The Musical History of Adelaide Part 2

Welcome to Part Two of our stay in Adelaide during our Rock Around Australia trip.

Paul Kelly
It is beyond difficult to sum up the career and music of Paul Kelly in a short paragraph. However, Adelaide's bard du jour has been making uniquely Australian music for 35 years and he shows no signs of slowing down. He sings in a unique local drawl and his lyrics are fuse Dylan's wit and wordiness with, at times Tom Wait's world-weariness. As Molly Meldrum used to say, "Do yourself a favour" and check out some of his back catalog. Start here:



Cold Chisel
Cold Chisel started life under the name of Orange, and started gigging in Adelaide in 1973 before finally settling (if you could call it that) in Sydney in 1977. Fronted by Scottish-born singer Jimmy Barnes, their sound was shaped by Soul music and the blues, but it developed a tougher, more ragged edge from being in competition nightly on stage with bands like AC/DC and The Angels. The band went on to become one of the biggest selling bands in Australia, selling over 6 million records to a population of 23 million people.



Redgum
Redgum was started by four students of Adelaide's Flinders University in 1975. They have a strong satirical bent to their songs, which generally have a strict folk flavour. The subject matter of their songs often tackles corrupt politicians, unemployment, foreign ownership of Australian assets, consumerism and more. Their biggest hit was the story of two Vietnam Vets (a subject kept very much under the rug at the time) called "I Was Only 19" in 1983. Their second biggest hit is linked below, the playful skewering of youth tourism to Indonesia (as it seemed everybody was doing in 1984), "I've Been To Bali Too". They split in 1986.



Exploding White Mice
Exploding White Mice take their cues from the hard driving punk sound of The Saints and Radio Birdman. They started their career on influential Adelaide indie label Greasy Pop belting out fast three chord originals and covers of 60s instrumental and garage pop hits. They may not be household names in Australia but they made a healthy income from touring in Europe. They called it a day in the mid-1990s.



Swoop
Swoop made a name for themselves by taking the groovy retro funk of Sly and the Family Stone and Parliament/Funkadelic into the grunge era. They worked the groove hard and added some rap for good effect. The band issued the independent debut LP "Thriller" in 1993 before signing with a major label in 1994 to release their heavily funkified sophmore LP "The Woxo Principle". By this time, the rap influence was watered down somewhat, and there were some more sunshine pop and psychedelic influences contained within. The band issued another single in 1997 "Teenage Funkazoid" but since then very little has been heard of them...

Sunday Sessions: Christmas with Paul Kelly

As you know, Christmas is upon us, and we here at The Sound and the Fury Podcast are winding down for the end of the year. Life have been very stressful for me at least this year, especially in the last few months of the year, and this is one of the reasons why the blog has been so slow lately.

There will be more great music and great stories on the blog in 2014, as well as a few new surprises up my sleeve. This year we welcomed our new contributor King101, and I look forward to seeing more of his great work in the new year.

There will be more intense playlists. There will be more interesting videos and heaps more next year, so stay tuned.

Stay safe over the Christmas break. Have heaps of fun and we'll catch you all again soon.

For now, I'll leave you with a great Christmas song from one of Australia's finest songwriters, Paul Kelly. This tune is written from the point of viw of a prison inmate who cannot come home to be with his family for Christmas. It is called "How to Make Gravy".

Enjoy, and I'll see you next year. Thanks for visiting.

Paul Kelly and Neil Finn Live

On Monday 18th of March Neil Finn and Paul Kelly played the final show of a short tour together, at the Sydney Opera House.  It was streamed live on YouTube.

The set list was a nice mix of old and new with the song choices split roughly 50-50 between the two songwriters.  Neil cherry-picked songs from a number of his former projects - Split Enz, Crowded House, The Finn Brothers and his solo records.  They ended with two covers: Buddy Holly's "Words of Love" and the standard "Moon River".

It was one of those shows that featured a set list where most music fans could sing along to most, if not all of the songs.  It was an event where both lead singers showed tangible mutual respect for each other and each other's artistry.

One particular highlight was when both singers elected a song from the other singer's back catalog and took lead vocal on it.  Paul chose "Into Temptation", a moody offering from the second Crowded House LP.  Neil chose the more obscure song "You Can Leave Your Shoes Under My Bed", and he sang it beautifully.

The two performers were embellished by a number of additional musicians: Paul's nephew Dan on lead guitar, Neil's son Elroy on drums and Zoe Hauptmann on Bass.  As a unit they were tight and managed to pull off the diverse range of material well.  They knew when to rock out ("Deeper Water") and when to empty out an arrangement for effect ("Private Universe").  In fact, on "Private Universe" it was a real treat to hear both Paul and Neil taking turns at singing vocal lines all through the verses.

The acoustics in the concert hall at the Opera House have never been the best and they have never been fixed, so as to what it actually sounded like in the venue is another story.  On YouTube it was professionally filmed and the sound quality was crisp, clean and well balanced.  I'd love to see this released on DVD one day.

Here's some of the promo clips for the show, with Paul singing Neil's "Into Temptation" and the pair of them doing Paul's "Leaps and Bounds".  Enjoy!





The full show can be watched at this YouTube link