John Hardaker Archive

Walking in late, two minutes into the first number of US tenor icon Ernie Watts’ gig at VJ’s, I was blasted by four cats utterly grooving high. No warm-up for these men – it was straight into the blistering bop of ‘To …

  Daniel Algrant’s Greetings from Tim Buckley is a feature of this year’s Sydney Film Festival, a festival humming with music-related films. From portraits of The Warumpi Band’s George Rrurrambu Burarrawanga and a Flemish bluegrass family to a doco on an orphanage …

Songwriter Andy Gordon’s new album The Reverent Jorfy was released late April. It is a sublime collection of acoustic flavoured songs that all seem wise beyond their years – sympathetically recorded and produced by Syd Green, a producer who always seems to …

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is a composer whose work spans the entire breadth of what it is to be human. From ribald ditties to almost ‘pop’ hits of his day to soaring, achingly spiritual works, his music covers everything. His genius, of course, …

Soaking up the rootsy atmosphere at this year’s Byron Bay Bluesfest (often to saturation point), I began thinking on music and the notion of authenticity. To be honest, I began to get a little irked by the relentless barrage of worn leather, …

Soaking up the rootsy atmosphere at this year’s Byron Bay Bluesfest (often to saturation point), I began thinking on music and the notion of authenticity. To be honest, I began to get a little irked by the relentless barrage of worn leather, …

Firmly established in its 24th year as one of the premier music festivals of the world, the Byron Bay Bluesfest continues to top its already heady highs. The lineup for this year’s festival was a dream program for lovers of blues and …

Several months ago I happened to catch a performance of a band called Video8 at the Annandale. They were tight, edgy, obviously influenced by the sharp end of the ‘80s and surprising. Surprising in their originality and sound but also surprising because …

When Ray Charles’s 1957 debut album, Ray Charles was reissued in 1962, it was under the new title Hallelujah, I Love Her So. As well as being the title of one of the album’s most riveting and beguiling songs, the ambiguous phrase …

It is a challenge to the non-Aboriginal Australian to consider that inanimate material objects can hold cultural memory. Even though we seem to spend the majority of our time chasing material possessions, we rarely, if ever, look beyond an object’s practical use …