Tramming

..driving-in-the-city impatience and exasperation.
It’s a neat trick
I jotted down the music that had become my soundtrack and I’ve just
checked the dertails on the ABC Classic radio website. It was a guitar piece
called Chamber Concerto by Shaun Rigney, whom I’ve not heard
of before, played by one Antony Fielding*, whom I’ve not heard of either.
I’m guessing that Shaun’s a contemporary Australian guitarist/writer,
because he’s written some very guitary figures, and it just sounds,
well, Australian. (I conjectured it might’ve been Nigel Westlake, but
I’m not sure that he’s a guitarist). Anyway, I’ll just check
it out on Google. (This is exciting).
Here you go then: Shaun Rigney was born in Melbourne Australia in 1960.
Since graduating from Monash University, he has worked as a writer, composer
and radio producer. He is a regular contributor to ABC Classic FM’s premier
Audio Arts program The Listening Room. His radio pieces characteristically
combine text, music and electrocoustic techniques. Shaun has written plays,
poetry, criticism and radio works and has composed orchestral, chamber and
instrumental pieces. His CD credits include Wetland and Double Exposure. In
1996 Shaun was Australia’s representative at the international ARS Acoustica
Radio Arts Forum.
‘Electrocoustic’? That’s a new one on me. I notice that
he’s done something or other with Slava Grigoryan as well. The point
is I liked the piece well enough, and it certainly worked on the level of
being the soundtrack to my movie at that moment. I’ll look out for more
of his stuff in future.
It caused me to reflect that the concept of acoustic guitar and orchestra,
even a chamber orchestra, is a tricky one to pull off. The guitar is so quiet
compared with an orchestra – in fact, it’s quiet compared with
any one instrument in an orchestra – that it must be extremely difficult
to write something that sounds believable balance-wise. There are some quite
famous pieces that just don’t sound believable to me, and they only
work on record because the guitar is placed at the foreground sonically speaking,
otherwise the guitar would simply be swamped.
Legend has it that Charlie Christian was the first amplified guitarist. I’ve
got a CD of his that I play every now and then. It’s quite a revelation,
particularly if you were expecting something a little unsophisticated, which
I was for some reason. Not at all, as it turns out, and Charlie would be very
comfortable in most jazz outfits working around anywhere today.
Anyhow, concerning public transport I’d learnt my lesson and so I took
the tram into town tonight to see the VCA Film & TV kids’ annual
presentation of short films at the ACMI theatre in Fed’ Square – at
the invitation of Miranda ‘Mazz’ Worthington, who amongst other
things, put the Rocket Girl clip together. But it was the trip back
to Camberwell that proved to be most interesting. I took the No. 75 tram,
intending to change to the No. 70 at Camberwell Junction. It was fairly crowded
when I got on, but there were a couple of seats right at the back. I thought
about challenging this particular bloke who had effectively commandeered three
seats for himself, but thought better of it and sat next to a couple of iPods
instead.
I was in a good position to covertly check out Mr Three-seater. He was a skinny
looking guy in his mid-twenties, dressed in baggy shorts and wearing a baseball
cap the right way round. He reminded me of a young Nigel Macara. He had a
couple of carry-alls on the floor and was holding a plastic bag that looked
like it might’ve had food in it. He was sitting on the single seat in
the corner leaning over the other two seats and moodily rolling a plastic
bottle backwards and forwards– he looked like trouble waiting to happen.
So I was surprised when these two atttractive, well-dressed young girls got
on and asked him if he wouldn’t mind if they sat there. He was surprised
too, but said OK. The girls then ingenuously/compulsively started to chat
with him and asked him what he was doing. He said something about getting
some food to eat and they started going into raptures about this place they
knew and going intp great detail about the way the food was prepared there
etc.
I could see he was slightly taken aback, but he had no choice but to be engaged.
He ended up telling them his name (Simon) and just had time to tell these
chatty angels that he hadn’t been having such a good day before it was
his stop and he was obliged to get off – no doubt feeling a whole lot
better about himself and the world in general.
I could feel myself smiling as I watched this scene unfold and I was glad
I elected to go the tram route this time round. The world ain’t such
a bad place sometimes.

* 19.10.09 Rather disconcertingly, I’ve been e-mailed by the composer,
Shaun Rigney, and it turns out that the piece in question wasn’t played by
Antony Fielding at all. Read what he has to say:

Hi there Mike,
I was googling myself recently (not in public) when I came across a blog of
some sort claiming to be by an Australian blues-rock legend.
I was reading with growing curiosity, when next thing you know I’m being
eulogised as the composer of a certain chamber concerto. Well I was quite
chuffed except that ‘bio’ sounded quite fearful, made me sound
like some kind of boffin. Actually I quite enjoy a beer or three.
Just for the ‘record’, the recording features Slava Grigoryan
as the soloist, not Antony Field. Slava has recorded quite a bit of my stuff
(including an album of my pieces that includes another concerto, with larger
orchestra).
Your guess that I play the guitar was spot on.
Also just for the record, I would nominate I’ll Be Gone as one of the
greatest Oz songs of all time.
Next time you see Jim Keys, can you ask him how Turn Up Your Radio was produced?
The saxes sounded like they were coming out of a stack of Marshalls. Maybe
there weren’t any saxes…
All power to the Murtceps,
Shaun