Seventeen years after their recording career began, country music super-stars Brooks & Dunn have completed their first Australian tour. A tour that provided so many positive outcomes on so many levels.

We’ve seen Shania Twain, Keith Urban and The Dixie Chicks sell out major venues in the past. But what made this tour extra special is that Brooks & Dunn aren’t a cross-over group with a couple of pop hits to draw from. They are a straight up the guts modern day country act. A great modern day country act doing a great modern day country show. They sold out Brisbane (twice) before performing shows at Acer Arena in Sydney and Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne with crowd intensities that equalled the Justin Timberlake concerts earlier this year.

This tour has well and truly proved that if you give the local market a great country show, people will go. Nearly 50,000 in fact across the 4 shows. "Brooks & Who?" they said 4 months ago. Not anymore.

Brooks & Dunn first hit the local radio market in the early 90’s. At that time both 2SM in Sydney and 4BC in Brisbane both had 24/7 country music formats. It was a golden time really for the genre and it was during that period that the careers of artists like James Blundell, Lee Kernaghan and a young Keith Urban were established locally. I’ve got no doubt that many of the fans who were listeners back then have stuck with the band and were at these capital city shows.

The tour also demonstrated something else. Recording great songs, whether you write them or whether someone else does, is the best way to ensure longevity in this business. Brooks & Dunn served up 2 hours of hits. There were no fillers, just hit and hit after hit. Singing other people’s songs is often frowned upon in this market – but this act prove that the ’best song wins’ theory has plenty of merit.

This tour also provided wonderful opportunities for local acts. Catherine Britt, Adam Harvey, Morgan Evans and Steve Forde – all currently promoting new releases of their own, were able to utilize the fantastic production set-ups for 2 of the shows each and performed fantastic sets before the dynamic duo hit the stage.

Everyone involved in this tour should be congratulated. From Chugg Entertainment and Rob Potts Entertainment Edge for having the balls and the cash to take the plunge and do this and give our industry such a massive boost, through to the artists themselves, their management and tour road crew. They all came to this country and performed these shows with a spirit which ensured that everyone involved got a positive outcome from the tour.

The success of this tour will undoubtable mean that other international country stars will now take the plunge and tour out here. So bring on the next one! 

The 1984 US Open tennis semi final between Pat Cash and Ivan Lendl was surely one of the greatest tennis matches of all time.

In the 5th set a young Cash saved several match points on his serve before having two of his own two games later. The first one Lendl saved with a remarkable lob when all looked lost, and then tragedy for Cash. He served what replays confirmed was an ace, but it was called a fault. It hit the middle of the centre line, but the call went again him. Lendl went on the win the point, break Cash's serve and win the match in a 5th set tie-breaker - before then winning the US Open final.

Of course, today Cash would have infact won that match with players now able to review calls on a TV monitor.

Cash ultimately had his revenge being Lendl in the 1986 Wimbeldon final.

Pat Cash was my hero as a child. He was a determined player who ultimately won the greatest prize in tennis (Wimbeldon) against the greatest player at the time (Lendl) as well as being a heroic player in Davis Cup for Australia. A lot of people don't like him becasue he's controversial, but I have no problem with his personality.

Have a look at the great vision below to the music of Jimmy Barnes' No Second Prize from "The Pat Cash Story".

The mighty and great North Sydney Bears (back to back premiers in 1921-22) will feature on NRL Grand Final Day in the NSW Premier League grand final at 3:55pm. The game will be telecast on Channel 9. They play the Parramatta Eels.

It's been 8 years since the Bears were wrongfully booted out of the NRL and the fact they will be back in the spotlight on the weekend and back on Channel 9 is simply fantastic.

For Bears great Greg Florimo, who remains such a amazing club champion -having run the club with next to no resourses for many years now following his wonderful playing days, this is a fantastic reward. It's also a great reward to the fans who have gone to reserve grade games and kept following the team.  

Unfortunately as a result of this achievement, some of those dreadful directors of the North Sydney Leagues Club, the ones that decided to renovate the club instead of save the team from excile from the NRL back in 1999 will probably get some sort of suite to sit in at Telstra Stadium on sunday. It will probably be the only game they've seen this year too. I'm not going to let this dishearten me though!

Go You Mighty Bears!  

As featured on Entourage last night,

"... sure Paramount turned it down. But now Disney are interested, so Paramount will be interested. You never fuck the Prom Queen until she finds out her best friend jerked you off in the bushes earlier in the night do you? Get it E??!! ..."

Each year my former employer, The  Music Network magazine conducts a number of awards voted by readers of the magazine. Awards include Label of the Year, CEO/Chairman of the Year, Label Manager of the Year and Radio Plugger of the Year. The winners are published in the final issue of the year after the votes in each category are tallied.

There's also an award for the Most Over Exposed Music Industry Identity.

Well guess who won that award this year?

Yep… ME!

It's a little extreme I would have thought. One minute your in a couple of party photos in a couple of Sydney news publications and the next minute your the good damn MOST OVER EXPOSED MUSIC INDUSTRY INDENTITY!

The fact that one person would vote for me in such a category amuses me, but to think that the music industry as a whole felt that way is even funnier.

Apparently, I just beat out Kyle Sandilands who has more media profile on his left thumb than I do overall. Hence, it all seems a bit ridiculous. But the industry has had their say and who am I to complain?  

Some people (including past winners) have looked at this award in a less than appealing manner in the past, but I'm actually felling extremely positive about it.

When I look at previous winners of this award such as Australian Idol presenter Andrew Gee and Sony BMG CEO/Chairman Denis Handlin, I can't help but think that it is an award generally won by incredibly successful people!  

So it's all good in my books.

Merry Christmas everyone.