Matt Johnson Returns with the Definite Article
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AUSE01Z01MA - V1 THE AUSTRALIAN, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2018 14 theaustralian.com.au/arts ARTS YOUR NATIONAL CULTURE GUIDE Matt Johnson returns with the definite article NOW SHOWING TASMANIA Zama (M) MUSIC Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel’s new film, Zama, is set in The Joy of Mozart 1790 in a little colonial Violinist Emma McGrath backwater on the Amazon. The performs Mozart’s Violin central character is Don Diego Concerto No 3. The program de Zama (Daniel Gimenez also includes Haydn’s Cacho, pictured above), a Symphony No 44, Mourning, magistrate representing Korngold’s Much Ado about Spanish justice who is conscious Nothing Suite and Brahms’s of the fact his appointment to Tragic Overture. this out-of-the-way place is a Federation Concert Hall. 1 Davey St, kind of humiliation. To Zama’s Hobart. Friday, 7.30pm. Tickets: $33- frustration, the local governor $99. Bookings: 1800 001 190 or online. constantly frustrates his requests and demands for a transfer, refusing to send the required letter to the king in Madrid, and when the hapless NSW Zama is discovered to be writing Matt Johnson has put the The a book — on government time STAGE back on the road, playing at such — he’s punished by being forced prestigious venues as the Royal to move from his already Leigh Sales: Any Ordinary Day Albert Hall, below, and tonight at primitive accommodation to Walkley award-winner Leigh the Sydney Opera House more squalid premises on the Sales discusses her book Any HELEN EDWARDS outskirts of the community. He Ordinary Day with Annabel responds by joining a band of Crabb. Investigating how the soldiers who are hunting down a brain manages grief and fear, legendary outlaw. As a Sales’s book is a mix of scientific protagonist, Zama is not exactly research and interviews with Matt Johnson was born and raised tre. Trotsky. Graham Greene. an easy figure to understand or those who have faced extreme in the East End of London, where The The’s frontman hopes Australian audiences will sing along and dance George Orwell was his favourite.” warm to. Yet this handsome hardship. — after stints in Sweden, Spain He leaps up and fetches a book film, beautifully photographed Seymour Centre. Corner of City and New York — he lives again titled Tales from The Two Pud- by Portuguese cinematographer Road and Cleveland Street, now. JANE CORNWELL dings, filled with stories and pho- Rui Pocas, is more than just an Chippendale. Today, 6.30pm. Tickets: East London isn’t what it was, tos of uncles and aunts and esoteric exercise in exotica. It’s a $30-$35. Bookings: (02) 9351 7940 or of course. Corner shops and pubs Johnson: that impassioned bari- alongside the eponymous album. immediate family including his stark vision of a corrupt society. online. with sawdust floors and upright tone, those chiselled looks the so- He waited for the phone to ring. It elder brother Andrew, whose DAVID STRATTON hhhkj pianos and have given way to lux- cial conscience he poured into didn’t. “Eventually I understood death in 2016 prompted Johnson ury towers and shiny office blocks. lyrics that railed against war mon- that the joy comes in the creation,” to revive the The; and his father Proud workin- class folk are being gering, inequality and greed. “This he says with a shrug. Eddie, who died earlier this year, Johnny English Strikes Again edged out by hipster millennials, is the day your life will surely “So going forward to 2018 and aged 86, just as the band was about (PG) SOUTH AUSTRALIA who swarm past Johnson’s front change,” he intoned on the band’s being in this band … I’m older. to play Stockholm. “Dad would Rowan Atkinson stars in Johnny door in Shoreditch, E1, unaware 1983 debut, Soul Mining, a classic We’re having a laugh. I’m enjoy- have wanted me to continue,” says English Strikes Again, the third STAGE that the dapper old dude they see that paved the way for a sound as ing the moment.” Johnson, whose new song about film in the comic espionage coming and going was frontman much rock and blues as post-punk. Johnson only ever wanted to death, We Can’t Stop What’s Com- series in which he is a Faith Healer for one of the most acclaimed Today, sitting in a vast living space work in music. The third of four ing, took on added poignancy; it combination of James Bond and Francis Hardy tours Ireland, bands of the 1980s. colonised by books, boxes and sons born to publicans in Strat- will feature on a new studio album Mr Bean. As the title suggests, Scotland and Wales with his “My family goes back genera- recording gear, blinds closed to ford, east London, his earliest mu- due for release next year. this movie is about English wife, preaching his ability to tions to this part of London,” tone down the furnace outside, he sical memories include the Beatles Having returned, Johnson’s coming in from the cold. We cure the ill. Judy Davis directs Johnson, 57, tells me when we says life hasn’t changed — at least wallpaper in his shared bedroom muse is staying faithful. He has set first see him teaching geography this play, written by Brian Friel, meet on a blazing summer’s day, a not on a global level. and muffled sounds of bands play- up a record label, broadcasts on his — and spycraft — at an English which explores themes of chemical heat that saps and wilts Wars are still being waged. The ing in the pub — The Two Pud- own Radio Cineola, has a publish- school. But when a cyber attack nostalgia and faith. and creates a queue in the pop-up underprivileged are still being dings — below. Not just any ing company called 51st State reveals the identity of every Adelaide Festival Centre. Space juice bar outside his home. “I’m abused. Now there’s climate bands; The Two Puddings was one Press and has channelled his flair British spy, the government has Theatre, King William Street. one of the few original East End- change: “It amazes me how many CHRISTIE GOODWIN of the best live music venues in the for mixed-media into a series of to call agents out of retirement. Tonight, 6.30pm. Tickets: $30-$84. ers left.” people are going about oblivious East End and Johnson’s Uncle lovingly crafted CD/book releas- The Prime Minister (Emma Bookings: 131 246 or online. Until Johnson has spent the last dec- to what is unfolding around ‘People need to logue; 2000’s acclaimed NakedSelf Kenny was one of London’s top es. A boxed set features the film Thompson) is about to host a October 13. Duration: 1hr 40min. ade fighting the area’s encroach- them.” He gestures towards a — kept coming. For a long while live music promoters. Tony by his younger brother Ger- G12 summit. It is English who ing gentrification, sitting on shuttered window. “People need put down their he felt stuck. Not for nothing is last “The Small Faces, the Kinks, ard, for which Johnson did the must save the world from the committees, lobbying MPs, re- to put down their phones and phones and year’s documentary about John- before they were famous … We soundtrack; and Moonbug, a doc- cyber terrorists. He is joined by storing the 19th-century building galvanise.” galvanise’ son titled The Inertia Variations, could hear them if we sat on the umentary on the Apollo astro- his tech-savvy comrade cum he owns. But then his muse re- “Put down your phones” is a after a work by English poet John stairs. When I was 12 I learned to nauts with music by the The. I ask manservant Bough (Ben Miller). turned and there was no time to directive he issues from the stage, MATT JOHNSON Tottenham. Johnson read the play boogie woogie on the pub’s who buys them and he flashes a The PM is unconvinced the waste; wasting time, he admits, is during a set of 24 songs cherry- poem from the Royal Albert Hall old Joanna” — Cockney rhyming grin. “Asian housewives,” he empire can be rescued by Her his specialty. picked from albums including the a radio ban. There were long-form stage: “You would think by now slang, he adds with a twinkle, for quips. “You’d be surprised.” Majesty’s Secret Service. So she Putting the The back on the righteously angry Mind Bomb, re- videos involving death-defying people would know better than to upright piano — “then picked up a There are more projects to reaches out to a young Silicon road was a risk that paid off: leased in 1989, the same year the stunts and recording sessions ask me what I have been doing guitar at 14 and formed my first come, he says. But for now, be- Valley tech billionaire (Jake venues including the Royal Albert The toured Australia, wowing fuelled by sleeplessness and magic with my time / And you would band.” tween concern for our overheat- Lacy). This movie is directed by Hall sold out. Reviewers raved: crowds, being drunk and silly on mushroom tea. When Johnson’s think by now I would have come Aged 15 he left school, which he ing planet and a longstanding David Kerr and it’s his first go at “Johnson may not have sung pub- late-night chat shows. “We want younger brother Eugene died sud- up with any answer that would hardly went to anyway, and got a need to talk about gentrification, the series, though the licly for (18) years but there’s little an old-school audience,” says denly in 1989, aged 24, midway silence them.” job in a recording studio in edgy, globalisation, extremism, it is the scriptwriter, William Davies, doubt he’s been practising his Johnson, an intense yet amiable through the band’s world tour, A new authorised biography characterful Soho.