Prior to copywriting, I cut my teeth as a music journalist, profiling recording artists (and the occasional despot rock star) for a variety of print magazines. Below, you'll find some of the publications I've appeared in, excerpts from feature articles and reviews, and a list of some of the performers I've interviewed or written about.
To view my hard copy clippings book, get in touch.
FEATURED IN
MAGAZINES INCLUDING:
BEAT
A premier gig and events guide, founded in 1986, specialising in cover stories, feature articles, artist interviews, and reviews.
THE BRAG
Former Sydney street press that has since transformed itself into a media giant that now publishes Rolling Stone Australia, as well as other magazines.
METRO
Australia’s oldest media periodical, specialising in essays, articles, and interviews focused on feature films, shorts, documentaries, television, and cinema-related books.
FAB UK
A British fashion and lifestyle publication that covers the latest runway shows, designers, film and music festivals, and trend forecasts.
BLUNT
Founded in 1999, Blunt focuses on band interviews, features, and reviews across the genres of heavy metal, hard rock, alternative, and punk.
INPRESS
A weekly tabloid-sized music magazine, founded in 1988, that comprised of three main sections: music news, features, and reviews.
XPRESS
Australia’s highest-circulating free weekly entertainment and lifestyle publication, with 40,000 copies distributed every Wednesday.
RAVE
Founded in 1991, Rave publishes interviews with international, national, and local artists, alongside up-to-date information on live gigs, tours, dance events, and music festivals.
BILL BAILEY: TINSELWORM
FEATURE ARTICLE / INTERVIEW
Bill Bailey is an English comedian, actor, and musician, best known for television shows such as Black Books, Doctor Who, QI, 8 Out of 10 Cats, Strictly Come Dancing, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, and Skins. He has also appeared in numerous films like Hot Fuzz, Run Fatboy Run, and The Libertine.
I interviewed Bailey as part of national press coverage for his Tinselworm stand-up comedy and live music world tour.
Feature Article / Interview Excerpt
2PAC: THE SEX, THE SOUL AND THE STREET
FEATURED ALBUM REVIEW
First printed in Beat Magazine, this ‘Album of The Week’ review explored Tupac Shakur’s legacy as part of the press coverage for his retrospective collection: 2PAC: The Sex, The Soul and The Street (released by Death Row Records / Shock).
Years after he was gunned down on the corner of East Flamingo and Koval in Las Vegas, Tupac Shakur’s ghost looms large over the rap world in immortalized, if not caricaturized, format.
His controversial body of work (released when he was alive, as well as posthumously) was as varied as it was immense — a stunning collection of street anthems, slanging matches, and impassioned storytelling, detailing everything from the hardships of ghetto life, to the fabulousness of fame, to the price that is ultimately paid when a young black success story from the hood discovers gangs, guns, money, and women.
What cut Pac as such an irresistible figure was his potent mix of force and femininity. That may irk those who only toast the days when he was a thugged out, Hennessey-slamming, Glock-toting jailbird, grazing cops with bullets and spitting at camera crews. But before things went west (and for a little while afterwards), Pac was a power to be reckoned with. He imparted tales about rags and tatters street life when everyone else tried to dress reality in a dinner suit.
Critics were divided. Look one way and find a Black Panther street poet with poignancy to burn. Look the other and discover a disturbed young man with delusions of grandeur and a mouth suffering a severe case of broken zipper. Either way he was an undeniable superstar. But before we could measure the true magnitude of his talent, Tupac Shakur was dead at 25.
This 10th anniversary box set is an impressive retrospective of classic cuts spread across three discs: The Sex, The Soul, and The Street. To Live and Die In LA, California Love, Picture Me Rollin’, Hit ‘Em Up — all the expected standards are here. But Shakur is at his most compelling when contemplating social oppression or analysing the mess his life had become with that addictive mix of melancholy and magic. White Man’z World, Starin’ Through My Rearview, Hail Mary, and Keep Ya Head Up are some of the greatest hip-hop cuts of all time. And even when he was forewarning foes or winding up his contemporaries on the Dr Dre collaboration Can’t See Me, or the infamous Holla at Me, Pac’s uninhibited delivery acted as a failsafe and demonstrated a dangerous quality of volatility and genius rarely (and arguably never) repeated.
A definitive anniversary release was a given. That said, it makes no sense why crucial tracks like Troublesome 96, Krazy, Letter to the President, Changes, and Temptations were excluded or traded in for less superior cuts. Still, this is a superb showcase of Shakur’s disturbing talent on full display, to be enjoyed by those who regard him as rap’s reigning king, or for new fans who are beginning to discover his work, all these years on.
Shakur never expected anyone to see eye to eye with his ideology or adhere to the way he lived his life. What he did expect, however, was that people recognise art as a tool — one that can challenge societal principles and transform personal and collective vision. In his short time on this planet, he bought all of that and more. A momentous and admirable achievement.
JEFF BUCKLEY: GRACE
FEATURE ALBUM REVIEW
This album review appeared as a feature in Beat Magazine’s 1000th anniversary special after Jeff Buckley’s Grace was voted ‘Album of the Decade’ via a national public vote.
In what seemed like a passing torn straight from the pages of the Rock and Roll Handbook of Death, May 29th, 1997 struck a sorrowful chord when the wistful American troubadour Jeff Buckley wandered into the Mississippi River singing and disappeared under the water, only to be discovered days later, washed up on the Beale Street shoreline in Memphis, Tennessee. His final resting place? The birthplace of the blues.
With a death that mirrored the lines of So Real from his critically acclaimed debut (and his only completed studio release) Grace — “I couldn’t awake from the nightmare, that sucked me in and pulled me under” — the world didn’t just lose another young upstart in Jeff Buckley, it lost a visionary, a genius, and the most promising artist of a generation.
Grace is a rare diamond. A panorama of musical influences, a white-hot fusion of blues, rock, folk, soul, and gospel — sitting somewhere between the damaged choirboy of a small Southern church and a whiskey-fuelled guitarist in a road bar with a head full of memories — Buckley broke every convention in the book and scrambled popular music like a Rubix cube.
Album opener Mojo Pin introduced the world to his compelling 3.5 octave range. Gender confused with its angelic honeyed tones, the track established Buckley as a preacher for the lonely, delivering a sermon full of ache and anguish. On the title track Grace he evoked imagery of biblical proportions, that famous refrain — “Wait in the fire" — set against a whirlpool of guitars that swirled around chaotically and took the listener with it.
His reworking of Nina Simone’s Lilac Wine and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah showcased a hands-down talent for re-invention, with the latter feeling so at home on Grace, both lyrically and sonically, that it's as if some higher power accidentally channelled it to Cohen in 1985, then corrected its mistake nine years later when the song finally found itself in the hands of its rightful owner.
That’s no diss to Cohen (who is one of our most masterful songwriters), but Buckley brought out such immense layers of texture in other people’s work that the originals have often been left to fade. Hallelujah found Buckley in his finest hour, illustrating how his remarkable voice was the ultimate weapon — high falsetto and all.
The impressively candid snapshot Lover You Should Have Come Over captured Buckley in redemptive mode as he navigated the end of a relationship; Corpus Christi Carol brought out every ghost in the cathedral; and curtain closer Forget Her (available on the album's Legacy Edition) had this insightful and volatile artist infusing every note with the drip-drip of bloody heartache.
Jeff Buckley was a mastermind of literary imagery with an exceptional vocal range — a man of black feathered wings, lilac wine, funeral mourners, white horses, falling rain, fire, moonlight, goodbyes, love, and faith. And Grace is an album that will forever haunt us, a reminder not only of what Jeff Buckley was but, more importantly, what he could have been.
Rest in peace.
FEATURES, INTERVIEWS, AND REVIEWS
INCLUDE:
• Ray LaMontagne
• Slipknot
• Marilyn Manson
• Linkin Park
• Bill Bailey
• Jim Rose Circus
• Waylon Jennings
• David Gray
• Hank Williams
• Amanda Palmer (Dresden Dolls)
• Stone Sour
• Deftones
• Aimee Mann
• Neil Young
• Robert Cray
• India Arie
• Goo Goo Dolls
• 2Pac
• Ryan Adams & the Cardinals
• Arrested Development
• Jeff Buckley
• Korn
• Billy Joel
• Dave Matthews Band
• Tim Reynolds
• Pennywise
• Don Letts
• H.I.M
• John Hiatt
• Billy Childish
• Sevendust
• Christina Aguilera
• Opeth
• Live
• Joss Stone
• Renée Geyer
• Circus Diablo
• Fear Factory
• 36 Crazyfists
• He Is Legend
• My Chemical Romance
• Fall Out Boy
• Jeff Martin (The Tea Party)
• Orenda Fink
• Hayseed Dixie
• System of a Down
• Cannibal Corpse
• Mudvayne
• Thad Cockrell
• Caitlyn Cary
• Jesse Malin
• Tenacious D
• Daughtry
• Amiina
• Chevelle
• Anti-Flag
• Catfish Haven
• DevilDriver
• Trivium
• Arch Enemy
• Ill Niño
• Evanescence
• Bring Me the Horizon
• DragonForce
• Nightwish
• Marc Broussard
• Weird Al Yankovic
• Static X
• Mike Tramp (White Lion)
• P.O.D
• Staind
• The Backstreet Boys
• And more…