I love the Barons of Tang!
Ok for a few years I’ve found them too hard core, and they were always playing at the same time as spoonbill, so I would never stay and listen.
But tonight* they hit the spot like never before. They are extraordinary. And they’re going to the usa. i don’t think i’ve seen them properly since Aviva joined – her clarinet and bass clarinet riffs added a lot to the sound for me. Loved it.
Dance! Did we? I love those gigs where you start out kind of half-hearted, an you wind up jumping like a mad thing and shouting for more.
*When i say tonight i mean: Northcote Social Club 30 April.
Lou and I went to see dr brown play the tuxedo cat. It was the final night of the mammoth comedy festival and our last chance to catch this californian doctor clown this year.
He is insane. We hooted with laughter, and I can’t even remember why. He’s just really silly, and open, and ridiculous.
But the lovely thing was this: the week before i’d been to his “clowning with doctor brown” workshop, and as i saw him in performance – it all made sense. Everything he’d been trying to teach us, all the wisdom he’d aimed to impart; it all fell into place.
The workshop was crazy. I went because Lynne and Ahmarnya were going, and i’d wanted to try this for a while. The thing about simple clown is not that you have to make people laugh, which is good as I have no skills in physical comedy, but that when you fail – people need to see and feel your genuine emotional response. You need to connect authentically. To be vulnerable.
We all try to act upset, or show our masks of distress and failure, but the clown can simply be open and present, and let the whole world in.
It feels impossible, the more you try, the more you fail even at failing.
And then comes a moment of extreme frustration where you surrender completely, and the doctor calls out, “Yes you’re beautiful right there, we love you there!” Ah, thank heavens i got it finally, the surrender moment.
of course, if you can make people laugh.. it’s a whole lot better.
And the next day – after the Castlemaine festival madness – we all supported the legendary Sam Downing in her Sew Funky event “Beasty Beats” at the Elphinstone Hotel.. an awesome day of monster-making. Around 80 people, children and their parents, designed and created their own monsters in all shapes and sizes. At the end we had a monster monster dance. Fun.
One of the highlights of the Castlemaine festival was the Baroqu-eoke performance, “So you think you can Prance”. This was a very fun event. We’d seen them dressing up in the early part of the day, and i was looking forward to finding out more. The costumes were magnificent, as were the instruments and their players. Genuine harpsichord, viol-de-gamba, mediaeval flute and fiddle.
For the first part of the show, the MC taught us a range of emotional expression, Baroque-style. When expressing emotions in the world of Baroque (restoration?) one must always place the weight on one foot or the other. Never evenly balanced.
After teaching us the basics, we were asked to dance these emotions to a series of classic karaoke numbers: Dancing Queen, Don’t you Want me Baby? and You Should be Dancing. Classic! At one point, there were no volunteers for the karaoke, so Tim in his role as Barry Fluff the festival host pointed at Sam and me, calling out, “They’ll do it! Choose those two!” Nice one Tim – clearly we were being too shy. Sam and i belted out a raucous version of ‘Don’t you want me baby’, and were awarded a free jug of Pimms next door at Madame Brussels. Sam mentioned later on that perhaps we might have attempted to sing in a more refined way, however i’d been following the lead of the “Village Idiot” character who would sing in the most tuneless and hopeless way.
Tim made a quick video, you’ll get the idea. Oh boo, it doesn’t work. Why not? Oh well you’ll have to go over to their site to watch it.
You know Felicia Day, right? She’s one of the fledgling slayers in Season 7 ( – Buffy! – ) And she’s the laundromat girl in Joss Whedon’s Dr Horrible’s Singalong Blog; as well as being a major player in the future dreamworld (?) of the Dollhouse apocalypse/epitaph episodes. Well it turns out she’s also created her own webTV drama known as “The Guild“, all about a set of hard-core gamers who live in their rooms, surgically attached to their gaming equipment. It’s funny. The show went from being a web series to being on DVD. Go Felicia. Anything is possible these days.
Her character is a room-bound nothing-but gamer, just like Marigold in Questionable Content. Interaction between members of this World of Warcraft team is only online. Until something goes horribly wrong (in episode 1).
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i saw Playback down at Gasworks i think a few years back with Zeena, and then we went again last year. Zeena loves their work and persuaded me to come originally. i didn’t need any persuading the second time around. The performers bring audience stories to life in a series of structured improvisational activities, which is a clumsy way to say they act out stories from the audience.
i like the way the MC / conductor draws out the narrative threads, and then quickly throws it to the performers with a kind of code word. “Let’s do this as an escalating singalong” (or something). They always begin with easy things like ‘tell us about your day’.. and gradually move into the more involved stories.
At their April show, there were some good stories including one about an out-of-body experience.
The one that got me was an English woman who had just moved to Australia 6 months ago with her family, was feeling ungrounded and disoriented, not sure what to do next in her life, and was missing her daughter back in the UK. She didn’t give much detail for the players to work with, but they crafted a lovely piece. At the moment where her daughter called on the phone i felt the tears coming, and as i was sitting next to her husband i could hear him choking back the sobs too. (Then the slightly awkward bit after the show when you want to say something to them, but don’t quite manage it.)
So interesting to see the vulnerable bits of people’s lives played out in front of them. Part of the playback approach is to always do it with compassion, and that shows.
Links: Melbourne Playback.
i’ve seen this woman before somewhere. She plays a very good innocent character, pretending to be no-one in particular, who then goes on to take the audience’ breath away with her incredible voice. So as well as buying her cd, i went out hunting on the youtubes and found these live performances, from a show in Melbourne in 2008: “Yego Luelku (Leave Me Alone)”
Wait, there’s another one: “All My Wives”.
photo credit: freestylee
What about the nerve of Donald Rumsbum, trying to take credit for the Egyptian revolution!! Let me see, how is this similar to the kind of “pro democracy” outings of Donald and Dubya?
Did a hundred thousand people get killed?
Did countless precious ancient artefacts get destroyed?
Did the west start a civil war and then 5 years later work out how to manage the situation?
did Western govts lie to their citizens in order to invvde a sovereign nation, almost bankrupting the world in the process?
This article from the Guardian strongly makes the case that Rumsfold is delusional. Which we knew, but it’s nice to read a well-worded case innit!
A better way to push democracy, but the west’s love-bombing has risks too | Jonathan Freedland
Recently i read this very interesting article from the Guardian about Gene Sharp – the little known author of a world best-seller. In some places, bookshops have been burned to the ground for selling his work, according to this article in the guardian.
Apparently the book has been translated into many languages. It was originally written for the people of Burma, and explores the full range of weapons that people have at their disposal (apart from weapons of violence). Yes, colour and flags can be weapons, because they aim at the heart of the tyrannical regime. The basic idea is that if the population refuse to be drawn into violence or fear, then they must win
Who knows more about the book? Can you give me more details?
More links over there: Tales from the Lou gives a good write-up and background. Gene Sharp on the wikipedia. Some of his books you can download over at online books, Uni Pennsylvania.
Some key steps, quoted from the book:
Develop a strategy for winning freedom and a vision of the society you want, Overcome fear by small acts of resistance, Use colours and symbols to demonstrate unity of resistance, Learn from historical examples of the successes of non-violent movements, Use non-violent “weapons”, Identify the dictatorship’s pillars of support and develop a strategy for undermining each, Use oppressive or brutal acts by the regime as a recruiting tool for your movement, Isolate or remove from the movement people who use or advocate violence.
So i’ve been looking for photographs of the Bohemian Ball. Luckily there are some really good photographers hanging around with this crowd. There’s even a new book coming out that seems inspired by the ball and its coterie of performers – “This City Speaks to Me“.
The shows have been hit and miss over the years. i think i went to the first one at the Regal Ballroom in Northcote, and the music was decidedly non-boho. Disappointing in fact. But they’ve settled on a combination of Spoonbill and the Barons of Tang for recent years, and also for their whirlwind tour of Australia last year.
Found a set of (NSFW!) photos from the March 2010 ball, by Luke David Kellett over at flickr.
