Summer Tones - Shadow Electric 26^th January

The Mistletones records people put on this showcase of their roster and others as a public holiday treat. The Convent in Abbottsford is a great sprawl of buildings – many still mid-renovation or arrested decay and Shadow Electric sits out the river side, drawing together a motley collection of dormitories and other buildings to create a semblance of unified venue. Much of the action today takes place on the outside grassy area in bright sunshine and perfect weather, with the inside stage reserved for bands with …drums…

There is a very full roster for today’s event, so let’s start with highlights (also read as – “acts I saw”)

Very appropriately on what is contested as both Australia and Invasion Day, Vic Simms made an early brief guest appearance with a small backing group. Turning 70 on Friday when he supports Tex Perkins at the Zoo Twilights series. Pointing out various audience members showing solidarity on their chests, he sang songs from his 1973 Bathurst Prison recorded album Loner amidst a few old rock n roll songs and reminded us of what this day represents.

Next up was to me the absolute stand out of the day, Ryley Walker. The venue and the vibe reflected a mid-60s feel, (despite it being very un-hippie in dress and style) and Ryley personified this. With local double bassist Adam Casey in support, they created a beautiful soundscape: haunting, hypnotic guitar that pounded into crescendos, with looping, sensuous bass lines weaving in and out of the flow. This was the last slot on his Australian jaunt but look him up – he is crazy good. Closing my eyes in the sun, I felt like I was at Woodstock momentarily; even though he copies no one, his vocal style and finger picking folky/psychedelic guitar playing (yes it can be both) evoke that era poignantly without being a pastiche or homage. New and old at the same time. Will be watching for more of him, and the addition of double bass was inspired, creating new melodies in the mix.

The Orbweavers started out on the outside stage and I managed to catch only a couple of songs, Delicate, fleeting moments of music with Marita Dyson’s quiet voice lilting through the guitar of Stuart Flanagan and a smattering of gentle trumpet.  Another act that simply shone in the sun.

Terry I’ve not seen before and know very little about – caught just a few songs from their set of 80’s sounding indie pop – lots of chorused guitars. Intriguing and worth catching again if you can find them playing anywhere.

Totally Mild followed Terry on the inside stage. I missed Michael Hurley and Meg Baird too for these guys and others inside, in some ways unfortunately, but I don’t regret it. Liz Mitchell’s chirpy, poppy vocals over Shadows feeling guitar and a bass/drum beat that seems constantly sprung, pushing the songs along in waves then holding it back until bursting again. Nice to see quick pop songs done well and with a fun spirit, even if a few were much shorter than they should have been (oops forgot a verse!). Again they felt a bit 80s influenced, but I have to mention those drums again. Sitting in the background they pulse and flow in a way that doesn’t make it to their album Downtime (currently on various best of 2015 lists and the AMP Long List). Montero followed them but weren’t my thing – I just kept feeling I was watching an 80s US yacht rock band and it made me feel queasy. Food time.

One of the aspects I really enjoyed at Summertones that isn’t often well done at other festivals was the effective way in which the whole day was organised. The two stages overlapped but usually not fully, so in most cases you could zip back and forth to catch some of the other acts on the opposite stage. Best of all there were DJs playing sets in between each act, so rather than just a few songs from some mixer’s IPod, the music was thought through and complemented the live sets. On the outside stage there was a lot of 70s rock going down for a while – Nilsson and others bringing a wry smile of recognition. It meant that the changeovers were not the usually tedium of (“why are they done yet”. Food from local BBQ restaurant Le BonTon was tasty and a big step above the usual fare at gigs. Even when they ran out more was brought in quite quickly so it was only a 30 minute delay. Queues were a bit long but I think they were overwhelmed by demand.

After a semi incoherent rave from Ryley Walker about Melbourne, namechecking some local haunts and comparing it to Chicago, Kurt Vile  came on to the simultaneous release of the smoke machine and the nightly bat migration. Out of context I had Nick Cave screaming Release the Bats in my head while Kurt started with his acoustic set. That probably wasn’t the best introduction and I have no doubt that his set was exactly what was expected of him, but for me it felt a little empty – should’ve gone to see the Violators I know, but his set reminded me why it’s always good to have at least one other instrument to provide some colour to your set. Ryley Walker managed this brilliantly in his much earlier set, but it left Kurt looking pale in comparison. It was time to head out… too much great music, sun, Coopers and food. Thanks Mistletone.

Courtney Barnett - CB3 @ The Palais Friday 22nd Jan 

I've followed and listened to Courtney with great interest since I first saw her playing in Jen Cloher's band at the Music Bowl in Feb 2014. Since then I've seen her a couple of times in pub gigs, most recently at the Corner early last year. That set at the time seemed like a real welcome home show, she was relaxed and on fire, Depreston was just released or about to be and the current album was in the can and not far from release. Dan Luscombe augmented her band that night and they rocked out, the 4 piece filled the Corner and its notorious pylons, she chatted happily to the crowd and there was a lot of hometown love for the recently returned overseas tourer.

A lot has happened in the year since: the Album is Grammy nominated, Ellen plugged her to a huge US audience; and tours of Europe and the states gave her sales and a big support base globally. Tonight she's back home again and at the venerable Palais, home to Scout Gang Shows, Rockwiz Christmas tours and a myriad of medium pull touring artists. Has success changed her and can she rock out at a big venue? That's partly what I came to see. 

We caught about half of Wil Wagner, (lately of The Smith St Band). I've not heard anyone who evoked Billy Bragg as much, but still had totally his own thing going. Irrespective of the accent, his tone and phrasing brought BB to mind, as did much of his subject matter. No matter though, he was thoroughly Aussie in outlook and sang alternately sad and cheeky songs about life here. A great support, and someone who deserves to be more widely heard from - I'm sure we will see more of him.

Cloud Control followed up with a curiously loose and tight set of clever light 60s/80s influenced pop songs. At times the singer looked like David Byrne, but their harmonies and sweet pop songs were more reminiscent of bands like Evermore or even MGMT from a few years ago. They were delightful without really taking me by the throat and forcing my attention. The drumming was fascinating too - I reckon he was just behind the beat and it gave an odd relaxed, but robotic, tempo to the songs. They sounded great for a simple four piece, very full and lush and sweet.

As an aside, it'd be nice to see some concessions to support acts from lighting crews etc. The lights were plainly set up for a three piece, and the 4 piece set up of Cloud Control meant that the lead singer played mostly in half-light for the set. That's just rude. If you're going to have supports on then help them to look good. I'm sure it's an oversight, or left to the road crew maybe but really guys, c'mon!

So, the main event, a theatre full of seated patrons, politely waiting for CB3 to come on, then sitting through the first few songs quietly. Courtney and the band were slick and dirty, her guitar playing a highlight as she played nice country licks and strumming in one part of a song, then dropped into raw arse feedback and fuzz in solos and song ends. Vocally she sounded a touch hoarse at times when she really put her lungs into it, but at other times she was clear and pure.

Brightly coloured, simple and effective animations gave you something extra on which to focus when the band were hard to see. Looked like they were done to order and they pretty much played to the best in most songs too. That doesn't mean that CB3 hid behind that, they didn't, it just rounded out the experience.

The first half of the set went well, albeit quietly and with the audience pretty restrained. Courtney was too, saying virtually nothing until half way through. Then she started to relax and open up, encouraging people to get up and dance in their seats, which by the last couple of songs, everyone was.

She covered most of the current CD and much of the first including all the singles. I'd worried about missing the second guitar, but plainly a lot of touring has got this band tight, and Courtney's playing fills out the sound beautifully. The filled the big hall well without being screechy, marshalling feedback and chainsaw noise with aplomb. After a single encore (History Eraser), it was all over.

CB3 are playing Saturday at Sugar Mountain  today, just before the Dirty Three, then they're off to Europe once more. They played at least one new song, and I reckon a new CD must be in the recording phase. The Grammies are up soon, here's hoping that she gets to walk away with a little gold record player and that the Courtney wagon rolls on in 2016.

Charlie Marshall's Body Electric /Ron Peno and the Superstitions Gasometer Tuesday 18/1

A line up like this gets the old Gaso displaying sold out signs at 8pm on a mid-holidays Tuesday. Walking in I was struck by how familiar the audience seemed, a few famous faces, lots of the inner city cognoscenti from over the past couple of decades and a few familiar mugs that I hadn't seen in a long while. Plainly this was going to be one of those gigs. 

Ron Peno hits out early, going on around 830 - his band are pumping, although frankly the mix is a little muddy, and his oh so familiar voice hides a lot of the lyrics. Ron is a showman, whether it's playing to 20 odd punters at a small pub in Castlemaine with Kim Salmon, a big house at Shadow Electric doing Died Pretty songs, or here, playing to people with whom he feels at home. 

He gives it his all, crooning, shouting, squealing and singing his guts out on new and newish material. The passion is still there, as his the tone and timbre of his voice. He writhes on stage to the instrumental breaks in his inimitable style, arms weaving, back bent, face scrunched up in concentration. 

He's not ever really been away, but he's also back as good as ever, his voice having lost none of its tone and distinctive angst. Some of the slower numbers were particularly moody and effective, and the band were solid and dynamic, slow or fast. His new single Kid Gloves is due out any day now and well worth a listen. 

After the usual cfat (compulsory friggin’ around time) Charlie and the Body Electric (v2.0) started banging out songs. They're very bass driven this particular version, with Brian Colechin relentless. They're effectively a three piece mostly, although Tim from the Superstitions helped out on piano at times. So powerful was Brian's playing that they managed to bounce the amp head off the speaker box twice in three songs, before gaffering it down amidst general bemusement and a 10 minute break in proceedings. A few more songs then Charlie announces that it was time for Body Electric v1.0 to take over. 

You can sense that many in the crowd have been waiting for this combo - Brian Hooper from the Beasts of Bourbon on bass, sitting gentlemanly in the back, playing a much more relaxed style than the aforementioned Brian C - Jim White from the Dirty Three caressing the drums, looking for all the world like a retired Greek wedding band drummer, but carefully and forcefully accenting Charlie's singing and playing - and Warren Ellis (Dirty Three/Bad Seeds) on violin, keys and piano, rounding out a powerhouse outfit. Despite these songs being 20 or more years old and only having had a few rehearsals, these guys fell into gear quickly and thoroughly. They take their craft seriously, and had a bigger gradient of emotion and sheer power than v2. 

I hadn't seen Charlie play since before the first incarnation of Body Electric, when he was first going solo post the demise of Harem Scarem, one of the great couldabeens of Mebourne indie rock. In those days he was heavily early 70s rock influenced, doing Rod Stewart covers and Rolling Stones licks. That's of course long gone, but he's essentially still the geeky smart kid from school, who's unsure just quite why the cool kids suddenly love him. Self-deprecatingly funny and awkward - "these songs are about girls who didn't love me" - he at times summons up Jonathan Richman with songs about not liking maccas, or why ‘she's like that’; and others Leonard Cohen.

But his intensity is his own. Charlie acts out his songs on stage, pushing every part of his being into the lyrics, his choppy, accented guitar playing strung across the words in counterpoint. Like Ron Peno, he has his own way of moving around a stage, and a minute after seeing him I was brought back to how he played and sang years ago - he's refined it a lot, but what you see onstage is the real Charlie, exposed, hurt, confused and sometimes angry as he navigates life and love. 

This was a gig that could've gone wrong a few times, with not only the bouncing bass amp, but the inevitable messing around that comes with swapping out a band mid set (changing drums, basses etc) - "who thought this was a good idea? You did Charlie!" Through it all Charlie Marshall's honesty and down to earth humour kept us going, even during the excruciating chat while the bands changed over and he explained how Warren, Brian and Nick had asked him to detail who was the inspiration behind every love or hate song. 

Charlie was there to launch a compilation CD of his Body Electric work. On the strength of the band last night this is a great set of songs. Body Electric v2.0 are set to play around a bit in coming weeks, keep your eyes out for them and get an earful.  

Next up to review will be Courtney Barnett at the Palais this Friday.

Summer of Soul – Mossvale Park, Leongatha Saturday 9^th January

Nicky Bomba is becoming the James Brown of Australian Ska. He wields total control over the Melbourne Ska Orchestra, with a raised eyebrow, a lifted hand, a couple of fingers pointed up, he gets them to belt out stops, starts, exclamations and fanfares at will. He has us in the audience under his sway too, from the very first song, as the band march in to find their chairs and parade across the stage blasting out a ragged riff, he gets us to applaud on cue. Later we battle the band, with Nicky as a Bugs Bunny like maestro – flicking his hand across and back, raising a finger, making a gesture, we sing and chant and yell in time, facing off against the band.

His band always keep one eye on Nicky and one on their charts - there were 24 musicians on stage most of the time (they perform with between 14 and 34 at any gig) – three drummers/percussionists who rotate (plus Nicky of course who is a brilliant drummer on his own and proves that with a  solo piece about 2/3 of the way into the set), an MC (in true SKA style), a “proper” singer, Pat Powell, two guitars, bass, keys, Clarinet, four saxes, plus a barry – baritone sax, four trombones ( who spent a lot of time prancing around stage waving their ridiculous looking instruments in the air), four trumpets, and of course Nicky. It’s amazing that not only did they make it all on stage at once but that they made it look like there was space to burn, dancing and grooving the whole night away.

The MSO is an entertainment experience, in some ways the songs are the least important part of the show, although a number of them deal with indigenous issues and other matters close to Nicky’s heart. They also play mostly originals – with a couple of old ska classics from Jamaica. It is an act rather than a band in the strict sense, you go to become a part of the show, to jump, to ska dance, to chant and clap along. They were undoubtedly the highlight of a very busy day at Mossvale, and the audience lapped it up.

The Summer of Soul has been going for 16 years now and has a fiercely loyal local community attendance, a lot of ring-ins from Melbourne plus one mad bastard from Manchester who came to see the MSO and got to dance on stage for his troubles. Unlike many other regional festivals which are aimed at Melburnians wanting a day in the country or several, this one really does have a community feel to it and is family friendly in the truest sense. Kids danced up the front all day and were as much a part of the crowd as adults. While everyone was very happy, there wasn’t a hint of the crowd being out of it in the way you so often see at other festivals. That doesn’t mean it was twee or lame either – it was just a show where everyone was welcome and made to feel so, because it is organised locally and put together with pride and love.

The day started at 2pm with the Melbourne Mass Gospel Choir – around 30 people on stage with featured soloists from the group and Kylie Auldist as well (who was on stage more than anyone that day). A lot of fun, even if gospel ain’t your thing, there were some great solos and the choir does warm things up.

Olympia followed up – ( I have resolved to never use the term “quirky” to describe an artist btw) – she has her own sound - a pastiche to me of 80s indie pop and more up to date stylings - and made some new fans today, although there was relatively little conversation from her about the music, she just let it speak for itself. Be interested to hear her album when it is released later this year.

Emma Donovan and the Putbacks were up next, belting out actual, well, soul music. Emma channels her idols – Aretha, Diana, Martha and company to belt out some great pumping soul sounds. Joined for a few songs by Kylie Auldist, the harmonies really lifted those songs into a different gear. A highlight was singing a Ruby Hunter song in Ruby’s language. Soul with soul you might say.

Dorsal Fins (“genre shifting alt-pop goodness”) played a fun set – by now the expected soul HQ (horn quotient) was starting to rise, with a trumpet at the centre of a few songs joined by sax. Featuring members of Saskwatch and other local bands, Dorsal Fins’ poppy dance music got the crowd up and bopping, even if they were mostly unfamiliar with the songs and the band.

Saskwatch followed hot on their heels with singer Nkechi Anele writhing in time and singing her heart out. Moving from being a nine piece horn driven soul outfit to a lean six piece pop band has not hurt their stage presence, nor their songs at all. There was I think more energy in the band than maybe previously too, with a noticeably rockier feel to the set. They, especially guitarist Rob Muinos, seemed to be channelling the Who and other high energy rock acts in their stage show, climbing the speaker tower for a song, and ending the set with a fun display of coordinated guitar and bass throwing. In a nice moment Rob (who grew up in South Gippsland) paid tribute to a local teacher who had inspired him out of a bad place as a teenager by thrusting a Buddy Guy CD into his hands.

The show ended with The Bamboos featuring Tim Rogers for a set of great funky tunes. The Bamboos really deserved their headliner status, even if the crowd had started to thin a touch as quite a few left to get out before the inevitable traffic snarl that occurs at the end of the night at festivals. Their playing and the sound was a touch above many of the other acts and the singing from Kylie Auldist (the hardest working singer in Mossvale that day) was terrific. I like everyone else am a big Tim Rogers fan, but I kinda felt that he doesn’t really add that much to the Bamboos. I’m not convinced that his style and voice tone really gel that much with the band, but that’s just me I guess, everyone else was right into it. He may also not have been in his best form that night either, repeatedly saying “you can’t lose with the Bamboos”. Overall they took on the unenviable challenge of following Nicky Bomba’s amazing theatrics well and flew through a great set of songs to round out the night.

As an aside I’d like to just note that the lighting was highly effective too once it got dark enough to be seen. Too often you go to see a band with so many lights that it’s just all bright and doesn’t have an impact. The lights at Mossvale were subtle and really lovely with the white stage roof showing them off beautifully.

See you all at Mossvale Summer of Soul 17 next January.

Leaning on a Zimmer Frame…..

I have seen the future of rock music, and it's a Zimmer frame. Rock and roll is dead; or at least it's in a retirement home.

Rock was the go to means of expression for a couple of generations through the 50s 60s, 70s and 80s. Even Nirvana and their pals in north western USA in the 90s squeezed extra life out of the formula and injected a much needed dose of aggression and angst. Rock music personified rebellion, the frustration of youth bursting out in an angry 3 minutes of blistering noise. 

Elvis was a living pelvic testament to the power of youth and sexual energy. The Beatles a sugar coated version of the same energy, pouring out in screams, teenage orgasms and wet concert seats all over the world. John famously said that the Australian tour of 1964 was Fellini’s 9 1/2 - even a recent documentary on the tour aired on the ABC had a broadly grinning Jenny Kee bragging about her sexploits with the fab four.

Rock right into the 70s was bristling with menace to the established order. It was associated with youth rights and with the peace movement (overtaking the use of folk music which had been geared to protest songs since the 30s and 40s). Kids all over the world listened to the premier DJs of their day playing new songs, from the Stones, (if ever a band lived on the outside it was these guys, a decades long performance art piece on partying and drugs), Neil Young, Dylan (a country rock artist post 1965 and Nashville), and many many more. Rock was everything their parents hated: long hair, flowery, flamboyant clothes, and songs about fast cars, girls, booze, sex, and drugs.

Music was what was discussed all day every day alongside the latest black and white telly shows. Fans damn near fought each other for supremacy – Beatles v Stones, Sherbert v Skyhooks (nice boy pop rock v wild boys personified). Music and more pertinently Rock Music was important to us all. Countdown was fought over and compulsory viewing for any teenager and most 20 somethings all through its life. Songs’ meanings were dissected and analysed into a coma – we thought that it damn well meant something, although what that was no one was really able to elucidate that well.

“The Man” in the persona of record company execs did their best to kill that sort of danger in the 70s as West Coast and Prog Rock took over, stifling the aggression in favour of solos and acceptably smooth music, but there was always an undercurrent. Patti Smith, the Velvets, New York Dolls, the Saints, Ramones and eventually the Sex Pistols restoked the flames of discontent, bellowing their rage and frustrations into a new fire – Punk and then New Wave/NoWave/PostPunk.

Again the later 80s ground down our spirits in a melange of coke, pop, big snare drums and bigger hair, underwear as outwear, cock rock and a general masquerade of anger hiding a deeper contentment with life. Then the US grunge boom erupted and gave us a new lease of bile. That too dissipated over time, as alt music became pseudo mainstream, even bleeding into country.

The splintering of musical styles into more and more precise sub genres meant that the common language of rock music in the 50/60/70/80’s has been left behind. Rock music in its most powerful forms is no longer a shared experience for a younger generation. We love bands as much as ever, but they simply aren’t as overwhelmingly important to our culture as they once were. Rock music no longer sets any agenda that is widely accepted.

Rock music is now the music of Dave Warner’s Suburbs for real. It is the soundtrack of parents, increasingly grandparents and even great grandparents. The video linked to here is indicative as it is a middle aged Dave banging out the song to an audience of largely the same age group. Rock is largely the domain of boomers and Gen X. Gigs of reformed 70s 80s and 90s bands are everywhere, feeding off an older audience’s nostalgia. That doesn’t mean that many of these gigs aren’t as great as ever – The Models have shown that they can still be as tricksy as ever they were and many other Aus 80s acts are doing great shows. That’s not the point though – it is that they are now sideshow acts, catering to a niche audience.

Sadly Rock is too attached to boomers to be relevant to their children or grandchildren. It is rapidly becoming the baroque music of the next century, a moribund format that exists in the ears of a relatively small number of listeners while the mainstream has passed it by. In times to come rock will be referred to in a similar way to the way that many talk about Jazz music now – niche, difficult to appreciate and only known to a few cognoscenti, despite its highly popular and effervescent past role.

It is warming to see that much of rock’s royalty refuses to age gracefully. Keef’s portrait in his attic must be a skeleton by now as he swathes himself in scarfs, smokes and pirate costume, while Ronnie Wood always seems to still have much younger women in his entourage. Ozzie Osbourne can barely stagger on stage, but Sabbath are touring  - how long will it be before one of them dies of a heart attack brought on by booze and pills, on stage during a superannuation fund tour?

Where has the zeitgeist moved? There’s an argument that gaming is to Millennials what music was to Boomer and Gen x; social media too. The forms of discourse have moved on. Rock music is a rump. Mind you it’s a damn fine rump – current artists are still writing and performing brilliant music, it has just lost the power to drive our culture forward in the same dominating manner it has done for the past 40 years.

So let’s drag out our Zimmer frames, sit in our electric scooters and terrorise everyone on the footpath of popular culture as rock music ages disgracefully, going to its retirement home waving a stick and yelling at everyone that passes by.

Marlon Williams and the Yarra Benders at The Substation Newport Friday 11^th December

Peter Paul and Mary Do Murder Ballads.

What a great menu of music Marlon Williams and crew dished up last night. It really was constructed like a degustation session. He rocked up in a North Melbourne footy jumper, having moved here from NZ a couple of years ago and done what all good new Melburnians do, chosen a religious affiliation.

First course: Marlon solo, crooning magnificently through The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, sounding like Roy Orbison had come back from the dead for an encore. Sometimes a man and a guitar are all it takes, a few strums, a couple of notes ringing out, a clear voice hanging mid-phrase in the air.

Second course: Marlon is joined by Aldous Harding, and the harmonies are delicious, like old brie that had melted in the sun. Her voice and his meld together with such seeming effortlessness it leaves us all momentarily shell shocked.

Next course: “Bluegrass!” announces Marlon, bringing on the Yarra Benders, Gus Agars on drums/mandolin, Dave Khan on violin, guitar and mandolin and Ben Woolley on slap ‘n’ electric basses. Humph. Bluegrass, damn, I'm not really such a bluegrass kinda person, but they are good. Very good. The harmonies here too are quite special. It's the voices that set these guys apart, they all sing well, but together the harmonies work to set Marlon’s unique voice off perfectly, adding to the overall sound in ways that surprise.

The main event: The band goes electric, both in instruments and energy. “Look what I've got here” says Marlon, a shiny green Telecaster. He's pretty pleased with himself, plainly, in an aww shucks way. They rip through a few lovely songs, with a Beatlesque feel to some of them. It's the harmonies, but more just the pleasure they derive from the oldest rock format: two guitars, bass and drums. The songs were infectious, even if all the way through there was a dark element to them lyrically.

Aldous is called back on to sing "her song", but there's a problem, Marlon’s acoustic guitar is making awful buzzes and clicks. While everyone pfaffs around looking for a solution, she “takes one for the team” and gives us a fun fact: "Ocean rats are the only rat that won't take a grape". She intones it seriously, drily, definitively; then moments later "you know that's not true of course". Her sly wit belies her serious demeanour and turns what could've been an awkward 5 minutes of CFAT (compulsory frickin’ around time) into a triumph of humour and goodwill as the others chime in boyishly and we are all totally charmed.

“One more, just one more song” says Marlon, many times laughingly and we all cry and plead.... The last song is the great Hello Miss Lonesome and the band stomp off to applause. We have just had our dessert, but there is still more.

Coffee and cheese is on offer in the encore, a practice that still does my head in. Why not simply say, this is my last song, I'm not coming back, or I'm doing an extra two songs then we won't be back, thanks for coming... The encore ritual is weird, especially in Melbourne where audiences are often restrained, but go beserk for an encore, almost out of the blue.

What a cheese platter it is though. A Marlon solo song: When I was a Young Girl. Took me back to the Green Man in the 70s, or what I imagine the 60s folk scene in Greenwich Village was like. Followed by a three part harmony piece with Ben and Aldous that is just a delight – Peter, Paul and Mary do murder ballads. Finally the true finale, a Nick Cave style song and Screaming Jay Hawkins cover – Portrait of a Man. A tour de force of eerie guitar rock, Marlon, guitar free and swinging the mic around like he's been doing this all his life. For me, totally the highlight of a show that had several peaks already. After a meal like that you have to sit back and just let it all digest.

I'd never seen Marlon before this, nor even heard his music other than a quick listen to Dark Girl, his single. When he came out solo to do The First Time, I was hooked, a slight hiccough in the bluegrass section, but we got over that, and as the night wore on I was more and more into the breadth and depth of what he can do. A couple of niggles here and there were minor: his very powerful voice can get piercing if he's not totally on top of his mic technique.

The harmonies were ethereal all the way through, faultless and brilliant. They stand out because most acts I see don't pay them enough attention, or lay them on too thickly. They really make the difference, especially when his own voice is so lovely and enticing. Their voices are all unusual these days too – they manage to sounds both anachronistic and fresh, harkening back to the 60s and that well-spoken folky tone that the Seekers used in one song, then dust bowling it up in the bluegrass section, evoking many different great singers, but imitating none. His sound is truly his own.

This was unfortunately the last stop on his Oz tour, they're all heading off to the USA now. The buzz around Marlon is meant to be huge and it's totally deserved. He's in it for the long haul. Marlon’s first solo album is available now in Australia and NZ and will be released in the USA in Feb 16.

Get Real – Authenticity In Popular Music.

Ever since corporate BS artists cottoned on to the notion of authenticity as a means of inspiring your staff, the notion of being true to oneself has been a shocking mess. A quick Google of it brings up a mess of vomit inducing motivational posters all designed to have us fooled into giving our souls to the company; man.

In music it's always been a vexed issue. Where do we start? Was Elvis inauthentic because he sang what was traditionally black people’s music? Were the Beach Boys inauthentic because they ripped off Chuck Berry shamelessly to create a new genre? Were the Beatles inauthentic in slavishly covering Little Richard and others?  Plainly no, they started as fans and built their own, newer, music from that base.

Why am I even bothering about this? It’s an old canard. But it just keeps coming back like a zombie. Steve Albini certainly seems to subscribe to a notion that there is “authentic” music art and the inauthentic production of pop. Last night at the Wheeler Centre it was the ongoing theme of his talk, which was interesting, amusing and touched on many facets of his stellar career in making music.

He also spent some time on the other chestnut that he is “just an engineer” and it is entirely up to his musician employees as to how the songs turn out. Without going into this in detail, it is plain that he does have influence on how a recorded piece of music sounds, and while I’m sure he refrains from making overt structural suggestions, and his ideology is consistent and well thought through, in the end there are reasons that he is sought out to help “produce” music. He is no Svengali, but it is after all a spectrum.

Anyway, back to gettin’ real. It also came into mind the recently when seeing CW Stoneking, a bloke from Katharine, and lately Melbourne, who plays US roots music, sings in the voice of a 1920s sideshow huckster, and carries that accent/style over into his speech, on stage at least. The contrast with his support act, Peter Bibby was stark. Peter sings in deep WA strine songs about local pubs and experiences on the ‘goon.

So who's authentic, or the more authentic, of them? I should at this point say that I'm not trying to pick on either of these two guys, just using them as examples to illustrate what Steve Albini was saying.  Doubtless he would see both as authentic because they are not mass produced pop.

By what standard do we judge what is authentic? If it is the one which says that they have to have lived it to be it, then I think both are likely to fail. I don't know Peter Bibby's background, but I suspect that he didn't really live an extended period as an itinerant drunk, but that he's observed and met some of these guys and was inspired to write about them. CWS was plainly not born a sharecropper in Tennessee or Alabama. So if the standard is facts, then they, and by extension most artists, fail to meet the authenticity test.

Let’s look at Credence Clearwater Revival for example, a band who really got the whole notion of swamp rock going…..without ever going to the Bayou. I doubt that they have been accused of being inauthentic. Or someone who is I think often implicitly derided for his inauthenticity (i.e. professionalism) - Glen Campbell. Glen was a studio muso, part of the famed west coast fraternity called the Wrecking Crew. He played on nearly all the major Beach Boys albums and darn near anything else that came out of LA in the early to mid-60s. Perhaps unfairly excluded from many of the greatest guitarist of all time lists due to his smooth country style and melodic soloing, Glen went on to sing many of the late 60s defining pop ballads – (By the Time of Get To Phoenix, Galveston, Wichita Lineman etc.). By the Albini criteria, these are manufactured pop music. Yet they sound full of emotion and convey pain, loss, loneliness and love.

I don’t believe that direct experience, politics, or means of production create an “authentic” piece of music.

At the risk of getting an inbox full of laugh mail, I think that Taylor Swift is as authentic a performer as say The Pixies ever were. I take Steve Albini’s point that many of his early contemporaries who actively sought commercial success have faded away after frustration at the hands of the music industry machine. I’d dare to add that several times as many of the now forgotten young bands that also tried to keep going in the non-industry sense have also faded out of view for ever due to simple economics. So I don’t think that this is the marker of authenticity and that “authentic” bands are more worthy of long term success/existence. Sometime it’s just because they have perspicacity to the extreme. I’ve seen it in the business world too – the guys that have mediocre talent and ideas who just keep on at it forever often seem to win out in the end, irrespective of how smart they are or what great ideas they don’t have. No, I’m not going to start that fight by naming those that I think meet this criteria in music, they know who they are. Part if it is simply that practice makes better, if not perfect, in any case and we tend to culturally underrate craftsmanship often in music against emotion and impact.

The whole notion of the artist as authentic and only worthy of respect if they have lived some version of experience in which they suffer for their art is a complete Romantic wank. Yet we keep returning to it as a touchstone. Why is it so comforting? I thought that Punk music and more pertinently New Wave/Post Punk tried explicitly to debunk that rubbish with the whole DIY ethos that said: we are all capable of producing music – so therefore do it. On the same track, the internet media explosion has all been about democratisation of the means of culture production and consumption so that we are all consumers and producers of words – to a lesser or greater extent. And yet we continue to fetishise authenticity in music and other art forms. It’s time we moved on.

So where do we go from here? Is authenticity like meaning and beauty – in the eye of the beholder, or the ear of the listener? Is it just a construct that we use to convince ourselves that we are subscribing to something worthy as well as being a soothing piece of ear candy? That’s a conclusion I can’t escape. A song that has meaning for me – because when I hear it a range of memories, associations and feelings get generated – is just a piece of fluff to you.

An artist that I see as authentic, the voice of his generation, will often turn out to be some privileged white boy from a good home, who decided to enjoy poverty porn in some sort of faux rebellion. Does that make his music less authentic or meaningful? Hmm. Not if the song still conjures up the same emotions. If my judgement was all about my perceptions of his politics then it may lose its meaning.

At the far end of this scale is the Milli Vanilli debacle. Now that is truly inauthentic because it is a complete fraud, but even so it is only a matter of degree away from session muso backed bands that have many hits – the degree in this case was that they did basically nothing on their own records and lied about it. I imagine that is one case on which we can all agree.

Maybe the only one. Pretty much everything else is up for grabs. I’ve already cited TayTay as a good example of authenticity. It hurts to say so because her music is not meaningful to me, but I think even Katy Perry probably is….. Munch on that Steve Albini. Let the derision flow.

Zikora.    Thornbury Theatre Thursday.

At the Thornbury again, downstairs in the more intimate Velvet Room. A space that is well suited to 100-200 people, carpeted and curtained so that it rolls the sound nicely through without being harsh. One of the reasons I like coming here is that it’s not as ‘sticky carpet’ as a lot of the other venues, and you can have a seat. Ideal for enjoying reflective music.

Kathy Hinch was up first, just her and a guitarist....and a good suite of pedals. Her voice is lovely, nice R&B, doing I think mainly originals. They made effective use of their technology, looping simple slap and click rhythm tracks made by the guitarist to power the sound. That left him able to play minimally, very smoothly complementing her singing. Kathy made good use of some vocal effects (octaver/chorus) to fill out the choruses of the songs. She also looped some backing tracks in a song or two. This really was a case of less is more, and I think she is someone to watch.

Andy McGarvie band was next up. He has a residency Wednesday nights at the Retreat in Brunswick through the next few weeks. His voice and songs were very appealing, smooth with a slight edge to them; lots of songs about messed up relationships. His guitar work is slick, and the rest of the band: another acoustic guitar, melodica and percussion, worked well together. They are all obviously great musicians. Andy said this was not his normal format, that they are a blues-rock band (his words) usually, and that the Wednesday night sessions would be a short set like this followed by his normal band. I'd really like to take a look at what he does with a full band. It could give his songs and band a bit more depth and scope, but that could just be my prejudice. My only real disappointment was that I've not long seen dozens of acts as good as or occasionally better than his, with almost exactly the same feel, sound and vocal style - in Nashville. If he could rise out of that slight sameness, you reckon he could just about crack it in the US. He has the skills and I think, the songs, just needs that little something to set him apart. Look I know that sounds glib and harsh after one gig, but let's face it that's what we all do, record companies and the industry most of all. Like I said, check out his full band and make your own mind up.

It was Zikora's night, the launch of their EP Golden Thread, and the audience was in a large part their crew. I'd not seen them before and was excited to see what a group with harp, percussion and keyboards could do. They had specially prepared a big show, with 9 additional performers, so it felt like a big event.

I can feel really conflicted with these reviews. On one hand all of the players were technically musical beyond the imagining of many bands. Arrangements were well structured, thought through and not overblown.  Astro on horns (trumpet and I think euphonium) was particularly effective. His mute work in one of the early numbers quietly underlying the sound hauntingly. Owen on bass was a solid part of the mix, subtle and present but letting the three main players have the floor. Tumi MC, doing two hip hop slots added definition to those songs in a way that added modernity to the sound.

On the other hand much of the additional instrumentation was to me ineffective. It did feel like a case of inverse gestalt, the whole was perhaps less than the sum of its parts. They had traded off some level of spark and intimacy for intricacy of arrangements, and additional sounds. The guitar for example was in most cases not really adding anything great. Mike had one terrific solo in which he demonstrated his more than adequate chops (and air guitar face)  but otherwise I’d have not noticed his absence. Similarly the drums of Jacob, while good, tended to devalue the excellent percussion of Talia Browne, the key mover in the band and evening. Rachael Kim’s violin was likewise technically excellent, but arrangement-wise did not stand out enough to me. The backing vocalists were also redundant given that there are three great lead vocalists already providing harmonies through the songs. If anything Mike’s BVs were more valuable to the overall sound than his guitar work as his voice contrasted with the sweeter female ones. And…for what I can only think of as novelty value Zikora elected to bring on a tap dancer in one of their songs. He was again great, but didn’t add much to the band, other than as a distraction.

So that’s the downside, where a bunch of really terrific musicians, playing at the top of their game, somehow manage to combine to produce an overall impression that is less striking and effective than what the simple three piece may have been. I know that some of this is just a question of taste, but to me was key that a day later I can barely recall any of the songs individually, other than the single they had melded into a whole – beautifully played, sung well, but not distinctive.

Emily Rosner on harp and Elisa Scott on keyboards did most of the heavy work singing and their voices mesh well together, lifted when Talia also joins on choruses. The single, Golden Thread finished the show; it is much more a multi-instrumental work in the studio, and I guess that’s what drove bringing in the expanded line up. I’ll be looking forward to seeing them play again as a three piece and listening to the tracks that are on the EP and also live videos from other sets with a smaller backing band – the spaces in the songs resonate against the harp and keys and allow the listener room to savour. That will have to tide us over until their next show.

Next Friday I’m looking forward to seeing Marlon Williams in Newport.

Interrobang – Asking the big questions?      Athenaeum Theatre  Melbourne  Saturday

What is an Interrobang? It is apparently a character: Wikipedia – “A sentence ending with an interrobang (‽) asks a question in an excited manner, expresses excitement or disbelief in the form of a question, or asks a rhetorical question.” It’s an exclamation mark and question mark combined into one character. I have to admit I’d never heard of it before and I can’t say that it’ll change my life. It really just seems like it’s a space saving way of saying “WTF?” on Twitter.

The Wheeler Centre have used it as a thematic way of getting a huge grab bag of clever people in front of us to talk about stuff. Stuff you say, what stuff? A number of the question were posed by the public and voted on in a process stretching over a period prior to the event. A number I’d guess were organised well in advance in order to get the excellent list of authors, scientists, business people and generally all round clever bods along. Some of the talks had substantial entrance fees, and appeared quite serious, such as Yanis Varoufakis and Mary Kostakidis on “Why marry capitalism and democracy?”

I’m a bit cheap though and as I only saw this event a week or so ago, I decided to stick only my little toe in the water and visit some of the free sessions on the Saturday. The format of these was simple – a guest speaker talks for around 15 minutes to a question, then there is time for audience interaction.

The rather daunting question: “Is the attainment of physical beauty a classist pursuit?” with Anne Summers was my first foray. Anne started by saying that she really didn’t understand the question nor the notion of “classist” which got all of us who had a slight case of ‘this looks like it’s going to be over my head and very political’ nerves laughing quietly and breathing with relief.

Anne spoke to some of the lengths that people are prepared to go in the pursuit of physical perfection – e.g. “whiteness” – and a long list of don’ts from Dr Jill Tomlinson’s website was read out to squeals of nervous laughter as various butt whitening creams and home remedies for skin lightening were placed on the don’t do list. With only 15 minutes to speak, Anne’s survey was brief and, I would have liked to see her talk a bit more explicitly about why these desires were so omnipresent – politics? Commercial imperatives? What is it that drives our insecurities?

All in all though, we were off to a good start, although I think that audience questions were a little awkward and didn’t maybe generate some more tangential discussion – this was true of all the talks I saw. This was entertainment with a rhetorical twist that did get us thinking, however slowly.

Next up for me was Upulie Diviskera: How does the world end? I’ve followed Upulie on Twitter for a while and was interested to see a longer form communication from her as a well-known and witty science communicator (in addition to her day job as a molecular biologist). She didn’t disappoint, coming up with an amusing list of ways in which human civilisation and/or the physical world will end. This talk had a generally younger ore at least more mixed, audience than that for Anne Summers, and they asked questions that showed that in some cases at least they were very scientifically literate.

Upulie’s list varied from Judgement Day, to interstellar collision, pandemics, climate change, bug eyed monsters and the big daddy of them all; the sun expanding into a red giant star and burning our poor planet into a lump of molten rock. It was equal parts great science and amusing silliness, entertaining and enlightening.

Final splash for me was Alan Brough speaking on “Why are so many people intimidated by poetry but love song lyrics?” Alan leapt on stage, looking like a long lost member of Split Enz, barefoot and impersonating everyone’s least favourite English teacher from high school. He shared with us his family fascination with poetry, with a father who was wont to leap into a bit of Robbie Burns (in brogue) at any occasion, frightening the littlies. He got it spot on though, poetry scares many of us because it is a thing that has to be studied, to be interpreted and to be thought over. That makes it feel a bit elite no matter what the poem is. There was a great short exchange with an English teacher in the audience who pointed out that slam poetry was loved by her students and how it relates to hip hop culture.

Alan finished by reciting a punk song he wrote at 14 (which he said he had not read over in advance so that we could experience either the pure humiliation or true greatness of it with him). His ‘reading’ of it was worth coming for alone, even without the preceding 28 minutes of talk and questions.

Alan’s session was unique and showed how a comedian/performer comes to these things in such a different way to a journalist or academic. He had clearly rehearsed and performed the session. He used the stage, his physicality, and his ability to hold an audience’s attention quite differently to the way in which Anne or Upulie had spoken. This was not necessarily better or worse, but certainly had an impact, got the audience engaged immediately, and had us laughing while thinking.

So they’re just a few snippets from a large program, which included many people who I’d have liked to have seen too. I was slightly surprised and a little disappointed in that the sessions I saw were not by any means full. It was great that they were intimate, but I wonder why more of us weren’t excited to be a part of this. Are we intimated by reading/thinking/writing events in the same way we are of poetry? In this case we need not have been – the questions were entertainment first, thought coming in just behind. The speakers I saw were all accessible, thoughtful, interesting and varied. If we as a city are self-selecting by assuming this would be “too hard” then we are missing out on something great. Maybe the Wheeler Centre’s marketing was a bit limited or only reached the usual suspects? Who knows, but I hope that they repeat this concept, even if they ditch the urky name.

I could easily see this format working in a pub or café or bar on a Sunday afternoon – get a question, bring along a speaker, and watch the discussion flow afterwards. Or maybe even a half hour TV show – Q and A compressed and less politically focused. There is certainly a lot of meat here which the Wheeler Centre could use to expand upon. One thing is for sure – it has got me tuned into them more now – I’ll be watching to see what else comes up, and that has to be good for their aim of being “Melbourne’s home for smart, passionate and entertaining public talks on every topic.”

Click here for the Wheelers upcoming Events calendar. The Interrobang website is here if you want to see what you missed. At a guess I’d say it may get a run next year.

Robert Forster                                  Thornbury Theatre Friday 27th

For a change, I made sure that we got there early to catch the Thin White Ukes, a threesome doing Bowie on of course, ukuleles. Fun, nicely sung, carefully arranged, slightly tongue in cheek versions of classic songs. It's the second time I've seen them as support at a show, and I think this crowd was more receptive than last time, where the vibe was decidedly rockier, although the fate of warm up acts is always to play to 1/3 filled rooms.  They are certainly worth another listen.

Not long from her triumph at the “Horses” album show at the Melbourne Festival, Jen Cloher came on and immediately created a welcoming, homey feel in a big room with hundreds spread thinly through it still. I don't quite know how she did that. Playing mostly her own songs, telling a few short stories in introducing songs and drawing us in to her experience, then delivering the goods with just her acoustic guitar. I'm not even usually a fan of acoustic guitar solo sets, but the honesty and passion she put into her performance made that irrelevant. It felt like we were all sitting around her hearth, swapping stories and songs, laughing, commiserating and warming to each other.

Jen brought the Ukes back for the last two songs, bringing a wider dimension and some great harmonies into the music, finishing off on a high. Highlight songs: ‘Mt Beauty’ and ‘David Bowie Eyes’ from her last album In Blood Memory, plus a Gillian Welch cover whose title I didn’t catch. At the end she brought the Ukes back on and sang a couple of songs (one Needle in the Hay that she recently released with Courtney Barnett) with their backing – it ended the set with a flourish, and there was a lot of love in the room for her.

Then it was time for Robert Forster to come on. There’s so much baggage for me in seeing him play: memories of Go Betweens shows that are still in my best gigs of all time lists; his oddly uncanny resemblance to a cranky old boss and some of the memories that triggers; the fact that he's a recognised and awarded rock critic....it all adds up to make this feel a little more than just another night out to me.

He strode on, strapped on a lovely semi-acoustic guitar and launched into a song with the band (Scott on guitar/keys, Luke on bass, Matt on drums and Karin on violin/tambourine - they all sang too - non intrusive backing vocals that gave Robert's voice a soft cushion on which to rest). He was in form tonight, despite having not long driven up from doing a set at Queenscliff Music Festival, strumming determinedly at his instrument, his engaging voice telling tales of life in all its variations.

Robert always reminds me of both David Byrne and Jonathan Richman - I can hear their timbre in his voice, their concerns in his lyrics, their physical styles reflected in his stage presence. At once theatrical and self-effacing; serious, tempered with humour; both naïve and knowing he launched into a set mainly covering the new album, with a generous selection of songs from his long history.

A version of ‘Draining the Pool for You’ from Spring Hill Fair was an unexpected pleasure – lightly fleshed out and extended with tongue placed in cheek, bringing the audience into his world. ‘Head Full of Steam’, another oldie from Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express, didn’t quite hit the same mark, sounding a little more like a cover band version of his song (and maybe it’s just not the same without Tracey Thorn in the chorus).

The songs in which Robert played the semi-acoustic (i.e. electric) guitar seemed to gel much more as a band than those in which he swapped out for an acoustic, and had more depth and power in them. It could just be that a number of his acoustic guitar based songs have a sameness about the rhythm and strumming, but they didn’t affect me as much as some of the others in general with some exceptions like ‘I Love Myself (and I Always Have)’ and the single – ‘Let Me Imagine You’ – there is a fun little making of video for the new album Songs to Play on YouTube too here.

He covered a lot of ground with songs such as ‘Surfing Magazines’ from Rachel Worth, ‘Here Comes a City’ from Oceans Apart all featuring, and ‘Danger in the Past’ (title track of his first solo album) again showing Roberts theatricality and wry humour as he twisted the song about, directing the band when he wanted to stop and start. I saw Robert at WOMAD back in March and a lot of the same ground was covered in this set, but there he played with a string quartet, while here the full rock band really pushed his songs along and added power.

Like when he was with the Go Betweens, Robert’s shows have the power to connect with us in a very human way – despite being personally intense (or at least he appears that way) - what comes through on the stage is a love of playing and a frailty that asks you to warm to his performance. This radiated through the whole room (and I was sitting way up the back tonight). The audience called him back for two encores before they were satisfied.  He won’t be back in town for a while, as he has dates all through Europe ahead of him, but I hope that you got a chance to catch him this time around – it’s always a delight.

Later this week I’ll be seeing Zikora launch their new EP ‘Golden Thread’. That should be an interesting show – they are certainly different to a lot that’s around. Tickets and show details here.

22nd November 2015 - First published @dailyreview.com.au 

Feeling Horny? – Horns of Leroy at Catfish, Fitzroy.

There is a four letter word so upsetting that it can barely be mentioned in polite company. Otherwise adventurous music fans run a mile when they hear it. But today I’ve decided I have to see some …. Jazz….. There, it’s out now and I feel better.

Despite the fact that much of rock, r&b and popular music springs from this foundation, jazz has a not entirely undeserved reputation as latte sipping, chardonnay quaffing elitist esoteria. Endless solos from saxes, pianos, guitars and such are not the stuff of which fun is made. Nor is the washboard scratching, hallelujah shouting Dixie style much in vogue.

Granted, much of jazz is not easy to get into – it’s longish, complex and messy, even assaulting to the ears in ways that metal and alternative bands only dream of. I’m not here to apologise for all of that, nor to necessarily promote it – like any genre it has its fans, and critics. I’m more interested in when it intersects with the casual listener.

Something too I have noticed recently is the return of horn sections. Every second act seems to have a horn or two pasted on, or as with Horns of Leroy, it's all about the brass. Can't say I'm complaining though, trumpets and trombones are brilliant when played well and judiciously ... but, there's a part of my brain that when I'm going to see an instrumental act sighs inwardly... It often just ain't the same without singing....

So with all this in mind, I talked a friend into coming along to see the Horns of Leroy last night. They had played last week at Flinders St Station as one of the Melbourne Music Week events, and this was a Catfish 2nd anniversary party too. On paper it looked good….

...and it was. Big time. Forget labels, forget jazz and intellectual pish posh, these guys were there to blow and entertain. Crammed into a tiny corner of a small bar, better suited to a duo, they managed to fit in two drummers (snare and bass), sousaphone, two trombones, two trumpets and a guest clarinet. They blew hard, cheeks busily puffing, red faced and sweaty, and even apologised for being too loud, although let's face it, unamplified they'll never compete with Charlie Owens in full swing at a Beasts of Bourbon show.

Horns of Leroy have an unassuming, self-deprecating attitude to their show - "I don't even like us" joked Travis, the nominal front person. Lots of mini jokes about pictures and Tinder - these are a group of people who like each other and play for love. It works well for us as audience, keeping us in touch with them, part of the joke.

Musically, they are very proficient. The arrangements sound to me quite complicated, so I guess that means they practice them a lot, to make it feel off the cuff. I particularly liked the snare drum work of Daniel Berry. He tickled us with rim shots, kept up the beat, never overplaying, sympathetic to the rhythm of the horns.  The horn players (Travis, Nick, Ben and James plus special guest John Hunt on clarinet), were all really good, hard to single anyone out really, which is I think a compliment - they really play as a team. The core rhythm machine of Kyra (hey guys update your web page!) on sousaphone and Tim on bass drum anchored them firmly.

What did they play you ask? Well, it's sure New Orleans street big band inspired. There were a few songs that name check the Big Easy early on in the set. They played the obligatory 'Big Chief' and it rocked. It was great that they use this as a base to make excursions into other styles (they list Beyoncé as an influence) - both writing their own material and doing some inspired covers: Fats Domino's 'I'm Walking' (fair enough that's on genre), Toto's 'Africa' (wow, both funny and excellent), Brian Cadd/Loggins and Messina's 'Your Momma don't Dance', and to cap it off Marvin Gaye's 'Sexual Healing' which had us pissing ourselves laughing and dancing to a great groove simultaneously. 

Even better, there were snatches of weird-ass barbershop quartet style singing in about half the songs, just half a dozen or so lines usually chanted (in harmony), tongues firmly in cheek. This ain't high falutin' music, though I strongly suspect these guys have trained for years to make it sound so easy.

So my fears were groundless, instrumental jazz gigs can be engaging, light hearted and fun for all. Catfish is a nice small bar too, welcoming and with some great hot pepper Philly Steaks. Worth going back for both when you can.

Click here to see Horns of Leroy’s gig list and here for the NYE on the Hill show list of bands at which they are playing – looks like a great night.

Next week I’ll be seeing Robert Forster. It’s unfortunately the last stop on his current tour in Aus before he heads to Europe. He is also playing the Queenscliff music Festival during the day on the 27^th and a few other shows this week before the Thornbury – Mullumbimby, Katoomba and Oxford St, Sydney – the list is here if you want to catch him and compare notes with me.

Twangitude! – Cash Savage and the Last Drinks/ Henry Wagons and the Only Children

Max Watts Melbourne Friday 13^th

Coincidentally after returning from Nashville and writing about the Nashville Grinding Music Machine, I got the chance to see Henry Wagons, not long returned also from there and Cash Savage, both of them  playing on the country twang side of the music ledger. This was an AWME gig and the audience was much like that at Americana Fest – lots of industry peeps as well as punters ordinaire like me. These showcases are a big part of the music festival scene, but I’ve got to say they feel a little contrived. The sets are short and the comments from the stage can be focused on the business. It’s all a bit “in” if you ask me.

We missed the first two sets (Ruby Boots and Raised by Eagles – click the links for their upcoming shows) – sorry, as they were reportedly great.

Cash Savage and the Last Drinks were in full swing as we arrived. She prowled the stage like an angry bear in a cage, head down, resentment seething. Despite some average sound quality (lyrics hard to hear really) they rocked it. They really feel and play like second country cousins of the Bad Seeds. They brood and menace, with a swinging fiddle ringing in and out of the songs. This is what Alt-Country means in its heart – powerful bass, economically piercing guitar, banjo and fiddle, driven by sympathetic drumming. Cash’s stage presence is charismatic and real – there’s no sense that she’s putting on a show, but that she’s singing her guts out on subjects that have some connection to her psyche. Honestly, can’t recommend seeing her enough – she’s playing in Adelaide next week – go if you can.

Henry Wagons and the Only Children were the nominal headliners at this show. Henry has been recording in Nashville and also was at Americana Music Festival - I missed seeing him there so figured this was a good chance to catch up. Maybe it was the nature of this event, maybe it was a crowd that had surprisingly thinned by the time he came on, maybe he wasn’t really ready to go (this was his first show with the Only Children). Don’t know why but this wasn’t a great gig.

Henry has a beautiful, syrupy strong singing voice. He can croon the hell out of a tune and sang the songs really well. The Only Children were great – Matt on guitar laid down some gorgeous slide, and rockin’ country licks, the bass and drums did what they had to with economy and drive and Siobhan on keys added nicely to the show. But this is Henry’s gig and he has plainly learnt from Nashville: he spent lots of time between songs in talking about the AWME event, and bigging it up – tick for solidarity. He told us many times who he was – a real Americanism, and one that grates on this listener. I know who you are, and by the 3^rd or 4^th repeat I was wishing I didn’t maybe. They were minor annoyances though and overall didn’t really affect the show.

I think the main failure of the set was the songs. I must admit I’m not a long term follower, so maybe I’m stating the obvious, but I just get the feeling that his songs were taking the piss without being actually funny, and that doesn’t really match the timbre of his singing. The audience loved “Willie Nelson”, but it didn’t do it for me. I just felt a burst of insincerity around a lot of the set. I can’t help but feel that his time in Nashville has go Henry focussed on the US market and how to “entertain” over just singing the guts out of something you care about (see Cash Savage above…).

So I came away feeling a bit like I was still in Nashville, and that’s not a great thing. Henry is so talented and a superb singer – I’m really hoping that he gets a better handle on material for his upcoming album release and the tour he has promised us for February – I’ll be going along to see if I was wrong. I sincerely hope I was. 

This week is Melbourne Music Week and the AWME conference -- it includes 'We Can Get Together '-- a symposium on the phenomenon of the 'Music City' and how Melbourne can become one. These sorts of events are popping up regularly in towns that consider themselves to be world “Music Cities” – SXSW in Austin is one that springs to mind.

With this in mind, I recently went to Nashville and attended the Americana Music Festival. This was very much a 'Music City' event, aimed a lot at the local industry and full of self-congratulation.

The positive part of this was that crowds were not excessive, and even pretty small at a lot of the shows. The negative was that it was full industry A&R types drinking the subsidised booze. Some things never change.

But what is Americana Music? It strikes me that it includes damn near everything expect Bouzoukis and Nigerian chicken scratch beats: Jazz, Country, Rock, etc. I’d always thought it was a focus on what we might call “roots” music -- mainly acoustically based rural sounds. If I was facetious I’d call it “anyone who sings in an American accent” music, but that would rule out Los Lobos and a few others from TexMex land.

So it’s pretty much whatever they decide it is on any given day -- a way of carving out a chunk of music for Nashville specifically to celebrate all that isn’t Country. It seems that Nashville wants to move out of that dead end niche -- profitable though still is -- because the Nashville music machine is starting to choke the life out of the body on which it feeds.

Nashville for singer-songwriters today is what Hollywood was in its '40s heyday for actors. They come searching for the dream.

I saw big and medium shows (some of which were fabulous, others colour by number recitations of hits), as well as a few open mic nights, which are incredibly important in this town.  At Douglas’ Corner Cafe, (one of the two top 'Open Mic' nights in town), there were 40, yes 40, acts to cover their two songs each in the evening. A total of 35 of the acts were white guys with acoustic guitars singing that peculiar Nashville country pop crossover material; three were white women doing the same stuff, though one played piano and one recited poetry (there’s always has to be one). It was very vanilla.

What was amazing was the homogeneity of the acts -- in looks, voice, material and even in attitude. “I’ve been in Nashville for around six-seven weeks and doing some demos,” was what most of them said. If this is new blood, then no wonder the end product is so often bland.

Sure, interesting acts do break out of these bounds, but for every one of these there are ten clones. It seems to me that Nashville’s music scene is business first and cultural/artistic issues come a distant second or third.

Nashville’s music biz takes up a few blocks where the real power is -- the big studios, booking agents and record companies in Music Square who run things: they determine who, why and what gets signed, recorded and played on radio too.

It’s the same sad story of what happened in the '40s and '50s when Country music stars built their power bases in Nashville so that their decisions became more driven by what could easily sell. Over time the honky tonks of Nashville's Broadway strip became institutionalised as downmarket tourist fodder, replacing venues where players honed their craft. The live scene has stagnated as floods of wannabees come to town while the old venues cater to a common denominator that values playing the canon over originality and energy.

While I love the history and the mood of Nashville as a place that celebrates (Country) music at its best, it seems to me to be in artistic decline; rather than renewing and reinvigorating, it pushes more pap pop.

So what’s the lesson for Melbourne to ponder this week? Melbourne considers itself the centre of Australian Music despite the fact Andrea Jean Baker, writing this week in the Conversation said: “The majority of the entertainment industry, music publishers, major record labels and studios are based in Sydney. Melbourne’s tech and start-up scene, whose links to the global music industry are critical, is still a dark horse in comparison to Sydney.” Yet Melburnians still think of ourselves as a global force – Courtney Barnett and Gotye are just two recent examples of Melbourne based acts taking on the world. Where does this come from?

Melbourne’s live music scene is one of the best in the world. It is diverse and has so far not fallen into the Nashville trap of honky tonks and big plastic venues. I’d say it is as good as or better than Austin’s, which is a smaller town than ours after all. The diversity of venues and types of music played here is something that we should aim to encourage. Good live music drives much of the rest of the infrastructure over time and the barriers to getting great sounds onto digital formats are getting smaller every year.

The best thing we can do to help Melbourne become or remain a Music City is support our small live venues --especially those in the inner city threatened by new development. We don’t need to develop our own “Melbourne sound” – for that way lives homogeneity and boredom. Get out there and see some live music whether it be thrash metal, folk, rock, pop, hip hop, jazz or classical.

For the next couple of months this column will be a place to see reviews and some news about the smaller acts that don’t get that sort of coverage regularly. In any week in Melbourne there are as likely to be as many people at small and medium gigs as there are at Melbourne Park seeing big touring shows.

There is a large regular audience for this music and we will do our best to cover some of it. We will focus on acts that are playing regularly so that you can read a bit then go and see them on their tours.

Disclaimer – the author has no links to any venue or venues. I’m just passionate about music and Melbourne.

Gon Boogaloo

CW Stoneking and Band at Thornbury Theatre (Friday 6^th November) 

****

We rocked up in time Friday to see Peter Bibby doing his sweary rants about bein’ on the ‘goon (or pigbag depending on where you’re from). Initially odd, and with a steel guitar that was thrashed as much as played, he was easy to warm to and funny while singing quite sad material about an itinerant, alcoholic life. From Midland WA, he’s well worth a look if you get a chance.

This was a slightly unusual show for the Thornbury, no seats and even better, no tables. Sold out, there must have been 5-700 punters there. It meant that we could for once get close and even… dance… yes I know it’s Melbourne and frowned upon, but some people do and did…. It was funny to watch a young woman taunting her very stiff and awkward friend into dancing (he never succumbed).

CW marched on stage with a sparkly new looking gold Fender Jazzmaster and steel guitar in hand, laid them carefully on the stage and picked up ... a banjo. Standing by himself and joking about the Melbourne tornadoes, he looked happy and comfortable, and he promised that it would be the last banjo song (and it was).

With Fender in hand, 2 piece horns (sax/trumpet and trombone), electric/stand-up bass, drums and four, yes FOUR backing singers (the omnipresent and delightful Vika and Linda, plus Maddy and Memphis Kelly), he launched into the set proper. Let me confess I came to this having heard very little of his material. Most of what I had heard really sounds like it was recorded in the back blocks of the USA, in the 1930s… which is I think a real shame, because live he is not like that at all – certainly not with this band.

In some ways unfairly typecast as a blues roots player, CW proceeded to take us on a musical tour from those blues ballads, via yodelling country songs, calypso, reggae and a hint of ska, 30s jazz, R&B (of the old pre rock n roll sort), gospel and soul. I’d love to hear a live album from this band because they were hot. The singers’ were deft and adorned the songs, percussion and drums were clear and supported CW, not overwhelming him, with professionally busy bass, and horns that added shade and melody without taking over the stage too often – this was definitely CW Stoneking and band: they all worked to show him off.

Not knowing the songs I really didn’t expect a lot from this show. I was totally wrong. He draws you in, playing superbly, jazz chord after jazz chord (great value for money there), deft and light of touch, with minimal if any guitar effects. While his songs don’t have a lot of lyrical depth (they’re a lot about jungles and lions, but I guess not being able to sing about how crap life is, is no real impediment to the blues), they are well honed and easy to follow. The band turned up the groove factor for the last third of the set after a few ballads – “because I live life leisurely”.

That was what got a lot of the crowd up and dancing – moving into R&B/soul and calypso, gospel moods. It was music for pleasure, to enjoy listening to, but more to move to, find your feet with. Channelling maybe a speakeasy club show (or at times a sideshow spruiker) CW took us through a tour of roots music and into the modern era, while maintaining his old world persona.

I believe that he is moving to the USA soon (I did hear one of his songs in a bar in New Orleans a few months ago – the barman pointed it out because I was Aussie and therefore should’ve known him…). They should lap him up, he is a real performer – if you get the chance on his current tour (dates left in WA at least this coming weekend), do yerself a favour….go boogaloo.

The Decline … and The Fall

Melbourne Festival Review: The Fall (Foxtel Festival Hub - Saturday 24^th October)

I have to confess that I came into this with prejudice aplenty. I saw The Fall on their, I think, first Australian tour at the lamented Club (maybe it was still the Jump Club then...) in Smith St, Collingwood. They were frankly godawful: Mark E Smith snarled at the crowd wearing an old Fair Isle jumper and looking like a clerk on day leave. We vowed never to repeat that experience and I’ve largely ignored them for the intervening 34 odd years and maybe 28 or so albums….

A friend suggested going to see them in their latest incarnation at the Melbourne Festival and I figured that they had survived this long, why not give it another shot? Expectations were low though as you would expect after the 1981 experience…..

After a pleasant enough wait eating at the Mesa Verde container and drinking their pink Tequila alcopops we were well proofed to enter the venue on time around 9pm.

Inside we waited… and waited …. and waited. The best part of an hour after the advertised time, some noise mostly resembling the squeaks from R2D2 wafted over the PA louder than the previously bland doof. The highlight had come around 5 minutes prior when someone shouted “I’m going home” loudly enough for everyone else to laugh in empathy amidst a general restlessness and incipient crankiness among us all.

At last the band wandered up and launched in to some frenetic beats (the drummer – Keiron Melling looking like a National Front reject - did a fabulous job of powering the night, bashing hard and keeping a ferocious beat up). Then from the bowels of the backroom Mark E Smith’s unmistakable Mancunian tones could be heard drifting across and eventually he appeared, mic in hand. He is you’ve got to admire, consistent. Having graduated from being a clerk, he was dressed now as that old geezer from the pub who is there from 5.01pm to closing every day – dressed in a dowdy old leather jacket, grey slacks and a light blue business shirt. Although only a few years older than me he already looked well into his dotage.

The overall sound was like time travel. They sounded like any number of acts I saw in the late 70s, early 80s, raw, visceral, incomprehensible and powerful. Lots of the first few rows were madly pogoing/dancing around – although my guess is that this was fuelled mainly by booze and the beats, nothing really to do with the actual tunes – it could’ve been as Mark is quoted as saying – “your granny on bongos and me” – no one really cared. He then proceeded to start doing what he spent around half the night at – messing with the on stage amps (turning them from say 4 to 13 over and over again), and playing with either some sort of Theremin or simply using the radio mic through an amp and feeding it back… (couldn’t really see exactly what he was doing as he tended to hide it from us with his body). I later noticed that he had a raft of papers with notes on that amp, so there was no question that what he was doing was planned, as chaotic (and ear splitting – I wished more than once for the good sense of my immediate neighbour who had thought to bring ear plugs) as it sounded.

Then it finally hit me what he must have been doing. Performance Art! It certainly wasn’t coherently music and lyrics (the music was great – as well as drums, the bass - Mark Spurr - was first class and the guitars – Peter Greenway - pretty ok, despite having to put up with the aforementioned amp messing). Mark was unintelligible all night, and for once I don’t think it was the PA/mixing.

Secure that it was all one enormous pisstake on the process of performing and bands and the industry I settled in to assess the balance of the show, watching Mark E Smith cast his eyes over the audience to see if we were in on it or not and even (in my imagination) noting that I was refusing to applaud or be appreciative. Then he undid all my expectations again by coming back for encores. WTF? I mean if you’re really going to stick it up the notion of going to a gig then the time honoured ritual of encore calling is the one thing you shouldn’t do? Right? Nevertheless they belted through two more pieces (one of which was even vaguely recognisable – a “hit” in The Fall’s repertoire) before stalking off again, notes in hand.

So I’m now unsure – was it a supreme piece of Performance Art that justified the Melbourne Festival  contributing to the costs of the shows (the Hub was smaller than the crowd that saw The Fall at The Club back in ’81 so they couldn’t have broken even on it..), or was it all just a giant joke on the festival, bringing out an incoherent rambling old bastard who can’t cut it anymore and likes to piss around with the stage sound while his bandmates grimace and smile in deference?

I’ll never know I guess. Enigmatic to the last, cantankerous and difficult in their decline – The Fall.

I’m struggling with the logic in this article by Gerald K Harrison in The Conversation recently: http://theconversation.com/morality-requires-a-god-whether-youre-religious-or-not-42411

Basically I think there is some leap of assumption in this that invalidates his argument.

Let’s look at some statements: “Take moral commands. It is trivially true that a moral command is a command. A command is a command, right?” This is the foundation of the entire discussion.

       1.       It is not trivially true.

       2.       Why is morality a command?

       3.       The agent is oneself.

A moral command is not a command as such because it is not an order. It is a path of action that aligns with one’s internal rules of conduct. Further I contend that a moral “command” is the wrong phrasing. Morality as such is not a commanding thing. Morality is a set of precepts that we use to guide our actions. They are not the action themselves. They are statements about how to judge what is the better course of action, a set of standards, not in themselves actionable commands. The Ten Commandments are commands but they are not per se morality, but actions arising from a moral framework. Let’s not confuse the two. This is the critical point for the argument.

To any extent that there are commands being issued the whole point of a moral framework is that the commands to action as such are issued by oneself – ones own conscience/superego or whatever you swish to classify that part of ones thinking process that is concerned with the betterment of our nature.

I think that it contradicts the nature of morality to suggest that it can be commanded by an other of any sort. If we think then we must decide ourselves. If others command and we choose to follow those commands then we are taking that responsibility. I’m not sure that anyone can “make” one do anything other than to force us to make a choice between more and less palatable actions. AN extension of Gerald’s argument here is that we are not capable of independent action (maybe that is drawing too long a bow but it could be argued).

This also works contrarily to his argument about commanding ourselves to contradict our morals by command. It is plainly true that this does occur and often. Moral people in extreme situations do take actions that counteract their morals – hence genocides and justification of many horrific acts from war to the treatment of refugees. Gerald ignores the enormous capabilities that we have for self-deception and congestive dissonance. A moral framework is so deeply embedded in our psyche by upbringing, received instruction, specific direction and observation that it is not as simple as doing something opposite to it – that has deep resistance in our minds.

Moral frameworks are derived at least partially from our communities. As they are not commands (as argued above) there is no contradiction in that.

So while I can see that Gerald’s argument is logical – it is I think fallacious because it is based on a misinterpretation of what a moral code is.

Disclosure: I’ve never believed in a god as such, although for many years I’ve been prepared to wait and see. The older I get the less I can see it as a sensible explanation for the universe. Our gods are created by us to explain away our fears. No more no less. While there are many events and correlations that we still do not understand I think that there are and will become apparent non theological explanations for these.

The Power of Music in our Daily Lives

I’ve noticed something recently that’s brought me a great deal of happiness. Music in headphones played (quite loudly in my case) erases my headaches. Like many of us all (or even all) I get headaches from time to time – usually because I’m tired or stressed.

Recently I’ve been experimenting with not taking any medication for it but simply going for a long walk in the park with the headset on. Nearly every time (I think it’s every, but there’s bound to be some exceptions) I’ve noticed the following:

1.       .   After a while the headache goes as I settle in to listening to the music.
   
   
2.        .  I feel refreshed even if very tired and able to continue on after
   
   
3.          The refreshing effect  and lack of pain stays with me for some time after
   
   
4.           The headache does not recur unless I continued to do stressful activities or get stuck in front of a PC etc., freezing up my joints and so on.

It’s more consistently effective than any of the over the counter pills I usually take – paracetamol or ibuprofen, (which never works for me anyway) or even aspirin.

The most surprising thing to me is that the headache goes completely and doesn’t recur and the effects last for the balance of the day. It seems to erase the initial headache and any ones that occur after seem to be new headaches, maybe brought on by the same factors or new ones.

Once I realised this I went and did my 10 minute interwebs look and of course this same effect has been noted for many years now, although as always it seems to be treated with a great deal of scepticism, including the usual new agey fads/scams such as this.

There was a serious study done in 2001 in Germany with participants groups able to control their chronic headaches, and others done more recently too. A good summary is at http://www.emedexpert.com/tips/music.shtml which includes some of the other studies as refs.

The interesting thing is that no one knows exactly why – it seems to boil down to either /or a combination of music releasing pleasure endorphins overriding the pain, relaxes our autonomic systems, or some mind over matter effect (which they don’t give much credence too).

If I was to venture a hypothesis of my own it would be this (pauses to clear throat): it is primarily  driven by a distracting as it were of our brain functions, with the pleasure induced from the music moving our conscious awareness of the pain into the background, and the brain working to erase that feeling as it replaces it in our short term memory with the feelings of pleasure generated by the music. I believe the mild exercise also assists by regulating blood flow and breathing, oxygenating the brain, making the ”brainwipe” of the pain more permanent and effective. That effect then lasts until it is overwritten later on by other factors. I think that having the tempo/patterns in the music act in the calming effect too and the walking with music combine to create a near meditative effect.

From what I’ve read this is pretty much as plausible as anything else yet done in this field. It seems to be treated with similar derision to that meted out to most alterative therapies (much of which I share) by the greater medical community except as a mild assistance to traditional techniques. I expect that it can be taken further, but let’s start with what I can see it does now. Many insist that only slow tempo or classical music is effective too.

Before I do that it’s worth noting that many blog responders on this so far have said “no way, it doesn’t work for me”. That may well be true however I think it is worth a try for anyone with a headache – there are no side effects other than the continuation of the headache for longer that it may otherwise have gone. Just make sure that all the factors are present, maybe with your own variations for comfort.

The keys to it are I believe several:

•          The music must be played on headphones or headsets with as much external noise as you can blocked. I use in ear headsets as they are light weight and give good sound, while blocking most noise. It’s like directly injecting music into your brain.

•      You must pick music that you really like. Critical! The music must be well known to you so that you can let it seep into your brain without too much intense effort to “listen”. It’s long been my view that the music you listen to regularly creates well-worn paths into your brain that more quickly simulate the pleasure response.  
  
  
•       It must be played loudly enough to be both comfortable and a little “overwhelming” so that your surrounds are relegated to the background if at all.

•       You must walk, all the time and not too briskly – I prefer outside in a park but I don’t think this really matters too much. It’s about getting a rhythm going and gently pushing blood round your system. No running or heavy exertion I believe that will just pound the headache in and disallow the healing.
  
  
•       My own routine is a walk of around 5 kms (say 30-40 minutes) but I have found it works in as few as 15 minutes.

For me at least this works. And not just for headaches… tiredness recedes too and my general mood lifts, even if I’ve been very down.

This isn’t ground-breaking but it’s worth building into your routine. There are no side effects except maybe a blister or two if you walk too far, but I can’t think of much else. The only down side is that you need a bit of time but that is in itself a great way of forcing yourself to do what is effectively a type of meditation.

Happy trails.

Lifters and Leaners? FFS!

Rarely do we get a chance to witness the sort of hyperbole that has been pushed about the political environment as recently...and by our incumbent government as well. The categorisation of our whole society into lifters and leaners from the Treasurer beggars belief.  

It takes the whole fantasy economics project to its ultimate, sickly conclusion: a person's worth is only the dollars he contributes to our economy. All else is irrelevant. 

As a mean scheme to draw debate away from the most loathed budget in history it has failed spectacularly. As a way of privileging the already privileged it has only worked to awaken the sort of active opposition from out and about that the Greens and others have dreamt about for years. In one swoop Hockey has fired the crucial shot in a new class war, one that many of us thought had been whittled away by successively rightist ALP governments driven by econometrics, power and polling.

 The best thing about this is several fold: it has shone a unique light into the mind of the person in charge of our economy; it has reawakened political debate and discourse in the wider community; it has drawn attention to the manifest ideology of the government and its reliance on an IPA style (if not directed) agenda.

 And to think I thought it would be Tony who'd crack first! He has amazingly so far managed to keep the crazy locked away in his ultra disciplined don't think just trot out rubbish style. Honestly, if we discovered that he'd been replaced by a robot in late 2011 or so I wouldn't be surprised. Thanks must go to Peta Credlin for riding shotgun on this. As it is Mr Abbott barely passes the Turing test. A discussion with him looks increasingly like an argument with an answering machine preprogrammed to direct your call to the list of LNP talking points but never to a real person.

 Yet it's the now aptly nicknamed Sloppy Joe that has somehow managed to snap the lock on the straightjacket and in a fit of anger lash back at those impertinent souls who happened to believe in an Australia where the worth of a person was more than mere dollars.

 We must not fall into the ALP trap of debating on this turf. This is insulting, demeaning and hypocritical at every level. Hockey, Pyne, Abbott et al all got their education at public expense. Many of these guys have rarely worked outside of politics. It is hypocrisy in the extreme that they can turn around and throw such pejoratives back at others after the levels of community support they have all received. Abbott took at least his first degree as a foreigner. I think we should send him a bill plus interest for what his free degree cost the Australian people.

 Frankly I'm so gobsmacked I can't even continue to rant about this. It hurts my brain and contributes to my already high blood pressure. Maybe I should send them the bill for treatment. They only seem to understand money. All I can do is reiterate the blog from a few weeks ago. I'm somewhat ashamed to be part of the most spoilt, pandered to, greedy generation of all - the boomers - and embarrassed to see what a venal bunch we have become. I now hope for a double dissolution - I cannot see any other solution.

 Thank you for tuning in. Rant over. Normal transmission may resume soon.

3D Printing -  WTF?

I’m going to sound like a luddite here, but what’s the big buzz about 3D printers?

As far as I can tell they’re relatively useful tools for prototyping stuff, for making little bits of plastic and metal that can be joined to other bits to actually make things. They’re great for modelling (here’s a great 3D model of San Fran done to highlight development) – and they must make a sculptor’s life a breeze…. BUT

I don’t get how they are gonna change life as we know it?

What I don’t really like about them:

               -    They don’t make complex objects – you can’t build a complete engine in one go

                -    They are slow.

                -  They waste raw material – all that unused stuff has to either be turfed, or recycled.

               -   I bet they aren’t especially efficient either (happy to be shown this is wrong but..)

              -   They are not yet at least really set up for mass production (see above).

              -   They don’t make me tea and toast for breakfast

I could be forgiven for thinking that they should given all the stoopid hype.

It seems to me that they are the germ of an idea of a something. Maybe the sci-fi crew (of which I’m often an enthusiastic supporter) have been reading far too many novels set in dimensions where they have universal replicators.

3D printers are NOT that!

No matter how many wish fulfilment fantasies we have they don’t really contribute much.

Can someone tell me why we should be lauding the (second) coming of these things? I say they are a fad that will eventually morph with technology into more but right now they’re close to being but a toy, a curio, a useful tool for a few sectors and no more.

Please convince me otherwise.

Boomers – the me generation

I’ve been trying really hard to stay out of politics on this page – but it’s hurting my brain. The release of the Budget last week has done my head in. All I will say is that I’ve been confidently predicting since last year that eventually Mr Abbott’s head will explode from the sheer volume of garbage inside it and the crazy will burst out. In the meantime he has let (nay encouraged, demanded) that the ideologues take over the citadel and the budget is really but the latest in a line of these very ideologically based activities of the government.

So rather than decry the budget explicitly I’d like to use it as an example of the sorts of hypocrisy in which my generation (yes I’m a boomer, born into the last stage) currently engages, and which by implication really does involve all of us from both sides of politics.

As a generation we were exceptionally lucky – I paid virtually nothing for my education (two undergraduate degrees completed over an extended period) and during that time access to different sorts of study assistance (NEATS, AUSTUDY etc.), the good ole dole was relatively easily available and the interrogations that seem to accompany these benefits were largely absent.

Yes by definition we were an elite group as only 20% or so of our age attended higher education, but we expected it as our right and demanded access to facilities, new campuses and a level of debate and activity around university life that has largely disappeared under the pressure of modern living.

Virtually everyone in politics today would have had some or complete benefit from these sorts of policies in their youth.

The irony of this year’s budget is that it so aggressively attacks the young, working inevitably towards the completion of a project to deny our children and grandchildren the benefits that we experienced, fencing them in ever more and more in order that they will have to work to pay for our retirements in ways that we never did (the first boomers have really enjoyed the windfalls of compulsory superannuation with generous pension and tax concession – everyone from now on will have it harder and harder).

Under this project we have entrenched home ownership into our age group: we bought property at the lowest relative prices in generations, then awarded ourselves generous tax concessions as landlords to really drive it home to younger people that they could not get into the market at all. We snapped up prime inner city real estate when it was incredibly undervalued as a result of post war suburban booms and watched it skyrocket in price, then ploughed that into investments everywhere to lock up the market in our group’s hands.

We have made higher education more and more expensive to obtain, gone are the carefree days of a university education being about life as much as learning, and put more and more pressure on our kids to study study study.

Younger people who want to work in arts get almost no support and can’t even fall back on the dole. We are about to start programs to ensure that older people get incentives for staying on in the workforce, by default discriminating against the young (yes I know that there has been discrimination against older workers too, but in the context of an overall project it is just another string), including making it harder to get apprenticeships (and let’s face it apprenticeships were where many of us got our starts – lineys at Telstra, chippies at the builders and so on). We have made it harder and more complex to even get any job, requiring more and more qualifications than ever faced us – a nurse has to do a degree now, not just a few years of slave labour, and we are asking our kids to do extended unpaid internships, something that certainly wasn’t around that I can ever recall.

We can’t even be bothered to do our part to help face the “moral challenge of our lifetime” – climate change - we all want to stick our heads in the sand and believe the denialists – it will all be ok, yes it’s just a bunch of mad scientists and science is really black magic isn’t it….

In short the generation that proudly sang “hope I die before I get old” must have been prescient - we must have known how selfish we would be and how grasping, greedy and rapacious we are. Those of us that marched against wars and bombs, and fought for gender equality and a myriad other causes have all well, sold out, in favour of a comfortable retirement. We have let the ideological warriors of the right forge ahead because they whisper in our ears (like some Tolkienesque grey adviser) how they will make it better for us all the time. They blatantly outright lie, and lie again and we believe them because we are small and selfish and greedy and want to believe them and don’t want to do the hard work to make it all right. Do we?

We could fix much of the budget so called crisis over the course of several cycles by:

-          Staging in the removal of negative gearing on rental properties. Extra tax will be collected and house prices will stabilise and fall allowing more people into the market.

-          Removing much of the superannuation tax concessions. This alone can add billions as it is phased in.

-          Restore the carbon pricing mechanisms- they weren’t perfect but they do add billions to revenue and encourage at least some action on carbon abatement.

These three big ticket items would go a long way to restoring a long term budget balance – this obsession with balancing the budget but at the cost of the young the poor and the helpless is surely a wakeup call to the rest of us – is this really the Australia we were born into? Is this is the Austramerica that we want to become? But no government will do it because the polls tell them that we will vote them out if they tell the truth and campaign on items that will hurt the pockets of boomers.

Is this how the generation of Dylan and Lennon and Woodstock really want to be remembered – as the most selfish and uncaring of all?

The PayTV Dinosaur

I read with interest the recent article from the anonymous Game of Thrones downloader. What a mess we have got ourselves tied up in... ( as an aside what self absorbed times we live in when one of our great issues is whether we pay for other people's ideas or not - it's not life or death now is it?).

There was a lot of vitriol and self justifying on both sides. No one walks way covered in glory that's for sure. On one hand I can certainly sympathise with the downloader - he has found a way of paying something for the product that avoids having to buy other unwanted bundled items and returns some money to the rights holders.  I can also see the view of others who claim to bit torrent it now and buy the DVD later, although that's on a lot shakier ground.

The real problem here is that we have allowed and encouraged monopoly practices to flourish in many parts of our economy and that leads to inefficiency and basic ripping off. It's no wonder when faced with what is easily seen as unfair practices, the response is to seek to work around the problem, or frankly outright steal it.

Filmed entertainment still seems to be struggling with the same fights as music and books, fights that got mainly resolved some time ago. Books are easily available from several sources and we don't see a lot of angst about kindle/nook/iBook etc nor a wholesale ripping off process. Music too is not only available from a number of online stores and there are several free and subscription radio stations that pay to play music. Despite some early pains these will get resolved and music and books are surviving. I also note that last year was the first for a while in which cd sales actually rose.

Filmed entertainment by its nature is more capital intensive than either books or music so it will take time, but Hollywood's obsession with finding and prosecuting so called criminals has to stop in order to move ahead. Movies themselves have moved to a less risky model for the higher cost spectaculars and yet people like Wes Andersen and Woody Allen still manage to make smaller movies that find their audience.

It's time for the distributors to find more legal ways to get their product to market. In the end they lose most from piracy. The Foxtels of this world won't gain any more from tightening down on piracy because people simply won't subscribe until they see it as valuable. It's the makers and distributors that miss out. It's time to end the silly practices of sole distribution rights and staggered sales. Outlets like Quickflix and other delivery mechanisms are the way of the future.

If they don't see this and soon they run the risk of being more examples of Kodak style blindness. Netflix is already producing its own shows. Won't take much for HBO to go the same way in terms of delivery. Wait till they start streaming services in a big way...

PayTV has to open up more flexible options if they want to stay relevant. They're not growing as it is and they don't have right to monopolise output. We don't owe them anything - free to air at least gives us the option of watching or not and voting with our thumbs on every show. PayTV doesn't and that makes them greedy and lazy.

One thing I can confidently predict: until PayTV sees the light on this basic premise they will become less and less relevant to our culture and will fade away in time. Embrace the future or become fossils.