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The night started with a simple premise, Where’s Jai? Naming a band is hard with you needing to find a name that is unique, meaningful and fits the thing being named. The name Where’s Jai, consisting of five band members from New Zealand have just started their first international tour, and chose Brisbane to kick it off. The name is certainly a discussion starter, and doesn’t seem to be a bad fit, particularly considering the narrative behind it’s choice. The band name is, ho

At some point I am going to learn my lesson. Going into night two of Big Sound, I had an even more ambitious timetable for artists to watch consisting of nine artists across six different venues. It did not take long for the timetable to fall apart with my main job and my tired self being forgetful caused what should have been an easy trip to the Valley to see Serendipiti’s set, being instead a bit of a madcap dash across the CBD to make sure I got there in time. Serendipiti’

Tonight I was transported back in time to a golden age. A time when people actually acknowledge each other, will smile at you as you walk past them on the street, will exchange pleasantries and general vibes with strangers, where people will go out of their way to be pleasant and where a community comes together to put on an actual living, breathing street festival. I am talking about Big Sound and I am in love. Like, where was this hiding my entire life? To think that there

Tonight was something a little bit different and as they say, variety is the spice of life, tonight certainly held a different flavour. I was scheduled to attend a Dizzy Days concert, held at Bootleggers (the upstairs function type/night club area of Kelly on Kings) a place I hadn’t been to since my university days in Sydney. I have hazy memories of getting shit-faced during a trivia night, but that’s about it. SO in some respects, this venue might have well been a blank slat

This year is absolutely flying by. I was originally going to write this in the lead up to the end of the financial year but in a blink and you’ll miss it moment, its now six weeks later. There is something special about a halfway point. The thing is now more done than incomplete, forecasting the remainder of a thing becomes much easier and seizing the momentum to get you through the second half can make things easier. In a similar fashion, the halfway point is a point of refl

Australia is a diverse country with its multiculturism oft described as a melting pot of differing perspectives, traditions and cultural practices. There was no greater example of this than Max Jackson’s performance at the Bribie Island Hotel back on 11 July 2026. Fusion is often used to describe the combination of differing cuisines to create a fresh take on traditional recipes, with the aim that the fused product is greater than the sum of its parts. Max’s take on taking po

It was the best of times, it was the worse of times. Last weekend I did something ill-advised, I decided that it would be a good idea to see two concerts in the same night. I had done this previously with Lara Buchanan and Ruby Fields and it had worked out well. Perhaps that past performance had given me unfounded confidence. The plan this time was to see Holly Hebe at 38 Berwick, in the Valley and then rush up the Bruce Highway to King’s Beach Tavern, on the Sunshine Coast,

Maths can describe any number of natural phenomena. One of my favourite movies, Hidden Figures, has a break through moment when they discover that the representation of orbital mechanicals which they had been struggling immensely with can be easily approximated by Euler’s Number. Serendipiti’s second stop on her debut headline tour the idealist (realist) tour can also be plotted the cartesian plane of moods with the end graph striking an uncanny resemblance to that classic tr

The mind is an incredibly complex piece of bio-machinery, the extent of which I am not going to even pretend to understand. It translates sensations and inputs into our senses and then triggers the release of chemicals to guide how we feel about a thing. Memory is then a separate kettle of fish, which can be completely divorced from the feelings that were felt at the time of an event. Hindsight being 20/20 and reliving a memory with rose coloured glasses are common preconcept

There are degrees to being from the Country in Australia. I grew up in Woolgoolga, a small coastal town of about 5,000 people situated about 25 kilometers north of Coffs Harbour. Going to boarding school in Sydney, I was sorted into the category of being from the Country and was considered the same level of country as the kid who grew up on a station outside of Tibooburra who literally had to travel for multiple days to get to Sydney. The point is that the term Country, at le

Tell me what you want, what you really, really want. Oh, I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want. – Spice Girls Desire can mean any number of things and changes from person to person, minute by minute. At their essence, a desire is a personal want that is communicated to the wider world in a variety of different ways, be it through actions, body language, emotions or by someone straight up saying what they want (known as the Spice Girl approach). You can have mu

Friday nights hold a special place in capitalistic society. They spell the end of the traditional workweek and give the general populace the heady promise of having a solid two days away from the corporate overloads who only see their workers as serfs to be exploited. But I digress, this isn’t a political manifesto, rather Fridays are a promise, they are untapped potential, they are a blank slate that can be filled with a myriad of activities where the repercussions and conse

To have a crush on someone is one of subjectivity and has its roots in the feeling of being overwhelmed or ‘broken down’ emotionally with the metaphorical weight of the heart collapsing under the pressure of someone’s overwhelming existence. Therefore the stirrings of a crush exists as a form of infatuation. It is not surprising that the term plays so well as the name of The Brightside’s four volume series where local bands with modest followings get to perform on a Thursday

Serendipity is a funny word, because it really just takes chance, probability and randomness and applies a subjective positive mental framework to the results. Afterall, whether something is considered a good or bad outcome of a random occurrence is inherently subjective and personal. The combination of doomscrolling, the influence of a band that broke up a couple of years ago and a cob loaf all came together to produce a magical night out. This is the real world story of ser