Saturday also marked the start of the Australian Rules
Football (aka footy) season with the first match for my team, The Western
Bulldogs. “M” (only an occasional supporter) and I hook up with Mickey and his
family. We’ve watched (and suffered)
together through decades of highs and lows without ever tasting ultimate
success. But we persist even with years like this when most of the so called footy
experts forecast a bleak year. Unusually for us, we’re reasonably confident this year we’ll
be able to pull off a few surprises without necessarily challenging for major honours.
Mickey fills me in on his experiences at Springsteen’s final
Rod Laver Arena gig. He was really impressed
by him as a live performer and had no problems with his seat behind the stage.
Only three rows back, he indicated you get a sense of what the act experiences
and you really feel very close to the action. What’s intriguing about his enthusiasm is that
it wasn’t until relatively recently that Mickey developed an interest in The
Boss. Previously, he had dismissed him
as a parochial American who wrote only about cars and girls and only started to twig when he heard the
acoustic material on The Ghost Of Tom Joad.
Who said you couldn’t gain new fans from diversifying? Our conversation was ended by the start of
the match. The Bullies pull off a
surprise by defeating Brisbane but the massive 68 point victory pleasantly
shocks even us.
But not everything turns to gold like that. Still feeling unsatisfied by my failure to
catch the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion live, I purchased over the weeken:
(247) The Jon Spencer
Blues Explosion – Meat And Bone
This is not how things are supposed to work out! I feel worse.
How was I supposed to know that this would be their best album since Now
I Got Worry? After a so-so opener, Bag Of Bones thrashes away in classic Blues Explosion
style. Boot Cut ramps up the tempo, and Strange
Baby incorporates some wicked slide guitar reminiscent of Mick Taylor era Stones. Remaining tracks are all of a high standard with
Gadzooks bringing things to a satisfying close.
Happy after my teams unexpected thumping win, I make an interesting
discovery on Saturday night. Whilst going
through the Apple Apps Store I found an app called Discovr which is an
intriguing way to discover new artists.
The way it works is deceptively simple.
You start with a single field into which you type the name of a
recording artist. A circle
appears on screen with an image of that artist.
Hit it once and a number of links are made to other similar artists, either
from the same [sub] genre or with a historical connection (such as solo acts or
subsequent bands, etc). You hit those, more connections are made and so on with the resultant diagram continually reformatting itself as
you establish new links. At any astge, you
can double hit an artist and this takes you to a new screen with a history for
the artist, discography and tracks to listen.
But I’ll provide a consumer warning. This app is so mesmerising that hours can go
by without you realising it. So far the
only time I’ve stopped is when I seem to have overloaded the program by
establishing hundreds of connections with linkage lines so complex that the
task of following them really does your head in. I’ve even taken to using it as a weird form of
entertainment, for example, attempting to navigate between two completely
different acts (say Otis Redding to Sonic Youth).
What’s really impressive is that the compilers have really left
no stone unturned; I’ve found myself locating Harry Smith era Americana acts,
Australian hip hop acts, Aboriginal musicians, Krautrockers, TV stars who’ve released albums and even
comedians by using this. It’s far from
perfect; some of the links made are unintentionally hilarious, it occasionally
has problems distinguishing between two acts with the exact same name (such as
Nirvana), some obvious connections haven’t been made yet (for example, I can’t
get it to acknowledge connections between Paul Rodgers, Free and Bad Company) and
obvious connections sometimes take a while to emerge (for example, it took
forever before a connection was made between Australian husband/wife acts
Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter). But it’s
a great tool and I intend to use it to further my explorations.
Whilst exploring, I took the opportunity to play;
(248) Keb’ Mo’ – Peace….Back
By Popular Demand
I first heard Keb’ Mo’ when he played a very satisfying
opening set for Dr. John a few years back.
A bluesman with a smooth delivery
and understated, fluent guitar style, her reminds me of Eric Clapton without
the additional fiery Yardbirds/Cream/Derek And The Dominoes back catalogue. This album consists of a number of generally well known
tracks performed in this style. For What
It’s Worth, People Got To Be Free and (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace Love And
Understanding come off pretty well. John
Lennon’s Imagine doesn’t.
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