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“People ask about my style; I just look…”

03 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by Rody in Metro

≈ Comments Off on “People ask about my style; I just look…”

Photographer Michele Mossop recently made her first appearance on these pages with a beautifully nuanced portrait of singer Matthew Henrick. Michele is widely known in Australia as a news photographer whose images are distinguished not just by a clear factuality that captures the essence of the story but also a sense of light, shade and composition that vividly evokes its human aspects.

That duality was to the fore in her picture of Matt – a publicity shot for his recording of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 – which combines a studio portrait of the singer and a photoshopped image of Dreshout’s famous engraving of the poet.

It turns out that Michele’s work, and portraiture especially, is heavily influenced by Renaissance art. To learn more about what shapes her craft, we asked her about her influences, career and creative process.

Self portrait (memory)

Self Portrait (Memory), by Michele Mossop, 2003

I always loved faces, portraits of any kind, and dancers especially. I also loved the old family photos. I thought about doing a course in photography, but photography was looked on as a trade. All the courses looked far too technical – they didn’t even mention subject matter. So I forgot about it and studied Fine Art at Sydney University; back then, the subject consisted only of art history. I loved the Renaissance and Baroque. I loved Italy. In January 1979 I moved to Florence.

Dancers

Dancers in the Wings, by Michele Mossop, 2008

It was a very interesting time. The Red Brigades, the Historic Compromise, the P2 masonic lodge – they were all interconnected (see References below – Rody). The newspapers were many and varied and the news magazines ran great photographs – all news, unposed, spontaneous.

When I arrived in Italy I skirted around the idea of photography but thought I wouldn’t be any good because of the technical demands, so I thought about doing paper conservation.

On my second day I photographed a maxi terrorist trial where the leader had just been captured. There were about 96 defendants in 12 cages….

My interest in paper conservation was less than lacklustre. It was just a way to have something to do with photography. But everyone in Italy seemed to have a darkroom in a cupboard or bathroom and everyone wanted to be a fotogiornalista. There were no schools or courses of photography. A boyfriend taught me how to develop black and white film and printing. i discovered it wasn’t that difficult. I became obsessed and spent most of my spare time and the little money I had processing film and printing in the bathroom/darkroom.

I started to check out the newspapers everyday to see what was happening and would go out and photograph demonstrations and other political events. I then fronted up to the small local daily paper, la Citta’, Quotidiano di Firenze, and asked for work – I started the next day. I think the editor thought I must have been crazy as a foreigner and a woman but he had a lot of faith in me and I just loved it. I had a front row seat to all that happened in the city, and that made me feel very much part of the place. On my second day at the paper I photographed a maxi terrorist trial where the leader of the group had just been captured. There were about 96 defendants in 12 cages in the courtroom.

Terror trial 2

Terrorist Trial, Italy, by Michele Mossop, 1983

I prefer to use available light and to observe and wait for the image to happen. Sometimes this happens in professional life – when photographing the arts, for instance. Over the years on newspapers I have seen style move towards more controlled images, especially portraits, with the use of studio lights, art direction; the looser more spontaneous images aren’t appreciated as much. This of course is often mediated by the fact that you usually have limited time to shoot in a place that gives little or no context, so you just try to make a nice looking picture which is well lit and looks polished. More and more in newspapers there is a trend to using a photograph as little more than identification. This is a big worry….

The old masters didn’t have electric light. We still refer to Rembrandt light. Some of those I particularly like are Bronzino: highly stylised but exquisite; a couple of props to reveal something about the subject – for example, a chubby little boy squeezing a goldfinch. There’s Carravaggio – very dramatic, minimalist for his day, risky; he would have been a big butch war photographer today, or – as a friend suggested – Oliver Stone, just full of it. Apart from the old masters, other artistic inspirations and influences are Mark Rothko and cinema, especially the 1970s.

Dieter Adamsas

Dieter Adamsas, by Michele Mossop, 2000

790px-Rembrandt_van_Rijn_-_Self-Portrait_-_Google_Art_Project

Self Portrait, by Rembrandt, 1659

Among photographers, iconic American fashion and portrait photographer Richard Avedon, whose classic portraits reveal much about their subject; the delightful, wry Martin Parr who captures the ordinariness of suburban Britain (or anywhere) – the Philip Larkin of British photography, but with humour and a much warmer heart.

One of the reasons I left Australia was a fear of the silent still suburbia where I grew up. I try to capture it but it always evades.

Suburbia 

Suburban Nightview, by Michele Mossop, 2009

I have became more interested in landscapes – especially urban, suburban landscapes. One of the reasons I left Australia was a fear of the silent still suburbia where I grew up. I try to capture it but it always evades.

People ask how I would describe my style: I just look.

A lot’s changed since I became a photographer – technology, media. I miss the darkroom and the quietness of working there but I would never go back to it: digital photography is so much easier and it makes a huge difference for a freelancer – just a laptop, no rolls of film, no prints, turnaround is more immediate.

What I do miss about film is that you worked more intuitively: there was no screen at the back of the camera to check the exposure. You really had to think about what you were doing and know your camera, like playing a musical instrument. No photoshop. I feel as though I have lost something.

Mick Jagger photo Michele Mossop

Mick, by Michele Mossop, 1989

Also with digital we shoot far too many frames and very indiscriminately. i looked at some negs I took at a Rolling Stones concert years ago: I shot only two rolls. Back then, you had limited time and only 36 frames per roll and manual focusing. You never wanted to run out of film in the middle of something so you shot with a lot more patience and thought. Today I would have shot the equivalent of about 10 rolls for the same result.

I love my iPhone camera – it’s portable and easy to use, but you still have to think about what you are photographing.

References:

Red Brigades, the Historic Compromise, the P2 masonic lodge

 la Citta’, Quotidiano di Firenze (shots of Michele at 1.22, 1.23, 1.24 and 1.26)

Rembrandt light

Below: Portrait of Giovanni de’ Medici as a Child, by Agnolo Bronzino, c. 1545

Bronzino

Below: Judith Beheading Holofernes, by Caravaggio, 1598-99

Carravaggio - Judith Beheading Holofernes

Below: Truman Capote, by Richard Avedon, 1974

Truman Capote by Richard Avedon

Below: Bored Couples, Brighton, UK, by Martin Parr, 1985

Bored Couples - Martin Parr 1985

 

 

Triumph of the spirit: Jeff Cotton’s 52 years of healing

10 Wednesday Aug 2022

Posted by Rody in Music

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Jeff Cotton via Zoom on August 3, 2022 (Australian time)

Smiling, tanned, relaxed, sitting in a studio on his island home of Maui in the Hawaiian archipelago, Jeff Cotton is a very different man from the one who, 52 years ago and physically and mentally close to breaking point, finally quit what had been his dream job.

Jeff, then known as Antennae Jimmy Semens, had been one of the two guitarists with Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band, a legendary US ensemble that made an equally legendary album, Trout Mask Replica. Released in 1969, the album continues to be both controversial and influential.

Artists are supposed to suffer for their art, but not the way Jeff had done.

“Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band was my Vietnam,” he says.

The Trout Mask Replica era: Jeff Cotton/Antennae Jimmy Semens is second from right (Photo by Ed Caraeff/Getty Images)

Shortly after joining the band in 1967, Jeff received his call-up papers to serve in the Vietnam War.

“Obviously, I didn’t want to go to another country and take out my brothers and sisters, of any age, whether the children or elderly. The band wanted me and I wanted to be in the band, so, we did everything we could to get me out [of the draft], and we did get me out.”

Before long, however, Jeff found himself in the midst of another conflict. Beefheart, real name Don Van Vliet, was a creative visionary but, to put it mildly, a hard task master.

The band shared a house. While they typically rehearsed 18 hours a day for the Trout Mask Replica recording session, Beefheart usually slept. When he appeared, it was often to subject Jeff and the others to verbal and mental abuse, apparently to bend them more easily to his creative will.

Beefheart even encouraged violence. When Jeff was physically attacked by a stand-in drummer, he decided enough was enough.

“I thought I could escape war in Vietnam, but if that [war] is what’s laid out in front of you, you’re going to have it anyway. So, I had my Vietnam in the Magic Band. It was probably, for me, as intense and emotionally wrenching as going to war.”

His acceptance that war of one kind or another was to be his lot says much about Jeff’s philosophical take on life. It’s an attitude deeply embedded in his first solo album, The Fantasy of Reality, which he is about to release (August 12, 2022) to mark his return to the music scene after a 47-year absence.

The new album is a long way from Trout Mask Replica.

SMALL SIMILARITIES, BIG DIFFERENCE

Except, that is, in a couple of minor respects.

I suggest that his vocal on Elvirus is reminiscent of Beefheart. It’s a stretch, I know: Jeff’s light quavering tenor is nothing like the Captain’s booming baritone, but the falsetto flick-ups that punctuate much of his intonation echo a hallmark of Beefheart’s style.

Jeff disavows any mimicry.

“Every song I write tells me what it needs in voice or whatever.  I’m 74, and I think I sound more like 97.  But I like humour.  On Heavy, another song on the album, I use a very old man’s voice.  I won’t tell you who he was but I used his voice.”

But Jeff does see a link between Trout Mask Replica and one of his instrumental tracks, On the Thread.

“That’s one of my favourites because I do like avant-garde-type music.  And Beefheart fans may not see it exactly as I do.  They may say, ‘Well, that doesn’t seem too Beefheart to me,’ but that’s my concept.  Had I been more influential back then in the Trout Mask days, the songs would have probably been a little more conservative, like On the Thread.”

Of the three instrumentals on Trout Mask Replica, the one likeliest to offer a line of descent to On the Thread (to my ears, at least) is Hair Pie: Bake 2. Both tracks have a full band arrangement (Jeff played all the instruments on The Fantasy of Reality, and programmed the drums) and foreground intricate interplay between guitar parts.

But there the similarity ends. While Hair Pie: Bake 2, like the rest of Trout Mask Replica, is harsh and discordant, On the Thread is light and airy—indeed, almost airborne.

The difference provides clues not only to where Jeff stands, musically and personally, in relation to Trout Mask Replica, but also to his innermost character, and to the distance he has travelled, emotionally and philosophically, since, as a 21-year-old, he helped make that iconic album.

FROM FRAGMENTATION TO WHOLENESS

This article is not meant to be about Trout Mask Replica. The album casts a long shadow, however, and it seems necessary to enter the darkness to draw Jeff and his own album into the light.

Sleeve of the Trout Mask Replica double album, released June 16, 1969

While Trout Mask Replica has grown in critical esteem over the years, it continues to divide ordinary music fans into lovers and haters. Prior to its release, Beefheart and the various incarnations of the Magic Band had been a respected blues-rock outfit with increasingly psychedelic leanings.

With Trout Mask Replica, they shredded that legacy. Steady beats were abandoned in favour of arhythmicality and clashing time signatures, while melody and harmony gave way to atonality and a sonic grind based on random horn-blowing, strangulated guitars and Beefheart’s wild vocals.

Even fans would concede that it sounds like a bear roaring drunkenly to the accompaniment of metal scraping against metal. But they hear something else, too: an underlying order and beauty.

Beneath the chaos, many elements and influences are at work, from the band’s roots in the delta blues to the free jazz of John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, and even (according to those who know about these things) the serialism of Stockhausen and fragmentariness of Stravinsky.

At the risk of sounding pretentious (oh, go on, then), it reminds me of T. S. Eliot’s classic modernist poem, The Waste Land. Both break down accepted artistic forms. In the poem, Eliot uses the phrase, “a heap of broken images”. It could easily describe both the poem and the album.

The Fantasy of Reality couldn’t be more different. Instead of fragments it offers an aesthetic wholeness based on Jeff’s rich blues sensibility and deep spirituality—both of which are evident on the album’s opening track, Does It Work for You?

Jeff Cotton’s debut solo album, The Fantasy of Reality, released August 12, 2022

What, in Jeff’s view, does the album say about how he has developed, musically and personally, in the last 50 or so years?

“40, 50 years ago, I believed in art for art’s sake and, today, I’m not interested in that at all.  I’m interested in communication and connection with another being, another human being.  So, all the music has evolved.  The lyrics have evolved, and the music has evolved, in that direction.”

He cites as example another instrumental from the new album, a classically-flavoured solo-guitar piece called Ivy. Like On the Thread, it’s warm and lyrical, but takes its strength from a deliberate sparseness.

“I’m looking for the least notes, the simplest construct possible. You’ve heard it many times: It’s not what you play; it’s what you don’t play. It’s the silence between. That’s why I love music even more than film, in some ways, because music allows the listener to cocreate. 

“And if there’s more space in the song, there’s more time and space for people to cocreate.”

For Jeff, the ideas of communication and cocreation have a philosophical as well as a musical dimension, because they are ways of drawing people closer to each other.

“We’re at a unique time in history. There’s never been anything like it before, and we’re all in it together.”

THE DROUGHT BREAKS

It was when he co-founded MU in 1971 with two old friends and musical collaborators, guitarist Merell Frankhauser and drummer Randy Wimer, that Jeff fully began to step out of Beefheart’s shadow.

MU—short for Lemuria, the mythical lost Pacific Ocean continent that preceded Atlantis—recaptured some of the idealism and optimism of the pre-Manson 1960s. The band’s fascination with the legend behind its name led to its relocation from California to Hawaii, now Jeff’s main home base.

Jeff Cotton with MU, early 1970s

It was around this time that Jeff began the healing process he alluded to in his YouTube interview a few years ago with Canadian musicologist Samuel Andreyev. It wasn’t just his time with Beefheart that he was healing from, however.

“By the time we’re teenagers, we have had a lot of reprogramming done on us. Unconscious reprogramming is a nice way to put it—or the dark side—where we don’t even question things until a certain time in our life.  Maybe something will happen that’s really heavy and we begin to question our lives.  Or some people say they hit a bottom before they started coming up.

“So, I had everything everybody else did to deal with as a kid, the emotional stuff.”

His time with Beefheart provided an extra difficulty, but he bears no grudges.

“I can look back at it and really enjoy it because, yes, I did a lot of healing work. I mean, right from the get-go—every kind of cutting-edge modality I could find.  Rapid eye technology is outrageous.  There are so many other different things that [I] did.  And so, I cleared it, as much as I could.  

“To me, it was important to clear the emotional garbage, because I don’t care how spiritual one may be, if one’s emotional body is polluted, all you’re going to do is shine that beautiful light through a maze of yucky colours. So that, to me, was a responsibility.”

In 1974 he converted to Christianity (but did not, contrary to some online bios, study for the Christian ministry). MU disbanded in 1975 after which Jeff devoted himself to family (he has three adult children) and medical missionary work. His wife Len-Erna—“a great musician and a wonderful writer”, with whom he co-wrote and performed at small, private gigs—died in 2017.

Since then, Jeff has been musically silent. But that’s all about to change. Not only is he releasing his first solo album, work on a second and third album is “70 to 80 per cent complete”.

It’s been a long drought. Why is it breaking now?

LET’S GET THIS FIRE LIT

There are two explanations for the timing. Technology is one.

“I didn’t get into recording music until about 2005, because I was always a little queasy about digital recording back in those days. To me, it was like a hospital—very clean and no character. When a console that was warm came on the market, I started recording.”

Raising three kids is another.

“A lot of the basic tracks on this first album were done in very little increments. If I had 15 minutes, I’d go down in the studio and lay down a part.  Maybe a couple of hours later, I could come down for a half hour.  After everybody went to sleep at night, I might be able to do two hours.  So it was literally put together in that fashion.

And what about the motivation for making the album? Was Jeff driven by a desire to meet specific creative goals, or was the impetus deeper and more personal?

Jeff Cotton recorded The Fantasy of Reality for “deep and personal” reasons (Image credit: Press)

“It was deeper and more personal.  I have wanted, all my life, to do something that counted for others.  Not so I would just have a notch on my gun, but to do something for others that was positive.  And that’s been my whole motivation.  Now obviously, that’s a thought of a young kid, but as you get older, it takes on a deeper meaning.

“And we need love in this world.  We need to love one another, is what we need now.  We know that.  And we need to do it because every human being on this planet is a genius.  Many just don’t know it yet and they don’t know what their genius is.

“And so, my heart is to, hopefully—because I’m trying to live that life—inspire others to be motivated and then to begin their path and journey, if they haven’t already, to know who they really are, because everybody has a great magic within them. 

“And if people get their fire lit, we can clear this world up.”

Keats and Spontaneity: A Message for Our Times

19 Friday Feb 2021

Posted by Simon Jones in Heritage

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Compared to all the better-written and more erudite articles that mark the bicentenary on February 23 of the death of John Keats (1795-1821), this probably rates as a back-of-the-fag-packet job. No matter. The aim is not to make a big impression on the literary world or the blogosphere, merely to record my personal appreciation of Keats and the pleasure his poems and letters have given me over the years, and continue to give me.

And to say why I think he’s still worth reading, particularly today.

John Keats by Charles Brown; copyright National Portrait Gallery

Much of the pleasure I take from Keats arises from his spontaneity, by which I mean the freshness and immediacy with which he engages with people and literature. As these qualities, by definition, don’t grow stale, they have helped to underpin his appeal to successive generations of readers.

They are more than incidental characteristics, however. As Keats matured, certain ideas became integral to the way he wrote and thought about poetry, and all can be linked in one way or another to the notion of spontaneity (not a term he used himself). It’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that, for Keats, spontaneity, variously defined, became both a creative and intellectual principle.

This, for my money, is a key reason for reading Keats today. If, like me, you feel suffocated by the post-modern orthodoxies and sterile polarities that prevail in so much our public discourse, you may find his spontaneity to be just the antidote you need—creatively and intellectually.

A SENSE OF EXCITED DISCOVERY

Keats’ spontaneity was, of course, a natural attribute, but the extent to which it characterised his thought and behaviour may be explained by his background. The circumstances of his early life and education are well known, and I’m not going to rehearse them here, except to note that they marked him as an outsider in the eyes of polite society and inclined him (in a politically turbulent age) towards radical politics. He didn’t attend university but he had an excellent school educaion and was sufficiently familiar with, and inspired by, the classics to translate much of The Aeneid while still a pupil. The tone of his upbringing, however, was set by the world of trade and enterprise, rather than landed gentry or the professions.

He was not, in terms of his home life, the product of a literary culture. To that extent, he came to poetry raw. One of his earliest efforts was Imitation of Spenser, a stylistic impersonation of The Farie Queene by Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser (1552-1599). Keats wrote it in early 1814, when he was still 18. You can access the full poem here; I’m going to quote just one stanza:

There the king-fisher saw his plumage bright
Vying with fish of brilliant dye below;
Whose silken fins, and golden scalès light
Cast upward, through the waves, a ruby glow:
There saw the swan his neck of archèd snow,
And oared himself along with majesty;
Sparkled his jetty eyes; his feet did show
Beneath the waves like Afric’s ebony,
And on his back a fay reclined voluptuously.

Compare this to a similarly early effort by one of Keats’ seniors in the English romantic movement, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). Dura Navis, written as a school assignment when Coleridge was 15, warns against the dangers of a life at sea:

To tempt the dangerous deep, too venturous youth,
Why does thy breast with fondest wishes glow?
No tender parent there thy cares shall sooth,
No much-lov’d Friend shall share thy every woe.
Why does thy mind with hopes delusive burn?
Vain are thy Schemes by heated Fancy plann’d:
Thy promis’d joy thou’lt see to Sorrow turn
Exil’d from Bliss, and from thy native land.

Neither poem repays much critical scrutiny, but each illustrates a particular approach to learning the craft of verse-writing. An obvious difference is that Keats, the progeny of trade, models himself on a particular author while Coleridge, the son of a clergyman-schoolmaster, writes within a tradition. Coleridge’s effort is conventional and (for his age) accomplished while Keats, though imitative (he is channeling other Spenserian poets as well as Spenser himself), produces some vivid effects—notably, in the quoted stanza, the mimetic power of the line describing the swan’s movement and, in the last stanza of the full poem, the description of rose petals as “ruddy tears”. Even more impressive is the energy and engagement that Keats conveys: he has no filters, no literary self-consciousness. Compared to Coleridge he’s naïve, but his naivety results in a sense of excited discovery which is part of his poem’s appeal.

This combination of literary ingenuousness and keen, responsive intelligence was a constant in Keats’ poetic development. Progress, however, was uneven. He fell under the spell of the darkly charismatic poet and radical journalist Leigh Hunt, who spent two years in jail for libelling the Prince Regent. Hunt was not the best literary model, although he helped to advance Keats’ career. Charles Cowden Clarke, a teacher (and son of the headmaster) at Keats’ school, became a friend and, in many ways, a more positive influence than Hunt. He was responsible for the moment which, famously, became Keats’ literary epiphany:

On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men

Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Keats wrote this in 1816, the morning after Clarke had introduced him to sections of the Iliad and Odyssey as translated by George Chapman (1559-1634). Here, the sense of excited discovery is an explicit theme. The Elizabethan’s vigorous English and clattering 14-syllable line renders Homer with a freshness and immediacy with which Keats could readily sympathise, and which are not found in the translations that Keats would have known already—those by Virgil and the Augustan poets John Dryden and Alexander Pope. Through Chapman, Keats experienced for the first time the imaginative power of Homer in a language and style which felt more like his own. In a striking example of spontaneity, Keats responded, almost instantly, by internalising some of this power and recreating it in his own poem. The planet swimming into his ken is not just Chapman or Chapman’s version of Homer but a new level of poetic consciousness—one that is fully evident in the structure and execution of his poem, which is rightly regarded as a milestone in Keats’ development and a minor classic of English romantic poetry.

From this point, imagination and various related ideas became significant themes in Keats’ poems and letters. It’s fascinating to trace their development in his poetry, but it’s easier in an article of this length to summarise them from his letters.

CHAMELEON POETS VS. VIRTUOUS PHILOSOPHERS

Below are passages selected from letters Keats wrote in 1817 and 1818, the years after he read Chapman’s Homer and before he wrote the six odes—to Psyche, on Indolence, to a Nightingale, on a Grecian Urn, on Melancholy and to Autumn—for which he is most famous:

“… Men of Genius are great as certain ethereal Chemicals operating on the Mass of neutral intellect—but they have not any individuality, any determined Character—I would call the top and head of those who have a proper self Men of Power…. I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of Imagination—What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth—whether it existed before or not…. The imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream, —he awoke and found it truth.” —to Benjamin Bailey, November 22, 1817

“…several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason—Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge.”—to George and Thomas Keats, December 21, 1817

“What shocks the virtuous philosop[h}er delights the camelion Poet.” —To Richard Woodhouse, October 27, 1818

Keats’ letters discuss many ideas, but these extracts illustrate two of the most important: the nature of a poet and the relationship between imagination, beauty and truth. Each in its own way ties back to the notion of spontaneity.

In describing the nature of a poet, Keats might have been referring to the kind of poet he considered himself to be (or aspired to be); his comments may also be taken as saying something about the nature of the creative process. The key characteristic, ironically, is a negative one: impersonality (“they have not any individuality, any determined Character”). Poets (and other artists) have the “negative capability” of being able to immerse themselves in the creative moment, to give themselves over to the aesthetic and imaginative imperatives of their art, unperturbed by what their work might “mean” in terms of external, rationally-based appraisal. (The swipe at Coleridge, who became a philosopher, theologian and critic as well as a poet, echoes the contrast I posited earlier when comparing Keats’ and Coleridge’s juvenilia.)

The negatively-capable artist—who can merge chameleon-like into his or her work, without submitting to the kind of accountability typically required by intellectuals or ideologues—is free to follow the dictates of his or her creative conscience. Such freedom facilitates spontaneity, and spontaneity, although not named as such by Keats, appears to be the virtue he identifies as arising from negative capability: “…of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason”.

The second idea discussed in the quoted passages is more in the nature of a theory of poetics: “What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth—whether it existed before or not…. The imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream, —he awoke and found it truth.” In our relativistic and post-truth age we might ask, with Pilate, “What is truth?” Keats provides no explanation, probably because he was invoking Platonic concepts of truth and beauty which Bailey, his correspondent, would have recognised: absolutes which are intelligible to the rational mind as ideal forms.

Keats seems to be less concerned, here, with explaining than with describing, and what he describes is a process in which the imagination intermediates between beauty and truth. We might understand the process better if we see it an action; to do this, we need to turn back to the poetry.

THE MEANING IS IN THE (CREATIVE) PROCESS

Ode on a Grecian Urn, written in 1819, is one of the six odes, mentioned earlier, which are widely regarded as the peak of Keats’ achievement. All are, in different ways, reflections on the human condition (one of Keats’ brothers had died the previous year of tuberculosis, the same disease that would kill Keats when he was just 25). In Ode on a Grecian Urn, Keats contemplates a scene depicted on an ancient artefact and contrasts the permanence of art to the fleetingness of life. It’s a very fine and intricate poem which is a pleasure to analyse in detail; it’s also an interesting guide as to how imagination, truth and beauty interact in Keats’ poetry. (If you’re not familiar with the poem, I suggest you read it here first, uninterrupted by my comments.)

The first stanza is a simple act of observation, in which Keats describes the urn’s physical characteristics. These are of sufficient appeal (beauty) to engage the poet’s interest, as evidenced by the succession of questions from the fifth line to the end of the stanza:

Thou still unravished bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

The questions stimulate the imagination, which effectively takes over in the second stanza, where the poet moves from observation to revery (“heard melodies”) and the deeper reflections that begin at the fifth line—”Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave/Thy song…”. These reflections dominate the rest of the stanza and the whole of the third:

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal — yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
Forever piping songs forever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
Forever warm and still to be enjoyed,
Forever panting, and forever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

They contrast the imagined permanence of the moment favourably with the transience of life lived through the senses, although they never lose sight of the fact that the urn, and the figures depicted on it, are inert (“Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss…”). The tone changes in the fourth stanza, in which the poet’s perspective reverts to prosaic observation…

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands dressed?

…and makes a curious imaginative leap:

What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

The town is not shown on the urn and Keats “imagines” it, not in direct response to what he sees, but as a matter of speculative logic—i.e. these people must have come from somewhere, and that place must now be deserted. This development, if it can be called such, feels contrived (the poem seems at this point to lose sight of what T.S. Eliot, in another context, called the “objective correlative”), but the sense of discontinuity prepares us for the jolt back to reality that follows in the final stanza:

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

Keats returns to the mode of simple observation with which the poem began but with the experience, this time, of having been “teased out of thought” by the urn’s beauty (“Fair attitude!”) into a moment of imaginative immersion comparable to the mental effects of contemplating eternity. The poet recognises that the urn will outlive successive generations, providing to each of them, through its aesthetic power, a means of imaginative release or transcendent inspiration. The full meaning of the experience, however, appears to be compressed in the two famous last lines, supposedly spoken by the urn:

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

The “irritable reaching after fact & reason” among critics as to what these lines mean is extensive and interesting. Much of it focuses on “beauty” and “truth”. Let’s accept that Keats uses these words in the Platonic sense referred to earlier[1] and move on to the rest of the passage, the force of which is sometimes overlooked: “…that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”. This statement about the limitations of our knowledge is at least as emphatic, in my view, as the axiom that precedes it, and suggests that we should be content with meaning that is conveyed by inference or intuition. Such a reading is, I believe, consistent with Keats’ thoughts on negative capability and the differences between poets and philosophers.

In Ode on a Grecian Urn—as in his letter to Bailey on imagination, beauty and truth discussed earlier—Keats’ method is to describe rather than explain, demonstrate rather than expound. The movement of the verse shows the poet’s imagination seizing upon the beauty of the urn and elaborating it into a meditation, and the meaning of that meditation—the permanence of art, brevity of life etc.—is the “truth” of the poem. Internally, that is.

There’s another possibility: that the process also applies externally. That is, the interaction between imagination and beauty in the poet’s mind leads to the creation of the poem itself—the objective reality, or truth, on the page in front of our eyes. This idea seems less fanciful when we recall Keats’ comparison of the imagination to Adam’s dream, the outcome of which was also objectively real—the creation of Eve: “…he awoke and found it truth”.

In summary, Keats appears to be saying that truth is revealed through a creative process initiated by the imagination’s response to beauty—a process in which beauty acquires the force of truth and truth appears to be inherently beautiful.

If that’s too vague and inconclusive for the modern, materialistic philisophical mind—the kind that unweaves rainbows[2] (and, I would add, manufactures fashionable ideologies)—so be it. The meaning is in the process: the commitment to engage imaginatively with our reality to deepen and enrich our humanity, our sense of beauty and our feeling for truth. It’s anti-philosophy but not unphilosophical: it is, I believe, a profound statement about the value of creativity and, implicit in that, the need for spontaneity.

HOW WE THINK IS IMPORTANT

I haven’t said much about the beauty of Keats’ poetry; enough has been said by others and will, I’m sure, continue to be said while people are free to read what they enjoy. In these troubled times, however, it seems to me worth emphasising his spontaneity for two reasons.

First, it reminds us that how we think is as important as what we think. This matters, because a perennially fresh and creative approach to interpreting our reality may help us maintain our intellectual independence and integrity, so that we can effectively challenge arguments and ideas before we accept or reject them (always helpful, for example, in sniffing out “fake news”).

Second, his conviction that men (and women) of genius lack character should be nailed to the forehead of every politician who, and above the lintel of every institution that, espouses identity politics, a pernicious ideology which is designed to oppress and imprison, not liberate. The idea that impersonality is integral to the creative process has the potential to challenge such orthodoxy.

There are many other, probably better, reasons for reading Keats but his spontaneity, to my mind, seems particularly relevant now.


[1] See Kellie Martin, Pepperdine University, April 1997.

[2] See Keats, Lamia, ll 229-238.

Fighting back against COVID-19: The Sidemen come out swinging

17 Monday Aug 2020

Posted by Departure Lounge Lizard in Music

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One of the few displays of kindness between public figures that we’ve seen during this shit-storm of a pandemic was Russell Crowe’s tweet to Victoria’s embattled premier, Dan Andrews: “If you find yourself going through hell, just keep going.” That seems to be the kind of spirit, and thinking, behind “Songs from Behind the Viral Curtain”, the debut EP by Steve Banks and The Sidemen.

As the title suggests, this is the band’s creative response to COVID-19 and the harsh reality of lockdown, which is more brutal for musicians (and other artists) than it is for many other segments of the population, for the simple reason that the necessarily free-flowing working lifestyles of creative people mean that they may not qualify for income support mechanisms like JobKeeper.

The Sidemen—five grizzled musicians whose careers date back to big-name acts of the 1960s[1]—have come out swinging, in every sense. Combining Banks’ humorous lyrics and soulful vocals with a musical authority that brooks no argument, this is a punchy, confident and highly accomplished EP made more remarkable by the fact that the musos recorded remotely from each other, in lockdown,

Punchy, confident and highly accomplished

But the music is not their only way of pushing back against our current affliction: a share of the EP’s proceeds goes to music industry charity Support Act which provides, among other programmes, support specifically for musicians affected by COVID-19. Coming from veteran rockers who’ve probably seen every high and low of a musician’s life, the donation has a certain poignancy.

The EP, however, is significant for other reasons. When Banks launched The Sidemen as a live act in May 2019 the focus, understandably, was on each member’s musical life history and the famous acts and songs with which they will be forever associated. What’s interesting about the latest project is that it sees The Sidemen working with original material for the first time.

This opens up intriguing possibilities for the band’s future development, hints of which may (or may not) be present in each of the EP’s five songs.

SLIPPING EFFORTLESSLY BETWEEN STYLES

One of the great things about musicians with long careers behind them is the ease with which they can draw on so many different musical styles and traditions. The first track, “CV Blues”, is (as the sleeve notes acknowledge) a nod to Cab Calloway’s “Minnie the Moocher” and draws a neat parallel between Minnie’s bohemian loucherie and the pariah status acquired by a certain Chinese bat.

But while Calloway’s song is, in part, a celebration of hedonistic nightlife, “CV Blues” (again, as noted on the sleeve) evokes a New Orleans funeral march with master-of-ceremonies Banks providing a gothic-horror-comic oration: “Take a bat with attitude—let’s not have this misconstrued: that bat, well, he done us wrong, this ain’t his redemption song.”

The horns, arranged by Paul Williamson (like co-producer and guitarist Jeff Burstin, formerly of The Black Sorrows), pick the song up and carry it, helped by some great piano fills from Bruce Haymes (also co-producer) and beautiful backing vocals from Martine Monro who, although technically a guest artist, puts her stamp on every track and forms an integral part of the EP’s overall sound.

And I can’t help feeling the song makes another nod to musical precedent in the way that most of the instruments fade at the end, leaving the horns to themselves for a few moments of glorious, alley-cat cacophony. Decades ago The Band did something similar in the middle of a song called—wait for it—“Chest Fever”. If the similarity is intentional, it’s clever; if it’s accidental, it’s spooky.

The Sidemen slip effortlessly into country mode with “12 Steps”, an upbeat number with tasteful, melodic fills from Burstin and Haymes, light-but-tight bass and drums (Greg Lyon and Grant Gerathy respectively) and seamless harmonies between Banks and Monro. The mood is deceptive, however, because, lyrically, this is the most affecting song on the EP.

It’s about addiction—or, rather, the sense of vertigo that troubles a former addict when he or she feels at risk of slipping back into old, bad habits: “I’ve been on the 12 steps to survival, I think I’m going in reverse: don’t want to let you down, don’t want to go back there, I can’t tell you which one is worse…”. And how many of us, in lockdown, haven’t felt tempted to drink and/or smoke more?

Part of the song’s power comes from a surprisingly effective narrative device. The song begins with the protagonist “walking sideways down the alley” feeling “I made a terrible mistake”, but then he wakes up “safe and sound beside you”. Far from being an anti-climax, the fact that he dreams his fears underlines, rather than diminishes, the intensity of the addict’s psychological struggle.

The remaining songs are less tied to the COVID-19 theme but no less effective or enjoyable for that. “Secrets on the Darker Side” is a warm piece of romantic nostalgia (teenage love, anyone?) in which all the musical elements—especially the guitars of Burstin and Rick Fenn, Haymes’ piano, and a tantalising vocal breakout by Monro—combine to leave you feeling youthful and optimistic again.

“Father/Son/HG” (as in Holy Ghost) has Banks in reflective, even philosophical, mood, ruminating about religion and the meaning of life. The last time I heard Banks get this deep and meaningful was on “Me, Innit”, a candidly introspective song on his solo album “Ordinary Man” (also produced by Burstin). Both songs ask deep questions about life, but only one of them really works.

The problem (as I see it) with “Father/Son/HG” is that it elaborates an opinion, rather than a state of mind. And no matter how much you might agree with the opinion (“What we need is a basic code to navigate this rocky road, not one guy—you might call him God—firing up his lightning rod”) it lacks the emotional persuasiveness of “Me, Innit”, which is based on a real internal psychodrama.

And so to the closing track, “Rooster in the Hen House,” an out-and-out rocker in which the horns are back and Burstin and Fenn give Keith Richards and Ron Wood a run for their money. A tale about sexual infidelity sung from the point of view of the gleefully unrepentant co-respondent, it just makes you want to play the EP again. And again.

WHERE TO NEXT?

If the songs do provide a pointer to The Sidemen’s future development, it’s that it could be in any direction they damned well pleased. There’s no doubting the credibility, capability and versatility of musicians like these; the only question is where these attributes will take them, once they (and we) are free to live our normal lives again.

God knows what these guys will do when they finally get into a studio together….


[1] Steve Banks, vocals; Bruce Haymes (The Paul Kelly Band, worked with Renee Geyer and Archie Roach); Jeff Burstin (The Black Sorrows, Jo Jo Zep and The Falcons); Greg Lyon(The Hip Operation, Georgie Fame, Crossfire, Doug Parkinson and many more); Grant Gerathy (former drummer from John Butler Trio, has worked with Pete Murray); Rick Fenn (guitarist from 10cc, worked with Jack Bruce from Cream, Mike Oldfield, Peter Green); special guest vocalist Martine Monroe (Bodacious Cowboys).

The Sidemen: Turning Music History into a Timeless Moment

07 Wednesday Aug 2019

Posted by Rody in Music

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One way to think about Byron Bay is as a sort of bohemian Cote d’Azur: many of the rich who retire or build holiday homes here made their money in the more louche areas of capitalism, such as media or entertainment, and its style and atmosphere come from the young and partly transient population of surfers, neo-hippies, buskers, artisan pop-up stallholders and tattooed baristas.

The vibe is laidback, rhythmic, sensuous (all those colours, sounds, smells and flavours) and sensual (tanned young bodies and…but enough of that).

Like its Mediterranean counterpart, it has natural beauty to spare: the town prostrates itself behind an elegant sweep of sand that curls at one end into the easternmost point of Australia, Cape Byron, before losing all sense of itself in the almost fluorescently blue ocean.

Byron at dawn

Good morning, Australia (Source: west1.com.au)

You don’t have to be rich to live comfortably here, and it doesn’t matter how old you are, because it’s a place for the young at heart. And if you’re not, you soon will be. After all, the sun makes its first mainland-Australia landfall here every day. Who can contemplate that fact without feeling, somewhere in their bones, a stirring of youthful optimism?

It’s home to a lot of artists and musicians, including most of The Sidemen, which helps to explain why they launched here. But don’t let their residency beguile you into thinking they personify the town’s insouciant hipness. When I say they “launched”, I mean “went off like a rocket”.

Picture the scene: Byron Theatre, a charming weatherboard structure in the middle of town, on a balmy Saturday evening in May. The 246-seat auditorium is sold out and the audience—mainly boomers like myself with a smattering of Generations X and Y and the occasional iconic Byron yummy mummy in designer hippy gear—is good humoured and, between sips of wine or beer, talkative as it waits for the show to begin.

We’re here to see five musicians who have spent their careers backing some of the biggest names in rock or pop since the 1960s but who, until tonight, have never appeared as an act in their own right.

Jeff Burstin and Rick Fenn (guitars), Bruce Haymes (keyboards), Greg Lyon (bass) and Grant Gerathy (drums) have worked variously with the Black Sorrows, Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons, 10cc, Nick Mason and Dave Gilmour (both of Pink Floyd), Renee Geyer, Paul Kelly, Peter Green (Fleetwood Mac), Crossfire, Georgie Fame, the John Butler Trio and…that will do for now.

Sidemen-poster-738x1024

Roll up! (As in, come and see the show…)

The project is the brainchild of Steve Banks (Banksie), a gifted singer, songwriter and guitarist (and, full disclosure, old mate) who, only a few years ago, escaped from the world of business in Sydney and relocated to Byron to pursue his long-held and much-deferred musical dreams.

His aim (which, it turns out, is part of a wider agenda) is to give these massively credentialled and seasoned musicians the opportunity to play live together and entertain the audience with stories about their times on the road. It’s an irresistible formula.

It also raises some interesting questions. The show is formally billed as “Steve Banks and The Sidemen”. How will Banksie balance his role as vocalist and front man with his avowed intention of putting The Sidemen “front and centre”, given that they are functioning, to all intents and purposes, as his sidemen?

And what is the audience hoping to gain? A trip down memory lane? A chance to revisit the soundtrack of their lives? Relive the glory of their youth? Experience once again the glamour of the stars they once worshipped? Enjoy a bit of celebrity gossip?

Paradoxes and ambiguities, I think. But not for long: the evening will end by resolving itself in, for me, a moment of unexpected clarity.

THE SOUNDTRACK OF OUR LIVES

As far as this audience member is concerned, the answers to all the above questions are in the affirmative. I’m a tailender of the boomer generation: the music and the acts that The Sidemen brought to life and nurtured for all those years—still nurture—helped shape my sense of myself and my view of the world. I’m pretty sure all my peers in the auditorium feel the same way.

Let’s take a few random examples. Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames. I grew up in the UK but never saw them live. They were, however, a frequent, vibrant presence on our grainy black and white TV, with Fame on Hammond organ backed by a very tight r’n’b/jazz/ska combo (bands like that were always “combos”, they were never “bands”).

He had only three top 10 hits, but they all went to number one. My favourite was ‘Yeh Yeh’; the one I remember best, ‘The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde’, was a tie-in with the 1967 movie starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. With the latter, Fame became the epicentre of a cultural moment: the film launched a style revolution, with Dunaway’s elegant gangster-gal costumes single-handedly killing off the mini skirt in favour of the midi (much to the disappointment of my 13-year-old self).

Bonnie and Clyde

Gangster gal (Source: Warner Bros)

Pink Floyd. This is a band you never speak of in just the past tense: they were, are and forever will be. One of the reasons they will endure, in my view, is that, while they charted the outer reaches of psychedelia, their far-outness was perhaps one of the most reassuring things about them; what was really unnerving about Floyd was their connectedness to reality.

We all know the sad story of sweet Syd Barrett. He defined Floyd’s originality as a combination of eccentric English pop sensibility (‘See Emily Play’) and space-age or science-fiction themes and imagery (‘Astronomy Domine’). It was after Syd had left the band and become institutionalised that a dark psychosis entered the music, culminating in the monumental and classic Dark Side of the Moon. But the strength of the album, I would argue, lies in the fact that its edginess is grounded in the stark contemporary realities of the Nixon years, Watergate and the Vietnam War.

There’s more to Floyd than this, I know, but we’re talking about how music shapes lives and memories. I was introduced to Dark Side by a friend from school (let’s call him Malcolm) who had dropped out after Year 10 and fallen under the spell of dope, acid and an all-consuming existential rage. We no longer had much in common personally, but we rediscovered each other through that album. I discovered a lot about myself, too, and I was grateful for the fact that, while the realism at the album’s core would take me close to the edge, the sheer artistry of it would lift me up and set me down somewhere safely again.

Gustave Dore - Satan falling

Coming down after listening to “Dark Side”

It didn’t work out that way for Malcolm. The last I heard about him (and this was only 10 years ago), he had become the town’s tragic freak, standing on street corners, cross-dressed and stoned, yelling at passers-by. He lived alone in sheltered accommodation. One night the police turned up, took him away, and that’s the last any of our mutual acquaintances saw of him.

If Floyd defined the downside of my adolescence, 10cc was very much part of the upside. Apart from the Beatles and Beach Boys, few bands, in my opinion, have so consistently raised pop to the level of art (and I don’t mean pop-art). ‘Rubber Bullets’, ‘The Dean, His Daughter and Me’ and ‘Wall Street Shuffle’ were part of the soundtrack to my later school years, while ‘I’m Not in Love’ came out while I was at university. It was hard to know where pop would go after that; perhaps it’s one of the reasons punk rock became necessary—after all, the song has become deeply embedded in the sonic wallpaper of every shopping mall in the Western world. Everything about it is perfect—not least the multi-vocal backing track which, along with the overall Spector-ish ambience, takes me back to The Mindbenders’ 1965 hit, ‘Groovy Kind of Love’. Eric Stewart sang vocals on both records. I hadn’t realised it until now, but that guy bookends my life from puberty to early adulthood.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” says a familiar voice over the PA, “pray silence while The Sidemen take the stage and reserve your applause for when I come out to join them.”

The audience laughs. So that’s how he’s squaring the “Sidemen front and centre” circle. Classic Banksie.

LICKS AND YARNS

First number, and they set the tone perfectly with a mid-tempo disco beat that turns out to be the 1981 Darryl Hall and John Oates hit, ‘I Can’t Go for That’. All we know at this point is that The Sidemen will be playing songs they used to play, wrote or wished they’d written. Presumably this number, penned by Hall and Oates, falls into the last category. Which kind of makes sense as It’s stylish and accessible—a bit like The Sidemen themselves.

Right to left, we have Jeff, head to toe in black, former lead guitarist with the Black Sorrows and Jo Jo Zep, playing a custom-made Noyce, also black, through what can only be described as a rather phenomenal-looking-and-sounding Fender amp in a matching black cabinet offset at the front by the tastefully subdued glitter of a silvery grill cloth.

(This amp, as will become apparent, is crucial to the whole enterprise.)

Greg, his head crowned with a magnesium halo of curls, is easily the most exotic-looking, but substance more than matches style as he rolls out a bass line that’s solid and vibrant, like a hardwood timber floor.

Grant on drums is in his early forties, which makes him the baby of the group but, judging by his relaxed composure, he could be the most experienced of them all.

Rick, tall and English, coaxes perfection out of a Roger Giffin Strat copy with a gentlemanly charm that makes the whole thing look so damned easy.

And Bruce, far left, sitting ramrod straight at a Nord keyboard, adds colour, texture, depth and rhythmic nuance with a poise that totally belies his self-effacing personal manner.

Sidemen on stage 1

Let it rock (Source: LisaGPhotography)

Behind Jeff, a bonus for the evening—backing singers Vanessa and Martine; and, front and centre, singing his heart out and grinning like a kid in a toy shop, Banksie.

Jeff is the first to receive the This Is Your Life treatment. Born in Mt Waverley, Victoria, to a musical family, he played in several bands before international success with Jo Jo Zep. Later, as part of the Black Sorrows, he co-produced several platinum-selling records with Joe Camilleri.

“Name one of the highlights of your time with the Sorrows,” says Banksie.

“Playing on the steps of the Sydney Opera House.”

Greg pipes up from the back: “I was there!”

Jeff turns: “Were you?”

These guys have so much history to share, they’re still discovering each other’s, on stage, in real time.

Cue two Sorrows numbers, ‘Hold on To Me’, with its killer opening line (“We were dead on arrival…”), and ‘Harley and Rose’.

Next up: Grant. Born and grew up in Sydney (Maroubra/Matraville) and moved to Byron because “the surf’s better”. A nun taught him piano as a kid: “it was horrible”. As a drummer he’s worked with Labi Siffre and Jackie Orszaczky among others and toured the world with John Butler, playing major venues like Madison Square Garden.

This leads into Siffre’s ‘I Got the Blues’—which I initially mistook (similar intro) for Butler’s ‘Zebra’.

Greg Lyon was originally from Melbourne (where Jeff and Bruce are still based). He started gigging in his teens with someone called Little Johnny Farnham and became a regular in the Aussie Blue Flames, the local combo which backed Georgie Fame on his Australian tours. After a spell in the States he relocated to Byron, combining music with a 20-year career in academia, during which he helped create Australia’s first contemporary music degree course at Southern Cross University.

They play ‘Yeh Yeh’ which makes my night. It’s at this point that I notice that the audience, just like me, are seriously enjoying themselves.

And then it’s Greg’s turn to do an intro.

“Not so long ago, Rick mentioned to me that, with Mike Oldfield, he’d co-written a song for Hall and Oates, ‘Family Man’, which enabled him to buy a house in Byron Bay.”  A mercenary glint lights up his eyes. “So naturally I said to him, ‘Let’s write a song together’. This is it.”

It’s called ‘Do I What I Say, Not What I Do’. Greg apologises for the “indulgence” and says that it’s still a work in progress. No apology necessary, of course; the song rocks along very nicely.

Rick’s next. Born and bred in Oxford, England, his big break came in 1976 when the drummer of 10cc recommended him to the rest of the band. He joined to promote the Deceptive Bends album and has been with them ever since. Along the way he recorded an album with Nick Mason from which a single, ‘Lie for a Lie’, sung by Dave Gilmour with Maggie Reilly on backing vocal, was a hit in the US. And, with Pete Howarth of The Hollies, he wrote a rock opera, ‘Robin Prince of Sherwood’, which toured the UK and had a good run in the West End.

The band launches into ‘Lie for a Lie’ followed by ‘Dreadlock Holiday’, Grant nailing down reggae snare fills in a way that makes any distinction between technique and feel totally meaningless.

Suddenly it’s the interval. How did that happen?

A HARSH REALITY

The first I knew for certain that the gig was taking place was when Banksie rang me.

“Listen, mate, I got a favour to ask. Equipment hire is pretty expensive and I’m trying to keep costs down so that there’s as much money as possible for the band. Could I possibly borrow your amp for Jeff to use? We’ll need it for a couple of weeks, to cover rehearsals as well as the gig.”

Let me get this straight, I thought. Jeff Burstin, ex Jo Jo Zep and the Sorrows and ARIA Hall of Famer, would like to borrow my lil’ old Fender Hot Rod amp which, because I’m still a 10-hours-a-day desk-bound working stiff, I hardly ever get to use?

Two possible replies sprang to mind: “Is the Pope…?” and “Does a bear…?”.

pope and bear

Is he? Does it? (Source: eyeofthetiber.com)

Eventually I settled for, “Yeah, sure, no worries”, and hoped it sounded nonchalant.

Yes, I admit, for a moment there I was reduced to a state of childish excitement. My amp? On stage with these guys? But I make no apologies.

We all have our passions—music, sport, politics or whatever—and our heroes in those fields. Mine from an early age were guitar music, guitarists and their guitars: Eddie Cochran and his Gretsch, Bert Weedon and his Guild, Hank Marvin and his Burns, Lennon and his Rickenbacker.

Most of us don’t have the talent to indulge our passions personally, at least not at an elite level, and therefore do so vicariously, through our heroes. So, on the odd occasion when our personal lives and the idealised world of our heroes intersect, it’s OK in my book to be, as I was, a little star-struck.

But the sense of referred glamour didn’t last long, because Banksie’s request reflected a harsh reality: the economics of making and performing music in the 21st century.

Musicians have always been the last to get paid, but it’s even harder for them today. The internet, social media and streaming services have destroyed the business model of record sales, regular gigging and tours that underpinned the music industry’s growth in the 1960s and 1970s.

Online technology has made music more ubiquitous than ever, especially through personal listening devices, so that individuals these days are increasingly accessing music privately and relying less than their parents did on mass media and live venues.

scream on headphones

The alienating effect of personal listening devices… (Source: everydayisspecial.blogspot.com)

And advances in electronic music equipment have made it easier for solo performers, DJs or small groups to flood venues with big digital soundscapes at a fraction of the cost that promoters would have to pay to hire a more traditional band of three, four or more musicians.

It’s got to the point that many live venues don’t charge the punters for the music. The idea is that the band brings in the crowds to increase the trade at the bar, then gets paid out of the “additional” takings. The proportion they receive is usually no more than a few hundred bucks in total.

I’ve even heard that some venues expect the musicians to underwrite the bar take: so, if the expected “additional” $2,000 or whatever doesn’t materialise on the night, the musicians are expected to compensate the venue. You couldn’t make it up.

My guess is that, for most of their working lives, The Sidemen would have followed the traditional template of gigging, session work, song writing and teaching, enabling them to enjoy satisfying careers and decent, though probably not particularly flashy, lifestyles.

Now, they face the same challenges as everybody else.

“When you think of all the talent and experience and years of musical history that these guys represent, there’s got to be a way of rewarding them more appropriately, in a way that gives value to the public too,” said Banksie toward the end of the call. “The question is, what is it?”

He was speaking now, not as the stars-in-his-eyes front man planning a major gig, but as a successful, retired businessman warming to a new challenge: how to introduce a measure of equitability in an industry where, more than ever, producers and creators are being denied a fair share of their rewards by distributors and consumers.

“I don’t know,” he said, answering his own question, “but I’m working on it.”

SHARING A PERFECT WAVE

I confess I’ve never seen the 2001 Australian hit movie, Lantana. Noirish, introspective stories about tangled relationships in suburban Sydney are not my thing. As far as I can tell, though, the title and creeping-plant imagery are well suited to the theme. I just tried reading the plot summary on Wikipedia; it was like ingesting broken glass.

Cue Bruce. He was part of the team, including Paul Kelly, that created the film’s soundtrack. The second set begins with the Lantana trailer, minus sound, playing on the backdrop and Bruce improvising over it. A dark and empty road lights up like foil in the headlights of a car; couples couple or glare moodily at each other; one woman talks tearfully to another; two men snarl at each other; Geoffrey Rush stares down at the Hawkesbury River, as into a metaphysical void; a woman’s body is thrown from the car….

Bruce’s music creeps from the shadows and curls itself around the images like the caress of a lover which, at any second, could snap into a stranglehold.

He’s from Bright, a charming old gold mining town in Victoria. Before being discovered by Richard Clapton’s bass player, he’d never played to an audience of more than about five people. Now his track record includes working with Kelly, Russell Morris, Renee Geyer, Colin Hay, The Waifs, Archie Roach and many more. He’s worked on the music for 15 films and won an ARIA for Lantana.

“You were there when Kelly wrote ‘How to Make Gravy’, weren’t you?” asks Banksie. “What happened?”

“Well, he walked into the room, playing a guitar, and said, ‘What do you think? It’s got a few chords from another song so I’m not really sure….’ And I said, ‘Nah, it’s really good. Work on it.’”

From little things, big things grow.

Guest vocalist Mark Jelfs channels Kelly with a near-perfect rendering of ‘Gravy’, and the show changes gear. The interviews are done, and the songs are no longer in support of anecdote or historical perspective. From this point on, The Sidemen are playing whatever the hell they want to.

The classics—so many of them my personal favourites—come thick and fast: ‘Rag Mama Rag’, ‘Drive My Car’, ‘Come Together’, ‘Heading in the Right Direction’ (the Renee Geyer classic with Vanessa delivering a beautifully judged lead vocal), ‘Shape I’m In’, ‘Oh Well’ and ‘Family Man’.

People are dancing, filling the space in front of the stage; the rest of us are either standing or rocking in our seats, clapping time. I turn to my Better Half: “Hey, that’s my amp up there!!”

Sidemen dancers

One timeless moment (Source: LisaGPhotography)

“Yes, dear, lovely,” she says, and pats my knee before losing herself in the moment again.

We’re all reliving the best musical times of our lives, but there’s something else going on here, too. It’s particularly noticeable on ‘Come Together’ and an unrehearsed ‘Sunshine of Your Love’ which forms part of the encore (Rick walks over to Banksie: “Is this in E?” Banksie laughs and nods.)

Is it the sound quality? It’s been good all night, but now it seems to lift a notch. Or maybe the songs are taking on a new, fresh life of their own. We know them inside out, but they sound clear and pristine, as though we’re hearing them for the first time.

The Sidemen are not just purveying musical history, they’re creating their own timeless moment—and we’re part of it.

That’s not just my opinion. It’s clear from the mood of the rest of the audience as we spill out onto the street that it’s been a pretty special evening. So often when you get carried along by a crowd you feel as though you’re spiralling downward into something; not this time. The sense of energy and release is palpable, as though we’re all surfing the same perfect wave.

That’s when my moment of clarity hits: the real story of The Sidemen is not about the stars they supported back in the day, but about the talent, skills, hard work, creative energy and unassuming professionalism they’ve brought, and continue to bring, to every job they’ve done.

And it’s about the enduring musical legacy and tradition they’ve created in the process. Stars come and go, but it’s the side men and women of this world who keep the show on the road.

Sidemen taking applause

Job done (Source: LisaGPhotography)

At the pub the next day we catch up with Banksie, his family and friends, and most of The Sidemen. The mood is tired but happy. Bruce has had to go back to Melbourne for a gig. Before he went, he said something to Banksie which, we agree, will resonate with us for a long time.

“In 40 years of playing live, that’s the first time I’ve ever spoken on stage.”

 

Celebrating NAIDOC Week – an excerpt from “Rody and The Stranger”

05 Sunday Jul 2015

Posted by Simon Jones in National

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This week (July 5-12) Australia celebrates its indigenous people, and does so against a background of continuing controversy over the constitutional status of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. In recognition of the event and the complexities that continuously challenge our original inhabitants, I’m offering below an excerpt from my novel-in-progress, “Rody and The Stranger”, which touches (in an admittedly fleeting and indirect way) on some of these issues.

We were just about to turn up the hill that leads to the village when our next-door neighbour, Colin, wearing overalls and gloves, appeared from among the trees. Sophie beeped at him and waved. When he recognized us, he flagged us down; he seemed excited.
“Oh God, we’re going to be late,” murmured Sophie as she pulled over and lowered the window, leaving the engine running.
“Come and have a look at this,” said Colin.
“What is it?” I asked, but he had already turned and was walking briskly back to the bush, waving at us to follow him. “I’d better go see.”
“Christ,” said Sophie, slapping the top of the steering wheel with both hands.
“He might need help.”
“If you’re not back in two minutes I’m going without you.”
I jumped out of the car and followed Colin across the road.
“Can we come?” asked Rory.
“No!” roared the thundercloud.
A narrow, twisting and very uneven path led through eucalypts and she-oaks to a clearing where Colin and half a dozen others were standing in a semicircle around a large, flat expanse of rock surrounded by piles of freshly cut lantana.
“We just cleared this,” said Colin. “Look what we found.”
I made my way to the front of the group, nodding and smiling at Colin’s wife Brigette and others I knew, all volunteers on the community bush regeneration programme. It took me a moment to figure out what I was looking at and then a shape emerged.
Down the centre of the rock and taking up most of the space was a long, straggly outline of a man with a melon-shaped head that was far too large for his body. His eyes were like twin full moons and his lower half seemed to morph into a sort of tripod. The penny dropped and, not for the first time, I cursed the naivety that my sheltered Welsh Methodist upbringing had ingrained in me.
“Impressive middle wicket,” I said.
“The girls have told us to order more Viagra,” said Tony the plumber. Everyone laughed.
“Probably some kind of fertility symbol,” observed David, a schoolteacher.
“How old do you think it is?”
“Who knows?” said Colin. “Aborigines have been here more than 40,000 years.”
“Well, the other one can only be a couple of hundred years old at most,” said Brigette, pointing above and to the right of the figure’s head.
Again, it took me a moment to discern the shape. It was smaller and less impressive than the man-figure in terms of artistic conception, but it made my heart skip a beat: a three-master, complete with bowsprit and a few lines to suggest rigging, riding at anchor in the Sydney sandstone. To say I felt time stand still would be a cliché, but so what? It was as though someone had frozen a moment in history, thawed it and served it up to me on the spot: an Aborigine’s first encounter with European civilisation. For him (her?) the wooden floating object would have appeared strange, perhaps unearthly, while the medium in which he recorded it was natural and familiar; for me the object I was looking at was familiar from movies and illustrated history books, but I was seeing it in a new and alien way. I imagined the artist and me to be two observers at different points in time momentarily sharing a sense of being jarred out of our respective contexts.
And then there was the contrast between the subject matter of the two engravings, and the clash it could be said to represent between modern and ancient, dreamtime and real time, one culture and another. Oh, don’t get me started….

I was still thinking of the engraving of the ship. I fantasized that the original might have been the mother vessel of Captain Phillip’s expedition, witnessed by some Durag people from the banks of the Hawkesbury. I further fantasized that the process of engraving would have been a way for the artist to come to terms with this extraordinary encounter, by re-ordering his personal experience into something which, aesthetically at least, was definitive and, therefore, something he could own and control. I knew, of course, that I was imposing my own conceptions and assumptions—if not my own psychological needs—on experiences and processes that I could only imagine and not fully understand. No doubt the reality, as usual, was infinitely more prosaic and complex.
“Watch your speed, darling.”
“We’re late.”
“Let’s just make sure we get there in one piece, yeah?”
I remembered from my reading of local history how a party of Aborigines had attempted to board a settler’s boat on the Hawkesbury in 1873. The passage quoted a contemporary account from The Sydney Morning Herald which said the settler had aimed a pistol at the leader and “dispatched him to the shades”; the other raiders fell back, discouraged. It was only later that I learned the phrase was from Ovid. To the writer and his readers the allusion was probably no more than a stroke of rhetorical colour in a report that was fair and balanced, about an incident of which the rights and wrongs were clear-cut.

© Simon Jones 2015

It might be appropriate here to mention “Shadows in a Landscape”, Rody’s song about Albert Namatjira, which he wrote about on January 26, Australia Day (scroll down for article and link to song).

 

Michele’s past comes back to haunt her (in a nice way)

15 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by Rody in Metro

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Part of Universal Stranger’s “mission”, if we have one at all, is to bring together like-minded creative people, so it was pleasing to learn that our June 3 profile of photographer Michele Mossop led to her re-establishing contact with long-lost former colleagues in the Italian media. One of the formative experiences in Michele’s career was the time she spent on Italian newspaper la Città, Quotidiano di Firenze during the early 1980s, a politically turbulent period, even by Italian standards. As part of our research for the piece, we tracked down the following video on YouTube – a photographic elegy to the people and ideals that once animated a paper which, like so many others, is no longer with us (Michele appears at 1.22, 1.23, 1.24 and 1.26):

Sigh; guaranteed to moisten the eye of many a former journalist and news photographer, especially in these post-print days (as Michele points out, the soundtrack – from Cinema Paradiso – doesn’t help). So what happened to la Città (The City)? Michele takes up the story:

“Just before I left the paper it was sold and changed masthead, then it became the bureau for the national newspaper la Repubblica, which is a fine paper, and an important one. For years it ran the same 10 questions to [then Prime Minister Silvio] Berlusconi every day [see note below]. Over time I lost touch with the people, and lost touch with the politics completely after the Berlin Wall fell. When I worked there we were all – apart from the editor and maybe a couple of others – in our 20s. The paper’s ‘rivers of gold’ was la Pulce – the flea – a classified ads publication just like the Trading Post. It’s the same in journalism everywhere.”

The 10 questions were in reference to Berlusconi’s alleged affair with an 18-year-old (more background here). The questions below were taken from la Repubblica‘s website; not sure why they address Berlusconi as “Mr President”: a sarcastic reference, perhaps, to the impression he once gave of harbouring ambitions to become the country’s head of state?

The Rainbow Serpent’s Cave

18 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by Rody in Heritage

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While it might be an exaggeration to say that non-indigenous Australians are alienated from their landscape, they certainly don’t share the affinity that indigenous people have towards it. Uncle Wes Marne, an elder of the Darug, whose traditional lands are in the Hornsby area of NSW, conveys that sense of affinity in this, the second of three videos about local indigenous people produced by Macquarie University and showcased by Hornsby Shire Council. Wes takes us deep into the bush to the Rainbow Serpent’s Cave, where he tells the story of the good and bad serpents and how ochre gained its colours. Is it possible that, by listening to the stories of Wes and others like him, non-indigenous people might start to feel an affinity towards the land and develop their own unique and authentic Australian spirituality? Just asking. For the first video in this series, see ‘Spiritual Connections‘.

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