We were all equal, but sometimes the band could be led by whoever shouted the loudest. Step inside one of Australia's most beloved and hard-working bands. For eighteen years, Mark Seymour fronted Hunters and Collectors - although he was never remotely in control of it. Together they released songs that remain Australian anthems like Talking to a Stranger, Say Goodbye, Throw Your Arms Around Me and Holy Grail. The band was also a great social experiment - an artistic collective that shared everything equally, from the drinks rider to songwriting copyright. It couldn't last. In the end, the relentless touring machine known as 'Hunnas' didn't break up so much as switch itself off. With a songwriter's eye for the perfect detail, Seymour tells the truth about the endless fried breakfasts, bewildering industry negotiations and the view from a thirteen-tonne truck on a never ending highway. More than a simple rock memoir, THIRTEEN TONNE THEORY is a dryly comic, revealing and passionate reflection on the struggle to be heard in a democracy of blokes. 'Anyone who writes of their years in rock music must know that this is the book they are going to have to trump.' Robert Forster, The Monthly 'Very funny . . . there can be no escaping the absurdity of rock'n'roll.' The Age
We were all equal, but sometimes the band could be led by whoever shouted the loudest. Step inside one of Australia's most beloved and hard-working bands. For eighteen years, Mark Seymour fronted Hunters and Collectors - although he was never remotely in control of it. Together they released songs that remain Australian anthems like Talking to a Stranger, Say Goodbye, Throw Your Arms Around Me and Holy Grail. The band was also a great social experiment - an artistic collective that shared everything equally, from the drinks rider to songwriting copyright. With superstardom always just out of reach, they hit the road, becoming an efficient and relentless touring machine that kept pubs overflowing around the country. What happens to a band that sees its future packed in a thirteen-tonne truck on a never-ending highway? It couldn't last. In the end, 'Hunnas' didn't break up so much as switch itself off. Seymour provides a candid view from the front of the stage, looking out across the heaving sea of fanatically loyal fans and at the dedicated but road-worn men around him. With a songwriter's eye for the perfect detail, he tells the truth about the endless fried breakfasts, between-gig comas, bewildering industry negotiations and the struggle to be heard in a democracy of blokes. More than a simple rock memoir, Thirteen Tonne Theory is a funny, revealing, passionate tribute to standing together in collective paranoia towards outsiders, and each other.
Released in 1986, Hunters and Collectors' album Human Frailty is one of the most important Australian albums of the last two decades of the twentieth century. It was pivotal in the group's career and marked the group's move into pub rock. It is unashamedly concerned with love and desire. The album challenged traditional understandings of Australian masculinity while playing music to predominantly male audiences. No other Australian group would have dared, or indeed been able, to get their audience to roar 'You don't make me feel like a woman anymore,' the culminating line off Hunan Frailty's first track, and the first single taken from the album, “Say Goodbye”. The second track on the album, “Throw Your Arms Around Me” has become an Australian standard, an anthem sung drunkenly more by women than men, in pubs, at weddings and similar occasions. Human Frailty is an album that transcended the critical categories of its time.
In his first book The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll Australian singer-songwriter Robert Forster takes readers on an idiosyncratic journey through the past and present of popular music from Bob Dylan to Cat Power from AC/DC to Nana Mouskouri from The Saints to Franz Ferdinand. With thirty-years experience as a recording artist/performer and an undimmed love of popular music Forster's observations about his fellow artists balance the enthusiasm of a fan with an insider's authority. He is that rare thing a musician who can write about music and he brings to this collection of critical essays the erudition wit and craft of his songwriting.
The real story of the man behind the bands - and a backstage pass to forty years of Australian rock music.Known to many as GODinski, Michael Gudinski is unquestionably the most powerful and influential figure in the Australian rock'n'roll music business - and has been for the last four decades.Often referred to as 'the father of the Australian music industry', he has nurtured the careers of many artists - Kylie Minogue, Jimmy Barnes, Paul Kelly, Skyhooks, Split Enz, Yothu Yindi, to name just a few. But his reach isn't limited to Australian artists. With his Frontier Touring Company, Gudinski has toured The Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Sting ... pretty much a who's who of the arena level international music scene.A self-made multi-millionaire, Gudinski is the Australian equivalent of Richard Branson or David Geffen, but who is this tough, inspired, flamboyant and impassioned businessman who has shaped Australian popular culture? Where did he come from, and how has he stayed relevant for so long in an industry notorious for its fickleness? Rock journalist Stuart Coupe delves into Gudinski's life to find the answers - and in doing so gives us a backstage pass to forty years of Australian rock.
A juicy piece of trivia is like a beautiful fresh cut of protein. It needs to be handled just right. Some fillets of trivia work well as a question, others are best posed as a ‘Did you know’. Some have so much flesh on them that they are better served up as a whole story or essay. That is what you will find between these pages, a smorgasbord of trivia treats to feast upon. Like a buffet on a cruise ship, you can start at the beginning and work your way along, you can push in at any point for the one tasty treat that you want, or you can fill a small plate and come back over and over again. This is possibly the most complete book of Rock Trivia ever compiled and the morsels will astonish … Did you know that in 2013 Chubby Checker sued Hewlett-Packard over a 99-cent app called the ‘Chubby Checker’ which allowed users to enter a man’s shoe size to estimate the size of his penis? He claimed that the product would cause damage to his goodwill, tarnishing his image. Trivia with a twist? Did you know that Charles Manson co-wrote a song for the Beach Boys? Plus hundreds of questions to tease and expand the mind. "At last ... a rock trivia book that is not at all trivial! This is a remarkable collection of questions, facts, myths, stories, jokes, riddles and answers. Number one with a bullet!" - Brian Nankervis, ABC Radio and RocKwiz host. "This is the book that we music trivia nuts have been waiting for. Even if you think you know it all there'll be something that surprises you. Read it from front to back or just dip into it when you need a trivia top up. I love it!" - Murray Cook, The Wiggles, The Soul Movers
'Sometimes I play a game in my head: name the five best American rock bands of the '60s. My list goes: The Velvet Underground, The Byrds, The Beach Boys, The Doors, and then I stall on the fifth. Creedence? The Band — although they're mostly Canadian. Simon and Garfunkel? Jefferson Airplane? The Lovin' Spoonful? But I plump for The Monkees.' Robert Forster In The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll, Robert Forster takes readers on an exhilarating trip through the past and present of popular music – from Bob Dylan, AC/DC and Nana Mouskouri through to Cat Power, Franz Ferdinand and ... Delta Goodrem. To accompany Forster's acclaimed writing for The Monthly, there are some stunning new pieces – 'The 10 Rules' and 'The 10 Bands I Wish I'd Been In' and an appreciation of Guy Clark – as well as a reflection on The Velvet Underground, a short story about Normie Rowe and a moving tribute to fellow Go-Between Grant McLennan. Funny and illuminating, The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll shows a great critic at work.
The proposed volumes are aimed at a multidisciplinary audience and seek to fill the gap between law, semiotics and visuality providing a comprehensive theoretical and analytical overview of legal visual semiotics. They seek to promote an interdisciplinary debate from law, semiotics and visuality bringing together the cumulative research traditions of these related areas as a prelude to identifying fertile avenues for research going forward. Advance Praise for Law, Culture and Visual Studies This diverse and exhilarating collection of essays explores the many facets both historical and contemporary of visual culture in the law. It opens a window onto the substantive, jurisdictional, disciplinary and methodological diversity of current research. It is a cornucopia of materials that will enliven legal studies for those new to the field as well as for established scholars. It is a ‘must read’ that will leave you wondering about the validity of the long held obsession that reduces the law and legal studies to little more than a preoccupation with the word. Leslie J Moran Professor of Law, Birkbeck College, University of London Law, Culture & Visual Studies is a treasure trove of insights on the entwined roles of legality and visuality. From multiple interdisciplinary perspectives by scholars from around the world, these pieces reflect the fullness and complexities of our visual encounters with law and culture. From pictures to places to postage stamps, from forensics to film to folklore, this anthology is an exciting journey through the fertile field of law and visual culture as well as a testament that the field has come of age. Naomi Mezey, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C., USA This highly interdisciplinary reference work brings together diverse fields including cultural studies, communication theory, rhetoric, law and film studies, legal and social history, visual and legal theory, in order to document the various historical, cultural, representational and theoretical links that bind together law and the visual. This book offers a breath-taking range of resources from both well-established and newer scholars who together cover the field of law’s representation in, interrogation of, and dialogue with forms of visual rhetoric, practice, and discourse. Taken together this scholarship presents state of the art research into an important and developing dimension of contemporary legal and cultural inquiry. Above all, Law Culture and Visual Studies lays the groundwork for rethinking the nature of law in our densely visual culture: How are legal meanings produced, encoded, distributed, and decoded? What critical and hermeneutic skills, new or old, familiar or unfamiliar, will be needed? Topical, diverse, and enlivening, Law Culture and Visual Studies is a vital research tool and an urgent invitation to further critical thinking in the areas so well laid out in this collection. Desmond Manderson, Future Fellow, ANU College of Law / Research School of Humanities & the Arts, Australian National University, Australia
The Ballroom is a brutally frank memoir of what has become known as one of the most pivotal, fascinating and influential periods of Australian musical and cultural history. The story is illustrated with original flyers and candid photos, some never before seen or published.
