All at Sea. Part 3

Depends where you socialise. You may not have heard this: Ay yah yah yah yah yah yah Or this: Ynk ynk yyyuuunk But I’m sure you’ve heard this LOUD one, which drove me out of the supposedly quiet Viking Crown Lounge yesterday at beer o’clock: Uk ahahahahahahahahah Those are chook calls. I was going to…

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All at Sea. Part 2

There are unexpected consequences, being locked up with 2,039 rabid rock fans. Who knew that they would be this old? I spotted a young couple walking defensively along Deck 9, the walking track. They are trapeze artists, in recess as the regular Rhapsody of the Seas entertainment program is suspended for this charter cruise. The…

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All At Sea. Part 1

I seem to draw the short straw. At the latest editorial conference they chortled and sniggered at the Old Guy in The Tent debacle where I was sent to the Falls Festival at Marion Bay and had a nice tent on the side of a hill. The story came out OK, but the best part…

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Crestron in Australia

Crestron’s news release puzzled us here in the CX newsroom. Our weekly staff lunch at the Willoughby Pub was abandoned as we went into deep analysis. A weeks reflection, and some inquiries failed to lift the fog of confusion about this. Let’s review it line-by-line. We’ve italicized the words from the release. This year Crestron…

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Hills acquires APG

Contractor audio has a new number one Hills have acquired Audio Products Group (APG), an Australian and New Zealand supplier of professional audio products, for A$15 million. APG will now join the roster of Hills audio brands in one greatly expanded distribution firm known simply as Hills. Hills and APG both operated heavily in the…

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What Woodie Wanted

Talking about male cancer issues is REALLY freaking boring. I know, I track what you click. If I write about a punk who runs a crap festival and rips off crew, you click 28 x more than if it is about men stuff. Especially THIS man stuff, cancer of the gland that helps you ejaculate.…

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How The Hit List was stillborn

For several years now CXtra has grown almost exponentially in viewers as internet TV takes off. Video now makes well over half of all internet traffic. CX Magazine wouldn’t exist now if not for advertising revenue from our internet TV platform, cx-tv.com Today we have three channels: GEARBOX contains product reviews which mirror those in…

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Band by name alone. When should a band name extinguish?

CX learned a long time ago that music fans get riled about whether ‘their’ band has been dissed. So when Australian Story detailed the terminal illness and decline into loneliness of former Angels front man Doc Neeson, we had some flaming. Because we suggested (on Facebook) that it was time to put the band name…

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Biz Talk: Mad Crazy Money

It was back to the future at CX Roadshow when I did an encore performance of my Crazy Money seminars from 2012. They were very popular then, and again this summer, pitched at small businesses that are the backbone of entertainment. Almost every freelancer is a small business, and we had plenty from all walks…

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Studio Dummy Spit

Normal on Friday, demolished on Monday Amazing stories sometimes take a few years to ferment and for the shock and residual dismay to wash off. This is one superb example. We had Julius Events College inside a warehouse near Parramatta and reasoned adding on a working recording studio would be a handy foil against the…

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Passion and Money: the lo$$e$ I don’t regret

  You’re looking at an Australian Monitor AM 1600 mosfet power amplifier, made by my firm and designed by Stuart McLean. Greg Hicks was the foreman at the factory we set up behind Graftons Sound and Lighting in Campbell street east Sydney in 1986. Hundreds of these still solider on, testimony to the brutal engineering.…

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Woeful Lightshow for The Radiators

It was a night off, a trip down that lane called memory with another memory, Karen my former wife. We share a like for retro rock and beer, so we headed to Asquith Leagues Club which is confusingly located in Sydney’s north at Waitara. The other werid aspect to all this is that we don’t…

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