Entries from January 2009 ↓

Books I've finished reading this month:¹

1. The Photographer's Eye: Composition and Design for Better Digital Photos, Michael Freeman.

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   This was so excellent that I am going to write about it at greater length at some stage.
2. The Subterraneans (and Pic), Jack Kerouac.

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   I suspect that The Subterraneans displays Kerouac at his worst, and I don't (just) mean in an artistic sense; without the journeys and discoveries of On the Road or The Dharma Bums, all we can see is the deeply sexist, racist, irresponsible, selfish artist as he portrays himself (with unflinching honesty, to his credit). Pic is more tolerable but at the same time appalling in its ignorance; "this is what black folks are like", says the "other"-fetishising white guy.
3. Tales from Outer Suburbia, Shaun Tan.

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   Beautiful.
4. The Book of Three, Lloyd Alexander.

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5. The Black Cauldron, Lloyd Alexander.

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6. The Castle of Lyr, Lloyd Alexander.

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7. Taran Wanderer, Lloyd Alexander.

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8. The High King, Lloyd Alexander.

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   The Chronicles of Prydain were fun to read over a couple of days. I liked the setting's inherited Welshness, and would have enjoyed the real series more if I had read it at a younger age; I tend to be much more demanding of fantasy fiction nowadays and found the simplicity a little wearing, especially towards the end (with its not-surprising-at-all big reveal and ensuing consequences, sigh).
9. Lost Boys, Orson Scott Card.

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   This is not as good a book as a three-star rating suggests. I enjoyed reading it not because it is a good book, but because it is a fascinatingly bald-faced piece of Mormon propaganda that betrays much more of Orson Scott Card's terrible values than any of the Ender series I have read so far. The whodunnit/ghost story wrapped around the outside simply gives the novel an excuse to exist; antagonists and plot points are set up with great care and little sophistication, and the real value of the book lies in immersing oneself in such an alien, intolerant set of values, presented with all the goodwill in the world.

   What I learned from reading this book: the place of a woman is to make babies (LOTS of babies) and take care of the home, while also serving the community as much as is asked of her by people in the church who are more important; people who play Dungeons and Dragons are socially retarded savants who probably like to molest children; mentally ill people cannot function as normal members of society — HOWEVER, psychiatrists are malignant, religion-hating witch-doctors who think they know everything and basically aren't real doctors at all; personal concerns are unimportant and must always be secondary to the demands needs of the church hierarchy; women are weak and cry about things while men are strong and bear their burdens nobly, perhaps becoming angry sometimes; it is okay to behave in an abhorrent manner if you are righteous. Oh, and good always triumphs over evil.

10. The Reality Dysfunction, Peter F. Hamilton.

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    Would have rated higher if it weren't for the woeful clumsiness of the writing. Comma splices everywhere, semicolons where there should be commas, impenetrable forests of adjectives with nary a comma in sight, bizarre overuse of the verb "to boil" in various forms, and such poor expression generally that I fervently hope Hamilton has since found a better editor. However, the story was much better than the first couple of pages indicated, even if not much that happened at the end of the book rang true for me. A fairly fascinating universe and an interesting enough story to overcome the significant handicap of an author who does not write especially well, but I couldn't face reading the next in the series right away. (Sorry, Luke.)
11. Night Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko.

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    Vampires and wizards and magical goings-on in post-Soviet Russia. Unlike unread-but-surely-abominable vampire stories like Twilight or anything by Anne Rice, Night Watch is fun to read, perhaps because it is not actually a vampire story (it just has vampires in it). The writing is smooth and unobtrusive (as is the translation, incidentally), a real relief after reading Orson Scott Card and Peter F. Hamilton, and the world Lukyanenko has built offers an interesting blend of updated mythology (all that stuff about garlic and silver was encouraged by the bad guys, because it doesn't actually work) and a supernatural Cold War (a treaty binds good guys and bad guys alike, and much quibbling and rule-bending ensues), with all of the drinking and train stations and name-and-patronymic addresses that I've come to expect from everything written by Russians.
12. Day Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko.

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    Unfortunately not up to the standard set by Night Watch, Day Watch is still not a bad read. Perhaps because there is not much mileage to be had from introducing the universe after so much of that was done so effectively in Night Watch, or perhaps because it focuses on the "bad guys" who make up the Day Watch,² Day Watch seems to meander a little despite the high stakes and soul-searching it contains. I did like the journey of the mysterious Vitaly, and overall Day Watch is not bad at all - just not as good as Night Watch.
13. The Hand That Signed The Paper, Helen Demidenko.

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    I have only the vaguest of memories of the Helen Demidenko/Darville controversy that raged years ago, mainly because I was in primary school at the time and thus didn't have my finger on the pulse of the literary world. As a result, I came to The Hand That Signed The Paper without too many preconceived ideas. I was struck by the way it humanised people on the "wrong" side in eastern Europe during World War II; the anti-Semitism of many (most) of the characters was hard to stomach, but so was the unavoidable question raised: can anybody really know that they would do the "right" thing, faced with starvation and torture and the absence of hope? It's easy to sit on a moral high horse when you've been comfortable all your life. That being said, the overarching theme of the book seemed to be that people responsible for atrocities during wartime should not be prosecuted for war crimes, which I can't agree with, and I can't quite believe that none of the characters' hatred originated in the hatred of the author. Uncomfortable reading, and absolutely worth my while.

At the start of this year I thought I would aim to read one book each week. I suppose I've built up quite a buffer against the inevitable burst of apathy that will come.

1. Confession: I started reading the first two in 2008. [↩]
2. Despite the refreshing lack of clear victors in Lukyanenko's plotlines, perhaps he is not too comfortable taking the side of evil after all? There is certainly plenty of focus on Night Watch characters in this book, although the reverse is certainly not true. [↩]

As you may or may not be aware, when commenting on this blog you can tick a box to subscribe to subsequent comments on the entry in question.

Nine times now, people have opted to subscribe to comments without entering their email address. Given that the text accompanying the checkbox says "Notify me of followup comments via e-mail", it is not apparent how these people (I assume they number more than one, but probably less than nine) thought their notifications would arrive. More importantly, the way the plugin manages subscriptions means that I actually can't remove the blank subscriptions, so they just sit there and aggravate me.

I have now reverted to the original comment verification settings of this blog, which require both the name and email address fields to be filled in. The email address will not be displayed to anyone but me, and obviously you don't have to use a real name or even a real email address, but until I can work out how to purge the subscription manager (or somehow be convinced that people are intelligent enough to do things properly) you will just have to type those extra few characters. If you use a sensible web browser you can get it to remember your details for you, so you only have to type them once.

While all this fiddling about was going on I also enabled an OpenID plugin, which allows you to link your comment to (for instance) your Livejournal or other-blog identity (and has the additional benefit of ensuring that your comment will not be marked as spam or held for moderation). I hope to improve the user-friendliness of this sometime soon, as its usefulness is currently not at all obvious. I do have the option of allowing OpenID-verified comments to be posted without a name and email address, but I think we can all see where that would lead. None of that!¹

Update, 01/07/09: Due to an unfathomable and unrelenting flood of spam comments on this entry only, I am disabling comments. Akismet is kind enough to catch all of them for me, but it makes wading through in search of false positives an impossible task.

1. Or any of the others! [↩]

As time passes I find it harder and harder to remember when things happened at Woodford. Fortunately, I had the foresight to write down my impressions of most of the bands I saw; unfortunately, my foresight was somewhat blinkered as I didn't take notes about anything else. Perhaps the final Tales of Woodford installment will be about all the unplaceable, un-noted things that I still remember by then.

By Monday, I had become almost blasé about the routine of waking up freezing at around 3am, then waking up again dehydrated and gasping some time around 6. I think this was also the morning I attempted to buy breakfast from the delicious-smelling ilovemushrooms stall prior to seeing my first band for the day, but got too confused about the ordering protocol and whether they were even serving people yet. Ah well, at least there were a few days left for repeat attempts.

Said first band of the day was Sunas, a pleasantly unassuming acoustic-Celtic-folk band whose four members indulged in a certain amount of banter onstage, most of it for their own entertainment rather than that of the audience. I enjoyed the tunes, although the performance felt more like a scattering of tunes across a lot of awkward remarks and silences - perhaps that can be put down to the early hour, or the beginning of the heat-induced wilting of everyone involved. Despite my apparent ambivalence, not at all a bad way to start the morning.

Unfortunately, I can't be as kind about my next stop, the "Learn to play tin whistle" workshop. Not only did the workshop-giving guy (David somebody?) treat the workshop as the second or third in a series despite the absolute beginners who were showing up,¹ he seemed to expect people with no musical experience at all to be able to learn tunes by ear on a brand new instrument, and persisted in saying things like "you need more intensity in the breath" without explaining what that meant or how to do it when people were struggling to hit notes in the second octave. Honestly, although I had never played a tin whistle before I am convinced that I could have run a better workshop teaching beginners to play it.

Next, Roz Pappalardo and the Wayward Gentlemen livened things up with some energetic country-rock. I hadn't intended to see this band, but they filled a gap in my schedule and ended up being much more enjoyable than I had expected. Pappalardo was an unaffected performer (with an unabashed love for her electric guitar!) and the Wayward Gentlemen were much more well-behaved than their moniker might lead one to suggest.

Dev'lish Mary were a very bluegrassy sort of ensemble (their myspace offers the word "hilljilly", which I reproduce here without comment), four female singers with fiddles, banjos and a double bass. Technically very good, adept performers, but not my scene (although their cover of AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long" in the style of an Appalachian waltz provoked a certain amount of giggling).

In the heat of the afternoon (and the absence of anything more exciting on my schedule) I took a gamble and went to watch the first heat of the Great Band Competition. The idea behind this was that anybody could put their name into a hat at the start of the festival, then get 24 hours to prepare a song with three strangers and peform it at the first heat. I had chanced to see some of the name-drawing the day before, and there were certainly some odd combinations; most of the adults who ended up in bands with younger people looked a bit dubious about it all, too.

As it turned out, all of the young kids² were really good, from the thirteen-year-old soprano who brought tears to the eyes of a few audience members (and not just his doting stage parents) to the kid about as tall as his electric guitar. The quality of the performances in general was also very good, all things considered; the majority of the bands had one dominant member, usually with a pre-written song, who everybody else played along with, but there was also a band who played a cover of "You Are My Sunshine", and one named X-Y-Z-Boom (for the generations its members came from) who produced a bizarre sort of family hoedown.

After a delicious dinner I went and sat on a hill to listen to Murphy's Pigs, whose name in my head is always spoken with Dylan Moran's voice. They had a ridiculous number of musicians on stage - I want to say there were ten of them, but I don't think I counted - with instruments including bagpipes, accordion and bodhran (along with the obvious drums, fiddle, whistle, guitar, etc.). They played various traditional Irish and Scottish pieces, as well as a lovely lovely Billy Connolly song, and the jolly guitarist-singer who looked like someone's dad merrily announced songs in Irish and Scottish accents willy-nilly. Lots of fun, and I was sorry when the set ended.³

Next up, and conveniently at the same stage, came Kangaroo Moon. Kangaroo Moon were one of the acts in the festival programme that I felt compelled to see, even after I had failed to find any enticing examples of their work online. Apparently this was a grand reunion of sorts, band members having scattered over the last twenty years and some of them now based in London, and as the band had played at the very first of these festivals it was something of a momentous occasion. Some old-timers sitting near me on the hill mentioned early on that they seemed to have mellowed with age; certainly, they started out with some low-key, almost ambient sounds, ideal to relax to while watching a thunderstorm approaching across the hills.

Several flashes of sheet lightning every minute were persuasive enough to inspire movement off the hillside and under cover, despite the lack of rain or audible thunder. Kangaroo Moon were playing up a storm; as the pace picked up and they began to meld Celtic fiddle reels with droning didgeridoo and people started getting up to dance, the rain started pouring down. In the end the "dancefloor" was packed, plastic chairs being quickly stacked out of the way to make more room, and there was probably sixty years' age difference between the oldest and youngest people jumping about. Even the two brief power failures and the bogginess underfoot had no real impact on the festivities.

I have to say that seeing Kangaroo Moon gave me my first glimmer of understanding when it comes to those multi-day dance/electronic/doof music things that people go to out in the bush. I still can't imagine wanting to go to one, but I think I get why other people do now. Kangaroo Moon were, I think, what so many other (younger? more naive?) bands want to be: a melting pot of stylistic influences, but coherent and unique instead of derivative and uncomfortable. They mixed tradition and technology, folk and psychedelia, electronic and acoustic sensibilities, and were unlike anything I'd ever heard before.

Once Kangaroo Moon finished up I had to decide whether to brave the elements for the last three bands on my schedule, or flee back to the tent. I didn't have any way to keep dry, so as either choice would mean getting wet and I'd slept through an Evenish set earlier in the festival I splashed my way around in the dark for a while and ended up back at the Duck and Shovel.

Evenish were very nice,⁴ a trio (guitar/fiddle/whistle+flute+bodhran) playing Celtic folk-style music. The guitarist (who also plays a mean fiddle, as we discovered) and the fiddle player were engaged to be married, and Evenish played tunes that they had written for each other as well as various other original compositions. Seeing them play on stage I was struck by - well, not a vision exactly, but something like one, of the sort of quiet existence they would lead together in the middle of nowhere, making music and never having to raise their voices. The whistle player mentioned that the band had been rehearsing via YouTube because of their geographical separation, and I'm impressed that he hasn't succumbed to some kind of third-wheel paranoia; there did seem to be a certain amount of awkwardness onstage, but nothing that their nice music couldn't ease.

Yet another change of pace came with The Gin Club's set. Another of the not-really-a-folk-band-at-all bands that I assume are on the program to add some relevance for the young folks.⁵ The first band of the festival to get me wondering what it is that defines that particularly "Australian indie rock band"⁶ sound - the sound of bands that get played on Triple J radio, who grew up listening to You Am I. I'm convinced that there's a particular energy and style that makes that variety of Australian band identifiable as soon as the guitar chords start.

The Gin Club were pretty listenable, and obviously have a substantial fan base in Queensland; being a Brisbane band made up of competent young fellows, this is not entirely surprising. Unfortunately, I didn't find anything about their set especially illuminating or invigorating, and the constant swapping of instruments between band members became very annoying. Much as I appreciate musicians who have more than one string to their bow,⁷ I really think that it's overly disruptive to have everybody in the band switching around after almost every song. I don't think it's necessary to prove to the audience that everyone can play guitar, bass and drums as well as singing; more consistency would result in a more coherent performance.

By this stage of the evening I was close to nodding off in my white plastic chair, but decided to stick around for the Transbalkan Express as I wouldn't have a chance to see them later in the festival. Long before they started there were all sorts of exciting noises emanating from the backstage area, but soon enough came a distraction as the band filed on for the sound check. I don't know how many people there were in the band, but I don't think twenty would be too wild a guess. After what seemed like an eternity they started to play, and people in traditional costumes burst out of the backstage area, pulling civilians with them, and started an enormous circle dance.

Although the Transbalkan Express were very good, I may have been too tired to appreciate them properly, being constantly distracted by the incompetent bumblings of people trying to dance in a circle and the miniature melodrama being played out between a girl from the audience and one of the dancers. Lesson for the day: it is possible to see too many bands in a day.

1. The festival programme did not suggest that these were anything but stand-alone workshops [↩]
2. The youngest competitors were in their early-to-mid teens. This means that I have become Old, because I thought that they were much younger. [↩]
3. Looking back, this is actually the first band of the day that I can say this about. That's a bit sad. [↩]
4. I hate it when there's no other adjective I can use, but there it is. [↩]
5. No pun intended. [↩]
6. And I don't mean "indie rock" in the sense that, in the words of Andrew Bird, is "more about haircuts and fashion than about music". Get off my lawn! [↩]
7. Intended, this time. [↩]

The always non-citrus ephant reminded me today that I would like to make T-shirts. The problem is, of course, that I have no product or brand to attach said T-shirts to, no intention of making a terrible webcomic to give myself an excuse, and little likelihood of being in a band any time soon. Given the terrible, crawling horror that grips me at the thought of becoming famous more famous than I already am, it seems likely that my imaginary merchandise will remain imaginary forever.

My favourite Imaginary T-shirt is the one which says "I do not feel good about anything" on the front. It is probably a black T-shirt with white writing because, you know, that's what T-shirts like that look like. The thing about this T-shirt is that I usually remember that I want to make it when the sentiment is more or less accurate, but I can only envision actually wearing one in public when I am in one of those aggravatingly sunny moods that cause benevolence and goodwill to spill from my every pore. ¹

Another Imaginary T-shirt Slogan that I am very fond of is "everything is very very bad". Application as above, with the additional option of wearing it to make fun of opinionated people. I think I would also like one that said "what".

Now I have forgotten my other Imaginary T-shirt Slogans, except for the one John Campbell has already put on a T-shirt that I don't like the look of. Woe is me. If he didn't make one of the best things on the internet I would have to be cross with him.

1. That actually happens, you know. [↩]

I must interrupt this blog's continuity, such as it is, to say something about Hey Rosetta!'s¹ Brisbane show last week. Having seen them at Woodford (twice) and nagged several people to see them in Melbourne (quite successfully), I was duty bound to see them play in Brisbane. Also, I wanted to, because they are awesome. Dead Letter Chorus were headlining, or possibly co-headlining with Hey Rosetta!, but [spoiler] sadly I didn't end up seeing them.

The Troubador is an endearing little venue up some stairs in the Valley, long and thin and with a stage so small there are guitar stands mounted on the wall. There are comfy-ish seats along the sides as well, which is handy for when the music does not warrant standing up.

The Support: At Sea

We arrived part of the way through At Sea's set, and I got briefly distracted by having to bellow at the ever-affable Romesh and Josh about my Melbourne friends and hear them get ephant's name wrong. Even after I started paying attention to the band I was not especially interested. There was a brief period of amusement when I realised that the configuration of Dead Letter Chorus as described to me by Stefan was the same: three tall guys wearing black plus a girl. Then I realised that At Sea had a drummer as well, so they must be At Sea and not Dead Letter Chorus.

At Sea were ... okay, I guess. They reminded me a little bit of Teeth and Tongue, but I think this was for the entirely superficial reason that both have a female singer in a dress and a band made up of boys. At Sea's singer did not play an instrument, just strutted and sang poutily, failing entirely to overcome my prejudice against singers in rock bands who don't do anything but sing.² I was powerfully reminded of all the classified ads that read something like "Heavy rock band seeks female singer." On the other hand, the band's only stylistic consistency seemed to come from the singer, who sounded a bit like 1990s Gwen Stefani propped up in front of a different band. Overall grade: a resounding "meh".

During the set I was mainly entertained by watching band members flit back and forth between backstage and the merch table, and playing "guess who's in a band and who's just going to the toilets". Oh, and by the fact that one member of At Sea looked like a taller Ben Lee with fluffy sideburns.

The Main Event: Hey Rosetta!

All six members of Hey Rosetta! on the little Troubador stage made for a tight squeeze, the more so because one of them had a cello. The Very Tall Guitarist looked even taller in such a small space, and there was an incident of approximately as much cuteness as three kittens: the bassist and the (significantly taller) violinist sharing a mic to sing backing vocals. I am fairly sure my inner voice went "ee hee hee!" and didn't stop until they stopped doing it.

The show itself was, unsurprisingly, excellent. Being so spatially concentrated only intensified Hey Rosetta!'s sound, and I was able to hear and appreciate more of the music's subtleties in an enclosed space than had been possible outdoors at Woodford. I was really impressed by the exceptional skill and musicianship on display, of every member individually but also of the band as a whole. In some bands everyone concentrates hard on playing together and nobody gets into any kind of musically transcendent headspace; in others, invididual members go off on their own individual journeys and the music doesn't hang together unless the poor drummer manages to pound the skins insistently enough. Hey Rosetta! play like maniacs, yet with such sensitivity and precision that you could be forgiven for thinking you are listening to some kind of extraordinary one-man-person-band.

Some things that I particularly liked:

• The wonderful ensemble playing frees up the drummer to add rhythmic texture to an already rich sound, instead of being stuck keeping time.
• Having two string instruments rather than one exponentially increases the awesomeness of a band. There's something about a (horn/string) section that trumps a single instrument every time, and I love the way these two bounced off each other.
• Mandolin!
• Having seen Hey Rosetta! a few times and listened to their album and EP, I recognised the openings of some favourite songs, which made me think that I was getting to know the band - so much more satisfying than musical one night stands, as Stefan so deftly metaphored.³

Hey Rosetta! won over what seemed at first to be a dubious-to-indifferent crowd - I was standing more or less at the front of a scattering of people at the beginning of the set, with an unobstructed view, but by the end of the set I was shifting about to see past the drunk tall people who had drifted in front of me. Hooray for Hey Rosetta!

Unfortunately, it was past the bedtime of a certain doctor,⁴ so Dead Letter Chorus remain an unknown quantity. I hear they are quite good, but having heard that about the Arctic Monkeys and Vampire Weekend in the past I will reserve judgement.

finis

1. How am I supposed to accurately punctuate that? Stupid bands with exclamation marks in their names. [↩]
2. This is not to say that they are never awesome - Matt Berninger "only" sings, after all, and The National are my equal favourite band of all time. But a singer who doesn't contribute anything else to the sound needs to be good. [↩]
3. 'To metaphor' is a verb now. You heard it here first. [↩]
4. Not a real doctor. [↩]