Written to accompany the release of the now-vanished (and eagerly sought-after) Damien Fitzsimmons mixtape, To All Those Who Have Disrespected Me, this piece was published in the ‘best new music’ column of the New Statesman. It shows Mr Kissinger in full flight as he paints a portrait of a flawed yet sincere artist at the nadir of his personal life and, paradoxically, the height of his creative expression. Two masters at work.

The Southend Rainbows are a force of nostalgia that few can (or have been able to) resist. Grown in the fertile soils of sunny Lismore in 1981, they cut a swathe and a swagger that has earned them an untiring fanbase and an inalienable place in the local musical imagination. TJ Cheen, Chonga and Chooka Buckley and Damo Shitsimmons (when he could be found) were idols for a generation of musicmakers.

The Southend Rainbows revolve around three stalwarts of Sydney music, TJ Cheen, Chooka Buckley and Damien Fitzsimmons. Through the years, they’ve constituted and reconstituted, courting the worlds of music, politics and controversy. With supporters stretching from the offices of ABC to the political machine of the Greens and finally to the septuagenarian punters of the Botany View, they have established their name as one of the best mixed-media experiences in Sydney’s corporate entertainment circuit.

During the Maurice Newman era, the ABC became a hotbed of radical political art and exhortations to revolution. The Southends were approached by Janet Albrechtsen directly to create a one-off New Years Eve event to rival the fireworks in explosive dialectic, with TJ nabbing the writer/director spot (some said due to his previous work with Maurice at the Centre for Independent Studies). However, the band’s relentless focus on attacking John Howard eventually drove the project into development hell, and the bulk of the material remains in the Ultimo archives.

The Corso is a song about love and loss on Sydney’s upper crust. Chooka Buckley, the ‘Ends’ longtime guitarist and producer, has attached his name to a single for the first time. A little Paul Kelly, a touch of the Go-Betweens and at least a Flock of Sea Eagles add colour to his portrait of Manly: the forgotten enclave within spitting distance of Sydney.