Clinton Walker is an Australian writer, best known for his works on popular music. He is known for his books Highway to Hell (1994; a biography of Bon Scott), Buried Country (2000; also a film and soundtrack album), History is Made at Night (2012), and others. He has also written on other subjects, in books such as Football Life (1998) and Golden Miles (2005), and has worked extensively as a journalist and in television. [1]
Born in Bendigo, Victoria, in 1957, Walker dropped out of art school in Brisbane in the late 70s to start a punk fanzine with Andrew McMillan and to write for student newspapers. [2]
In 1978, Walker moved to Melbourne, where he worked on-air for 3RRR, and with Bruce Milne on the fanzine Pulp and wrote for the fledgling Roadrunner magazine. [3] [4]
Moving on to Sydney in 1980, he commenced a career as a freelance journalist, and for many years he wrote for numerous magazines and newspapers, including RAM and Australian Rolling Stone , as well as The Bulletin, The Age, New Woman, Playboy, and Juice. [5]
Walker published his first book, Inner City Sound, in 1981. [6] It documented the emergence of independent Australian punk/post-punk music and quickly fell out of print but was re-released in 2005 in an expanded, updated edition, [7] [ better source needed ] along with an accompanying CD anthology. [8] [ better source needed ]
In 1984, after a couple of years in London, Walker returned to Australia and published his second book, The Next Thing.[ citation needed ]
Walker's third book, Highway to Hell, was a biography of Bon Scott (1994).[ citation needed ]
Walker then published Stranded: The Secret History of Australian Independent Music 1977-1991 (1996) and Football Life (1998). Stranded was republished in 2021 by the Visible Spectrum in a new updated global edition. [9] [ better source needed ] Des Cowley in his review in Rhythms Magazine said: "Reading Stranded today with a quarter-century’s hindsight, it’s easy to see that Walker mostly got things right. And if he stumbled now and again, it’s still the case he was streaks ahead of the pack." [10] Football Life was similarly a personal history but covered minor-league Australian Rules culture.[ citation needed ]
Walker's sixth book, Buried Country , a history of Aboriginal country music, was published in 2000, along with an accompanying documentary film and CD soundtrack album. Martin Jones wrote in Rhythms, "Like many of Walker's projects, Buried Country was at least a decade ahead of its time". At a time when Aboriginal music was not established or accepted as a fixture on the broader Australian music scene, Walker's Buried Country was praised as a pioneering, detailed work of music historiography.[ citation needed ] [11] [12] [13] A new updated edition of the book was released in 2015 along with a rebooted version of the CD called Buried Country 1.5, which received further critical praise. [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] A live stageshow adaptation premiered in 2016 and toured for several years in the festival circuit. [19] [20] [21] In 2018, Australian singer-songwriter Darren Hanlon, in conjunction with Mississippi Records in the US, produced a vinyl iteration of the Buried Country compilation that included new tracks. [22]
In 2005, Walker’s seventh book, Golden Miles: Sex, Speed and the Australian Muscle Car, was published, expanding on an article he published in the Sydney Morning Herald in 2002. [23] [ better source needed ] It was praised for its design. [24] It was re-released in 2009 in an expanded and updated edition by Wakefield Press. [25] [ better source needed ]
In 2012, Walker published History is Made at Night about the Australian live music circuit. [26] [27] In 2013 he published his ninth book, The Wizard of Oz, about the ill-starred Australian speed ace from the 1920s, Norman 'Wizard' Smith, [28] [ better source needed ] as well as co-producing the CD Silver Roads, an anthology of Australian country-rock from the 1970s. [29] [30] [ better source needed ]
Deadly Woman Blues, a graphic history of black women in Australian music, was released in 2018 by a division of academic publisher UNSW Press. Each of 99 biographical entries was accompanied by a hand-drawn illustration by Walker. The book immediately garnered a few glowing reviews. [31] [32] [33] There was an angry backlash from four of the artists who expressed their displeasure at being included without being spoken to, and citing factual inaccuracies. [34] [35] [36] [37] This led to social media outrage in which Walker was criticized as a racist, misogynist, colonialist privileged white male. The book was withdrawn from sale, with the publisher promising to pulp any unsold copies and never to reprint it. [38] Walker admitted to mistakes and apologised, saying "I didn't try to obscure what I was doing, I didn't take all the appropriate steps. I've been involved in underclass music forever, and in some ways, this is no different, but in other ways, it is very different". [35]
In 2021, Walker released two books, including a new edition of Stranded and a new work, Suburban Songbook. [39] [40] [41] Suburban Songbook: Writing Hits in post-war/pre-Countdown Australia is a critical history of the early evolution of rock/pop songwriting in Australia. [42]
The Saints were an Australian rock band formed in Brisbane, Queensland in 1973. Founded by singer-songwriter Chris Bailey, drummer Ivor Hay, and guitarist-songwriter Ed Kuepper, they originally employed fast tempos, raucous vocals and a "buzzsaw" guitar sound that helped initiate punk rock in Australia and identified them with the greater international movement.
The Lighthouse Keepers, initially the Light-Housekeepers, were an Australian country and indie pop band formed in 1981 in Canberra. In November 1984 the group issued their debut studio album, Tales of the Unexpected, and a single, "Ocean Liner". In 1985 the band toured the United Kingdom supporting Hot label mates, The Triffids. The Lighthouse Keepers combined a "loosely rehearsed, casual ethos" with humour, punk attitudes and pure pop song craft. The ensemble disbanded in 1986, releasing a compilation album, Imploding, in November that year. According to rock music historian, Ian McFarlane, their "tasteful, jangly brand of country-tinged folk rock was at odds with prevailing trends on Sydney's early 1980s, Detroit-besotted independent scene. The band nevertheless issued a number of albums and singles, and always lived up to audience expectations".
Indigenous music of Australia comprises the music of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia, intersecting with their cultural and ceremonial observances, through the millennia of their individual and collective histories to the present day. The traditional forms include many aspects of performance and musical instrumentation that are unique to particular regions or Aboriginal Australian groups; and some elements of musical tradition are common or widespread through much of the Australian continent, and even beyond. The music of the Torres Strait Islanders is related to that of adjacent parts of New Guinea. Music is a vital part of Indigenous Australians' cultural maintenance.
The Little Band scene was an experimental post-punk scene which flourished in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia from late 1978 until early 1981. Instigated by groups Primitive Calculators and Whirlywhirld, this scene was concentrated in the inner suburbs of Fitzroy and St Kilda, and involved many short-lived bands that played live only once or twice before changing names and swapping members.
Stranded: The Secret History of Australian Independent Music 1977–1991 is a book about the Australian independent music scene from 1979 until 1991, as written by author and music journalist Clinton Walker. The books follows two decades of music, from punk, rock, alternative sound to garage-rock and grunge and integrates various first-person accounts from Walker's perspective as well as drawing upon interviews with artists during that time to illustrate the cultural history of Australian sound.
Christa Teresa Hughes is an Australian singer, circus performer and comedian. She utilises wild on-stage antics and a powerful voice. From the age of 15, Christa performed with her late father, jazz pianist, journalist and broadcaster, Dick Hughes. From 2000 to 2005 she was the nude roller skating singer, KK Juggy, for rock band Machine Gun Fellatio and then until 2008 the Ring Mistress with Circus Oz. During her solo career, Christa has regularly sung jazz and blues, created and starred in numerous musical theatre and cabaret shows, performed on television and appeared in films. She has recorded three albums, Sleepless Beauty (2004) with The Surgeons, 21st Century Blues (2010) with her father, Dick, and Shonky (2011) with the Honky Tonk Shonks.
Debra Oswald is an Australian writer for film, television, stage, radio and children's fiction.
Alexander McPhee Miller is an Australian novelist. Miller is twice winner of the Miles Franklin Award, in 1993 for The Ancestor Game and in 2003 for Journey to the Stone Country. He won the overall award for the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for The Ancestor Game in 1993. He is twice winner of the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Christina Stead Prize for Conditions of Faith in 2001 and for Lovesong in 2011. In recognition of his impressive body of work and in particular for his novel Autumn Laing he was awarded the Melbourne Prize for Literature in 2012.
Carmelina Marchetta is an Australian writer and teacher. Marchetta is best known as the author of teen novels, Looking for Alibrandi, Saving Francesca and On the Jellicoe Road. She has twice been awarded the CBCA Children's Book of the Year Award: Older Readers, in 1993 and 2004. For Jellicoe Road she won the 2009 Michael L. Printz Award from the American Library Association, recognizing the year's best book for young adults.
Jordie Albiston was an Australian poet.
Roger Knox is an Australian country singer, nicknamed "the Black Elvis" and "Koori King of Country".
Auriel Marie Andrew was an Australian country music singer from the Northern Territory. She was the first Aboriginal woman to appear on Australian television.
Buried Country is the name of a documentary film, book, and soundtrack album released in 2000, and a stage show which toured from 2016 to 2018. A prosopography created by Clinton Walker, it tells the story of Australian country music in the Aboriginal community by focussing on the genre's most important stars.
Robert Whyte is an Australian writer. He was a founding co-owner and director of the Brisbane-based multimedia firm ToadShow. After 2012 he participated in the Australian Government's new species exploration program Bush Blitz. His works include The Creek in Our Back Yard: a practical guide to creek restoration (2011) and A Field Guide to Spiders of Australia for CSIRO Publishing 2017.
Harry "Buck" Williams and Wilga Munro, known as Harry and Wilga Williams, were Aboriginal Australian musicians who performed professionally between the 1960s and 1980s, playing Aboriginal country music. They formed the band the Country Outcasts, also known as Harry Williams and the Country Outcasts.
Mark Tredinnick is an Australian poet, essayist and teacher. Winner of the Montreal International Poetry Prize in 2011 and the Cardiff International Poetry Competition in 2012. He is the author of thirteen books, including four volumes of poetry ; The Blue Plateau;The Little Red Writing Book and Writing Well: the Essential Guide.
Janeen Brian is a South Australian writer of children's books. A primary school teacher prior to 1990, when she started writing full time, she published her 100th book in September, 2016.
This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 2018.
Roger Norris-Green, also known as Roger Green, is an English-born Australian author known for Western stories and novels. Some of his westerns have received 'Best Western of the Month' awards.
Bruce Milne is a prominent figure in the Australian music industry, a long-standing member of the grass-roots Melbourne music community who, after getting his start publishing a punk fanzine in the late 1970s, has done practically everything since – been a writer, radio presenter, DJ, run record shops, book shops and record labels, run bars and venues, and worked in A&R and as a tour promoter.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
