Book Review: Life as the world’s first female roadie
Tana Douglas found her calling in 1973. Before she was 21, she had worked with Carlos Santana, Neil Diamond and Iggy Pop
By Jenny Valentish / The Guardian
In recent years there has been a barrage of self-help books by former Navy Seals, applying their hard-fought techniques of leadership, discipline, problem-solving and survival to the lives of us everyday civilians.
Even though she served in the trenches of rock, Tana Douglas’s memoir, LOUD: A Life in Rock’n’Roll by the World’s First Female Roadie, could easily serve the same purpose a kind of Gaffer Tape Your Life.
As a young woman barely out of boarding school in Toowoomba, Tana Douglas stuck steadfastly to the rule: ‘Never let them see a sign of weakness.’ Photograph: Supplied
Before Tana Douglas was 21, she had worked with Carlos Santana, Neil Diamond and Iggy Pop. A new memoir from the world’s first female roadie recounts a life “often silly and frequently dangerous”. But as Jenny Valentish notes, Douglas has more to offer than just a catalogue of mad adventures (secret pregnancy and peltings with live fish notwithstanding). “In recent years there has been a barrage of self-help books by former Navy Seals, applying their hard-fought techniques of leadership, discipline, problem-solving and survival to the lives of us everyday civilians. This could serve the same purpose – a kind of Gaffer Tape Your Life.”
The crowning glory is Swift’s version of I Contain Multitudes, from Dylan’s new album Rough and Rowdy Ways. “It’s a love song, and a prayer,” she said of the song. “And it’s about his life, but it’s also about what art and music and literature can mean to humanity. And to me that’s an extraordinary thing to meditate on, particularly when our social interactions are so limited.” All of the above could be said of Blonde on the Tracks itself.
– Andrew Stafford
The Avalanches – We Will Always Love You
We Will Always Love You is a miraculous-sounding record, infatuated with the universe and the infinite nature of energy, light and – especially – sounds that echo in the void for eons. Sample-based music is inherently tactile; artists like the Avalanches pick up and tool around with old vinyl that’s traded hands before. And on this record, they’ve leaned into that tactility and the sensoriality of music, turning images into sound and back again (Star Song
Last modified on Tue 22 Dec 2020 00.52 EST
This year served up a never-ending stream of catastrophes – from record-breaking bushfires to a virulent deadly disease – but 2020 also generated a new kind of breakout star. Scientists, public servants and a very sweary man: these are the Australians who rose to prominence in this highly unusual year.
Shane Fitzsimmons
The then commissioner of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service, Shane Fitzsimmons, became a symbol of the bushfire fight.
Fitzsimmons, who now leads the new crisis agency Resilience NSW, was named the NSW Australian of the Year, with the committee praising his “exemplary leadership and empathetic presence”.