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Mark Mordue

Mark Mordue

Mark Mordue is a writer, journalist, and editor. His work has been published in Interview, Madison, Speak, The Nation, and Salon in the United States, as well as Rolling Stone, Vogue, GQ, The Australian, and the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia. Mordue is the winner of a 1992 Human Rights Media Award, the 2010 Pascall Prize for Critical Writing, and from 1992 to 1997 he was the founding editor of Australia’s leading pop culture magazine, Australian Style. His first book, a collection of integrated travel stories entitled Dastgah: Diary of a Headtrip, was published in Australia in 2001 and the USA in 2004. His poetry collection Darlinghurst Funeral Rites appeared in 2017, while Boy On Fire – his acclaimed biography of "the young Nick Cave" – was published by Allen & Unwin in 2021.

The free verse and loose thoughts of Mr. Mordue

36 articles

List of articles in the library

By date | By artist | Most recently added

Elvis Costello: Rebirth of a Punk Hero

Profile by Mark Mordue, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 27 November 1987

Mark Mordue profiles Elvis Costello, now in his post-punk phase and about to tour Australia next week. ...

Henry Rollins: The Bright Stuff

Interview by Mark Mordue, Juice, April 1993

As American as Apple Pie, saluting the flag, street violence, psychopaths, racism, guns, incest, overdoses, police brutality, urban decay and spiritual horror. Mark Mordue goes ...

Hole: Selina's, Sydney

Live Review by Mark Mordue, Melody Maker, 4 February 1995

OH YEAH, smash it up, baby, smash it up. This is Courtney Love's night, history standing on her great long legs, a f**k-you attitude. ...

Gil Scott-Heron: A Frail Godfather

Profile and Interview by Mark Mordue, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 1 March 1995

GIL SCOTT-HERON greets me genially. He's slightly spidery in his dangled movements, surprisingly slight and aged. At 45 the man oft referred to as The ...

Paul Kelly (Australia): Paul Kelly: Poet of the Common Man

Report and Interview by Mark Mordue, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 12 January 1996

PAUL KELLY'S back in town. I meet him at a King's Cross hotel where his daughter, Madeleine, is turning her slice of cheese into a ...

Pulp Friction

Profile and Interview by Mark Mordue, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 18 September 1998

JARVIS COCKER wanders through London's Tower Books and Records like a spy in a foreign country. Close by, music fans are harvesting the racks of ...

You Am I in NYC

Report and Interview by Mark Mordue, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 24 December 1998

KENNETH BRANAGH at a You Am I gig?! I had to look twice. It turned out to be an ostrich-like version, but that's New York ...

Ben Harper at Byron Bay

Profile and Interview by Mark Mordue, Madison, November 1999

IT COULD BE the definition of what an artist does when he sets out to make something. ...

The Dirty Three: Metro Theatre, Sydney (5 November, 2001)

Live Review by Mark Mordue, Drum Media, 23 April 2002

SOMETIMES I COULD just run into a river and drown. ...

Morrissey: Enmore Theatre, Sydney

Live Review by Mark Mordue, 12Gauge.com, October 2002

CURIOUS CREATURE. Half denying us yet wanting our love, chilling us with the dark edges of sadness yet exalting us to ecstasy if not joy; ...

Tom Waits: Real Gone (Anti)

Review by Mark Mordue, Neumu, 2004

DID YA COME from outer space? Did ya kill that bird in the coop? Ooh there be a guitar like old Barney Kessel and something ...

M. Ward: M Ward: Newtown, Sydney

Live Review by Mark Mordue, Drum Media, December 2004

SO YOU ASK what magic is? And the roof above you has lights like long red teardrops hanging from it, splashing down stars into the ...

The Easybeats, The Go-Betweens, Ed Kuepper, Laughing Clowns, The Loved Ones, Midnight Oil, The Saints, The Triffids: Prehistoric Sounds: In Search of an Australian Rock'n'Roll

Overview by Mark Mordue, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 28 December 2004

I'VE STARTED writing this story a hundred different ways and every time I think I might be getting somewhere I end up stumbling across some ...

Smog: A River Ain't Too Much To Love (Drag City)

Review by Mark Mordue, Neumu, May 2005

THERE'S SOME kind of desert here, some grand landscape hinged between dusk and dawn that Bill Callahan evokes. ...

David Pajo: Pajo: Pajo (Drag City)

Review by Mark Mordue, Neumu, June 2005

I DIDN'T KNOW what I felt about this record by David Christian Pajo. Then I hated it. ...

Kate Bush: Aerial

Review by Mark Mordue, Neumu, January 2006

IT HARDLY seems to begin or end. Just continue. With Aerial, Kate Bush's first CD in 12 years, we could be anywhere between her first ...

Rosanne Cash: Black Cadillac (Capitol)

Review by Mark Mordue, Neumu, January 2006

YOU CAN'T EXPECT these things. So let me start in another place to explain. ...

Daniel Lanois: The Basement, Sydney

Live Review by Mark Mordue, Drum Media, 14 April 2006

DANIEL LANOIS is a strange kettle of fish. You wouldn't call his voice magic, but there's a lot going on in his mind and how ...

Bob Dylan: Dylan on Dylan edited by Jonathan Cott

Book Review by Mark Mordue, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 24 June 2006

LATELY I've begun to think that Bob Dylan does not exist. That the boy who made him up might still be dreaming. And we are ...

Bob Dylan: Modern Times (Columbia)

Review by Mark Mordue, Neumu, September 2006

THIS RECORD came in a wooden box. When I opened it, the hinges creaked. Inside there was an old phonograph and a dusty 78, cracked. ...

Jarvis Cocker: The Jarvis Cocker Record (Rough Trade)

Review by Mark Mordue, Neumu, November 2006

CAN HIPS BE witty? Jarvis Branson Cocker proved it last year as part of the stellar ensemble for Came So Far for Beauty, the Leonard ...

M. Ward: M Ward: Post-War (Merge)

Review by Mark Mordue, Neumu, Summer 2006

STRANGE TITLE: makes you wonder what he means. Though the words to M Ward's cover of Daniel Johnston's 'To Go Home' may get to the ...

Lou Reed: Another Brick in the Wall: An interview with Lou Reed about Berlin

Interview by Mark Mordue, unpublished, Fall 2006

This story appeared in various edited versions in Rolling Stone Australia, December-January 2006-07, New York magazine, USA December 11, 2006, and The Word, UK February ...

The Electrified Journalist

Essay by Mark Mordue, markmordue.com, 5 May 2008

WHEN I THINK ABOUT rock 'n' roll and my life trying to write about it, my trying to get inside rock 'n' roll through words ...

Joan As Policewoman: Goodbye and Hello: Joan as Policewoman

Profile and Interview by Mark Mordue, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 9 August 2008

BIRDS ARE SHRIEKING through the trees all over Rushcutter's Bay. It is as if something violent and tuneful is going on at once as we ...

Nick Cave: A Rake's Progress: Nick Cave's Death of Bunny Munro

Book Review by Mark Mordue, The Australian Literary Review, August 2009

IS BUNNY MUNRO Nick Cave's version of Willy Loman with a hard on? In The Death of Bunny Munro the Australian rock 'n' roll singer ...

Rowland S. Howard: Oxford Art Factory, Sydney

Live Review by Mark Mordue, Rock's Backpages, 26 October 2009

WHAT COST? When the former Birthday Party guitarist Rowland S. Howard walks into his song 'Pop Crimes', the title track to his new solo album, ...

John Cale: Cold, Black Style: The John Cale Interview

Interview by Mark Mordue, Rock's Backpages, January 2010

N.B. An edited version of this story appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald Spectrum on January 2, 2010. ...

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, The Dirty Three, Grinderman: Howl: An interview with Warren Ellis

Interview by Mark Mordue, The Sun-Herald, 10 January 2010

WHEN THE American author Mark Twain visited a Victorian gold mining town back in 1885, he was inspired to write: "It was as if the ...

Patti Smith: Just Kids

Book Review by Mark Mordue, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 10 April 2010

ART can set us free. Art is holy. Art is love. ...

Hank Williams: On The Lost Highway: Hank Williams

Retrospective by Mark Mordue, The Australian, 22 October 2011

DAMNED cold. An ice storm over Nashville has closed down flights across the state of Tennessee. ...

Miles Davis: Me and Miles Davis, in a silent way

Essay by Mark Mordue, The Australian, 31 December 2011

I DON'T WANT to tell you where. It seems too private. Not that I have all that much to tell, only what I saw. Midafternoon, ...

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Push the Sky Away

Review by Mark Mordue, The Monthly, February 2013

WE DON'T OFTEN go on journeys with musicians any more. Not over the length of an album. From iTunes to Spotify, we live in an ...

Nick Cave: One More Time With Feeling, Skeleton Tree and the power and language of grief

Interview by Mark Mordue, The Guardian, 19 September 2016

The subject matter is heavy – the death of a child – but the results are divine in an album that emerges from struggle to ...

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds: Ghosteen

Review by Mark Mordue, The Electrified Journalist, 6 October 2019

NOTE: I wrote these notes upon a first listening to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' Ghosteen. I tried to evolve the words into something ...

Nick Cave: The Journalist and the Singer

Book Excerpt by Mark Mordue, 'Boy On Fire' (Allen & Unwin), February 2021

THE FIRST TIME I ever spoke to Nick Cave was in a phone interview to promote his second solo album, The Firstborn Is Dead (1985), ...

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