Sun, surf, scales

Back in Sydney after a weekend at lovely Bawley Point (on the NSW south coast) with fellow Touchwoodians and associated family and friends. Most of the others are dawdling back today, I'm holed up in an air-conditioned refuge from the onset of summer in the city.

There was a good deal of scenery contemplation, water immersion and Scrabble at the Point, but also some music, including test drives of the beginnings of three new Touchwood originals - two by Christina and one by Kt. Just like the St Josephs cross country I'm going to have to put in some effort to catch up.

Additionally, the hung-over wedding guests next door had the benefit of my attempts to master a in-tune scale on the cornetto. The cornetto? That's the answer to the question "what's long , curved and covered in black leather?" Yes, of course, it's THAT Renaissance wind instrument. Have a look here.
Two squawking rainbow lorikeets landed on the deck during the practice. I suspect I had inadvertently hit on a parrot distress call.

Reeling back through an eventful week, last Wednesday's landmark was the Elvis Costello gig at the State. EC and The Impostors really are in top form on this tour. Did agree, though, with a member of our party who thought the sit-down theatre venue was a bit of damper on the audience buzz. Interesting interview from the weekend's Age. You may need to sign up as a subscriber to the Fairfax site to have a squiz (it's free).

The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

I reckon it must have been bread torn apart with the hands and eaten still warm from the oven (the bread, not the hands).

The best a cappella group I've seen for yonks is Myrth - four women from Port Macquarie who I had the pleasure of hearing at a recent Blindman's Holiday gig at the PM Regional Gallery. Their picture, below, shows them in "costume one" phase - respectable ladies with twin sets and pearls. They were dressed like this when I met them before the show - they had their act down so well I was almost fooled. Their songs are topical, sung with passion and they have fantastic arrangements and beautiful voices. I hope they expand on their four-song repertoire soon!

The painting behind them was the backdrop for our performances - a very sinister painting by George Gittoes showing Afghani children on an abandoned carousel they found. I wrote a haiku about it:

Thick with dancing paint
And larger than my small life
Spins the carousel

Making merriment with our backs to this painting was daunting to me. Or perhaps we were just part of a largrer art installation, or perhaps the world's a ...

music for driving

What's your favourite music for those long car journeys?

For Touchwood trips, we have a playlist (on the iPod) that includes Elvis Costello, Crowded House, Tom Waits and many more, but out absolute fave - best of the bestest - is Steve Nieve's 2000 album Mumu.
Mumu is a strange and special album, and difficult to buy. None of us listen to it very much at other times, but in the car on tour it's a sing-a-long-a-Steve-fest.

Steve is Elvis Costello's keyboard player, and has been for nearly 30 years. Watching them perform live together is a joy (which, I'll say again, we'll be experiencing again after two more sleeps).
I emailed Steve today via his website. Just standard-issue fan mail. He wrote back Within The Hour from Melbourne, where the band has a day off between gigs. I feel almost important!

I'll leave you with a line from Mumu:
"I want my own web site like young people have today"
Indeed.

Mr. Poo?

Over the city skyline this morning, I spotted the following vapour trail:

Turns out they weren't writing "poo" at all - but "pacific". What a shame.

For the brief moment wherein the possibility of scatalogical skywriting lingered, I was reminded of a Touchwood incident in the UK...
We were having brekkie with our hosts one morning when a plane flew over, trailing a sign. The text was backwards from our vantage point, and there was much discussion about what it said. The best suggestion by far was "Mr. Poo?!".

Then, as today, the fact was much less entertaining that the fiction.

muse-ings

Ah Canberra - always worth the drive.
Friday night saw us at The Merry Muse for a very fun night. New Canberra band Aglet played first (apparently, aglets are the plastic thingies on the ends of shoelaces), followed by Reynardine, launching their CD Old Fox, New Trick. With the four of us (Louise-the-gorgeous-cellist included), and a walk-up spot from a wonderful harpist, that made for more that 16 players on and off the stage across the evening - keeping the ever-patient and unflappable sound-guy on his toes!
Highlight of the evening for us was the view from the stage as we coerced the audience to show us their paws during Waltzing With Bears. Pandas R Us.

Christina had to head off at some non-existent (pre-8am) hour on Saturday for a two-week tour with Blindmans Holiday. Bye C! The rest of us enjoyed a slighty slower start to the morning, and then spent most of the day at the National Gallery looking at the Vivienne Westwood exhibition.
Then off to Jo Cresswell's for the house-concert debut of her band Halliracket. Guitar, voices, concertina, piano, and even a bit of step-dancing. Very fine playing - and a lovely way to spend an evening.

Special-big-thanks to Catherine for letting us crash for the weekend, and for the roast lamb, and for the Scrabble, and for not making us watch the video of Hello Dolly...

fact checking the fact checkers

Although I'm loath to sound as though the girls are ganging up on Terry again (again!?), I'm afraid I must point out that it was a list of EC's FIVE-hundred must-have recordings. No measly century for our Elvis.
And HERE it is, for those who want to see how their collection measures up.
And, solitary reader, some time you should get Christina to hop off her lofty perch and tell you about the time she didn't feel so determined to avoid being a "blathering fan" - the story behind one of the names originally considered for Touchwood: "Elvis Stole My Pen".

"We," paleface?

Terry has failed to point out one of the important details in his "WE Met Elvis" story. And that detail is that HE AND KATE went to meet Elvis but I had decided that EC didn't need to meet another blathering fan and that I didn't need to be that blathering fan. So instead I went out into the audience and talked to a Music Critic Who Shall Remain Nameless who was raving so much I thought both his eyeballs were going to pop out.

I still think "Brutal Youth" is one of the best albums EVER EVER made. Every song is like a small film for the ears. I see whole scenes unfolding, characters, places ... omigod, I'm blathering ...

The link between Andrea Gabrieli and EC

Counting down to the Elvis Costello gig in Sydney on 24 November... a Touchwood music appreciation outing. Last time at the Enmore we plucked up the courage to go backstage and hand Mr McManus a copy of our first CD The Great City on which we had done an arrangement (by Christina) of The Letter Home from The Juliet Letters.
I also gave him a copy of A Venetian Coronation, one of my favourite early music recordings. Weird? Well, I'd seen an article by him listing his 100 essential recordings, and there was some John Dowland there. Seeing he was interested in (Renaissance) hits and memories, I thought he needed to hear the Gabrielis (Andrea and Giovanni). Have no idea if he listened to either disc. Maybe we'll ask him? Hmmmm... maybe security is already planning to eject CD-bearing freaks.

Speaking of freaks we're also booked in to see The Black Rider in January. Was hoping the Sydney Festival production might entice Tom Waits to revisit our shores. Didn't know much about him in 1979 when he appeared on the Don Lane Show during his one-and-only Australian tour. Immediately regretted having turned down a chance to go to his Brisbane concert. He's not been back. Curse you Bert Newton!

Canberra this Friday

Hurrah - we're off to Canberra this weekend for a gig at the Merry Muse. With our gorgeous cellist Louise!
And, as if that's not enough, Saturday brings the joy of the new Vivienne Westwood exhibition at the National Gallery.

7.30pm Friday November 12
Touchwood plus Reynardine
The Merry Muse
Polish Australian White Eagle Club, David Street, Turner

Big Things at indie-cds

The lovely Malcolm Fielding at indie-cds is now selling Big Things online for us.
There's a dedicated order form here. Go there and do all your Christmas shopping!

My name is Jann Jansson

Ha. Tricked you. Coz it's NOT!

Driving back from the Wheeze and Suck Band gig last night I had a nightmare-comes-to-life type of experience. So, I'm driving through the quiet mostly dark grounds of Gladesville Hospital. It used to be the place people went when they forgot to take their special pills. And there are secret tunnels and big fig trees and sandstone buildings. It was bucketing down last night and I found myself driving round and round in ridiculously labyrinthine circles and down dead-end lanes. I couldn't find my way out. It was a ll giant trees and rain and darkness and sandstone. Finally found myself in some godforsaken dead-end. had to reverse out a long way back without really being able to see much. Was I whistling the theme to The Archers? NO! I was recalling that scene in "The Murder Room" where he can't see out of his car window properly and someone pounds on his window but he can't see who it is and then five seconds later his car has been set alight with him in it. Funny how the mind works.

The good news is that obviously, as I'm posting this to the blog, I must have made it home without being kidnapped by Treebeard or blown up by someone who didn't want me to close their forensic musuem. Phew.

I once went on an adventure with a group of teenagers through Western NSW and South Australia on a mini-bus. We were touring a show called "Rated X" on the taboo subject of teenage depression. When they weren't insisting I wore the fake nose-ring they'd given me, they were singing this song:

You're a directional spastic
You don't know which way is which
And the people you meet as you walk down the street
They all point to you and they say ..
(repeat ad nauseum. Tour lasted two and a half weeks. You do the maths).

And the tune? The "Jann Janssen" ditty of course!

NxNW

That's North by Northwest to you. It's a monthly folk club in the grounds of the Gladesville Hospital (reminded me of the lyrics to Bedlam from Elvis Costello's new album). Christina and I went to hear The Wheeze and Suck Band play in celebration of the club's 7th birthday.
The wheezers are good fun. They all wear top hats now - which reminded us of Harry from the Hoy At Anchor club in Leigh-on-Sea. Harry wears a top hat all the time, decorated with whatever fresh flowers come to hand. He makes the BEST sloe gin and toasted cheese sarnies... (sigh)
C & me would have done a floor spot at NxNW tonight, but we didn't have a ukelele with us - how often does that happen??