Once upon a time the streams of music that have come together to be known as popular music (folk, blues, jazz, country, rock, electronica etc) were a kind of vulgar, ad hoc tradition, in contrast to the ideas of perfection, intellect and beauty that was the hallmark of the classical tradition. Of course there is much overlap and forays into each other's territory but in generalised gross terms, popular music was music of the body and classical music was of the soul. (Body and soul are inextricably intertwined, another topic for another day.)
Strange things have happened to popular music since the late 70’s, mostly in the specifically popular, ie the top selling musics, rock, pop & its various kissing cousins. What was once a crazy, dangerous, living, breathing beast is now a simulacrum of that. Music so much of the time is made for large spectacle, music for the masses, music made for stadiums, music that is the equivalent of a blockbuster movie. All good of course, people obviously love, need and want that kind of thing, otherwise it wouldn’t have happened but we sit uneasily inside that world. When we play those sorts of shows and play with a house band, those very fine musicians have recreated the records, the better the musician the more they are a replica of a record that was made decades ago. Playing with a band like that is akin to laying upon the most benign mattress (such support!); or bowling with the gutter protectors up (can’t fail to score!); or navigating with a perfect GPS (we never lose our way!). And yet….and yet…there is something missing.
Mostly when we play it’s just the two of us, two acoustic guitars, two voices, fairly raw and we’re always trying to bring something of the present moment to what we do and it’s at odds with the zeitgeist, even the hits are not quite as you know them. We’re not professional in that sense, we’re not trying to sell you over and over again a recording you heard when you were young. And we’re sorry if we don’t play the songs you expected and we’re sorry that if we do play those songs you don’t hear what you imagined you were going to hear and we’re sorry for the moment that doesn’t always work but we live and breathe for the moment that does; when the sound you’re making is within you but also outside of you and the molecules of air align in such away that wisdom acquired with age forms a patina around expressions of youth and somehow the whole thing becomes timeless and just for a second the universe says it’s okay to smile, or shed a tear in the communal surrounds that stages and audiences share and you know, altogether, that it feels real. Hopefully.
See you at a show.
photo by wysiwyg_pix
Happy New Year to the faithful & the unfaithful, to the movers & the shakers, the sad & lonely, to those who get it done & those who want it done. May you appreciate this is all a gift that one day is taken away and passed on like a baton in a relay that you wish could be held onto just a little bit longer. xx
From 1999 a rarity called Happy New Year. By the time New Year rolled around in 1999/2000 we were in hospital with a one day old baby girl, our third. We briefly wished each other a happy one and then went back to our dreaming.
From Paul Kelly’s self-described ‘mongrel memoir’ ‘How To Make Gravy’ pg 139-140
"Everybody Wants To Touch Me’ is sometimes read as a riff on celebrity. That seems to be Sydney cabaret singer Paul Capsis’s take on it on his album of the same name. Medusa-haired Deborah Conway, Melbourne singer-songwriter and mother of three, knows a little about celebrity and pregnancy both. She fronted a band called Do-Re-Mi in the eighties and had a big hit with a song called ‘Man Overboard’, featuring the memorable lines ‘Your pubic hairs on my pillow, your stubble rings the sink.’ Her shapely posterior was also famous, full-framed and proudly bare on big Bluegrass Jeans billboards nationwide, with the tagline ‘Get yours into Bluegrass’.
Do-Re-Mi functioned as a collective - a shaky construct in pop music at the best of times - and used language such as ‘ideologically unsound’ (the predecessor of ‘politically incorrect’) in their band meetings. Deborah, with her ...
Antarctica, destination of majesty, of mystery, of dreamlike otherworldliness; the air so clear you could see the future. Our nights rocked by the seas, our days filled with light, colour, wildlife, adventure.
And no internet! For 11 whole days the world could not intrude.
Thanks @Chimu & @Intrepid
Back in Australia with almost enough days to recover from jet lag before the next stop - Israel.
