So I got it in a spreadsheet.

51.1%

of music is from within the past 5 years. That’s up from 38.3% from the first review.

56.2%

of songs are from Australian artists. That’s up from 48.1%.

30.5%

is Queensland artists as a percentage of Australian. That’s a bee’s dick down from 31%.

46.8%

are female artists. That’s up from 41%. I want >50%.

49.4%

of songs are from the fantastic AMRAP service. That’s nearly double the 25.4% of the last review and reflects my massive push to new Australian music.

Notes: i) removed duplicate song plays. While it’d be great to capture this – it’s hard ii) G = gender, apologies for the categorisation but it was required for the process iii) Yr = year of first release iv) Oz categorisations based roughly on current or familiar home base

Check out the original analysis of episodes 0-20 of You’re Gonna Like This.

Listen to the 2025 ARIA Awards episode.

Twenty episodes, 233 songs. According to my spreadsheet it’s 1970’s Ramble Tamble by Creedence Clearwater Revival all the way to 2025’s Dummy by Brisbane’s 01 Thurman.

Here’s the latest list in full.

The post How is the new, interesting, and Australian music project tracking? appeared first on adamconnors.net.

Not that Curseforge, Discord, and Patreon is any less real than the old internet that I’m still artlessly hanging on to, but it was nice to work on this.

Apotheotic Studios

And, surprisingly, he was probably the best client ever. We both dig it. And his font choice was totally right.

The post Back on the tools with my smart game developer son appeared first on adamconnors.net.

Bay FM’s Broadcast House in Thornlands.

Radio, and especially volunteering to do so, to inflict music on people is the most entirely fulfilling thing I have ever done in my life.

It turns out Bay FM has this ridiculously huge footprint across south-east Queensland encompassing Brisbane and the Gold Coast, and nearly to the Sunshine Coast. Across about 4 million people on 100.3FM. It streams too.

The overall playlist is not generally my cuppa tea. The website’s a mess. No catch-up or podcasting either. My thought was I could volunteer to help there too.

Dave, the station’s producer, an ex-ABC cammo from Gore Hill who did a fair bit of GTK with Farnsie and JPY, met me at the door – flywire that doesn’t shut and certainly doesn’t stop traffic noise into the nearby recording booth.

“Can you do a new music show?” Um, I wanted to help administratively, but OK. That’s an itch I didn’t realise I needed to scratch.

I literally came up with the one-hour program name You’re Gonna Like This on the spot, right there. I just vacantly said yes to the almost nowhere time of midday on a Friday. Cool.

With that title, I substantiated to myself later, meant it was a Trojan horse to sneak in whatever I wanted.

“You may not of heard this song, but you’re gonna like this.”

Listen to the all Australian Vol II episode.

I’m going to be a bit blunt at this point.

The overall format of the station? I obviously had to fit in somehow. I can happily swing from Sparks to Aphex Twin – if we’re talking old school – but the 15,000-track library largely acquired from a Christian rock station which I’ve since estimated that if left to run repeats every 16.5 days – yeah, challenge.

You can’t swing a stick without hearing the Barnes family – Swanee and Diesel included. Don’t get me started on INXS.

That said, the team at Bay FM are at every level the nicest, kindest, community-minded beings out there, comparable to everywhere else I’ve been.

What I’m explicitly trying to say is this a wonderful example of a community radio station. I am honoured to be given my wee hour on Fridays.

I hope to lead by example. My long game is training the next generations.

I don’t really give a damn about my little hour in the scheme of things, the whole station’s survival – like all community radio stations giving airtime to community – is the whole point of getting involved after driving past for so many years.

All the music of the first 20 episodes, 240 songs

So, to the music. What I’ve inflicted. Maybe inspired.

After the first 20 episodes of You’re Gonna Like This I needed to break down whether or not I’m at all an agent of change, so I got it in a spreadsheet.

38.3%

of music is from within the past 5 years

48.1%

Australian artists

31%

is Queensland artists percentage of Australian

41%

female artists

25.4%

from the fantastic AMRAP service

Notes: i) removed duplicate song plays. While it’d be great to capture this – it’s hard ii) G = gender, apologies for the categorisation but it was required for the process iii) Yr = year of first release iv) Oz categorisations based roughly on current or familiar home base

Listen to the all Australian Vol I episode.

Twenty episodes, 240 songs. According to my spreadsheet it’s 1969’s Venus in Furs by The Velvet Underground all the way to 2025’s Can’t You See by Byron Bay’s Garage Sale.

Here’s the entire list.

The post An older not particularly wiser community radio tragic walks into a station appeared first on adamconnors.net.

Roly Skender–This came into my possession a little while back. I think it was made by Nancy Jones … There are a lot of familiar faces in there for anybody involved in the Perth music scene in the early/mid 90s. Even the folks I remember as old(er) are looking peachy! One for the archives.

The post WAM in 1996 documentary chockers with heaps of bonza players appeared first on adamconnors.net.

Chris Hann’s new EP All the Rest Are Strangers, recorded “during the wet”, a namesake season in Darwin, and released yesterday, is a fresh and familiar love affair with an artist that set some high bars on the Western Australian music scene back when.

The opener Out for Blood is comfort food — that jangle! Storytelling kicks in as Hann’s bending of all the majors woozes you through a tale, his voice having matured to tap a bit of Brian Ferry – that period with Eno also in the keys, also featured – but tricking it up with a very power-chord-y outro, then pending a bit of doom, building the instrumentation, simply signalling a darkness. Whispers foreboding.

The comfort is in the playful riffs of all the tracks of this EP. There’s a generation, which seems to be baked on now, of Perth artists that can’t help to smash out riffs like there’s potentially about 3-5 songs in any track, “but we can’t choose and I’m going to make it bloody work”. And he does.

I Like It But I Don’t Know Why is a pop masterclass. Less than three minutes long it gets to the point and raises a smile. Not a singer’s song, but a sing-along. Malkmus wants his song back. But then it slams into the undeniable Perth twist. Thus, it seems like home. It has those pauses, those bridges, not at all out of place, taking us to that P-Town sound of which we all love.

The stuttering, ‘I’m doing this at home’ start of Agency Birds makes way for musicality of the coastal beatuty of both WA and no doubt the NT, switching gears several times to bring the listener to the scene. Reaching deep to concentrate on the vocals, it’s another storytelling delight. The riff flourishes will delight.

Strummy strum strum Summer’s Lease with its pedal steel-ish vibes and storytelling is a liltish, languid summer by the pool. Stripped back, with an initial Bluetile feel, its evocative “Revlon painted on” is so sunny. Again short, it’s definitely an EP near-closer, a taster.

The Drifters is almost like a signpost to what a full stage and band, and everything potentially tweaked to overdrive, could be if brought to the live format. The slightly off-key backing vocals just add that very Wooden Fische lilt we all loved so mch, like, 30 years ago?! The potential of grunt from his Anodyne 500. A homage to the great 90s anthems that still hold us in thraw in 2023, The Drifters is an opening song at a festival support. Hang on, isn’t that what the young kids of Hann’s home town used to do? Before they headlined?

Ridey and ROsesy, it’s a final flourish with a slow fade to what Hann under the moniker The Sandhills can bring to the world in his latest incarnation, on the balcony watching the rain pour from the roofs of Darwin, with fond memories of the pitter patter of the sparce rain of his hometown.

Recommended.

The post Mental Notes January 2023: All the Rest Are Strangers appeared first on adamconnors.net.

My father told me that at the ceremony lowering the flag on Rhodesia and raising it for a new Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe looked at the folded, former ensign dad held and said “you keep it”.

Mugabe, a bad man, was one of three giants that passed this week, three who shaped distinct areas of the world – Mugabe in Zimbabwe, BJ Habibe of Indonesia, and ‘Akilisi Pohiva of Tonga.

The boy from Hobart had touched each of them his own way.

Pete with first grandchild Bowie.

Peter Allan Connors was part of the small force of multinational peacekeepers deployed in 1979-80 for the Rhodesia-Zimbabwe handover.

I asked him many years later “how’d Mugabe work out for ya?” – hoping my smart-arsery could possibly get a rise from someone who still held three passports so did not ever need to go through customs, even approaching 70 years of age.

His evasiveness was the usual stream of mixed messages, entertaining Australianisms and subterfuge, as even after a few beers he knew what our roles where – me being the journalist and he the spook.

At his funeral a couple of weeks ago, the local RSL had to apologise that they didn’t have sapper Warrant Officer First Class and RSM PA Connors’ full service record available, there was a hold-up in Canberra.

I quietly leaned forward to my family and said “they haven’t had enough time to redact it”.

Welcome to the big game

On the evening of Time’s publishing of one of its most influential, and then the most heavily legalled investigations in the magazine’s history, Suharto’s Billions, I was at the elevator door having a cigarette preparing its online rollout.

This was the 30-something floor of a Hong Kong skyscraper in 1999.

You could smoke anywhere those days.

BJ Habibie was radically and somehow peacefully steering Indonesia from a brutal autocracy quickly to a fledgling but functional democracy.

He had given a path for the release of East Timor. There was conjecture about Indonesian Papua.

Pak Habibie was fronting the generals, and both Time and Asiaweek were going at it as hard journalistically as a then-boundless editorial budget could muster.

My father, it turns out, had helped draw the boundary between a free, democratic Papua New Guinea and Indonesia’s Papua as part of a survey team in his youth.

“How’d that work out for ya?” I also recall saying.

Anyway, the lift pinged and a tradesman struggled getting through the security door, trying the pass codes constantly.

He said he had to fix the telephone at the reception desk, just through the secured doors.

I swiped him through and he set about doing something out-of-view at the very offices we could have held all the detail about the massive expose about to drop.

Sitting back at my desk I shook as I realised what I might have done.

Months later, at editor Don Morrison’s going away shindig, I told him about it.

He slapped me on the back of the head. He said something along the lines of “you idiot”.

He said I should have called security to evacuate the building – a 32-something-storey building in Causeway Bay.

I agree. I should have.

Dad, who later oversaw security for the UN in Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province in his 60s wouldn’t have allowed that.

Voice of home

The stunning thing about working in Pacific journalism is that you can speak to everyone, and everyone wants to speak with the ABC.

There was rarely a time when Tonga’s ‘Akilisi Pohiva was not available for a chat on Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat.

He was the longest serving member of parliament, he was the eternal opposition leader. But sadly he finally got the top post when his health was on the wane.

When not steering the program where he featured so large, I would read the news.

Dad, as a quartermaster of aid delivery for DFAT on Nauru in his latter years, would tune in.

He liked news, but would never, ever make it himself.

“How’s Nauru working out for ya?” I said very, very, very often, exasperated, as over the years no journalist had access to that place.

As usual his training would kick in. Engage but not elaborate. Entertain and evade.

When I showed him from a photo of Nauru’s opposition leader being manhandled into a police car emblazed with Australian government sponsorship, he mumbled – a rare event – “that’s not going to be there, shortly”.

It wasn’t.

The post Mental Notes August 2022: Mugabe, Habibe, Pohiva, dad, and I appeared first on adamconnors.net.

• Local accommodation options. Not particularly fancy, but I recommend Alex Hills, Bay Air, Comfort Hotel Pacific or Motor Inn, all Uber/crawling distance away.

Direct invites are rolling out soon with the address (keeping that off the live web!), so if you’re in the mood for rolling up Brisbane way here’s my traditional posterwork for a long-belated milestone occasion – considering I’ve delayed about 17 years of birthday parties.

Update: see the gallery of fine peeps at the event.

The post Mental Notes April 2022: The birthday invite appeared first on adamconnors.net.

Considering that in 1998 I was was about to faff around the world for ages, I pruned the collection to what I loved, or believed in, at the time.

So after opening the beast in 2020 and sorting the Australians from the internationale, here’s a snapshot of the locals. All now with new jewel jackets on the ‘old man iso project’ wall-length shelves.

Some dear Perth loved ones and record co. flips

Classy Perth singles and EPs

Mardi Picasso is the closest to genius I’ve seen, along with Tucker Bs obviously. Lots of foundation here

The top shelf, and seeds of it, and those that shouldabeeen

Max impact releases in Perth at the time

The Black Captain’s cover missed the previous pics because I was playing it at the time. It’s brilliant. RIP Pete Dunstan

Top-right Western Front CD was probably the second-most CD ever played on RTRFM 1990-1995 — apart from Crystal Journeys by Storytime

A few Aus ones not generally on the radar. Ratcat’s JPY one is okay, but their version of Jebediah’s Blame is mwah

Bit of an Aus wrap of goodies thar

Huge fan of each of these at the time. Dollop especially

Thanks to the bands and record co. folk who flipped me a copy many years ago.

Regards,

26yo Adam

Also see the commentary on a version of this post on the Facebook group Sound as Ever.

The post Mental Notes September 2020: Opening the suitcase appeared first on adamconnors.net.

Paul’s Boutique
Beastie Boys

A ride through history’s killer samples, recontextualised.

Meddle
Pink Floyd

Where soaring, mad noise awaits.

It’s Schnapschter
Cinema Prague

Childhood’s soundtrack. Start with Terminal to begin my live music education.

• It’s unavailable to buy, so download it legit at Perth Music Blog
• rar transcoding at Convertio

The Pod
Ween

Warped, scorched, and woozy.

Slightly Odway
Jebediah

Not something I’d flip to these days, but its immense impact changed and supercharged Perth’s music scene. And they’re top peeps too.

Screamadelica
Primal Scream

From The Firm, The Loft, Planet, DCs Backroom, and even Chemical Suzy in Hong Kong, the untouchable floor filler.

Split
Lush

A masterpiece that was lost in record company maladministration.

Loveless
My Bloody Valentine

The template.

Transient Random Noise Bursts With Announcements
Stereolab

Moments of perfection.

Synthetica
Metric

Pop.

Batchelor No 2
Aimee Mann

Songsmithery.

Primitive Species EP
Arse

Just. Pure. Rawk.

The post Mental Notes March 2020: The music one appeared first on adamconnors.net.

A quick jaunt from Brisbane for quite sad family catchups has still let me off the leash for one night only.

It’s the third city I’ve seen the full ensemble – the others Melbourne twice, Auckland – plus Laetitia solo in Brisbane.

But first a bit of Timezone.

And High St scrubs up okay eh? First time I’ve been down these streets in probably 28 years.

Roundhouse delivers as always.

And all those Freo ingredient are. still. here.

And because I don’t whip out the phone at gigs, apart from this, you had to be there.

Just Tim retuning.

Oh, and my people.

The post Mental Notes March 2020 appeared first on adamconnors.net.