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Live reviews with Lyndon Blue
Lyndon in Tasmania?
GOING SPAZZY IN TASSIE
The little Boeing wheezed its way down from the plateau of clouds, diving towards an infinity of verdant conifers and misty peaks. A gentle sun was yawning its way over the horizon: I could already see how this southerly isle got its reputation as a picturesque idyll. I was looking forward to exploring Tasmania. It was a mystery – I’d researched it none, cultivated no expectations – though leaving the pulsating stimuli of Melbourne in my trail, I didn’t suspect a hub of thrilling youth culture. Peering out rental-car windows onto Hobart, nestled trimly in its valley sloping towards a quietly smiling harbour, it already struck me as a place for unpretentious couples to pleasantly retire and die. The state’s street press (entitled Sauce) boasted a grimly scant-looking gig guide. I feared it was as I’d feared; but I remained slightly expectant of the
unexpected. The expected was to prove excellent, and the unexpected exceptional.
A mere stroll down to the Salamanca waterfront and things were looking auspicious. The Princes Wharf Shed 1 had been gutted, lined with fake lawn, stuffed with bars, ping pong, lights and giant pink pouffes on which lounged art-school types, fashionistas and music-hungry patrons. This was the second Mona Foma arts festival, or MOFO (as the enormous letter-statues before the front gate spelt) for short, and it was host to such tremendous and varied acts as John Cale (of Velvet Underground fame), The Dirty Three, Bridezilla, Grandmaster Flash and Perth’s own Cat Hope. Sat now in the nearby Peacock Theatre, Brian Ritchie (Violent Femmes founder, teahouse owner, MOFO curator - I’m not sure which is more awesome) rose to introduce ‘Helmethead’ – a psychedelic twenty minutes of audio-visual weirdness in which one man projects various images of lights, patterns
and seafood onto fabric hung between the wire-antler protrusions of another man’s welding mask. Next I caught the silky ambient wash of Decoder Ring back in Princes Wharf 1, eking out buoyant, swelling post-rock fogscapes whilst science-class geometrics flickered behind them; snowflakes, crystals, amoebas. It wasn’t an inspiring performance, its dynamic fluctuations too few and far between, but the mood was perfect for unwinding in a cushion-lined shed.
Apprehesively gulping watered-down ale in the Oyster Cove Inn some way south of the capital, a cover band called Slyde (shudder) farted out a rendition of ‘Mustang Sally.’ Mother Nature seemed not to take to them either, and quickly unleashed an icy torrent from the heavens onto their verandah location – but, not to be thwarted, they set up inside and were back with ‘Dreadlock Holiday.’ A grimace turned to a smile as I recalled how earlier that day in the bustling Salamanca markets I chanced upon a stall peddling rare records. The moustached German responsible for it sold me a UFO 7-inch and, having thus spurred a conversation on the merits of krautrock, informed me that the drummer and prolific frontman from kraut-legends Guru Guru, Mani Neumeier, would be a last-minute addition to the Princes Wharf lineup for this evening.
Following the Interpolish frown-core of dark-electro four-piece All Fires The Fire (at times, indeed, quite enjoyable), Neumeier climbed into his drum-kit space-pod, replete with a glittery spandex-like top and beige cargo pants. He looked like a strange old man, but played like a strange young one. Brutal but sensitive and dripping in multifarious jazz-fury astro-grooves, Neumeier proved you don’t need melody, or even much in the way of visuals, for a thrilling set. He was eventually joined by the alluring Etsuko Wantanabe, who held a tin bucket containing a rattling vibrator. The phallus produced intense flourishes as Neumeier bashed aluminium colanders, poured onto the floor from a nearby sack, in rapid semiquaver patterns. The honourary third 'member' was passed from container to container, intoning a range of pitches and buzzes, before a colander was richocheted poignantly
into the cool night air. Bizarre - and magnificent.
While local music hasn't seemed too eager to rear its head - most pubs in Hobart and Launceston, from where I now type, seeming to eschew live bands by and large - Tasmania seems to have good taste, and I'm sure there's local musical produce floating about to match its culinary delights (anyone who hasn't sampled Mersey Valley cheese mustn't delay. It's outrageously delicious). MOFO was a veritable cultural wonderland in a place that I'd unfairly written off as somewhere pretty, but pretty boring. On the contrary, Tasmania has proven to hold a gamut of cultural treasures - sometimes, like its famed devil, elusive, but nevertheless, unlike its famed tiger, that poor stripey mofo - well and truly alive.
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A Word from Martin Belt
3D everything.
For my entire life everything has been in three dimensions. Despite Paul Dempsey singing that he's bored with three dimensions, in the seemingly inactive band Something For Kate's Echolalia album, I find the three dimensional nature of everthing more than satisfying - hey it's my life and it's in 3D.
Now, you must be aware that I didn't spend a lot of time watching television in my youth, sure I enjoyed Danger Mouse, Monkey Magic, Warner Brothers classics like the Spear and Magic Helmet cartoon featuring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd - and yes I have been all varying degrees of informed by the news, Simpsons and David Letterman's show whilst not being able to sleep. What's more I am chained to a computer for the rest of my days, which obviously has a screen. However, I use the screen and the keyboard buttons knowing, well hoping immesely, that some other form of voice recognition or better yet intended thought pattern program will allign and assemble my messages to friends, business folk and so on - and to get to the point - when you are designing this - whoever you are - could you please make it non screen based, as when I observe many of my more relaxed friends constantly using
screens watching television or playing compuer games I can't even hassle them out - as I'm in front of a [computer] screen for even more hours a day than these entertainment screen junkies.
All that said living life away from a screen is my aspiration, as from where I can see it, life happens without being filmed. Now - whilst this is hardly a novel concept given the following reworked tree falls phrase as treated to address systematic-authoritarian-racism such as umm.. if a black man is bashed in the city by cops and nobody films it will there not be a riot - I exclaim this finally - If you are overly familiar with life on a screen you will come to require 3D entertainment on screens - adversely if you have experienced most of your life first hand - as in you were doing the thing that you love and not just watching others do it as filmed with a camera you will not be obsessed, as the world currently appears to be, with 3D viewing! (rant gasp..)
There I said it.
The world is obsessed with 3D screen viewing. Hollywood heavyweights James Cameron, Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg are all planning their next films to be in 3D as this article attests. On the other side of the entertainment playing field this years FIFA world cup
will be filmed in 3D and the 2012 London Olympics may be broadcast in 3D. Hell there's even a documetary about the Hubble telescope narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio - IN 3D!
Accomplishing a good 3D image is no walk in the park. If the distance between the camera does not replicate the distance between human eyes no amount of sweetening can fix the problem. 3D production is about three times the money and time of 2D production. But the benefits appear to outwieigh the difficulties. The depth and immediacy as the viewer flies through the floating mountains of Pandora in this years billion dollar grossing film Avatar is not to be sneezed at. Nor is actually being able to tell from a screen if a football actually goes through the goals due to the immensely better perspective of 3D sports viewing.
So on one hand Martin Belt is having a hissy fit about those hooked on screen culture needing to recreate life within the format that they've grown accustom to - that being life on a screen - and on the other those developing more accurate representation via screens through the use of 3D imaging are undergoing a commercially successful, very fashionable and technically masterful renaissance. Maybe money, trends and technological progress oughta win over the argument of life already being in 3D? After all television's development was intended for, amongst many ad hoc and less noble purposes, bringing distant images closer than otherwise possible to the viewer.
Fair enough then.
However! If this is the case all bands playing in the Perth area best write 'playing live in 3D' to describe their performance before tv claims that reality from our lives.
Martin Belt walks off smoking a cigarette - IN 3D!
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