Rhythms Magazine

This week’s On The Record with Brian Wise and Michael Mackenzie begins where most music chats don’t: with a gripe about what the ARIA charts don’t show.

Wise is baffled that Emma Donovan’s Take Me to The River—an album he rates highly after seeing her preview it live at Port Fairy—can’t be found on the main chart or the Australian chart. 

The question isn’t aesthetic; it’s ...

Episode 26 of On The Record is the first fully international edition—Brian Wise filing from Melbourne, Michael Mackenzie beaming in from the ancient fortified town of Monemvasia, deep inside the Peloponnese. The contrast isn't just geographic: Wise is braving Melbourne winter; Mackenzie is swimming in warm salt water off Byzantine fortress walls. 

The hate is, as he cheerfully acknowledges, entirely deserved.

Show Notes

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Episode 24 of On The Record with Brian Wise and Michael Mackenzie opens not in a record shop or a green room, but in the unglamorous reality of domestic collapse: Brian’s gas hot water service fails, leaving him hunting for a plumber and waiting five days for resolution.

Musically, the emotional high point is a warm, informed appreciation of David Byrne. 

The hosts tip their hats to Byrne’s wider career, including ...

On The Record’s Episode 23 leans in to great songs, better stories, and the strange afterlife of pop careers.

Michael Mackenzie’s big night out is Split Enz at Rod Laver Arena, a reunion-sized crowd of “people in roughly our same demographic” packed into a venue that, he notes, holds 14,860. 

The gig itself? A triumph. Plus UK crime reviews and the long overdue recognition of The Zombies.

Show Notes

Spl...

On his final night in New Orleans, Brian Wise files a slightly frayed dispatch that captures Jazz Fest’s defining tension: a festival big enough to feel infinite, and a schedule brutal enough to make you choose your regrets in advance.

Episode 22 becomes a story about how festivals actually unfold—less like neat recaps and more like a sequence of weather calls, crowd-panics, and last-minute pivots.

With the festival rec...

By Episode 21, On The Record has moved beyond anticipation and into immersion. Brian Wise is no longer circling Jazz Fest—he’s in it, navigating its scale, its heat, and its constant, often punishing, decisions.

Broadcasting from the French Quarter, Wise paints New Orleans as it always is: chaotic, convivial and faintly surreal. One moment it’s a communal gumbo dinner with locals and visiting friends; the next, pr...

Episode 20 of On The Record finds Brian Wise reporting in from the field—first Austin, then New Orleans—with the kind of on-the-ground detail that reminds you why festivals still matter, even as many struggle to survive.

There’s even time for a detour through Austin’s bookstores in search of Dylan literature—because some habits travel well.

Show Notes

Railroad Earth - Been Down This Road 

The Last...

Episode 19 of On The Record kicks off with one foot in the present and the other firmly planted on the long tail of rock history—touching on new Rolling Stones material before sliding into an excerpt from Brian Wise’s recent interview with Mike Mattison of Tedeschi Trucks Band.

It’s a neat juxtaposition. 

From there, the episode turns toward what’s ahead, with Wise preparing to head to Austin and New Or...

There are episodes of On The Record that wander; Episode 18 plants its flag firmly in one year—1966—and dares you to argue it wasn’t the moment pop music grew up.

Brian Wise and Michael Mackenzie mark the 60th anniversary of Revolver not as a nostalgic exercise, but as a forensic examination of how four-track limitations, studio ingenuity and sheer artistic restlessness combined to reshape recorded music.

Show Not...

If you want to know the exact moment legacy radio started to feel its age, it might have been when a major Australian station began giving away lacy doilies.

In the latest episode of On The Record, Michael Mackenzie and Brian Wise—veterans with a combined 70 years behind the mic—stage a fascinating "in-house" intervention for the medium they love (and occasionally despair over).

Joined by global "radio futurologist" J...

The long goodbye to Bluesfest continues in Episode 16 of On The Record, but this time the tone shifts from shock to something closer to forensic analysis. If last week was a reaction, this is reconstruction.

If Bluesfest is a case study in organisational failure, Scarpetta is its televisual equivalent. The long-gestating adaptation of Patricia Cornwell’s crime novels earns a near-unanimous drubbing.

Redemption comes via The O...

Episode 15 of On The Record is the sound of a long-running Australian institution going quiet — followed by the louder, messier noise of what happens when a festival doesn’t just “take a break”, but goes into liquidation.

Brian Wise and Michael Mackenzie devote the bulk of the episode to the sudden demise of Bluesfest after 36 years, and they do it with a guest who knows the event from the inside: Sarah Ndia...

The latest episode of On The Record opens where any self-respecting Australian roots podcast should: the Port Fairy Folk Festival. It then takes a characteristic detour into aging payment technology, Formula One, Mick Turner guitar lines and the comedic chops of Steve Poltz.

Show Notes

Port Fairy Folk Festival 

Queenie & Hank - Anyhow I Love You Video 

ANNIE & THE CALDWELLS – Wrong feat. Deborah Caldwell Moo...

If you ever needed proof that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is less a museum and more a cultural argument with a gift shop, Episode 13 of On The Record opens by doing what the institution does best: stretching the phrase “rock and roll” until it politely accommodates everyone from Wu‑Tang Clan to Shakira, with a quick stop at INXS (or, as Michael once heard on the BBC, the new Australian sensation “Inks”).

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In this episode, roots music returns via the altar: Gillian Welch & David Rawlings live at Melbourne’s Forum, with guest Andy White joining the chat. 

They describe the duo as deities in Australia, playing with disarming minimalism (mics on guitars, SM58s, no fancy DI wizardry), and drawing an audience so quiet it feels like church.

Brian’s only complaint is the kind you’re only allowed after 20-plus gigs...

Episode 10 opens in the long-running genre they’ve accidentally perfected — two grown men versus consumer electronics — as Michael explains how he revived his ageing Samsung “smart TV” (now “a bit of a nuff-nuff”) with a cheap HDMI streaming box bought from an Australian online retailer that “rhymes with Hogan”. 

The thrill here isn’t just 4K; it’s the moral vic...

Episode 9 is the one where Brian Wise and Michael Mackenzie briefly mistake themselves for an IT helpdesk, a sports panel, and a moral philosophy seminar—before landing, somewhat dazed, back in music.

It opens with Wise declaring he “can’t stand” the sound of his own voice (a bold confession for a career built on talking), while Mackenzie offers the sort of praise that feels both affectionate and faintly men...