cd reviews

IN BOSTON Chris Botti * * *

A different tune

CDs ejected as the car goes wireless

Europe breathes easier as Greeks agree to tighten belt

FEARS of a sovereign debt meltdown in Europe are showing signs of receding, as credit markets welcome Greece's promise to slash spending.

New threat to funding costs

GROWING fears over ballooning public debt in Greece and Portugal have sparked a fresh round of global credit markets jitters, which threaten to push up funding costs for Australian banks.

Summer dreams with a touch of blue

IMAGINE Daffy Duck is reading this aloud: a singing Scottish spinster has been the sound of summer so far, while the sights of summer have been big blue bio-weapons, a dynamic doctor-detective duo and a voluptuous but vituperative vicar. Plus the customary cricket and candlelit carols, of course.

Free stuff

– NEXT month, the Solar Music Festival will rock the Mornington Racecourse again. Bliss N Eso, Birds of Tokyo, the Grates (pictured) and Muscles will headline a very solid line-up (details solarfestival.com.au). EG is giving readers the chance to win a Solar Music Festival pack containing a double pass, a Muscles T-shirt plus CDs from Young Heretics, Ash Grunwald, Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Red Riders and Birds of Tokyo. Email joselyn@

Thanks for the memory

Increases in digital storage mean music compression is a thing of the past.

Giving in to lobbyists is a bad sign this early in a term

The Coalition stood up on CDs, and Labor should have on books.

Read my lips: book decision a bad ending

Bob Carr has been opining about how the parallel import rules make books more expensive and how the federal Labor Government should have adopted the recommendations of the Productivity Commission to abolish them. It is hard to think of a tough decision taken by Carr in his 10 years as NSW premier. Reform at the state level usually involves taking on public sector unions and their work practices - which Carr was never inclined to do. His attitude can be seen in his response to the GST, which he railed against as a wicked and unjust tax, yet he declared that should it be introduced, NSW would insist on a fair share of the proceeds. And when it was, he did.

Voices from the past

Hear the complete works of the Audreys on vinyl, writes Bruce Elder.

Ask Doug

Jack Vaughn saw recent correspondence regarding Sometimes a Great Notion, based on the Ken Kesey novel, and sent in a DVD copy of the eccentric 1970 comedy starring Paul Newman and Henry Fonda, plus a disc of Where the Buffalo Roam, which has yet to be claimed by its unknown seeker. A small surrey without a fringe but drawn by a team of miniature gazelles and lashed into a flared-nostril frenzy by a sadistic stoat with a whip has conveyed the Kesey disc to George Barnes of Mayfield East in record time.

Do not abandon Australia's writers and publishers

Cutting import barriers is no guarantee of cheaper books.