Issue 345

The Tea Party.



"Well, we're going to go do what's absolutely necessary every time we go to Adelaide, and that is go tour some wineries," says Jeff Martin, dryly, before exploding with a chuckle. "I gotta stock up again, so it's been a while. Got to go hit Henschke, and Penfold's and Rockford's. I love the little one, the Rockford one, it's so real. I'm a big fan of the Rockford Basket Press Shiraz."

I'm asking the lead singer of The Tea Party about what they are going to do on their impending eleventh tour of our country...

Leonard Cohen
Dear Heather
Sony

Back in the mid-eighties the outspoken Modfather, Paul Weller - then at the height of his pop powers - dismissed Leonard Cohen as "music to slash your wrists by." This was at a time when Leonard's popularity had reached its lowest ebb, to the extent that Columbia did not see fit to release 'Various Positions' in the US. Of course, it was on this album that John Cale, Jeff Buckley and Rufus Wainwright discovered the jewel Hallelujah. With that - and Cohen's reinvention as electronic prophet - his career has soared, influencing many and allowing him to rightfully claim his position as poet laureate of love and life, the spiritual and the physical in modern song...

In a sense 'Dear Heather' is the summation of his long career as poet and troubadour...

It's time once again to determine who's been rocking your local world over the past year with the Second dB Readers Awards, or as we like to abbreviate it around these parts, the dBras (as in debra)!

We're wanting YOU, beloved reader, to vote for your favourite local band, venue, solo artist, release, new act and more.

Final voting is now open!
Voting closes Monday November 22.

The dBras: South Australia's only music-related award that's entirely decided by you, the gig-going public!

It's back!

Get your paintbrushes out and get art-ing it up for the dB Big Day Out Art Competition.

You stand to win double passes to the Big Day Out plus CDs of every performer on the bill!

Or get tickets the easy way!
The first acts for Big Day Out 2005 have been announced and you can be watching the Beastie Boys, The Streets, System Of A Down, Chemical Brothers, The Music, The Donnas, Freestylers, Powderfinger, Grinspoon, The John Butler Trio, Concorde Dawn, Eskimo Joe, Infusion, Butterfingers, Little Birdy and Dallas Crane! Get your BDO tix direct from dB Magazine!