Planet Vinyl
Yesterday, driving my daughter to her soccer game, I found myself trying to explain Elvis. This isn’t easy. There is the 1950s fireball, who melded R&B and country and CFM sexuality, and changed everything. There is the long decline into bloated, jump-suited, self-parody. There is the piratical “Colonel” Tom Parker, who both made Elvis a […]
I mused a little while ago about how the Soviet Union, as oppressive and bureaucratic a society as ever shot a dissident, managed to produce great art. Pianist Sviatoslav Richter (no relation to the earthquake guy) personifies the paradox. Born just before the Bolshevik Revolution, Richter’s father was German by origin. During the Second World […]
There are crushing moments when illusions, fondly nurtured for years, are shattered. Santa Claus isn’t real. No Viking ever had horns on his helmet. Chairman Kaga, the poncy Japanese playboy who used his personal fortune to create Kitchen Stadium and named his men the Iron Chefs, did not exist. Not quite as devastating, because I […]
It says a lot about the changed status of tobacco that as avuncular and wholesome a figure as Bing Crosby would appear on record sleeve smoking a pipe. Look at that jaw! Those kind twinkling eyes! The nice hat, and the colour-coordinated pocket handkerchief! This is as solid a slice of Middle America as ever […]
In this country we play a code of football known as Australian Rules, or AFL. It is different to all the other codes. At its best, it is the most spectacular and exciting sport anywhere. Okay, I am a bit biased, but I really do think so. Every team has a club song, which the […]
It is up there with the shower scene in Psycho. It is dawn. The sun is rising over an ornate mansion in Hollywood, the home of a famous film director. We see him sleeping in gold satin sheets. He wakes, and notices something … wet? He reaches under the covers, and withdraws his hand. It […]
There is a peculiar excitement in dropping the stylus onto a record which is a complete mystery. The label is blank, or illegible, or in a foreign language. Not Italian or German: an English speaker can puzzle those out, more or less. I’m talking seriously challenging languages: Russian, or Hebrew, or (as in this case) […]
Kurt Maier was born in Germany in 1911, and became a skilled pilot. He fought with the Luftwaffe during the Second World War, and rose to the rank of Major. He was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, for bravery and leadership. Perhaps surprisingly, Maier survived the war. All the […]
I spent many years being prejudiced against opera. It wasn’t really opera’s fault. What happened was that when I was a teenager, my parents divorced. I lived with my Mum and every couple of weeks traveled to stay with Dad. Dad was a loving and kind man but, like many Australian men of his generation, […]
Julia Lee was from Kansas City, a blues singer in the famous club scene there. In the 1940s she had great success with what was then called “dirty blues”, but which to modern ears are just a bit risqué. They were, she said, “the songs my mother taught me not to sing”, with lots of […]
Planet Vinyl