Nominees for the Tamworth Country Music Awards, AI causing problems for The Dead Boys and Australian legend John Dowler all sharing the spotlight in David Kowalski's final music wrap-up for 2024.
Tamworth Country Music Awards
IN MY FINAL MUSINGS for 2024, the Toyota Tamworth Country Music Awards nominees have been announced, and they have included some big nods to some up-and-coming stars, while legends are in the running for extra hardware for their mantelpieces.
Troy Cassar-Daley has secured six nominations, including Single of the Year for 'Let’s Ride'.
Melbourne school teacher turned singer-songwriter Michael Waugh is up for five awards including Male Artist of the Year and Alt.Country Album of the Year and Toyota Album of the Year for his fifth album 'Beauty and Truth'.
Kasey Chambers, James Johnston, Colin Buchanan, Kingswood, and Lee Kernaghan have all been nominated for four awards each.
Earlier this year I wrote about the former Play School presenter Colin Buchanan’s return to the country area with his album Memory Town, which has now been nominated for both the Toyota Album of the Year and the Traditional Country Album of the Year.
He also shares a nomination with Michael Waugh for Vocal Duet Of the Year, for a track on the album called 'Sing Me The Land'.
The range of artists up for awards is huge.
Country Music Association of Australia (CMAA) Chairman Dobe Newton said in Countrytown Magazine:
“We are particularly pleased with the depth and diversity of this year’s line-up. The results highlight both first-time contributors and young achievers, such as Tamworth-based 18-year-old Lane Pittman, alongside some of our most experienced and enduring talents, including 97-year-old songwriting legend Kelly Dixon of Slim Dusty’s Leave Him In The Longyard fame.”
Michael Waugh, a favourite of this column, has made significant leaps and bounds, both personally and creatively with his latest album Beauty and Truth, and it is amazing to see that he is being recognised and celebrated for his uniqueness. It is hard to be vulnerable on record, and I hope his boldness is awarded with a few additional golden guitars.
The Dead Boys use AI-Generated Stiv Bators on their new album and the new lead singer quits
Okay, so I know I have made some bold statements in the past in these pages about the development of generative Artificial Intelligence – or AI for short – being a long way off from being good enough in its ability to replace human creativity.
I hereby stand corrected.
Legendary 1970s punk band The Dead Boys, originally formed in Ohio and then relocated to New York City to play the same club scene as the Ramones and Talking Heads.
They were loud and violent - they made the Ramones look like librarians - and they only remained together long enough to make two albums before splitting up in 1980. They have reformed a few times in the 1980s, but lead singer Stiv Bators was knocked off his motorbike by a taxi in Paris and killed in 1990.
The band have since reformed in recent years with new lead singer Jake Hout replacing Bators. It has been reported that in the last couple of weeks, Hout has stormed out of new recording sessions.
He disagreed angrily with producers when he was told he was only recording his vocals as a placeholder, as they would be replaced by AI-generated vocals by the long-deceased Stiv Bators.
Now, I am all for using AI as an assistant to assist with planning and coming up with ideas and the like, however, to replace the hard-earned work of an actual human, or to create work modelled on the work of an artist long passed away is beyond the pale.
To pass these off as “new” recordings to hook in the old fans is offensive.
Queen fans may be divided about the merits of the album assembled with Freddie Mercury's vocals after his death, 'Made in Heaven'. At least that album featured vocals recorded by the man while he was still alive.
The example of The Dead Boys seems nefarious in that it seems more of a cash grab than an artistic statement.
What bothers me is that this will not be the last we will hear of this. 2025 will be a year of further leaps and bounds with AI and not all of them will be beneficial.
John Dowler’s Vanity Project
Existential Friend | John Dowler's Vanity Project | Half A Cow Records
The final new release for the year that I wish to bring to your ears, gentle listener, is from a seasoned veteran of Australia’s music scene, John Dowler.
Dowler started in Adelaide in the 1970s, where he played in a band called Spare Change, who knocked around the same gig scene with a young Paul Kelly. He relocated to Melbourne where he worked with punk legend Kim Salmon and also found his way into a band that was poised to break out of the indie rock scene of the 1980s but didn’t quite get there The Zimmermen.
Now, Dowler works his wonders with a new cut called 'John Dowler’s Vanity Project', and this third LP of his is called 'Existential Friend'. His warm voice is wrapped around some solid drumming and some chiming guitar chords, with rich vocal harmonies. It may not be genre-busting, but it is a fantastic listen. The album is full of great melodies but “Good Advice” is a great place to start.
My heartfelt thanks goes out to everyone who has read my column this year, those who have commented, argued, encouraged, supported or just discovered a new favourite tune within these pages. My thanks to the editors who have polished my writings with such a glistening sheen. I wish you all a fantastic Christmas, and every success for 2025.
See you next year.
LISTEN TO THIS WEEK'S SPECIALLY CURATED PLAYLIST BELOW:
David Kowalski is a writer, musician, educator, sound engineer and podcaster. His podcasts 'The Sound and the Fury Podcast' and 'Audio Cumulus' can be heard exclusively HERE. You can follow David on Twitter @sound_fury_pod.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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