The Music Show

Lucy Dacus is now perhaps best known for being one third of boygenius, one of the great sad girl groups of all time. But her latest album, Forever is a Feeling, is bursting with romantic joy. On her way to Australia for a series of shows, she talks to Andy about finding its lush sound, performing it live, and about singing for Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral inauguration in New York City.

Útóipe Cheilteach (Celtic Utopia), a film by Dennis Harvey and Lars Lovén, explores what has happened to Irish folk music in both the south and north of the island in the century since independence, how it keeps alive tradition, history and grievance, while also encouraging conciliation and healing. Andy speaks to the film makers.

Singer and actor Ursula Yovich joins Andy to talk about Nina Simone. Yovich has been taking on Simone's music for a show at Sydney Festival and she explores what set Simone apart, what part of her story she wanted to tell, the continuing importance of Simone's politics, and the cost to an artist to perform and share themselves on the stage.

And Toshi Maeda, from the Australian punk band Mach Pelican, shares the band's first new music in almost two decades, and explains how he got involved in tour promotion - bringing Japanese bands to Australia and vice-versa.

Music in this program:

Title: Born to DeliveryArtist: Mach PelicanComposer: Mach PelicanAlbum: Mach PelicanLabel: Shagpile

Title: I Put a Spell on YouArtist: Nina SimoneComposer: Jalacy Hawkins, Herb Slotkin; Arranged by Hal MooneyAlbum: Feeling Good (The Very Best Of Nina Simone)Label: Mercury

Title: You Can Have HimArtist: Nina SimoneComposer: Irving Berlin; Arranged by Nina SimoneAlbum: Nina Simone At Town HallLabel: Spectra Records

Title: SinnermanArtist: Nina SimoneComposer: Les Baxter, Will Holt; Arranged by Nina SimoneAlbum: Feeling Good (The Very Best Of Nina Simone)Label: Mercury

Title: Strange FruitArtist: Nina SimoneComposer: Lewis Allen; Arranged by Nina SimoneAlbum: Feeling Good (The Very Best Of Nina Simone)Label: Mercury

Title: Four WomenArtist: Nina SimoneComposer: Nina SimoneAlbum: Ultimate Nina SimoneLabel: Verve Records

Title: Partita no 6 in E Minor - AirArtist: Vikingur OlafssonComposer: Johann Sebastian Bach; Arranged by Vikingur OlafssonAlbum: Opus 109Label: Deutsche Grammophon

Title: Dance In ChicagoArtist: Mach PelicanComposer: Mach PelicanAlbum: Mach PelicanLabel: Shagpile

Title: Remember ItArtist: Mach PelicanComposer: Toshi MaedaAlbum: A Secret SessionLabel: Cheersquad Records & Tapes

Title: Just Another DayArtist: DYGLComposer: DYGLAlbum: Who's In The HouseLabel: Easy Enough

The Music Show is made on Gadigal, Gundungurra and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country

Technical production by Mickey Grossman

From a teenage band driving up and down the coast in a station wagon to one of the biggest Australian bands of all time, Midnight Oil survived on the backbone of drummer, founding member, and songwriter Rob Hirst. Hirst, who has died at the age of 70, was a frequent guest on The Music Show, both as an Oil and with his blues band the Backsliders, and we remember him with a selection of appearances, including his demonstration of the musical washboard.

And Pinchgut Opera remembers three great opera performers with a new release of the 2019 production of Vivaldi's Farnace. Featuring stunning performances by Taryn Fiebig (1972-2021), Max Riebl (1991-2022), and Jacqueline Dark (1967-2023), it's a vivid record of the production in its own right, but also a memorial to the memories of three artists gone too soon. Pinchgut artistic director and conductor Erin Helyard joins Andy to listen to their voices. 

Music heard in the program:

Title: Beds Are BurningComposer: Hirst, Rob; Moginie, Jim; Garrett, PeterArtist: Midnight OilAlbum: Diesel and DustLabel: Columbia

Title: Feeling BlueComposer: John FogertyArtist: BackslidersAlbum: Starvation BoxLabel: Fuse Music

Title: US ForcesComposer: Hirst, Rob; Moginie, Jim; Garrett, Peter, Rotsey, Martin, Gifford, PeterArtist: Midnight OilAlbum: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1Label: Columbia

Title: Sinfonia. Allegro (1)Composer: Antonio VivaldiArtist: Taryn Fiebig, Pinchgut Opera, Orchestra of the Antipodes, Erin HelyardAlbum: FarnaceLabel: Pinchgut Live

Title: Tito Manlio, RV 738, Act II Scene 18: Aria. Fra le procelleComposer: Antonio VivaldiArtist: Max Riebl (Gilade), Pinchgut Opera, Orchestra of the Antipodes, Erin HelyardAlbum: FarnaceLabel: Pinchgut Live

Title: Farnace Act III Scene 1: Aria: Non trova mai riposo Composer: Antonio VivaldiArtist: Jacqueline Dark (Berenice), Pinchgut Opera, Orchestra of the Antipodes, Erin HelyardAlbum: FarnaceLabel: Pinchgut Live

Title: Ottone in villa, RV 729, Act II Scene 6: Aria. Leggi almeno, tiranna infedeleComposer: Antonio VivaldiArtist: Taryn Fiebig (Selinda), Pinchgut Opera, Orchestra of the Antipodes, Erin HelyardAlbum: FarnaceLabel: Pinchgut Live

Title: Don't Let Me Be MisunderstoodComposer: Bennie Benjamin, Horace Ott, Sol MarcusArtist: Nina SimoneAlbum: Broadway-Blues-BalladsLabel: Philips

The Music Show is made on Gadigal, Gundungurra and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country. 

Technical production by Micky Grossman.

The bouzouki has been a feature of Irish folk music since the mid-1960s, and one of the instrument’s finest modern exponents is Daoirí Farrell. He’s also a singer and a song collector, and he's brought his instrument into our studio to demonstrate how the three things fit together.

Post-post-modern chanteuse Meow Meow returns to The Music Show to talk about The Red Shoes, the third show in her series of Hans Christian Anderson adaptations. She goes into both the music and the research behind the show, including the revelation of a Danish ballet dancer whose "feet ran away with her", that may have inspired the tale. 

In February 1975, Keith Jarrett turned up at the Cologne Opera House to play a solo concert. He was tired, hungry and in pain, and the Bösendorfer piano was falling apart. Technicians worked on the instrument before and after that night’s opera performance, and the 18-year-old promoter talked Jarrett into going on. Still tired, still hungry (dinner arrived too late), still in pain, and very much against his better judgement, Jarrett took the stage at 11.30pm and played what we now know as The Köln Concert, the biggest selling solo jazz album and biggest solo piano album of all time. Jazz pianist and composer Matt McMahon joins Andy at the ABC’s well-maintained Bösendorfer to talk us through that night and its resultant music.

Lajamanu is one of the most remote places in Central Australia, and it’s where we meet Wanta Jampijinpa Pawu-Kurlpurlurnu, his father Jerry Jangala Patrick OAM, and the music producer Marc ‘Monkey’ Peckham. Crown & Country is a new album and film that’s come out of more than a decade of friendship and collaboration between Wanta, Jerry and Monkey. Blending Warlpiri Jukurrpa (Dreaming) songs, cultural stories, soundscapes from the desert, and electronic beats, it’s a compelling and immersive way of sharing Warlpiri culture with new audiences.

The Shangri-Las were responsible for hits like Leader of the Pack and Remember (Walkin’ in the Sand), teenage soap opera songs that sounded like nothing else on radio at the time. Melbourne historian and musician Lisa MacKinney has written the first full-length history of 1960s New York pop group.

MacKinney’s book Dressed In Black: The Shangri-Las and their Recorded Legacy flips a lot of the accepted narrative about the group on its head, and argues that their talent and musicality has been overlooked due to their age and gender, and that the emotional impact of their (relatively small) collection of songs is of lasting importance.

On the 25th of August, 1975, Bruce Springsteen released Born to Run, the "dividing line" of his career. Starting with the title track, written on the edge of his bed in a rented cottage in New Jersey, Born to Run signalled the arrival of Springsteen, and the E Street Band. 

A child of the Kennedy, King, and Malcolm X assassinations, Springsteen transformed classic rock and roll images - the road, the car, the girl - into something potent and virile that reflected the sense of dread in the air. 

Musician and academic Toby Martin and writer and critic Kerryn Goldsworthy join Andy to trace the arc of Born to Run's story through one violent night in the city, and the root system of its influences, from Roy Orbison, to the Bible, and West Side Story. 

The Glasgow-based singer Quinie travelled across Argyll on her horse Maisie to collect old Scots songs for her new album Forefowk, Mind Me. On this record, Quinie (whose real name is Josie Vallely) pays tribute to her ancestors as well as Scots Traveller singers like Lizzie Higgins, whose deep connection to the land has been expressed beautifully in song for generations. She speaks to Andy about arranging ballad and piping traditions, the melodic influence of the Irish uilleann pipes on this record, and why travelling across the landscape on a horse changes one’s perspective and approach to music.

For a band that weren't around very long and only really put out one studio album, the cultural and musical impact of the Sex Pistols is staggering. Guitarist Steve Jones opens up to Andrew Ford about starting the group when he was just a kid, how it feels to be considered a guitar hero now, and why he thinks we're still talking about the band fifty years on. 

“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 violin in Australia, from 1788 to 1914 – and beyond. It's a history of class and gender lines in the colony but it's also about how the violin has been an instrument of both assimilation and resistance by First Nations violinists.

Seraphim Trio have been making chamber music together for over twenty years. Pianist Anna Goldsworthy joins Andrew Ford to talk about her relationship with violinist Helen Ayres and cellist Tim Nankervis, as well as the women composers – famous and lesser known – they have recorded as part of their latest album Radiante.

Written from the small shed on his allotment in Northern England, the lyrics on Richard Dawson’s album End of the Middle are filled with small observations and rich characters. He's a prolific and verbose songwriter, likening his habit of jamming too many syllables into the end of lines with "putting too many clothes in a suitcase". Rich's record is replete with his unusual guitar tunings and arresting singing voice.