Happy New Year! 2015 is here which is ridiculous. I remember the mayhem of that rainy night in Paihia, Northland, New Zealand in 1999/2000 so vividly that I really cannot believe it was 15 years ago. There were torrential downpours, midnight pashes, 111 calls on brick cellphones for severed toes and many other mild shenanigans…
Pilot Episode Of ‘Sunglasses Inside’ – Linking Current Affairs To Music – The 3 Amazing Xmas Songs You Didn’t Hear This Year
Merry Christmas and welcome to the very first episode of Sunglasses Inside. Exciting times with this high budget show! This is a pilot episode of what may become a regular feature on the Roxborogh Report. The initial two-minute episode has me discussing three sensational Christmas songs (by Sheryl Crow, Hall & Oates and…
RIP Joe Cocker – Why He Was Perfect For The Wonder Years
Joe Cocker. Joe Cocker, what a voice. The news has come through that the soul singer – one of the most distinctive soul / R&B singers England ever produced – has died aged 70 of lung cancer. I never saw him live but everyone who did during his regular visits to New Zealand always raved…
When The Bee Gees Performed The Greatest Live Medley In Brit Awards History
Maurice, Robin and Barry Gibb, 1979. Today, December 22nd, would’ve been the 65th birthday for Bee Gee twins Robin and Maurice Gibb. I was with friends playing backyard cricket on a New Zealand summer’s evening, January 12th 2003, when I got a phone-call saying Maurice had died. Fast-forward nearly a decade and it was under…
Lindsey Buckingham’s Finest Solo Song
Lindsey Buckingham. Soul Drifter – Lindsey Buckingham (1992) I’m a soul drifter And I’m out of this town Ain’t no use hangin’ ’round You see My heart was broken My part was spoken Now the ground has opened All around me I’m a soul lifter And it’s out of my hands So it’s off to…
Why McCullum Should Open The Batting In The Cricket World Cup – A Hypothetical Black Caps World Cup Final 1st XI
Brendon McCullum *UPDATED SINCE KANE WILLIAMSON HAS BEEN CLEARED TO BOWL AGAIN. Here’s my New Zealand cricket XI in the event our team plays to its very real potential and makes the World Cup final on March 29th 2015. With the initial squad of 30 released today, I couldn’t resist quickly tapping out my selection….
The Missed Opportunity Of Band Aid 30
Band Aid 30 recording Do They Know It’s Christmas. I think it’s great – indeed vital – that good folks like Bob Geldof are galvanizing some of the biggest names in music to raise funds in the fight against Ebola. It just bums me out that given it’s 20 years since a new Christmas song…
25 Years Since The Fall Of The Berlin Wall – David Bowie’s Heroes
Marking 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall (November 9, 1989), here’s David Bowie’s Heroes, a song I’ve often thought of as the greatest song U2 never wrote. This is in large part due to the soundscape created by producer Brian Eno who years later would go on to work with U2, but…
My South India Intrepid Adventure – Top 50 Images
Hampi, Karnataka. A few days after returning from India, here’s a little sample of what’s to come with my three New Zealand Herald travel articles and Flight Centre video blogs about my Intrepid adventure in India’s south. India was mayhem. At no point boring, we had incidents involving jumping out of moving trains, rushing friends…
3 Weeks In The South Of India – My Latest Intrepid Adventure
Kerala backwaters. On Wednesday I fly out to India for the very first time, with one night in Singapore on the way. I will have three weeks exploring the south of the country thanks to Intrepid Travel, Flight Centre and the New Zealand Herald. Look out for a trio of articles about the trip in…
The Buried Treasure Of Robin Gibb – 5 Essential, Overlooked Robin-led Bee Gees Songs
Robin Gibb. *DECEMBER 2014 UPDATE: See below for thoughts on the new album. With Bee Gee Robin Gibb’s posthumous album 50 St Catherine’s Drive to be released this month, here’s a look back at five essential, too-often neglected, Robin-heavy Bee Gees songs. 1: Don’t Fall In Love With Me (1981) – I’ve written before about the…
U2’s Free Album: Is It Worth The Backlash? The 3 Best Tracks From ‘Songs Of Innocence’
The question could’ve been, is it worth the hype? But a couple of weeks after U2 surprised many with the release of their 13th LP Songs Of Innocence as a free iTunes download, the backlash is in full-swing. “More hated than Nickelback!” yelped one blogger’s headline while making a fact-ignoring case for U2’s downfall being…
