I Heard The News Today, Oh Boy - SUPER EDITION

Remember that quote from Wes Bentley in American Beauty? The one about there being too much beauty in the world in the world and he can't take it? Well I feel like that at the moment, only replace the word 'beauty' with 'music' and the floating plastic bag with a wealth of amazing new tunes.

I guess first and foremost though, I should be plugging this:

Fellow lovers and loathers of music, my latest comedy show based on this very blog is already in full swing as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival 2011. That's the cheeky show poster up there and essentially it's a whole new hour of music based hilarity to capitalise the momentum of my comic debut, my Difficult 2nd Album in every sense of the word.

You can book tickets and find more dates and deets here:

Al's Music Rant: The Difficult 2nd Album|Melbourne Fringe Festival 2011

If you need some convincing, there's already some reviews of the show available.

Firstly via ArtsHub who give a lovely review of three-and-a-half stars

then there's Crikey, which - despite a strange obsession with my facial hair - seemed to like the show.

So come on down to The Glasshouse from this Thurs 29 - Sun 2 or next week from Thurs 6 to Sat 8 to catch some cutting musical analysis, some crazy character work and a whole bunch of powerpoints.

It's The End Of R.E.M. As We Know It...

Listen close. Hear that? It’s the sound of a million montages using Everybody Hurts being constructed... with equally pun-tastic titles like Losing My R.E.M., The R.E.M. Sleeps Tonite, What’s The Frequency, R.E.M.?, How The West Was Won And Where It Got R.E.M. and so on and so on… and the less said about the Peter Buck airline 'yoghurtincident' said, the better…

All jokes aside, it’s saddening to hear that such a highly-respected group are bowing out of an industry that long needed them as a vanguard of how to ‘make it’ without compromising. Today sees one of the cornerstones of indie rock removed. When I heard the news of R.E.M.’s decision to split, I did what any self-respecting muso would do – I returned to the music. Chucking their discography on shuffle, the first cut was the opening track from 2008’s Accelerate - a personal favourite - Living Well Is The Best Revenge, it seems a fitting enough epitaph. 

For R.E.M. lived well indeed, by a criteria that many envied but struggled in vain to replicate. Quickly achieving what most bands spend their entire lives striving to attain: commercial success balanced with a well-respected artistic integrity. Both of which they managed to consistently maintain over an astonishing 31 years. Each decade roughly representing three distinct phases in the band’s career.

AMR and Kimbra re-united

Well Vows releases nationally today, and I'm assuming you've already headed to your local record store and picked up a copy; or you could just download one of the editions available on iTunes from the comfort of your net cave. Either way, to celebrate its release, here's an interview I conducted with Kimbra a couple months ago in the lead-up to its release in which we discussed its long gestation, her writing process and some of the records themes. Enjoy!