David Nichols

In October 2001, as a member of a group called Huon, I set out on my fourth US tour drumming in an ‘indie’ rock band: a low-key, non-profit cross-nation trek performing shows in colleges, small bars, even a few suburban basements. It was an extraordinary time to travel across the States, particularly since much of it was spent in a hire car with only AM radio for entertainment. AM radio in the ... (read more)

It is impossible to look cool studying youth culture. Researchers can’t help being uncool, whether they’re explaining every little term to their readers, as if to a High Court judge, or shoehorning the ‘in’ lingo into their otherwise conventional academic texts. However advanced their self-awareness strategies or their desire to avoid seeming preachy, nothing can stop them coming off like ... (read more)

Levin’s God is a two-part epic. The first half is a take on the Australian rock scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Singer-guitarist Levin Hoffman, on the strength of what people say are ‘great songs’, rapidly takes his band the Barking Dogs to the top of the charts. Levin – believe it or not – finds that success is hollow and that not even his devoted Indian-Australian girlfriend, ... (read more)

1980: a red-haired girl in my Year Ten art class at John Gardiner High School asked me if I knew there was a radio station that only played ‘that new wave music’. She said it with a measure of contempt in her voice – for me and for it. But I was tempted, and soon became part of 3RRR’s small, staunch audience. A quarter of a century on comes Mark Phillips’s lively, if listy (though no mor ... (read more)