Cream of The Crate: Album # 198 - John Lennon: Plastic Ono Band

"The reality of Plastic Ono Band is that it contains eleven of Lennon’s most accessible and gorgeous melodies and riffs." (Gerry Mullholand - BBC review 2010)
"An album that will be as much analysed as Sgt. Pepper over the years." (Billboard - 1971)
"It remains one of the most audacious, iconoclastic albums in all of rock and roll." (Guitar World 2016)
"The album certainly shows that he had yet to work through many unresolved matters, and that he still had much anger in him. However he was a brilliant man and knew how to channel these elements in such a way to create some brilliant, memorable and haunting tracks." (This review)


...

The big names of Melbourne’s fashion scene strut their stuff at last night’s extravaganza. Before a packed media contingent Melbourne’s celebrities gathered at the Bond Lounge and Bar to launch Fashion +Aid 2016 Where Fashion and Music collide in a stellar line up of Australia's hottest performers and designers.
...

Yes, I’m a fan. I’ve watched Mack Horton blitz the 400 in the pool, and the Campbell sisters with a couple of mates, knocking off multiple awards in the relay, our archers getting bronze without getting a tan and Bogut doing his magic with the round ball. Wonderful stuff. And this was just the first day.
...

Nada is creating something extraordinary for St Kilda families.

Through 20 years of working with children, as a nanny to the young, as a mentor to teens both in Perth and St Kilda, and having raised two confident, capable lads despite a messy divorce, Nada has seen the value of rich experiences as part of growing up, and is passionate in offering that to families today.
...

Bali has for the past four years become the choice of destination when I need to get away from the cold of Melbourne.
...

Welcome to Listen To Older Voices, a program produced Rob Greaves for Wesley Mission Victoria and podcast through the Toorak Times.

Listen To Older Voices presents the stories, views and opinions of our older citizens. It is predominantly in a life & times format, with interviewees reflecting upon their lives from earliest memories. An underlying principal of the program is to promote the concept of positive ageing, reinforcing the principle that older people have & continue to make a valuable contribution to both their local & wider community.
...

"Sam Moore and Dave Prater's string of soul and pop hits made them the '60s' most successful black vocal duo." (The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)
"Sam & Dave created some of their century's most enduring music in the pop form." (Stylus Magazine January 2007)
"There can be no argument that as a duo, Sam and Dave introduced the previously successful sound of the black church music, so successfully to pop music." (This review)



This is album review number One Hundred and Ninety Seven in the series of retro-reviews of both vinyl and CD albums from my collection.
...

_{Rocky Dabscheck on the free-access people's TV programme,
The shtick on Aussie channel 31, talking about his new book.}

Since touching down in Hong Kong last week, Rocky Dabscheck has wasted no time in finding his footing in this part of the world where massive audiences of millions will take to his inspirational version of Aussie-rooted blues.
...

Everyone is shocked by the treatment of incarcerated indigenous youth in the Northern Territory. There are calls to get the perpetrators and punish them. How dare they treat children that way? Unfortunately, their baying for blood is the same side of the coin. When will we learn that more of the same, doesn’t solve the problem? And it’s not just in the Territory. How we treat our less fortunate fellow humans is pervasive.
...

Now Available on Amazon

This visceral non-fiction book explores the true story of H Division, the punishment division within Pentridge Prison, Melbourne, that operated from 1958-1994, which was responsible for cultivating criminals who committed horrific crimes upon their release. “Some may have gone in as eighteen year olds, but the extreme brutality they were subjected to turned out potential monsters.”
...

I woke with an immense feeling of emptiness. Perhaps it’d been brewing for years and things had gnawed me until I was hollow. I got out of bed and summoned the strength to walk to the window and look outside. I saw empty streets, empty freeways, empty bridges, empty buildings and empty skies. I considered the thought that I may be dead. Perhaps there is no heaven, just another dimension filled with familiar surroundings and this was my location in which I could spend eternity trying to make some sense of the life i’d lived. What was most surprising was that I felt nothing. No panic, concern, fear – nothing.
...