_{Tom Verlaine turns on Television.}

The Palais & The Prince of Wales, St Kilda, Melbourne, October 26, 2013

I have a lot time for the All Tomorrows Parties as a festival, it is ultra-cool. Awesome vibe. In fact, my festival going was a dim memory since the late Nineties until the ATP Sydney Cockatoo Island of a few years ago. It a lineup of was The Saints, Rowland S. Howard and Bad Seeds. No brainer really, It was an awesome day. Nor, was it a no brainer to get down to Melbourne for another dose of ATP with a lineup that included Jesus Lizard, Television, Scientists, Breeders and the Roland S Howard tribute Pop Crimes.

Enmore Theatre, Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Restraint is not often a by-word around these parts but let’s at least try to keep some perspective. A visit to Australia by Television seemed unlikely, if not an absurd proposition, just a few years ago. The band was scarcely active, Richard Lloyd having had long flown the coop, and Tom Verlaine had let a label issue two mothballed solo records that were barely promoted. It seemed if the TV hadn’t been turned off it was in storage and in danger of being forgotten.

The Metropolitan Hotel, Adelaide - September 27, 2013

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Tonight was a passionate night of balance, power, and space. Each group told us stories, ran films in our heads.

The streets are empty. Empty as in, it's Tuesday night. Except it's Friday night. Where is everyone?

Just the previous night, the suburbs decanted some 10,000 to land like a torrent of ants in Adelaide's great dome of the popular people's front to see Rihanna, who is, I am told, a superstar. From overseas.

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Annandale Hotel - August 1, 2006

If you don't like slobbering, breathless gushes, leave now. OK? I've already copped a broadside from someone about one review of a gig this week - and the fucker wasn't even at the show - but here goes...

What an in-fucking-credibly amazing show. Just about the best thing I've seen this year. The Stooges beats it (although that was surreal an experience I'm still not sure it happened). Soulful, rocking, energetic and dynamic. Perfectly paced and a testimony to a band at the peak of its considerable powers. Cruisey and light at the get go, it shaped as a righteously loud and grooving way to ease us all through a Tuesday night.

Wheatsheaf Hotel, Thebarton, Australia - June 22 and 23, 2013

My dad used to say that nothing was free. There's always a catch. There's a reason that nice man on the street is giving away Bibles, Robert.

He was right, of course. Those free music magazines you pick up for the what's on this weekend guide, the reviews of pub food, new beers and pricey wine, they make their living from the adverts. Stop putting in the stuff that the people with money to spend want to see and they'll stop bending at the creaky knees to pick it up. And the advertisers start to wonder why they're paying four or five hundred bucks a week. Self-evident, yeah? You don't change a money-making formula unless you can make more.

Iggy and The Stooges. The Authorized Biography
By Jeffrey Morgan
(New Haven Publishing)

Did we need another Stooges book? Rhetorical question but slap yourself if you answered in the negative. This is a pared-down and re-cut variant of the coffee table format “The Stooges: The Authorized and Illustrated History” published by Abrams in 2009 under the authorship of Jeffrey Morgan and Robert Matheu. 

This version is prominently attributed to Morgan although Matheu is acknowledged on the cover and at length throughout.

“Iggy and The Stooges. The Authorised Biography” is still in hardcover and runs to 140 pages as opposed to the original 180-odd. It’s illustrated by the photos of  Matheu, John Catto and Jeff Magnum (yes, the onetime Dead Boys bassist) and others, although the reformatting has resulted in much of the original imagery beinbg deleted or replaced.

John Catto’s and Robert Sikora’s 1974 Toronto shots of Iggy and the Stooges are amazing additions but so were Craig Petty’s St Louis photos.  

The original book was the brainchild of Morgan and Mattheu after both had been co-opted by Italian uber fan and magazine editor Rosano Ciccarelli to contribute to his own Fun House publication in 2005. They tossed the idea around over some beers, let it slide and revived it a year later with Matheu in the driving seat.