Media – Page 94 – Stilgherrian

20 August 200706 February 2025

Club Escape’s “Perfect List” 1990

Triple J Club Escape Perfect List 1990: click for a close-up

Before The Core magazine, there was Club Escape, a dance music radio program on Triple J which went to air on Saturday nights in Adelaide during 1990 and 1991.

I had the very great pleasure of presenting this program during its first year, along with promoter Scott Thompson — who also ran the coolest nightclub in the history of the universe, Metro on Rundle Street.

Club Escape was created by John Thompson-Mills (“JB”) who, through anally-retentive production, made Scott and me sound like stars.

I know I only wrote about The Core the other day. But on Facebook today someone’s brother saw that I was a “friend” and asked him to ask me if I had the Perfect List from 1991.

I don’t.

Well, I might have the audio somewhere, ~~but not the list of tunes~~. Actually, I do have it, see this post.

However I do have the Perfect List from 1990 — our choice for the best 50 best dance music tracks released that year. And here it is.

How many of these tracks do you remember? And which ones would you prefer to forget?

18 August 200706 February 2025

The Core: “The KLF: Genius or Gibberish?”

Cover of The Core magazine number 6, 27 November 1991

It’s two weeks since I posted the last thing from my deep past, the Script Challenge, and no-one’s solved it yet. So I’ll post something less cryptic, a little less demanding — an extract from The Core magazine, which I worked on back during the brief period when I was cool.

Plus it gives me a chance to reminisce about The KLF.

The Core dates from a fantastic period of my life. I’d been working for ABC Radio for a few years, and along with club promoter Scott Thompson — does anyone know where he is now? — I presented Club Escape, a dance music program on Triple J created by John Thompson-Mills that aired in Adelaide in 1990-91.

Club Escape was hot. We had 11% of the total radio audience on a Saturday night, which means we probably blitzed the 15-25yo demographic. Nightclub owners told us their venues were deserted until the clock struck midnight and we were off the air.

It Was So Much Fun.

15 August 2007

Skank Media registered!

Ah yes! The Plan gently unfolds. My new business name Skank Media is now registered. A shame that the Office of Fair Trading has got my name wrong on the certificate — again.

11 August 2007

A Taxonomy of Leaks: how weird will this election get?

Back in 1980, Yes Minister explained the use of irregular verbs in politics:

Bernard Woolley: That’s one of those irregular verbs, isn’t it? I give confidential security briefings. You leak. He has been charged under section 2a of the Official Secrets Act.

This week I was pleased to see PR strategist Ian Kortlang classify leaks to the media in four ways: Accidental, strategic, malicious and pyromania.

Christian Kerr explains:

Accidental included documents left on photocopiers and the like. Strategic meant a leak designed to achieve a positive advantage. Malicious was meant to undermine and disadvantage. And pyromania was “Stuff the consequences, this feels good.”

Korlang reckons this week’s leak of the Crosby/Textor research saying John Howard is perceived as “old” and “sneaky” was pure pyromania.

One aspect of all this I found quite bizarre was John Howard on radio on Monday:

Confronted with scathing polling describing him as old, sneaky, dishonest and out of touch, Howard said: “There’s nothing particularly new in that… I’m not particularly amazed.”

This election (pre-)campaign is getting weirder and weirder. What could be the weirdest thing yet to come?

06 August 200706 August 2007

What’s so special about the Workplace Authority?

Those TV ads for the Workplace Authority don’t work, do they? They’re another “official government reassurance” — so of course we don’t believe them.

“You can call (the) Ombudsman but you have already lost a house, your job… You are living on the street with your kids,” one respondent said. “Six years later you may get a reply.”

And who are the people in the ad? Barbara Bennett strides around comfortably — apparently she’s a public servant who’s risen quickly through the ranks. But key jobs like “General Manager Contact Centre” and “Chief Financial Officer” were only advertised in the papers on the weekend.

And why is the General Manager Contact Centre, who oversees just 180 staff, being offered $220k per annum, when this survey of call centre salaries (44k PDF) shows that the current range is $70k to $160k, with a median of $120k?