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.
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”.
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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.
So Amarina and i went to see Jamie Lidell at the East Brunswick club. i’m still reeling with the pleasure of the experience. He is funny, fabulous and so funky! Did we dance? Oh Yes. Everybody danced.
A good, well-balanced set of old and new. i’m so glad he played one or two of the solo numbers – the ones where he builds up the entire song using his voice and some kind of loop pedal / electro board thingie. The one i recall is “The City”.
The rest of the set, he plays with a fantastic drummer and this astonishingly energetic keyboard guy, who went topless and sweaty at the first opportunity (it was a hot evening). In contrast Jamie kept the black and silver vinyl jacket on all night, occasionally flashing us the neon heart blinking away from the inner lining.
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Here are some videos showing his enchanting and soulful vocal beats. Not as good as live, but hey.
The official vid of Multiply
Have you seen the Air Orchestra? Directed by Virginia, in concert with the songroom. Apparently this was on TeeVee.
Hilarious and super adorable!!
via YouTube – Air Orchestra.
Links: The Songroom does amazing things. i think they’re at the Abbotsford Convent.
Ah, Saturday morning. The dripping sounds of night rain outside my room.
Housemates emerging from their post-whirlwind-tour funk. Time to hit the couch and go you tubing.
As Lou says, these players are my new favourite thing. i think they’re in the UK though, East London. They played Glastonbury this year. Brassroots playing Karma Police, somewhere in London.
via YouTube – Brassroots – Karma Police Radiohead.
They also do a version of 7 Nation Army. Ooh yeah, i want them to play in Melbourne.
Seems to be a few bands around with similar names: Here’s their Myspace just to be sure. And yes i think this album is theirs too, over at Last.fm.
While on the topic of Dreadlock-inspired Radiohead covers, who could go past Radiodread from the Easy All Stars!! Here’s No Surprises, with the original video.
i think it’s going to be this kind of Saturday. Clothing sales, picnics in the rain, exotic midnight parties.
Laid back.
Nice work from a rapper known as Jasiri X in the United States of Hell: “What if the Tea Party was black?”.
The Tea Party have been seriously dissing their president. If they were left-wing or non-white, the media would interpret their messages as seditious, treacherous and Anti-American. They would be vilified in the most ugly ways imaginable. But no, the Tea Party is the darling of the media with their horribly misguided and intellectually-damaged thought missiles. Reprehensible rubbish.
Thanks for this video!!
via YouTube – What if the Tea Party was Black?.
Ok, irony alert. i got the video from “Stuff White people do”, chapter entitled: listen to anti-racist music. Yes i’m trying to salve my bruised conscience. Whatever.
While i’m talking of anti-racist music, one of my all-time favourites is “George Bush don’t like black people” by the Legendary KO. Impressed to see this song has its own wikipedia page.
..and here’s the original quote from Kanye West that led to the remix:
..and another video mix
This originally came out back in ’05. Xeni at BoingBoing pointed everyone toward it. You can still get the mp3 file too: “George Bush Don’t Like Black People” MP3 (8.7MB). [Lyrics here.]
On the other side of The Pond, a 15 year old gains notoriety with this stirring speech during the recent demonstrations around education fees. Good to see the next generation coming up and with such strength and passion. Really like the way he weaves narrative into the invective. No music, but a really good talk eh.
via YouTube – 15 year old Tells Establishment to Stick-it..
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?
Dude you have no Qu’ran.
You’ve got to love the Autotune remixes.
i don’t know what’s going on in the USA at the moment. They’ve got a brilliant leader, and a whole bunch of intelligent creative compassionate people working for social change, but somehow there’s still idiots who want to burn Holy Books during a really ugly world war.
And then there’s the cool people who just run up and spoil the media event. On top of that, someone is going to make an autotune remix out of anything these days.
—————————————- Thinking:
One of the comments on the youtube video page was this: ‘so, let me get this straight: hippies love to burn flags but can’t stand to see the Koran get burnt?’
Interesting point.
i think it’s a bit like Jewish jokes. You can make all the anti-Jewish jokes you like, if you are in fact a Jewish person.
You can burn the US flag if you’re a US citizen. (okay, it’s not legal, i mean under my rules which i’m making up right now)
You can criticise the heck out of your own relationship, tear yourself to shreds, burn the Bible if you’re raised a Christian, find the weak spots in your cooking strategies, etc.
But lay off other people’s business.
. . . . .
How about this joyful piece from andrea dorfman in Halifax. The same woman who made that previous one.
Cycling is something i love too.
Thanks Andrea!
