MAN ABOUT TOWN

The wedding party (L-R): the father of the groom, Ali (chief bridesmaid), the mother of the groom, Bob, Bec, the mother & father of the bride. Bec & Bob were married at St Ninian's Church on Sunday 28th August... ***** Hmmm. Actually, before I talk about the wedding (the main reason I've come to Glasgow, and by extrapolation the rationale behind this whole overseas trip) I should talk a little about the people whose wedding it is, and whose loungeroom I'm staying in! Bec Carey (now officially Rebecca Carey-Grieve) was my co-CEO and Express Media's general manager. We worked together for four years and formed a long - and I hope lasting - friendship as well as being a great team for that small and special youth arts organisation. Bec is petite, likes the colour red , and is a digital artist/animator. Bob Grieve (Robert Carey-Grieve) is a visual artist and a founding member of Henry VIII's Wives , a Glaswegian artists' collective who are now scattered all...

Sat 27 - Sun 28 August Glasgow is a beautiful city. Once an industrial city on the banks of the River Clyde, its streets are lined with sandstone Georgian terraces built in the early 1800's, and its people are friendly (the friendliest people in Scotland, I overheard one local say). On Saturday, myself, Nerida and Nat (another Australian friend and ex- Voiceworks person) spent the day wandering around the city while Bec & Bob went off to the wedding rehearsal: Nat has been here before so she took us to an excellent record store called Monorail Music (12 Kings Court, King Street: www.monorailmusic.com ) which is also a bar, cafe and performance space as well; I have to go back before I leave and stock up on obscure local bands... We walked through the countless malls, up a steep hill, and ended the day at NICENSLEAZY (421 Sauchiehall Street) , a fantastic bar & live music venue where Bob works. I was restrained, and only stayed for a few hours, although I could have stayed ...

Thurs 25th - Fri 26th August Never one to do things by halves, I decided to combine two of the most stressful things imaginable on the one day: my most important radio program of the year and my first ever international flight. First off was my Radiothon show for 3RRR . For 10 days RRR announcers badger, beg and sweet-talk our listeners into pledging a subscription to the station. As RRR receives no government funding, and we're not a commercial broadcaster, we rely on listener support for 50% of our annual income. The irony of course is that you don't need to pay to listen to the radio, but bless their little cotton socks, RRR listeners enjoy showing their support for the station by subscribing in droves. This being my first Radiothon for 'SmartArts' I had no idea how many subscribers I'd get; as it turns out I got heaps. About 126 people subscribed during my three hours, which was a delightful result, and created happy smiles around the station. Many thanks to ...

It's 12.30am on Wednesday 24th August and I'm sitting at home drinking warm sake and listening to Dominique presenting the excellent punk-ska-rockabilly show Atomic on Melbourne's community radio station 3RRR . Should you live somewhere other than Australia, community radio may be a foreign concept to you. Take the best elements of college radio in the USA, add a dash of the sadly-missed Peel Sessions from the UK, take away any suggestion of playlisting, and you have some idea of community radio. I'm a RRR presenter, so I'm biased, but bear in mind that I don't get paid for presenting a three-hour radio show every week - I do it cos I love it, and cos I love RRR and what it stands for. Without this station broadcasting at 102.7 FM, Melbourne would be so less rich artistically and musically. Commercial radio stations don't play new music unless it originates from a record label who basically/effectively/actually pay them to do so. Commercial radio doesn...

In three days time I have to present my most important program of the year on 3RRR, as part of the station's annual Radiothon. Then that night, at 7.30pm, I fly out of Melbourne on my first-ever trip to the UK and Europe. It surprises a lot of people that I haven't been to the UK before; they're even more surprised when I tell them that, apart from a two-week visit to New Zealand with my parents when I was 14, I've never really even been overseas - not unless Tasmania counts. It seems almost madatory now for so many Australians in their early 20's to go backbacking for a year(well, middle-class and upper-class Australians, anyway), but I just never got around to doing it. At a time when half my friends were jetting off to work in London for six months to a year, and from there heading off to wherever their fancy took them, I'd just quit my job and gone onto the dole in order to focus on the creative aspects of my life. Given that I was broke, and that it seemed ...

Gregg Araki has directed his most mature film to date, in the haunting and disturbing Mysterious Skin . "What I really wanted to do with this film was have it devastate people in the same way Scott Heim’s book did to me when I first read it," director Gregg Araki says of his controversial new movie Mysterious Skin . "I’ve never encountered a story like it. I get sent a lot of scripts and books and stuff, and there’s really no other story that has moved me, and made me want to make it into a movie, the way this story did." Mysterious Skin is the eighth feature film from the former bad boy of the 90’s new queer cinema, whose works includes the HIV-positive road movie The Living End and the bleakly beautiful teen drama Totally Fucked Up . Thanks to recent attempts by the religious right to have the film banned here in Australia, its subject matter, an exploration of the devastating impact of child abuse upon two young boys, is already well known. Araki acknowledges t...

Partially as a result of having the flu for the first week and a half of the festival, and partially as a side effect of having purchased a festival passport for the first time in several years (whereby you book for 75 films, wake up hungover at 10am on a Sunday morning and say to yourself "Hmm, I might pass on the 3-hour subtitled epic at 11am until my brain stops bleeding" and consequently only see a third of the total number of films you'd actually planned to watch), I've only seen about 20 films at the Melbourne International Film Festival this year, and shock! horror! there's only two days left to go. Bear in mind that 20 films over 18 days is actually not bad going. It certainly provokes the occasional gasp of disbelief in people for whom seeing 20 films in a year is a lot. That said, between 2002-2004, thanks to the fortnightly film reviewing segment I was then presenting on 3RRR on the lovely Nina-Marie Petrik's show Mercury Rising , I saw about 120 ...

No that's not a metaphor to try and describe the beauty of last night's gig at Hamer Hall by Icelandic band Sigur Ros; I did actually get a farewell kiss from their vocalist Jonsi at the end of the night, having met him, his very sweet American boyfriend (whose name I've forgotten, dammit - I wish I had a better memory for names), their drummer Orri, and two of the members of Amina, their support-band/collaborators/string section at a bar called Phoenix after the show. Instead of a big, noisy after-party it was a discrete, intimate affair; a perfect end to an amazing gig. If you haven't heard Sigur Ros, they're an atmospheric, moody, beautiful, dramatic post-rock band. Words fail me. Go track their music down and listen to it for yourself and then try and come up with your own description. A good place to start is their official website 18 Seconds to Sunrise , which features music and video clips : http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk/ I've loved their stuff for a couple...