Australia gets lucky as Nile Rodgers heads down under

NILE Rodgers, who plays that catchy guitar on Daft Punk's hit Get Lucky, is about to show off his talents in Australia.

Nile Rodgers

IN the wake of those crafty French craftsmen Daft Punk reinventing something called disco on the duo's latest album, Random Excess Memories , it's worth noting that Nile Rodgers, who plays that infuriatingly catchy guitar on their hit Get Lucky, which he also produced, is being rightly recognised for his services to disco the first time around and is about to show off his talents in that department in Australia.

The veteran producer and songwriter has been enjoying rave reviews for his performances with Chic at festivals in Britain, including Glastonbury, and will get Aussie feet moving in December when he and the band arrive for a handful of shows, including a spot at the annual Meredith festival in Victoria.

Rodgers has made a huge amount of records across all genres in his lifetime as a producer, not all of which linger in the memory in quite the way Le Freak and Everybody Dance do. For example, anybody got a copy of Mick Jagger's She's the Boss?

WHILE on the topic (vaguely anyway) of festivals, SD will be setting forth today to get an earful of the delights at day two of Splendour in the Grass, which includes the National, Empire of the Sun, Bernard Fanning and Birds of Tokyo, among many others.

It will also be an opportunity to check out the film on Sunnyboys singer Jeremy Oxley, The Sunnyboy, which is having a special screening at the festival at noon, with director Kaye Harrison in attendance. The documentary, which had its launch at Vivid Festival in Sydney a few months back, explores the singer's music as well as his lifetime struggle with schizophrenia. It is expected to get a limited cinema release before screening on the ABC before the end of the year.
 

STILL on Splendour, SD had the pleasure of meeting the charming Haim sisters earlier in the week. Known as Haim, strangely, the Californian ensemble made its Splendour debut yesterday, performing songs such as Falling and Forever that have thrust it into the spotlight in the past year. Este, Danielle and Alana have been enjoying their new-found status after years of trying to combine gigs and recording with more mundane activity, such as studying and going to work.

One of the great joys of their musical independence, revealed Este, the oldest at 27, is that they have had a tour bus for the first time and have been doing their best to fill it with friends from Los Angeles - provided they can afford the airfare to wherever the band is playing. There were few takers for the Australian leg of their new adventure.

YET more on the festival trail. The line-up for the inaugural Boomerang Festival of indigenous culture and arts was announced this week.The three-day event from October 4 to 6 is being held at Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm, the site of the Byron Bay Bluesfest, and will feature among its international acts Scottish folkies Breabach, Chile's Quique Neira and Digging Roots from Canada. Dubmarine and Ray Beadle are among the local performers.

ON this day in 1958 a warning was issued to drivers in the US that listening to rock 'n' roll on the car radio would hit them in the pocket for fuel. Researchers from the Esso petroleum company believed that listening to the likes of Elvis Presley and Bill Haley might cause one's foot to press harder on the accelerator pedal, thus contributing to greater fuel consumption.