Mick and the PhatMan Talking Music

Warren Zevon, hailed by Bruce Springsteen as “one of the great, great American songwriters”, is like a Greek tragedy, where everything that could happen to him, happened - and it was all his own fault! He was a musician's songwriter, whose simple songs were masterpieces of technique, full of characters, and, often, achingly beautiful love songs.   He had his demons, and was not afraid of bari...

Crowded House arose from the ashes of Split Enz, a NZ band but adopted by Australia, where they were huge.  After Split Enz, Neil Finn went to LA, where he put together a band he planned to call "The Mullanes".  However, Capitol, their US label, wanted a “better” name.  They were all living together in one house rehearsing, so, voila!, “Crowded House”.   They became huge in America - goo...

After leaving The Velvet Underground, Lou Reed produced two albums - Transformer and Berlin – based around songs he'd worked on with VU.  Transformer showed Reed’s caustic wit and observation of the seamy culture around him.  "Walk on the Wild Side", a huge hit in 1973, featured drugs, oral sex and transvestism, and yet often features in advertising? Don’t ad agency creatives listen...

In the 70’s and 80’s, the USA had MTV, England had Top of the Pops, but Australia had Countdown.  The show featured an amalgam of film clips, live music and interviews with Australian and overseas acts, all with a live studio audience.  We religiously rushed home by 6.00 pm on Sundays to watch the show while our parents made themselves scarce.  The conversation on Monday morning was, “Did you see...

This is one of THE most influential rock & roll albums ever.  Brian Eno noted that “it didn’t sell many copies but everyone who bought it went and formed a band.”   Stylistically, their influence is enormous.  REM started with a sound very much like VU & a bunch of VU covers.  Mazzy Star's sound has everything distorted at 11 with the volume turned down, and, on Hunky Dory , Bowie not...

Stranded , Roxy's third album, released in 1973, is arguably their best album, with subsequent albums showing a slow but gradual decline in quality. The boys recall seeing Roxy Music at the Sydney Entertainment Centre - once in 2001 and then in 2011.  The 2001 concert was a great career retrospective and the boys were rapt when the band started the show with "Remake/Remodel" from th...

Released in 1972, "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars" was David Bowie's breakthrough album.  In a world that had run out of resources and had only five years left, Ziggy Stardust is an alien creature who becomes a rock star with all that entails.   When Bowie first toured Australia in 1978, he played five songs from Ziggy Stardust.  On later tours, he dro...

Late-70’s, Neil Young produced what many (including Mick!) regard as his finest album - Rust Never Sleeps.    In a productive burst, he produced that album, a live album featuring many of its songs, and released a live concert movie called, coincidentally, "Rust Never Sleeps".   The boys went to town by train to see “Rust Never Sleeps”. They talk about the highlights, like the Star Wars-...

Nick Cave is highly respected as a singer, songwriter, author, screenwriter, composer and occasional actor.   We talk about his early work up to what many fans regard as perhaps THE definitive Nick Cave song, “The Mercy Seat” - the confused, pleading thoughts of a man on death row, about to go to the electric chair.   Mick's seen him perform the song many times with controlled intensity, buil...

Queen had just released “Bohemian Rhapsody” in 1976, with a ground-breaking film clip, and the question was, “Can they play the clip live?”.  Well, they not only did it, but they blew everyone's socks off!   Mick and the Phatman were there and recall one of the best concerts ever seen in Australia.   From Freddy Mercury appearing in silhouette, to a leap straight into a perfect recreation of...

This podcast is two guys born and bred in suburban Australia, whose opinions about music have been shaped by lots of concerts and shows, and rock music since their early teens.    They discuss music and artists that made it into their collections in a fun, conversational style.  References:  Queen, Bowie and Lou Reed, Cold Chisel, The Angels, Mi-Sex.  Recommended Listening https://open.spotify.com...