Voice of Real Australia is a regular newsletter from ACM, which has journalists in every state and territory. Sign up here to get it by email, or here to forward it to a friend.
You can tell a lot about a person from their vinyl collection.
The Beatles White Album. Hey Boomer!
Fine Line by Harry Styles. Hey teenager! I do love this album but I'm still miffed that Styles rocks a pink tutu or white pant suit better than me.
150 Years of Strauss. Hey Dad! It's only a bargain at Kmart if you really wanted it in the first place.
Ripper '76. Hey rockstars! This was the most risqué album cover in my family's collection when I was growing up. Howzat!!
David Bowie - Fame and Fashion was the first album I bought with my own pocket money and I believe K-tel's Adventures in Storyland was my mum's best attempt at multi-tasking in the mid-1970s.
My family's original ABBA/Arrival album came from Venture - Albury as the $5.50 price tag still on the back attests. Again this Swedish awesome foursome collectively rocks the white pant suit better than most. (And I always liked to believe ABBA came to Australia in that helicopter featured on the album cover! Where the bloody hell is Sweden, anyhow, when you're only in primary school?)
Since then, vinyl records have gone full circle in popularity and the prices reflect it.
With so much time spent at home these days under restrictions one way or another, I have been slowly building up our record collection almost from scratch.
Powderfinger: Odyssey Number Five; REM: Out of Time; and Harry Styles: Fine Line for the resident teenager.
Without doubt the arts and entertainment sector is among the worst impacted by the global pandemic.
While musicians stand to make relatively little from streaming services, they rely heavily on tours and merchandise like vinyl.
Tours have been a movable feast.
Anyone who has booked a ticket to a live show in the past six months only to have it rescheduled three times knows this.
However, spare a thought for the artists, support crews, promoters and venue operators as they scramble to re-book shows and tours, time after time.
Border-based venue operators throughout the country are hampered by two sets of house rules.
NSW Border venues lose half of their audience every time Victoria goes into lockdown, making shows no longer profitable at a moment's notice.
Albury Entertainment Centre recently added a second show to its Taste of Ireland tour to comply with the 50 per cent capacity rules in NSW.
With half of the patrons booked for the evening performance moved to a matinee or reimbursed for their tickets, the goalposts shifted once again within 24 hours of the shows.
Brewing border closures with NSW meant the artists could no longer be guaranteed to get home without undergoing the mandatory quarantine.
Neither show went ahead.
You have to feel for the artists, organisers and venue operators as the rules change at dizzying speed.
Their heads must be spinning.
Meanwhile, lovers of live music and theatre can only keep supporting the arts industry by booking the tickets and buying the albums.
When the house rules align, the shows will go on!
In case you are interested in filtering all the latest down to just one late afternoon read, why not sign up for The Informer newsletter?
More stuff happening around Australia ...
- COVID outbreak at Sydney apartment block
- Delta variant changes AstraZeneca calculations
- Five-year ban for man who starved pet dog
- 'I couldn't walk away from her': Why Mary-Anne stood by her mother
- NSW Central Coast on high alert after long list of exposure sites
- The radical life of a trailblazing gay minister from Tasmania
- Australia isn't ready for vaccine passports. Soon we may not have a choice
- Why humans like to be creatures of habit
