MAN ABOUT TOWN

Tuesday morning Monday night at about 9pm About 3/4 of an hour ago I was walking home down Gertrude Street, having just grabbed some fish and chips for dinner, when I saw a guy punching his girlfriend. I tried to intervene. He punched me in the face a couple of times. My dinner went all over the footpath. I'm sitting here now in something ressembling a state of shock, holding a packet of frozen peas to the right side of my face. I can't see out of my right eye cos the swelling's so bad. I'm gonna have a major black eye tomorrow. I've already reported the assault to the local cops. Fuck knows if anything is gonna come of it though. Tomorrow I'll post a pretty picture for you all of how my black eye has developed. If I had just kept walking I would have hated myself for not getting involved, but now I just feel sore and slightly stupid. Well, maybe sore, slightly stupid, but slightly proud that I tried to intervene as well... * * * Tuesday 29th I've upda...

What a week. Ack. I can barely bring myself to think about it, let alone write about it. Everything built towards Thursday: I watched Kubrick films, read a Kubrick bio, browsed Kubrick-related websites, all in preparation for 3RRR's three-hour outside broadcast live from the Australian Centre for the Moving Image on Thursday morning, where the exhibition Stanley Kubrick: Inside the mind of a visionary filmmaker opened that night. Got to ACMI early, chatting to various wonderful RRR staffers who were getting the equipment set up, running through the interview schedule with ACMI staff, and generally getting nervous about the show. To give you an idea of how seriously I was taking the broadcast, I scripted all of my intros and questions, which I usually just make up on the spot from a couple of brief notes. Not today though, I didn't want to leave things to chance (which meant that at least one of my interviews was a bit stiff, but more of that later). 9am rolled around, and we ...

Ok, the last few days have been more than a little tension-inducing. On Monday I found out that I had the opportunity of interviewing one of The Strokes, guitarist Nick Valensi, on Tuesday afternoon. Naturally I wasn't going to say no, even though it meant that most of Monday was a right off because I had to get public transport across town to South Melbourne, to the office of Sony BMG, so I could listen to eight of the 14 tracks off the band's forthcoming 3rd album First Impressions of Earth . (It's good, much better than Room On Fire - but more on that in a couple of weeks, once the embargo has been lifted.) Tuesday I did the interview, although as they were running a couple of hours behind schedule, the whole afternoon was a right off as well. (I'll play the interview on my RRR program Smartarts at the end of the year, or in early January; I'm not quite sure when, yet. I'll also print some of it in my MCV column, despite the fact that the idea of me doing ...

On Saturday, I: Woke up after a strange dream involving a talking dog which at one stage I was having a conversation with; later on I was the dog. I don't know what breed I was: probably a mongrel. Showered and dressed. Had a can of coke and a line of speed for breakfast, but not in that order. Ran out the front door. Caught the Brunswick Street tram into the city. Watched Miranda July's sublime debut feature film You and Me and Everyone We Know at the Kino cinema. Walked down Little Collins Street into Moviola, where I purchased Michael Herr's Kubrick , a memoir about writing the screenplay for Full Metal Jacket . Went back to the Kino and watched the Australian film Little Fish (starring Cate Blanchett), which I thought was strong but still under-developed. Walked home through the Fitzroy Gardens wishing it was autumn so there would be piles of leaves to kick through. Dropped in on a print-making exhibition at the Australian Print Workshop in Gertrude Street, Fitzroy. ...

This 1985 documentary, co-directed by Richard Lerner and Lewis MacAdams, is a wide-ranging tribute to the life and literature of Jack Kerouac, the tragic chronicler of the Beat Generation and author of the seminal novel On The Road . The Beat Generation was a group of writers and artists in post-WWII America who provocatively explored their disaffection with an increasingly homogenous and materialistic culture through often-autobiographical work. Kerouac (who died in 1969, aged 47) was widely perceived as the leader of the Beats, although as this documentary shows, he was ill equipped to handle the fame and infamy that the role demanded of him. From its opening scenes it is clear that What Happened To Kerouac? seeks to further enshrine Kerouac in the pantheon of literary saints rather than critically examine his reputation or the merits of his work. That in itself is no great sin. Less forgivable is the film’s inaccessibility: viewers who are not already intimately familiar with Kero...

Ang Lee's new film Brokeback Mountain just screened before a very respectful audience of film critics here in Melbourne, of whom I was one. I am delighted to report that the film was magnificent. Understated, subtle, rich in emotion, beautifully shot and superbly acted. It made me cry a couple of times. All the buzz about Ledger's performance as Ennis Del Mar is spot-on: he really does give a remarkable portrayal of a man who is so emotionally crippled, and frightened of himself and what his feelings mean, that he is unable to express the love he feels for Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal). The expanded roles for the protagonists' wives (compared to their minor roles in Annie E Proulx's original short story) are well handled, so we feel compassion for them both, and gain a real sense of insight into their family lives. The sex scene in the tent between Jack and Ennis should satisfy everyone, homophiles and homophobes alike; although to my mind the second tent scene (I'l...

I have a grand total of $19.50 in my bank account, and apart from a little bit of money coming in from DJ'ing and sporadic, underpaid freelancing for the gay press, no income sources to speak off. Oddly enough, I don't feel at all concerned, perhaps because I know I can always get cash advances off my credit card, and also because the universe usually drops something in my lap at points like these. Then again, trusting in fate is not usually the wisest course to take. I need a job, and fast!

Well, not really. It wasn't like I was poised on the brink of suicide when a chance encounter with a Velvet Underground or Sex Pistols song renewed my optimism and sense of wonder about the world and made me coil up the rope or put down the razor blade. The title of today's post (which hopefully most of you will recognise as a paraphrased line from the Velvet's classic song 'Rock and Roll': if you didn't, you go buy a copy of the band's 1970 album Loaded immediately) seemed like a good intro to a brief discussion of some of the best gigs I've ever been to, which was inspired by my mention of seeing Nirvana live at the Palace in my 20 factoids tag response. So, in no special order (because how can you determine a scale of bliss?) here are a few of the most mind-blowing-or-expanding, moving, or simply thrilling gigs I've been to over the past 38 years of my colourful life to date. 1. P.J. Harvey live to air on 3RRR at the Rooftop Cafe, Monday 29th J...

Ok, so I've been tagged by Ekstasis , so I guess I better play... (Did you spot the carefully feigned reticence to hide my puppyish eagerness just then? Puppyish eagerness, you see, is not cool. Like, I'm cool? Yeah, right! See point 4, below.) Twenty things about me, hey? Hmmmmm. Let's see. 1. The only reason I went back to do Year Twelve in 1984 was cos I wanted to be in the school musical. The teachers had promised me that it would be Jesus Christ Superstar , and I figured I'd end up as either Christ or Judas, seeing as I'd had lead roles the two years previously (Joseph in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat with I was 15 and still a boy soprano; and Fagin in Oliver! the following year, by which stage I'd become a baritone). Then the bastard teachers decided to put on Bye Bye Birdie instead. I had to sing 'Put On A Happy Face.' Fuckers. 2. I read The Lord of the Rings 19 times between the ages of 14 and 21. Yes, I was a nerd. I played ...

Richard speaks with butoh performer Yumi Umiumare about culture, dance and gender politics. Tokyo-born butoh artist Yumi Umiumare first visited Australia while performing in the 1991 Melbourne International Arts Festival. Two years later she migrated to Melbourne and now lives here permanently: a decision motivated by personal as well as professional reasons. "I met a person I can stay with and start a relationship with, but also just the arts scene here for me is very liberating," Umiumare explains. "To see everyone in an audience respond to a performance so individually was quite refreshing for me, because in Japan the feedback you get is quite generic." Yumi’s dazzling performances, which fuse elements of traditional butoh with cabaret, are equally individual and have gained rave revues at festivals in Melbourne, Adelaide, Edinburgh, Copenhagen and Hong Kong. Her latest production, DasSHOKU Hora!! opens at the Malthouse Theatre next month. "People who have ...

Actress Caroline O’Connor talks with Richard Watts about evoking the spirit of Judy Garland . Agreeing to play the late Judy Garland in End of the Rainbow , the new play by English writer Peter Quilter, was not a decision that Caroline O’Connor made easily. "I didn’t immediately say yes when the role was offered to me," she says. "I did consider it for a little while, going ‘Oh my lord, what am I thinking?’ but the script was wonderful and original, and to have the chance to recreate such a glorious individual, such an amazing woman, I just thought it would be a fascinating project to take on." O’Connor is a veteran of stage and screen whose career encompasses Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge and an award-winning role in Joanna Murray-Smith’s one-woman play Bombshells . Despite a successful career spanning two decades and three continents, she admits to being in awe of Garland, the young star of MGM’s 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz . "I’d never sung anything that s...

The Last Romance – Arab Strap [Stomp] Glaswegian duo Arab Strap are an acquired taste. Their alcohol-sodden love songs are delivered in Aidan Moffat’s thick brogue, accompanied by Malcolm Middleton’s tense, minimal guitar hooks. While The Last Romance doesn’t quite lay the pair’s gloomy reputation to rest, a few rays of sunshine have been allowed to creep into the smoke-wreathed bar that Arab Strap call home. Overall The Last Romance is more compact and more energetic than its predecessors, and increased attention to the collaborative process has resulted in a new complexity. Despite these progressions, the sense of late night, last beer dramas still remains. "Sometimes there’s nothing sexier than knowing you’re doomed," groans Moffat on ‘Don’t Ask Me To Dance,’ one of the many Arab Strap songs proving that misery makes good company. 'Teardrops' – The Winter Ship [She Puts Out Records] Septet The Winter Ship, originally from country Victoria, are now firmly based in...

Ring Them Bells (Freedom has come & gone) - Thee Silver Mount Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra La La Band Escape Pod - Decoder Ring Empty Beats for Lonely Hippo - Pasobionic National Holiday - The Herd Tomorrow Never Knows - The Beatles Get Off Of My Cloud - The Rolling Stones Sun in my Morning - St Etienne Come in out of the rain - Engineers Who Named the Days? - Arab Strap (live) There's Something at the Bottom of the Black Pool - Augie March War - Celebration Footy - Spiderbait Cody - Mogwai De Profundis - Dead Can Dance The Evening Gathering - Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares In the Dying Moments - SPK Come on Feel the Illinois - Sufjan Stevens Dayvan Cowboy - Boards of Canada God Bless Our Dead Marines - Thee Silver Mount Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra La la Band The Final Arrears - Mull Historical Society Scientists - The Guild League

As promised, another photograph of me in a kilt, taken outside Bec & Bob's flat in Glasgow. The photographer was fellow Australian party animal and music fan, the lovely Ms. Nat Clark . We were supposed to be striking a 1970's male fashion catalogue pose which Henry (the best man, the dapper chap on the right) and Bob (the groom, centre) have pulled off with aplomb. Me, I went 'huh?', and hastily copied what Bob was doing, having just stepped out the front door and not quite knowing what was going on, which explains why I'm aping Bob's pose and don't have a suitably serious, impassive-male-model-type-expression on my face. A minute or two after this picture was taken Bob and Harry got into their chauffer-driven mini to head off to the church and Nat and I headed back into the flat. A minute after that there was a knock at the door. The mini wouldn't start, and I was needed to help push-start it. Weddings are mad! Happily though, everyone got to the...