worth listening to

Some of the music most worth listening to is not often played on mainstream radio. Here's some of what I'm enjoying at the moment.

all india radio

All India Radio is Martin Kennedy plus assorted other musicians from time to time. This generally instrumental music can occasionally be a little trite and simple, but more often it is strange, beautiful and haunting ambient sounds. Perhaps best of all is the only vocal album, "Fall", where the strong, expressive voice of Leona Prue fronts some fine Kennedy instrumentation. Right now (Feb 2010) you can get cheap and even free downloads from All India Radio's Myspace page.

auburn lull

These four guys from "somewhere in middle America" (Michigan) play what is sometimes called "space rock" - atmospheric, lush music that is somewhere between rock and ambient. The vocals can be a little weak, but the mainly instrumental music really soars. Check out their music at Myspace.

my brightest diamond

My Brightest Diamond is mainly Shara Worden. Trained as an opera singer, she has toured with Sufjan Stevens (see below) as a back-up singer as well as a performer of her own material. Her music is dramatic, individual and her singing can be electrifying. Her Myspace page will let you listen to some of her music.

radical face

Radical face is one of several projects of Ben Cooper, who does just about everything on the superb album "Ghost", including record it in his backyard shed. The music is beautiful and folky soft rock, and the lyrics on this album are based on the fantasy that houses have ghostly memories which remain and may haunt those who move in next. "Down the Road" from this album is one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard. Check out Ben's website.

sigur ros

Possibly the most well known of the bands here, these Icelanders play quirky, anthemic songs with a big sound. Never in a hurry, the music builds slowly, ebbs and flows and contains many surprises. But don't try to decipher the lyrics, they're generally in Icelandic or Hopelandic, an invented mini-language. Here's the Sigur Ros website.

sufjan stevens

Sufjan may just be the most talented and quirky musician I have ever heard. He writes some of the simplest and best lyrics you'll ever hear (try "Casimir Pulaski Day"), he plays most instruments, does his own gentle singing, and his choral and musical arrangements are sometimes intricate and always creative (try "They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From the Dead!!…") And did I say he has a mad sense of humour and some outrageous song titles? His website sums it up this way: "Sufjan Stevens mixes autobiography, religious fantasy, and regional history to create folk songs of grand proportions." On top of this, he established Asthmatic Kitty records, which is now home to a large bunch of quirky, obscure and talented musicians.

the middle east

The Middle East are a creative bunch of Aussies who can play anything from modern folk to anthemic rock. Recent performances have endeared them to a growing clan of loyal followers. On stage, they are a six or seven piece collective that can on occasion be augmented to include a string section and/or a choir. "Blood" is a moving folky song about family and the hurts that can come with the package. Pig Food live (which has the full string section plus choir) is well worth a listen (though not as tight as on recording - it was on the original "The Recordings of the Middle East", but not on the re-release). I really hope this amazing band is heard by many more happy listeners. Check out their Myspace page.

some music is special

Who can explain why some music just says something to your soul? Lately I've been enjoying the music of an obscure Australian band, the Middle East. I saw them live and have a dozen of their songs. Here's the lyrics of one of the best, "Blood" (about family):

Older brother, restless soul, lie down

Lie for a while with your ear against the earth

You'll hear your sister sleep talking

Say "your hair is long but not long enough

to reach home to me

but your beard someday might be"

And she'll wake up in a cold sweat on the floor

Next to a family portrait drawn when you were four

And beside a jar of two cent coins that are no good no more

She'll lay it aside ...

Older father, weary soul, you'll drive

Back to the home you've made on the mountainside

With that ugly terrible thing

Those papers for divorce and a lonely ring

Sit on your porch

And pluck your strings

You'll find somebody you can blame

You'll follow the creek that runs into the sea

And you'll find the peace of the Lord

Grandfather, gentle soul, you'll fly

Over your life once more before you die

Since our grandma passed away

You've waited for forever and a day

Just to die

And someday soon you'll die

It was the only woman you ever loved

That got burnt by the sun too often when she was young

And the cancer spread and it ran into her body and her blood

And there's nothing you can do about it now.

You can listen to the song on the Middle East Myspace page, or on the Triple J Unearthed page.

the trend to the trivial

The theory (proposed by Maslow and believed by most psychologists) is that humans have a "hierarchy of needs". When we satisfy our basic material needs, we will then pursue "higher level" intellectual and spiritual ends.

But, says  clinical psychologist John Schumaker in a recent article, it doesn't appear to be working out that way in western society. Instead "Pulp culture is a feast of tinsel and veneer. Operating on the principle that triviality is more profitable than substance, and dedicating itself to unceasing material overkill, consumer culture has become a fine-tuned instrument for keeping people incomplete, shallow and dehumanised. ..... Today, the demand for triviality has never been higher and our tolerance for seriousness has never been lower."

He goes on to ask: "Can a highly trivialised culture, marooned between fact and fiction, dizzy with distraction and denial, elevate its values and priorities to respond effectively to the multiple planetary emergencies looming? Empty talk and token gestures aside, it doesn't appear to be happening."

He doesn't offer a lot of solutions or hope, but does suggest that the growing global problems may perhaps be our last and best chance to become more serious.

Many years ago, CS Lewis wrote: "If we are content to go back and become humble plain men obeying a tradition, well. If we are ready to climb and struggle on till we become sages ourselves, better still. But the man who will neither obey wisdom in others nor adventure for her/himself is fatal. A society where the simple many obey the few seers can live: a society where all were seers could live even more fully. But a society where the mass is still simple and the seers are no longer attended to can achieve only superficiality, baseness, ugliness, and in the end extinction. On or back we must go; to stay here is death."

ethics - when freedom & responsibility clash

These past few days in Australia we've seen an interesting and difficult ethical issue unfold, as two different ethical values come into conflict.

artistic freedom

Bill Henson is an eminent Australian photographer. I first came across his photos of urban areas at night - everyday and not particularly "beautiful" subjects, but the use of light and dark made them extremely interesting and evocative. But when I went to an exhibition of his work a year or two ago, I found that the majority of his work were photographs of people - people in crowds, ordinary people, and studies of children and adolescents. The way the photos were lit, the repetition of the same subject in many different views, and their age, made many of the photographs slightly disturbing or edgy, and his work has sometimes been controversial.

But this week a new exhibition of Henson's work opened in Sydney, and when it was found to include photographs of nude adolescents, some of them "explicit" (as the euphemism goes), a complaint was made, police took possession of the offending photos, and were considering charges for indecency relating to under age children (although legal advice suggests prosecution would be unsuccessful).

Many people applauded the police action, but others were upset at the censorship, saying that the photographs were not pornographic, and artistic freedom allows artists to push the boundaries.

child protection

On the other hand, Australia, like many other countries, has significantly tightened child protection laws in the past decade or so. Although not always successful, some attempts have been made to limit child access to the internet, penalise creators and viewers of child pornography, and reduce risks to children in other situations by requiring those who work with children to undergo police checks, giving clear and stringent guidelines to how teachers, doctors and others deal with children in their care, and placing age limits on some activities.

All of this can be seen as inconvenient, an insult and a curtailment of civil liberties, but most people believe it is worthwhile to reduce the sexual abuse and exploitation of children.

the two values collide

In this case, child protection laws have collided with the artistic freedom.

Defenders of Henson's work say that, compared to the sexualisation of children and teenagers through mass media, especially music videos and fashion, these photographs are benign. But it seems to me there are two separate issues here.

1. What is the effect of these photos on viewers? I don't think many people think Henson's work is pornographic in this sense, and few would want to ban them on these grounds.
2. Have children been exploited? This seems to be the key question. Some art forms are created by the imagination of the artist (e.g. painting, literature), but photography and film also require a subject. Even if we would allow a similar photograph of a 20 year old, should we allow a 13 year old to model, has he or she the maturity to make the choice? Thus economist Clive Hamilton, formerly executive director of the Australia Institute think tank, said: "I think the way childhood has been sexualised so heavily, particularly over the last 10 or 15 years, has inevitably changed the way we see children in their naked form. I've argued that previously when perhaps it was a more innocent age, then artistic representations of children, as is the case with the Bill Henson exhibition, wouldn't have provided difficulty. But in an age where children have been so heavily sexualised by commercial organisations and by the wider culture and where there's so much more alarm about paedophilia then I think the presentation of a 12-year-old girl, for instance, naked to the public, really has quite a different impact and raises new concerns. And I argue that she, the girl, the model, could not possibly understand the implications of being presented naked to the world, even though the presentation is very aestheticised and that therefore she could not give informed consent."

I think it is a great pity that Henson's work has been stigmatised in this way, and if there is a way to amend the law to allow adequate child protection without catching his photographs in the net, then perhaps it should be done. But as it stands, it may be that artists and patrons need to willingly show restraint (e.g. not putting the photos on the internet) for the sake of continued protection of children. Sometimes freedom has to be curtailed for the sake of another principle. It's unclear whether this is one such time, but maybe it is.

breath

Tim Winton is perhaps "Australia's favourite novelist", and he is certainly mine. His latest novel, "Breath", his first for seven years, has just been released.

The reviews are very positive. The Sydney Morning Herald's chief book reviewer says it "may prove to be the best thing Tim Winton has done." He concludes his review: "Winton explores themes that preoccupied many great writers of the past .... though ... Winton articulates his concerns in an almost unsullied Australian vernacular. His skill, control and eloquence are impressive."

I look forward to reading it.

death of a great pioneer

Larry Norman, pioneer christian musician, died early this week at age 61.

I was a Larry Norman fan. In the 1960s, when rock music was in one of its most innovative phases, with great artists like the Beatles, Dylan, Van Morrison, Yes, Jethro Tull, the Beach Boys, Eric Clapton, Jefferson Airplane, etc, christian music was back in the 1950s, with some wimpish gospel country sort of stuff. (I guess there was some good black gospel, but I never heard it.)

Enter Larry Norman, with some good, though not great music, but with superbly crafted words and attitude. He blazed the way for others to follow (though I'm pretty sure he would have hated the too nice, predictable, middle-of-the-road and big money thing christian music has become). He became a leader in the post-hippie Jesus movement and christian counter-culture. But in the end, his attitude probably brought him undone, as he was difficult to get on with (they say) and he alienated the christian establishment. In the past two decades, he was often badly unwell and he didn't produce much music of note.

Here's a sample of his lyrics, illustrating his blend of faith and politics (it's from "The Great American Novel" on the 1972 album "Only Visiting This Planet", but it some of it sounds eerily current):

you kill a black man at midnight just for talking to your daughter
then you make his wife your mistress and you leave her without water
and the sheet you wear upon your face is the sheet your children sleep on
at every meal you say a prayer that you don't believe but still you keep on

and your money says "in God we trust", but its against the law to pray in school
you say we beat the russians to the moon, and i say you starved your children to do it

you are far across the ocean in a war that's not your own
and while you're winning theirs you're gonna lose the one at home
do you really think the only way to bring about the peace
is to sacrifice your children and kill all your enemies

you say all men are equal, all men are brothers
then why are the rich more equal than others
don't ask me for the answers i've only got one
that a man leaves his darkness when he follows the son

Farewell Larry, I'll see you "in another land".

Read an obituary here and the notice on his website.

a tale of 3 watches

One watch has the slogan: "It's your watch that tells most about who you are." And this is who they hope you'll want to be like ...

Another watch suggests your watch determines what you are made of ...

So what does Unkle E's watch tell you about him?

Let's resist advertising and social images that try to sell vanity, and self esteem where it cannot and should not be found!

truth in advertising?

"australia's most beloved novelist"

It's not often that my taste and popular taste coincide, but this is one of them. Without doubt my favouriate novelist is Tim Winton, and he and his books have also commonly been at the top of polls conducted in Australia.

Winton writes about people on the edge - on the margins of society, or at the end of their tether, or just on the edge of the vast western Australia coastline. His "tough but spare" writing captures the idiosyncrasies of working Aussies and tells emotional stories evocatively but with a minimum of fuss. His sympathies are clearly with the strugglers and the losers, and although many of their lives are bleak, his characters often find mateship and hope.

Probably his best known book is Cloudstreet, an urban epic of two families who live in the two halves of an old house. The events of the lives are ordinary yet surreal, plain yet deeply moving. It was made into a 5 hour theatre production that never lost interest (there was a meal break in the middle!).

His first novel (and one of my favourites) was An Open Swimmer, the story of a teenage boy who spends his holidays, mostly alone, camping, swimming, fishing and introspecting on lonely beaches on the coast. If you're looking for thrills, you won't find them here, but if you enjoy watching a character grow and struggle within himself, this is good.

His most recent book, The Turning, contained short stories about connected characters in a coastal fishing town. Some want to escape, some have never thought of anything more than the day-to-day. The stories tell of "the darkness and frailty of ordinary people", tender yet gritty stories of hope and hopelessness, family and loneliness. For example, the title story chronicles a woman's spiritual emancipation even while being abused by her partner. Yet somehow through it all, there is hope and a celebration of being human.

But my personal favourite is That Eye the Sky, the story of a family that once tried to live the hippy dream of self sufficiency on a small faming property, but the dream has faded. When the father ends up in a coma, needing care at home along with an aging and helpless grandma, the family situation is definitely bleak. Then into their life comes a mysterious and edgy stranger who offers to do some of the hard work caring for the invalided father, in return for board. He brings both good and evil, hope and defeat into their lives.

The story is told by 12 year old Ort, who observes and dreams. As the world falls apart around them and death and despair visit them, Ort and his mum find renewed hope. Perhaps God, who Ort imagines as a big eye in the sky observing all, may even heal his dad?

The story is wonderfully told, grips me throughout whenever I read it, and so much happens in a relatively short space. The last few pages, simply written in Ort's laconic voice, are some of the most effective writing I have ever read. The book was made into a good film (albeit with some changes to suit a worldwide audience and the different medium), and an amazing stageplay.

If you want a good read, or you want to capture the Aussie spirit, or you want a little hope amid the trials of life, Tim Winton is not to be missed.

Read some reviews of The Turning, That Eye the Sky and the film, a brief biography or an interview with Tim (2004).