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Frist! Gotta love 3 hour time difference
or is it 2?
Well I have 2 subjects to offer.
One from Hannah, following on from the eat the dog thread.
This site:
http://daily.sightline.org/daily_score/archive/2009/11/02/dogs-vs-cars
Concludes:
“So I say to the folks who made the original claim: Bad Researchers! Fur Shame!!! And to the rest of you: let’s consider the “dogs are worse than SUVs” meme debunked: buried in the back yard, put to sleep, and whatever other bad dog pun comes to mind.”
But more seriously, I found this at a site which apparently is a transcript of Alexander Downer talking to Fran Kelly yesterday.
“The other thing we did, which we did more sotto voce was to tow the boats – I must say this is not something that has generated much publicity recently in Australia – we used to get the Navy not to guide the boats into the Australian shore line what we did was [laughs] we got the navy to tow the boats back to the Indonesian territorial waters, left the boats with enough fuel, food and so on to get to a port in Indonesia – guided them where to go – and them left them.
Obviously monitored them to make sure the boat was safe but disappeared over the horizon. And this worked very effectively, but we did this without any publicity, we didn’t run around boasting that we were doing this because we knew the Indonesian accepted these people back through gritted teeth. But what the present government has done is in a way is what we did over the Tampa make too much noise publicly, back the Indonesians into a corner and so then the Indonesians said they wouldn’t take the people, just as they wouldn’t take the people from the Tampa.”
I don’t quite know what to make of this.
Any comments?
I know what to make of it, hannah’s dad! I heard that too and thought “Sotto voce” Alexander Downer? More his usual style of braying ass. And that insensitive stupid fool was once our Minister for Foreign Affairs. What lying hypocrites the Coalition have been on asylum seekers!
Their policy of turning back the boats at sea may have been an open secret and old news in a sense, but surely Downer admitting it on Radio National should have been breaking news? I have been searching all major news sites since I heard it looking for commentary and found not an echo, not even as those benighted souls started to leave the Oceanic Viking.
I gave up and have been out until late this evening and almost didn’t check in at LP before turning in. What is it with journalists these days? And why hasn’t Chris Evans or some government spokesman commented on this?
Goodnight. Thanks too for the good oil on pets and their carbon paw prints.
I’m now convinced courtesy of National Geographic and the ABC that the Freemasons and their brothers in arms, the Knights Templar (Simon must have been a renegade) now run a shadowy world government manipulating great powers to achieve their ends whatever they might be…
Men in aprons.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Men in Aprons. Around here they’re known as “Chefs”. Nothing to be afraid of.
Saw the 2012 Disaster movie. Great special effects if you like that sort of thing.
I wasn’t sure if no news was good news. Australia wasn’t pictured being wiped out by global calamity and no kangas or koalas were reserved for the ark. Australia didn’t get a refernce.
As usual some highly improbable human responses. At one point the chief character’s daughter, who was apparently still wetting the bed at seven managed to survive the end of the world and overcome her night wetting. Who knew that dealing with losing everyone you knew apart from your close family (and she lost a de facto father) would be good for you?
Apparently the US and Italian leaders chose to share the fate of their populaces (Berlusconi? — I don’t think so — maybe in some other universe). Even the pope stayed behind, but the queen took her corgis.
The “dali lama” stays behind to pound the gong as a tsunami takes him and the Himalayas.
The US president’s daughter — an adult with a responsible job — still calls her father “daddy”. Ugh!
The Russian mafia type dies but saves his hideous twin progeny and his trophy girlfriend with the breast enhancements ends up perishing but saves her agility-trained Tibetan spaniel.
A crashing Antonov disgorges the main characters in a Bentley from its cargo bay onto a Nepalese peak. The USS John F Kennedy is washed into the whitehouse and Air Force 1 crashes into an ark. Great stuff!!!
In the end, Africa alone survives, apparently so the much depleted human populace goes back to its roots. Hmmm
A fun romp though.
On a cheerful note:
Spent yesterday arvo driving through stunning sandstone formations, an ancient seabed thrust upward during the Main Range’s meozoic eruptions, to a sandstone cave:
Three & a half decades ago, when I last visited (it’s unforgettable, especially when you’d taken friends & visitors there for years), it still had charcoal art as well, but weather exposure (and it’s very exposed) during the 1974-6 & later deluges have erased it.
Haven’t heard of it? Can’t find it on a map? No index reference to the road? i place staff look blankly at you? Nor could we remember exactly when we decided to revisit. After a delightful, but an unsuccessful trip (to the music of bell-bird, cockatoos etc) through where we thought it was, and more unsuccessful attempts to find out exactly where it was, we eventually located it via a trek through local Birdwatchers’ webpage, then Rockhounds’, then plant-finders; but you have to discover the Aboriginal name (4th search) to find a direct reference – but no details as to where (luckily we recognised the indirect references). And the same is true of the magnificent sandstones. It’s also a geologist’s dream, with added diatomite areas as well as olivine basalts (mainly decayed).
But, despite the broadwalk, the cave’s not well protected. I could have irrevocably damaged/destroyed it and, as it’s almost at the end of a road rarely travelled except by locals during working hours, done so without anyone’s interrupting me.
We blew a water pump hose just as we arrived (maybe a great ancient Chalawong curse). Luckily, as our Boy’s Toy carries almost everything but the kitchen sink, we had a replacement; but found “almost everything” excluded other than a tiny screw driver (amazing, as we own zillions) so changing it with improvised ones took us 2 stormy soaking-wet hours of late afternoon-evening (luckily, we did have a light). No mobile coverage of any sort; not one vehicle passed; 5+K to the nearest house. And, yep, we did get lost on the stormy, foggy raining night-drive home on another “road less travelled” (almost total lack of signage; no other car in just over an hour; no mobile coverage) through what must have been spectacular Range-ascent scenery.
Ah, but, though more than a tad angsty, it was an afternoon adventure surrounded by natural & created magnificence on a Wordswothian scale:
PS “meozoic” should be “miocene”
Yeah, I heard that idiot Downer too, hannah’s dad, and thought “WTF? He’s just admitted his government got the Navy to do things which I suspect are criminal acts under our international treaty obligations.” He was our foreign minister, and the PM at the time is a lawyer.
Patricia WA @ 4, FWIW this is what I think about it.
When the Tampa appeared there had been over 220 boats in a relatively short space of time and the Howard Government was definitely asleep at the wheel. At first there was a fair bit of ad hocery in handling the incident, but it was a huge wake up call. The strategy the Howardistas came up with was to be extremely inhumane to anyone who came near us in a boat, and made sure that everyone knew about it. Turning the boats around was well known, but they didn’t need to make a fuss about that angle, because the strategy was aimed at the people smugglers.
An important part of any strategy should have been working at every point along the supply chain, especially Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as going back to source to try to improve the conditions that are making people leave. That last part is the hardest, and usually we can’t do much by ourselves. But that’s what the Fraser Government did. We are now doing this with Sri Lanka.
The most recent incident was high profile enough that Rudd was always going to become involved, which has its negatives and positives. The positive side is that Rudd can work at head of government level to try to stem the flow in Indonesia and improve the way things are handled there.
After East Timor, working with Indonesia would have been touchy, but the approach Downer related would have ensured that significant co-operation was never going to happen.
So pragmatic, nasty and inhumane was the way to go for Howard, and in terms of stopping the boats was successful. But at what cost in human terms and to our international reputation?
“What cost to our international repuatation?” Hard enough to find anyone overseas who has even HEARD of Australia, never mind has anything like a coherent grasp on our “reputation”.
I don’t give two hoots about Downer opinion or anything he may have done, but it is stretching it a bit to suggest that a mythical international reputation will be preserved intact if we get all pansy-fied and turn our border into a walkover for any individual who bares their teeth at us.
Treaty obligations? Politicians: At your own electoral peril may you govern in the interests of a treaty obligation rather than in the interests of your constituents.
Yet another revelation of the utter inhumanity of the Howard Government. And that asinine fool was snickering about it. Any chance of legal prosecutions?
On a much more pleasant level, spent a fair bit of Thursday afternoon and Friday afternoon and night watching Granada TV’s adaptation of the Forsyte Saga. Wonderful stuff.
This is probably not the right forum, Brian, but the pollytical Possum produced a nice scattergram of boats to NZ vs boats to Australia, with a straight line fit. Since for most of the time covered NZ had a much more humane process than we did, Howard’s policies had absolutely no effect on the flow of reffos. (Figures for the rest of the world bear this out too, apparently.)
Brian @ 12. Thanks for that perspective. Thinking it further through I guess it doesn’t help us in trying for a more cooperative regional approach if there is a great hue and cry here about the Coalition’s shameful actions, now openly admitted by dopey Dolly Downer, though not acknowledged by Turnbull. “Pragmatic, nasty and inhumane” sums it up. In a sense it’s reassuring that Rudd now seems to be trying a different kind of pragmatism as he puts getting real cooperation with Indonesia above the temptation to exploit the issue here.
The trickle of people off the OV seems to vindicate his lower-keyed and more constructive approach. So different from Howard over Tampa in 2001. The patience and ongoing cooperation of the Indonesian government at executive level suggests he is gaining some ground there too, while Downer’s “sotto voce”(on Radio National!)confession explains why local resistance there has been so great. Whatever the critics say at whatever extreme of the argument there is some dignity here as well as some salvaging of the rules, whatever they might be.
Who cares if fifty or more lucky souls manage to jump ahead in “the queue” of hundreds of thousands out there begging for safety, even just a better life.
Steve at the Pub – I have always assumed your pseudonym is an ocker form of “Devil’s Advocate.” If I’m wrong then I won’t dignify your comment with a response.
Fran Barlow @8, a thought provoking and believable movie, then?
Is anyone really surprised at this? Just further proof of what a nasty, mean-spirited regime the Rodent government was.
This Saturday as the heat continues to enthrall us in western Victoria, I’m a-wonderin if we should be bringing in a siesta system for our summers and possibly our springs if it’s gonna go on like this.
I can do the necessary first thing in the mornings: dig the garden, bake a cake, walk to the shops; and I can do it again in the evenings: water the garden, cook dinner; all that work that takes energy, but in the middle of the afternoon I want to rest, have a little snooze, nod off with book, lie down on the couch.
I’m with you on that rainbowdog. All we need to do is convince mad dogs and englishmen.
#17
Yes!!
What a bleeding obvious idea.
Cos we here are doing what you describe already, up early to work in the cool[ish] am, hide inside from the heat, then re-emerge in the arvo to do some more work outside.
Copy the Spanish idea, match the worktime/lifestyle to the climate.
Is listening to jazz left wing? I am a leftie and I love jazz. I speak about both with passion. But I think they are two completely different things. But my paranoid mind is seeing things. People seem to equate a love of jazz to be a sign of left wing tendencies.
Jazz music was the African-American expression of European music. They did not understand the conventions nor did they wish to be constrained. The famous jazz musicians were / are black. Jazz reveres improvisation – does not follow convention.
So help me bloggers – am I equating my love for jazz a subliminal expression of left wing tendencies?
I’ve written an email to Turnbull about Downer’s comments but expect the usual anodyne reply I get from his office whenever I’ve written in the past.
It’s usually been “Dear Allan, Thank you for your comments. Best wishes, Malcolm.” I mean, how can you possibly argue with that? I do love these stock-standard pro-formae responses, much like my letters to the ABC really. Have we lost the art of letter writing, I ask myself. LOL.
Paul Burns – was that the original TV adaptation of the Forsyte Saga and not that more recent woeful attempt? I refer to the one with Nyree Dawn-Porter, Eric Porter, Kenneth More, Susan Hampshire et al. Great stuff, if so. The more recent adaptation – 1 star (and that’s me being generous).
Allan, Turnbull has no say what comes out of the pearly Dolly mouth these days.
Sad for him, because mad Alex has let the cat out of the bag. Just when Mal announced a return to the same wicked policy that pointlessly wrecked relations with our neighbours, Indonesia and Malaysia, and toyed with desperate peoples lives .
Allen at 22 Nyree oh my the original 7 of 9(Startrek Voyager)what a cracker. my old heart still races at the thought.
#21:
Is jazz music politically Left? If so, then New Orleans must be a hotbed of Socialist Insurrection.
And I’d argue the point about the famous musos being black. Many were/are, but many others weren’t/aren’t.
It’s music. Great music, but apolitical.
Jazz creepo: I’m not sure where in the world you’re commenting from, but here in Melbourne Jazz is fairly much entrenched in the very white and privileged society of the richer bayside suburbs and Morningto Peninsula. I have met some of the older jazz icons and they are nice people, and I haven’t made a political study of their voting patterns, but I’d venture to say that Southern Australian jazz society – the audience in particular – would be quite politically conservative.
I don’t know so many of the younger jazz players so no idea there.
Fodder for another musical discussion: How much do you hate autotune? I hate it with a passion. http://bit.ly/35ioiO
“Is listening to jazz left wing?”
Anecdotally speaking… not necessarily.
“Jazz reveres improvisation – does not follow convention.”
Well, but in reality, jazz is full of conventions… it’s just that they’re its own conventions, not somebody else’s.
As F. Zappa once said, Jazz isn’t dead, it just smells funny.
Helen: “How much do you hate autotune?”
Aw, but Helen, how can you stay angry at autotune for long when it’s produced something like this masterpiece?
best line: “I’m angry! You can’t see it, but my forehead’s veiny!”
Re Cabinet and the cowardly abstaining Rudd’s Productivity Commission decision: Amazon here I come … : (
Fine, Adam. Just make sure to check that your canoe has no holes in it.
I’m no fan of Rudd, as people know, but the Productivity Commission recommendation on parallel imports seemed purely an exercise in free trade fundamentalism.
Whatever one may say about “free trade”, it’s hard to see book purchasing usages by local book wholesalers and retailers significantly affecting the Australian economy. The fact remains that anyone can use Amazon or similar.
Almost all our household’s purchases come this way, not principally because it’s cheaper, though of course it is, but because you can generally find what you want and have it in your hand more quickly than you could if you went on a bookshop crawl here. Not only that, but you can also find thematically-related books which you are also interested in which you would probably mjiss here, including of course out of print, secondhand but in good condition etc.
Currently, Australian authors in the children’s fiction area are doing very well, and one can’t but conclude that the current regime is responsible for at least some of that.
No. But thinking about that question and still deciding to ask it may well be.
Jazz is a diverse idiom. Perhaps even more diverse are the various audiences for jazz.
Helen’s observations about the Melbourne jazz scene are accurate enough. A bit of historical perspective is needed. Jazz took off in Melbourne in the 1930s. Two of its pioneers were brothers Roger and Graeme Bell.
Graeme Bell was a member of the Communist Party. The Eureka Youth League, a front organisation of the CPA, established a jazz club in 1946. From that date, jazz and left-wing politics became closely associated in Melbourne.
However, many members of the Eureka Youth League were university students. As budding professionals, their income levels gained them access to the more salubrious suburbs mentioned by Helen.
Some of these folks certainly did continue to be leftist in outlook. Others drifted away but retained their love of jazz.
I imagine that there are as many stories about the relationship between jazz and politics as there are cities.
Melbourne’s is just one of them.
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/carbon-scheme-in-the-bag-20091114-ifnt.html
“For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken away even that which he hath.” [g'Mark' 4.5]
“In a significant concession, and a huge win for the powerful farming lobby, a senior Government source revealed Labor will this week agree to exclude agriculture from the scheme ”indefinitely’ …..But critics of the Government’s scheme who already believe it does not go far enough and has been overly diluted by huge concessions to incumbent power producers, exporters and mining companies, will be dismayed at the farming exemption……It follows the release of a report by the Government yesterday warning rising sea levels triggered by climate change could damage or destroy 247,600 buildings valued at $63 billion.”
There is a certain irony, possibly deliberate, in he juxtapoasition of the last sentence.
Allan,
the more recent adaptation. It introduced me to Damien Lewis, who, I later discovered when I watched Band of Brothers was in fact an American.
(It did win a BAFTA so I’m not alone in really liking it so will have to differ with your rating. I’d give it 3 and a half stars.
On another topic, everyone.
Kids today!
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26351872-2,00.html
Love’em.
I’m quite keen on the odd ‘bookshop crawl’ myself. I often find ‘thematically-related’ books when I’m searching the shelves for a topic, even if I can’t locate a particular title.
Bookshops are part of our literary culture. They’re places where ideas are often discussed between customers and with boosellers who may be passionate about books, writing and ideas. I would say that as I sell secondhand books myself: there’s nothing I enjoy more than seeking out connecting titles around topics or writers and having something ‘related’ to offer readers.
I’m often told that bookshops don’t matter any more, that ‘browsing’ is a term strictly in the on-line camp, but I don’t and I won’t believe it as long as I keep meeting young readers keen to jump into a bunch of Russian classics they’ve found at my stall, or retired people with a bit more time on their hands who notice ‘Sons and Lovers’ and recall that years ago someone suggested they read it and now they’re going to give it a try. That kind of thing gives me a warm inner glow. Hopelessly romantic I know, but where would art or culture be without desire?
rainbowdog @ 37,
Spot on. I do a bookshop crawl every fortnight in Armidale of all the bookshops except A&R, which here is just awful. Its a relatively new shop with nothing in it except rubbish. The person behind the counter didn’t know who Emily Bronte was. I’ve never been back there since.
I check out the two second hand bookshops here once a month, and almost always find a book I want on something in the 18th century. One of them even rings me up if they get in something I might be interested in.
Which I suppose SATP, excuses Rwandan Prime Minister Jean Kambanda, who:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide
Shorter SATP’s logic: It must have been politically perilous to have the interests of the Hutu constituents overridden by any international law protecting the Tutsi from genocide.
Shorter SATP: I possibly subscribe to the Ribbentrop anti-pansy school of international relations: treaty making and breaking.
Shorter Peter Kemp: I am an obtuse type, who sees an equivalence between an African cabinet discussion of genocide and the obligation of a democratic politician to represent their constituency.
Really short Peter Kemp: I am opposed to democracy.
Further on the water debate: has anyone got any ideas on the current state of the development of the ?unified? water agency / board for water in south east Queensland? Scheduled for completion mid 2010.
I understand that the people working in the different organisations and on this unification, reckon the likelihood of it being privatized is currently 50 / 50.
I’d also be interested in comment about the apparent recent privatization of the Hobart water supply. Does anyone have info on this and has the cost of water there gone up significantly (as someone from within one of SEQld water authorities was spruiking the other day)?
As for the proposition that “jazz” may somehow be “left-wing”. Sounds as improbable as “folk” music being “left wing” or “classical” music being “blue rinse” and “right-wing”.
My parents (whose human rights, anti-war and social justice ideas were extremely radical in staid, neo-colonial 1960’s Queensland) used to argue about whether one of my older brothers should go to “The Folk Cellar” (behind the People’s Palace, in Ann Street, Brisbane – where Stan Arthur and the “Wayfarer”s played for decades), because it was a “communist” front organisation. Presumably based on the proposition that “folk” music was somehow subversive due to the content of so many “folk” songs – ?
Is the intro music to that aweful ABC Radio national program “Counter-point”, “jazz”. If so, that program alone, is enough to turn this music lover off “jazz” – for life!
The person behind the counter didn’t know who Emily Bronte was. I’ve never been back there since.
Yes, I asked a Young Counter Person a while back if they had the book “Reviving Ophelia”, about adolescent girls. She said “Who’s Offeelia?”
rainbowdog@37
So do I but sometimes the thematically-related stuff isn’t nearby on the shelf either because the shop isn;t carrying the title or because it is categorised as something else despite the overlap in issues.
This videoclip is doing the rounds of the dog training community, but it is amusing enough to pass onto the Saturday Salon patrons …
I love you
Re the sotto voce confession: it was either piracy or counter to the UN charter to which Australia is a signatory. To openly admit it is hardly likely to be conducive to Indoensian cooperation. Alexander Downer: you are a cretin.
Hello everyone,
Look at the following website – http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/music/jazz/mainstream/
Jazz in Australia – popular and unconventional
When jazz first reached Australia in the 1920s it became popular as dance music, although it was not until the end of World War II that jazz became truly popular in Australia. In December 1946, the first Australian Jazz Convention was held in Melbourne and became an important gathering place for mainstream Australian jazz musicians. The convention has been held annually ever since. During this post-war period, jazz appeared in clubs, concert halls and hotels. Soon jazz societies, festivals and dances were springing up all over the country.
In Australia, jazz was also viewed as a radical, unconventional form of music and has often been associated with politics and radical ideas. Harry Stein, one of the founders of the Australian Jazz Convention, was also the founder of a left-wing political movement in Melbourne. Many people, particularly younger people, were attracted to jazz as an alternative to the popular music of the time. Jazz also gained a reputation for being the music of artists, painters and poets – the radicals of the time – and as such, found fans attracted to this bohemian element.
In the 1960s and 1970s there was a decline in the popularity of jazz in Australia due to the new pop and rock music styles that emerged. Since the 1980s however, jazz has experienced a revival in popularity.
Today, musicians like Vince Jones use lyrics to express political beliefs. Vince also has the ability to move his audiences in an emotional way, that they describe as insightful, subtle and discreet. This trait, more often associated with classical musicians, demonstrates the maturity of jazz in being able to reach audiences on many levels.
Wingnut brain explosion of the week.
The Left loves Islamists because of the Big Bang. Or something.
Struggling Australian musician needs your help.
Wow, that’s deeply psychotic, Katz. (And pretty bloody incoherent as well.) I almost felt the need of a towel to wipe the spittle off my face after reading that.
“In the 1960s and 1970s there was a decline in the popularity of jazz in Australia due to the new pop and rock music styles that emerged”
Not at my place. Unbelievably, I had a crystal set (in the 1960s!) and one of my favourite programs was Willis Conover’s Jazz Hour on the Voice of America. God knows where else a kid would have heard that music in Western Australia in the early 1960s. I can remember the theme music even now: Take the A Train.
“God knows where else a kid would have heard that music in Western Australia in the early 1960s”
Hmmm, pre-RTR FM (or earlier incarnations)… that’s a tricky one. But VOA would have come via the ABC, no?
There’s no doubt that from the 30s to the mid-60s that most jazz buffs were left of centre if not downright anarchists.
These days though I think you’ll find many classic jazzaficandos tend to trend comfortably centre-right.
Exhibit A. I was introduced to Jack Teagarden by a CIA officer.
But then what is jazz these days?
Duke Ellington? The Necks? Lester Bowie? Chet Baker? Sun Ra? The Mound City Blue Blowers? Dunajska Kapelye? Jeff Beck? take the A ‘Trane? Dave Brubeck? Yardbird? Don Van Vliet? Django? Ella? Nina?
Remember jazz is full of giant steps admired by pygmies.
It could have been on the ABC – it started at 10.00pm which was late for an eleven year old. Then again I had several crystal sets, each of which was good for different things – perhaps one of them was good for shortwave. (My best crystal set was called The Scientific Egg – a clear plastic thing the size and shape of an egg).
I have to be careful not to let Katz know my formative years were spent listening to The Voice of America. OTOH maybe that accounts for my perfectly balanced political views: growing up in a Labor family, while the CIA was whispering in my ear.
Fabulous – why didn’t I think of Youtube – you’ve got to listen to the voice of
Willis Conover. Maybe I listened for Willis’ voice, rather than the music ….
Speaking of Willis Conover, let us not forget another great white boy jazzer with a superb voice, the inimitable Ken Nordine.
Tho’ I once stumped him live by asking what rhymed with “orange”.
Never heard of Ken Nordine, but, yes that is a voice. But Willis spoke slowly, really slowly, with a slowness, a calmness that I doubt would be possible in today’s world.
And some of Ken Nordine’s commercial work.
With added Dacron.
Enjoyable, but 70s nostalgia is often accompanied by a bit of a cringe … whereas Willis – pure sophistication.
Newspoll back to normal (56-44) following last fortnight’s outlier: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/labor-increases-support-newspoll/story-e6frgczf-1225798362542
Well jeez Russell, if you’re gonna flush a bit of fun and campy yet superbly produced nostalgia down the toilet, well then suck on this.
Peace.
Unless a majority of the population of the US was ‘leftwing’ from the mid to late thirties to mid forties (ok, a bit more likely than today as it happens & depending on one’s def. of left, but anyways )….or unless big band and swing ain’t jazz …….cause jazz totally dominated the music charts and dancehalls of that period; Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, Count Basie, Glen Miller and so on held the No. 1 chart position for years at a time etc. I assume Australia followed the US charts to a largish degree.
So not sure about some of the stuff written above nor of the link @ 46, to an official Aust Govt site stating that jazz ‘only became popular here after WW2 when a local jazz musician’s convention started’. I thought this was when jazz, like in the US, was becoming less popular with each passing year ….and by the mid 50’s, black kids in the US were getting into R&B, and all kids into rock n roll. And the charts had lots, as always, of syrupy pop tunes & novelty songs, as well as many re-recorded even then ‘jazz standards’ by big singing stars etc, but the golden years of jazz were kaput. ‘Modern jazz’ otoh, which had come to dominate the jazz music scene itself, was never going to be a popular idiom, it was self-acknowledged and proudly so after, the formal, orchestral-like restraint of the big band/swing era etc.
As per Nabs @ 52, the range of jazz styles/sub-genres is pretty deep and wide after 100 years.
And there had been mega jazz hits of varying degrees of ‘hotness’ (ie blackness) since the early 20’s. Of course, white jazz composers and band leaders like Paul Whiteman, the self-titled ‘King of Jazz’ had many huge hits during the 20’s and 30’s…Hoagie Carmichael’s Stardust was released in 1929… but Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington had a few big hits leading up to big band/swing jazz era, although the depression saw hundreds of artists dumped from labels..
As to Jazz Creepo’s question:
A correlation between lefties and I’m assuming ‘modern jazz’ in Oz? Firstly, you are talking about a tiny live music scene or wine bars etc located in a couple of inner cities, with probable links whatever arts/literary and theatre scene was happening and the one university in town, and then any link to politics through all of that. Modern jazz was cerebral, and referenced/played w/ genres of music and/or abandoned/extended them etc. so I would think any correlation in white Australia esp. rather than being left or right wing, was more likely if any, to be ‘further educated’ and continued to be so.
I don’t agree whatsoever with Jazz Creepo’s statement that black musicians “didn’t understand the conventions nor did they wish to be constrained.” They may not have wanted to have been constrained, but…there is no way that you can play, let alone develop and create complex music without knowing musical conventions…In terms of modern jazz in particular, Jazz Creepo, you might like to read Miles Davis’ autobiography & disabuse yourself of the notion that these guys weren’t intensely intellectualising every note. As for study & technique:
hhhm….
Ella…. Duke….Miles…..Bird…umm… ‘33 Cab:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D44pyeEvhcQ&feature=related
Further to that, jo, apparently Coltrane spent a fair time working his way through Slonimsky’s Thesaurus of Scales.
Over hot and sticky where you are and missing out on important sleep?
Relief is in sight.
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/radar.jsp?lt=wzcountry&lc=aus&ane=1&anf=1&and=1&ana=7&anb=333&anc=3&lya=1&lyk=1&lye=1&lyf=1
“apparently Coltrane spent a fair time working his way through Slonimsky’s Thesaurus of Scales.”
Oh, Coltrane studied formal technique like you wouldn’t believe. So did most of those guys — well, the good/great ones. (Coltrane also did his post-docs, as it were, in the Schools of Miles and Monk. IIRC, even in Coltrane’s great years, he spent a few hours a day just playing scales.) Just like Pollock studied formally with T.H. Benton and the Mexican muralists, and (informally) over all the minutiae of Picasso, so he could learn to fling paint the exactly *right* way. James Schuyler was Auden’s personal secretary. None of this stuff is ‘freedom’ from ‘constraint or convention’ — none of the stuff that’s any good, that is.
“None of this stuff is freedom…”
Oh, except for Don Van Vliet and The Mascara Snake, getting themselves lost on sax and bass clarinet. Those guys had no idea what they were doing. The Captain was kind of an idiot savant with a horn or a paintbrush; but with a pen or a microphone, he was sublime.
My husband plays double bass in two jazz bands. There is a fairly extensive jazz culture in the outer north of Melbourne which goes back to Graeme and Roger Bell and Gordon Ford in Eltham in the 30s and 40s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JycfQd9nk9M
there are clips of tatum playing chopin, dvorak etc on youtube, but not in the 1 above:
jo — ahh, true. Conversely, there are a few rare passages in Schumann (notably in Kinderscenen, but also elsewhere) where, for a few brief moments, he actually sort of swings — a century or so ahead of schedule.
Just for fun (and cuz we’re speaking of jazz) here’s a link to Lee Morgan’s sublime mid-60s cut “The Procrastinator”, one of the great lesser-known jewels of hard bop. Just look at that lineup — it’s to die for, and yeah, they do not disappoint. (And for those of you who think the jazz trumpet is defined by Miles, you’re in for a stylistic surprise. Check out Lee’s entrance around the 2:00 minute mark on “The Sidewinder” some time for a treat.) But here’s “The Procrastinator”, with the great Bobby Hutcherson leading the charge…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIEQak9Vh6w&feature=related
Sometimes I think of Lee as being sort of the Dee Dee Ramone of jazz (when you consider, say, “The Sidewinder” or “Mr. Kenyatta”). But beyond that, here’s a truncated version of his sublime, epic “The Search for the New Land”, always one of my favorite jazz cuts… if you can pick up the whole thing on vinyl or CD, it’s money well spent.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht-WGjPhQKw&feature=related
I always loved how this bunch, in spite of their enormous chops and taste for high-altitude art, nevertheless did not disdain to throw in a bit of showmanship too. Lee at his best, turns his little spectactular show-off bits into pieces of poetic metaphor instead of just sparks. Anyway enjoy.
Oh, and p.s. — thanks to Jazz Creepo for turning me on to Vince Jones… I checked out some of his stuff on youtube and it was lovely…
Damian Lewis is British he just plays an American in Band of Brothers and other films
diffan1213,
Thanks. Did discover that after my earlier comment, but forgot to say.