i like this dancing – she is mighty fine. but she also demands a fairly steep tithe.

Ok, so I’ve decided to get back into the dancing hardcore in the last month.
Because:

  • I have time and can stay up late a few nights a week because I’m not teaching
  • I need to get a bit fitter and healthier, and there is no exercise as physically demanding as lindy hop except perhaps basketball. 20s charleston, however, kicks both their arses for arse kicking
  • I missed it – I missed the creativity and the physical challenge and the sheer wonderfulness of jiggling about to music I love with a partner

Things I have noticed:

  • I am not 25 any more. My recovery time is kind of long. Today, after dancing like a fool for a few hours (including my first public showing of the Cranky Poo and the bits of the Big Schnapple that I know) last night and then riding home I feel quite rough. I have aches and pains. I have ringing ears (argh, noob DJs: walk the room, doods, walk the room. Decibals won’t replace base). I am tired and look quite awful.
  • It’s frickin’ fun. When you’ve got a bit of fitness back and your body awareness and general coordination get back up above the sloth level, dancing is easier, you can do more things and the endorphines… oh, those lovely lovely endorphines.
    For the first song you’re kind of clunky. The second, your heart rate gets up a bit, your muscles are warming up nicely and you’re remembering how to dance. Midway through the third it’s like someone’s thrown a bucket of ecstacy over you. Ecstasy made of chocolate. Ecstasy making really fabulous jokes. You start grinning like an idiot, then laughing like a fool. You’re a dancing queen – nothing goes wrong, you rock. You know every single note of the song, your partner is beautiful (and possibly made of chocolate as well). You physically feel frickin’ good – it’s like… I was going to compare it to sex or something sex-like, but it’s not – it’s better. It’s kind of like you get a drumming in your ears. You suddenly want to touch your friends more and squeeze your partner. It’s really nice.
  • I really don’t give a fuck who I’m dancing with – I’m just happy to be dancing. Because dancing – she is good. She is also the bringer of nice chemical action.
  • Music – she is even better. Suddenly all the songs you like listening to have added purpose and meaning. Dancing to them makes them better
  • This stuff is addictive. I can see, as someone with no real demands on their time or actual focus, how people do let dancing consume them utterly. How they end up living, breathing dancing in a pretty scary way. Think I’m into dance in a big way? Imagine if I was teaching it. And in a performance troupe. And training for a competition. That’s at least 3 or 4 nights a week on top of social dancing twice a week and the sort of practice you do on your own. That’s insane. When would I have time to watch telly? My conversational skills would deteriorate, my attention span would drop to about 3 minutes max (ie, the time between dances) and I’d suddenly find it difficult to retain basic information about new friends. And those endorphines – did I mention their goodness?

Last night I went to sleep still hearing jazz and with my brain running through dance steps. And this after a couple of hours coming down – riding home for 20 minutes, hassling The Squeeze, reading, eating something, showering.
I like this dancing – she is mighty fine. But she also demands a fairly steep tithe.
Tonight I DJ the second set. And I’m kind of looking forward to sitting down and getting some physical and emotional distance from the dance floor.

hm

I’m doing a set this Friday night (second set, if you’re interested, preceded by one of my least favourite DJs) and I’m not really on top of my music. I have been too busy reading and writing and haven’t spent enough time listening to music. I don’t listen to music when I’m working because it either distracts me or I just stop hearing it after a while.

clicky

I’ve been looking at some interesting acka blogs lately – sort of the American (I assume) version of people I’m already reading.

  • Digital Audio Insider, an interesting chat about digital music. I need to read more of this dood’s blog. Especially when he gets talking about itunes (because swing DJs have a rather love-hate relationship with itunes – there’s some freaking amazing, obscure shit on there, but the quality simply isn’t good enough for DJing).
  • Fandrogyny, a blog with a post about Heroes at the top, and of course, we’re all over Heroes at our house at the moment.
  • terra nova, a kind of all-round internetty/acka-ish group blog which has a really interesting article about three ackas choosing to synchronise their posts about second life:

    The posts are intended to be the beginning of a coordinated conversation. According to Henry, “After corresponding with Shirky and with my colleague Beth Coleman, it was decided that we would offer some new statements about this controversy across our three blogs today and respond to each other’s posts in about a week’s time. We also agreed that we would post links to the other posts through our sites which would help readers navigate between the various positions.” (from that entry)

    That’s some interesting stuff – I’ve been thinking about the way early career ackas (or eckas, I guess) use blogs to network. And it’s only a matter of time til more grown up ackas start using the lovely discursive potential of the internet. I don’t doubt, though, that finding the time to do this stuff will be something only fairly well positioned ackas will be able to do.

  • apophenia, more lovely fan talk

things i like to do

I like to go home via Sydney Road late at night. I avoid the road during the day because it’s so busy, but I like being driven up it at night because it’s interesting. I ride up it late Thursday night (if you watch out you might see me riding up it tonight at some point between 11pm and 12.30am), but that’s getting increasingly scary. It used to be empty and ‘safe’ but now it’s full of wanker ‘I’m so cool’ kids spilling out of The Spot and The R… pub that starts with R whose name I always forget and the grotty bars full of old furniture. I don’t like those sorts of people.
But I do like riding straight up Sydney Road, having gone up Queen Street, through the Vic Markets car park, along William Street and then through the roundabout of death.
When we’re riding east from Sydney Road The Squeeze always asks if we can take this one particular side street. I once saw a giant bunny looking out at the road through the gate of a house on that street, and The Squeeze has only seen it once. So we ride down that road hoping to see it again. We haven’t.
I like to ride down through the parking lot at the Vic Markets on my way to dancing on Thursday nights. I come down William Street, past the top of the markets and then down through the carpark. There are usually millions of seagulls hanging about in there and I love riding my bike down through the crowd of them, yelling. It’s slightly downhill, and a big, empty space. There’s never anyone around and it’s dark and empty. It’s a bit scary because I could hit something and fly off my bike, or the seagulls could decide to pull a Hitchcock on me, but those thoughts just make the whole thing more fun.
I like riding to the Laundry (a venue) on Saturday afternoons to see local jazz band called Virus. The band’s made up of a raggle taggle of younger doods and older doods who really know their shit. There’s no sheet music, they share the solos around during the song, and visiting musicians from out of town drop in to do a guest song or two. This is proper jazz – sometimes they check the sheet music before the song, but not always. The decide what to play on the spot – there are no set lists. They take requests. They wear scrappy clothes (shorts and thongs, dress pants and tshirts, ill fitting suit coats with jeans), drink a lot of beer and make crude jokes. The music is fricking fast, fricking hot and fricking good – it kicks your arse if you’re dancing.
The venue is narrow and loud and crowded and smokey. We dance sometimes, but mostly we drink beer. That’s how jazz should be – loud and fun and crowded and with lots of heckling (between the band and the audience). Not with rules about not talking and turning off your mobile phone. Heck, you’re lucky if you can hear your mobile ring at the Laundry. This gig is on every single Saturday afternoon between 4 and 7 and is free. After we’ve seen the band, we usually go to eat somewhere. It’s lots of fun, but it makes you stink like a dirty old pub floor.
Go to the cinema on my own during the day to see lady films and art house films. Long, boring things with no action scenes. I like to get a chilli chocolate ice cream if I’m at the Nova or a bag of joobs if I’m at the Westgarthe.
I like to go to the Astor for a double session on the weekend, though I haven’t done that many times.
I like going to fabric shops and spending hours and hours in there choosing fabric.
I like doing the same at the video shop.
And in music shops.
I like riding down through Royal Park from Royal Parade, down the path past the stadium and giant play ground to the cemetary and then down to Lygon Street. It’s all a bit brown and dry and crispy these days, but it’s still a nice ride.
I like it that bikes and trams get a green light on Swanston Street at the intersection of Swanston and… LaTrobe? Where Melbourne Central is. I like being able to zoom off at the lights while the cars are left at the lights, cranky.
I like riding my bike through the Edinborough Gardens, past the giant possums at night and around the fountain during the day. Even though you’re not allowed to. I ride carefully so I don’t hit anyone.
I like going to Brunetti’s and having an Italian hot chocolate with a tiny biscuit and reading my book.

the good, the bad and undead

I’ve been thinking about that Australia Day meme and how I couldn’t answer the questions properly. And especially, I’ve been thinking about why I don’t much like Tim Winton or those other difficult authors. I mean, the people who write miserable stories about nice things or heart warming stories about miserable things or uplifting stories about people triumphing in spite of adversity.
By the way, I’ve remembered another Australian author I used to quite like: Sue Woolfe. Especially Leaning Towards Infinity. And I like Nicki Gemmel. I know that that last one’s not cool (nor correctly spelt, I suspect), but fuck. And I like Peter Carey’s short stories (but not novels). And there’s an Australian bloke who writes crime novels (one was called Iron Rose) which/who I liked. And I like Shane Maloney’s stuff about Coburg and Melbourne)
Anyway, back on track, here.
So, about all these difficult books.
I’m sure I’ve said it before. But.
I read almost nothing but SF. That’s either science fiction or science fantasy. Sometimes I read crime novels as well, but not too often as I tend to get upset by the implication that you’re supposed to get some sort of readerly pleasure from the in-depth description of torture and serial killers going about their work. Smacks of voyeurism to me. And I don’t like it. For the same reason I don’t like watching SVU. Somehow I feel that I’m to enjoy (or participate in?) the systematic subjugation torturing, killing and general Bringing Low of women and other vulnerable people. No thankyou.
So I read books about space. And about dragons. But only well written ones.
But lately I think I’ve strayed into even darker territory. I’ve just finished this. I have no excuse other than the fact that my mother sent it to me in a package from Tasmania with chocolate. And it’s easy to read. And it has vampires in it. And a sassy female protagonist. And now I’m reading the second one (that’s it to the left, the image lifted from the site linked above). And before these I read another one by another author called … Pat something.
This stuff reminds me of Tanya Huff, except without the… well, the good stuff. I think I might have strayed into that land of no-longer-pink books.
I’m not sure if you know, but romance novels went genre bending a few years ago (I know because my mother is a mad pink book fiend and I’ve had to spend far too many hours in Rendezvous Romance (don’t ask me to relive that, please)). So, you know that romance novels (or pink books as they’re known in our family, because they are used to be pink) are massively popular, right?
Well, you might also know that women are the big readers in Australia as well (I think that’s true. If not, I made it up, and it’s a myth I’m sticking with).
So anyhow, a few years ago, as I’ve said, the pink books went genre bending. They starting moving beyond ‘real world’ plots, settings and characters and introduced detectives. Then they introduced vampires. And vampire hunters. Of all sexes. And then they suddenly exploded and were going crazy with the whole sf/speculative/fantastic fiction thing. And they no longer had pink covers – they had black covers. And were about three times as long as the normal pink books. But they were still all about romance. And had female protagonists. And somewhat objectified male love interests.
Now, all this, on the one hand, is vaguely nauseating. But on the other – this is some fascinating shit. Sounds like chick flicks to me. Can anyone else smell Sistahhood? Well, ok, so I’m exaggerating on the feminist political theme thing. But still.
Anyhoo, when I was browsing in a certain SF bookshop whose name I can’t remember (but it’s worth knowing about – they sell novels at $15 or a bit less, have a shop in The Arcade on Elizabeth, sort of under Melbourne Central. It’s a bit of a pathetic arcade, but it has a Dick Smith and this bookshop. Which sells only SF. Yay.) I realised I couldn’t tell if I’d wandered out of the Normal Books and into the formerly-known-as-pink book section. But all the authors were women. And all the protagonists were female. The covers were black, we were talking serious demon hunting and vampyr slaying narrative action. But suspicions were raised by the humourous (sp?) subplots and lengthy discussions of clothing. And lame puns. Not that lame puns are anything new in SF. SF is all about dag (goddess bless).
I was kind of getting worried – I didn’t want to spend perfectly good book cash on something where the hero(ine) would end up spending every second page fussing over her makeup. But I didn’t want to miss the demon-slaying/arse-kicking female protagonist action. The guy who runs the shop couldn’t help. Even the matriarch, who knows All Pink Books and has now begun flogging some of her (zillions and zillions – fuck, googleplexes) of pink books off on ebay couldn’t help me. And now, even after two and a half of them, I’m not sure.
Here’s what I do know:the authors are shocking dags – there are far too many discussions of ‘ankle high, vampire-made leather boots’ and “fingers flicked about the deep v-neck of her spandex shirt tucked into her leather pants” (The good, the bad and the undead, p 61). In fact, I think I need to continue with the fashion descriptions, because these books seem to spend more than a little time discussing who’s wearing what. I smell pink book:

“Ready?” Ivy said brightly as she finished adjusting her jacket. She was dressed in her usual black leather pants and silk shirt, looking lanky and predatory. The only color to her face was her bright red lipstick. A chain of black gold hung about her neck in place of her usual crucifix -which was now tucked into her jewelry box at home. It matched her ankle bracelets perfectly. She had gone further to paint her nails with a clear coat, giving them a subtle shine (same book, pg 100).

It’s kind of a give away when a paragraph like that is about a quarter of a page. And is preceded by a series of paragraphs explaining every character’s outfit. And please – black gold ankle bracelets???
BTW: what the FUCK is a duster? It’s an item of clothing. I think it’s a long scarf. Apparently vampires dig them. I shudder at the thought. No capes!
So, ok, I think we can assume I’m in pink book territory. If only because we’re looking at a particular female readership. Which, apparently, I am part of.
It’s worth pointing out that Ivy is the protagonist’s flatmate. And a vampire (I can’t explain the crucifix thing here, ok). And has a massive hawt thing for the protagonist. Both of them are tall and thin. The protagonist (a witch, by genetics, with an athletic build, sparse bosom and curly/frizzy red hair) is heterosexual. And Ivy has a massive boner for her. The whole vampire-sex-violence-pain thing is kind of overworked, but … the thing is. It’s not like in Tanya Huff’s books where queer characters are very much ‘normal’ – bi, lesbian, gay bloke, trannie, some combination thereof, whatever. Nor is it like Buffy where the characters deal with coming out and move on – monster attacks kind of taking precedence.
In this stuff the queer thing is kind of background static – I smell ‘bi-curious’ and ‘female queer fantasy’ action where the women ‘are all lesbians’ but don’t do no deep sea diving. It’s titillating, but there’s no real action. The protagonist and Ivy do not get it on. We’re left hanging for a shag. Rather, for them to shag. In fact, there’s a lot of saucy talk and innuendo, but no real action. Kind of like a level 3 pink book. Where level 10 is out and out pron (you have to read it to believe it – those pink book shops, while they’re full of gauzy curtains and New Zealand bees wax candles and posters of chocolate are also stuffed to the gills with all manner of hawt lady pron action. Actually, if you’re easily shocked, you’d best not read it. This is real erotica for women. And hold the feminist Message).
…which is interesting in itself, but I digress.
Basically, think Charmed, but with a bit more grit. Though a similar obsession with shoes, female ensemble casts and male eye candy.
So this is what I’m reading right now. I’m also reading that book about Marconi and wireless telegraph and a crime novel the Supes leant me, but right now I can’t put this particular book down.
I’m not sure what my point is. But I think I’m wanting to say something about ‘literature’ and ‘reading’. And gender. And possibly hang a bit of shit on the whole idea of literature.
Ok, so we all know that it’s nice to read a well-written book. I’m with you on that. But just because I also like trash (and baby, do I like trash – I have seen EVERY SINGLE CHICK FLICK EVER MADE. And I love them all), does that mean I’m somehow culturally deficient? I mean, I’m a cultural studies dood. I’ve read Modleski and Radway. I freakin’ wrote a thesis on pop culture. So how come I’m sporting this pink book anxiety?
I think, really, for me, this stuff is only one point on a continuum of cultural consumption/practice. I likes de trash (look, ok, I’m coming out on that one: I cannot read ‘real’ pink books, but I’m enjoying this stuff). I love chick flicks – lady films as they’re known in our house. I was a massive Spice Girls fan. I spent a lot of time in gay clubs as late teen/early twenties person, and not because I’m a fag hag. But because I like trashy music and trashy disco dancing…. mostly the dancing to trashy disco. I like silly television.
And I like to read science fiction. Why is it that I still feel like I’m not doing ‘serious’ reading when I’m reading SF? Even when the SF I read inolves massively fat books, complicated politico/socio/ideological themes and complex characters?
Is it unAustralian of me to not know the names of any of the 7 little Australians? Is it wrong for me to not read poetry (and to have pretty much sworn off it so as to avoid flashbacks to my teenaged poetry writing phase? Oh man, I’m totally having horrible flashbacks as I type this. No, please, no – no more! No more stream of consciousness poetry! No!)?
Fuck – look at the time. I told you!

cover bands

Ok, so this is some freaking amazing fan action. Check out this post from Solomon on the SwingDJs board:

(Posted by Solomon: Wed Jan 31, 2007 07:20)
Post subject: Seeking recommendations of pre-Swing big band recordings
I’m always writing new arrangements to expand the reportoire of my ten-piece orchestra, and right now I want to do so by regressing in time. Currently most of my book is stuff from the late 1930s to the mid 1960s, with a special emphasis on late 1950s (New Testament Basie etc.) I want to start doing a bunch of music from the period 1915-1935.
Therefore, I’m asking for recommendations (“requests”, if you will) of recordings from that period that I should take a listen to! Here are my parameters. Because of the size of my band (three reeds, three brass, four rhythm), I’m going to focus on songs with great written arrangements rather than collective improvisation. In other words, I’m more interested in pre-Swing big band repertoire (or small-group repertoire with a minimum of group improvisation) than polyphonic New Orleans hot jazz. I’m also looking for instrumental music rather than vocals.
For example, here are some artists I’m thinking of (with examples of the sort of song I mean)
Duke Ellington (The Mooche, Saturday Night Function, Black Beauty, many others)
Benny Moten (Moten Swing)
Jimmie Lunceford (Flaming Reeds And Screaming Brass, White Heat, Stomp It Off)
Fletcher Henderson (King Porter Stomp, Sugar Foot Stomp)
Jelly Roll Morton (Deep Creek, New Orleans Bump)
Fats Waller (The Minor Drag)
King Oliver (Struggle Buggy)
Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra (Casa Loma Stomp, San Sue Strut)
Mound City Blue Blowers (Hello Lola!)
Reuben Reeves (Yellow Five)
By the way, I love vocal music, and I love New Orleans-style group improvisation. It’s just that my band is not well-suited to playing that kind of stuff.
Oh, and also, I’d especially appreciate stuff that’s between 120bpm and 220bpm… it seems much easier to come up with great stuff outside of that range, as you can see from my list above. But feel free to suggest songs at any tempo, as long as they were recorded before 1936.
Thanks in advance! I look forward to seeing what suggestions you guys can come up with.
Solomon

And when you read that in light of this interesting post on onlinefandom…
It’s a bit late for me to be touching the computer (I have to have a mandatory 2 hour cool off period or else I’m up all night IMing buddies overseas, buying music on amazon and writing shit on international discussion boards), so I won’t write anything more.
… but that’s some really interesting shit. Especially when it was Solomon who transcribed the Keep Punchin’ music for the Big Apple (he wasn’t the only one, but his version is the better of his and JW’s). Solomon is also a keen dancer and dance teacher as well as DJ and pianist. He’s also a mathematician.