Random Play by Graham Reid

Last week, while driving back to Brisbane Airport, I picked up an hour or so of a fascinating radio broadcast from the Sydney Opera House. An impressive cast of speakers (Peter Garrett, various government and state ministers, John Bell of The Bell Shakespeare Company reading a piece by David Malouf) and performers (Cate Blanchett reading a passage from Cymbeline, Neil Finn singing Don’t Dream It’s Over) and others were paying tribute to the late Joern Utzon, the architect who designed the Opera House.

I guess it was the 50th anniversary of work starting on Utzon’s innovative design and while speakers didn’t shy away from the subsequent controversy and Utzon’s alienation from the project (he died last November, never having seen his completed building), there were eloquent and articulate speeches about just what his marvellous building had done for Sydney, but more particularly the country as a whole.

It was a physical, dynamic and public emblem of a country that was boldly stepping into the future, putting aside its rambunctious past and saying that here was a nation which was aesthetically aware, mature, sophisticated and courageous.

Yes, some had been sceptical of the design -- I remember someone describing it to me in the late Sixties as “nuns huddling against the wind” -- but most embraced its bold gestures. It is one of the great pieces of 20th century architecture, and many speakers -- fairly I think -- drew comparisons with the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower, Golden Gate Bridge and so on.

It is, in the truest sense of that now threadbare word, “iconic”.

What impressed me as I drove through diverse Australia -- dusty and winding mountain back roads, down through small towns, past glorious beaches and then along smooth modern motorways -- was how eloquently people spoke about this building and its brave architect (whose wife and children were in the audience).

Everyone thanked Utzon for the gift he had given all Australians, a rare piece of architectural sculpture which enabled everyone to have a sense of pride in it -- even if they had never set foot inside its doors.

Some people spoke of how ordinary Australians and tourists alike could simply enjoy being in its company, sitting on the steps taking in that magnificent harbour, looking at those poetic shells shining in the sun . . .

David Malouf noted that cities are random collisions of expediency and utilitarianism, and yet sometimes a building comes along which is -- he offered, quoting Wallace Stevens on poetry -- a “necessary angel” which speaks directly to the spirit.

“Set such a building down in the middle of a great city and the whole field composes itself anew,” he wrote. “The city is drawn in around it, as if it had been waiting for this miraculous object to appear and claim its place”.

Someone quoted the architect Frank Gehry who said, "Utzon made a building well ahead of its time, far ahead of available technology, and he persevered through extraordinary malicious publicity and negative criticism to build a building that changed the image of an entire country. It is the first time in our lifetime that an epic piece of architecture has gained such universal presence."

This was inspirational and provocative talk -- and because I was coming home after various travels which had taken me away for a month -- my thoughts turned to my own city; a mess of expediency, utilitarianism, facades, crass Modernism and empty lots.

Auckland's waterfront is -- it goes without saying, surely? -- an international disgrace: containers, sheds, fences to keep people out, very few public spaces, endless debates and committees about why we can‘t blah-blah . . .

What is lacking in Auckland is a courageous vision: a design for a building (my wish is for a gallery of contemporary art with a marae, restaurants, theatre space and so on) which has the effect the Sydney Opera House had on Australia, an architectural magnet which pulls people toward it and the space it inhabits.

I came back to read of the plans for a “super city” called Auckland and, depressingly, the people who want to be its mayor.

These were tired and obvious names, familiar men (all of them men if I recall) who belong to the past even though they inhabit the present. They were not of the future.

As always, we stand on the threshold of the future and while the “super city” seems fraught with problems there are none that cannot be overcome. If the good folk of Matakana think we are all Jafas and won’t have a bar of us, that’s fine. Cut them loose and chop up Rodney.

If the rest of the country hates us for being too big for our boots, so what? You won’t be able to change the opinion of provincials who characterise us as shallow latte sippers. To hell with them I say.

Let’s just get on and do what needs to be done for our city -- and by extension, the country.

But it takes vision and courage. Someone -- and it may well be just one person -- who says, “We can and will do this”. Someone who sees the waterfront as a space where a necessary angel will take residence; someone who calls for an international design competition in which the likes of Gehry, Sir Norman Foster, Renzo Piano, Zaha Hadid and others throw their hats into the ring because they can see the potential and beauty of our harbour with fresh eyes, architects unblinkered by time-wasting committees with bewildering acronyms and generational in-fighting.

Money you say?

Well, the Sydney Opera House -- recognisable across the planet, acclaimed in song, poetry and painting, the pride of a nation -- cost a truckload of money.

Do you think anyone today can tell you exactly how much? Would say it wasn’t worth it? Would prefer to see a container wharf on the site?

Sometimes -- and maybe this especially true when times are tight -- we need to look beyond our pettiness and step towards a shining future.

The Sydney Opera House allowed Australia that opportunity, a gift from Joern Utzon that has never ceased giving pleasure and a sense of place to its diverse people.

We could dream, think and act in that larger spirit also.

Auckland has a population of 1.4 million. I have great faith that somewhere out there is a man or woman -- and not one of the names I've read so far -- who will make themselves known to us. And by the generosity of their vision they will, without resorting cliches such as “a world class city” and so on, talk past the drones of local government and nay-sayers with ledgers.

They will be someone who will inspire enough confidence in us all that we may be bold, resolute and excited by a project that draws our city around it, catches the attention of the world, and offers all New Zealanders a similar sense of national pride to that which Utzon gave Australians.

They too will be “a necessary angel“.

Apropos of nothing: My return sees much new (and reissued) music at Elsewhere, another Essential Elsewhere album (the Undertones 30 years on are reconsidered!), an interview with a musician who is a national treasure in Korea and much more. Some photos of Buenos Aires stencil, graffiti and mural art are also starting to appear. Many more when I get time. Enjoy.

Ignoring the news for a while gives you your real life back. I re-discovered this fundamental truth a few weeks ago when, racing to prepare for a couple of trips away, I neglected to keep abreast of world and local news, the opinions of strangers on issues I vaguely cared about, what John Campbell or Mark Sainsbury were telling me . . . and I found that life continued. Rather more pleasantly, in fact.

As someone who devours news from many sources, it was a weird feeling to be so detached from that lifeline. Yet my nephew’s wedding on the Gold Coast went off despite me not knowing much about current events in the area. We had family conversations in which politics, crime and taxes were never once mentioned.

In fact, sitting on the 34th floor of an apartment block looking up
that glorious, surf-flecked coastline the rest of the world seemed very far away -- and I couldn’t have cared less. A morning and evening swim can do that to you I guess.

Of course I did notice some news headlines in Australia: economic gloom looming, some kid stabbing a teacher and so on.

I came home for a couple of days and found exactly the same stories commanding our headlines. And I noticed once more that those girls who bend their backs in the that weird way on the social pages and their guys who pose with beer bottles in hand are interchangeable all around the world.

I also noticed a consensus emerged about the new U2 album which made me strangely uncomfortable and wondering if there was some collusion between the critics. Hmmm, maybe Bono gave a big interview which explained the album and everyone fell into line? Dunno. I have yet to hear it -- and that has been fine too.

Then I went to Buenos Aires for 10 days and by that time I was so far out of the news loop that I decided to ignore it entirely.

This isn’t like me at all: generally the first thing I do in a new place is get into conversation about politics (after I’ve done a bit of homework) and try to understand what is going on the place I am. But not this time. I ate, drank, went to art galleries, had a lot of fun with people, observed and made lots of notes.

Yes, I had a few conversations about the Peronists and the president Cristina Kirchner . . . But I don’t recall instigating any of them. I did ask the follow-up questions though.

So much of Argentina’s sometimes brutal history is inscribed on the pavements -- and latterly stencilled on walls -- that its politics were impossible to ignore. I took dozens of photos of stencils and graffiti which I’ll post on Elsewhere as soon as I can.

But frankly, I didn’t make that much of an effort to get beneath Argentina’s political skin. It would take years to get a handle on it.

So after three weeks I have become weirdly dislocated from whatever has been happening in New Zealand -- and within a couple of days I go back to Australia for another week in which New Zealand will, unless some dire tragedy occurs, never once pass across my scanner.

I’m getting fearful that I might never come back from this pleasant state of suspended . . . uninterest?. I may be that embarrassment at the dinner table who has absolutely no opinion about David Bane. The unwelcome guest who cannot put a time frame around the length of the depression, or what Obama or Osama have said.

Strange, but strangely enjoyable, times. I’ve observed just how much of our dialogue revolves around wailing about politics and our lot.

In my absence though I kept posting a swag of new music and articles at Elsewhere, although the Argentinean rock, violent tango and other such things I bought the other day won’t appear until I get back from Australia. Meantime take your head out of politics too and check out the music, and my essay on Janis Joplin. I’ve enjoyed the comments that have been added! Feel free to have a go at me yourself.

PS: Just one amusing observation though: on the way out of Buenos Aires there were the customary inspections of bags and people were forced to give up soft drinks and throw away mascara.

Oddly enough, and I had forgotten this, I was carrying a gift in my carry-on bag. It was a clock inside a ball and had some weird wires and rods to support it when it was open up. I passed through unchallenged.

Isn’t it a strange world when you are forced to empty out your water bottle -- but someone can get on an aircraft carrying a timing device?

You wouldn’t read about it.

Because I grew up on pop music (Beatles, Motown et al), I still have an unashamed love of it -- which perhaps explains why I enjoyed Bionic Pixie, Sneaky Sound System, the Ting Tings and so on at the Big Day Out more than some of the main-stage monsters.

Sure there were other delights (more of them in a minute) but I kinda liked the joyous danceable quality of these acts (and Lupe Fiasco, Hot Chip) and their utter lack of pretension.

While crashing bores like Bullet for My Valentine tried to elevate their mediocrity to an art form, the pop acts just got on with making me (and many others) smile. And I quite like that.

We arrived right on start time as always and I headed straight off to see Bionic Pixie -- whom I have subsequently learned is Zoe Fluery and the daughter of Chapman Stick player Johnny Fluery who gave a couple of my kids guitar lessons many years back. He’s a talented guy and a lot of it has rubbed off on his cute kid whom I read about in, of all places, the Herald’s Viva section.

Normally I wouldn’t let a fashion writer point me to music, but Bionic Pixie did sound interesting and she didn’t disappoint. I think she’s already got two good singles in her (probably amalgams of what she did on the day) and her infectious enthusiasm was winning.

If she designed the costumes for her drummer and synth player they might want to have a wee word with her though, but when she strapped on a heart-shaped guitar for a bit of T.Rex-influenced pop-rock at the end I was completely won over. She also needed the guitar as a useful prop to give her something to do other than dance. It’s a lonely and empty stage when it’s just you.

Australia’s Sneaky Sound System also did the trick and -- despite sound problems which meant they had to quit the stage for a while -- they convinced me and a number of others. I quite like being able to remember every song a band sings at the end of their set and these people had memorable hooks, choruses and catchy lyrics -- and I’d never heard a note they played before seeing them. Verse-chorus, verse-chorus is still a sound formula.

The Ting Tings were equally delightful and fun -- and as the crowd was going off around me a thought occurred: we actually like this pop music stuff, but not so much when our own artists do it.

Our default position in this country is to alt.pop or alt.rock and if someone gets up -- as Bionic Pixie did -- and just makes something pure and fun-filled then there is a weird critical consensus formed which says they can’t be taken seriously. Yet we take the Ting Tings pretty seriously. I saw a couple of very hip critics there beaming along.

Of course I enjoyed Neil Young too (what wasn’t to like, he seemed utterly committed, it was greatest hits set -- without Hurricane however -- and he played typically bludgeoning guitar).

I have never got the appeal of his folksy songs (“I’ve been to Hollywood, I’ve been to Redwood” etc) and I am old enough to remember that stuff when it came out: I thought then he just sounded like whinger so I’ve never enjoyed that stuff, but when he racked up Cortez the Killer I was real happy. I like chintzy pop, but I also like raucous rock’n’roll.

I’ve seen Young a couple of times before -- notably at that notorious Supertop concert where some clown threw a coin and it hit him in the head during his acoustic set. Aussie promoter Michael Chugg came on and unleashed a torrent of abuse and obscenities at a crowd which actually felt really scared by his bellicose and menacing manner. Weird.

This BDO had Young at his best: fired up and not once coasting on material which could have sounded threadbare.

As with Russell and many others of more senior years, I was astonished at the size of crowd Pendulum pulled, and how they totally possessed that audience. I‘d never heard of them before -- I must have been asleep last year -- and my comment to Russell which he mentioned in his posting perhaps needs some explanation.

They did sound like pumping exercise/gymnasium music of the kind which pounds out of the fitness centre near my place -- except this was for people on P working out. Their front man even had a whole gym instructor attitude down pat, getting the crowd jumping and moving, as much as singing. Thomp-thomp-thomp: seems to work too.

I liked them a lot, although I wouldn’t buy an album.

In the flip-side of that, I thought the Tiki album of last year was hugely over-rated but thoroughly enjoyed what I saw of his set, and although I missed Prodigy I was real glad to have seen An Emerald City again, a local band who have a kind of Middle Eastern prog-rock thing going (with mini electric sitar and percussion). I think when they learn to use space as much as sound they will be world beaters and I’m told they are off to live in Berlin.

That would be smart, they’ll hear a lot more North African/Middle Eastern music in the streets and clubs, and so will have a greater well of ideas to draw on. I can’t wait for their album.

Some bands just couldn’t make the leap to the big stage: the great TV on the Radio whose albums I like were woefully out of their depth and you had to conclude they are a fine New York/art/album band but not made for unforgivingly large arenas. People fled, me among them.

The Arctic Monkeys suffered the same fate: they are, at present, a band built for a clubs not fields.

I thought Luger Boa started well but increasingly became their influences: and when Jimmy Christmas so tentatively climbed on an amp and looked very unhappy up there, then jumped off and fell over, it just looked a bit silly. Not devil-may-care rock’n’roll. I think you either commit to personal damage or not do it at all.

Of the others I saw Bang! Bang! Eche! and the Mots seemed to know exactly what they were doing, Black Kids were professional and enjoyable, Clap Clap Riot didn’t do it for me (it’s all personal folks) and I just didn’t get My Morning Jacket at all.

I heard their last album and thought it fairly standard rock, but then I kept reading about them and they were described as alt.country. Curious. I gave them three songs which were utterly underwhelming so I quit -- and am reliably informed that their final half dozen songs made sense and they were very convincing. Ah well, I missed that.

And that’s the thing about the Big Day Out, it’s like going on an overseas trip: you see what you see and other people will doubtless see something different -- and you can see exactly what others do and come away with a completely different opinion.
As always, the best band on the day was the one you liked the most.

Serj Tankian? Dunno. I wait to hear what the jury of public opinion says.

I wanted World War IV to be better, and wished I’d seen more of Hot Chip and Luke Fiasco, but something else beckoned. I wished I’d seen a lot less of The Living End who were so bad as to be insulting. Two thumbs down on them.

But thumbs up to combined weight of The Horseman Family though, they deserved a much bigger audience than they got -- but the BDO has always been fairly unforgiving to hip-hop.

But for me, pop music was the winner on the day.

And a final observation: without wishing to sound the whole Sideswipe . . . To the boorish, nuggetty drunk with a physique like a body-builder who bashed his way through the Ting Tings crowd pushing little girls and me aside. Mate, you might have got a better view, but you still woke up the next day with the Limp Bizkit tattoo.

Righto, your comments on my comments appreciated. And if you are looking for other music . . . I have posted some new albums at Elsewhere as well as a noisy Essential Elsewhere album by Blue Cheer which I love at full volume but may well be one of the very worst ever recorded in the ears of others.

Have a listen and make up your own mind: that’s what you do with music.

PS: Some of you will be amused to know I took a cellphone and sometimes used it to text. That's an in-joke for regular readers, right?

I ask this as a genuine enquiry. Last night I saw the exceptional Fleet Foxes from Seattle at the Bruce Mason Centre in Takapuna . . . and three times during this attention-grabbing show -- once when singer Robin Pecknold stepped forward for moving solo song on his battered acoustic - the woman two along from me started texting.

I dunno. I’m asking honestly. Anyone in PA-land do that at concerts? And if it isn’t too rude of me, just what was so important that your message had to be conveyed right there and then?

I’m curious.

PS. Five or so hours after I made this post I have checked back on the discussion thread. While I am bemused at the tangents and disappointed by the profanity and seemingly personal insults being tossed, I would like to make a small point.

I wasn't objecting to people texting at concerts (hell, you want to pay all that money to be in the real world but watch your postage stamp screen then knock yourself out) but just asking what could be so imperative that at such a time it needed to be conveyed?

I will have my phone at the BDO and may well even use it, but at a sit-down concert, or the movies?

So despite the vitriol, insults, oblique comments and so forth in the thread I am still no wiser with regard to the questions I actually posed. Anybody care to stay on-topic?

Or fail to do so?

Some years ago I travelled around Japan for an intensive three weeks of interviews, tourism, nightclubs, hi-tech and low-life experiences. I loved it -- but for the life of me can’t remember a note that band played which so impressed me one night in some club near Shinjuku.

What I do recall however was meeting an old banker. And he was old.

He was in his late 80s and my reason for seeking him out was because of the financial crisis Japan had been through, and was still suffering under. Everywhere people spoke of when “the economic bubble burst” which was code for “sudden recession aka crash”.

I thought it would be good to meet someone who had seen it all, quite a few times.

This venerable gentleman -- who spoke through an interpreter but then would sometimes break into perfect English with a wicked twinkle in his eyes -- had been a banker from the time he left school and had been through it all: the uncertainties before and after the Second World War (not to mention the crippling war itself), the rise and fall of the volatile Japanese economy, and then of course the recent bursting of the bubble.

I figured if anyone had any wisdom to offer it would be this man -- and he didn’t disappoint.

I don’t remember the detail but essentially it went like this: don’t worry.

That may seem like the Alfred E Newman philosophy of life, or at best the detachment of Zen. But as he explained the inevitabilities of the market (sometimes it goes up, sometimes it goes down, and it is cyclic up‘n‘down) it just made such good sense as a philosophy. You are aware of it and accommodate it, but you can't actually worry about it.

Like the weather, “the market” will always be there to trouble us and at any given moment they will cross to “see how the markets have responded”. And then we’ll change the channel, play with the kids, wonder if its going to rain tomorrow . . .

Life will go on.

This old man’s wisdom is probably the kind of thing which is dismissed by power-dressers and “property developers”, but there is a lot in it -- and it’s not something you hear too many market watchers saying. But it is the wisdom of the ages, and sort of obvious.

I don’t often read the Herald business pages other than to skim and see who is going up or down (without my assistance I should note) but there was lovely, gentle, funny and intelligent column by Liam Dann, the business editor, the other day.

I commend this sensible piece to you as an uncertain year opens up before us.

The nice thing about this for me is that Liam is a young guy. I guess he might be in his early 30s but he wrote with the wisdom of years, yet still managed to tell jokes, cite Mad Max and PJ O’Rourke, and make some useful and insightful observations by way of an overview.

If you read nothing else of it just go to the last paragraph.
It’s a thought worth carrying forward.

Happy New Year to you and yours.