Split Enz

After the calm of "Dizrhythmia" came the storm called "Frenzy".

The US version of "Mental Notes", produced by Phil Manzanera, is the Aussie LP called "Second Thoughts" with the track "Mental Notes" tacked on.

After "Mental Notes" was re-recorded as "Second Thoughts", the boys came up with this one. And they left it like that.

Robert Christgau doesn't get it: "They're still hyped as "avant-garde." Probably because they mix their twitty, intermittently tuneful art-pop with Nino Rota homages and stereo effects that go back to the house of Gary Usher. C+" What an ass!

7 February 2009 will forever be known as Black Saturday. On this day the worst bushfires in the history of Australia caused devastation across Victoria like never seen before. The effect this terrible tragedy had was felt not only here, but worldwide. Almost simultaneously Queensland was undergoing its own tragedy, with the state experiencing widespread flooding. In response to our nation's greatest ever natural disasters, Australia's music community, along with some of the biggest music names internationally, banded together for two stadium benefit concerts that ran simultaneously in both Melbourne and Sydney under the unified banner SOUND RELIEF. 9 hours of footage over 4 discs featuring every artist, documenting the biggest concerts in Australian music history.

‘Crowded House’ was the band’s first and most commercially successful effort, with two of its singles reaching the American Top Forty – ‘Something So Strong’ and ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’. Reviewers commonly refer to the music of Crowded House as either new wave or something close to that – songs that are short in length, short on instrumental solos, and, to an extent, compatible with music videos. Much of that is actually true of ‘Crowded House’, but the only real description gets offered by stopping the talk, and turning on the music. The album is one snappy yet alluring melody after the next, music that variously earns the description of soulful, emotional, often a celebration but sometimes solemn. Beneath it all, one detects in Neil Finn’s music a passion and meticulous respect for the art he is creating. The lofty quality of his work not only applies to the music – his deceptively simple lyrics always emerge from the music, never the other way around.

Mushroom Records was an Australian flagship record label, founded in 1972 in Melbourne. It published and distributed many successful Australian artists and expanded internationally, until it was merged with Festival Records in 1998. Festival Mushroom Records was later acquired by Warner Bros. Records, which operated the label from 2005 to 2010 until it folded to Warner Bros. Records. Founder Michael Gudinski went on to become the leader of the Mushroom Group, the largest independent music and entertainment company in Australia.