personal political

children

When I first heard about this (and whenever I hear news of other accidents involving groups of young people), I breathed a sigh of relief that my own child isn't old enough to be out in the world on his own. It is indeed "every parent's worst nightmare".

veges

Via Linda Grant's blog, which I've recently discovered and enjoy, is video of the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra, which is bemusing and amusing.

magic piano

Phil mentioned having Sparky's Magic Piano as a child and I asked him what that was - you can read about it here. It looks good - I'm tempted to buy it. (This is probably a good time as I have something on 'back order' with them so I can save on postage.)

what i haven't blogged about this week

• Went to see Jimmy Somerville in concert with Bob Downe and the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Choir. I think the choir is dorkey, I'm afraid - their hand movements are cringe-making. Other than that, I love Bob and I love Jimmy (who used to be Jimi - what happenned to that?) But I do wonder if Jimi/Jimmy finds it tedious having to be so constantly proud and upbeat about being gay and about gay sex. Maybe not. Anyway, his voice has not aged or declined in any way  - I last saw him perform at The Fridge in Brixton sometime in the early 90s and I knew his Communards buddy Richard, so it was a literal blast from the past for me. It's very strange, this process of getting older and having one's past life become history - I don't mean just one's own personal history, but to see an entire decade, ie London in the gay, Thatcherist 80s, which I was part of, become "the past as a foreign country".
• Life chez nous, it must be admitted, is much calmer since Harry died. Which doesn't mean that I don't think about him and miss him every day.
• I don't even have time to blog about what I haven't blogged about as I have to rush off to another beach picnic. Watch this space.

pre-pre-teen

Olle was given his first pop CD for Christmas. Given by his cousin, who is 10 but a pop music veteran. We haven't been inclined to encourage Olle to listen or in any way be tuned into pop music - I'm a believer in everything at the appropriate developmental stage. I've listened to a lot of music with him, but it's been Noni Hazlehurst and Playschool, Raffi and Bananas in Pyjamas doing nursery rhymes. More recently we listen to things like A Child's Celebration of Folk Music and Maria Muldaur.

Anyhow, he was given this CD because it is by Lee Harding, who was one of the finalists on Australian Idol. The punk finalist, the one we supported.

It's a single, so it has two tracks, one which I can't remember (dare I say it all sounds the same to me?), the other is 'Eye of the Tiger', which was a big hit in the 1980s (not a punk hit, originally). Olle loves it - plays it over and over while mouthing the words and staring into space, moodily. I decided to enter into the spirit of things by teaching him the punk pogo dance, which I could see gave me a lot of street cred.

idol thoughts

Confession: we've been watching the third series of Australian Idol. Actually, only part of the series - we came in just a few weeks ago, when they were down to six contestants from the original twelve.

Our excuse was that co-parent's sister in Melbourne's daughter's friend is a cousin of Lee. In fact we have met this cousin, who is a younger but equally smiley and good-looking boy. When this info was passed on to us, we had to tune in and see for ourselves.

The first series completely bypassed me except for the news that the winner was an evangelical Christian. I managed to avoid all of the second series except for the final - we were at friends' place for dinner that night and they insisted on watching it. I was appalled. To my ears, no one on the show could sing in tune, especially the eventual winner. I'd received chain emails urging me to vote for Casey because she was a large young woman from an Aboriginal background (god, that looks awful written down but that is in effect why some women were campaigning on her behalf), but I felt completely unmoved by her. All of the performances were embarrassingly derivative.

The same could probably be said for most of this year's contestants but these contests have a way of hooking you in. Which is another way of saying that we're hooked.

Though I may yet wriggle free. When Dan was voted off last night, some of the spark went out of the competition for me. I thought Dan had the best voice, in a vaguely Tom Jones-ish way. And I think that Lee has the most charm/charisma, albeit in a bubblegum kind of way. He looks genuinely relaxed  and ... nice. I was really surprised that Kate made it into the final three. And Emily does nothing for me.

I would have liked to see a final between Dan and Lee or between Dan and Emily, with Dan winning. That's in the idealised arena of the television program. In real life, someone I know who's in the music biz points out that it's much better to come second or third - then you aren't tied in to the Australian Idol contract. You don't have to do their album and their concerts, you can do your own. Both the previous second-place getters have done well in the music business, but last year's winner seems to have sunk like a stone.

I'm slightly perturbed by the fact that I prefer the final two men over the final two women. I wonder if that's an indication of how constricted women still are in the way they must present themselves on stage. Kate turns up in an assortment of ridiculous feminine outfits, while Emily supposedly represents the tough diva, which to me is just another flimsy stereotype. The men have a much broader array of types to choose from and can even go out on a limb with pink hair or dreadlocks. Watching the show with my young son, I've been pleased that Dan and Lee are there for him. I can't imagine wanting a daughter to emulate the women.

tap dogs/billy elliot

I took Olle to see Tap Dogs on the weekend. It was sensational, thrilling. Olle was focused and engaged for the entire 75-minute performance. (We took him to see Lion King on stage exactly a year ago, when he was five and a half, and he had a more dazed reaction. It's interesting seeing his ability to watch evolve with age.)

We bought the DVD and he watched the entire show again, as soon as we got home. He even put on his jazz ballet shoes and some clip-on taps and danced along with it!

It's amazing how much Dein Perry's story parallels that of Billy Elliot. We watched that film on video with Olle when he was three and a half. What he took away from the story was a great love of ... boxing! The dance component went right over his head. I'll have to rent the video again to see how he reacts now.

Billy Elliot is about to open as a musical on the London stage.

music meme

Lucinda from Rainbowcake has passed me a stick of questions about music. I'm hopeless at answering these 'favourite' types of things, memory like a sieve, but here goes:

1. What's the total number of music files on your computer?
That's easy, as there are none. I used to occasionally play a CD on my computer while emailing or webbing, but found it distracting. I don't have an iPod and frankly have very little motivation to get one.

2.The last CD you bought was...?
Probably an audio-story for my son at Christmas time, but I guess that doesn't count - before that, we were given 'Songs from the 42nd Parallel' by kd lang and "Want One' by Rufus Wainwright, but being given them probably doesn't count either. I bought 'Shadows and Light' by Joni Mitchell around the same time, so that's the one. I only buy 4-5 CDs a year these days. I don't know if that's typical of people in their 40s. In my teens and 20s I of course bought albums very often, every week at least. This tapered off in my 30s and has almost ground to a halt now.

3.The last song you listened to before reading this message was...?
To be completely accurate, it was probably some music played by Angela Katterns on ABC radio when I was in the car yesterday. (Something bluesy which I didn't especially like.) In terms of music I chose, it would have been something by Madonna, whose 'Immaculate Collection' tape is in the car or "She'll be Coming Round the Mountain' sung by Pete Seeger from 'A Child's Celebration of Folk Music' which we played at breakfast yesterday. I'm such a groover.

4. Name five songs you often listen to or which mean a lot to you.
A CD I've been playing quite a lot recently is Kiri by Kiri te Kanawa - the first track on it is Puccini's 'O mio babbino caro', the theme song from 'A Room with a View' - on a sunny Saturday morning, with all the doors and windows open, it's beautiful music to fill the house with. It makes me think of my mother and of when I got together with co-parent (who made me a tape of Kiri singing Broadway show tunes).

A track which makes me think of my father, who died a year ago, is 'Oh What a Beautiful Morning' from 'Oklahoma', sung by Yvonne Kenny, which was played at the end of his funeral.

But I'm not really a classical or light classical kind of person.

I love Leonard Cohen - can I squeeze two of his songs into one here? I really like 'Famous Blue Raincoat' - it's so evocative and melancholy. It perfectly captures that sense of people's lives intersecting intensely before they go off in different directions. I used to have it on record sung by Judy Collins (perhaps I still own that record, somewhere in the attic), I still have it on a Leonard Cohen CD (and the Cohen-covers CD Tower of Song) and play it every so often. The other song by Cohen is 'So Long Marianne' - it's not that I especially like that song more than others by him, but it reminds me of someone who was my first great love and who in fact introduced me to Cohen's music when we were still at school - it always brings to mind that photo of the woman who I think was the real Marianne (Cohen's lover) on one of his album covers in the 70s - I think the photo was taken in a whitewashed house on a Greek island. It all seemed terribly sophisticated (in a bohemian kind of way) and out of my reach at the time...

'You Have Been Loved' by George Michael. This makes me think of the gay men I knew at the height of their AIDS crisis in the 80s - men who died and the friends and lovers who survived them. I was in London during that time - George Michaels' home city - so I think of the people I knew there, I think of Soho and gay cafes. (This song came later than that, but takes me back to that time.)

'Who's That Girl?' by Annie Lennox (the Eurythmics). Early 1984: my lover was having an affair and I was trying to be cool about it though secretly tied up in knots of obsessive jealousy. This song was a hit at the time and chimed in perfectly with my mental state. I heard it again very recently and immediately thought back to a dark winter holiday in Wales where I could not get it out of my head.

5. Which three people are you going to pass this stick to and why?

That's a hard one. They may not be reading this! Let me see:
Robyn, the Other Mother, because I have no idea what sort of music she would like, though she often writes about what she's reading.
Lushlife (I hope you haven't been given it already) - she wrote about a concert the other day and is sure to have some favourite music that's different from mine
David of the Chooks - I'm wondering what sort of Anglo-Germanic combo he might come up with.

singin' in the rain

On a very hot Sunday afternoon in January, we went to see Singin' in the Rain at the Chauvel.

We already had the soundtrack CD at home and ever since, Olle has been playing his favourite tracks ('Singin' in the Rain', 'Moses Supposes' 'Fit as a Fiddle' and 'Make em Laugh') again and again and doing an invented dance along to them. [Reminder to self: I must video him doing this.]

One day this week, he and I went for a walk around the streets where we live and I eventually realised that he was doing a Gene Kelly - leaping up gutters and kicking his feet together in the air, skipping and hopping and dancing along. Pure joy.

If he had to emulate any American entertainer, Kelly was a good one to pick.

mcgarrigles and wainwrights

Three of us went to the Kate and Anna McGarrigle and Rufus and Martha Wainwright concert on Sunday night. (Kate and Anna are sisters; Rufus and Martha are Kate's offspring.)

As the review says, there were some very sweet highlights, including, for me, the discovery of Martha's wonderful vocal abilities. (She sang a song by French chanteuse Barbara, which was a blast from the past - a friend of mine introduced me to Barbara in the late 70s.) But there were some even stronger disappointments, especially the quality of the sound system, which made Rufus on his own often hard to listen to.

[The couple sitting next to us had more to complain about - one of their seats collapsed halfway through the show - they got up and left, as you would.

Not to mention that they sold out of Martha's EP in the foyer afterwards - what sort of musical tour is it where they don't bring enough merchandise???]

Very unusually for procrastinating me, I managed to dash off an email to the Enmore Theatre the next day, telling them how bad the sound was. Today I had a phone call from their event manager, letting me know that in fact the promoter had supplied the sound person and sound equipment and she'd had other verbal reports of its poor quality. She ended by offering me two free tickets to see David Byrne  next week! We're big Talking Heads fans, so of course I said yes. It pays to complain.

[Rufus, I still love you, and your mother and aunt and sister.]