Episodes
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Paul L. Weston (born 9 April 1957) is a former Australian rules footballer who played with Essendon in the Victorian Football League (VFL) as well as Glenelg, West Torrens and Norwood in the South Australian National Football League (SANFL) during the 1970s and 1980s.
Weston started his career at Glenelg whilst still studying at Glengowrie High School. He quickly established himself as a key player, winning the club best and fairest in 1976 and taking the captaincy in 1979 at only 21 years of age. However, premiership success was elusive; during his time with the Tigers, Weston was a member of five losing grand finals – in 1974, 1975, 1977, 1981 and 1982. Frustrated by the lack of premiership success in his home state, Weston decided to try his luck in Victoria. Essendon won the race to recruit Weston and he relocated to Melbourne in January 1983 to begin training with the club. However, there was a disagreement with the transfer fee; Glenelg had asked for AUD 175,000, but Essendon's offer was around AUD 90,000. The case was taken to the National Football League Appeals Board, which in March 1983 set an undisclosed compromise fee that both Essendon and Glenelg were expected to agree on. Weston said afterward: "I am very relieved and happy ... I can now get on with the business of playing football instead of worrying about court cases."
Weston had played mostly as a centreman at Glenelg, but became a key defender while at Essendon. Weston made an immediate impression at his new club, winning the most consistent player award in his first season. But it seemed the curse of losing grand finals had followed him; Essendon were thrashed by Hawthorn in the 1983 VFL Grand Final. Weston, and Essendon, had their revenge when they won back-to-back premierships against Hawthorn in 1984 and 1985. He was a South Australian State of Origin representative and won a Fos Williams Medal in 1982 for his performance against Western Australia at Football Park. Weston returned to South Australia in 1986 to take up a captain-coach role at West Torrens for three seasons, one of the last of his kind. He finished his football career with Norwood.
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Joseph Dolce; born October 13, 1947) is an American-Australian singer, songwriter, poet and essayist.
Dolce achieved international recognition with his multi-million-selling novelty song, "Shaddap You Face", released worldwide under the name of his one-man show, Joe Dolce Music Theatre, in 1980–1981. The single reached number one in 15 countries. It has sold more than 450,000 copies in Australia and continues to be the most successful Australian-produced single worldwide, selling an estimated six million copies. It reached No. 1 on the Australian Kent Music Report Singles Chart for eight weeks from November 1980.
1947–1977: Early yearDolce was born in 1947 in Painesville, Ohio, the eldest of three children to Italian American parents. He graduated from Thomas W. Harvey High School in 1965. During his senior year, he played the lead role of Mascarille in Moliere's Les Précieuses Ridicules for a production staged by the French Club of Lake Erie Frie College, which was his first time on stage, acting and singing an impromptu song he created from the script. The play was well-received and his performance was noted by director Jake Rufli, who later invited him to be part of his production of Jean Anouilh's Eurydice.
His co-star in Les Précieuses Ridicules was a sophomore on a creative writing scholarship at Lake Erie College, Carol Dunlop, who introduced him to folk music, poetry and the writings of William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. Dunlop later married the Argentine novelist Julio Cortazar. Dolce attended Ohio University, majoring in architecture, from 1965 to 1967 before deciding to become a professional musician.
While attending college at Ohio University, in Athens, Ohio, he formed various bands including Headstone Circus, with Jonathan Edwards who subsequently went on as a solo artist to have a charting hit song in the US ("Sunshine"). Edwards subsequently recorded five Dolce songs including, "Athens County", "Rollin' Along", "King of Hearts", "The Ballad of Upsy Daisy" and "My Home Ain't in the Hall of Fame", the latter song becoming an alt country classic, also recorded by Robert Earl Keen, Rosalie Sorrels, JD Crowe & the New South and many others.
1978–1984: Move to Australia, "Boat People" and "Shaddap You Face"Dolce relocated to Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, in 1978 and his first single there was "Boat People"—a protest song on the poor treatment of Vietnamese refugees—which was translated into Vietnamese and donated to the fledgling Vietnamese community starting to form in Melbourne. His one-man show, Joe Dolce Music Theatre, was performed in cabarets and pubs with various line-ups, including his longtime partner, Lin Van Hek.
In July 1980, he recorded the self-penned 'Shaddap You Face", for the Full Moon Records label, at Mike Brady's new studios in West Melbourne. When in Ohio, Dolce would sometimes visit his Italian grandparents and extended family—they used the phrases "What's the matter, you?" and "Eh, shaddap", which Dolce adapted and used in the song. He wrote the song about Italians living in Australia and first performed it at Marijuana House, Brunswick Street, Fitzroy in 1979. It became a multi-million-selling hit, peaking at No. 1 on the Australian Kent Music Report Singles Chart for eight weeks from November 1980,in the UK from February 1981 for three weeks, and also No. 1 in Germany, France, Fiji, Puerto Rico, the Canadian province of Quebec, Austria, New Zealand and Switzerland. Dolce received the Advance Australia Award in 1981. The song has had hundreds of cover versions over the decades including releases by artists as diverse as Lou Monte, Sheila (France), Andrew Sachs (Manuel, of Fawlty Towers), actor Samuel L. Jackson and hip-hop legend KRS-One. In 2018, the first Russian language version was released by two of Moscow's most popular singers, Kristina Orbakaite and Philipp Kirkoroy. The song has been translated into fifteen languages, including an aboriginal dialect.
By February 1981, it had become Australia's best-selling single ever selling 290,000 copies, entering the Guinness Book of World Records and surpassing the previous record of 260,000 copies by Brady's own "Up There Cazaly".
"Shaddap You Face" has continued to be licensed and recorded by other artists and companies since its release in 1980 with its most recent appearance, in 2021, as part of the US series The Morning Show (aka, Morning Wars in Australia.)
Follow up single, "If You Wanna Be Happy" was released in 1981 and charted in Australia and New Zealand. In December 1981, Dolce released the album Christmas in Australia, which peaked at number 92 on the Australian chart.
1984–presentWith Lin Van Hek , he formed various performance groups including Skin the Wig, La Somnambule (1984) and the ongoing Difficult Women (1993). Van Hek and Dolce co-wrote "Intimacy", for the soundtrack of the 1984 film The Terminator, now part of the US Library of Congress collection. He was a featured lead actor in the Australian film Blowing Hot and Cold (1988). He has continued to perform solo and with Van Hek as part of their music-literary cabaret Difficult Women.
In 2010, two of his photos were selected for publication in the US journal, Tupelo Quarterly.
Since 2009, he has been a prolifically published poet in Australia. In 2010, he won the 25th Launceston Poetry Cup at the Tasmanian Poetry Festival. His poems were selected for Best Australian Poems 2014 & 2015. He was the winner of the 2017 University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor's Health Poetry Prize, for a choral libretto, longlisted in the same year for the University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor's Poetry Prize and included in the Irises anthology. He longlisted for the 2018 University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor's Poetry Prize and was included in the Silence anthology. He was Highly Commended for the 2020 ACU Poetry Prize] and included in the Generosity anthology. He was selected as the August 2020 City of Melbourne Poet Laureate.
Since 2018, he has been the television and film reviews editor for Quadrant magazine.
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Russell Greene (born 30 May 1957) is a former Australian rules footballer who played for the St Kilda Football Club and Hawthorn Football Club in the Victorian Football League (VFL).
He was just sixteen when he made his VFL debut in round 1, 1974 for St Kilda. After playing eight games with St Kilda in 1980, he joined Hawthorn for the rest of that season and was a key player during a successful decade for the club. He won the VFL Players Association. Most Valuable Player award, now known as the Leigh Matthews Trophy, as well as Hawthorn's best and fairest honours in 1984. Greene was chosen in the All-Australian team in 1983, 1984 and 1985. Greene's last game was the 1988 grand final win over Melbourne.
Greene has been involved at a few different clubs over the years, in 1994 at North Melbourne, Greene was the fitness advisor, a position he also held in 1997 at St. Kilda.
Since retiring from football, Greene has worked as a PE teacher, first at Melbourne Grammar School, and currently (2011 – present) at Marnebek School in Cranbourne.
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