Shannon O’Neill

The discussion list for Australian electronic music, which I started in 1998 (initially on Onelist, which was taken over by Egroups, which was then taken over by Yahoogroups) is no more.

Aus_emusic was a pretty cool community in its heyday, arguably bringing a number of different scenes closer together. The aus_noise list split off from it in 2000 and is still going. Sadly I feel that many lists from that era are in decline, with little interesting discussion these days, and so I’ve decided to move on. I’ve deleted aus_emusic, but handed on some other lists that I started (audiovision, cmc) to new moderators.

In the late 90s I was on over 100 email discussion lists, but now I’m on none, with the exception of a few work-related ones. These days email is a chore. My interest in online discussion has shifted to blogs and RSS.

i’ve just found out that my brother has advanced lung cancer and only has a matter of days to live. he’s a smoker, as was my father, who also died of lung cancer.

if you smoke, please try to quit.

Frigid is no longer, nor is the Frequency Lab. Disorientation is now only doing occasional events, and word on the street is that Pelt, Impermanent Audio and Synaesthesia are all about to end. What does this mean for Australian experimental music?

One of my favourite net labels has closed.

These were given out at Max’s funeral. I wanted to post them earlier, but my scanner stopped working and I’ve only just got a new one.

Click on this image to read the story of an amazing life:

Obit at Sky Noise.

Max Keogh, one of the founders of 2MBS-FM, has died.

Max was a pioneer of community broadcasting in Australia. I first met him in early 1991, when I was studying journalism. He taught the communications law part of the course. I was immediately drawn to this eccentric old fellow.

Shortly afterwards, I started broadcasting on MBS, and would often see him at the station late at night. We would have interesting conversations while smoking outside the front of the station. I have fond memories of him smoking his pipe.

He was one of the few ‘old guard’ at MBS who was supportive of contemporary music, and I admired his strong commitment to keeping MBS as independent as possible, something which unfortunately made him a more marginal figure in recent years. But every year, at the station’s AGM, he would step up to the mic and tell everyone exactly what he thought.

Farewell, Max, I’ll miss you. The Australian music and radio communities will be much poorer without you.

The funeral will be at 12.30pm on Tuesday January 24 at the East Chapel of Northern Suburbs Crematorium, Sydney.