Mandy Martin, Puritjarra 2, 2005. For further information on MANDY MARTIN, refer here: http://www.mandy-martin.com/
If there are diverse kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing place, then we need to learn to value the different ways each of us sees a single place that is significant, but differently so, for each perspective.
adrift on a sea of information at a time when the world's night is a destitute time. In the age of the world's night, the abyss of the world must be endured.
--Adelaide is home. Relaxation is Victor Harbor. I'm a frustrated photographer who has lost his way in life.I have trouble coping in the technological mode of being of our complex digital world.
It's a sunny morning in Canberra. 'Tis a light laugh over an issue that is causing a bit of political heat and angst around the nation as it is part of the culture wars:
Matt Golding
It's Sunday morning and I'm reminded of the Velvet Underground and, in a particular a song from their "banana album" Velvet Underground and Nico, the lush and professionally produced Sunday Morning:
I only know the CD. The banana does not peel slowly. Warhol's Factory and the Exploding Plastic Inevitable media happenings may have faded, but not the music on this album.
Even though the Velvets were experimental (John Cage) and wrote interesting songs (Lou Leed) this first album died still born. It was critically acclaimed a couple of decades latter but it took longer for the Velvets music to be professionally repackaged and properly restored. Finally this music, which fuses avant-garde with rock & roll, can be critically evaluated outside the 'influence upon the punk and new wave' frame. They blended the energy of rock with the sonic adventurism of the avant-garde, and introduced a new degree of social realism and sexual awareness into rock lyrics.
Something else of interest that I came across on YouTube-- the Beginning cartoon that opens the Grateful Dead "Movie.
I am suprised that a lot of credit goes to the UK visual Yellow Submarine-style animation work around the Beatles whilst that around the Grateful Dead is ignored. This work is not hippy stuff, nor do you have to be a deadhead to appreciate Gary Gutierrez's innovation circa 1974-76 around the iconography of the Grateful Dead --the Uncle Sam skeleton, skulls, roses etc. It is pre-Bush America.
Update
The Grateful Dead Movie was Garcia's labour of love, and it captures performances from the Grateful Dead's October 1974 five-night stand at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. This end-of-tour run marked the beginning of an extended hiatus for the band as no shows were planned for 1975.
There was no director in the beginning. After the shows, Garcia sat down with 125 hours of raw footage, which he matched to the soundtrack and catalogued. Garcia, by late '76 he was purchasing books of airline commuter tickets and flying daily to Burbank Studios to mix the soundtrack, inventing new technologies like 'phase panning' so that the sound of the film would subtly follow the camera. The film was edited by Susan Crutcher.
Ironically, the film that followed them into Burbank Studios was Star Wars.
| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:29 AM | Permalink
I found this a beautiful piece of music, whatever it might be critically evaluated as.
I have been swimming in the sea. It is black and wild and stormy, and its sunday morning. So this was very appropriate. Ta.
Fiona
swimming? Where are you? Cape York? I'm freezing in down in Canberra.
I've added the animation.By the time this was done the Velvet Underground had fallen apart. Few connect the experimentation of New York with San Francisco in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
this is very cool. I congregate with aging rockstars and they certainly ain't this cool.
I am swimming in sydney btw. Nothing like greeting the winter by being completely immersed in it.
Funnily enough, I was photographed by the sunday telegraph, so I gather i was being "noteworthy"
Fiona,
do you know if there much is visual culture arising out of Australian rock culture?
The Grateful Dead also had very interesting light shows ---photos of the work of Candice Brightman, the lighting designer for the Grateful Dead for two decades, can be found here. The use of colour and texture combined with video makes the work a rich visual experience. Visual music?
I would not have thought that anything like this---animated paintings that pulsed with the music and was rich in expressive colour--- was created in Australia?
The Grateful Dead's psychedelic carnival can be placed in in context of their "kinship with the frontier ruffians of the 1850s, and the actors, musicians, and fandango dancers who crossed the plains to amuse them."
I found this a beautiful piece of music, whatever it might be critically evaluated as.
I have been swimming in the sea. It is black and wild and stormy, and its sunday morning. So this was very appropriate. Ta.