Posted by Jerry on April 1st, 2005 — Posted in Journal, Music
What an amazing festival!! This one has to have been the best yet – The only downside was that my attempts at moblogging failed dismally, so here are my highlights of the festival – after the event.
Key highlights were some great concerts – Martin Pearson’s satyrical recitation of the Lord of the Rings trilogy in two parts… Dingo’s Breakfast – especially the “Original Goon Show”; Nancy Kerr – an amazing fiddle player (My apologies Nancy if my anti-session caused you grief); Jane Brownlea’s band; the Wise Family Band (Scott Wise made my hardanger fiddle); and many more.
Other highlights included our ‘Anti-Session in the session bar – where we welcomed bodhran players and squeeze boxes, performed random stand-ups during the tunes, and then topped it off with literal musical chairs – getting up and wandering around and sitting down randomly where other musicians had been sitting – it was a no-frown celtic music session. Yes it was loud and raucous but everyone had a big grin and a laugh – after all music is all about enjoyment and never mind the odd random notes! Many came up afterwards and said it was the best session they’d ever played in – high praise indeed.
Other highlights included a couple of one-to-one sessions with Jane Brownlea – an awesome fiddle player; sessioning with Louisa Wise, Scott Wise and Jane Brownlea; performing a concert spot with the venerable Billy Moran – an Irish accordionist from Melbourne in his nineties and still going strong! Also jamming with some cayjun fiddlers; lots of guinness and sessioning until six AM most mornings.
One of the biggest surprises was finding another hardangerfiddle (hardingfele) – a genuine Norwegian eight string fiddle of the type mine was modelled on. So we played some Scandinavian tunes – and had the very great pleasure of Dave deHugaard joining in – and suggesting we all ge together for a spot of Scandinavian music at the next National Folk Festival.
Dueling hardangers!
My own performances with Will-o-the-Wisp circus street performers (stilt walkers and associated characters) went very well and received a lot of attention throughout the festival – especially when we invaded the Session Bar!
And finally, the many friends I caught up with from many years ago from Perth, Western Australia, and from Adelaide – along with the many new friends I met and the many new friends I haven’t met yet 🙂
It was exhausting, but exhilarating!
The Festival flu I came home with was a small price to pay!
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on March 19th, 2005 — Posted in Journal, Music
If you were wondering why I’m taking so long to blog St Patrick’s day, it wasn’t because of the Guinness – it’s just that it is only today I have stopped aching after two very energetic shows totalling six hours of playing with a complete sound system breakdown and setup in between!
I put on my pedometer – reset to zero – on the morning of St Pat’s day, and I took a photo when I took it off in the evening:
Now that is a lot of bounding around on stage!
We started off at PJ O’Reilly’s in Civic (Canberra Australia) playing from 1.30-4.30pm
The wireless sound system is great to use – it allows much more freedom of movement than if we were plugged in to the sound system through standard leads – as you can see I danced around so much my legs just faded away!
And we played for some Irish dancers from a local Irish dance school
The audience were a great crowd and all too soon we had to pack up in a rush and head over to Filthy McFadden’s in Kingston (Canberra, Australia) and set up in time to start playing from 5.30-8.30pm.
Filthy’s is another great venue – more intimate, with many nooks and crannies, despite being quite a good sized pub. It certainly kept our sound engineer busy as the dynamics would change as the composition of the crowd changed.
The audience was very enthusiastic and many got up to dance. The bar was lined up five deep for most of the night and we kept ourselves lubricated with light beer throughout both shows so we wouldn’t end up Patrickly Sainted! But I did allow myself a good pint of the Guinness at the end of the evening once our work was done and we could relax and take in the band that followed us. They were a mainly covers band and did not get as enthusiastic a response as we did 🙂
Anyhow it was a great day and as the Irish say – great craic!
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on March 17th, 2005 — Posted in History, Journal, Music
Happy St Patrick’s Day! We will be busy today – the band Full Circle is playing two shows today – from 1.30pm-430pm at PJ O’Reilly’s in Civic and 5.30pm-8.30pm at Filthy McFadden’s in Kingston – so if you are in Canberra, Austraalia today, why not drop by and say hello! (I’ll be the one with the fiddle – and the guinness )
The sculpture beneath the hat is called “Blinded by Reggae” and was made and cast by Swaziland-born Western Australian artist Terry Thomas in 1981. I have taken to calling it “The Procrastinator!”
St Patrick is of course the patron saint of Ireland – it appears St Patrick was a real historical figure who lived in the 5th century (Christian Era). Interestingly, while he is said to have used the three-leafed clover, or shamrock to explain the Trinity, the shamrock had long been held as the symbol for Brigit – a pagan goddeess of healing, she was later appropriated by the church as St Brigit!
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Posted by Jerry on March 16th, 2005 — Posted in Journal, Woodwork
I was reading my online copy of Woodworker’s Journal today and encountered an article on the delightful woodwork of Kim Kelzer. Her whimsical, yet functional pieces show a refreshing departure from traditional furniture and the tyranny of brown, brown, and more brown.
Even her workshop is a work of art!
Much of her work is displayed in art galleries across the US. But you can see her online gallery on her website. Amazing work and a wonderful artist
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on March 9th, 2005 — Posted in Journal, New media, Technology
Yes it was time to update the old Ericcsson brick – it was a museum piece given to me by a friend who was tired of not being able to reach me. I looked around and found little choice in Canberra for vodaphone prepaid – basically it was a choice between Nokia and Sagem. One shop told me that many customers had trouble with their Sagem phones – then I went to their website and found it full of Nokia promotions – a bit sus. So I checked out the Sagem reviews and found a generally pretty favourable response. Some didn’t like the reversed stop and go functions -hey it’s French – what do you expect? Second, was that some people had trouble with the infrared transfers. This was a critical one for me – especially when I found that the CD only had WinCrap PC software – and no mac version. How was I to download images from the neat 3 x zoom camera if I couldn’t connect to the mac? Answer? The faithful Psion 5MX!
I said to the retailer that I would only consider it if it would connect with the Psion – I would bring it in the following day and test it in the shop.
So today I went in, Psion 5MX in hand, went up to the bloke and asked to test the infrared transfer. He put in a sim, plugged the Sagem into a power adapter and took aim with the phone camera. I opened up the Psion, switched it on and hit the menu – went to the IR receive mode and at the same time the retailer put the phone down with the IR ports facing each other. It took less than a second for the Psion to say: “receiving file from Sagem…” and shortly after it had completed the transfer. I quickly opened the jpg image in the Psion’s web browser – in the process impressing the hell out of the retailer who had never seen a psion before – and I had made my decision. Transferring files between the Psion and the Sagem is a breeze! And I can upload the image onto the mac via the compact flash card reader – so no need for WellPhone software.
First impressions – this phone has an amazing array of features – fully polyphonic ring tones, colour screen, easy to navigate menus, light weight, compact size and great quality images straight from the 0.3MP (640×480) camera – like this flower in my garden:
And the price was only AU$179.00 (and in Australia the Sagem MY-55 phones are unlocked 🙂 )
I guess I’ll have no excuse not to begin moblogging now eh?
I haven’t yet figured out if I can connect the psion to the internet via the IR port in the phone, but it could well mean the Psion will have a new lease on life as a sub-sub-notebook computer that fits in a pocket. At the very least it will be a handy go-between to transfer files. All up I’m so far very happy with this phone.
Cheers
Jerry
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