Category Archives: Uncategorized

feminist fika: weeks 4 and 5 in Herrang

Still on-going.
Usually meet 1pm in the Bar. If there isn’t a note up on the folklets hus noticeboard, add your own – there are plenty of people who are enjoying turning up to chat.
Feminists, friends of feminists, and feminist-curious peeps are all welcome. Assumption is that you are down with feminist values and be a dick. ie, this is a chance for peeps to meet and be nice to each other, not a chance for you to start arguments with women.

ave Jane La Scala

I’m not sure if people realise, but Jane La Scala passed away recently. She used to keep the blog Jazz Ramble http://www.jazzramble.com/

Australian jazz _seems_ male dominated, but there are plenty of women involved in lots of different ways beside standing on stage. I’ve found it difficult to find women jazz journos and writers, so it was very nice to come across Jane’s blog. I never met her, and we didn’t correspond, but it was nice to know she was out there.

Sad to report the passing of Jane La Scala on March 23rd after a long illness. Jane was editor of “Jazz Rambles” and the VJC Newsletter for many years. Her funeral will be held on Friday April the 1st at Le Pines Ivanhoe at 2.30 pm.( Posted bydogpossumPosted inUncategorizedLeave a comment on ave Jane La Scala

While we’re thinking ballrooms…

This plan of the ballroom was posted by Felix Berghäll on his wall recently, and I noticed that the band stage was on the long wall of a rectangular room. This is pretty much the opposite of the way we set up rooms for concerts usually. But it makes much better sense if you want to be sure a room can see the band, from the dance floor or tables.
Looking at photos of the Cloudland ballroom, it also has the stage on the long wall.
I use a fair few ballrooms and dance halls around the place, from square ones (the lovely Annandale Town Hall) to round ones (the gorgeous Famous Spiegeltent). My preference as a DJ is a round room, or to have the DJ/band on the long wall of a rectangular room, so that it’s right in the ‘middle’ of things. It’s also better for sound, because the speakers don’t have to ‘throw’ down a loooong room. They can radiate from the middle of the room.
This is an issue for me at the moment, as I’m thinking about the dance we’re holding on the Saturday of the Little Big Weekend 13-15 May 2016 . It’s in the Glebe Town Hall, which is pretty much perfect. But it’s long and narrow, with a teeny-tiny (and wholly inadequate) stage in one corner.
So I was thinking we’d put the band on the long wall (opposite a large double door).
Question: will this leave us room to have a competition in front of the band? Asking for a friend*.
*Myself. I am my own friend.

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Ah, the Leichhardt town hall.

With your novelty corrugated iron roof and bizarro colour scheme. You are affordable, you’re centrally located, and interesting. But you are also perfectly oriented so as to never catch a breeze, and your hideous 1950s added front-bit makes you so hot the floor wax melts. I have never been in a venue so hot. Mid-winter, and I thought I might actually boil alive in there.

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Name and shame

What if tomorrow night when I’m DJing, I wear the head mic, and each time I see* a creeper guy creepin’ on a sister, I name and shame them? I’ll have a tip jar on the DJ table, and each creeper has to donate all the cash in their wallet to the women’s shelter of my choice. And then they they get thrown out of the building, never to return, and all the sisters they’d harassed dance the Big Apple of Victory.

*Because I see you, creeper guy. Because I’m watching the floor ALL the time.