ACDC Lane and Melbourne's Musical Deadend

As AC/DC prepare to unleash themselves on Melbourne in three gigs next week, artist and metalhead Ben Couzins has created a fitting poster tribute to the rock gods. ACDC Lane (slash omitted because it apparently offended the Registrar of Geographic Names) has become a lunchtime tourist attraction for grey suits to admire Couzins' images from across the band's 37-year career. There's a cheekiness to the posters plastered all over this city lane that makes even non-fans smirk at their pomp and majesty.

The lane was reclaimed for rock in 2004 after ditching its dreary former moniker, Corporation Lane. The renaming was partly due to the It's A Long Way To The Top video that dragged the band and bagpipers down nearby in Swanston St to the confusion of 1970s Melbournians. But the ACDC Lane is a nod to Melbourne's music culture while that same culture is getting a bureaucratic thumbs down.

A crackdown on Melbourne's liquor licencing has forced the closure of the Tote, a much-loved live music venue that's been squeezed out by panic about public drunkeness. Connecting live music with street violence is like blaming a nanny for kids' behaviour when they're not there - live music literally keeps kids off the streets and breaks the boredom and frustration that leads to punch-ups. Who goes to a gig then feels like taking a swing at someone? Victoria's premier, however, needs an expensive psychological study to prove that people are more likely to throw a brick through a shop window if they're deprived of live music.

It may be too late for the Tote, but a couple of groups are organising to save live music in Melbourne. There's a petition asking for the state government to take a closer look at causes of violence while supporting a gig culture. Most significanlty there's a protest that heads down Swanston St where AC/DC from the back of a flatbed once belted out: "Riding down the highway, going to a show". The way to the top has gotten even longer.

The Informant! book review

Amid the speculation of the extinction of the newsasaurus, a book like The Informant! is an argument in favour of the in-depth coverage papers provide. Author Kurt Eichenwald reviewed more than 800 hours of interviews along with reports and other news coverage to put together this whopping book. That's a little deeper than your average unpaid blogger is prepared to go.

The book focuses on a price-fixing scheme by US food giant Archer Daniels Midland. Business is never sexy but throw in the complexity of food additives and it sounds about as attractive as business socks pulled over the knee. So Eichenwald narrows his focus on the individuals of the case - mostly whistleblower Mark Whitacre who dobs in his own company by wearing a wire and videoing meetings, but also FBI agents like Brian Shepard. At several points in this true story people involved remark that it's like a John Grisham book, but it's much better than that.

Eichenwald uses the tropes of a thriller to keep this big business gone bad story racing along. He develops character in a very crowded space (the investigation broadens and more FBI and legal eagles are brought into the story) keeping an eye on Whitacre. But Whitacre is a mercurial figure so FBI agents are a reader's touchstone empathising with their feeling of the case falling out underneath them as Whitacre plumbs new lows.



And in terms of the Book vs Film Stoush, The Informant! wallops Matt Damon's effort. Damon's comic take on cooperating witness Mark Whitacre looks cheap beside Eichenwald's real concern that Whitacre has a mental illness. The depth of the book means that readers get impressive insight into the daily running of the FBI and machinations of corporate America. It whets the appetite for Eichenwald's next book: an expose into the post-9/11 intelligence world.

If newspapers are going extinct then investigative journalism like The Informant! is the kind of book we need in our collective museums.


This review originally mumbled through and chatted over with Alicia Sometimes on Triple R's Aural Text.