Posted by Jerry on March 20th, 2004 — Posted in Journal, Music
Yes I know it was on Wednesday 17th, but it’s about time I blogged it isn’t it? Now, you may recall that I play Irish music on a hardingfele (Hardanger fiddle – eight strings). We (the band Full Circle) played two shows at different Irish pubs in Canberra – 2.00pm-5.00pm at PJ O’Reilly’s and then 6.00pm-9.00pm at Filthy McFadden’s – both great Irish venues and each with a different appeciative audience.
PJ’s was a great place to warm-up because they also had Irish dancers and and got into the spirit of St Pat’s Day in a flamboyant way – green beer, green hats, green gas balloons – yeah I wound up with green hair too! Everyone was ready to party – even at 2.00pm on a weekday 🙂 So it was easy for us to get in the mood and party along with the crowd
And Liz Gregory’s Irish dancers (described as Canberra’s answer to Riverdance) were a treat – two of the dancers are currently first and second place holders in the Australian Irish Dancing Championships. We have played music for them before, and they got us playing jigs and reels for them to dance to – great fun all round!
Then there was Filthy’s! The set-up was a bit of a rush – but the pub has a great atmosphere with lots of dark timber and a good range of Irish beers – including my favourite Guinness! and, like PJ O’Reilly’s was well crowded. With the lights up and a quick sound check we grabbed a quick round of light beers (hey with six hours of playing, you don’t think we’d be drinking full strength stuff do you?) As soon as we launched into the first set the crowd were right into it, singing along and dancing wherever they could find a space. We debuted a couple of new (for us) songs – “New York Girls” and, after 20 years of requests, I finally did “Devil Went down to Georgia” – that great song about a fiddler who meets the devil in a small country to the south of Russia… It went down a treat fully justifying the work we’ve been putting into it for the last couple of months.
It was hot – musically and physically – and I was glad to have eaten a large lunch, because there was no time to eat from the start of the first show until after we’d packed down the gear at the end of the second show! – hence it was light beer the whole time aside from a soothing pint of guinness at the end :-p
I certainly won’t need to see a gym after a workout like that!
(Full Circle in concert)
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Posted by Jerry on March 14th, 2004 — Posted in Journal, Motorcycling, Travel
What an exhilirating ride! Just popping out for a pie – 130km to Batehaven on the coast with the friendly folk from Action Motorcycles – the first of what they hope to be a monthly ride. They’re a good mob, and they accepted the antique Bol d’Or with good grace. There’s nothing quite like the howl that comes out of that four into one exhaust when it comes on song 😉
And there were some good corners to be had heading down the Clide Mountain – they’ve cleaned up the road a lot in the last couple of years. Pity that the bear seems to have disappeared from Pooh corner.
You can just see the antique trying to blend in among the modern bikes 😉
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on March 14th, 2004 — Posted in Journal, Travel
Every year Canberra has a Balloon Fiesta at this time of year. So yesterday (Saturday 13 March), we got up early and headed into the city to see the balloons being launched in front of our Parliament House. There must have been about thirty of them! Most were the usual shapes, but there were some unusual ones, like: the house, the frog, the bunch of balloons, and above all, Van Gogh! It was too much of a temptation when van gogh headed over the Australian National University’s Canberra School of Art:
The image was taken by my partner, Sharon Boggon who lectures at the Art School.
cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on March 13th, 2004 — Posted in Journal, Writing
Yeah it’s been a little while – and I’ve got a few things to write up on the blog. But first: A fun quiz! What kind of postmodernist are you? Here’s the result I got 🙂 “You are a Theory Slut. The true elite of the postmodernists, you collect avant-garde Indonesian hiphop compilations and eat journal articles for breakfast. You positively live for theory. It really doesn’t matter what kind, as long as the words are big and the paragraph breaks few and far between.” Sprung!
Cheers Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on February 19th, 2004 — Posted in Journal
It has come to this! As my focal length began to extend noticeably further than was comfortable for reading I have taken the plunge and for the first time have begun wearing spectacles.
It is wierd! Jerry as cyborg – with artificially enhanced sight. The upsides are that the specs are light and comfortable – and they improve my close vision immensely. The downside is not having enough shirt pockets to carry sunglasses as well as reading glasses and the usual assortment of pens etc. And I am learning not to move my head too much when reading or I get motion sick from my view of the world moving at a different rate than my brain expects. But these are small prices to pay for improved vision 🙂
Cheers Jerry
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