The Music Show

“This song put me in the middle of the road. Travelling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch”, said Neil Young about his only major hit, Heart of Gold, from the 1972 album Harvest.  Whether or not the dozens of artists who’ve covered it since consider it “middle of the road”, they’ve certainly taken it right off the beaten track. Andy’s guest analysts in this second edition of our ne...

Matt Hsu’s Obscure Orchestra has more of an ethos than a sound. A twenty five piece indie band with constantly evolving membership, it began as a solo project by Matt Hsu, whose values and “punk-trained” composition shine through on not one but two new albums released on the same day: Noodle, and Forest Party. Opera for the Dead (祭歌) is a "contemporary Chinese cyber opera" that explores cultural...

Metal, marimbas, vampires and EDM: ABBA’s Lay All Your Love On Me as you’ve never heard it before, with producer Paul Mac and composer Alice Chance. This is the first episode of Cover Story, a new series from The Music Show in which Andy and his guests take songs of the popular music canon and examine their cover versions, for better, worse, and weirder.  Music details: Lay All Your Love On MeComp...

British singer and songwriter Marianne Faithfull has died at the age of 78. In 1996, Andy spoke to her about finding her true voice, why she was drawn to the music of Kurt Weill and the Weimar Republic, and why she was wrong about The Rolling Stones. Armed with homemade instruments and a larrikin spirit, Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band were mainstays of Melbourne's alternative music scene in the 197...

“Ships become obsolete; fine furs are ravaged by moths, faded by the sun, worn by rubbing against show cases; garments go out of style; the gold watch grandfather handed down is replaced by a thin one. Change and decay is all around—except in violins. Death rarely comes to the violin.”  So wrote Arland Weeks in 1929, in The Scientific Monthly. Dr Laura Case gives Andy a potted history of the violi...

Country singer songwriter Andy Golledge  cut his teeth in Sydney’s Inner West band scene before returning to his hometown of Tamworth a local hero. He and his band have racked up thousands of kilometres of touring, and whether it’s in the back room of a country pub or in the biggest concert hall in town, they put on one hell of a show. Andy is our ears on the ground at Tamworth Country Music Festi...

American composer Caroline Shaw’s latest album, a collaboration with Sō Percussion, is called Rectangles and Circumstance . It’s a collection of ten songs run through with words by Emily Dickinson, Emily Bronte, William Blake and Christina Rossetti, as well as Caroline herself. She joins Andy from her home in the US to talk about her collaborators and her co-poets. When Irish singer songwriter Dav...

The Music Show explores the legacy of the late Ruby Hunter – short in stature, a giant in music, and a mentor and parental figure to so many First Nations musicians in subsequent generations. We’ll hear Ruby from the archives, and catch up with Emily Wurramara and Dan Sultan, both of whom have sung a tribute to Ruby Hunter alongside their fantastic new albums.

Some of the most prominent folk singers of the twentieth century like Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan were being surveilled and, in some cases, blacklisted by the FBI due to their political activism and ties to the U.S Communist Party. Writer and historian Aaron J. Leonard  has written several books on the subject and is in to reveal why the US Government was so fixated on musicians in th...

Ziggy Ramo returns to The Music Show with a new album that’s more than just an album. Human? is a new and beautifully contradictory sound for Ziggy. It blends folk (with guest vocals from Vonn) and his signature rap, precipitated by Ziggy picking up the guitar for the first time in the wake of his 2021 single Little Things.  Ziggy joins Andy to talk about the project - which spans the album, the b...

Romano Crevici has been playing violins made by Harry Vatiliotis for decades. Now drawing to the end of their respective careers, Harry has made one final instrument, which will be Romano's last violin too. The process, challenged by sore joints, thin skin, and Harry's caring responsibilities to the love of his life Maria, have been captured in a moving film called The Last Violin by Carla Thackra...

For someone referred to as "the Queen of Jazz" and "First Lady of Song", there's a surprising amount we don't know about legendary jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald. She didn't fit the image of a star: she was incredibly polite, avoided drugs and swearing, and kept her private life entirely private. But when she sang, people listened. Her clear diction, perfect intonation and master of scat singing made...

Harnessing looping pedals, percussion and vocal manipulation, Tune-Yards make a very big sound for a core membership of two people. It's been ten years since the experimental pop project released their third album Nikki Nack and creepy hit Water Fountain . Songwriter and singer Merrill Garbus is on The Music Show to talk about the duo's complex rhythms, vocal athleticism, and how to play with word...

From the rattling charge of The Lone Ranger to the slick, warbling vocals of White Lotus, music for television has been beckoning us to the couch for the best part of a century. In Music for Prime Time: A History of American Television Themes and Scoring, Jon Burlingame has charted the history of music for telly in the form of an elegiac sort of look back at the medium as streaming overtook networ...

In 2024 Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson undertook an international tour that saw him playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations almost a hundred times, including his first ever performances in Australia. He joins Andy in the studio, in front of the piano, to talk about finding infinite variety in those Variations. Angélique Kidjo shares the story behind her 2018 album Remain In Light, a track-for-trac...

Live from WOMADelaide 2024, an hour with two Irish living legends, singer songwriter Lisa O’Neill and concertina master Cormac Begley. Both stalwarts of the Irish traditional music scene, they united for an intense, wailing version of All the Tired Horses which was used in the final moment of Peaky Blinders. They play live and talk to Andy about what tradition means, how new writing can sing along...

Though best known as a musicologist - the author of 16 books - Lawrence Kramer's other life as a composer shines through all his writings. He says he has become increasingly aware that music is made of sound, a fact that in Kramer's view has perhaps been 'too obvious for its own good'. Accordingly, he has turned his attention to writing about the nature of sound and ways in which we perceive it, f...

At 13 years old Janis Ian wrote one of the most iconic American songs of 1960s, Society's Child. Ten years later At Seventeen spoke to millions of women and girls around the world and made her even more of a household name. Janis' extraordinary life is told in a new documentary by filmmaker Varda Bar-Kar , who follows the highs (GRAMMY awards, multi-platinum albums) as well as the lows (homophobia...

Sam Lee  spends a lot of time walking in, thinking about, and singing of the UK's wild places. The singer, folk song collector, pilgrim and activist released his fourth studio album songdreaming earlier this year. Traditional songs are brought into the 21st century with lush arrangements, lyrics addressing contemporary issues, and the inclusion of Trans Voices, a London-based choir. Andrew Ford ca...

Forty years on, to the day, from when Do They Know It's Christmas? stormed the UK charts and remained at number #1 for five weeks, Bob Geldof is a guest on The Music Show to talk about the song's complicated legacy, how he looks back on Live Aid, and why he thinks pop music doesn't unite us like it used to. Sydney soul artist CINTA has lived a life of performing and sharing, over-sharing she says,...

We’re used to seeing him with a guitar strapped to his chest or playing keyboards on stage with Midnight Oil, but Jim Moginie returns to the Music Show to sit at the grand piano this time. He’s joined by drummer Hamish Stuart to play songs from his latest solo album Everything’s Gonna Be Fine. He’ll reveal the importance of optimism, irony, and telling personal - not just political - stories. A li...

Paul Kelly’s 29th (!) album Fever Longing Still is a modern twist on the contemporary Paul Kelly formula. An “attempt to present all kinds of love songs into one forty minute album”, it features his devoted band, vividly drawn characters, and a mature sort of melancholy. Paul performs live in The Music Show studio and talks to Andy about the album, his community of great and often young collaborat...

From the very first shot of John Travolta strutting his stuff down a busy New York street, Saturday Night Fever is an iconic film, and the music is even more iconic. Well, the five Bee Gees’ tracks that occupied side A are anyway—don’t get music writer Clinton Walker  started on the ‘highway robbery’ of making fans pay for a double-album just to get those songs! Clinton Walker brings disco fever t...

JADE Ensemble are four Brisbane-based musicians who compose and improvise across musical styles: Wakka Wakka man and didgeridoo player David Williams, Japanese koto master Takako Haggarty, Nepalese tabla virtuoso Dheeraj Shrestha and guitarist/composer Anthony Garcia. Anthony and Takako join Andrew ahead of a performance at Brisbane Powerhouse next week to share how each member contributes equally...

Jerron Paxton’s music sounds like it could have been unearthed from a time capsule buried in the 1920s or 30s. His new album of original songs, Things Done Changed, finds the multi-instrumentalist playing guitar, banjo, piano and harmonica across blues, folk, ragtime and old-time Black music styles. He tells Andy about being glued to the radio as a young child, his deep love of acoustic instrument...