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A Review of Avast! Wretched Sea by The Good Ship

Ration My Rum! Something of a Post Office Box mix up courtesy of the local Postmaster meant this CD didn’t land in my hands much sooner, but I’m happy it did.

The Good Ship are no doubt Australia’s newest exponents of maritime Indie Folk. More fun than keel-hauling Angus & Julia Stone under the hull of a heavily barnacled clipper – maybe with the Able Seaman Nick Cave releasing the rope of one side, and Bosun Shane McGowan pulling up the rope on the other under the watchful eye of the Captain Eugene Hütz.

Avast! Wretched Sea is subtitled as a work of Undulating tales of woe and intrigue. Indeed they are.

After many months at sea, we approach port with A Harbour Fair, a rousing anthem to gambling, grog and loose women.  Frantic fiddles and homebound hollering set the pace in this slick shanty.

Spanish horns and straight vocal delivery subtlety mask the true bawdiness of A Few of My Favourite Flings, showing that one can still have a girl in every port.

The demonic domains of Davy Jones Locker are captured in the rocking three-step Sea Monster, over the skeletal jangle of dancing castanets.

6000 Cocks is a tragic ‘working girls’ lament with a catchy sing-along tune, though you may want to be careful where you sing it. Public transport is not a good idea.

Cougar culture and the tragedy of mutton-dressed-as-lamb is pondered in a country-ballad-like 18 When You’re 44. Lock up your mothers…

You’ll have a tea-bagging good time with Don’t Kiss Me With Your Lips, and a pick up line guaranteed to either get you laid or arrested.

The waltzing Tavern Song is a rollicking good folk tune that is a wonderful musical advocate for extended trading hours down at your local.

Slow and wistful, No Shortage of Company opens the bloodied and broken heart of the rejected. Misery indeed loves company.

The previous tune is almost a segue into Bury Me, a tune dressed with moments of rousing spiritual gospel, with counterpoints of delta blues fatalism.

These lads and lasses of Good Ship must be sailors because the next song, I Can Make Her Laugh– full of beautiful melodies and harmonies, is also replete with sodomy and pearl necklaces. You heard me.

Cut Off My is a psychopathically sordid love tale with wailing violin and sinister military snare, no doubt deserving of a Tarantino film clip of its own. Being stuck in the middle is easy with no limbs.

Last Song of the Night brings our journey to an end, the thankless job of a musician in front of an uncaring audience, disappearing slowly into their beer glasses in melancholy and indifference.  Whatever happened to the Piano Man?

Avast! is now out on Autumn Recordings and a selection of tunes available for a listen at The Good Ships myspace site.

Upcoming gigs include

3 Oct 2010      Peregian Originals     Peregian Beach, Qld, AUSTRALIA
8 Oct 2010     BAM Festival     Peaks Crossing, Queensland, AUSTRALIA
29 Oct 2010     The Troubadour     Brisbane, Queensland, AUSTRALIA
20 Nov 2010    Grace Darling     Melbourne, VIC, AUSTRALIA
21 Nov 2010     The Tote Melbourne     Melbourne, Victoria, AUSTRALIA

Go support some local Australian music ye Lily-livered landlubbers!

Did you know the domestic adoption and use of the vibrator preceded the home vacuum cleaner by nine years?

Neither did I?

And that once upon a time medically administered manual masturbation by your local doctor was the standard treatment for women suffering genital congestion and hysteria and that it was not regarded as anything to do with sex?

But could you claim it on Medicare?

All these tit bits, and historical pink bits, are contained in cabaret song and delicious silliness in this production by Isabel Hertaeg on “the little death”, La Petit Mort – The Orgasm.

Accompanied by her talented pianist, Geoff “Magic Fingers” Urquhart, this sexy siren, a metaphorical and literal Lady in Red, gets us into the mood with a good dose of Luciferian lavisciousness as she serenades the Devil’s horn.

Alternating between story and song she takes us from period Germanic art song dripping frank Freudian connotations to lesbian laments for labia left behind.  If I could critique one thing, it would be that the strength and delivery of her dialogue maybe didn’t carry the gravitas or conviction of her singing, less vamp, more vixen.

La Petit Mort has two more shows, 11 & 12 March at the Promethean Theatre.  Grab a ticket, but not yourself, and see why this show received rave reviews at the Edinburgh and Melbourne Fringe Festivals.

On the related topic of vibrators, and the absinthian cultural mores of neo-Victorian Steam Punk, here is a website by a creative genius who has managed to bring the two together.

The Promethean Theatre, an Edwardian era Church, one time Liquor Trade Union Hall, now a gothic grey and plush velvet performance venue, is an excellent and intimate location for a witty night of bad German accents and cabaret.

Supported by the virtuosic Berlin Cabaret Micro Orchestra (read three piece jazz ensemble), Gerhardt, Lux and Rudi play up to every hokey hun caricature straddling the Weimar era and period of Nazi ascension.

Gerhardt was the charming, crooning Master of Ceremonies for the evening, with plenty of bad-but-good puns and blue banter. Lux is the resident alcoholic lush, strutting the stage in fishnets, corsetry and wine bottle belting out her particular penchant for American jazz numbers. Overplayed to the max, but then I think this is a necessity (even if her German accent seemed to be sliding at times into Slavic territories like all so many invasions of the era).  Supporting act, the Tin Can Alley, are an extremely talented and ageing decadent duo who specialise in catchy cabaret – from well known standard such as “Non, je ne regrette rien”, or more obscure Indian show tunes about oversized tomatoes (in Hindi!)

The gangly, shy and awkward Rudi, however, steals the show.  One minute delivering operatic overtures with Wagnerian largesse, next (un)dressed as ol’ Adolf himself in a fetching negligee.  His voice is either angelic or infernal as the tune and context demands. Glorious stuff.

I’m not sure what it is about this particular company of performers, but the average age of the audience was closer to 60, which I found curious – but maybe the “classic” form of Weimer cabaret holds an appeal for the older set that differentiates them from the new generation of neo-cabaret. At the very least it demonstrates that the cabaret and vaudeville arts still hold a broad appeal across many generations, and that the Fringe is not just for the young and tragically Boho.

The Berlin Cabaret have two more performances this Fringe - alas all sold out. But keep an eye out for them at other events such as the Adelaide Cabart Festival.

Bogan’s are funny. And so are Catholics (thanks Tony Abbott). Regional centres where the world is as big as the town limits are will always be funny as long as it is mixed with a dose of nostalgic & affectionate pathos.

Make it into a musical gala and you have WrongTown.  Think of the Andrew Sisters after a drug binge. Performing in an outer suburban Westfield. Outside a Supré.

But oh, these girls can sing.

Why a musical tribute to the Snowtown Murders in the form of the Beer Barrel Polka (aka Roll Out The Barrel) has not been done before is beyond me?  If tour buses can now stop at the infamous disused bank in Snowtown so tourists can sniff under the door, then I say enough time has passed for us to laugh through song and wimsy at one of the more recent episodes in Adelaide’s Bizarre Murder Capital scrapbook of infamy.

Of course the mid-North Coast’s very own “Summer Bay” with industrial slag & drag, Newcastle, is not forgotten.  And if it wasn’t for the fact that Jetstar has tricked many a passenger flying to Melbourne, by taking them to Avalon Airport instead, well, would anyone know that Geelong existed?

But far from the industrial and residential wastelands often portrayed, these places are hotbeds of intrigue, with a song in the fractured heart of all these places: married mothers discovering lesbianism, Catholic schoolgirls in need of confession, burgeoning drug cultures amid Americanisation of white bread rural youth and suburban murder tales worthy of their own ballads.

WrongTown is your town. Admit it -  you grew up, got trapped, maybe escaped, and possibly returned to places like this. And when you can acknowledge that, WrongTown will stay in your mind for all the right reasons.

While I’m usually loathe to compare bands to other bands or artists that have similar sounds – as a point of complement I am happy on this occasion to say the first time I heard Jai Pyne’s voice, lead singer for Sydney band, The Paper Scissors, I pictured a strange experiment that somehow involved cross breeding David Bowie and Frank Black. Granted one would not engage in such profane genetic manipulation for visual aesthetics but perhaps for more profound musicality one would dare to play God a little.

The Paper Scissors have just released their new E.P., ‘Howl’ on the eve of a national tour, which can be downloaded from all good electronic stores like iTunes.

The E.P. title track ‘Howl’ has a certain rocky balladeering sentiment, haunted octaval lyrical treatment, with a somewhat kooky, but highly appropriate discordant backing vocal that fits nicely amongst this rock number.  This is followed by the new-wavish bass driven ‘Soldier’ that regularly jumps sideways into a pleasing pseudo-swing style chorus.  The E.P is complemented with 3 remixes of Howl – the Cleptoleptics brings the vocal structures and interplays more prominently into the fore amongst a more reserved IDMesque blip track. The E.L.F Remix is almost flocking with seagulls and may be the least adventurous treatment.  The SPOD Remix is practically a different song altogether, a conveyer belt of electronic grooving and widget twitching with electro-interference treatments that playfully pummel around the vocal refrains. Certainly the most interesting of the remixes.

I think that while the songs had great capacity to be played ‘safe’ – the risks that are taken make them musically much more engaging than many recent Australian bands coming out of the stables.  While getting good exposure of late on JJJ, with the lads on tour it is an excellent time to see them live, and grab yourself a copy of the E.P.

I had a most unusual realisation the other day.  I realised that I had grown up with British Musical Hall tradition tunes.  Now, being in my late thirties this may seem incongruous with a musical tradition that spanned the late Victorian and early Edwardian eras, a hey-day for absinthe.  But something triggered a long forgotten memory in my mind of spending a good part of the late seventies as a child watching ABC television on Sunday nights I believe, following a long-running BBC show called “The Good Old Days“.

For those post-Gen X, this was a somewhat gloriously hokey romp of a tv show (yea, camp even - Victorian Drag anyone ?) where the entire audience dressed up in period Victorian-Edwardian garb (today we might say old school Steampunk….) and sang along to old show tunes with the performers, often well known comedians and singers of the day, hamming it up on stage reliving the glory days of British vaudeville. Such was its popularity that it ran for 30 years.

That’s what people did before Torrent downloads of Joss Whedon shows and internet porn.

It must be said that with the meteoric Burlesque revival, the revival of Music Hall must surely not be far behind, or have a potential niche in these “new old times”.   And so it is with some delight that I stumbled across the Australian performing duo known as Bygone Error, who are making a mark in the Australian folk scene with their resurrected show tunes and bawdy British humour from these delightfully fruity times past.  Think of a musical ‘Are You Being Served?’ in a snazzy bowler & waistcoat and you’ve hit the vibe.

I think these chaps have potential to go wider than the folk scene - any promoters in the Fringe Festival or neo-burlesque milieu should go give them a listen now.  I can easily see them being an excellent support to the other revived lost vaudevillian arts now back in vogue - and to my mind the musical side has been the one component of these traditions largely overlooked with the exception of specialised cabaret chanteuses such as Meow Meow.  But there is so much more musically from this era, and I am glad for one that this dynamic duo are broadening the re-experience of entertainment history.

Dear friendly Libertines amongst the Melburnian set,

Do you have a frock coat and brocaded shirt just dying for an excuse to come out of the closet?

Maybe an insanely tight corset to die for (not in!) or a pair of flirty French ‘Lolly Bloomers’  that screams for some damn high kicking?

The fine people at Marionette Management Talent Agency are having a launch party on the 24th July 2009 on an Absinthe theme, which is a damn good excuse to get dressed in your finest fabulous Victoriana - with a shot of green of course - and go party with all the beautiful, and most talented people. Only $25 for the waged, and $17 for those undergoing higher learning, it will be held at Chasers, 29 Bray Street, South Yarra, with tickets available from Moshtix.

Through the Marionette’s generosity, we at Absinthe.com.au have managed to secure a free double pass for the most fantastically adorned Absinthe.com.au member from Victoria, who can send us a photo of themselves in their Bohemian finest, with a distinctive piece of viridian plumage in their attire.  If you are a couple, why not submit an entry of both of you together?

This is not a competition of chance, luck or serendipity folks. We want you to dress to impress.  The most impressive outfit will secure the prize to what should be an evening of high glamour.

Send an email with your photo to newlibertines @ absinthe.com.au, including your name, absinthe.com.au login name, address & phone number (of both parties if photo is of a couple).

Competition closes Friday 3 JULY 2009. The winner will be announced Friday 10 JULY 2009.

Terms and Conditions:

1) Participation in the competition includes full acceptance of these terms and conditions. 2) Competition open only to those 18 years and older who are members of absinthe.com.au. 3) Entrant(s) will be required to verify their identity and that submitted photos are of themselves and not of a third party. 4) Winner(s) will permit the publishing of their name (or requested nom-de-plume) and photo on absinthe.com.au. 5) All Entrant(s) will also permit the publishing of their photos in a gallery of the “Best Dressed”  on Absinthe.com.au.  Images will not be used in any other commercial capacity. 6) All photos and personal details will be available to the relevant staff of Absinthe.com.au and the Marionette Management Talent Agency for purposes of judging only. At the completion of the competition all personal details and images will not be retained and will be destroyed, save those of the Winner(s) and selected “Best Dressed” as proof of participation under the above Terms and Conditions. No personal details or images will be shared with any other third parties other than those identified in these Terms and Conditions. 7) Winner(s) will be notified by phone and email.

Die Roten Punkte - Adelaide Fringe, Bosco Theatre, 17 March 2009

Have you ever wanted to think the worst of the White Stripes in a dirty Perez Hilton sort of way?

Now you can get your chance by indulging in the eurotrash high-jinks of Die Roten Punkte (which actually translates as the Red Dots – geddit?!? – and not a homage to John Lydon as you might badly translate if you only know your German from repeats of Hogan’s Heroes or reading subtitles of Inspector Rex).

This show is ultimately about therapy.  Certainly for our brother and sister act, Otto and Astrid, who through the therapeutic powers of drum and power chord written songs come to grips with family tragedy, alcoholism and suppressed incestory tendencies.  But maybe therapy for myself also, causing one to reflect upon ones younger formative musical years?

Our protagonists explore the fringes of straight edge and old school punk, Nick Cave-ish poetic indulgence, EBM/Eurosynthpop and yea verily, Bavarian beer hall songs.  I have to admit a guilty familiarity to the various musical phases one passes in one’s ‘yoof’, and scarily so I seemed to identify with the show with more irony then should probably be permitted.

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Adelaide Fringe Review - CW Stoneking @ The Spiegeltent, 15 March 2009

Society loves a personality that is seemingly bigger than the frame in which it is carried  – individuals with a specifically tailored functional reality that invites a response from peers and public.  They are not necessary fictional, but rather an amplification of select traits of real individuals, and executed such that the character is self-sustaining and independent. They truly have a life of their own.

This is of course nothing new.  Artists and intellectuals have been indulging in literary creations as living breathing expressions of the Self for centuries  - authors such as Giacomo Casanova being an adept at exaggerating his own adventures, and his character being all the richer for it. But how many of them can truly use Casanovas reflective self-epitaph “I have lived”?

The personality under scrutiny tonight is Mr CW Stoneking, the son of noted playwright and poet Billy Marshall Stoneking.  If there are any inherited sins of the father, then it is the ability to tell a tale or two.  His songs are back stories. A musical biography.  Ship wrecks off the coast of West Africa, apprenticeships to Hoodoo root doctors in New Orleans, the life experiences of this Warrnambool warbler are the foundation for his style of Hokum Blues.  While Hokum is an oft used a synonym for fabrication – his voice and style are real, and by extension, CW Stoneking the Bluesman is real.

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Adelaide Fringe Event Review - 7 March 09

Do Tibetans experience death any differently to the rest of us?

Short of dying somewhere on the Asian continent at the hand (or should that be hooves?) of a rabid Yak, it is perhaps somewhat easier to ponder these questions through a profound dance/theatre performance of the key Tibetan work known (perhaps erroneously) in the West as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, more accurately named Bardo Todel - Profound Dharma of Self-liberation through the Intention of the Peaceful and Wrathful Ones.

Our psychopomp in this exploration as part of the Adelaide Fringe is Sun Li Tsuei and her ShangOrientheatre company.  Originally from the provinces of Qing Hai and He Nan in China, she emigrated to Taiwan and studied Tai Chi, Chi Gong and meditation.  In the early 80’s she traveled to Europe and studied mime under the master, Marcel Marceau, and also worked with master of physical theatre, Jacque Lecoq.

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