I heard the news today, oh boy...

At 7.30am (AEST), Michael Jackson was pronounced dead by the Los Angeles coroner, after what appears to have been complications following a cardiac arrest.

It is hard to describe the loss that the music world feels on this historic day. Very few artists have revolutionised music in the way that Michael did, and his influence has permeated through every facet of music since his humble beginnings with the Jackson 5 during the glory days of Motown.

Having sold over 50 million records in the 1980's alone, MJ was not only one of the most prolific artists of all time but one of the most idolised. He transcended what it was to be a musician and broadened the boundaries of stardom, his progressive dancing setting a new standard in music videos and his music was, and in many minds will always be, the epitome of pop music. And while the debate between whether Off the Wall is a better album than Thriller will continue for generations to come, his claim in creating two of the most perfect records is only part of his legacy.

A generation of musicians, whether fronting a hardcore band, trying to make it as an MC or learning acoustic guitar are indebted to Michael as he created a love of music for so many people. In sharing with them the gift of his music he influenced and inspired people across the world, a seed the world is now reaping a generation later, as we now enjoy a generation of musicians who cite Michael Jackson as a primary reason for their success.

If there is any justice in this world, the crass, debasing accusations against him that have lowered his public status in the past decade will be forgotten, as will the pointless and inconsequential controversy over his skin colour and his merits as a father. Michael will be remembered by those who loved him as the biggest superstar of the 20th century, the moonwalking, invincible man who gave us some of most beautiful music ever created.

Personally, Michael was with me throughout the first ten years of my life. Growing up with older siblings i fauned over their copies of Bad and Dangerous, I remember my sister making me watch the Thriller video on 'Rage' on a Saturday morning. I was mesmerised. His ability to move was unlike anything i'd ever seen before and it was a truly significant moment in my musical awakening. When i was 14 i bought a second-hand copy of Off the Wall and subsequently used Rock With You on every mix-tape i made for a girl in the next four years. I believe his music was so universally loved simply because it was life-affirming, and he injected his positive, utterly optimistic view of the world into every one of his songs.

I realise my own imposition that it is impossible to give worthy credit to such a man through this medium, his effect on the history of music is mammoth and cannot adequately be expressed in brevity. It is clear however that today the world lost a beautiful man and a musician who has few rivals. Like Lennon, Elvis and Cobain before him, he was taken from this world unexpectedly and prematurely, but his legacy will live as long as his music does.

Rest in Peace,
The King of Pop
1958 - 2009

Some of Australia's Best Work

You see the beauty in having a blog is that it allows a person to make incredibly subjective comments and state them as fact. So without further ado, (clears throat) The Whitlams are the most under rated and under appreciated group in Australia.

As I have mentioned though, this might be a slightly bias opinion because I hold a very personal connection with The Whitlams, they were my introduction to music. I have vague memories from my childhood, flashes really, of sitting in the passenger seat of my brother's midnight blue '93 Prelude, driving around South Yarra with Triple J on the radio.

These memories are some of the happiest I have, my brother made me feel cool and grown up, he would let me do all the things my mum wouldn't let me do: drinking chocolate milkshakes, eating as much McDonalds as i possibly could and listening to songs with swearing in them. And whilst my age prevented me from consciously knowing and singing along to many of the songs that my brother loved, one song stuck with me like no other had before.

This song in many ways was my musical awakening, had grown up on The Beatles and U2, but somehow I knew this song was different. It was vibrant and obtrusive and everything about it was strange to me; the vocal delivery, the chord progression, and even the piano melody played inside my head, sound tracking my many road trips around Melbourne with my brother.

This song was No Aphrodisiac, a song that would go on to win the 1997 Triple J Hottest 100. Now before I go further, I believe it is important to note that I was 9 years old at the time, and I'm pretty sure I didn't even know what an erection was, let alone something someone would take to get one...but the pure phonetics of word affected me and I fell in love with the song's lyrical style. It was melancholy but also contemplative, passionate but yet with hints of anguish and despondency at a life of loneliness and sexual frustration.

It catapulted the pub band from their residency at the Sandringham Hotel to gigs around Australia, with their album, Eternal Nightcap earning them plaudits at the 1998 Aria Awards. What it got me was a copy of the Triple J Hottest 100 Volume 5 on double-tape from my brother that Christmas. This present would do extraordinary things to my early musical development, introducing me to bands that to this day are personal favourites of mine, including The Verve, Blur, Blink 182, Ben Folds (Five) and of course Radiohead.

These two tapes were the only thing that got me through a disgustingly boring road trip through Tasmania with my parents, as I listened to the aforementioned classics on repeat and tried to grasp the shocking nature of Marilyn Manson and The Prodigy. I remember thinking to myself that I didn't like the man screaming on that song Monkey Wrench.

But more than anything it was Track 1 on Side A that hypnotised me, the lyric, "I'll be asleep at my brother's house" reminded me of my regular sleep overs in South Yarra, and the song quickly became a symbol of my growing independence. For once I was listening to my own music as opposed to whatever my parents had selected, and whilst I relished our sing-alongs to ABBA, there was a raw and new sense of adulthood that came with having my own walkman and music that my parents were not privy to.

The overwhelming commercial success and media interest The Whitlams received for the chart-topping single and its album were never to be replicated again, spiking briefly once more, two years later upon the release of their controversial plea against the government's radical gambling regulations, Blow up the Pokies. This cry is The Whitlams at their most impassioned and most articulate, damning a government that allowed the financial destruction of its people for profit, as Tim mourns, "Cause they're taking the food off your table, so they can say that the trains run on time." To this day it remains one of Australia's most culturally relative songs, sitting along side The Oils's Beds are Burning and The Finger's Like a Dog.

These songs illustrate and epitomise the eclectic brilliance of the leader and sole survivor of the original lineup of The Whitlams. Tim Freedman's talent as a song-writer and musician is a result of his personal connection to the subject of each of his songs, and it is obvious that there is a story behind every one of them. Whether it be told in the first person like No Aphrodisiac and his ode to an old girlfriend and her city, Melbourne or in the third person like Blow up the Pokies and the polka jangly-pop mess of You Sound Like Louis Burdett; Tim Freedman is a storyteller, he wraps his songs in vivid imagery and his characters absorb his listener into the narrative. He resonates with the state of the nation like other great raconteurs gone-by, commenting on both its innate beauty and the despair of its people, a quality that results in a deeply personal feel in his songs but also a larger and much broader appeal.

The Whitlams, like all of the great storytellers in music including the likes of Springsteen and Neil Young, have no defining or all-encompassing album (Eternal Nightcap if i had to choose) because their catalogue is essentially a journey through Tim Freedman's life. More than anything it is Tim Freedman's ability to find the personal in the general and beauty in the mundane that has led me to associate and characterise many important times in my life with the songs of The Whitlams, a quality in their music that I believe epitomises the importance of their contribution to Australian music.

Now its probably time I got to the point in this self-indulgent rant, The Whitlams launched my 11-year campaign to explore as much music as possible, one that continues to this day in all of its money-draining glory. In all honesty I have probably spent more money on them than I have on any other band, and considering i recently forked out a good $300 for a Simon & Garfunkel ticket, that's a pretty big call; especially considering a 3-hour booze-fest with The Whitlams at The Corner Hotel sets you back around 35 bucks.

On the 7th of August, I shall be seeing The Whitlams for the 8th time, not that I'm some crazy obsessive or anything, I just think that for the cost of a few jugs of Mountain Goat, a 3 hour set from a great Aussie band is pretty damn good value. But there's one problem, in the roughly 24 hours that i have spent watching The Whitlams perform live, i have never heard them play my favourite song. This really, really, really shits me. And it's not as if my favourite song is a dud, it was the second single from their album Torch the Moon and peaked at #35 on the Aria Charts, so I'm guessing a few other people in Australia must like it as well.

Best Work is a lovelorn paean to the broken-hearted; and it is pulled off with delicacy and heart-crushing honesty that lifts it above most of the pseudo-break-up songs that are produced. There is a pain in his voice that tells you Tim has lived each one of his words as he admits to his ex-lover, "i still don't wanna know if you're moving on." So while this song treads a well-worn path of the man as a post-relationship trauma victim, Tim manages to evade the usual clichés through the use of his personal idiosyncrasies to bring originality and honesty to his subject matter, confiding, "I never dreamed about you, when we were never far apart, and now that i'm without you, you're here all through the night." But despite the gorgeous sentiment of Best Work, Tim has left it off all of his set lists and drunken encores I have ever witnessed, I do not know if this is just some random coincidence in omissions or if there is a reason for this decision, but i am definitely hoping for the former.

What a way to ask for a favour huh...(awkward laugh) So here is my official request for The Whitlams to play my favourite song when i see them in August. So with a bit of luck, the curse stops here.

Rapper's Delight

DJ Shadow explained on his seminal album Endtroducing, "Why Hip-Hop sucks in '96."
However 2 years in the bussiness is a mighty long time and the Jonathan Levine film, The Wackness shows that Hip-Hop definitely did not suck in '94.

Set in urban New York, the film is an obscure coming of age story following loner and pot-dealer Luke Shapiro through his Summer after graduation, the development of his first real friendship, and his first love. With edgy, unique direction and strangely endearing character development; the film's poetic charm is aided by brilliant acting and an inspiring soundtrack.

Weaving through many of the film's sub-plots, including Luke's escapism from his parents and his romantic pursuit of Stephanie, the film's soundtrack is a showcase of everything there was to love about hip-hop in the early 1990's. From the emergence of Notorious B.I.G to Faith Evans and A Tribe Called Quest, the soundtrack represents the connection between this music and its people, who treated it as life philosophy.

Now that might sound very wanky of me, but the music in The Wackness perfectly encapsulates the naive and innocent journey the protagonist Luke goes through in discovering himself. The music of Ice Cube and LL Cool J was part of a modest hip-hop culture where thier insignificance in the industry next to the grunge heavyweights of the day accentuated the personal nature of their music. Their music was cathartic for the communities they were a part of, the communities that they were writing about and the people who listened to this music knew that the people themselves and their lyrics were not far removed from their own lives.

This connection hip-hop held in society in the early 1990's was not contaminated by the aesthetically excessive and superfluously glorified culture that would consume it in the later half of the decade as the successes of Biggie and Tupac transformed the sub-culture into a stratosphere.

The growing sub-culture is beautifully portrayed through The Wackness, as almost the mirror image or doppelgänger to Luke - without pretensiousness, without arrogance and without the fasçade of worldly wisdom. Just like Luke, the hip-hop culture in '94 was still learning about itself and still accepting what it is, and what its purpose in the world is. This fascinating use of music through out the film is something that sets it apart from the 'indie film with a heart' niche that is becoming so very populated recently; and the way that both the film and its music are beautifully characterised as modest and undeveloped is what makes this quirky coming of age story all the more moving and entertaining.

The Wackness - A
The Wackness OST - A+