Industrial Strength: Musical inspired by Whitlams tracks close; Bieber loses Aus fans; RÜFÜS change name

RÜFÜS change name for North America

On the eve of their debut appearance at SXSW, RÜFÜS have been forced to change their name to RÜFÜS DU SOL for North America. This came after the exchange of strongly-worded lawyers’ letters over another Rufus trademarked in those territories already. Their Atlas album is to be released in the US and Canada on Columbia (which found success with Aussie acts as Men At Work, Savage Garden and Temper Trap). RÜFÜS is locked in for a 15-date tour there from March 7 to April 6.

Venues #1: Perth’s Rocket Room returning

Perth’s Rocket Room nightclub is returning from Friday February 28 with a “100% Live Music on Fridays” policy. The club is in Northbridge.

Venues #2: Darwin’s The Chippo farewells site

One of the surviving Darwin live music venues, The Chippo farewelled its current building at Coconut Grove after property owners forced operator Rod Fitzgerald out. About 200 turned out last Saturday to say their (temporary) farewells, with Fitzgerald promising to bring the club back elsewhere.

Venues #3: New owner for Sydney’s The Lansdowne

Fairfax Media revealed that long time Sydney live music venue The Lansdowne Hotel, has been sold to the Oscars Group for $6.2 million. The company bought The Annandale last year.

Venues #4: Solbar moving to larger premises

Plans by the Sunshine Coast’s major live space Solbar to move across the road to bigger premises that will expand its capacity to 450, looks to be happening in April. Next Wednesday, the venue will again host Wolfmother, who want to road-test their new material, charging $15 a head.

Venues #5: New space for Melbourne

Melbourne gets another live music venue, this one the Playground Bar in Fitzroy. It launched on the weekend, filling out its two 150-capacity rooms. This weekend it has 12 acts booked. The 19th century bank building was formerly The Cape Lounge.

Venues #6: Old Growler announcing music

The year-old Old Growler bar in Sydney’s Woolloomooloo is about to announce a new live entertainment line-up of blues, gypsy jazz, funk and soul bands. It recently announced a new menu and expansion of craft beer range.

Megan Rose Management becomes Connect PR

Sydney PR firm Megan Rose Management changed its name to Connect PR to reflect the widening of its client list, and expansion into the New Zealand market. Rose set it up in 2008 initially offering PR services, after stints as a publicist at Turner Entertainment Network, Asia Sony Music Entertainment and Network Ten. Now her roster has widened to all sectors of the corporate world, and the company’s growing role is to connect the brands to others.

Certifications: first gold in the world for Bring Me The Horizon

UK metal band Bring Me The Horizon’s Sempiternal (Sony) has gone Gold in Australia – the first Gold in the world for the album and, indeed, their very first gold in their career. Sempiternal debuted at #1 on the ARIA chart on its release in March last year.

Also picking up gold were John Legend’s Love In The Future, Neil Finn & Paul Kelly’s Goin’ Your Way and Boy & Bear’s Moonfire. Arctic Monkeys’ fifth album AM achieved Platinum sales in Australia, reported EMI. It entered the ARIA chart at #1 (and nine countries), featured two gold singles and remains in the Top 15 after 20 weeks. Katy Perry’s Prism picked up its third Aussie Platinum.

On the singles front, Ten Network’s use of The Script and Will.i.am’s Hall Of Fame in its pre-coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi helped the track pick up its sixth Platinum. Miley’s Wrecking Ball is 4x Platinum… Pharrell Williams’ Happy, Magic’s Rude and John Legend’s All Of Me are on their third Platinum. Katy Perry’s Roar is now up to its ninth Platinum while her Unconditionally grabbed its first Platinum. Also certified Platinum are INXS’s Never Tear Us Apart, MKTO’s God Only Knows, London Grammar’s Strong and The Vamps’ Can We Dance while Imagine Dragons hit 2x Platinum with Demons.

Melbourne council sets up fund to meet costs of being creative

Yarra Council in Melbourne has set up the Room to Create Fund to provide artists and arts organisations in its area funds to keep them being actively creative. The area is abound with music venues, 60 galleries and artist-run spaces, rehearsal rooms, arts organisations, radio stations, film production houses and recording studios. At its launch yesterday, Yarra Mayor Jackie Fristacky said the funding could be used to “help pay for basic but essential things like studio fit-outs, rent, sound-proofing in music venues, technical production and upgrades.” The Council and the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation’s jointly chipped in $200,000. But Fristacky said it was necessary for private and corporate donations to top it up to $1 million, so that an average of $50,000 a year was available to help the creatives.

Bluesfest brings back Juke Joint Stage

Bluesfest Byron Bay (April 17 to 24) said that as part of its 25^th anniversary this year, it would bow to pressure from its audience and bring back the Juke Joint stage after some years. This will make it six stages, with the Juke Joint for R&B acts only. Director Peter Noble said some of Bluesfest’s best moments – including Johnny Green’s Blues Cowboys, Music Maker, RL Burnside and Ash Grunwald’s Bluesfest debut – happened on that stage.

SWIPE

Odd Future were added this week to the New Zealand leg of the Eminem-headlined Rapture tour after Kendrick Lamar dropped out due to scheduling conflict. Lamar is doing the Australian shows next weekend, but not Odd Future, a spokesperson for promoter Paul Dainty told us.

Australians fans of Justin Bieber, whatever is left of them, aren’t exactly rushing into cinemas pushing little old ladies out of the way to see the Bieb’s new biopic Believe. It scraped into the bottom end of the Australian box office Top 20, taking just $152,000 in 96 screens in its first weekend. But creating more of an interest, following Bieb’s “nipplegate” hysteria on the weekend, is that a 12-minute “crystal clear” footage of the 19-year old cavorting in a Brisbane lap dancing club last November is being offered to media outlets for a sizeable amount. The footage is taken from the club’s security camera and, we’re breathlessly told, sees him spanking the bare butts of two strippers and removing their panties with his teeth.

Which music firm is being tossed out of its premises for slow payment of rent?

Just why was a woman dressed in bra and panties smashing a festival organiser’s car with a hammer?

A weekend piece in The Australian on INXS manager Chris Murphy revealed that promoter Michael Chugg dislikes him so much (“evil prick”) that he grumpily hangs up on any caller who mentions Murphy’s name!

The Victorian State Government lived up to its promise of saving The Palace Theatre in Melbourne by rejecting its owner’s bid to demolish it to put up apartments and a hotel. But what’s the long-term strategy to keep it going as a venue? Will the Government buy the building and lease it back to the owner?

With the Queensland war on bikies, are patrons sporting tattoos increasingly being refused entry into nervous Gold Coast nightclubs and bars?

With so many females on the Laneway bill, some of the women performers have dubbed it Lilith Fair.

Canadian Music Week is moving to May – which is a real drag for Australians who used to attend it right after shaking hands and kissing babies at South By Southwest. Nevertheless, the first round of acts for CMW includes Aussies as King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and Elizabeth Rose.

The Collective, formed from The X-Factor Australia in 2012, have lost member Zach Russell who has returned to Rockhampton, QLD, to live.

Stone Temple Pilots dropped out of Soundwave – first claiming it was due to sessions for their next album running late, and then admitting on Facebook they fibbed – and were replaced by The Living End.

Sara Bareilles fired her manager Jordan Feldstein after he got involved in a screaming row with Sharon and Kelly Osbourne at a pre-Grammys bash, during which a plate of food was tipped on his lap and water thrown at his head. Apparently Feldstein, also Maroon 5’s manager, had made a comment about Jack Osbourne and his wife, which set the Osbourne sheilas off.

LIFELINES

Injured: Marc Earley, bassist for Perth’s The Growl ended up with a broken finger after being attacked unprovoked by a thug on Monday morning at an Oporto restaurant in Surry Hills, Sydney. Doctors told him he needed surgery in 48 hours, so he flew back to Perth. The thug had deliberately broken his left finger, leaving the hand at a right angle, and causing two fractures on the upper knuckle. Earley, renowned in the jazz community as a talented player, is also a film scorer and a tutor. Aside from having no income coming in while he attends occupational therapy everyday after his surgery if he is to regain the full use of his hand, Earley like most musicians has no health or income insurance. If you can donate, go to www.gofundme.com.

Attacked: A 23-year-old woman was sexually assaulted at the Oz Rock music festival in Busselton, WA. At about 10 pm, she was standing 10 metres from the front of the stage when a dreadlocked man attacked her.

Charged: A man at the Rainbow Serpent Festival in Victoria, with 210 counts of ‘upskirting’ following an alleged incident in a public toilet. He appears at Ballarat Magistrates Court on February 27. Also with a date at the court is a 25-year-old man who drove through a security check endangering lives.

In Court: James Scott McCabe, a Tasmanian man accused of stalking radio presenter/actress Sophie Monk, appeared briefly in Launceston Magistrates Court. He did not enter a plea, and the matter adjourned to February 25.

Vale: Aussie publicist Angela Batties after a battle with Motor-Neurone Disease. She worked at EMI Music, PolyGram Music and Network Ten before setting up her own AB Publicity firm.

Vale: Trevor Young, best known as drummer with Lobby Loyde’s Coloured Balls passed away after a battle with cancer. Starting out in the mid-60s, Young played with a number of acts including Blackfeather, Chain, Cold Chisel, Buster Brown and, most recently, his own Forever Young Band.

Vale: NSW country singer Patti McKinnon, 67, of a heart attack. Born Trish Cunningham on a sheep and wheat station near Temora, she developed a love for country music from her grandfather, a close friend of Reg Lindsay’s. She moved to Sydney and played with a series of bands including her own Freedom Highway, in between stints as a nurse and a truck driver. She was a campaigner for mental health, equal marriage and animal rights.

Vale: A 35-year old run over in her tent at the Got Milk festival in country Victoria on Australia Day was identified as Katie Louise Broadbent. She was a lighting operator at the Clock Tower Theatre and Monash Theatre, and DJ’d and tended the bar at inner city Melbourne venues as the Standard, The Public Bar and The Old Bar. A 24-year-old man was charged with her death.

NUMBER CRUNCHING

9^th chart topper in America for Katy Perry with the track Dark Horse, equaling her with the Bee Gees, Elton John, Paul McCartney (solo) and Usher. Ahead of her are The Beatles (20 No 1s), Mariah Carey (18), Elvis Presley (17), Michael Jackson (13), Rihanna (13), Madonna (12), The Supremes (12), Whitney Houston (11), Janet Jackson (10) and Stevie Wonder (10).

69,000 tickets sold for Avicii’s first headline tour of Australia, setting a new attendance record for a standalone DJ, said Frontier Touring and Future Music.

$8 million— $15 million estimated loss for Big Day Out this year, according to Sydney Morning Herald.

$11.5 million price tag for London mansion for Coldplay’s Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow after their decision to live in Los Angeles.

35 spots jump up the ARIA chart for Daft Punk’s Get Lucky after their Grammy triumph.

INSIDE TRACK

John Butler bloods out

In the four years since the release of April Uprising, John Butler’s downtime included camping, painting and tending the garden. But that’s ended. With the release of the Flesh and Blood album comes a US tour, then dates in Australia (which start on March 27 in hometown Fremantle and ends 15 shows later on April 19 at Bluesfest Byron) and continues on to Europe. The bulk of Flesh and Blood was cut in December 2012 over 20 days in Butler’s studio The Compound in Fremantle. It was inspired by camping trips to Uluru and long jam sessions, with production by Jan Skubiszewski. It’s a simple approach that captivated fans in the first place: Butler talks about how he loses himself to the songs, of the songs “wanting to come out”. Then drummer Nicky Bomba resigned to focus on his Melbourne Ska Orchestra, delaying the process while Grant Gerathy was brought in.

Butler says Flesh & Blood offers his fans much. “I hope they go on a journey with it or take it with them on a journey. I hope it can be the soundtrack for some cool moments in their life and some shit moments in their life and I hope it can be there for them at the ebb of their energy wave and at the crest of it. In the loud times and the quiet times. That would be nice, and I think that’s what all good art’s done for me. It’s been there for me, in one way, or another.” He’s excited about taking this lineup on the road for most of 2014. “I hate to say we sound better than ever because I don’t want it to sound derogatory to anyone we’ve ever played with. But it sounds like how we should sound, right now. Which is cool.”

Musical inspired by Tim Freedman songs

A new musical to premiere at Hayes Theatre Co in Sydney, called Truth, Beauty And A Picture Of You is based on the characters and storylines that inhabit the works of Tim Freedman of The Whitlams. It works because director and producer Neil Gooding is a big Whitlams fan, and digs into the material. He understands how Freedman songs strike a chord because they are about every day people and every day thoughts. No Aphrodisiac, Blow Up The Pokies and You Gotta Love This City appear away from the context of Whitlams records but about lost love, lost friends and lost youth. The story is about how Tom hunts down the surviving members of his late father’s band. Truth, Beauty And A Picture Of You, named after the band’s hits set, starts on May 9. See www.hayestheatre.com.au.

Riff it to death

Snake Sixx’s It’z All About The RIFF (Quarterpipe Records) is an album that sees 33 metal and rock names from Australia and around the world to interpret legendary Australian songs. It took Sixx, guitarist with Australian death metal bands Aftermath and Destrier 25 months to complete, using his own money. He was at a party with Sydney community radio figure Metal Matt when the INXS/Jimmy Barnes version of The Easybeats’ Good Times came on, and the idea hit. He called in musicians he had played with or met online. Those who contributed ranged from members of Rose Tattoo to Celtic Frost, Mortal Sin to Death, to L.A. Guns whom Sixx toured with. He says he was surprised to learn how revered some Aussie metal bands are abroad. “The Tatts have an amazing following in Europe, especially Germany, Steve Priestly (Celtic Frost) mentions on the Making Of DVD how he was in awe the first time he saw the Tatts with Angry Anderson smashing his mike into his head gushing blood. He was also stoked to be on an album with Adz from Alchemist, he is a massive fan of all Australian rock.” The Making Of DVD comes in the digipack called One Man’s Journey, limited to the first 500 packs.