Ooh Look, Nathan and Shelley made a movie. It’s funny. Do we get to vote in Tropfest? Where are the other entries then?
It’s A Pony from Justin Batchelor- BATCHEDIT on Vimeo.
Shortlisted for TROPFEST 2011
with Nathan Godkin Glen Hancox Lou Endicott Troy Larkin Pier Carthew Bevan Sly Shelley Lang
Five Friends take possession of a 97″ television from a dodgy Russian street side salesman. Hilarity ensues.
It’s A Pony on Vimeo on Vimeo
via Its A Pony on Vimeo.
Finally we made it to the performance night.
“first chorus: a retrospective” was a celebration of the first 4 years of Virginia Bott’s amazing Band of Singers. Such a joy to be involved with a magic and gorgeous bunch of good people.
The venue: Anytime Place in Brunswick. Gray Taylor and her team of speakeasy angels worked hard to get the venue looking its best. They are incredibly adept at adapting their environment to suit different kinds of performance.
The acoustics and sound engineering: Simon did a truly amazing job with the sound setup. What a dude. Thanks to Marianna and Ro for pointing out the need to turn down the band and the solo singers. Amazingly, we really had a good balance of volume from choir and soloist/band. (i heard later on from someone who sat both back and front that it was still pretty quiet out back in the standing room.
The audience: what a delightful and generous audience we had, filling out the space with warmth and focus.
The director: everyone knows now that Virginia Bott is a complete genius.
The new CD: Cave of Lights, the collaboration between Emma Tonkin and first chorus: band of singers is now available, hot from the CD burning presses. Launch should be around February. So lucky to have a preview copy that we gave a good spin last night after the gig.
Woohoo. Wish we’d recorded it.
Did anyone video?
Here at the Grandview, we’ve just joined a very wonderful food co-op. Exciting times for foodlovers.
i deliberately used some bad English in an email. (i mean grammatically non-standard English.)
My housemate was appalled.
So i took it all too far, with a genuine LoLcats poster from icanhazcheeseburger.
i’m fascinated by the way new language evolves in a new environment. LoLcats has become one of the latest new English dialects. If i put on my linguist hat for a minute, it’s easy to find a quote from David Crystal (one of the world’s most amazing academic linguist people), in an article at the BBC.
Word play For English speakers there are cult websites devoted to cult dialects – “LOLcat” – a phonetic and deliberately grammatically incorrect caption that accompanies a picture of a cat, and “Leetspeak” in which some letters are replaced by numbers which stem from programming code. “There are about a dozen of these games cooked up by a crowd of geeks who, like anybody, play language games,” said Professor Crystal. “They might not be reading Shakespeare and Dickens but they are reading and cooking up these amazing little games – and showing that they are very creative. I’m quite impressed with these movements.”
Word play For English speakers there are cult websites devoted to cult dialects – “LOLcat” – a phonetic and deliberately grammatically incorrect caption that accompanies a picture of a cat, and “Leetspeak” in which some letters are replaced by numbers which stem from programming code.
“There are about a dozen of these games cooked up by a crowd of geeks who, like anybody, play language games,” said Professor Crystal.
“They might not be reading Shakespeare and Dickens but they are reading and cooking up these amazing little games – and showing that they are very creative. I’m quite impressed with these movements.”
Okay that really belongs on my work blog, but hey, everyone loves the LoLcats, don’t they?
This is Melbourne, there’s always a dozen amazing exhibitions to visit.
I reckon these two could be really good.
..
Lauren Simmonds (had) an exhibition opening Thursday 3 June at the Napier Hotel – Skin and Bone –
Went to see Jessie Tucker’s exhibition at the Brunswick Arts Space last night. She’s made a thoroughly gorgeous set of “rare birds” – Avis Rara – in the style of trophies on the wall, with beautiful colour and design.
i wish i’d taken some photos, because all the pieces sold within the first 90 minutes, and who knows when i’ll get all the way back to old Brunswick town again.
An owl, a flamingo, a couple of love birds, some kind of hummingbird with a unicorn – all with lovely old world titles. My favourite was definitely the owl and i was thinking of investing, but i took too long thinking about it and bam, someone else grabbed it.
Would definitely recommend you pop into the gallery and see the birds before they fly off to their new homes.
The only reference i can find online is via BrunswickArts’ facebook page with
Wealth of Nations – the fringe festival experience – is all over, but i managed to grab some photos and videos. Lachlan’s uploaded them to places like youtube and flickr.. and there they are.
Pete and the Tar Gang were one of my favourite performances from the season. Pete is such a bold character on stage, with his old sea shanties.
They played the following week at the Fringe Club in North Melbourne, and followed up with the Tar Pit Men’s Choir. One of the guys sang a truly amazing solo piece which got the whole crowd turning their heads (at the Fringe CLub). Talk about upstaging!
Mamushka were hilarious and jazzie. Aviva is so stunning up front, and when she pulls out that bass clarinet, you know you’re in for some rollicking.
(i saw them again last week at Open Studio.. without all the costumes. They leap from their circus jazz into a bit of rock thrash every now and then.. and back again. What a blast.. but why was nobody dancing?)
The Kurtletts of course were thoroughly gorgeous.. Kirri and Sofiya play so beautifully together.
Links:
Oh, and the photo slideshow, which has some of my photos mixed in with other people’s too.
It was windy, raining and cold.. but the show must go on, isn’t it!
Emma Bathgate opened this extraordinary gig at the Fairfield Amphitheatre
An astonishing evening of the musical kind. A program including 2 world premiere performances.
First Chorus is part of the Melbourne fringe festival, this time featuring in
—————————————-
Plus, from the Victoria hotel event in August:
The choir i’ve been singing with had our big big night.. seven original songs by the songwriters in the choir. Songs in genres including folk, pop, jazz, operatic and gothic-epic, the arrangements all worked by Virginia Bott the amaazing musical director.
i wish i could put up the video right now, but it’ll take ages to be ready. i’ve heard the bootleg recording came out well.
The first show was electric and intense.. while the second was more sedate, laidback, and somehow harder work. Probably because we were already exhausted. As Lou said, it was as though we had a whole season, from opening to closing night .. in the same evening.
The Victoria Hotel has really picked up its game, reshaping into a kitschie Melbourne style classic. Upside-down lampshades hanging from the ceiling.. which any self-respecting Melbourne bar must have.. since the Night Cat started the tradition back in ooh 1990-something.
Really great to be involved in such a dynamic and powerful performance, eh!
Lovely people.
Totally feeling the vibe of the 2009 High Vibes festival.
Of course i must kick off with the very wonderful Flying Scribble, my favourite band in the whole world. Mal Webb at 303 was hilarious, doing mad things with his beat-boxing, a loop pedal and several trombones.
Then i bumped into some extremely glamorous and funky dancers from the first chorus band of singers, who’d created an impromptu dance floor outside Subterrain. Good venue!
