Have loved this song forever, and have played it many times live. Currently rehearsing it with a couple of friends to play live at the end of January.
Saturday, December 12, 2015
Bit of a Brick
Have loved this song forever, and have played it many times live. Currently rehearsing it with a couple of friends to play live at the end of January.
Thursday, August 06, 2015
Gurrumul
There was a moment at Womadelaide a few years ago when
Gurrumul silenced a crowd of several thousand mostly white Australians with
songs sung in ‘language’. We had no idea what he was singing about, but we knew
somewhere it was about things like hills, stories from the Dreamtime, ancestors
– things of antiquity. He was the voice of ancient Australia and he had us in
the palm of his hand. It was one of the most profound cultural moments I’ve
ever experienced. And this concert was another night of magic with this
remarkable singer. Billed as the gospel songs tour, it featured several songs
from Gurrumul’s past on Elcho Island that are more like hymns than the gospel
sounds one associates with black America.
The show began with safe territory – two of Gurrumul’s
better known songs – Wiyathul, and Bapa,
a dedication to fathers everywhere, and they set the inspirational tone for the
rest of the evening. When long time Gurrumul collaborator Michael Hohnen
announced that they were now going to play the religious tunes it seemed a
little superfluous, as these songs are deeply spiritual in the effect they can have
on an audience.
Nevertheless, local Adelaide choir Women with Latitude
joined the band for the religious/gospel part of the set and it’s a match made
in heaven. They provided a beautiful soft backdrop to Gurrumul’s timeless
vocals, embellishing every note with a restrained ethereal presence. When they
did crank up the volume later in the show on a Gurrumul original, while singing
in his native Yolngu tongue, the whole effect was
superb. It was quite noticeable too that as soon as multiple voices are added
to Gurrumul’s songs you can hear the link with the islander music of the
Pacific.
There is something intangibly primal about Gurrumul’s
ability to cut across Australian cultures with the voice of a songbird that soothes
and caresses and delivers you to a place of immense joy and deep satisfaction.
He is an extraordinary gift to this land.
Another original song, The Crow, was richly textured and
again showed Gurrumul’s ability to portray simple symbols from the world of nature
in a way that all Australians can appreciate. A catchy reggae tune closed out
the evening. Just the standing ovation was left, which of course Gurrumul can’t
see. I hope someone tells him about it. But my guess is he can probably sense
it.
Also published on The Clothesline
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Boomers' Legacy
OK. I’m going to write this rather than talk it. In truth, I
wasn’t a big fan of Stairway to Heaven. In fact the song drove me nuts. As a
guitarist and busker I was asked hundreds of times if I knew how to play it but
I never learned it. But the version of this song in this concert is a stunner. Nor
was I a great fan of Led Zeppelin after their early years. Like many bands
their best came early on and they never quite reproduced the edge of their
early stuff. So the reference to Led Zeppelin being the ‘wind beneath the wings
of a generation’ was really using them as a metaphor for all the music that
served that function. It could have been The Who, Stones, Beatles, Animals, Hendrix,
etc – it was the collective impact of new rock that sustained the cultural
change.
What of that change? Yes there were early utopian claims that
the Age of Aquarius would herald the age of peace and equality, but it clearly
didn’t happen. So what did change? It definitely drove a wedge between mine and
my parents’ generation. By the time I was 20 I was living a life that was eons
apart from theirs. The outward expression of this gulf was our appearance. We
let our hair grow, wore daggy or weird clothes, stopped going to church and
moved in to shared houses. Youth embraced a new freedom that was missing in
previous decades, and the stifling tyranny of the family unit was broken. And
rock music was our music, our mouthpiece. It’s not just the music that did it –
it was a mix of many things – but the music was the outward expression of
liberty that youth had discovered.
The legacy of this time can still be seen in a myriad of
things:
·
It is now for example quite OK to go to a fancy
theatre in jeans and a t-shirt. Or the CBD. Or anywhere. This breaking down of a
strict uniformity of dress code for all began in the late 60s.
·
It began a globalisation of the world. People
like Dylan helped people realise that struggles were the same the world over.
·
Young people started to travel – roaming far
away countries for months on end.
·
People began to live together out of wedlock en
masse and eventually wore down the importance of the institution of marriage.
·
Mainstream religion suffered a massive downturn
in appeal. People began to look elsewhere – Buddhism, meditation, Eastern
religions generally – for spiritual sustenance.
·
Communities based on very different values like
Nimbin and others on the northern coast of NSW began to spring up all over the
world. Many dropped out of a mainstream society that no longer met their needs.
·
Many more people began to take drugs and had
their consciousness altered. There were plenty of casualties but no one who takes
mind altering drugs can ever look at the world the same way again.
·
It did liberate women to some extent. Divorce
became socially acceptable and single parents received social security to
enable them to live a life free of abusive partners.
None of these things are final. They are processes of
cultural change that are still evolving. It’s interesting to think about
whether the Boomers created these changes, or whether they happened to them. It’s
probably both. Things were changing rapidly, and they were the agents of
change.
The fact is that between 1965 and 1975 the Western world changed
dramatically. And behind it was this music, these anthems advertising and extolling
another life and other values. The music you listen to in your teens and
twenties is typically the music that stays with you forever. It is the music
that was playing when you were becoming adult and working out who you were and
what you believed, and it is woven into your DNA. It provokes deep emotion whenever
you hear it. So I understand too well what Robert Plant was feeling as he listened
to his song in that concert. Quite frequently, without warning, I’ll be
listening to music of that time and tears will come. Tears for the memories,
the intense emotions of love and love lost and youth and freedom and good
times, for the people who have gone or who got lost along the way. And because
these people who inspired us with their anthems of an incredibly exciting time
are dying. Every time I see a musician from that time I am acutely aware that
it is probably the last time I’ll see them.
We’re still left with a world of wonder and turmoil.
Perhaps the part of the legacy of the 60s and 70s I value above
all else is the fact that I am friends with my adult children in a way that was
impossible when I was 20. The world had changed too much and too fast for me
and my parents to be anything but polite strangers. They simply had no clue who
their children were anymore. So I, and many of my generation (Leigh’s going to
tell me something different!) made sure as parents that we would never be
strangers to our children; that we would never impose on them values that were
not theirs. I am friends with my children, and the generation/cultural gap is small.
But that is my life….. J
Saturday, June 20, 2015
"This Music Won't Last"
Sometime during my teen years I was watching rock/pop
music on TV and my mother, a classically trained singer and pianist, assured me
this music would never last. It was her way of telling me that she thought the
music of little value and that I’d be better off spending my leisure time on
other things. We often debated this question. I remember another day when I
again was watching TV in the lounge and she came through from the kitchen
asking ‘who is that with the beautiful speaking voice’? She was shocked to see
a long haired, bearded and bizarre character speaking. It was in fact Ian
Anderson of Jethro Tull.
I don’t remember really having any sense of belief at the
time that the music I loved would last. As I grew
older I learned that the pop/rock music of the 60s and 70s represented a radical
change from what had gone before, both in terms of sound – they’re had been
nothing like it – and the cultural values held by many of its exponents. Long
hair and outrageous appearance and on and off stage behaviour was par for the
course. As a teenager and early 20 something I was proud that I was part of a
new generation that had at least in some sense changed the world. And it
satisfied my natural tendency towards rebellion and rejection of my parents’
and mainstream values.
Last night a Facebook friend (who is incidentally also a
good friend in ‘real’ life) posted a link to a video from a memorial concert in honour of the pioneer rock band, Led Zeppelin. The video featured a live performance of
Stairway to Heaven by Ann and Nancy Wilson. Complete with choir and orchestra I
really enjoyed this superb version of ‘Stairway’. But what moved me more was watching
the reaction of three of the original members of Led Zeppelin – Robert Plant,
Jimmy Page, and John Paul Jones. Once wild men of rock they were seated in the
audience dressed in suits and had it seemed turned into thoroughly respectable
old men.
Robert Plant seemed stunned at what he was witnessing. His
eyes welled up with tears, and he stared at the performance happening on stage
with a kind of ‘what have I done? what did I do?’ expression. But in a positive
sense. It was as if he was realising for the first time the beauty and the
power of the song he and Jimmy Page had created 44 years earlier. So Stairway
to Heaven has lasted and has been enriched and transformed by a new generation
of musicians. (John Bonham’s son played drums in this performance.)
My own eyes began to well up as I watched and listened to
this wonderful rendition of ‘Stairway’ until I was finally quite simply crying.
Crying In support of Robert Plant. As my wife commented I just want to give him
a hug. Crying too because I remembered that comment of my mother’s all those
years ago and I realised, if I hadn’t before, that the music of my generation
has been validated. We weren’t just listening to a passing fad or an aberration
in the history of music. We had been part of huge and powerful cultural change that
has left an indelible stamp on the world. It did have value.
You could scoff and bemoan the fact I guess that the Led Zap
boys are now respectable senior members of the community and wear suits – Robert
Plant often performed bare chested for heaven’s sake – but they are no longer
wild and provocative young men. They don’t need to be. They, and many of their
peers, created music that was the wind beneath the wings of a generation and it
is clear now that much of it will outlast them and the generation that is
growing old with them.
I felt proud watching this performance that I had made the
choices I had, that I had listened to this ‘devil music’ from an early age and I
want to believe now that I knew instinctively all those years ago that
something huge was happening, and that our music had value. It’s a big call but
it felt like it validated much of my life and who I am.
For another example of how another wild man of rock has
become part of the musical establishment watch Ian Anderson singing Wondering Aloud with a chamber orchestra.
You were wrong Mum.
ADDENDUM (3/2/24)
I have been reading Bob Spitz’s account of the Led Zeppelin story, and I have read things there that make me question everything I ever felt about them, and what I wrote above. We all know that the groupie phenomenon was part of the rock star lifestyle, and we have all heard tales of exploitation of women that don’t sit comfortably with more recent standards. But the disgusting depravity and debauchery of Led Zeppelin was beyond the pale. And the bullying methods employed by their manager against journalists, other bands, musicians, promoters, and bootleggers was nothing short of underworld thuggery. Violence and intimidation were his standard tools.
A very very seedy tale - there were seeds of evil within the
Led Zeppelin camp – and right now I’m feeling they did not deserve their success.
Saturday, June 13, 2015
Frisky and Mannish - Adelaide Cabaret Festival
Taken by Rosie Collins |
What a ride! Roaming spotlights playing over audience and
stage at the start of the show suggested we were in for something big! Looking
positively glamorous in gold, Frisky and Mannish enter the stage to form a
beautiful tableau, and that was about their only serious moment. Everything
about this show is over the top. I’m tempted to tag them the greatest hams in
the history of show business. But this is a good thing.
Promoting themselves as a bridge between pop and cabaret
they set about demolishing everything you may hold dear about either genre in a
fast paced, tightly scripted and hilarious send up of a long list of songs and
their performers. We learn that most pop singers (except for Katy Perry and her
paean to plastic bags) don’t write their own material, and in fact 81% of all
popular songs are written by the Bee Gees!! We learn too that Sinead O’Connor
wrote way more letters of advice than just the famous one to Miley Cyrus.
There are so many really funny moments. A medley of songs
revised for the Internet age inserts Google, tweets, and Facebook into the
lyrics of famous songs. “I still haven’t found what I’m googling for.” (U2) A
collection of Australian songs reveals their take on the Australian psyche, and
a fast and furious trawl through candidates for a feminist anthem is priceless.
And just in case you might think they take themselves
seriously, once they’ve finished taking aim at everyone else they turn the
blowtorch on themselves.
This superb dismantling of popular culture is all done via
bits of well-known songs with altered lyrics, and some of the funniest singing
I’ve ever heard. They can make the most beautiful song sound ridiculous, and
the most inane pieces sound like works of high art.
Outstanding performers; great writers. They try towards the end to take things seriously again for a minute but it lasts about 30 seconds before their wonderfully weird and demonic selves resume control. They close with a love song to us and all humanity but we know they don’t believe a word of it! Sensational.
Outstanding performers; great writers. They try towards the end to take things seriously again for a minute but it lasts about 30 seconds before their wonderfully weird and demonic selves resume control. They close with a love song to us and all humanity but we know they don’t believe a word of it! Sensational.
(Also published on The Clothesline.)
Sunday, May 31, 2015
WHAT TO DO WITH BIRTHDAYS ON FACEBOOK?
For the last 2 years I have faithfully responded to each and
every Facebook birthday greeting received. This year I decided I wouldn’t. I like
one friend’s somewhat cynical approach to this issue. The day before their
birthday they posted: “To all my FB friends who will inevitably wish me happy
birthday tomorrow – thanks in advance!” I contemplated changing my settings so
my birthday wasn’t visible but of course I forgot.
On the other side of this FB birthday greeting equation I am unequivocal. I resent FB telling me that some friend or
colleague is having a birthday. There’s a momentary pang of guilt as I choose
to ignore that person’s birthday ie not send them a greeting. And what about
all those I do know quite well, and care about, but if it weren’t for FB’s auto
notifications, I would never know it was their birthday - what do I do on their birthdays? I usually ignore them
too. And there are those who are really close and whose birthdays I probably know
without FB’s help. (My mother used to keep a book for such information – it contained
nothing more than a list of people’s birthdays that she wanted to acknowledge.)
I might contact some of these close friends/family on their birthdays, or if I
only remembered because of FB write something like, “FB tells me it’s your
birthday…..” I’m just not comfortable claiming credit for remembering someone’s
birthday when I actually didn’t! I know – I should probably get over it. Many
others obviously have.
And the thing is I love receiving these greetings from
around the world for that 24 hour period once a year. It’s a real buzz, even if
most of those greetings would not have been sent if FB hadn’t displayed my
birthday in your morning newsfeed. So to all those who did send me birthday greetings
- thank you! I appreciate it. However, I have 400 + friends on FB apparently,
and received about 70 birthday greetings. So what’s with you other 300?? Don’t
care enough about me? Too lazy? Or maybe you’re a bit like me and you resent
being prodded like a Pavlovian dog and decide you can handle the guilt of ignoring
me, or some distant colleague, or long lost family member. You never needed to
know my birthday before (nor I yours), and we all got on fine. And there’s the
rub with FB. Where’s the limit? We know so much now about other people’s lives
that in times past we never knew. And it was fine that we never knew. Wasn’t
it?
Anyway, come May 26th 2016 I hope many of you
ignore my reservations about all this and wish me well. And happy birthday to
you for whenever yours may be :)
Monday, March 23, 2015
River - Fringe Review
Bakehouse Theatre’s Studio, Mon Feb 23
River is a loner, but she has crafted a busy enough life for herself. She frequents a quiet caféteria where she can be alone unnoticed. She has become something of a Google expert, specialising in writing “googlet’ poems based on what Google’s auto-complete function provides when you search for things. She sells self-made aluminium shapes at a weekend market. Her job doesn’t require her to talk to anyone, but she gets some joy from the human contact shared with her colleagues over packets of Arnotts cream biscuits. She relates the minutiae of her daily life in a way that is both touching and tedious.
Her luck begins to turn when she makes the acquaintance of Harry, an aged widower who frequents the same caféteria and is looking for company.
Claire Lovering, the writer and performer of this one person show, has obviously spent a lot of time observing the old and lonely. There is a pathos in the details that her character shares with us, as we slowly learn that her whole life is based on masking the fact that she is alone. And Lovering does an excellent job of portraying this not quite sad and quirky character who is self-conscious, unsure, and excited by little things like chip sandwiches. Her friendship with Harry is short lived but he is the link in a chain that ultimately provides her with a new life where her warmth and care for others can be put to good use.
There’s a simplicity and a charm to this production that grows on you. It’s a poignant reminder that there are many who find it difficult to fit in. They want to be with people but they just don’t know how to do it. Happily in this case a lucky break helps a loner find their niche.
Left unsaid is the fact that many who are alone are not so lucky….
Quite moving in the end. It may well bring a tear of joy and/or sadness.
(also published on The Clothesline)
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