RIP David Lindley

 

I’ve been waiting to read Jackson Browne’s reaction to the death of David Lindley. And now we know why it took him awhile: he didn’t want to let him go.

I wanted to know how Jackson felt. As soon as I heard that Lindley was gone my thoughts turned to Jackson. They made so much wonderful music together.

When I first heard Jackson’s songs on Late for the Sky I loved them instantly. But at the same time I fell in love with the violin playing and pedal steel sounds that sent those songs into another hemisphere. And that was the work of David Lindley. To my ears it was musical perfection.

Baby Boomers are now of the age where the musicians of our youth are leaving us. It hurts when someone dies whose music you loved. And for me David Lindley’s death hurt more than most. He represented sweet musical perfection. As someone somewhere else noted, if you wanted someone to play along to a song in a major key, there were none better than David Lindley. So many times his music made me feel so happy, so positive, so in touch with raw emotion. It was your gift to us all.

Rest in peace David.

 

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An edited version of Jackson’s post on Facebook today:

 

David Lindley, the guitarist, lap steel and fiddle player who gave his personality and his inspiration to so many of my songs, passed away on March 3rd. The outpouring of love, and the widespread recognition of his mastery has been very moving. I want to join in the resounding chorus of appreciation for his gifts, but nothing I write seems quite good enough. Words have never been enough to describe what David Lindley brought to a song.

I played with David for the first time in a dressing room at the Troubadour in 1969. My friend Jimmy Fadden of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band had brought him to say hello, and pointed out that David had his fiddle with him, saying he would probably sit in if I asked him to. I already knew him from the band Kaleidoscope, whose first album, Side Trips, was one of my favorite records. We started to play my song These Days, and my world changed. His playing was so emotional, and immediate - it cast a spell over me and everyone there. It didn’t matter that he had never heard the song before. What he was playing made it more emotional and more real than it had ever sounded in the years I had played it alone.

……

David is a very large part of me - who I became, and who I remain. No one ever played like him. …. He didn’t play the same thing each time. He was always exploring, always hearing something new. Always in the moment.

…….

My own world is shattered by David’s passing. He was my friend and my teacher. It was with great pleasure and certainty that I revisited our special connection over the years. I guess I thought that he would always be around.

I've been struggling to write something and post it for the past two weeks. It was hard to begin, and it’s hard to conclude, I guess, because I don’t want to let him go. David was kind to everyone, and so funny. Incapable of uttering a dishonest word, or playing a dishonest note. There will be tribute concerts, and a documentary about him, for sure. There will be ways for us to continue to celebrate his life. And we all know there will never be another David Lindley.

- Jackson Browne

 

Fish Bowl - Adelaide Fringe 2023 Review

 

[THEATRE AND PHYSICAL THEATRE/Immersive ~ South Australia]

The Studio at Holden St Theatres, Tue 7 Mar, 2023.

Fish Bowl is part seminar, part theatre. While daring to entertain on a touchy subject like dementia it also provides a lot of advice on how to cope with, and treat, people with dementia.

Set in an aged care nursing home the players switch between being patients and carers, often quickly shifting from troubled /troublesome patient to narrator in the same scene. It’s a very effective technique that holds audience attention and attempts to explain the patient’s behaviour - why the patient might be all of a sudden roaming around the room in an agitated state, or affectionately addressing a soft toy as their spouse.

There is a tragi-comic aspect to dementia that is also on show here. As the old cliché says, you don’t know whether to laugh or cry, and often either response is appropriate.  But people in the caring role have to get past that and come up with strategies to deal with the situation at hand. Fish Bowl shows us several delightful examples: a scene encouraging a patient to recite a long poem while getting them ready for bed is quite beautiful and amazing to watch.

There are also moments of extreme, violent anger that are quite scary. Such are the swings and roundabouts of dealing with dementia – childlike joy one moment; explosive fury the next.

Full marks to Fish Bowl Theatre for delving into this challenging territory. It’s instructive and enjoyable theatre that attempts to cast somewhat of a positive light on how one can cope with people who have dementia; how one can build relationships across the cognitive disconnect.  I commend them for that but the sooner a cure is found for this dreadful dignity sapping disease the better.

Director: Steph Daughtry
Writer: Matthew Barker
Performers: Matthew Barker & Evie Leonard.

This review also published on The Clothesline.

The Sensemaker - Adelaide Fringe 2023 Review

 

[THEATRE AND PHYSICAL THEATRE/Comedy ~ AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE ~ Switzerland]

The Garage International @ Adelaide Town Hall, Fri 10 Mar, 2023.

How long are you prepared to wait on the phone? How many looped menus do you tolerate? Are you patient? How willing are you to accept instructions from a phone bot? What do you do while you’re on hold? The Sensemaker will help you answer such questions. It may also leave you with an uneasy feeling that this nonsense is in its infancy and could get much worse.

The Sensemaker is a wonderful solo show that puts the spotlight on an issue that has exploded in very recent times – just what should our relationship be with bots. And Elsa Couvreur does so in such a glorious and graceful fashion. In an unusual combination of dance and comedy she commands attention form the outset. Every sideways glance, every twitch of a finger, every sigh, is calculated and intended to convey meaning. She is riveting to watch.

Couvreur shows inexhaustible patience as we endure the endless wait for her ‘’request to be processed.’ She comes up with some very inventive ways to pass the time and amuse herself and us before things get a bit weird and the phone bot would appear to be very much overstepping the mark. The caller needs to decide whether she wants to continue to have her ‘request processed’.

This clever show takes what is normally private behaviour into a very public space, and does so with subtle humour, and an abundance of elegance.

Countless hours have gone into the preparation of the many layers of pre-recorded messages and on-hold music. Clever use of multiple languages and the ironic use of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy may mean you’ll never here it the same way again.

A magnificent show displaying mastery of the technical and artistic sides of theatre. Superb entertainment that also throws up just so many questions. Deserved a much larger audience.

This review also published on The Clothesline.

Glenn Skuthorpe and Band Play Dire Straits

 

Eliza Hall at Payinthi, Sat 4 Mar, 2023.

Attempting to play the music of Dire Straits is a risky business. Band leader and vocalist Mark Knopfler is one of the few in rock music who carved out new territory. He invented a distinctly new sound that was instantly recognisable as Knopfler’s – an understated vocal style and a bluesy melodic electric guitar finger style that was smooth as silk.

Turns out Glenn Skuthorpe’s delivery style is very much suited to playing Dire Straits music. Whether he subconsciously picked up the Knopfler way from hours of listening to him or it was just inherent in who he was doesn’t really matter. What matters is that is he has that same ability to deliver a vocal full of rich melody in that low almost semi-spoken way, and to play the guitar with emphasis on accuracy and tone rather than volume and speed. No shenanigans; no ‘look at me’ theatrics – just solid musicianship with a great feel.

Supported by a great band who clearly really enjoyed playing these songs, Skuthorpe and co delivered an excellent show. Claire O’Meara on keys/piano added welcome harmonies on several songs, and Aldo DiSario on drums was just all class – great to watch and listen to. Like so many bass players Mike Haynes was just totally focused on his craft and there were several occasions when you realised that it was his bass lines that were punctuating the beat with a metronomic pulse – beautiful work on Romeo And Juliet.
Mark Hawkins spent most of the time on rhythm guitar but added saxophone when necessary – the sax and piano duet at the start of Tunnel of Love works beautifully as a teasing intro to the main event. Skuthorpe’s guitar solo on this piece was a treat.

The show closed with the hauntingly beautiful Local Hero – not strictly a Dire Straits song but who cares – we all wanted to hear it, and Skuthorpe’s guitar was true to the original melody and feel. Just beautiful.

As it so often is with bands the quality of the final product is so dependent on the acoustics of the venue and the ability of the human doing the mixing to get the balance right. The sound was a little muddy early on, but things got better as the show progressed. But this is a real challenge for anyone playing Dire Straits. Knopfler was not a loud player, and he was a relatively quiet singer but somehow you have to get that vocal and guitar cutting through the mix, so the signature sound is at the core. There were times when that wasn’t the case, but all in all this was a great show. Those subtle melodies, trademark guitar licks, and the almost detached vocal mood were all there to remind us just how good Dire Straits were. And how good Glenn Skuthorpe is!

(This review also published on The Clothesline.)

Recalibrate - Adelaide Fringe Review 2023

 

The Lab at Light ADL @ West Village, Thu 2 Mar, 2023.

The Lab’s L-shaped stage and 180-degree panoramic projection backdrop encourages innovation. The fourth wall disappears as characters are in full view as they arrive and exit the stage. The extended projection space allows for all manner of use – text messages on screen, characters who are not physically present can interact with on stage players, radical changes of set from one scene to another, locating scenes in specific geographical locations, the use of silhouette, and canny use of liminal messaging between scenes via abstract imagery and sound.

All of these elements are employed with excellent effect in Recalibrate. And then of course you have the rightly billed powerhouse cast.

Simone (Emma Beach) has returned home from Las Vegas to help out with a mystery family emergency. Her entrance is awkward and funny – it’s immediately obvious she’s the black sheep of the family. She’s also someone who can see through crap and knows when people are fooling themselves. Her sister, Mary (Katie O’Reilly) is a case in point; lost in the world of motherhood. Their mother Carmel (Jacqy Phillips) is an academic coming to the end of her tenure. She is desperate for Tessa (Kelly Vincent), her star student, to stay on and complete her degree, but Tessa is tired of theoretical ‘academic bullshit’ and wants out. Relationships between all the characters seem fractured and tense until Carmel stages a protest on the roof of the university armed with a megaphone. Her impassioned rant from the rooftops is both an irrational outpouring and a brilliant account of what she sees as wrong in the world. As a fellow Boomer I found it deeply moving and had to fight back tears. A line was crossed here – somewhere it stopped being theatre and became terribly real. It was a powerful moment.

This desperate display of emotion briefly brings a degree of equilibrium until a final twist challenges the sisters one more time.

Jacqy Phillips, Kelly Vincent, Emma Beech and Katie O’Reilly were all wonderful in their respective roles, but Phillips’ performance is one for the ages.

It might be described as dark comedy. Variously bleak, humorous, and hopeful. But nothing in life is straightforward and everything comes at a cost. A really impressive new work from the SA Playwrights Theatre.

Written by Lucy Combe. Directed by Elena Vereker.

(This review also published in The Clothesline.)