Catch a load of Mr Johnny Borrell strutting his skinny-jeaned stuff as Razorlight launch in to Before I Fall To Pieces at the Sydney Festival 2209…
Tag Archives: Sydney
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April 8th, 2009
Anyone fortunate enough to sweat it up amongst the crowd flailing around to Madness at one of the Australian V Festivals, can confirm that this 10 piece has only improved with age. Their sets at Sydney, Gold Coast, Melbourne and Perth had everything - sing alongs, classics and more love than you could poke a bowler and brolly at. If you weren’t there, then feast on this - live from Sydney V Festival… we present Madness!
April 7th, 2009
Kaiser Chiefs perform Never Miss A Beat at the Sydney V Festival 2009. Give us a shout out if you were there, and if not - well treat yourself to this video clip and spirit yourself there anyway. Along with The Killers, Snow Patrol, Elbow and Razorlight, the Kaisers have just finished their V Festival tour of Australia - taking in Sydney, Gold Coast, Melbourne and Perth. Check back soon for more video clips from V Festival Australia.
April 6th, 2009
Okay, so I have no YouTube access here in mainland China which has made sharing the latest installment of my world tour all that more difficult… But with V Festival Australia goodness to come, take a sneak peek at the rest of my Global V Pass adventures so far…
April 6th, 2009
Here we have Snow Patrol turning off the lights for Earth Hour at the Sydney V Festival 2009 as they launch in to Run. Give us a shout out if you were there, and if not - well treat yourself to this video clip and spirit yourself there anyway. Snow Patrol, along with The Killers, Kaiser Chiefs, Elbow and Razorlight have just finished their V Festival tour of Australia - taking in Sydney, Gold Coast, Melbourne and Perth. Check back soon for more video clips from V Festival Australia.
April 3rd, 2009
Watch this fantastic performance from The Killers as they play Human at this year’s V Festival in Sydney, Australia. Give us a shout out if you were there, and if not - well treat yourself to this video clip and spirit yourself there anyway. Having already played Gold Coast last weekend, The Killers are now set to headline V Festivals in Melbourne and Perth this weekend… Check back soon for more video clips from V Festival Australia.
March 27th, 2009
With only a few days until the Australian V Festival kicks off, and with me, Eleanor Conway, your trusty Global VPass winner already en route, thought it might be time to whet your appetite with my first tour diary. London to Hong Kong to Sydney… all in a day’s work!
Keep in the loop, subscribe www.youtube.com/elleonline
Also don’t forget to check out Eleanor Conway Presents: Elbow and Flo Rida.
March 27th, 2009
So here’s a televisual blast from the past - well just about this time last year when it all kicked off at Centennial Park in Sydney for the 2008 V Festival. This is what this year’s V Festival has to live up to. Will the glamorous and the good of Sydney come out in force again this year for The Killers, Kaiser Chiefs, Razorlight, Elbow, Snow Patrol, The Kills, M83, Tame Impala and Howling Bells? Sure as anything they will - I’m just jealous I’m not there… as I look through my old YouTube clips of my Aussie adventures in 2008, all I have to comfort me and make me feel part of the party this year is our very own Eleanor Conway. Elle won the Global VPass competition last year for her awesome achievements in blogging for this very site. Check out her stuff: Eleanor Conway. And now she has embarked on her 2009 epic odyssey through V Festivals in every country courtesy of Virgin Holidays. So it’s over to a very lucky Eleanor to take us on her V Festival 2009 trip. If you fancy joining our global blogging community and sharing your adventures in music with us then simply sign up here to contribute. And if you’re at this year’s Australian V Festivals - then sign up, log on and tell us how awesome it was!
March 23rd, 2009
Elbow are set for a summer of love in 2009, music.virgin.com’s Eleanor Conway will be hot on their heels in true stalker fashion as they prepare for V Festival Sydney sunshine, ahead of their UK dates (including V Festival of course!). On the eve of the hotly commended Wembley Arena gig last week, Eleanor Conway gets down and dirty with the boys from Elbow in this exclusive video interview…
March 6th, 2009
Martin Martini is not a normal musician. Normally if a musician were to tell me that they went over to England recently with the sole purpose of finding a drag queen who picks up one hundred dollar bills with her asshole, I might be a little turned off. Normally I would. When Martin Martini explained this, however, it seemed strangely appropriate. Turns out he never found the drag queen, and he didn’t really like the country either.
“England’s a fuckin’ terrible place to play. I didn’t enjoy it at all. We went to Berlin afterwards and that was really fun. We holidayed in Berlin though, we didn’t play there.”
Everyone I know who’s been to England seems to share one major bone of contention; the cost of everything over there. Martin felt the tug on his hip pocket too.
“We lost a lot of money, put it that way. Even though people really loved what we were doing, we lost a shitload of money. The response was fantastic.”
Since then Mr. Martini has been rocking the socks off of adoring crowds in Adelaide, garnering five star reviews in the local papers to boot. He’s accompanied over there by an eclectic mix of complete strangers.
“They flew over some dude, some guy from the UK who’s two hundred kilos, and black and he dresses up in Lycra and does drag. They’ve got Paul Capsis in the show as well and they’ve got this really cute blonde girl that kinda looks like Marilyn Monroe from Ireland who sings songs on the uke so it’s sorta all these people I don’t really know thrown into this tent to just sorta do whatever we want really.”
The option to do whatever he wants in these solo performances has prompted Martin to begin incorporating a rather obscure talent. Having learnt to tap dance from his mother as a young boy, he has decided to work it in to his live show through “a sort of a rap song accompanied by my feet.” Again, not something I would expect from a normal musician, but Martin Martini might very well have broken that mould.
“It’s a little bit weird. I’ve got a pair of dunlop volleys and I just chucked some metal plates on the bottom of those and I tap dance in those.”
Martin’s last recorded work was a dark, powerfully ominous affair. He explains that it was reflective of his experiences at the time.
“Yeah, that album, I dunno man, I was in a pretty bad place there. I was pretty sad and this woman fucked me up a bit. Then I drank too much and I got behind the wheel of a car and I fell asleep and then I went to court. Things were going down hill quick. I think it was a wake up call.”
He’s “out the other end now” and is working on a record that’s romantic again. It seems We’re All Just Monkeys was a learning experience, but not one that he wants to replay. The songs have been omitted from more recent performances, replaced by new and perhaps more uplifting fare, ready for his upcoming visit to Sydney.
“I just cut those songs out now. We’re playing a whole new set now that doesn’t really consist of the Monkeys album. We’ve pretty much got a heap of new material that we’ve been doing and I don’t think Sydney have heard much of it so this is pretty much the last time I’ll be coming to Sydney before we lay down a new album.”
The shift in attitude has also seen him concentrate on some athletic aspirations. He’s “fuckin’ obsessed with running” in an interesting experiment at reconciling his physical and mental well being. It’s a move that he hopes will make him a more prolific writer.
“That’s why I’m running, I’m trying to get fitter at writing. To be honest it’s not working yet, but it’s only early days. I’m steadily writing. I still write a song a week but I’m not writing enough. I want to write one every day.”
Most people wouldn’t make the connection between those two pursuits so readily, but Martin Martini isn’t like most people. I guess that’s what makes him so compelling on and off the stage.
For more info, head on over to Martin Martini’s MySpace page.
Musicfeeds - Tighter than a nun’s schedule!
February 24th, 2009
Don’t miss your chance to see rock royalty in Sydney this week when Alice In Chains take to the Enmore Theatre stage on Wednesday 25th Feburary.
After a long hiatus, the members of Alice In Chains have decided to honour their musical legacy by taking their beloved songs to the road. Jerry Cantrell, Mike Inez and Sean Kinney will be joined by William Duvall on lead vocals who fills the void left after the tragic 2002 death of the legendary Layne Staley.
This year the band are thrilled to be reunited and returning to the music they created and the legacy that is Alice In Chains.
Wednesday 25th Feburary @ The Enmore Theatre, Sydney
Tickets available from www.enmoretheatre.com.au, www.ticketek.com.au or 132 849.
February 23rd, 2009
The Big O is a series of O week events to be held at university campuses in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra, Wollongong and Newcastle. Tickets are available for both students and the general public. Please note these will be the only shows for headlining acts in each state.
So come and celebrate O week when The Big O hits the University of Sydney this week. Taking the stage at Manning House will be:
The Music, The Fratellis, Ben Lee, Bluejuice, Yves Klein Blue and Cassette Kids.
Friday 27 February @ University of Sydney, Manning House.
Tickets available from www.qjump.com.au, www.moshtix.com.au or 1300 438 849 and Moshtix outlets including: Fish Records (Balmain, Leichardt, Newtown), The Music Shop (Bondi), Utopia (Broadway), Resist Records (Newtown), Redeye Records (City), www.ticketek.com.au or 132 849. In person from The Access Centre (Level 1, Manning House) Ph: (02) 9563 6103. For more information visit www.manningbar.com or call 1800 013 201.
January 29th, 2009
I never knew that there were places (homes, institutions or whatever you want to call them) for people who were deaf. Daniel Marando from the diabolically bluesy Maladies sits across from me, staring out the window. Something seems to catch his eye as he turns and waves to an older lady sitting across the room, intently watching the Bold and the Beautiful with closed captions blaring.
“HI MARGARET, HOW ARE YOU?”
He bellows at the small woman, turns to me and in the same breath informs me that “she’s a lovely lady when you get to know her. Her husband died in the war.”
I wonder how hard it is to get to know someone who can’t hear a word you’re saying. “You’ve got to have a bit of time for these people. It can’t be easy for them either.” Daniel’s words are kind, understanding. My voice seems to echo around the room several times as I ask him how the album is going.
“It’s all been recorded and mixed and mastered and pretty much ready to go. We’re sending it out this week to some labels to see if we can find someone to put it out for us.”
Two young men sit behind us, quietly playing cards, oblivious to our unnecessarily loud voices and happy to be left to their own devices. Daniel tells me more about the motivation behind the album. “It was totally self funded, we just did it ourselves. Musically, it’s ready to go.”
A monstrous sound rips the room apart as a patient begins hammering on the keys of the baby grand piano that until recently had sat disregarded in a corner of the room, her head pressed to the ground in an awkward dance with the chaotic noise. Raising his voice over the din, Daniel explains that “recording to analogue tape made things a bit rough for a first recording. You have to be a lot more accurate.”
The piercing sounds of the tortured piano slowly begin to subside. The random batterings start to resemble a somewhat pleasant sounding melody. “It also limits you to twenty four tracks maximum so you can’t do five hundred vocal takes and take a second from each one. I think doing it to tape worked out well because of things like that.” Daniel starts to talk softer, slowly approaching an average level.
The piano fades into the background noise and I suddenly realise just how hard that is. There are no other sounds in the room but for the subtle flip of cards or the occasional unacknowledged fart. There really isn’t much going on here. It seems like a quiet vacation more than an institution. “It limited our opportunities for editing and we had to have parts more exactly as we wanted them.”
Daniel is hesitant to take any credit for his own actions. He admits that he comes here to help out the less fortunate, but maintains that it is a team effort to keep the place going. “We got a girl choir that we’re calling the Don Walker Appreciation Choir to sing on a few songs.”
“It’s most prominent on one song which is a cover of a song called Silos, which is a Don Walker song.” A tall young woman with a ponytail enters the room. Daniel stands and gives her a warm hug.
“There’s horns and all sorts of percussion too. We wanted to give it a bit of a community vibe and we also liked what those things added and we wanted to do something fairly different to what we do live.”
Hellos and goodbyes are shared. Daniel and I head towards the revolving doors and the outside world. I ask him if The Maladies will be touring soon. “We’re doing quite a few shows in Sydney in December, basically just trying to get a bit of a vibe around the album.”
Passing the visitor registry, Daniel pauses to sign up for another visit next week. “We’ve been trying to write songs really since recording, we’ve been rehearsing a lot, getting together a lot and just nutting out some new material which is coming along as slow as ever but it’s all been rewarding.”
We stop and turn to face each other as we reach the kerb. I decide to ask Daniel straight up how he thinks he’ll manage, trying to balance all these different sides of his personality.
“I imagine it’s gonna be difficult. Especially with writing songs, it’s time consuming and it’s pretty hard to balance it all but you’ve just got to find a way to do it I guess.”
Musicfeeds - Spanish For Awesome!
January 28th, 2009
This one’s for all you budding Aussie rock stars. V Festival Australia wants you to show us all what you’re made of. All you have to do is pick a song from a V Festival Australia 09 artist, no matter how far back in their catalogue, and offer your own interpretation. Capture your performance on camera, upload it to YouTube and the very best (or the worst) will be posted on the V Festival Australia website and an esteemed panel will pick the funniest or the best.
The one the V Fest guys think is the best will get to be a rock star - for real! First of all Virgin Mobile Australia will make sure you get rock star treatment at the V Festival in your city where you’ll watch bands from dedicated viewing platforms, drink and eat for free and of course be on the guest list! Then afterwards you will take a Virgin Blue flight to Sydney and be on your way to LA - the home of all that rocks, thanks to Virgin Blue’s brand spanking new international airline, V Australia.
So what are you wating for? All eligible Aussies should head straight on over to vfestival.com.au to enter. Rock on…
January 27th, 2009
Razorlight have been added to the V Festival Australia lineup. Johnny Borrell and the boys will now join The Killers, Snow Patrol, Kaiser Chiefs, Elbow and Duffy on the four dates across Australia: Sydney (28 March), Gold Coast (29 March), Melbourne (4 April) and Perth (5 April).
Razorlight are heading to their first ever shows in Australia next week where their Sydney and Melbourne gigs quickly sold out. But as a treat for Virgin Mobile customers in Oz who didn’t manage to get their hands on the sought after tickets, Virgin Mobile has grabbed the last 40 tickets to each show and is giving them away free!
To get your hands on a double pass, all you have to do is line up @ Virgin Mobile Pitt Street in Sydney tomorrow (Wednesday January 28), or Swanston Street in Melbourne on Thursday (January 29) before 1pm. It’s first in best dressed so get there early…
Razorlight play the Metro in Sydney on Thursday January 29, and The Hi Fi Bar in Melbourne on Saturday January 31.
The last 40 tickets will be given away from 1pm:
SYDNEY - Virgin Mobile Store at Westfield Centrepoint, Pitt St Mall, City on Wednesday Jan 28 (from 1pm).
MELBOURNE - Virgin Mobile Store, 133 Swanston St, City on Thursday Jan 29 (from 1pm).
January 20th, 2009
Leopard Lady embarked on one of the most memorable road trips ever - to see the much anticipated show of Grace Jones… and show she DID!
It is mostly reported that Ms Jones is 60 years of age with some vague contention of a 2 year blurring of the lines…58 or 60, she looks brilliant in her g-string and fishnets! And she wanted us to feast our already focused eyes on her glory. Grace Jones owned The Enmore and her willingly captive audience, even as she bantered backstage during her costume changes. With every song came a new look based around the genius headpieces of celebrated Irish milliner, Philip Treacy.
Appearing exclusively in Sydney as a part of The Sydney Festival, after almost 20 years between visits to Australia (apart from a private Function in Cairns last year… lucky corporate cannibals…) Grace Jones brought her new and solid album, Hurricane, to a very hungry and devoted following. Including, incidentally, The Presets, Paul Mac, Cate Blanchet, Andrew Denton and of course, Leopard Lady and her handsome entourage.
Leopard Lady was prepared to have her mind exploded by the outrageous diva and every expectation was amazingly surpassed. From her relatively on time (!!!… she’s noted for being ridiculously late) entrance on a slowly decending hydraulic lift, to her spanking of a stage crew guy. From her rightly flaunted ass-ets, to her spur-of-the-moment open invitation to the crowd to pull up to her bumper on stage alongside her for a fantastic impromtu Dance Party. Close to one hundred diverse devotees must have thrown the security folk, but only fun ensued.. .a fortunate few even got their hands on the freaky goddess. She wiggled her said assets amidst the frenzy before dismissing the groovers from the stage and out of her limelight… there was now only room enough for Ms Jones and her parachute cape.
Her animalistic ferocity is strong as ever but with songs like I’m Crying (Mother’s Tears) and Williams’ Blood - both from the new album Hurricane, we see a deeply vulnerable side to Grace…. Leopard Lady fell hard for this inspirational woman. The highest highlight being when Grace donned a diamante encrusted bowler hat which shattered a massive crossfire of laser streams, splintering every surface of the Enmore Theatre during her hit cover of Love Is The Drug… spectacular.
Leopard Lady can see that the iconic Ms Grace Jones has had a massive impact on pop culture and is grateful that she continues to do so. Good luck keeping up with this Jones!
December 8th, 2008
For all you eager Aussie beavers quivering with anticipation over the forthcoming Australia V Festivals - here’s a flashback to this year’s awesome V Festivals in Sydney, Gold Coast, Melbourne and Perth. Watch Queens Of The Stone Age rule the stage with Make It Wit Chu.
If you missed it before, here’s the interview with QOTSA backstage at the Melbourne V Festival: watch the QOTSA interview
The Killers, Kaiser Chiefs, Snow Patrol, Elbow, Duffy, Louis XIV, Tame Impala, The Do, The Temper Trap and The Canyons are already on the V Festival lineup for 2009 and tickets are on sale now. Check out vfestival.com.au for more details…
December 4th, 2008
The Kaiser Chiefs, fresh from the success of their new album Off With Their Heads, are now looking forward to heading over to Australia in March with The Killers, Snow Patrol, Elbow and Duffy for their four dates on the V Festival tour - Sydney, Gold Coast, Melbourne and Perth.
Here’s a ‘making of Never Miss A Beat’ video for you to enjoy in the meantime (worth it to see Ricky’s ‘walk the dog’ yo-yo skills in action, his surreal diva ‘I don’t want to be an anchorman’ moment and his umbrella-in-strong-wind dexterity). And be sure to look out for the second single off the album - Good Days, Bad Days - it’s brilliant… Can’t wait to see them at V Festival Australia…
November 27th, 2008
Yes you heard right, prolific songwriter Ryan Adams is bringing his Cardinals back to Australian shores in January. Last here in 2007, their live show was certainly a talking point, and with their new critically acclaimed album Cardinology in the bag, this trip is sure to get tongues wagging all over again.
Let it be known that The Cardinals are much more than just a backing band for one of this decade’s most phenominal artists. The musicianship within this group is quite frankly mind blowing and must be seen to be believed.
Tickets for the following shows are on sale 9am Friday 28 November… but get in quick, they will not last!
Sunday 25th January - Metropolis, Perth
Tuesday 27th January - The Tivoli, Brisbane
Thursday 29th January - Enmore Theatre, Sydney
Friday 30th January - Forum Theatre, Melbourne
Ticketek are selling for all Australian shows http://premier.ticketek.com.au/
November 26th, 2008
Tame Impala are one of the awesome acts already confirmed on the V Festival Australia lineup for March & April ‘09. Check out the video for Half Full Glass Of Wine - one of the corking tracks on their brilliant debut EP which will be available to download here in the UK on 1 December. You can preorder the EP from their official website: tameimpala.com
Currently touring Australia, the lads from Perth are set to release their debut album in the UK in Spring ‘09 and are promising a bunch of live dates - so keep your surfing eyes peeled for more info as we get it.
Tame Impala join The Killers, Snow Patrol, Kaiser Chiefs, Duffy, Elbow, Louis XIV, The Do, The Temper Trap and Canyons on the V Festival Australia bill - with more acts to be announced soon. Tickets are now on sale at Tickemaster - so what are you waiting for!?
