Shoe Tossing And Shoe Trees

    shoe-tossing-shoe-treeShoe tossing – urban myths abound

One evening while walking through our town, I spotted a pair of shoes flung over power lines. They were hanging by the laces, which had been tied together to form a loop.

There they hung, like galahs waiting for the rain. My Dad’s voice entered stage left: ‘What wee bawheid* wasted a guid pair of shoes like that?”

My sentiments entirely. The old man had five years in the army, where he learned habits of neatness and most importantly, how to care for one’s shoes. So yes, Dad would have been disgusted at this world-wide phenomenon known as ‘shoe tossing’ or ‘shoefiti’. Urban myths abound on the whys and wherefores of shoe tossing. It could be to mark a place nearby where you can buy drugs (US reference), a Year 12 farewell tradition (Australia), a symbol of love, a sign that someone has died (generic) or (US again) a way for gangs to mark out their territories.

In Scotland (since we earlier referred to the auld country), when a young man lost his virginity he reputedly tossed his shoes over telephone lines as a sign to his peers. What the girl thought of this version of kiss and tell is not explained. I can imagine, though:

“Well, turns out he was a heel, without a soul.”

Aspiring US politician Ethan Book decided the best way to tackle the shoe tossing mania was to cut the shoes loose. He used a (plastic) extendable pole to clip the laces of hung-up shoes in his home town of Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Despite this somewhat risky, year-long neighbourhood goodwill campaign, he did not win Connecticut, District 128.

shoe-tossing-shoe-trees
Shoe tree at Lloyd Jones Weir, near Barcaldine

It seems folks are not content with simply throwing a pair of shoes up on power lines. At times you will find whole trees festooned with footwear. On one of our outback sojourns, we observed a tree on which hung many pairs of shoes, boots, slippers, and sandals. The shoe tree trend, I might argue, has been amplified and accelerated by the likes of Instagram and Tikkity-tok (whatever).

There’s Dad again, reminding me that shoe trees (still in vogue today), are devices you fit inside your (polished) shoes to help keep their shape when stored in a wardrobe. Dad used to polish his good shoes every week, whether or not he was going to wear them, then store them away as described.

Sadly, I never developed these habits of tidiness and thrift, but my unquestionable curiosity and capacity for research uncovered this gem: “leather shoes which are well cared for and worn infrequently can last 20 or 30 years”.

I can at least offer an example – a pair of tan Italian leather shoes bought in 2004, along with a 300 Euro, beige suit from a shop near Rome’s Spanish Steps.

Those shoes are still in pretty good nick, despite my tendency to wear down the outside of the heel. I wear them seldom as they are a narrow fit and the latter aggravates a chronic foot condition.

Which brings me to a memo on my to-do list which states  ‘podiatrist’. I’ve been putting it off, not so much because of the cost, but the pain.

A corn slowly grows into the side of my big toenail which, six months or so after treatment, has grown back enough to cause discomfort.

Meanwhile, my shoes lie all in a tumble at the bottom of the wardrobe. The ones I have not worn in a while, gathering dust, keep the more commonly worn ones company. I have only four pairs of shoes, carefully chosen for comfort, with a wide fitting to compensate for the complaint hereto outlined.

There’s a pair of black dress shoes, sturdy hiking boots with long laces, a mangy pair of slippers with velcro straps and my most-days walking shoes. I found last week that the stitching was starting to come apart along the top of the left shoe. One quick trip to the local shoe repair guy and $13 later the walking shoes are as good as new. These days I rarely buy shoes and when I do, the one rule is they have to feel like I’ve been wearing them for months.

If you are of my vintage, you may remember the fluoroscope, a shoe-fitting device in shoe stores. The machine took an X-ray of your foot while it was inside the shoe you were trying on. Children not yet tall enough to look at the bones of their own feet had to rely on Mum. By the time I was tall enough to use a fluoroscope, they had all but disappeared, after decades of children, parents and shoe store employees being exposed to radiation.

As this absorbing video by the US Food and Drug Administration history team shows, the fluoroscope, in common use between the 1920 and 1960s, was a hazard to health.

For strategic domestic purposes this discussion about footwear does not stray far into the topic of women’s shoes, I have always adopted a ‘not my department’ rule. I admire but never query. All the same, my sister had a snigger when visiting us in Maleny some years ago because the town’s shoe store is called Imelda’s. My sister likes shoes and why the hell not!

In season four of ‘The Crown’, which we have begun to watch, much is made of ‘outdoor shoes’ when city guests come to Balmoral Castle in Scotland. Prime minister Thatcher arrives for the weekend in modest black heels and a startlingly blue outfit (which she wears to go stalking deer)..

‘The Crown’ is a curious beast for those of us old enough to have lived through the Thatcher years and Charles’s arranged marriage to Princess Diana. In certain scenes fraught with emotion we feel like yelling out Look out! He’s right behind you or “Sir, you are a cad and a bounder.

But as noted, there are scenes in ‘The Crown’ when much is made of footwear – what’s appropriate and what’s not.

The Queen is frequently seen striding around the muddy Balmoral estate in aforementioned ‘outdoor shoes’, gadding about in an old green Jeep, much like Vera, the grumpy Tyneside TV detective.

As I was saying about the podiatrist, turns out I might have to wait until January for an appointment (unless I drive to the city). No doubt he/she will be wearing a face mask. If I was the one fiddling about with my feet, I’d be wearing a mask too.

I’ll leave you this week with a fine song about shoes, written and sung by Mark Knopfler, whose songwriting career, I believe, outshines his days with Dire Straits.

It’s called ‘Quality Shoe’ and is quite difficult to play (for all you bedroom guitarists out there). Just a suggestion for those who get Scotty from Marketing’s $250 stimulus payment next month, that’s about the right price for a quality shoe.

Lace ’em up, walk around
I guarantee you can’t wear ’em down
You’re gonna need a quality shoe.

*bawheid – a person with a big head, or, ‘One who is ignorant and unnecessarily stupid’.

Arts Take Virtual Performance To Another Level

arts=virtual-choir
Pokarekare Ana

One evening in April, a Kiwi songwriter friend living in London posted a YouTube video by the London Humanist Choir, performing a love song in Māori. The video of New Zealand’s unofficial anthem, Pokarekare Ana, was, as we are now accustomed, a multi-screen video with choir members recording their parts remotely. I shared this with a few Kiwi friends who live elsewhere, knowing it would tug at the tendrils of homesickness, which are almost always waving in the breeze.

This video has had some 37,000 views – not bad for an arts group with 322 subscribers. The group’s social media curator coined the cute phrase, ‘Choir-antine’.

The group’s leader, Alex Jaye, started by giving the choir singers notes on how to record, mostly to minimise unwanted noise, distortion and filtering. Once he received the 20+ videos, he used EQ and compression to correct problems detected in the audio (often due to mobile phone microphones).

“Very little corrective editing (on individual videos) was used as it kills the sense of there being a choir – which does invite blemishes naturally as part of the sound.

Mr Jaye used iMovie to edit the video, utilising picture-in-picture, a technique often used in sports broadcasts.

“Overall it was around a day’s worth of work, however mostly due to video editing not being my forte, so I would say all told five to six hours’ worth of editing.”

In the same vein, a virtual video by Camden Voices does Cindi Lauper’s True Colours a lot of justice.

Like Alex Jaye, the UK choir’s director Ed Blunt started by giving singers instructions for filming the videos to a click track (metronome).

“It was a steep technological learning curve for me as I only had limited experience with video editing.”

He also converted the individual video formats into a uniform file type. The video was synchronised separately from the audio and the different grids were arranged and then exported (one at a time) to an editing programme (Premiere Pro). The audio tracks were synced and mixed in Logic.

My point, before we get too much further into this topic, is the value of such contributions to the community in general. True Colours (this version) has had 1.64 million views. If even 10% of the people who watched this sent Camden Voices $1, they would be able to top up their larder, probably bare these past months from a lack of paid performances.

True Colours:

Sunshine Coast choir director Kim Kirkman concurs with the complexities involved in editing a virtual video. He produced a Zoom video for female barbershop group Hot Ginger Chorus, performing Cindi Lauper’s Time after Time.

The audio part is the challenging part for me. I have to put 25 voices in line with each other and check that they are all correct. That takes quite a lot of time. The visual is very easy. I just do two runs through Zoom and then stitch that together over the top of the audio that I’ve done previously.”

Time after Time:

Musicians, performing artists, actors and dancers were quick to adapt the technology to the life of isolation. Anyone with a smart phone and the ability to film themselves could play. The production values on numerous videos by orchestras, jazz bands, country musicians and choirs have, for the most part, been outstanding.

The ‘Quarantunes’ series by the Nelson family (Willie and sons Lukas and Micah) is worth a look. Lukas, who wrote a lot of the music for the hit movie A Star is Born, is the one singing, in case you were wondering!

Turn off the TV and build a Garden:

Queensland Ballet is a local example of an arts company creating ‘mini-ballets’ to keep subscribers’ appetites whetted for next year’s season. On May 21, QB made the difficult announcement that it was postponing its 2020 season to 2021.

Queensland Ballet Artistic Director Li Cunxin AO said the company was planning a reintroduction of activity “in a cautious and methodical manner to optimize dancer and community safety”.

Mr Li said in a statement that the decision was also based on feedback from patrons that they may wish to wait until 2021 to enjoy ballet again.

“We have also undertaken economic modelling which has considered potential social distancing restrictions that would render any return to the stage as extremely costly and potentially detrimental financially to the company.”

If you are a ballet fan (and FOMM’s research suggests that readers are more likely to follow the arts than the NRL), you can donate money this month and a benefactor will quadruple your gift. So your humble $25 turns into $100 and so on. To keep the faith, QB is posting 60 short dance videos through the month of June.

Britain’s National Theatre has been filming live performances and streaming them every Thursday. The most recent play is Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, starring Tom Hiddleston. There was also a performance of Frankenstein starred Benedict Cumberbatch as the monster. Imagine!

This is high art delivered with a generosity of spirit while the theatre is closed to patrons until at least August 31. If you think about what tickets to live theatre cost in Australia, you could log on to PayPal and send them a few quid!

I rather liked comedian Sammy J’s Antique Roadshow piss-take recently where he evaluated the worth of a pair of tickets to a live event. As the faux antique owner says, “you mean people used to leave their houses?”

We might bear this satire in mind, given that this week the first patrons will be allowed into live rugby league games. The National Rugby League apparently pointed out that pubs and clubs were allowed to have up to 50 patrons on their premises (subject to social distancing rules). So, the NRL said, it was only fair that rugby league fans to be allowed in limited numbers, confined to the catering sections of stadiums.

It will be interesting to see if Fox Sports abandons its naff ‘virtual crowd’ audio, the sports equivalent of canned laughter in a comedy show where there is no audience.

Andrew Moore of the ABC’s sports show Grandstand left no room for ambiguity when he commented on this during a lull in play.

“When two players are down injured like this (a head clash known as ‘friendly fire’), the crowd would normally go quiet. Let’s have a listen (pushes window open). Nah, nothing! No fake crowd noise on the ABC, folks.”

Which is as good a point as any to observe that while arts communities were getting creative through the March/April covid-19 restrictions, the best Channel Nine (the home of rugby league) could come up with was re-runs of State of Origin matches from bygone eras. the transition over the next 12 months.

The best advice to choirs and singers in general is dire – there is no safe way to practice public singing while the coronavirus is active.

Dr Lucinda Halstead, one of the experts quoted in this paper, says physical distancing on a stage for a choir would not be possible:

“You would need a football stadium to space apart the Westminster choir”.

The reality is that normal transmission will not be resumed until social distancing ends (as is now the case in New Zealand).

Kia kaha (be strong).

 

Ten songs that influenced teenage me

ten-songs-influenced
Image (and research): Wikipedia

Most of my musician friends spend time on Facebook, so that’s why I probably saw so many of those ‘10 albums which influenced your musical tastes’ challenges. It is no surprise this diversion has become popular in the uncertain time of COVID-19 because it allowed us to yearn, just a little, for those carefree days when music helped shape our lives.

You can tell how much the ‘challenge’ means, as so many participants cannot leave it at 10. Ah, the warm feeling of remembering a relationship that budded and flowered, just as Cat Stevens released Tea for the Tillerman. Maybe you’d met a brown-eyed girl (called Rhonda); perhaps you lived in a town without pity. Or it really got you when Ray Davies wrote, ‘I’m not like everybody else’.

I walked in to the ‘challenge’ by posting an ironic observation that nobody had nominated me to do anything, My record producer friend Pix Vane-Mason popped up, asking about the music that influenced my teenage years.

It didn’t take long for me to break the rules and make my own mini-FOMM, with explanations and reviews (most just post album covers on 10 successive days, with no comment at all). A few people who saw the first entry were surprised to find I was a pre-pubescent jazz head. No 1 was Carmen McRae’s version of Dave Brubeck’s ‘Take Five’. The song version of Brubeck’s famous jazz instrumental (in 5/4 time) came out in late 1961, when I was about to turn 13. I’d not heard the original instrumental version (1958), but this set me off on an exploration of modern jazz.

In 1962, pop music began to intrude, starting with Cliff Richard’s ‘The Young Ones’ in 1961. In 1962, I quickly became impressed with Cliff’s backing band, The Shadows. Original and distinctive tunes like ‘Apache’ and ‘Flingle Bunt’ can still be heard on the radio today. Check out this 2017 version of the No 1 hit ‘Apache’ (1960) when Hank Marvin and the original members reunited for one final tour.

 

(There’s a prize for the first one to tell me which politician they think the drummer resembles. Ed)

In 1963, the fickle fifteen year old was torn between folk (there was a folk club in town) and the peer pressure to go with those brash young pop/rock groups from the UK. This was the year The Beatles penetrated the Kiwi consciousness.

I liked the two covers the Beatles did early on (A Taste of Honey and Till There was You) which hinted at the musicality to come. But the music I remember most from that year was a collection of trad folk songs by an extraordinary singer, Odetta. It was a hit record in NZ.

An incredibly eclectic mix of music came through the AM radio in 1964. The Beatles dominated the charts – five songs in the top 20 including numbers 1 and 2, and nine in the top 100. But they had to share Billboard’s top 10 with Louie Armstrong (Hello Dolly), Roy Orbison (Pretty Woman), the Beach Boys (I get Around) and Dean Martin (Everybody Loves Somebody). I really liked vocal harmonies so the Beach Boys almost always got my vote. But the jazz influence was still there, so even though it seems cheesy now, Stan Getz’s collaboration with Brazilian singer Astrid Gilberto, was, as Danny R said on FB, perhaps our first taste of ‘world music’.

Difficult as it was to pluck one song from the plethora of hits in 1965, I could not go past ‘Rescue Me’ by Fontella Bass. It was released a few months shy of my 17th birthday. I bought the record and played it to death. Nothing wrong with a good old fashioned teenage crush, eh! This was the year that brought us ‘King of the Road’, ‘I Can’t Help Myself’, ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’, ‘Downtown’, ‘Help’ and ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’, so there was a lot of competition.

(Rescue Me)

Aretha Franklin is sometimes mistakenly credited with this song, which was written by record producers Carl Smith and Raynard Miner (Bass claimed she co-wrote the song but was never credited). The other song that grabbed me in1965 was ‘I Got You Babe’ by Sonny and Cher (Cher also recorded ‘Rescue Me’ in 1974). What was that I said about teenage crushes!

Gordon Lightfoot’s ‘Early Morning Rain’ was a hit for folk trio Peter Paul and Mary in 1965. A version by George Hamilton IV made No 9 on the country charts in 1966. This was the year Simon and Garfunkel emerged, suitcase and guitar in hand, also a beautiful song full of imagery (Elusive Butterfly of Love). But this was also the year of ‘Doobie Doobie Doo’ (say no more) and the Monkees, a manufactured band provided with catchy hits by a then-unknown Neil Diamond. For all that, folk/country music was starting to penetrate the pop charts courtesy of artists like Dylan, PP&M and Gordon Lightfoot. ‘Early Morning Rain’ covers prevailed for decades, including Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Jerry Lee Lewis, Eva Cassidy and Australia’s Wendy Matthews, A great song is always just that, no matter the genre.

No 9 & 10 in music that influenced me as a teenager makes a reference to J.S Bach. I was raised in a household where classical music was always in the background. Mum played the piano and organ, so naturally enough, the Bach-inspired introductions to hit songs in 1967 (the year I turned 19), pressed all of the right buttons. The late Ray Manzarek, keyboard player with The Doors candidly spoke about the inspiration for the intro to ‘Light my Fire’, Bach’s Invention No. 8, BWV 779. Many piano players who ended up in rock bands had a classical background. So when the organ intro from Procol Harem’s No 1 hit ‘Whiter shade of Pale’ first emerged from the AM radios we owned in those days, the similarity between that and Bach’s Air on the G String was immediately identified. Matthew Fisher’s Hammond organ intro eased the way for Gary Brooker’s distinctive vocals and a global hit was born. Jim Morrison’s smoky vocals on ‘Light My Fire’ emerged from Ray Manzarek’s attacking organ intro.

Later, in my 20s, the classical/jazz influence continued with a love of 70s bands like Blood Sweat and Tears, Genesis, Sky, The Nice, the Moody Blues and Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

While Joni Mitchell’s songs (Both Sides Now and the Circle Game) were hits for Judy Collins and Buffy Saint- Marie in 1967, Joni’s first album did not appear until 1968 (when I turned 20). Little did we know, 19 albums later, what an incredible influence she would be for anyone with a keen sense of music, poetry and art.

My bad – I forgot to mention ‘Friday on My Mind’ (The Easybeats, 1966), selected as one of the best songs of the last 1,000 years by Richard Thompson, Here’s RT’s version.

In the Facebook posts I also neglected to mention a key influence on my songwriting, Ray Davies of The Kinks. Those well-crafted songs (e,g, ‘Sunny Afternoon’, ‘Dead End Street’, ‘Lola’ and ‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion’), stitched sardonic social comment into a fabric of catchy and rhythmic tunes. His songs lived on in my lizard brain until I picked up a guitar aged 27 and discovered the circle of fifths, just like Ray!

 

Tiptoe through the ukulele group

Ukulele-group
Ukulele image: Eduardo Letkenman, Pixabay.com

One Tuesday morning recently I tiptoed into an auditorium and onto the stage, threading my way through the U3A ukulele group to take the one vacant seat.  I arrived at the Senior Citizens rooms at 10am but we were supposed to be there at 9.30am. The group was up to song three (Maggie) by then. So I calmly set up my music stand, took the baritone uke out of the bag and joined in at the start of verse two. The delay was due to setting up my songbook, which has chords for a baritone ukulele, completely different to the rest of the group.

There are ukulele groups everywhere you go these days. There’s a Brisbane Ukulele Musicians Society in Brisbane – which accounts for the acronym BUMS and a similar group on the Sunshine coast, SCUMS.  I think this probably typifies the attitude of ukulele groups. They don’t take themselves too seriously. Or at least, ours doesn’t, as the tutor wasn’t fazed by my late entry, something which could get you fired if you were, say, second violin in a symphony orchestra.

I decided to buy a ukulele and join a group when we moved to our new town. I figured how hard could it be – I’d been playing guitar for 45 years. I spoke to a musician friend who works at a guitar store. It was his day off, but he recommended someone to talk to and ventured some opinions about ukuleles.

These small, four-stringed instruments are popular with children and bored septuagenarians, as they are easy to learn. Often all you need to form a chord is one finger on one fret. The strumming is something else, but a cinch to a guitarist. The baritone uke is tuned to the top four strings of a guitar. So, with a customised chord chart, I mastered six or seven chords at my first session.

You can’t and shouldn’t diss the ukulele as so many people do when referring to the banjo. The ukulele has enjoyed several starring moments in the popular music spotlight over the last 140 years or so.

If you are my vintage, you will remember Tiny Tim’s 1968 recording of Tip-toe Through the Tulips, which charted for nine weeks and reached No 17 on the Billboard Top 100.

Perhaps it was not so much the novelty of the ukulele but Tiny’s Tim’s tremulous falsetto and his waif-like persona that captured the public’s attention. This video has been viewed 15 million times although you’d have to ask yourself why. Al Dubin and Joe Burke wrote the song in 1929 and it was first popularised by Nick Lucas. If you are a younger person, you may have encountered it in the 2010 horror movie, Insidious.

That’s a good word to describe how the ukulele gets under a musician’s skin. Contemporary musicians to employ the uke include Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Eric Clapton, Eddie Vedder and the late George Harrison. In 2006 a studious-looking Japanese player, Jake Shimabukoro, revived Harrison’s While my Guitar Gently Weeps, performing it in New York’s Central Park on so-so quality video. Nonetheless, it has had 16 million views and set Shimabukoro on a hectic schedule of touring around the world. One of the many people to leave comments said: “My uke must be broken, it sounds nothing like this.” If you thought this was a fluke, check out Jake performing Bohemian Rhapsody at a Ted Talk in 2010.

Like many people who play, Jake describes the ukulele as ‘the instrument of peace’, a sentiment echoed by Loudon Wainwright III in a 2010 song. LWIII remarks here “if every baby was issued with a ukulele at the time of their birth, there would be world peace……and a lot of lousy music!”

Actor, singer-songwriter and comedian George Formby found ukulele fame with a smutty ditty he wrote called When I’m Cleaning Windows. If you’re going to watch this next video, bear in mind what media historian Brian McFarlane said of his movies in the1930s and 1940s, Formby portrayed ‘gormless Lancastrian innocents who would win through against some form of villainy, gaining the affection of an attractive middle-class girl in the process’.

Formby owes much of his success to purchasing a ukulele and marrying Beryl Ingham, both of which he did in 1923. Beryl became his stage manager, insisting that he wear a suit and introduce the ukulele to his act. From such showbiz savvy came hugely popular songs like Bless ‘Em All and Leaning on a Lamp Post (reprised by Herman’s Hermits in the 1960s).

So you may be wondering why I would take up ukulele at an advanced age. I tell people it’s to get me out of the house and that much is true. The U3A group of about 20 people meet every week and our tutor Martin is keen on getting us out to perform at retirement villages and the like.

As most guitar players would know, when you mostly play by yourself, at home, eventually you reach a learning plateau. That’s when many people quietly put the axe away and take up lawn bowls or quilt-making. Buying an easy-to-learn instrument like a ukulele more or less commits you to joining a group, so it becomes a social occasion, but also a way to challenge yourself to keep up with the pace. It is also very soothing. Actors Tom Hanks, Ryan Gosling, Pierce Brosnan and William H Macy play uke for recreation. Macy says he and his wife play the instrument to ‘self-soothe’. I could not agree more, though whether She Who Is Just Down the Hall appreciates hearing my self-soothing experiments is another matter.

The growing popularity of the instrument has created a need for ukulele festivals – weekend events attended by uke enthusiasts. If you like camping, music and camaraderie, go no further than Kenilworth on the first weekend in May. This will be the 7th annual Sunshine Coast Ukulele Festival. I might even be there!

If you spend time on YouTube, it does not take long to uncover brilliant musicianship. I’m not the first to recommend this YouTube video which features the late Hawaiian ukulele player and singer Israel Kamakawiwo’ole (Iz). His 1993 medley of What a Wonderful World and Somewhere over the Rainbow has had almost 80 million views, unusual for a five-minute song. You might have heard it first on an episode of ER.

The ukulele (originally called a machete), emerged from the islands of Portugal in the late 1880s, when immigrant sugar cane workers introduced it to Hawaii.  A hundred years later, the 1990s uke revival brought into popular use to augment folk and country bands. Ukulele orchestras emerged; a skilled arranger can achieve a lovely sound by scoring parts for the main types of uke – soprano, tenor, baritone and bass.

My musician pal advised against buying a cheapie (from $12 in discount department stores). I had already decided to do just that and ended up with a $159 baritone instrument made from maple. I learned to play guitar on a six-string classical instrument, so quickly got used again to the different feel of nylon strings.

Music aficionados will say you can never get a good sound out of a four-string instrument with nylon strings. Well, here’s the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain (as Mr Waits would say, they’re big in Japan), thrashing out AC/DC’s Highway to Hell. The lead break is awesome.

FOMM will be on the road for the next four weeks so who knows what will happen!

 

 

Canned muzak takes away listener choice

canned-muzak
Image by Naobim/pixabay.com

Today I’m keen to vent my displeasure at the seemingly inescapable intrusion of canned music – known as muzak. Background music in public places was once described by violinist Yehudi Menuhin as ‘pollution of the mind’. Menuhin, the consummate classical soloist, led a campaign in the late 1960s to have muzak banned from shopping malls and other public spaces. Muzak is a company set up in the 1950s which produced pre-recorded background music and sold it to shopping malls, restaurants and other public spaces. Muzak was sold to Westinghouse in 1981, then to the publishers of the Chicago Sun-Times and sold again to Mood Music in 2011. Although often known as ‘elevator music’ for its pernicious blandness, Muzak (the company) never actually sold it to lift companies. Muzak was so pervasive in the 1960s and 1970s it became a lower case term for light music of generic sameness).

For my part, I endured it all day every day when employed by supermarkets. There’s a lot of difference, let me tell you, between sub-consciously listening to what Alistair Cooke called ‘audible wallpaper’ while doing a 20-minute shop and being forced to listen from 8.30am to 5pm, five or six days a week. In 1975 I wrote an offensive song about muzak. I didn’t play guitar then, so a friend helped orchestrate my first foray into songwriting and performed it at the Brisbane Folk Centre. There were references to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana brass (This guy’s in love with you), Andy Williams (More), Acker Bilk (Stranger on the shore) and Henry Mancini (Moon River).

From my memory of working in retail, Muzak’s selection of the month was delivered as a reel of tape and was then wound into a reel-to-reel recorder securely locked in a box on the wall of the office.

Fast forward to 2019 and our ears are constantly assaulted by bland music, wirelessly emanating from tiny speakers tucked into the roofs of establishments ranging from coffee shops to football stadiums. I’m not privy to how the music at sports venues is broadcast, but let me give the NRL and even the Intrust Super Cup organisers a bit of feedback – and I mean that literally too.

Various codes of sport feel compelled to fill in any break in play with partial renditions of songs, at peak volume. At the Intrust Super Cup final at Redcliffe, the volume was so deafening, the choice of music (hip-hop, pop, rock, reggae) so ad hoc, that just about anyone within earshot of us began berating the invisible DJ.

The music starts when play has broken down (for an injury or a penalty), and is abruptly cut off when play resumes (just as you were getting in the groove). A snippet of Van Halen or ACDC, bless them, adds nothing to the game, especially when the music is reverberating around metal and concrete grandstands.

Mood music seems to have gone up in standard since my days of listening to Up Up and Away for the seventh time in a working day. Muzak’s 2019 owner, Mood Media, offers a wide range of genres to its clients and I have no doubt about the quality.

My main argument with unsolicited music streamed in public places is just that – it is unsolicited and, rather than put me in a good mood, it does the reverse.

We were having dinner at a city restaurant recently which streamed its own brand of muzak, distributed around a relatively small space. It was not my imagination – the volume increased as the night wore on. I was going to ask someone to turn it down (have been known to do this). But on a trip to the loo I realised the same music was being streamed through all the neighbouring restaurants.

A barista once showed me where his canned music came from – it was one of a set of CDs called Café Music. I asked him did it not get irritating for those who work there.

“After a while you don’t notice it,” he replied. And that is just the point. Mood music is in the background – able to be heard but not intended to be listened to.

George Winter, writing for the Irish Times, described his experience of ‘aural Polyfilla’ while having coffee in a shopping mall.

“Muzak pollutes the air, befouling the connections between one rational thought and another until I begin to think that it probably would be a good idea to buy a tie-rack for the cat.”

Winter recalled October 1969, when Yehudi Menuhin addressed Unesco’s International Music Council.

“Our world has become a sounding board for man-made sounds, amplified to suffuse and suffocate us,” Menuhin said, in part.

The Council had muzak in mind when it denounced “the intolerable infringement of individual freedom” and asserted “the right of everyone to silence, because of the abusive use, in private and public places, of recorded or broadcast music.”

Winter concluded with the observation that as Ireland had banned smoking in pubs, why not ban muzak too?

He cited Professor Stuart Sim’s Manifesto for Silence, where Sims comments on background music not only in malls and restaurants but in pubs.

“It is a deliberate policy on the management’s part. The noise helps to create a frenzied, over-stimulated atmosphere which promotes evermore frenzied consumption.”

Prof Sims’s 2007 manifesto, subtitled Confronting the Politics and Culture of Noise, makes an urgent demand for silence. In the introduction to his book, he sees it as a tussle between those who want more noise (as in the oft-repeated anonymous command of ‘make some noise’ when attending footie games) and those who want none.

“Lifting the ban on mobile phones on planes has opened up a new front in this conflict,” he wrote.

If you have ever been to sacred spaces like Uluru, Notre Dame, the Vatican or the ancient cathedral at Assisi, unwanted background music becomes apparent by its absence.I have oft times wondered if the people you see on trains and buses with listening buds in their ears are (a) listening to something they want to listen to or (b) shutting out the madding crowd with meditative music.It could all be completely wrong, because those on the outside cannot know what is being heard on the inside. That’s the beauty of choosing what to listen to and when.

Academic studies have been done on whether or not students write better essays when listening to music. This survey, trialled with 54 psychology students, concluded that it disrupted writing fluency, although those with music training and/or high working memory wrote better essays with longer sentences.

Likewise, studies have been done to examine the effect of background music in open plan offices (used to mask ambient sound and background conversations). Hmm, is that accountant over there listening to Céline Dion or is he wearing noise cancelling headphones?

As a songwriter, the biggest problem I have with unsolicited background music is that they never introduce or back-announce the track. So on the slight chance a song might sound familiar; you are never going to know. The upside for songwriters is that if your music is used as ‘aural Polyfilla’, the royalty cheques will keep on dribbling in. As I added up my royalty income for the October 31 tax deadline, it became crystal clear I am not and never will be one of those.

The Sound of Silence https://youtu.be/NAEppFUWLfc

PS: As this essay argues, listening to music should be a matter of personal choice. So click or don’t click on this splendid rendition by She Who Sings (aka Laurel Wilson), of Un Bel Di Vedremo from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. https://youtu.be/WCQEhgpb-qM

Misheard lyrics and a sentimental playlist

sentimental-playlist
The author (and dog) contemplating the next move

Last Sunday, as we performed my only country song, Crossroads of Love, I allowed myself a sly inward chuckle at the misheard lyric (well, I mishear it): “So I look for directions in the stars high above’’.

It’s the kind of misheard line you’d expect of a 70-year-old bloke, but I’m not about to elaborate. This is a family show.

My songwriter friend Kelly Cork likes the song; he thinks it is a sin of omission that is has not caught the attention of a Kasey Chambers or a Garth Brooks. I always thought it was a bit corny, but it seems you can get away with corny in the country genre.

You will have to permit me a sentimental wallow this week, as I sit here at a bare desk with the laptop (and the dog) – literally the last things to be packed away. I dismantled all of my music-playing technology weeks ago, so now all I have is a tiny IPod with 1700 songs plugged into the car.

Music was uppermost on our minds last Sunday when, against common sense, we held a full-house farewell house concert with just two days remaining to finish packing.

We invited hinterland musician friends to perform: Jevan Cole, Karen and Murray Law, Tommy Leonard, Noel Gardner and Alex Bridge and Kelly Cork. A sumptuous afternoon tea was provided by the audience (Laurel had packed away her baking trays).

The Goodwills Trio ended the day with a set culminating in a medley of well-known travel songs. Not a dry eye in the house! Thanks to Helen Rowe for going the extra mile to get to rehearsals. Thanks also to Woodfordia Inc for sponsoring our concerts over the years.

In the fullness of time, we’ll be producing a history of our house concert series – the first one in Brisbane in 1996, when Margret RoadKnight agreed to be our guest. We held 40 or 50 concerts at Fairfield when we lived there and another 90 or so from the first one in Maleny in 2003 (Margret RoadKnight featured once again).

If you missed out leaving a comment in the guest book that was passed around, you could join the many people who have emailed us with comments about our house concerts. The plan is to print them out and paste them into the book.

This week, I decided to answer the question I get asked a lot about my (songwriting) influences. They are too many to count, although most will be appalled by the omission of Dylan, Springsteen and other mainstream songwriters from this top 20 Spotify list.

Bob’s Spotify Playlist (courtesy of Frankie’s Dad) There are Spotify instructions below, but if you’d rather, FD has also compiled a YouTube playlist

1/ White Winos – LWIII (Last Man on Earth)

Loudon Wainwright’s ever-so slightly wrong tribute to his mother with the last line of every verse left hanging;

2/ Disembodied Voices – Neil and Tim Finn (Everybody’s Here)

New Zealand’s best songwriters reminisce about their childhood growing up in a musical household.

3/ Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner – Warren Zevon (Genius), the title of the song says it all, the ultimate ballad about mercenaries.

4/ A Case of You– (k.d. lang’s version of Joni’s classic song), from Hymns of the 49th Parallel, a magnificently produced album of contemporary Canadian songs;

5/ Clare to Here (Ralph McTell) – poignant tale from Ralph’s early days as a builder’s labourer, as told here in this 2007 live performance;

6/ It’s Raining – Stephen Cummings – from the album Spiritual Bum, a beautiful album of songs from the former lead singer of The Sports (and hopefully an omen);

7/ They Thought I Was Asleep – Paul Kelly – classic story song from Australia’s best – and we’ll never know what happened!

8/ Our Sunshine – Paul Kelly – included here for its brilliant first line ‘So there came a man on a stolen horse and he rode right onto the page.’

(Ed: And as what I think is an interesting aside, Ned Kelly’s horse was named ‘Mirth’.)

 9/ Who Know Where the Time Goes – Sandy Denny.

The story is that a young Sandy Denny had the words to this beautiful ballad in her guitar case and it had to be prised from her by Fairport Convention band members who immediately saw its potential;

10 Cold Kisses – Richard Thompson.

This sly story about an insecure man in a new relationship is only bettered by a guitar hook no-one I know has ever been able to reproduce;

11 Took the Children Away – Archie Roach

Seriously, this should be taught at schools;

12 Cry you a Waterfall – Kristina Olsen

Kristina Olsen typically tells a hilarious story before she sings this tribute to a friend taken in an automobile accident. It’s a fine performance technique when you catch people at their most vulnerable;

13/ Say a Prayer – Fred Smith

A tragic love story woven into a snippet of Australian history of war in the Pacific;

14/ Cat’s in the Cradle – Harry Chapin

My song Watching as You Sleep has a similar theme to Harry’s lament about  not having enough time for your kids when they are growing up and then the worm turns (‘he turned out a lot like me’)

15/ Lives in the Balance – Jackson Brown

It was always a wonder to me how this stinging critique of American interference in other countries’ politics is not better-known.

16/ The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down – The Band

Robbie Robertson’s well-researched story about the American Civil War, told from a Southern family’s point of view. It has a peculiar but effective rhythmic structure, as explained in the link below.

17/ Hello in There – John Prine

The master of brevity and nuance tells a Cat’s in the Cradle type story about a lonely old couple: ‘We had an apartment in the city – me and Loretta liked living there.’

18/ Sailing to Philadelphia – Mark Knopfler and James Taylor

The story behind the Mason Dixon line, splendidly rendered by two of the world’s best songwriters;

19/ Soldiers’ Things – Tom Waits – the growling poet of life on skid row at his best here: ‘Everything’s a dollar, in this box.’

20/ Paradise – John Prine

Prine’s anti-fossil fuel anthem from a childhood in western Kentucky.

Here’s an extra song, but it’s not on Spotify. It fits well with Paradise – “If you’ve got money in your pocket and a switch on the wall, we’ll keep your dirty lights on.”. Watch and listen here:

Keep your dirty lights on – Tim O’Brien and Darrell Scott.

The refrains of both songs deserve to be sung out loud at next Friday’s Strike 4 Climate rallies.

So, while the homeless Goodwills wander off to the south-western plains, let it be known that you will never find our music on Spotify. Not until they lift the streaming royalties by a respectable margin. Despite its reputation as a music distributer that short-changes musicians, Spotify is an incredibly user-friendly, massive musical database. No wonder at last count they had 217 million subscribers (including the free accounts).

Next week: Expect FOMM late next Friday as I will be attending the Strike 4 Climate rally in Brisbane – an eyewitness report!

 

Is vinyl just a fad?

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A sample of Bob’s eclectic vinyl collection

The first reference that came up when I searched ‘vinyl fad’ was an advertisement for high waist stretch vinyl leggings (only $15.60 from boo-hoo Aus.). That’s not a plug, you understand, just an observation on the randomness of internet searches.

Vinyl records, or LPs as they were known in my youth, have indeed made a comeback, after being superseded by compact discs (CDs) some 30 years ago. In the US, where such trends usually start and end, 9.7 million vinyl LPs were sold in 2018. This was a 12% increase on the 8.6 million copies sold in 2017.

In Australia, 860,000 vinyl albums were sold in 2018, up from 717,000 in 2017. The revival began in 2015 with a modest 314,000 copies sold.

Demand for new music on vinyl is such that last year Sony started manufacturing vinyl albums in Japan. Australia’s only pressing plant, Zenith Records, will be joined by a new pressing plant competitor, Program Records.

Vinyl seems destined, however, to remain a small-scale, boutique business compared with the growth of music streaming. ARIA (the Australian Recording Industry Association) said music streaming (wholesale) revenue continued its explosive growth pattern in 2018. It now accounts for 71.4% of the overall market by value amid annual growth of 41.2%.

The streaming category includes revenues from subscription services (Apple Music, Deezer, Google Play,Spotify etc) and on-demand streaming services such as YouTube and Vevo.

The compact disc format continued its gradual decline, securing 10% of music market revenue with just $53.17 million in sales.

By comparison, streaming services and digital downloads earned $445 million in combined sales.

Vinyl sales grew from $15.79 million in 2015 to $21.73 million last year, robust enough sales to keep the industry interested.

Yamaha Music USA’s Ted Goslin says the return of the vinyl LP is being drive by the under-25s hipsters. “Visit your local record store”, Goslin writes, “Chances are you’ll spot a man bun, a flannel shirt or some other identifiable accoutrement of this popular sub-culture.”

Collectors are also driving the renaissance of vinyl, constantly scanning second hand shops for a rare gem to add to their collections. The other demographic adopting vinyl as a serious hobby are people in their 30s and 40s, who can probably afford the high quality speakers, amps and turntables it takes to make vinyl sound good.

This topic came to mind after I retrieved 200+ vinyl albums from the bottom of the linen cupboard, where they have been for 17 years, and packed them into three plastic milk crates. As some of you may know, we are packing up and moving on. Expect a flurry of stories in coming weeks about packing too soon (“Honey, where’s the can opener?”), decluttering and when does sentiment outweigh practicality.

The most sought after vinyl albums are usually in mint condition (rarely or never played) and of course everyone wants 0000001 of the Beatles White Album, sold at auction recently for $790,000.

Over the years, I have had occasion to liberate an album from the linen cupboard and give it a spin. I once went through a whole week of listening to vinyl and nothing else. It’s true what they say – the sound is mellower, easier on the ears than the compressed attack of digital audio. But you have to sit down and actively listen and not have it on in the background like a café mix.

There’s a quiet hiss and an occasional crackle as we listen to the likes of the Moody Blues, Blood Sweat and Tears or Joni. Sonic heaven.

But it’s a pain getting up to flip the album over, isn’t it?

If you have looked after your records, it seems not to matter if they’ve been in a cupboard for 20 years. They will play like it was Yesterday or Tomorrow (Never Knows). There’s a certain level of frustration now, as I sift through these albums, having packed the record player away.

The other attraction of vinyl albums is the elaborate cover artwork that helps make LPs more collectable. Obvious examples include Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (a pre Photo Shop montage); Blind Faith’s bare-breasted teen holding a model aeroplane (it was banned in some countries) and Nirvana’s Nevermind, a baby in a swimming pool seemingly chasing a dollar bill.

There were also some stunning Pink Floyd covers by design company Hipgnosis; a man bursting into flames, hospital beds on a beach, a shaft of white light passing through a prism to become a rainbow.

So when I was asked was it really necessary to keep the vinyl collection, I had to say yes. It is an important connection to my youth and early songwriting influences and yes, I do listen.

The LP (long player) collection is quite eclectic and includes a lot of jazz and blues (my earliest influence until I discovered The Shadows). I have discovered that my niece and her husband are not just vinyl converts, they love jazz. So I have promised to give them my jazz albums, which include five recordings by the Dave Brubeck Quartet (note to executor).

The collection includes a lot of folk albums that I purchased for small amounts of cash at a time when record shops were having sales to get rid of surplus stock before CDs arrived. I would not dream of getting rid of such gems as albums by Kath Tait, the McGarrigle Sisters, Silly Sisters, Martin Carthy, Bert Jansch, Van Morrison, Maddy Prior, The Pogues and Christy Moore.

Meanwhile, I discovered that banana boxes from our friendly IGA were perfect for packing CDs. Just fill in the small spaces with paper or bubble wrap, put the lid on and tape it up with ‘FRAGILE” writ large on the box. So far I’ve filled five of these boxes. Not to mention the four boxes of unsold stock from our recording ventures.

Much has been written about the decline of the CD, signs of which have become obvious. Few laptops now come with a built-in CD/DVD reader/player. Likewise, many modern cars don’t have CD players. As far as I can tell, the new medium for the average music listener is a Google app, Bluetooth, a smart phone and a subscription to a streaming service.

My brother-in-law has a Google Play speaker in his lounge room – hours of endless fun. As I have previously observed, the app struggles with different voices and often chooses the wrong song:

Bob: “OK Google, play The Goodwills.”

Google: “Alright. Here’s DJ Goodwill from YouTube Channel”

Bob: “Stop, Google. Play T.H.E. Goodwills”

This time it works and, because all of Google’s music is drawn from its subsidiary, YouTube, we hear one of our songs used as a soundtrack for a six-minute video. It’s confusing.

I ask Ms Google to play ‘Silhouettes’ and once again she turns up a more recent song of the same name (by Avicii).

Bob: “No, no, Google. Play Silhouettes by The Rays”

Ms Google: “Alright alright! Playing creepy voyeur stalker song Silhouettes by The Rays.”

Bob: “What!  Are you developing independent thinking now, like Hal from 2001 a Space Odyssey? Also, you need to learn how to use commas.”

Ms Google: “Look Bob, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over”.

Further reading: Some technical opinions of interest only to audiophiles.

FOMM back pages – https://bobwords.com.au/planned-obsolescence-strikes-again/

 

The back roads to Canberra and musical reunions

canberra-musical-reunions
The Fagans – a musical reunion (L-R) Bob Fagan, Nancy Kerr, Margaret, Kate and James Fagan

When we planned a 2,500 kms round trip to the National Folk Festival via the back roads to Canberra, it seemed like a monumental expedition. Now that we’re home again (via Dubbo and Goondiwindi), it seems a weak effort compared to the distances travelled by overseas guests including Manran (Scotland), Nancy Kerr and James Fagan (UK), April Verch (US), George Jackson (US) and Vila Navio (Portugal).

For example, George Jackson committed himself to a 35,000 km round-trip, flying with his two other band members direct from Nashville to LA (3,218 kms). From there, they flew to Sydney (12,065 kms) then by road to Canberra (286 kms). After arriving in the late afternoon, there was barely time to eat and rest before the first gig at 11pm on Saturday night. Such is the peripatetic life of a professional bluegrass musician.

While the musicians involved in more than 120 acts were wending their way to Canberra, we chose mostly secondary roads, including an excursion through the verdant Bylong Valley in New South Wales between Denman and Bathurst.

At times I wondered if we would get there. We were towing a caravan, albeit a small one. The winding mountain road on either side of the Bylong Valley was particularly challenging. There were hairpin bends, one way bridges, narrow sections where two cars scarcely had room to pass by. Not to mention frequent signs warning of fallen rocks (and we did see a few on the sides of the road).

My main mission at the five-day National Folk Festival was to catch every concert by the fabled Australian family band, The Fagans, re-uniting for the first time in three years. Bob and Margaret Fagan and their adult children James and Kate are these days joined on stage by James’s partner Nancy Kerr. James and Nancy live in the UK, where Nancy has established a strong solo career. It reached a high point in 2015 when she was judged BBC Folk Singer of the Year.

I caught up with James for a chat and started by commenting that his guitarist Dad (Bob) gets a real charge out of playing opposite his adult son (who plays bouzouki)

“Yes it is quite obvious, isn’t it? He revels in it. I wouldn’t say the music is secondary, but looking across the stage and seeing Margaret and then his two kids singing in harmony, it still visibly moves him and he talks about it openly.

“When we were children we just wanted to be doing a slick and professional show. But as I’ve got older and I’ve got children I completely understand that there are some things more important than being professional. It’s still very valued in the folk world – being yourself and being true to your story.”

That elusive musical quality emerged when the Fagans employed four-part acapella singing. Their stirring version of Alex Glasgow’s Close the Coal House Door and its third verse about the Aberfan colliery disaster raised ‘goosebumps’. The refrain “Close the coal house door, lads, there’s bairns inside” references the 1966 disaster in Aberfan, Wales, when a colliery slag heap collapsed on a school, killing 114 children and adults.

Folk songs often tell real stories and some don’t pull punches, like British leftie songwriter Leon Rosselson’s hard-hitting The World Turned Upside Down. The song tells the story of The Diggers, a ragtag group of latter-day socialists who in 1649, after the execution of Charles I, occupied the land at St George’s Hill in Surrey. They believed that the land could now be used to establish collaborative farming communities. It is supremely ironic that today, St George’s Hill is an enclave of the super-rich; lavish mansions and acreage estates owned by Russian oligarchs, TV personalities, film stars and rock musicians, not to mention the landed gentry.

You might know the song through the 1984 version by Billy Bragg, but my preference is the Fagans singing this socialist anthem in four-part harmony.

James and his sister Kate started performing with their parents in the late 1980s while in their early teens. From performances at Sydney folk clubs, they graduated to the Maleny Folk Festival (before it grew too big and went to Woodford). James had just left high school when the group recorded their first album, ‘Common Treasury’, in 1991.

Some 28 years later, James and Nancy and their two children travelled 10, 662kms from Sheffield in the UK to the Blue Mountains. Not to mention a 600 kms round trip from the Blue Mountains to Canberra.

Yes, the trip was worth it; a family reunion, a musical reunion and time for Bob and Margaret to spend time with their grandsons Harry and Hamish. The latter appear to be following the family tradition, sharing the stage with James and Nancy, to perform ‘Mr Weather’. Nancy said the children deserved to be there because “they totally gave me the idea for this song”.

James and Nancy recently recorded their first duo album in a decade, a live album, ‘An Evening with Nancy Kerr and James Fagan’.

“The time’s not been idly spent,” James said of the past 10 years. “The last (duo) album came out in 2010, a big departure for us, as it was all songs and tunes written by ourselves.

“At the same time that album emerged, so did our first child, Hamish, and that required us to give up the lifestyle of living on a narrow boat and being troubadours and river gypsies.

“It was a big life change. The children came along, we moved into a house, we formed a new band and started diversifying what we did so one of us could be home.”

James reckons he has been to the National Folk Festival at least 20 times and fondly recalls scoring his first professional solo gig there when he was just 18.

This was also the case for bluegrass fiddle player George Jackson, who also enjoyed this year’s festival as a family reunion. His parents made the journey from Alice Springs to attend the festival and spend time with him. Mind you, it’s hard to pin down a dedicated musician at a music festival – they are usually picking up extra gigs. For example, George and two other bluegrass musicians stepped up for a spontaneous gig with songwriter John Flanagan.

It might have seemed like a jam, but when musicians of this calibre get together, magic things happen.

There were other highlights among the 150+ acts at the NFF including Scottish band Manran and their Scottish Gaelic songs, the virtuosity of instrumental band Kittel & Co and their marriage of Celtic music, bluegrass and classical, and the innovation of original Portuguese band Vila Navio.

Rounding out this eclectic festival, I was fortunate to catch one of comedian Martin Pearson’s daily ‘Brunch’ sessions where he trades barbs with guests. Singer and debater John Thompson was the guest that day. They traded Catholic school day experiences at the hands of teachers like Pearson’s “Sister Genghis”.

Amid a hilarious skit “how to wash a cat” they were interrupted by a loud ‘ting’ as one of Canberra’s brand-new shiny red trams arrived nearby.

“It’s not a tram,” said Thompson, crossly. “Trams share the road with other traffic. This has its own dedicated track. Therefore it is not a tram, it is light rail.”

I asked John about this later and he emailed me yesterday.

“There is some disagreement online about this distinction.

All trams are light rail, but only light rail that features “street running” can be called trams.

“The Canberra light rail only has “street running” at a couple of corners – it’s not a tram!”

 

That’s the thing about folkies – they have strong opinions.

A few words about Christchurch and global grief

christchurch-global-grief
Christchurch and global grief – artwork by Isaac Westerlund

Last Friday’s massacre in Christchurch by a lone gunman was, as numerous people opined on Twitter, the per capita equivalent of New Zealand’s 9/11. The 50 people killed represent 3,000 fatalities in a similar attack in the US. That does give perspective to the overwhelming feelings of sorrow and confusion many of us felt last Friday and the global grief we have felt every day since.

New Zealand rarely makes international headlines, unless it’s an earthquake, a volcanic eruption or the Wallabies beating the All Blacks. We mourn the irrevocable loss of innocence.

Like Ten’s social commentator Waleed Aly, I did not really want to talk about this today, but as he and others have said, I feel as if I need to say something. I grew up in a sleepy little town in the North Island, a place where nobody locked up and people left their keys in the ignition while they went across the road to the dairy for a bottle of milk.

I remember the shock that was shared around the country in 1963 (I was 15), when President John F Kennedy was assassinated. Things like that didn’t happen in New Zealand so we were shocked, dismayed and very sad. Then as with Christchurch, we shared in a global grief experience.

Songwriter Kath Tait, an expat Kiwi living in London, found out about the massacre at two Christchurch mosques when she got up on Saturday morning (Friday night over here).

She wrote on Facebook: “I’m totally gutted; it’s a big shock for us NZers because we still cling to the notion that NZ is a safe peaceful place and not really a part of the wider world out there. I guess we’re wrong about that.”

George Jackson, a fiddle player now based in Nashville but raised in NZ, encapsulated his feelings by re-learning a plaintive waltz written by his great-great grandfather George Dickson.

Song of the Tui

I spent the weekend at the Blue Mountains Music Festival where more than a few festival guests had something to say about the atrocity in Christchurch, which had only just happened. As we all now know, 50 people died of gunshot wounds inflicted by a lone attacker and many more suffered serious injuries. A male person has since been arrested, by two brave rural coppers in Christchurch for, of all things, an armed offenders’ training course.

He has been charged with one count of murder and remanded in custody until April 5. Like New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, I refuse to speak his name. And, despite a plethora of online and offline speculation about the alleged perpetrator’s background and likely motives, it remains for a court to decide upon his fate.

Irish songwriter Luka Bloom started his set at the festival in Katoomba saying that people who perpetrate such atrocities “Do not speak for me“they never have and they never will.”

“They have no idea about the amount of love there is in this world,” he said.

And as Laurel Wilson recounts: “When New Zealand comedy duo, The Topp Twins, who hail from Christchurch, first heard about the atrocity that had occurred in their city, they asked each other, “How can we go on stage and be funny after that?”

“The Topp twins are two openly lesbian, feminist, politically active sisters who are also very, very entertaining – loved by a great diversity of fans in their native New Zealand but also in Australia and elsewhere. They have, no doubt, known prejudice themselves, but have not let it define or limit them. I believe this is the message that they wished to convey when they decided to go ahead with their show at the Blue Mountains Music Festival. And they lifted everyone’s spirits when they finished the show with an audience participation version of ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’, complete with choreography”.

Stephen Taberner, musical director of the Spooky Men’s Chorale, is also from Christchurch. He refrained from commentary about the events of that day, instead recalling an incident he once witnessed where a mother was remonstrating with one of her kids. The mother said to one of the other kids: “Don’t stir the pot”, which Taberner said meant, “Don’t make things worse.”

The Spooky Men then closed out the festival with a stirring rendition of Joni’s Mitchell’s The Fiddle and the Drum.

Taberner’s wisdom in choosing to bypass commentary or bare his feelings was the right choice, given the amount of pot-stirring that’s been going on over the past seven days on social media and in the conventional press.

The Urban Dictionary’s broader definition of ‘stir the pot’ might give us pause for thought about which media outlet we trust:

Pot-stirrer: Someone who loves to proliferate the tension and drama between two or more feuding people/groups in public…in hopes of starting a shitstorm of drama and uncomfortable conflict…”

The above could also aptly describe our accidental Senator, who has been in the public eye, grabbing headlines for all the wrong reasons. Boycott his press conferences, I say. He will still be free to say what he wants to say, just not on the front page.

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern put the lid firmly back on the pot with an apolitical, compassionate approach that above all took the feelings and beliefs of the Muslim victims of the massacre into account. Within days, she and Muslim leaders were collaborating with police to fast-track the release of the victims’ bodies to their families. The Islamic faith requires that burial rituals happen as soon as possible. The fact the NZ PM understood this and promised that the country would also pay for the burials, built a few bridges at a time when all connection could have been lost.

Defining the nation’s role in this global grief, she wrote in a commemoration book: “On behalf of all New Zealanders we grieve, together we are one, they are us.”

These words have taken on a life of their own, as a hashtag on social media. In just three words she defined New Zealand’s inclusive attitude towards refugees and immigrants in general. Ms Ardern’s approach every day since has been consistent, compassionate and yet firm, as shown with the swift introduction of stricter gun laws.

The chief pot-stirrers, unfortunately, are the loosely-regulated chat sites and bulletin boards where people can post anonymously. Telcos including Telstra, Optus and Vodaphone are temporarily blocking websites which continue to broadcast the live GoPro video filmed by the assailant as he went about his bloody business. None of the Telcos will say which websites they are actively blocking, although they say the bans will be lifted once the video is removed.

Apart from George’s fiddle tune, the most moving thing I have seen about the Christchurch massacre is a black and white ink drawing by Isaac Westerlund of a Maori woman and a Muslim woman exchanging the Hongi. This is a traditional Maori greeting where two people briefly touch noses and foreheads, exchanging a symbolic breath of life.

Thanks to open-hearted people like Isaac Westerlund and George Jackson, the healing power of music and art help us overcome emotions we don’t quite understand and to make sense of the senseless.

#theyareus

*A Tui is a native bird with a distinctive tuft of white feathers at the throat and a beautiful call.

Songwriting Competitions And Radio Play

songwriting-competitions-radio
Songwriter Kate MIller-Heidke, Australia’s entrant in the 2019 Eurovision song contest

My first record producer once said of songwriting competitions – “The only competition I’m interested in is – can it get played on the radio.” His wise words came back to me in a week when I was reminded twice of my peripatetic career as a songwriter. One reminder was a quarterly royalty payment from APRA, derived from having five songs played on the radio in the quarter under review. The money rarely gets above three figures, but it is easy to see how the multiplier effect kicks in if you have a song that is being played on a lot of radio stations all over the world. I usually spend mine on music! Last time I bought a set of harmonicas.

Also, I received an email from the International Songwriting Competition (ISC) which informed me (a) that I was not among the 2018 semi-finalists and (b) 18,999 other songwriters had taken up the challenge. The ISC judges’ panel, which includes luminaries like Tom Waits, Kayne Brown, Adam Lambert and Jeremih, whittled this down to 1,900 semi-finalists in 23 categories.

Last week I received a second email, the names of the finalists – it’s still a packed field. The ISC Grand Prize is worth winning – a cheque for $US25, 000 and a host of sponsor-driven extras including a six-song recording package at Nashville’s The Tracking Room (plus a fully mastered album) an Art & Lutherie Roadhouse Acoustic Guitar, recording gear and free online marketing campaigns.

The competition is high-level, as the ISC is open to songwriters already signed to labels and many entrants have, ahem, a track record. This year’s finalists, for example, include (from Australia), Missy Higgins, Sahara Beck, Pete Denahy, Fiona Boyes and Georgi Kay.

ISC spokesman Jim Morgan told me that Australians have always done well in this competition, since Kate Miller-Heidke became the first Australian winner back in 2008 with Caught in the Crowd. Other Aussies who have taken the main prize include Kasey Chambers and Vance Joy with Gotye winning the Folk category.

“Out of nearly 19,000 entries for ISC 2018, 199 Australian songwriters made it through to the Semi-finals and 30 from New Zealand.”

Kate Miller-Heidke’s husband and musician partner Keir Nuttall said of their 2008 win: “I think the great stuff we got out of it was that it gave us a bit of credibility overseas and it looks great on the bio.

Keir reflected on his days entering songwriting competitions as an emerging songwriter/guitarist.

“It reminds me of when my band didn’t make it into one of the early incarnations of Triple J unearthed. In Queensland alone there were literally thousands of bands.”

Established in 1995, Triple J Unearthed has exposed 99,000 music tracks from previously unheard of bands. Each year the ABC FM station plays its Top 100 unearthed artists.  If your band makes it into Unearthed, you automatically get played on national radio – then your fans take over.

One of the early winners was a band called The Rubens (also named in this year’s ISC finals).  Other artists who got their start on Unearthed include Flume, The Jezabels, Northeast Party House, Tired Lion and Courtney Barnett.

fRETfEST founder Alan Buchan, who recorded my first album Little Deeds in 1998, has since been persuaded of the merit in songwriting competitions. Tamworth-based Buchan started the Regional Songwriting Competition, now in its fifth year, which gives writers in rural areas a chance to display their craft.

Nambour-based songwriter Karen Law won this year’s Illawarra Folk Festival songwriting competition with 9am on Polling Day and has received honourable mentions in the Australian Songwriters’ Association (ASA) contests over the years.

“My first songwriting competition got me into being a perform iner. In the UK while I was at Uni, I won a folk songwriting competition run by BBC Radio Shropshire Folk Show. Part of the prize was appearing in a live broadcast concert – I was terrified but I did it and it set me on the road to becoming a performer”. Continue reading “Songwriting Competitions And Radio Play”