OMG

..days as a kindy kid armed with gallons of foul-smelling poster paints that
always ended up resolving to the colour of shit), has different cultural connotations
around the world and at different times in its history.

‘..it was an act of true cowardice and I consider it appropriate that
the Australian team were wearing yellow.’

While I’m not officially on holiday, (I never do holidays really – or
is it that I’m always on holiday?), the streets of Camberwell are fairly
deserted at this time of the year and I was eating my seafood soba alone at
Universal Sushi in the Portobello Arcade this afternoon contemplating Life,
the Universe and Everything. The temperature in the arcade was in the mid-thirties
and even though I was seated at the solitary table inside the shop, the air
conditioner was fighting a losing battle and my soba was scarcely cooling
down. I guess because there was nobody around the skeleton staff felt comfortable
putting on some of ‘their’ music. I reckon that very few sushi
joints round Melbourne are actually owned and/or staffed by yer actual Japanese
and my sushi joint is no exception, and although I’ve been frequenting
the place for two or three or more years, I’ve never bothered to discover
their actual ethnicity – alls I know is that they’re Asian. Anyway,
the music was really interesting, (I know my mother would hate it –
she has no tolerance for anything much outside the traditional European model),
and I found myself drifting into a Bladerunner frame of mind…
Dammit – I finally get in the mood to see the wunderkind movie
Moon and it disappears, so I guess I won’t find out whether
it’s the contemporary successor to 2001 till it pops up on Foxtel. Mind
you, I’m getting used to being disappointed at the movies and it’s
not just me, ‘cause some of the critics I’ve not necessarily agreed
with over the years are feeling the same way. The bean-counters are winning
when the modern-day director is happy to be seen as complicit in the ‘maximising
the audience’ conspiracy and all that implies – and it implies a continuous
stream of mindless blockbusters.
There’s a parallel here with the predicament that record companies find
themselves in, of course, but the stakes are even higher. Perhaps Hollywood
is in the ‘too big to fail’ category, but if it keeps this up,
it will fail. Not in one enormous, cataclysmic disaster, (you’ve read
the headlines, now see the movie), but by attrition, in the same way as the
music industry has been, and is being subverted. And the news media.
Nothing stays the same, and it is the lot of one generation to be appalled
at the falling standards of the next. ‘Oh, my God!’ he thundered,
has been transformed into any little tart with a tattoo on her tit breathlessly
interpolating an ‘Omigod’ into her mobile every five seconds.
(ranting gradually fades out stage left..)

I’ve recently been listening to Jeff Beck’s performing this
week ..live at Ronnie Scott’s, at least partially because I missed
seeing him when he was here. While I’m tooling around on the PC I can
usually only tolerate instrumental music, but I’ve found Beck’s
playing so arresting I might have to ban him from my background music repertoire.
While playing with some damn fine fusion-type players, Beck remains essentially
a rock guitarist, with nods to hard-edged fusion – and whale songs. I saw
him recently on the second of the Crossroads DVDs playing with Aussie
bassist, Tal Wilkenfeld, (who toured with Beck and is worth the price of admission
in her own right), and although Jeff’s rock ‘n’ roll mannerisms
seemed to me to be redundant and ultimately tedious, I found it very interesting
to see how he produces the almost free-fall sounds he elicits from his guitar.
It’s refreshing to see that he doesn’t rely on a huge effects
board too.
Previous to that I’d been listening to Shaun
Rigney’s Afterimage CD, a collection of Shaun’s pieces
played by Slava Grigoryan. As a counterpoint to Jeff Beck it could scarcely
be more opposite. The overall mood is soberly reflective – it sounds
like Shaun’s been left on his own on the back-beach at Blairgowrie for
six months, (I’ve been there – that’s where I wrote the
unrealised The Jellabad Mutant), but the writing of it took much
longer than that and perhaps as a consequence the music can stand repeated
listens with more being revealed each listen. (Shaun’s notes do reveal
a bayside inspiration, amongst others).
In the interests of keeping the classical nylon-string guitar to the fore,
the occasional string and other section accompaniments are relegated to the
background and sound a little cold and disconnected – even a little mechanical
– as a result; the perennial challenge of balancing a quiet salon instrument
like an acoustic guitar with comparatively loud orchestral instruments is
one that I mentioned when I first came across Shaun’s music on the ABC
(see Issue 60’s Pith
& Wind ) and isn’t really resolved satisfactorily here. Shaun’s
toying with the idea of a pyramid-style acoustic amplifier that can be heard
simultaneously by the guitarist, the orchestra and the audience.
While I’m obviously completely unqualified to comment on the compositional
and referential aspects of Shaun’s music, I can thoroughly recommend
Afterimage to the listener who is looking for something in the serious
contemporary vein as played by one of the world’s stellar guitarists.
(A warning though – I had quite a time finding it and had to order it in from
JB).