard James Keenan – despite that group having far fewer great songs than A Perfect Circle. I get it: Maynard doesn’t give a fuck about conventions or expectations. He’s his own man! Isn’t he rebellious? What a guy! But this set sucked, plain and simple.

    Kyuss Lives! were mixed so poorly that I fled after three songs. John Garcia’s vocals twice as loud as any of the instruments on stage? No thanks. These guys were good when they toured last year (review), so I’m not sure what went wrong today. When they first arrived on stage, Garcia’s mic was inaudible; someone at the sound desk massively overcompensated for their fuck-up. Also, no Nick Oliveri?

    Stone Sour are surely the least offensive band on the bill. Despite the grandstanding of Corey Taylor, who is an excellent frontman with one of the best voices in rock, there’s really not much to like about this band. I heard the majority of their set while waiting for Slayer and I couldn’t recall a single hook or melody. Beige.

    Myself, for losing my sunglasses. I can’t blame this on drink, drug, or mosh-pits, either. Just carelessness. Idiot.

    The Indifferent

    Local band The Schoenberg Automaton open main-stage proceedings as gates open on the stroke of eleven. To my ears their sound like generic hardcore with some highly technical guitar and drumwork tacked on. This formula is generally a win at this festival, though. They sound huge through the PA. These are my observations from the shade of a grandstand as the temperature climbs into the low thirties and we all begin losing litres of fluid hourly.

    I don’t find Anthrax to be especially engaging but it feels like I’m in the minority. They unveil flags bearing the visages of Ronnie James Dio and Dimebag Darrell, which is a nice touch. ‘Caught In A Mosh’, ‘Indians’, ‘I Am The Law’…they cover ‘TNT’ by AC/DC, one of the few heavy bands to not have graced these festival stages (next year?), and it doesn’t scan as a forced attempt at getting us onside — the entire arena already was. “Please remember to always worship music,” says Scott Ian at set’s end. OK.

    Dragonforce play all of the notes there are to play during their opening song, which goes for 10 minutes and contains as many guitar solos. Trying to listen to their newest album yesterday in preparation (while keeping a straight face) was hard work, and so is standing in the scorching sun while they shred. I can only stick it out for a couple of songs. I do like Herman Li’s whammy bar trick though: he holds the guitar aloft while it feeds back, then drops it onto his upper thigh with a flourish and continues playing. Dexterity.

    Shirt slogans spotted throughout the day:

    Tell your boobs to stop staring at me – worn by suss-looking, chubby 20 year old.

    Guns don’t kill people, Ray Lewis kills people.

    We’re just old farts who love music – worn by three 50-plus year-old guys in uniform.

    Fat guy wears Mystic Wolf shirt – worn by same.

    Suck my Richard – worn by tall, pasty redhead.

    It’s all good when you’re the big dude – worn by fat dude struggling to climb stairs.

    A singlet that reads  I’m a Lars Ulrich guy – exact meaning unclear.

    My favourite: You’ve never been drunk till you’ve shit yourself – Fraser Island 2010. Graphic.

    For the full review and photo gallery, visit The Vine. Above photo credit: Justin Edwards.

  • The Vine live review: Big Day Out Gold Coast, January 2013

    A festival review for The Vine. Excerpt below.

    Big Day Out 2013
    Gold Coast, Parklands
    Sunday, 20 January 2013

    Big Day Out 2013 Gold Coat review by Andrew McMillen for The Vine. Photo credit:: Justin Edwards

    It’s comforting to walk back into these festival grounds. I’ve barely given this event a moment’s thought in the preceding months, yet I know instinctively that I’m in for an entertaining day. This is what the Big Day Out has been synonymous with for 20-plus years: putting on a reliably good fucking show. In last month’s Rolling Stone, festival co-founder Ken West said that if this year’s tour goes wrong, the game’s essentially over. No more BDO. Was he exaggerating? Shouldn’t that be the case every year: don’t sell enough tickets, don’t make enough money? Yet as the venue fills throughout the day—this show hasn’t sold out, though they seem to have come awfully close—the stakes seem, strangely, lower than ever. It’s an eclectic, strong line-up led by one of the most popular rock bands in the world. What could go wrong?

    Before we get there, though, there are ten or so hours of live music to experience. Some of it good, some of it not. triple j Unearthed winners Jakarta Criers fall firmly into the former camp. They’re not doing anything particularly fresh or original within the confines of rock music, but the songs are good. So’s the musicianship and stage presence. They combine ‘Wicked Game’, ‘Come As You Are’ and ‘Gone Away’ into one mega-cover, which is a kinda cheap tactic but handled well, so the young Brisbane quartet score points. They play before several hundred applauding people today. I think they’ll be just fine. A career rock band in the making; a Birds Of Tokyo with balls, perhaps.

    Melbourne quartet ME are impressive, despite the bad band name. With a debut album out next week, they’re a tight live unit thanks a couple of years touring overseas. (An interesting take on the well-trodden path to indie rock success in this country.) If you’ve never heard of them, you’re forgiven: they’re playing the main stage, yet among the hundred or so initially paying attention to the band, it appears only a few dozen know what to expect. ME are an operatic rock band, essentially: somewhere near Queen and recent Muse — the four-piece write some of the most shameless arena rock you’ve ever heard. It’s awesome. It’s so transparent, what they’re doing, that you can practically see their internal organs. Yet it works so well. Falsetto vocals. Excellent guitar work. Powerhouse drumming. Good songs. I can’t look away from a chubby fat guy in a white shirt near the front, who spends a few minutes playing the most intense, unselfconscious air guitar I’ve seen. That dude sums ME up. You should check them out.

    Evil Eddie sucks terribly; real lowest common denominator stuff. Every Australian hip-hop fan discovers Butterfingers at some stage, and likely has a laugh at the funny/crude lyrics, but that shit’s just like the candy bar the band named themselves after: ultimately, bad for you. Eddie fronted Butterfingers, and he’s pulling the exact same shapes solo. It’s embarrassing; Australian hip-hop has come so far since Butterfingers were first amusing, yet here’s more of the same. He closes with two recent singles, ‘(Somebody Say) Evil’ and ‘Queensland’; the former is by far the worst thing I hear today. Just awful. I’ll note that there are hundreds of people jiving away before the Lilypad stage, so he’s evidently still mining fertile ground.

    Sampology, on the other hand, rules. I walk into the Boiler Room while he’s mashing up footage of the Wiggles in that fucking Coles ‘down down, prices are down’ ad while a much better song plays over the PA. That’s what the dude does: he DJs, skilfully, while cleverly-edited visuals play on the screen behind him. It’s compulsive viewing and listening; worth watching purely to see what he samples and mashes next. We dance while watching looped snippets of Free Willy and The Hangover, among loads of pop cultural touchstones that each get a cheer as they appear. Perfect festival fodder. Deserves a standing Big Day Out booking.

    The sum of my notes taken while watching Gary Clark Jr.: “CLASSIEST MOTHERFUCKER”. That’s really all there is to it. He’s a 28-year old Texan singer/guitarist who put out his major label debut in late 2012, Blak and Blu. Clark can sing, but it’s the guitar wailing we’re all here for. Fronting an incredibly tight four-piece band, Clark exhibits perfect guitar tone and phrasing. It’s such a pleasure to watch a master at work, and that’s just what Clark is. People keep throwing around the ‘H’ word in this context, referring to a legendary guitarist. It’s not really fair, but it’s basically true. This is one of the best sets I see today. All signs point to a healthy career shredding for a living, blowing minds like he does mine. If you get a chance to see this man play guitar, don’t hesitate. Please.

    For the full review and photos, visit The Vine. Above photo credit: Justin Edwards.

  • The Vine interview: Maynard James Keenan of Puscifer, December 2012

    An interview with Maynard James Keenan for The Vine. Excerpt below.

    Interview – Maynard James Keenan of Puscifer: “You can’t please everybody”

    Don’t ask about Tool. Don’t ask about A Perfect Circle. Definitely don’t ask when Tool’s next album – their first since 2006’s 10,000 Days – is due. These are the publicist-stated rules of engagement when interviewing Maynard James Keenan, frontman of those two bands and also Puscifer, a “multimedia project” that encompasses music, film, performance, wine and clothing, and has released two albums so far: 2007’s V Is For Vagina and 2011’s Conditions Of My Parole. Keenan is touring the Puscifer show outside of North America for the first time in February 2013, with three Australian theatre shows booked around his commitments with A Perfect Circle at Soundwave Festival.

    These interview restrictions open up lines of questioning largely outside of Keenan’s music, which has enthralled millions of hard rock fans since Tool’s first LP, Undertow, was released nearly 20 years ago. The singer owns and operates Merkin Vineyards and Caduceus Cellars in Arizona, where he’s lived for 17 years. Winemaking would be a gimmick – a distraction from his enormously popular musical outlets – if only Keenan wasn’t so damn serious about it. Multi-million dollar start-up costs aside, the business was built with a view to be sustainable, and Keenan says he has met this goal. A remarkable achievement, considering that Arizona had no wine reputation to speak of prior to Keenan’s involvement. Such is the pulling power of the man, perhaps, but it also helps that the wine is fantastic.

    Hello Maynard. Where are you calling from?

    The bunker. [At the Caduceus winery]

    Australia was the first country to import your wine: I’ve met the two guys behind [Caduceus wine importers] Sip & Listen here in Brisbane. I’m guessing that exporting was always on your list of goals, but were you surprised the Australian opportunity came up as soon as it did?

    I guess so. We don’t really have a lot of volume, so that we had enough to actually export was a surprise. It was good timing; we had a little extra.

    Australians will also be the first outside of North America to see Puscifer tour. Why is that? 

    The opportunity came up. It’s a tough project to get out of the country because of all the extra stuff we put into the performance. It had to be the right scenario, the right situation for us to be able to afford to do it.

    You said in [2010 documentary] Blood Into Wine that touring becomes more gruelling on your body as you get older. How do you take care of yourself, and your voice, while on the road these days?

    Just like anybody else would: just pace yourself, get good sleep.

    Is that different to what you were doing when you were touring in your 20s and 30s?

    Well, you know, back then you have a little more resilience, and you can kinda push it a little harder, move a little faster. You don’t necessarily have to pay attention to maintenance much.

    I get the impression that all of your musical output these days – touring, releasing music – is done primarily to fund your wine business. Am I way off the mark?

    Hmm… no. I think the touring is just because we like to play music and we like to perform. The wine business – it takes care of itself. Of course, there’s a lot of initial investment, from prior touring. I used a lot of that money to get it going, but that was instead of buying a Ferrari.

    So after the initial start-up cost, the ongoing costs aren’t so great?

    Yeah, I mean, it’s barely paying for itself, but it is sustaining itself. The point of even doing it was to establish a sustainable endeavour.

    Do you feel that reorganising your life around the wine business has had a positive effect on your art so far? 

    I would think so, yeah. It’s in tune with where I am. So if your art is, in theory, you expressing your take on the world, or your place in it, or your interaction with it, then I guess, yeah, it’s more in tune.

    Do you find it freeing to create music around the wine season, or restrictive?

    I haven’t really found anything that was restrictive. I kinda schedule things as I schedule ‘em. There’s a timing involved with harvest, so a lot of stuff has to take a backseat during that period of time, but it’s not like I’m writing every day.

    Which is more satisfying: completing a recording session, or finishing a wine harvest?

    I think they both stroke you in a different spot.

    For the full interview, visit The Vine.

    Further reading: my first interview with Maynard, in late 2010 ahead of Tool headlining the 2011 Big Day Out.

  • Rolling Stone Q+A: Paul Kelly, December 2012

    A Q+A with Paul Kelly in the December 2012 issue of Rolling Stone. Click the below image for a closer look, or read the article text underneath.

    Q&A – Paul Kelly

    The singer-songwriter on his new album, having his life documented, and nephew Dan’s cooking skills

    Few of us will ever know the feeling of watching a feature-length documentary about our own lives while sitting in a cinema filled with friends and family. Paul Kelly is one of the lucky few, though he probably wouldn’t use that adjective when describing the premiere of Stories Of Me at the Melbourne International Film Festival in August. Its limited release in October coincides with the release of the acclaimed singer-songwriter’s eighteenth album, Spring And Fall, which sees Kelly pare back rock-band tropes in favour of largely acoustic, softly-sung songs.

    Before we discuss that, though: what was it like to watch your life dissected on film? “It’s something I want to do only once in my life,” Kelly replies. “I had some of my brothers and sisters there. That was the best part of it for me; the celebration of my family. The rest of it was a pretty awkward thing to watch. But I got through it.”

    First the memoir two years ago, now this film. What in your life hasn’t been documented, Paul?

    I think too much has been documented, so it’s probably time to jump back into the shadows again for a little while! [laughs] I gave Shark Island [Productions] pretty good access, but from that point it was their film, not mine. It’s funny; I don’t feel connected to the doco like I would to my own work. I liked that they picked up a lot on my family; generations back, as well as my wider clan. That’s showing that people don’t work in isolation – they’re a product of a whole lot of things.

    Speaking of family, you and your nephew Dan have spent thousands of hours together, both onstage and off. Which trait sticks out more in your mind: the fact that he’s a great musician, or that he’s family?

    Family’s first, but he’s a joy to play with. He can be a bit of a worrier. He’s a great cook, so he’s great to travel with. He cooks like he plays [guitar]; never really follows a recipe, but he’s a great improviser. His playing has big, deep roots, because he listens widely to a lot of music. He’s got one of those ‘fermenting’ brains: there’s always a lot going on in Dan’s head, and it’s just a matter of catching it as it falls out.

    Spring And Fall is a love story – what can you tell us about the starring characters?

    It’s a love story from a couple of different points of view. Some of the songs are narrated, like ‘When A Woman Loves A Man’; ‘Time And Tide’ feels a bit more like a third-person story. Others are more directly speaking from the characters involved. But to me, the emotional arc of the record starts with love’s beginning – the ‘spring’ – and there’s a turning point in the middle around ‘Someone New’, followed by the aftermath.

    With your characters, do you go as far as envisaging their physical appearances and personality traits?

    Not on this record. I didn’t have it that defined; I don’t have names for them. But a bit of a model was a Willie Nelson album from 1974 called Phases and Stages. It’s the story of a divorce: side one is the man’s point of view, side two is the woman’s. I wasn’t getting quite as specific as Willie, but I kinda liked that idea.

    I’m not sure what you’ll make of this, but every time I listen to your song ‘When A Woman Loves A Man’, I think of how perfect it’d be as the soundtrack for a sex education video.

    Really? [laughs] Well, you know, if you know people in the know, then send it off!

    “Time and tide wait for no-one,” as you sing. You seem to have taken aging in your stride better than many musicians, perhaps even working harder as you grow older.

    Songwriting’s really a form of play. I still find it fascinating. It doesn’t feel like a grind. There are certain aspects of my job that’s grinding; sometimes the touring, and proofing, and approving YouTube videos. [laughs] If you want to be any good, you have to get involved with everything. There’s more work on the creative side now. And also, the record companies do less now than they used to: I do it, or me and the team do it. But the actual thing that starts it all is ‘play’: writing a song. Nothing would happen without playing in the sandpit. And that’s all it is.

    That’s a view that hasn’t changed over the years?

    Yeah. Songwriting’s not real work. Don’t let anybody tell you it’s a “craft”. It’s play.

  • The Vine live review: Harvest Festival Brisbane, November 2012

    A festival review for The Vine. Excerpt below.

    Harvest Festival
    Botanic Gardens, Brisbane
    Sunday 18 November 2012

    Arguably the hardest part of arranging a music festival is securing a headline act so superior that they simply can’t be followed. For the second year in a row, Harvest has achieved this. Sigur Rós are a delight: challenging, brave, and pure. Like Portishead last year, their main stage set is a sterling example of how to end a day filled with remarkable music. It’s a true spectacle, carefully structured to include peaks and troughs and the band work at eliciting a wide spectrum of emotions. There’s a real art to this, and it doesn’t go unnoticed by the thousands gathered before the Riverstage: a silent and attentive audience hangs on every note played.

    Before meeting the day’s peak, though, we find ten hours of solid entertainment bisected by a half-hour break in proceedings, owing to a storm cell menacing inner-city Brisbane. Organisers make the seemingly rash decision to evacuate the entire festival grounds – the first time I’ve heard of this happening in Brisbane – but in hindsight it’s a good call, at least from a public liability perspective. Hail and heavy rain lash the Botanic Gardens while thousands seek cover within the neighbouring university grounds, trading cigarettes and stories.

    During the storm I stand beneath a QUT building, adjacent to a construction site filled with plenty of objects which could easily become deadly in high winds. That doesn’t eventuate, though, and we’re all invited back inside at 6.30pm. A voice from the Windmill Stage coaxes us, urging us not to run, telling us that there’s room for everyone. Indeed. The situation is handled smoothly and professionally, all things considered.

    It rains intermittently throughout the day, starting one song into The War On Drugs’ set. This is not particularly interesting; most of the crowd came prepared with ponchos, given that the city was assaulted by severe storms the day before. (I won’t mention the weather again. Promise!) I love War on Drugs’ stage manner: the Philadelphia indie rock four-piece are calm, unpretentious and confident – it appears that nothing else concerns them right now. Their positive attitude is contagious. How much of the crowd is here because of their name alone? There seems to be few serious fans among the hundreds watching, yet they’re met with wide applause. They comply with a request for ‘Buying The Farm’from diehards down the front; in the closing moments, frontman Adam Granduciel removes and retunes a broken guitar string in 90 seconds flat. I’m impressed. It’s a strong start to the day.

    The Dandy Warhols are suited to the main stage when playing their singles, mostly taken from Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia; when indulging in slower, lesser-known material – including three plodders from 2012 release This Machine – they’re less appreciated. It’s a balance between crowd-pleasing and pleasing themselves, I guess. Their June 2011 show at The Tivoli was one of the best I saw last year. This feels a little flat in comparison. Silversun Pickups do too: the bass is nearly inaudible for the first few songs, Brian Aubert’s guitar parts are a little sloppy, yet his voice is spot-on. Drummer Chris Guanlao windmills his hair throughout the entire set, which draws material from their three albums. I’m a big fan of this band – Neck Of The Woods is one of my most-played albums of this year – but this performance feels far from their best. They namecheck Valley Fiesta, where Aubert tells us they played their first show outside of the US in 2007, and end strongly with ‘Lazy Eye’.

    Mike Patton is at home on the main stage, leading an orchestra through Italian pop songs. It’s a highlight because it’s so different from every other performance today. The Mondo Cane album is fantastic, and it’s a pleasure to see Patton working the songs in person, ever the genial frontman. The music is elegant, majestic, and all of those adjectives. It’s great that Harvest decided to book them: it wouldn’t have been cheap to hire, rehearse and tour that orchestra, nor is there a huge audience on the hill watching it take place. But damn, it’s fantastic. The Black Angels played a blinder headline set at The Hi-Fi last year, yet their performance on the smaller Big Red Tractor Stage is no knockout. While they play, I think about the quality of the Harvest 2012 line-up, and how there are few overlapping genres. This Austin-based psychedelic rock act play it cool, showing little emotion or enthusiasm before the hundreds-strong crowd. “You guys have been great,” singer Alex Maas says at the end of their set, and it’s hard to tell if he’s being serious.

    For the full review and photos, visit The Vine. Above photo credit: Justin Edwards.

  • The Global Mail story: ‘Unchained Melodies: streaming music in Australia’, June 2012

    A story for The Global Mail, published in June 2012.

    Excerpt below; click the image to read the full story on The Global Mail website.

    Unchained Melodies
    by Andrew McMillen

    What are you listening to? Chances are you accessed it from a streaming music-subscription service. Who wins and loses from the surging popularity of such sites as Rdio or Spotify?

    Little-known fact: among David Bowie’s many talents — singer, guitarist, hit songwriter, actor, multi-million record-seller, one-time androgynous alien — he’s also a soothsayer. The English pop star told The New York Times a decade ago, “The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it’s not going to happen.”

    Bowie continued: ”Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. So it’s like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You’d better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that’s really the only unique situation that’s going to be left. It’s terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn’t matter if you think it’s exciting or not; it’s what’s going to happen.”

    That New York Times article was published in June 2002. Ten years later, Australian music consumers find Bowie’s out-there predictions have become reality. Music sales have taken a severe dive worldwide; according to the most recent Recording Industry in Numbers report, 2011 delivered the “least negative result in global recorded music sales since 2004”; overall revenue fell by just three per cent, continuing the year-on-year decline.Today only a handful of the biggest artists can successfully earn a living from recording and releasing music alone; the vast majority of singers and players must tour regularly to top up their bank accounts, while simultaneously promoting their latest release.

    And, perhaps most significantly, technological innovation and begrudging record-label cooperation have combined to offer music fans the chance to shun the concept of traditional ownership entirely, in favour of streaming millions of songs wherever they want, as often as they want, in exchange for a regular fee. It’s Mr Bowie’s music-as-utility forecast come true. Streaming music is here, and likely here to stay. For music fans, the benefits are clear. Subscribe to an online service like Rdio or Spotify — the two most popular players in an increasingly-crowded Australian market — for $12.90 or $12.99 per month, respectively, and you’ll have access to almost any song you’ve ever loved, plus a whole galaxy of tunes you don’t yet know. You’ll also be able to hear new music on the day it’s released at the record store and on Apple’s iTunes Store. (Since April 2003 the iTunes Store has sold more than 16 billion songs.)

    Streaming offers an all-you-can-eat buffet of music, on your computer and your smartphone, and no matter how much you ‘eat’, the monthly fee remains the same. (Spotify also offers a free subscription, which automatically inserts audio advertisements into your playlist every 10 minutes or so.) Streaming is the most cost-effective and convenient means to music discovery ever mass-marketed; indeed, the initial enormity of the music library on offer — both Rdio and Spotify host 15 million-odd songs each — will overwhelm even the biggest fan.

    That record labels succumbed to streaming service providers by licencing their artists’ music was no doubt driven by a desperate need to regain some control over their ailing profit margins. Peer-to-peer file-sharing technology like Napster, Kazaa and — more recently — BitTorrent are widely acknowledged to have decimated overall music sales from 1999 onwards. The record industry learned a hard lesson: if the option is available, the tech-savvy will choose not to pay for music.

    Exactly how much this lesson cost the industry in lost sales revenue is impossible to measure, but it’s safe to say that the number in question is a whole number containing many, many zeroes. The labels’ great big hope is that the sheer convenience and relatively low cost of streaming will function as a finger in the proverbial dyke. A month’s unlimited subscription to Rdio or Spotify costs less than the average album does in-store, or on iTunes. Better that people pay a little money to hear their artists’ music, the labels figure, than nothing at all. The recording artists generally can’t choose whether or not their music is streamed, as their record labels usually hold the rights over how and where their music can be sold. Only the biggest fish can swim against the tide: bands such as The Beatles, Coldplay, Metallica and AC/DC all have opted out of including their respective catalogues on streaming services. Spotify won’t be drawn on the amount of revenue that gradually filters down to individual artists; spokespeople have only ever stated publicly that 70 per cent of the company’s revenue from subscriptions and ad sales goes to record labels, which then pass on a small percentage of the per-stream revenue to the artists.

    Perhaps it’s always been true that only the foolhardy would pursue a career in music with the primary goal of wealth in mind. But now it seems that the money-laden scales are tipping further away from the songwriters and performers in favour of those who build and maintain the tech services which enable the sale, distribution and consumption of music.(Just ask Apple’s shareholders.) So, is streaming going to kill the rock star?

    To read the full story, visit The Global Mail.

    Elsewhere: a conversation with Scott Bagby and Carter Adamson of streaming music service Rdio, February 2012.

  • Mess+Noise Storytellers interview: Shihad – ‘Deb’s Night Out’ and ‘Home Again’, May 2012

    An interview for the Mess+Noise ‘Storytellers’ series. Excerpt below.

    Storytellers: Shihad’s Jon Toogood

    As part of our occasional Storytellers series and to coincide with the release of a new career-spanning documentary, ANDREW MCMILLEN talks to Shihad’s Jon Toogood about two tracks from their back catalogue: an unheralded gem from the mid-1990s and the most popular song they’ve written to date.

    Shihad, one of New Zealand’s longest-running bands, have enjoyed a healthy career marked by experimentation. Now based in Melbourne, they’ve moved from industrial metal (1993 debut Churn) to include elements of pop and electronica (1996’s Shihad, 2008’s Beautiful Machine) while maintaining a central obsession with guitar-heavy rock music, as best exemplified on 1999’s The General Electric.

    I met with singer Jon Toogood [pictured above, far right] upstairs at Brisbane venue Black Bear Lodge – he was in town playing shows with new outfit The Adults – to discuss two Shihad songs in-depth: ‘Deb’s Night Out’ from 1995’s nine-song Killjoy; and ‘Home Again’, the first track from the self-titled album that followed a year later. Much has been written about how much energy Toogood exhibits when fronting Shihad on stage, and the same remains true when he’s engaged in conversation.

    ‘Deb’s Night Out’

    Andrew: I want to start with ‘Deb’s Night Out’. This song sticks out like a bit of a sore thumb, not only on that record but across your whole catalogue.

    Jon: Musically, it was very, very heavily influenced by Skeptics, who we were listening to a lot at the time. They’re a New Zealand Flying Nun band, who were quite different again from the Flying Nun crew in the fact that they weren’t using guitars. It was a lot of sample-based shit, a lot of keyboards. They used Euphonics, or E-Sonics … Some fucking early sampler. They just sounded fucking unusual but they also had this edge … [that was] quite majestic, melodically. Hard to explain. Really beautiful, but really weird.

    Anyway, we were listening to them a lot at that point. Phil [Knight, guitarist] wrote the loop the whole song’s based around, that thing that starts the whole song. That’s Phil on a sampler doing that. When he played it to me I was like, “Whoa, it’s really beautiful.” Then we wrote a bass line and then it was like, “Wow, that’s cool,” and then I just wrote a little poem over the top which was about a friend of my ex-wife’s who was a heroin addict. She came around to our house one night, in Wellington. At that point our daughter was one-year-old. She was asleep in the bedroom and her friend came around and was asking for money. We sort of chilled her out and then we ended up playing games, like Monopoly, but she was cheating. She also tried to steal some money so I actually said, “You – get the fuck out!” And it was pissing down with rain. So that’s where that song began.

    It’s a pretty relaxed instrumental, paired with lyrics that describe a dark tale of a relationship dissolving.

    It’s a song about disappointment, and a friend, really. She was more a friend of my ex-wife’s rather than mine. Oh, it was just the classic junkie thing. She was high; just never trust a junkie, really. She didn’t do anything to dispel that myth, or that cliche. She lived up to it. It was like, “Oh, that’s really disappointing”. I was a bit younger, so I learned, “Right, that’s actually how that drug works.” It was one of my earlier experiences with it. It was before Gerald [Dwyer], our manager, ended up dying of a morphine overdose.

    I didn’t know that.

    That happened after Killjoy [1995] and before the fish album [Shihad, 1996], which is probably a reason why the fish album is all over the place. Our heads were all over the place because we’d lost our manager.

    Was that in New Zealand?

    It was at the Big Day Out in Auckland. He managed us and another band called Head Like A Hole and we both had really blinding sets. We had seen him in the day; he was backstage and he’d rubbed his nose raw … because when he was on heroin, he’d scratch … The last thing I remember, it was really tragic, us all going [at the BDO], “You look a fucking mess, man. Get the fuck out of here! What the fuck are you doing?” He’s like, “There’s nothing wrong with me.” He went back to the hotel between our sets: we were on the main stage earlier, and Head Like A Hole were on the third stage later. He went back and had a hit, and it was really strong and he died. There was no one there at the hotel to help wake him up. By the time we’d got back to the hotel, someone knocked on his door, and then got it open, and he was dead on the floor. We thought it might have just happened, or something like that. But, yeah, he’d been dead for hours.

    Did you know that he had a problem like that?

    We knew that he used recreationally. But he had cleaned himself up for a while, and I think that’s what fucking killed him. Because he’d cleaned himself up for a while and then got some really pure morphine and basically decided to hit up what he used to do when he was using it more regularly – which kills a lot of people, anyway. There was no one there go to, “Hey, wake up.”

    So, ‘Deb’s Night Out’; how soon after that night did you write that song?

    Pretty much straight away, the day after. It was like – bam. [Guitarist] Phil [Knight] had given me that bit of music … It sounded like the feeling that I had, sort of bittersweet. Just sad, you know? And it was good timing. “Here you go Jon, I’ve got this music.” Great … We recorded it at York Street [Studios, Auckland], and we’d wanted it to be a loop rather than a live drum track. At that stage, as well, the studio was still new to us so everything was recorded to a two-inch tape. Before we were using ProTools properly, we went, “Oh fuck it, we’ll just cut a loop of Tom [Larkin] drumming.” So we actually cut it, had the splice going and we had to hold a drum stick in place [so that it could loop continuously] because there was only a small bit of tape. That’s why it’s got this weird skip in it, because it’s not quite perfect.

    That’s another cute thing I remember about that track. I remember laying down those keyboards right at the end, because it was always just one loop. I thought after that last line, “Pray for the rain/To wash you far away”, it needed to “rain”, musically. That’s the most Skeptics-y part, that whole [sings descending chord progression aloud]. It’s that sort of anthemic thing that the Skeptics did, but with keyboards.

    Did you ever see Deb again?

    Actually, I probably did see her once or twice, but nothing too deep. She probably was a little bit scared of me once we kicked her out.

    Does she know you wrote a song about her?

    I don’t care! [Laughs] I don’t even know if she’s still alive.

    At what point did you show your partner the song?

    At what point did I show my ex-wife? I remember her being around while we were recording it in Auckland. She would have known what it was about. [Pause] I’m always a bit cagey with lyrics, even with the people who are close to me – even with guys in the band. They’re real personal and I was always real … I don’t want people to not like them, so I keep them to myself until the very moment where I can’t hide them anymore, because we’re releasing the fucking record. Which is probably why I’m so fucking overly sensitive to bad reviews! [Laughs] Because I live in denial all the time! [Laughs] I am getting better at it. I am getting better at going, “Oh, fuck it. I’ve been doing it 22 years, this is the idea I’ve got, boom.” But around that, I was, what, 26 when I wrote that? Still very, very uptight.

    For the full interview, including questions about the classic Shihad track ‘Home Again’, visit Mess+Noise.

    Speaking with Jon about these tracks in September 2011 was a huge thrill for me, as I’ve long loved Shihad; my overall Last.FM charts show that I’ve listened to that band more than any other since I joined Last.FM in October 2004.

    The music video for ‘Deb’s Night Out‘ is embedded below.

  • The Vine interview: The Butterfly Effect, April 2012

    An interview with all four members of The Butterfly Effect for The Vine. Excerpt below.

    The Butterfly Effect: “I felt that I’d lost everybody’s faith and trust.”
    by Andrew McMillen

    I arrive at The Butterfly Effect’s rehearsal space in an inner north suburb of Brisbane on the afternoon of Wednesday, 8 February 2012. After pushing open a door bearing the band’s name in bold type, I find all four members in band position, almost as if they’re ready to begin playing. Ben Hall is sitting behind his drum kit, Kurt Goedhart is sitting before a wall of amps and noodling on his guitar, Glenn Esmond is cradling his bass and leaning over his pedalboard, and singer Clint Boge sits at a desk behind a computer and a set of speakers. They’re not rehearsing at the moment, though: instead, these four men are working on a first draft of the setlist for their final tour together. Two days earlier, the Brisbane-based hard rock act announced that Boge will be leaving the band after the tour culminates in early June. The other three members will keep the name, audition to find a new singer, and press on.

    Though the announcement was a shock to the band’s significant national fanbase, it’s less surprising when you consider their last few years of activity – or lack thereof, perhaps. Their last album was released in 2008, the sprawling, ambitious Final Conversation Of Kings, which saw the band reaching toward a more epic, prog-rock sound than what we heard on their 2003 debut Begins Here or its superb follow-up, 2006’s Imago. Though the quartet had toured occasionally throughout the last few years – including a short run of dates celebrating their 10th year together, in October 2011 – they had also been trying to produce a fourth album. They still haven’t gotten very far, apparently.

    Clint disconnects the speakers on his desk and distributes the milk crates that supported them. Kurt stays more or less in the same spot he was sat when I first entered the room; he continues to hold his guitar, and absent-mindedly plays a few notes occasionally, while the other three position themselves around the desk and do the majority of the talking. It’s clear that Clint and Ben are most interested in having their say, though Glenn does interject with a few nuggets of wisdom throughout our 45 minute conversation. Immediately before the interview begins, there’s an air of friendliness which morphs into tension remarkably quickly, as I start with the most important question: why is Clint leaving, after over 10 years fronting one of Australia’s most successful hard rock bands?

    TheVine: How long have you all known about Clint’s decision?

    Ben: It’s been a few months.

    Clint: September [2011]. It was mid-September when I came in and said I didn’t feel like going on anymore; continuing on. It took a little while to cement in, I suppose.

    How did the rest of the band react?

    Ben: I think it’d been coming. Everyone knew that there was something that was simmering. Not simmering, but… we’d obviously been trying to make a record for three years, and I just don’t think we were getting very far. I don’t think we were all happy with the way it was going. There was many tense moments, lots of points over those three years where we sat down and tried to realign, and I think it just came to a head on that day. We all agreed that we weren’t in the same direction, so maybe we shouldn’t waste any more time doing that. It was not a decision that was made…

    Clint: It wasn’t made lightly. It was something I’d thought about quite a lot leading up to that day. I think it came from… there were a couple of suggestions made to me about who I should work with, and who I should be trying to extract the best melodies with, and not really getting the songs, or delivering them in the right way. That was the last straw for me. I thought, ‘If I’ve lost the faith from my bandmates to produce what I think are the best melodies…’ and to have that trust taken away, then I couldn’t go on working like that. Not only that, but I don’t want to be the weak link in a band. I don’t want to be the guy that’s not pulling his weight. That was another reason, too. I thought, ‘If that was the case, I’ve got to go.’

    Not only that, man, but I think musically-wise I was looking for something different that I wasn’t quite hearing in the songs. I [think that some] of the ideas that I [was trying to communicate] weren’t being actioned. They weren’t being done, so I felt lost in that department, as well. It’s probably been happening for some time. I really felt some pressure, to not make the same mistakes that I feel we made on Final Conversation. Wanting to step up and go beyond was the focus.

    In terms of the band’s style, you mean?

    Clint: Yeah, yeah, and especially my vocal delivery, and what I heard in the songs and what I could hear being the final product. That was all taken into consideration, and the decision was made based on all of those points.

    Where were you on that day? Did you meet here [at the rehearsal room], and discuss it?

    Clint: Yeah, it was just another practice day, pretty much. I sat in my car for about 20 minutes, pretty nervous, thinking, “This is a big decision to make.” And not only that, to come in and do it cold. I pretty much walked in, grabbed my mic, put it in my pocket… because I thought, “I’m taking my bloody microphone!”

    [Ben begins laughing, and says, “Far out!” Glenn laughs and says, “I’m taking my bat and ball, and going home!”]

    Clint: [laughs] It was a bit symbolic, but nah, I actually needed it to do something with it. I was going to do some singing at home, and it’s a better microphone than I’ve got at home. I said to the guys, in light of the email that was sent and the two band meetings that happened previously in the year, I felt that I’d lost everybody’s faith and trust, so I removed myself from the band. Everyone took it pretty well. I thought so. There was no, “Fuck you, and up yours Jack” and whatever. “Get the fuck out of here or I’ll bash you,” or any of that sort of bullshit.

    Ben: Would’ve made for more of an exciting story, but. We can organise it?

    Clint: And also, Benny sent me a text message afterwards and just said, “Look man, you know we don’t want to go out like that.” Which I said to the guys, “I don’t want to go out arguing and screaming, and calling each other names”.

    Ben: We’ve done plenty of that over the years. There’s been of that sort of shit going on. It’s not just Kurt and me; it’s Clint and Kurt, or me and Glenn. We’ve had plenty of years worth of fights and all that sort of that shit. The second that Clint walked in, when that was the outcome, I think we all felt that this time, more than any before, that it was probably the right decision. It was probably something that had been coming for a fair while. As much as you don’t want to let it go, you fear having nothing. This band’s everything to all of us. It has been. But you go, ‘Cool, let’s reflect and look at what we’ve done.’

    Clint: And celebrate it.

    Ben: Immediately, I started to feel a better sense of achievement than I had the whole time I’ve been in the band. We’ve done a lot of stuff together, and we’ve achieved a lot, and it’ll be great to hold this together in light of what we’ve done, and do this tour that’s coming up. Already today, we’re talking about the setlist, piecing it together, and getting excited about it. Which is awesome. It could be a terrible break-up, but everyone’s been adult-like.

    Clint: I think that’s the surreal thing for me — when we did that tour in October. That week or two for the [band’s] ten year anniversary. We all came in, the pressure was off of writing an album, and it felt good to hang out. I really enjoyed that tour. [He looks around the room and is met with nods.] I thought everyone got along really well. There was a good sense of camaraderie. There was no hint of any malice towards each other. It was really… and it was odd, because I was expecting being at the airport and being sat in a different section of the plane. Sort of feeling this – ‘Oh shit, I’m the odd guy out’, and having the crew shun me and go, ‘You bastard, you’ve effectively taken one of our meal tickets off the table’ sort of thing. But no, it was good. Everyone was really good. And now it’s — do the last tour, really celebrate and enjoy a long time in the music industry, and some great achievements, and off we go. And then it’s a new singer for The Butterfly Effect, and a solo album for me, and rock’ n roller.

    For the full interview, visit The Vine.

    Note: Quotes from this interview originally appeared in the April 2012 issue of Rolling Stone Australia

  • Mess+Noise ‘Storytellers’ interview: The Panics – ‘Cash’, April 2012

    An interview for the Mess+Noise ‘Storytellers’ series. Excerpt below.

    Storytellers: The Panics

    ANDREW MCMILLEN revisits our occasional “Storytellers” series, whose premise is simple: one song by one artist, discussed at length. This week it’s The Panics Jae Laffer talking about ‘Cash’, a song from their 2003 EP ‘Crack In The Wall’.

    Four years before striking it big with their breakout, ARIA-nominated single ‘Don’t Fight It’ in 2008, Perth-based rock band The Panics released their third EP, Crack In The Wall. A stopgap between their 2003 debut LP House on a Street in a Town I’m From and 2005’s Sleeps Like A Curse, its seven tracks saw the still-young band yearning to find a sound of their own. Chief songwriter and singer Jae Laffer is the first to admit that their previous releases sounded like “guys imitating their heroes”, while doing a good job of it.

    Crack In The Wall’s second track, ‘Cash’, is instantly appealing. The song opens with a finger-picked acoustic guitar riff, which remains a central motif even while Laffer’s bandmates build around that earworm riff. I meet with Laffer at The Hi-Fi in Brisbane in late 2011 after their soundcheck. In a few hours’ time, he’ll lead his band through a set which focuses largely on their 2011 release Rain On The Humming Wire and its precursor, 2007’s ARIA-winning Cruel Guards.

    For the moment, though, Laffer is happy to cast his mind back seven years and relive ‘Cash’, a song he demonstrates and narrates for a few minutes while I film him near atop the venue’s staircase. After being interrupted by a couple of Hi-Fi staff, we relocate downstairs, where he continues to strum his guitar while we talk, eking out all manner of half-formed ideas and subconscious melodic curiosities. At one point I pull out my phone to play ‘Cash’ and jog his memory about a particular sound effect; he admits he hasn’t listened to it in a while.

    Jae Laffer on ‘Cash’

    ‘Cash’ was off Crack in the Wall. I wrote it in 2004. We call it an album; it’s got seven tracks, and it feels like an album. But ‘Cash’ is a good example of what was on the record at the time. I’m trying to think of what we were listening to at the time. There was definitely a little bit of Radiohead in our life, that kind of thing. We’ve been big fans of English music for a long time. I can just remember simply doing that [guitar riff].

    The title ‘Cash’ came because Johnny Cash died around the time we were rehearsing the words and writing the tune … At the time, I think because we were so into the Johnny Cash stuff that he was doing – the American Recordings stuff – we started calling the song ‘Cash’ because it had a country feel to it … It wasn’t about him; it was about his kind of character. It’s kind of autobiographical. It’s a hazy song but there was that uncompromising kind of spirit of someone like Johnny. The lyrics started to pour out like [sings], “He took his own life in a fire/To warm his hands, to feel it right.” … [It’s about] the people who give all for art, or for life, or whatever it is. That whole song kind of drifts along that. It’s just the timing of his death, what we were listening to, and just coming up with a riff that had a vague country feel.

    Were you surprised when I asked to talk to you about this song?
    Yeah, because I’ve never talked about that, apart from at the time when … it was on the radio a little bitt. It’s nice. People still request it. It’s a hazy kind of subject but it also seems to be full of purpose, and it’s catchy as hell. There’s something intriguing about the whole thing. I like it for that reason.

    I think of it as the ultimate Panics song, in some ways. It sums the band up well, lyrically and musically. Do you agree with that?
    I don’t know. Because we’ve had a bunch of albums now I could probably think of half a dozen songs which sum up maybe that time, or a couple of years. It is quintessential and I think it’s the style of lyric and also it’s the soft-meets-really-thumping sound as well. We’re known for a few ballads, but at the same time the guys are all-out rockers as well … When we mix them together with my voice, which is – I’m not Tom Jones, I kind of rap along like that. That’s just how I sing. You’re right.

    What do you recall about how the song came together? Was it that guitar bit that started it off?
    Definitely. I can’t remember what we were listening to at the time, but it seemed to be very “of the moment”. I remember thinking that about the riff … It was one of the ones where you start playing it and realise you want to finish the song quick because you want to get it on the radio. It had one of those feels to it. It was cool like that.

    For the full interview, visit Mess+Noise. The song ‘Cash‘ is embedded below.

  • Rolling Stone story: ‘The Butterfly Effect splinter’, April 2012

    A story which appeared in the April 2012 issue of Rolling Stone Australia. Click the below image for a closer look, or read the article text underneath.

    The Butterfly Effect splinter
    Brisbane rockers part ways with singer after 10 years together

    In mid-September 2011, Clint Boge drove to The Butterfly Effect’s rehearsal space in an inner north suburb of Brisbane. It was just like any other practice day for the hard rock act, who had released three albums since their debut EP in 2001. Boge switched off the engine and sat alone in nervous silence for 20 minutes, thinking about the bombshell he was about to drop on his three bandmates: he was quitting.

    Boge recounts the tale in blunt terms. “I felt that I’d lost everybody’s faith and trust, so I removed myself from the band. Everyone took it pretty well, I thought,” he says. “There was no, ‘Fuck you, and up yours Jack,’; no ‘Get the fuck out of here or I’ll bash you,’ or any of that sort of bullshit.”

    Rolling Stone arrives at the same rehearsal space on February 8, two days after Boge’s announcement was made public. The band are putting together the first draft of a setlist for the 20-odd tour dates that will run through late April until early June.

    The ‘Effected’ tour and the best-of compilation released simultaneously will allow fans to farewell Boge, and mark the end of an era for one of this country’s most successful hard rock acts.

    Boge’s bandmates weren’t entirely blindsided by his decision. “It’d been coming,” says drummer Ben Hall. “We’d obviously been trying to make a record for three years, and we weren’t getting very far. There was many tense moments; lots of points where we sat down and tried to realign. It just came to a head on that day. We all agreed that we weren’t [heading] in the same direction, so maybe we shouldn’t waste any more time doing that.”

    It wasn’t a decision that Boge made lightly. “I’d thought about it quite a lot leading up to that day,” he says. “There were a couple of suggestions made to me about who I should work with, who I should be trying to extract the best melodies with; and [that I wasn’t] really getting the songs, or delivering them in the right way. I couldn’t go on working like that.”

    The Butterfly Effect was formed in 1999 by Hall and guitarist Kurt Goedhart while the pair were in high school. Boge saw one of their first gigs, at the Ipswich Racecourse – with a different vocalist – then rode home with Hall and showed the drummer lyric ideas that would form the basis for their debut EP. Bassist Glenn Esmond joined the group in 2002.

    “It’s definitely going to be sad. I’m not going to bullshit to you,” Boge says of the forthcoming tour. “I have moments where I just think, ‘Fuck – it sucks that it’s gotta go like this.’ But the thing is, I’d rather walk now than have these guys looking at me in a year’s time, saying, ‘Fuck you, I hate you, get out of my face.’”

    After the ‘Effected’ tour, Boge plans to record and release a solo album, continue working with his other hard rock act, Thousand Needles In Red, and devote more time to his vocal coaching clinic, Road Coach. His three former bandmates will audition for a new singer – they won’t reveal who’s on their shortlist – and work toward the release of their elusive fourth album.

    “We’ve been extremely blessed to be able to do this for as long as we have,” says Esmond. “I really do appreciate all the stuff we’ve had done far. I just feel stoked to have been able to do it. Whatever happens from here – I’m content that I satisfied all my dreams [doing] this.”

    “I’m sure we’ve all still got more to achieve,” adds Hall. “We’ve lost a limb, but hopefully we’ll find another one, and power on. We’ve got plenty of songs, so we’ve just got to find the right person. They’re some big shoes for someone to fill.”

    Further reading: The full transcript of my interview with the band was published on The Vine in April 2012.