Books by Glen Humphries

With their long hair and fuzzed-up guitars, Tumbleweed rose out of the ashes of late-80s Indie band The Proton Energy Pills. Just over a year after their 1990 birth, they'd recorded with Mudhoney's Mark Arm, scored a support slot on Nirvana's only Australian tour (just as the grunge wave hit) and signed a US record deal.The Wollogong band hit their peak of popularity in the wake of the 1995 album Galactaphonic. And then proceeded to shoot themselves in the foot. Guitarist Paul Hausmeister got the sack, and then drummer Steve O'Brien left in protest.From there the band went downhill, chopping and changing band members, releasing albums that met an increasingly uninterested public and playing shows where there were maybe a half-dozen people in the crowd. So it was no surprise when they called it quits in 2001.That was supposed to be it for Tumbleweed. With the acrimony that swirled around the members for years afterwards, it was hard to ever see the hometown fans' wishes of a reformation come true. But in 2009 they managed to heal their wounds and reunite, releasing their fifth studio album a few years later and survive the sudden death of bassplayer Jay Curley.Journalist and music writer Glen Humphries has interviewed the members of Tumbleweed numerous times and, in Healer, takes the first complete look at the band's career.

In 1982, Midnight Oil was a band in trouble. Their last album, Place Without a Postcard, was supposed to be their big breakthrough but it hadn't worked out that way. So they found themselves in London, feeling the pressure of recording what was a "make or break" album. Members threatened to leave, others had nervous breakdowns and the ANZ bank manager back home was sweating as he watched the overdraft he'd approved for the band get bigger and bigger.If this album went the same way as the last one, it could be the end of Midnight Oil. Out of the crisis came 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1, an album that changed everything for the band. It entered the charts and stayed there for more than three years. They started playing bigger venues - and they were able to pay back the bank manager.Two years later, they headed to Japan to record the polarising Red Sails in the Sunset. It managed to do what 10-1 couldn't - give the band their first No1 album. But again the band found themselves facing the possibility it could all be over, courtesy of lead singer Peter Garrett's tilt at federal politics. If he wins, the band loses.In Sounds Like an Ending, journalist and author Glen Humphries takes a track-by-track look at these two albums and the times and turmoil that fuelled them. That includes wondering whether the 10-1 title was a sly dig at a certain Australian music TV show, finding out the stories behind some of the songs and explaining what's really happening on the cover of Red Sails in the Sunset.

"Could you estimate the number of houses and backyards you have unlawfully entered?""No, it would be terribly hard to say.""Would it be hundreds or would it be thousands?""Many, many hundreds. Perhaps thousands."- The Kingsgrove Slasher's police questioning Between 1956 and 1959, suburban Sydney was terrorised by a phantom known as the Kingsgrove Slasher. A peeping Tom, he graduated to breaking into houses to watch people sleep before later slashing women and girls with a razor while they lay in their beds.He punched a 21-year-old woman into unconsciousness, breaking her teeth and cutting her mouth, hit a teenage girl in the face with a piece of wood and slashed a deep wound across the stomach of a 64-year-old woman. The Slasher also groped teens in their beds, and one of his 18 victims was just seven years old.Night Terrors is the first detailed account of the Kingsgrove Slasher case. It draws on hundreds of newspaper articles written at the time - which show the level of fear in the community - as well as the transcripts from the court hearings, which had been sealed since 1959. The result is a true-crime book that might make it hard for you to go to sleep at night.