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Music festivals and footie finals

music-festivals-grand-finals — Night shot of the Neurum Creek Festival marquee

Some of our musician friends in Melbourne and Sydney have ‘festival envy’, akin to the mixed emotions felt by southern footie fans who will miss out on this year’s grand finals.

As you might know, the National Rugby League (NRL) moved all teams across the border into Queensland. As a result of ongoing Covid lockdowns in Victoria and New South Wales, this year’s Grand Final will be held in Brisbane for the first time ever. Likewise, the Aussie Rules Grand Final has been moved from Melbourne to Western Australia.

As for those southern musicians, most if not all of their live music events have been cancelled or postponed. For people who combine day jobs (also affected by lockdowns), with weekend gigs, these are very hard times. It’s been harder still for those who do earn a living from music and persevere with touring plans and CD launches, only to see them curtailed by lockdowns.

So we can consider ourselves blessed to have performed at one of the few music festivals to go ahead in Australia last weekend at Neurum Creek bush retreat near Woodford (see image above).

The Neurum Creek Music Festival is in its 15^th year, not counting a cancellation in 2020. It’s a medium-sized festival held outdoors (a camping weekend). The organisers hire one very large marquee with associated infrastructure for a bar and a ‘green room’ for performers. It is a minimalist event – numbers are capped at 1,000 and most of the work is done by volunteers. There were three food stalls this year and a hugely popular coffee van. The festival is billed as an ‘acoustic music’ festival,(ie no heavy drum kits or electronica, thankfully. Ed) with 23 acts performing from Friday evening through to Sunday afternoon.

Organisers Angela Kitzelman and Don Jarmey kept a daily watch on Covid developments in Queensland while planning the 2021 event.

“We sat down and assessed the risk.” Angela said. “It’s a very relaxed festival that we run and the money that we spend on it goes mainly to performers, for the marquee costs and the sound guys.

“It was looking at how much we spend and also looking at the situation in Queensland and what the health directions were.

“At the time we decided to go ahead with it, there had been a lockdown. We came out and talked to the camp site managers. They told us that in the event of a Covid lockdown cancellation, people who had booked tickets could get a full credit to do it at another time.

“We realised we could afford to do this at half capacity, as it was at the time, and be very clear that we would pick (the festival) up and put it on another date if something happened.”

After looking carefully at their finances, the organisers decided to press the ‘go’ button, without the usual lead time to host music festivals.

“We invite people to play and say this is how much we can afford to pay.

“We didn’t have enough time to invite expressions of interest so we just asked people who had played here before, abiding by our rule that performers don’t get to play two years in a row.”

“Our advantage is that people come for the festival itself. We don’t have headline performers. We often sell out before I’ve finished finalising the programme. People come here for the experience.”

While Queensland has been able to avoid ongoing lockdowns, some music festivals have been cancelled or postponed regardless. Last month, Woodfordia announced the cancellation of its six-day Woodford Folk Festival, held at New Year. Instead, the organisation will schedule smaller events called Bushtime.

The Byron Bay Blues Festival, which was cancelled just one day out from the Easter 2021 programme, has been postponed again to April 2022. The National Folk Festival, held in Canberra at Easter, has called for expressions of interest for 2022, a move which surprised many, as it was cancelled in 2020 and 2021.

Illawarra Folk Festival artistic director David De Santi took to Facebook this week to announce the cancellation of the music festival set down for 13-16 January, 2022.

“It is just too hard in the current climate for a non-profit association to take the risk on a festival of the scale of the Illawarra Folk Festival,” he said.

Mr De Santi said there was a chance the festival may be able to apply for a grant from the Federal Government’s RISE Fund and reschedule later in 2022.

Despite these and many other cancellations, two smaller music festivals are going ahead in north Queensland next month. Smaller social gatherings where musicians gather to jam have been held or are set down for later in the year. Woodfordia is also staging its Small Halls tour around Queensland country areas.

Professional arts groups including theatre, ballet, opera and orchestral companies have also suffered from lockdowns and Covid restrictions. Some Queensland arts events have since gone ahead, including ballet, theatre, musicals and the Brisbane Festival. Even so, this press release from Queensland Ballet is just one example of how arts companies have struggled to stage shows since Covid started in March 2020.

Queensland Ballet artistic director Li Cunxin took the decision in May 2020 to postpone the season to 2021. Despite forecasting a 43% drop in revenue for 2020 and a drop in patronage for 2021, Queensland Ballet resumed performances in 2021. As subscribers, we were lucky to have seats for sold out performances of the 60^th Anniversary Gala in March and Sleeping Beauty in June. The company also toured the regions (Tutus on Tour). and has five more ballets scheduled between now and the end of the year.

Government funding is available to support the arts, but it is relatively lean compared to the money invested in professional sport. The Federal Government’s $50 million Arts Sustainability Fund might sound generous, but it is spread over two financial years (about $2m a month). Then there is the hard-to-fathom RISE grant program. This post in The Conversation last September tosses it into the too-little-too-late basket.

For the professional sports sector, it has been mostly ‘business as usual’, although at a considerable financial cost. The NRL decided in early July to move NSW and ACT-based rugby league teams and staff into Queensland at a reported cost of $12m to $15m per month. The NRL funded the move, but it needed formal State Government permission to make it work.

As usual, money talks. It comes down to billion of dollars in sponsorship deals, international broadcast rights, betting agencies and other contractual obligations (not the least of which involves players’ salaries).

The NRL decided to relocate when there were eights weeks of the competition left to run (not including the finals). Now, primarily because of the Covid situation in NSW, the finals are being held in Queensland as well. So by the time the NRL wraps up the season in early October, the cost of what was meant to be a month-long trial may have blown out to $45 million or more.

The good news for Queensland is that local hospitality businesses have benefited from this, with more than 500 people living in hotels and serviced apartments for three months.

The hospitality flows most on ‘Mad Monday’, when players who did not make the finals let their mullets down. Let’s hope that the relatively strong Covid bubble around these 13 visiting teams remains unbreached during coming weeks.

We only need to remember the infamous Illawarra Dragons barbecue debacle to realise what could happen amid the inevitable celebrations and drowning of sorrows that follow a grand final.

Go you Rabbitohs!

Long live the Green Man

john-thompson-grief — Green Man camphor laurel carving by Sarah-Jane Abbott (Facebook page Chisel & Bow). Reference to the song, Long Live the Green Man (John Thompson)*

Today we’ll be talking about death, grief and hypochondria (mine). So if any of those topics catch you at a bad moment, look away.

We lost two good friends last week and, to misquote Pink Floyd, we’re feeling uncomfortably numb.

Many FOMM readers would have either personally known or known of the renowned Australian folk-singer, John Thompson. John had been battling cancer for several years until his death last Wednesday, aged 56.

Mr Thompson packed a lot of achievements into five and a bit decades, including a career as a criminal barrister and later, as a folk-singer/comedian. He also worked in professional theatre as the Songman in the touring play, War Horse. In his last decade, John become known to the wider community for his services as a civil celebrant at weddings and funerals.

But what he was best known for was a splendid, wide-ranging tenor voice and a brilliant ear for harmony. He had spectacular skills as a presenter and comedian.

A Maleny musician friend reminded me of the time John handed him a postcard on which was written: “Folk music – it’s not as bad as it sounds”. That is a good example of the wit John could display on any given day but no more so than when performing as a duo with Martin Pearson. The last time I saw them regaling a crowd was at the National Folk Festival in 2019.

Though not officially on the festival bill, John was invited to participate in Pearson’s daily ‘brunch’. The hour of what seemed to be unscripted comedy was endearingly funny as the two old friends kept trying to have the last word.

We all knew how unwell he’d been and how much worse it would get. But John took every opportunity to wring music and love out of the situation. His was arguably the most publicly documented case of terminal bowel cancer. He would post detailed summaries of his treatment and reactions to it on Facebook. Hundreds of friends and friends of friends left messages of love and support. Late in the day, he posted a selfie from his last stay in hospital while doctors were adjusting his pain medication.

Before then, musician Steve Cook posted a message, ‘Thinking about my friend John’, which a few people construed to mean John had already passed. At one point John popped up among the ‘RIP’ comments with, “Me too”.

Maleny people would remember John from the numerous times we featured the band Cloudstreet at our home. John, his partner Nicole Murray and later band member Emma Nixon never failed to entertain and amuse.

John and Nicole stayed with us when they were recording Dance up the Sun at Pix Vane-Mason’s studio in Conondale. Laurel (aka She Who Edits, etc), asked John if there was anything he didn’t eat.

“Elephants,” said John.

Though we were from different generations, I valued John as a friend, mentor and musician. He was the first person to give me practical tips to warm up the body and the voice before performing. Everyone wanted a piece of John, but I was always happy just for him to know we were there.

Hard as this was, last Friday we got completely unexpected news of a dear friend who died suddenly. Rob (Oss) Simcocks was a Stanthorpe district identity, known for his work with the rural fire brigade, the local pipe band and a long association with the bluegrass group, The Bald Rock Mountain Boys. In his last few years, Oss formed a new band, Too Much Fun and they were all of that and more. Long-time friend Mr Shiraz described Oss on Facebook as a ‘ bush polymath’ because of a string of interests and achievements including building his own home in the bush, working on landcare projects, gardening, viticulture, pottery, blacksmithing and making large iron sculptures.

He learned some piano when he was young and was taught bagpipes in high school at Scots College, Warwick. He also taught himself to play many instruments including banjo, mandolin, guitar, clarinet and spoons. He often found a way to turn various household items into music. His wife Teri tells me he once even ‘played’ an electric fan.

Oss was an artist. He painted, created found object sculptures, exhibited his works and in recent years wrote songs, poetry and short stories. He was an irrepressible gardener and almost always sent visitors home with a plant.

Curiously, these two sad events happened in the same week I received a communique from a local council in Scotland. I had inquired as to the state and status of our family burial ‘lair’.

In Scotland, the tradition is that a family owns a burial plot in perpetuity and it is passed on to the eldest son.

My father’s parents and his two younger sisters are interred in this lair. Dad’s parents died in the mid-1930s of bowel cancer and his young sisters died earlier still of scarlet fever. The plot, marked by an 86 year old sandstone tablet, is in the old part of a cemetery in a small coastal village. The Angus Council referred me to a local stonemason who quoted $800 to clean the headstone and re-letter it. Grandad Wilson was himself a stonemason, so there is some irony there.

There is some hide-bound Scottish tradition in play here that puts the onus on the eldest son (me) to do something about it.

These are four people I never knew and Dad’s ashes have since 1991 resided in a crematorium wall in Hastings, New Zealand. What I will more likely do is spend the money refurbishing Mum’s plaque, next to Dad. Mum died of cancer in 1966, so the lettering has faded.

But, as I wrestle with this, and feelings of grief over my friends Oss (met him in 1978) and the honourable Mr Thompson (early 1990s), there is a more pressing matter.

I did say at the outset I would write about hypochondria. It is 90% certain that sporadic palpitations which come upon me for no rhyme or reason, are likely to be psychosomatic (Ed: though no less serious).

Nevertheless, the GP has checked me out (normal) but because this happened once before (also normal), he referred me to a specialist.

Apparently I have to wear something akin to a bra for 24 hours. The chart will then go to a cardiac specialist who will review the result and report back.

At times like these one should drag out a Cloudstreet CD and play life-affirming songs like Thousands or More, Time is a Tempest or John’s quirky song, the Homeless Beaver. This three-minute parody of the sea shanty Drunken Sailor, necessitated a three or four minute droll introduction about Idaho Fish and Game employee Elmo Heter and his efforts to re-home a colony of 76 beavers. (They ended up putting them in self-opening cages and parachuting them into their new location). True story.

Meanwhile, I’m using my ‘idle’ palpitations as an excuse to avoid mowing, gardening, housework lifting or anything more strenuous than sitting here reflecting on mortality.

Yours and mine.

A private family funeral was held for John Thompson earlier today. It was live streamed and can be viewed via this link at a later stage.

https://mailchi.mp/42d987343acc/vale-john-thompson-online-funeral-link/

A public memorial will be held in April.

Ten songs that influenced teenage me

ten-songs-influenced — Image (and research): Wikipedia

Most of my musician friends spend time on Facebook, so that’s why I probably saw so many of those ‘10 albums which influenced your musical tastes’ challenges. It is no surprise this diversion has become popular in the uncertain time of COVID-19 because it allowed us to yearn, just a little, for those carefree days when music helped shape our lives.

You can tell how much the ‘challenge’ means, as so many participants cannot leave it at 10. Ah, the warm feeling of remembering a relationship that budded and flowered, just as Cat Stevens released Tea for the Tillerman. Maybe you’d met a brown-eyed girl (called Rhonda); perhaps you lived in a town without pity. Or it really got you when Ray Davies wrote, ‘I’m not like everybody else’.

I walked in to the ‘challenge’ by posting an ironic observation that nobody had nominated me to do anything, My record producer friend Pix Vane-Mason popped up, asking about the music that influenced my teenage years.

It didn’t take long for me to break the rules and make my own mini-FOMM, with explanations and reviews (most just post album covers on 10 successive days, with no comment at all). A few people who saw the first entry were surprised to find I was a pre-pubescent jazz head. No 1 was Carmen McRae’s version of Dave Brubeck’s ‘Take Five’. The song version of Brubeck’s famous jazz instrumental (in 5/4 time) came out in late 1961, when I was about to turn 13. I’d not heard the original instrumental version (1958), but this set me off on an exploration of modern jazz.

In 1962, pop music began to intrude, starting with Cliff Richard’s ‘The Young Ones’ in 1961. In 1962, I quickly became impressed with Cliff’s backing band, The Shadows. Original and distinctive tunes like ‘Apache’ and ‘Flingle Bunt’ can still be heard on the radio today. Check out this 2017 version of the No 1 hit ‘Apache’ (1960) when Hank Marvin and the original members reunited for one final tour.

(There’s a prize for the first one to tell me which politician they think the drummer resembles. Ed)

In 1963, the fickle fifteen year old was torn between folk (there was a folk club in town) and the peer pressure to go with those brash young pop/rock groups from the UK. This was the year The Beatles penetrated the Kiwi consciousness.

I liked the two covers the Beatles did early on (A Taste of Honey and Till There was You) which hinted at the musicality to come. But the music I remember most from that year was a collection of trad folk songs by an extraordinary singer, Odetta. It was a hit record in NZ.

An incredibly eclectic mix of music came through the AM radio in 1964. The Beatles dominated the charts – five songs in the top 20 including numbers 1 and 2, and nine in the top 100. But they had to share Billboard’s top 10 with Louie Armstrong (Hello Dolly), Roy Orbison (Pretty Woman), the Beach Boys (I get Around) and Dean Martin (Everybody Loves Somebody). I really liked vocal harmonies so the Beach Boys almost always got my vote. But the jazz influence was still there, so even though it seems cheesy now, Stan Getz’s collaboration with Brazilian singer Astrid Gilberto, was, as Danny R said on FB, perhaps our first taste of ‘world music’.

Difficult as it was to pluck one song from the plethora of hits in 1965, I could not go past ‘Rescue Me’ by Fontella Bass. It was released a few months shy of my 17th birthday. I bought the record and played it to death. Nothing wrong with a good old fashioned teenage crush, eh! This was the year that brought us ‘King of the Road’, ‘I Can’t Help Myself’, ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’, ‘Downtown’, ‘Help’ and ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’, so there was a lot of competition.

(Rescue Me)

Aretha Franklin is sometimes mistakenly credited with this song, which was written by record producers Carl Smith and Raynard Miner (Bass claimed she co-wrote the song but was never credited). The other song that grabbed me in1965 was ‘I Got You Babe’ by Sonny and Cher (Cher also recorded ‘Rescue Me’ in 1974). What was that I said about teenage crushes!

Gordon Lightfoot’s ‘Early Morning Rain’ was a hit for folk trio Peter Paul and Mary in 1965. A version by George Hamilton IV made No 9 on the country charts in 1966. This was the year Simon and Garfunkel emerged, suitcase and guitar in hand, also a beautiful song full of imagery (Elusive Butterfly of Love). But this was also the year of ‘Doobie Doobie Doo’ (say no more) and the Monkees, a manufactured band provided with catchy hits by a then-unknown Neil Diamond. For all that, folk/country music was starting to penetrate the pop charts courtesy of artists like Dylan, PP&M and Gordon Lightfoot. ‘Early Morning Rain’ covers prevailed for decades, including Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Jerry Lee Lewis, Eva Cassidy and Australia’s Wendy Matthews, A great song is always just that, no matter the genre.

No 9 & 10 in music that influenced me as a teenager makes a reference to J.S Bach. I was raised in a household where classical music was always in the background. Mum played the piano and organ, so naturally enough, the Bach-inspired introductions to hit songs in 1967 (the year I turned 19), pressed all of the right buttons. The late Ray Manzarek, keyboard player with The Doors candidly spoke about the inspiration for the intro to ‘Light my Fire’, Bach’s Invention No. 8, BWV 779. Many piano players who ended up in rock bands had a classical background. So when the organ intro from Procol Harem’s No 1 hit ‘Whiter shade of Pale’ first emerged from the AM radios we owned in those days, the similarity between that and Bach’s Air on the G String was immediately identified. Matthew Fisher’s Hammond organ intro eased the way for Gary Brooker’s distinctive vocals and a global hit was born. Jim Morrison’s smoky vocals on ‘Light My Fire’ emerged from Ray Manzarek’s attacking organ intro.

Later, in my 20s, the classical/jazz influence continued with a love of 70s bands like Blood Sweat and Tears, Genesis, Sky, The Nice, the Moody Blues and Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

While Joni Mitchell’s songs (Both Sides Now and the Circle Game) were hits for Judy Collins and Buffy Saint- Marie in 1967, Joni’s first album did not appear until 1968 (when I turned 20). Little did we know, 19 albums later, what an incredible influence she would be for anyone with a keen sense of music, poetry and art.

My bad – I forgot to mention ‘Friday on My Mind’ (The Easybeats, 1966), selected as one of the best songs of the last 1,000 years by Richard Thompson, Here’s RT’s version.

In the Facebook posts I also neglected to mention a key influence on my songwriting, Ray Davies of The Kinks. Those well-crafted songs (e,g, ‘Sunny Afternoon’, ‘Dead End Street’, ‘Lola’ and ‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion’), stitched sardonic social comment into a fabric of catchy and rhythmic tunes. His songs lived on in my lizard brain until I picked up a guitar aged 27 and discovered the circle of fifths, just like Ray!