During our self-imposed confinement with the lurgy, I’ve had a chance to catch up with what’s been happening in the outside world.

In an old edition of The Age, I read that New South Wales Premier, Nathan Rees, said that he’d prefer to have Brian Eno visit Sydney for three weeks than have Tiger Woods visit for three days. 

Huh? Brian Eno in Sydney? Eager for more information, I feverishly read on.

It seems that a day or so prior to that, Victorian Premier, John Brumby, had stated that Tiger Woods’ visit to Melbourne for three days, to compete in November’s Australian Masters, would cement the city’s position as the ‘major events capital of the world’. I’ve a hunch that he’s probably not a fan of Brian Eno, or even knows who he is.

There’s no doubt that Tiger Woods’ genius lies in swinging a stick to project a ball into a hole in the ground but…

Brian Eno has been inspiring the world with all manner of auditory delights since… well, since this writer was barely out of school uniform. Way back then he was with Roxy Music, one of the greatest bands of the early 1970s.

Who –  or rather, who of my age – can forget Virginia Plain, arguably the only pop single with a part for oboe to make it into the UK top 10. 

From Harold Budd to David Bowie to U2, Brian Eno has brought a distinctive and appealing dimension to the work of the many musicians with whom he’s collaborated over the years.

Now Sydney is to play host to Eno for his ambitious and spectacular project, LUMINOUS, part of the Vivid Sydney festival.

At a festival finale on June 14, Eno will participate  – with Karl Hyde, Leo Abrahams, Jon Hopkins and The Necks – in Pure Scenius, three concerts of improvised music. It will be the first time that Brian Eno has performed in Australia. 

I’ve never seen Brian Eno in concert, but I’ve listened to most of his albums. For what it’s worth, I rank him as one of the world’s greatest modern musicians. While his output sometimes verges on the experimental, his music has been consistently accessible and interesting, often moving, exciting and at times challenging.

If you know nothing of Brian Eno, the following is a somewhat sketchy ‘young person’s primer’. If you’re no longer young, it might take you back to the heady days of youth. Or if not that, it might prove just how far we’ve come since I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts was a popular favourite.

Hopefully, you’ll take the time to listen to some of the tracks I’ve nominated. They’re the ones with * next to them and they’re best heard through headphones. They’re mostly the tracks that I love to dance to, although the aforementioned ‘bins’ are a little limiting in that regard.

After he left Roxy Music, Eno released Here Come the Warm Jets. It includes one of my all-time favourite tracks, Baby’s on Fire*, featuring the searing guitar of Robert Fripp.

Although this track is best listened to LOUD, if you’re of a delicate nature, dear reader, be sure to turn down the volume on your computer before attempting it. It might not be everybody’s idea of brilliance, but it is mine.

After that Eno delivered Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy). Its dada-influenced lyrics were much admired by undergraduates of my acquaintance, who used to love to quote them. For my money, Third Uncle* is one of the best tracks ever released.

With an ostinato bass opening cribbed from Pink Floyd’s ‘One of these Days‘, from the seminal album Meddle, Third Uncle was written by Eno and arranged by Brian Turrington. The lyrics don’t make too much sense but, heck, that matters little when Phil Manzanera plays so brilliantly.    

Another Green World, released in 1975, featured Phil Collins, John Cale, Phil Manzanera and, again, Robert Fripp. The album cover lists instruments such as the ’snake guitar’, ‘desert guitars’, ‘assistant castanet guitars’, ‘choppy organs’, ’spasmodic percussion’ and ‘uncertain piano’.  

The unusual instruments don’t sound quite as out there as ‘the slave guitar’ of one of our local artists, but they’re certainly effective in evoking a response. The tracks range between insistently pounding rhythms to wistful, almost ethereal music of great beauty.

For me, St Elmo’s Fire* is one of the stand-out tracks on this album, with Robert Fripp’s brilliantly improvised, lightning-fast guitar solo on his ‘Wimshurst guitar’. 

In 1977, Eno’s Before and After Science was released to critical acclaim. The record (kids, that’s a big black vinyl CD that we’d have to actually manually flip over to hear the other side) is a mixture of high-energy tracks on the first side, while the second side consists mostly of the type of languid, ambient music with which Eno is now largely associated.

On that album, King’s Lead Hat* (an anagram of Talking Heads) is among my favourites. If you choose to listen to that track, you might like to reflect on the fact that there aren’t too many pop musicians who make reference to a T.S. Elliot poem, (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock) as Eno does with the line ’The passage of my life is measured out in shirts’.   

Eno’s collaboration with David Byrne in My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, produced, I think, one of the most influential albums ever released. Combining world music with ambience and electronica, it sounds as fresh and as relevant now as when it was first released in 1981.

I’ve never really learnt to appreciate some of Eno’s ambient music projects. His Music for Airports and Music for Films leave me cold, although if I heard them within the context for which they were intended (airports and films), perhaps I’d feel differently about them.

There is one of Eno’s ambient tracks that I love, though, and that’s Deep Blue Day* on the album Apollo. Guess I’m just a sucker for a good ol’ slide guitar.

I believe that Brian Eno’s contribution to the cultural life of Sydney will prove more popular, and ultimately more rewarding, than the spectacle of Tiger Woods pursuing a small white ball around a golf course.

But then, like Mark Twain, I think that golf is the waste of a good walk.

Hong Kong photos courtesy of John Mayger