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A Night At The APRAs 
Drum Media 
14 May 1998 
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The beauty of the Australasian Performing Rights Association (APRA) Awards is that there's none of the hoopla of the ARIAs, though the camreas from Channel [V] were there to capture the highlights, which included some brilliant performances of five of the six songs nominated for Song Of The Year. And that's the thing - the APRA Awards might be an "industry bash", but it celebrates not the "celebrity" but the makers of the music that makes those celebrities - the Songwriters and Composers. So while there was more than a little media interest in the fact that Kylie Minogue came out and performaed Nick Cave's song of the year nomincation, Into My Arms, it was just as special to the assembled songwriters, composers and publishers to see Gina Jeffreys performing one of two Savage Garden tunes nominated - Truly Madly Deeply - and The Whitlams play No Aphrodisiac, Paul Kelly perform How To Make Gravy and the ultimate winners, Leonardo's Bride perform Even When I'm Sleeping. And wasn't Colin Buchanan great as MC, proving himself the Paul McDermott of the the country music scene?! And there was Senator Kate Lundy reminding us that this industry was in great danger from the push by Federal government to introduce parallel importing, seconded by Peter Garrett and Michael Gudinski among others. Andy and Tim Farriss were on hand to help APRA present a tribute to their late friend and INXS colleague, Michael Hutchence and songwriters from the past - Eric McCusker, James Freud, Richard Clapton, Mario Millo - mixed it without any of the ageism hangups of an ARIAs but plenty of respect - with the "new" young bloods, from Tim Freedman to Dean Manning. And we all had a splendid time. 
pics: Tony Mott 
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