A Very Maynard Xmas 2024 will be unlike any other lo-fi Xmas special ever seen by anyone ever.
Broadcasting from the main arena at Maynard International Studios, just opposite the Gilmore Girls Memorial Auditorium, it will bring the magic of Santa’s grotto back into our lives. Hopefully in the good way.
Feature guests in A Very Maynard Xmas 2024 include Lesley Fountain/Glenn Keenan, Roy Darby, Chris Kelly of Ship o Fools. With Christmas greetings from Mari Wilson, Rob Darby, Christopher Laird of Radio Nowhere, George Hrab with The Christmas Sweaters, Brigitte Handley, Tony Push and his poinsettia, even Paul Field and Bronwyn Mulcahy of Countdown Live wave hello in this most awkward of Xmas variety shows.
To celebrate finally getting to see the greatest disco roller skating movie ever made involving Steve Guttenburg on the BIG screen, download this 15 month Can”t Stop The Music calendar.
Suitable for your street or your sauna, it runs from October 2024 to the end of 2025. Which as well as watching the film with us, Ch 9 will play it again at least twice in that timeframe.
You can boldly print as large as A3 (or a more discrete A6) you’ll love the colour and movement only a static calendar can provide. Richard Saunders has really outdone himself in designing a colourful tribute to an unforgettable part of cinematic history. He even looks like Richard the tax lawyer in the movie, he’s that into it.
Enjoy and see many on you at the screening and after party on the 14th September.
Simply download it from the link below and print it any size you like.
As Steve Guttenburg says “Village People, that’s fantastic!”
Friends of Lance and Magnolia Leopard gathered at Palms in Oxford Street, Sydney to celebrate their lives. It was my honour to play a few tunes Lance seemed to like.
Hear the tributes as well. Enjoy as we did. “What a crowd, what a time…”.
All of our lives are just that little bit less glamorous today.
Life isn’t fair, but it probably isn’t a redhead either. To the boring injustice of life, Lance Leopard Esq would have said something like “Fuck you and fuck the public transport you rode here on”.
There are not many people who are so fabulous that even their mother had a drag name: the lovely Magnolia Leopard.
Some travel in style, some travel discreetly. Lance travelled both ways through the back alleys and laneways of Darlinghurst.
As Oscar Wilde (or was it Taylor Swift?) once said “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars”. As Lance would say “No stupid, that’s the STAIRS. To the Taxi Club.”
Or Midnight Shift. Or DCM. Or whichever club his presence graced.
Lance was a delicate creature, as he often reported in his weekly Star Observer column. When he was seen with a nose bleed after coming out of the bathrooms at The Oxford Hotel it was obviously due to the sudden altitude change from going up the stairs to Gilligan’s. It’s just science people.
There are so many memories of Lance. Let me take you back to a time and place almost lost to history or even imagination: the early 1990s Mardi Gras parties. Imagine an almost empty VIP lounge at the end of the evening, sunlight unwelcomely poking itself through the blacked out windows.
Suddenly Lance spotted a small used zip lock bag among the evening’s party detritus on the floor. He dove on it as if it were a live grenade from which he had to save his buddies. And immediately poked half the contents into his mouth as I was saying “You really shouldn’t just …” then Gulp! he shoved the rest into my mouth. We ran downstairs to dance frantically to the last song of the party from DJ Mark Alsop. It was The Communards ‘Never can Say Goodbye’ (the Shep Pettibone Mix, you know, the good one).
What followed was one of the best out of body, soul enriching, mind expanding dancing for at least the next half hour. Which was odd, as the track is only 7 minutes long.
If there’s a moral to that story, let ME know sometime.
Lance had more recently adopted a healthy lifestyle, but he always had a very healthy love of fashion. He was a sharp dresser with an even sharper tongue. Some even today are still feeling the sting from one of his very blunt show reviews. Deserved or not.
Lance touched many people through his life and work, but mainly the hot ones. As he said “I don’t believe in the afterlife, but I’ve always believed with all my soul in the afterparty.”
Your name is on the door Lance, and save some of what you find on the floor for the rest of us …
Prepare yourself for the video livestream of the warmest parts of The Coldest 100, 2024.
Maynard hosts a video livestream of Australia’s own Coldest 100 – 2024. Saturday 29th June 8.15-9.30pm. Mostly picked by Andrew Sholl, it will feature world class musical shonk that only Australia can produce.
The Coldest 100 is songs about Australia, that sometimes don’t work out that well…
Expect to see Don Lane, Barry Crocker, Donnie & Marie, Cilla Black, John Farnham, Charo, Kahmahl and a lot of kangaroos (again) doing their bit to get on the show.
Hopefully we’ll have quest appearances from my fellow Aussie travellers Tim Ferguson, Tony Push, that guy in Orange, Brigitte Handley and the man in a tree.
Australia’s Coldest 100 returns for 2024 this Saturday 27th January with @ozkitsch presenting 100 tunes you won’t find easily anywhere on any continent.
Just look at this list of artists that Andrew Sholl has curated that you’ll never again see on the same list. This is Andrew’s eighth Coldest 100 and he doesn’t see Farnham clips running out anytime soon.
The 2024 Coldest 100 brings you Barnsey, Alexander Downer, Tiny Tim, Cilla Black and a rubber chicken.
If that isn’t enough to incite your antipodean awkwardness, well, bugger ya.
After all, anyone can put together a list of the latest good songs. It takes a certain kind of expert like Andrew Sholl to put together 100 songs of Australian musical hoo-haa for 8 years in a row now.
This is a version of You Are The Voice you may enjoy, or not…
Andrew Sholl
It will all be going down from 10am Saturday 27th January on X and Instagram @Ozkitsch Andrew Sholl shows no sign of ever stopping his annual festival of Aussie awkwardness. So lean into it.
The greatest and longest tradition in Australian history is the screening of Village People’s Can’t Stop The Music every NYE across Australia. So elevate your experience this NYE by watching this anytime before you watch the movie, anywhere, anytime, to get you in the mood for the musical extravaganza of 1980.
It’s not New Year’s Eve in Australia till we see Steve Gutenberg over excitedly skating down Broadway!
Here’s the audio version of the Xmas show this year. To enjoy the full immersive cheapo experience, watch the show on the previous page. But enjoy both, it’s Shatmas.
A Very Maynard Xmas is the highlight of the year for people who don’t get out a lot. It’s just like an old style Xmas variety show, but without the style, or the show.
Our guests dropping by this year include Tim Ferguson getting a surprise gift, Lesley Fountain dancing with a choir, Brigitte Handley hanging out with some creepy German dolls, Christopher Laird eating some sort of donut, Tony Push reading his Bowie inspired Xmas poem, George Hrab becoming a super hero, Rob and Roy Darby supplying some quality original music and other people who should have something better to do at this time of year.
A Very Maynard Xmas 2023 promises you almost an hour of Xmas entertainment that you will only have yourself to blame for. Musically the show has everything from David Essex to The Gibson Brothers and Lulu. Plus a monkey washing a cat.
A Very Maynard Xmas is the highlight of the year for people who don’t get out a lot. It’s just like an old style Xmas variety show, but without the style, or the show.
Our guests dropping by this year include Tim Ferguson getting a surprise gift, Lesley Fountain dancing with a choir, Brigitte Handley hanging out with some creepy German dolls, Christopher Laird eating some sort of donut, Tony Push reading his Bowie inspired Xmas poem, George Hrab becoming a super hero, Rob and Roy Darby supplying some quality original music and other people who should have something better to do at this time of year.
A Very Maynard Xmas 2023 promises you almost an hour of Xmas entertainment that you will only have yourself to blame for. Musically the show has everything from David Essex to The Gibson Brothers and Lulu. Plus a monkey washing a cat.