Kim Wilson of clients The Fabulous Thunderbirds: Making albums years ago, artists road-tested their songs before recording them. Each track was performed live, refined through audience reactions and stage energy, ensuring that when the album finally dropped, it was guaranteed to electrify listeners. The recording process was a dynamic, audience-informed journey.

An excerpt from the interview I did with Rob Hirst of Midnight Oil in 1998.
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Cris Cohen: You have this other band, Ghostwriters. What do you get from your work with that band that you don’t necessarily experience with Midnight Oil?
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Rob Hirst of Midnight Oil: Well, almost a nervous breakdown.
I think that there’s always a tendency with Midnight Oil to sit on the back couch a bit longer than you should or could, because everyone’s got an opinion and everyone’s probably got the right opinion.
With Ghostwriters, it’s songs that I’ve written and sing and play guitar and produce and play the drums and pay the bills and do the website and the artwork and the film clips and dance steps and blah, blah.
I actually embarked upon it as a non-sitting-on-the-back-couch thing, which became a monster. Not only was it quite successful. But in attempting, like all true control freaks, to do everything, it nearly killed me.
But it was an incredible learning experience. And we’re on to our third (album) now.
But the main thing I get out of it is that I’ve tried to be more and more prolific as a writer and keep that as my main focus. And as anyone will tell you, you never quite get there with this. You’ve never written the perfect song.
(So), if the muse comes past, I don’t let it go too often. Because I know it might disappear for another six months or so.

Afton Wolfe: One of the reasons I wanted to make this a full-length album (Ophiuchus) with many different kinds of songs is because I wanted it to represent what I aspire to in music: personal, vulnerable connection to people that are willing to send it back to me. I want to be open to it.

It’s a very personal album. All the songs I either wrote or co-wrote. I talk about things that are very important to me, things I’ve been meditating on for years… forgiveness, war, philosophy, ontology, mythology. I don’t know who else they’re important to, but I tried my best to bring in as many different influences because that is something that’s important to me.

Afton Wolfe website: ​https://aftonwolfe.com/home 

On January 20, 2026 Rob Hirst, the drummer and songwriter of Midnight Oil, died after a battle with cancer. In 1998 I was lucky enough to interview Rob following the release of their album Redneck Wonderland. Here is an excerpt.

Rob Hirst: As we were making the record, and as the political climate darkened, we ended up re-recording four or five of the songs to make them angry and tougher, particularly as we toured and the songs took on a new light. We decided we wanted to make the strongest and angriest musical statement that perhaps we had done since 10 to 1, which was, as you said, born of a similar political climate in the early 80s.
Cris Cohen: I’m guessing one of those songs you re-recorded was “Concrete”?
Rob Hirst: It was indeed. In fact, I remember exactly the time that we decided that the album version that we’d recorded with Magoo, who produced the bulk of the record, was too safe and too tame. (We were) playing a couple of showcase shows at the Mercury Lounge in New York last year. And we decided that that song, “Comfortable Place on the Couch,” and a new song that Jim (Moginie) had written, which was the actual title track, “Redneck Wonderland,” really should state the case at the beginning of the album.
And if people could sort of get through that, then they’re lucky to go the whole distance. If they weren’t, they’d sort of go back and play Diesel and Dust.
Cris Cohen: I was going to say, what you guys probably consider tame, most guys consider right out in the front.
Rob Hirst: Yeah, I guess it’s degrees. But there again, there’s been a lot of very strong, strident political music made, not the least of which would be people like Rage Against The Machine. A lot of people like that.
We felt that we had to put it in terms that were as strong as when we were just starting off, remember not to get too produced, and to throw away the rule book.