TWO MAN GENTLEMEN BAND SHOULD BE MY BOYFRIENDS

Fuck, look, I thought this thing would blow over. But it hasn’t.

The Two Man Gentlemen Band – Gentle Stomp from Live & Breathing on Vimeo.

I AM SO CRAZY FANSQUEE ABOUT THE TWO MAN GENTLEMEN BAND!!! If I could remember who it was who first linked em up on FB for me to see and fall in love with, I would find them and kiss them on the lips.

I love the way they say “leeesher class” in my favourite song ‘The Leisure Class’. I love the way they talk about cream in ‘Chocolate Milk’.

This love will never end. I’m stuck with them. Forever. Pity the dancers at the gigs I’m DJing. Pity them.

twittah!

I’ve just started a new twitter account using the name dogpossum4real, which’ll just be my music and dancing stuff. It’s an open account, so anyone can follow me. I’ll still be using @dogpossum for the bulk of my tweeting, but it’s still locked, and I’m still a bit careful about who follows me on that one. So if you’d rather screen out the endless tweets about Sam and Dean actually kissing, @dogpossum4real is the account for you.

Miss Piggy, Literary Icon

in response to the question “What do men look for in a woman?”:
They look for someone feminine, sweet, intelligent, and demure. They look for that certain flair, that je ne sais pas. They look for style, substance, and sweep. They look for a full, generous figure coupled with a deep, smoldering gaze. And then, alas, just when they have found it, I must tell them that I am spoken for.

Miss Piggy, Literary Icon, by Emma Straub

The King of China’s Daughter

I’m thinking about Natalie Merchant and Abigail Washburn and how they negotiate orientalism. Both are American folk music specialists (or fans, really), and are also influenced by Chinese folk music themes.

I haven’t thought much about this beyond a beginning point, but it’s interesting to compare Merchant’s song and video for ‘The King of China’s Daughter’ with Washburn’s music. Merchant’s song is positioned as part of a collection of songs for her small daughter in the album Leave Your Sleep, so the almost dodgy orientalist stuff is kind of mediated or made reflexive. Or is it? Merchant can be a bit naive… or obtuse about this stuff sometimes. Though the concepts and design for her album Ophelia suggest otherwise (the video for ‘Ophelia’ is a good example).
Washburn, however, is a slightly different animal. She speaks Cantonese (I think) and has traveled extensively. Her work often features Chinese instruments… and Mongolian!

linky

I was kind of stunned by the dancer in this video:

linky

There’s something about the harmonies in that clip that remind me of the tuning in Appalachian stuff.

is this your cat?



is this your cat?, originally uploaded by dogpossum.

We saw this piece of A4 paper sticky taped to a pole in Balmain. There were hundreds of them. It’s a very Balmain type of poster. I couldn’t quite believe what I was reading. At the top it asks ‘IS THIS YOUR CAT?” and supplies a phone number and name to ring if this is, in fact, your cat.

THIS IS A LARGE BLACK AND WHITE CAT WITH IRREGULAR MARKINGS. HE IS FRIENDLY, BUT WILL NOT ACCEPT LIMITS.
WE HAVE LIVED WITH HIS UNWANTED VISITS FOR MORE THAN A YEAR.
RECENTLY, THESE HAVE MARKEDLY ESCALATED.
HE IS SERIOUSLY BULLYING TWO CATS IN NORTH ST BALMAIN, AND THIS
CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO CONTINUE

The Eurythmics

I’ve been revisiting the Eurythmics in the last couple of months, particularly their 1983 album Savage. Even though I love it, Sweet Dreams (are made of this) is probably my favourite album.

I really liked the video clips for the songs from Savage, and have just realised that they were directed by Sophie Muller, and that there was a video clip for each song. All the clips join up (sort of) and make a kind of long film or story. I had no idea that these videos had anything more in common than particular characters until looking them up on youtube. I do have a Eurythmics video somewhere, but I haven’t watched it in years as I don’t have a VCR. My favourites are Beethoven and I need a Man.

Links to all the videos (I’ve starred my favourites):
Beethoven*
I’ve got a lover (back in Japan)
Do you want to break up
You have placed a chill in my heart
Shame
Savage*
Put the blame on me
Heaven
Wide Eyed Girl
I need you
Brand new day

Annie Lennox is always good for a bit of gender play, and I like the way she used different characters in these videos. I didn’t get into the Eurythmics until I was about 15, but ‘Sisters are Doing It For Themselves’ was released in 1985, and it really made an impression, even though I was only 11. There was something exciting about Aretha’s busty enthusiasm and Lennox in her short, bleached hair, leather trousers and tailored jacket.

I’m not all that interested in Annie Lennox more recently, nor Dave Stewart, but those earlier Eurythmics albums are really fun.

I think, really, I like Annie Lennox for those characters and dressing up in the Savage videos. I like the way they contrast with her usual short hair and jackets. I like this idea of dressing up and occupying characters or identities for performing. Not in a ‘I’m an actor and I’m playing blahblah’ way, but in a ‘today I put on this character, who’ll then go and do the show at blahblah venue and sing ‘Shame”. It’s a useful way of thinking about performance, for singing or for dance, and I think it’s a fun way of exploring gender.

This post isn’t really going anywhere in particular, but I’m putting together some ideas about imitation, copying, impersonation and so on. It’s such an interesting concept, and can work in so many ways, and I just can’t keep away from it. But Annie Lennox is a useful example (for me and my thinking, anyway) of how impersonation and identity/gender play can be subversive and quite powerful in a performance context.

Moonstruck

Last night there was a lunar eclipse, and I was up at midnight to see it. It was an amazing thing, but now I am feeling the late night in my bones.

I’m ‘preparing’ for another Speakeasy (10:30pm next Friday night, Crossover studio, 22 Golburn St, Sydney), when I should really be lying on the couch watching Nick Cage rage against the injustice of his severed hand before being ravished by Cher. I should perhaps also be eating a little high-end chocolate.
But no. I’m fucking about with my music.

Last night I went to my second dance christmas party of the year, and it was good. Both dances featured Pugsly Buzzard, which is pretty ok, as he is pretty damn good. Last night he was playing with a drummer and a broken legged tuba player (there’s a joke in there somewhere), which was kind of odd, considering the crowd was mostly rock n rollers (that school teaches rock n roll and lindy hop). But it all turned out ok in the end. Most of us can get behind a bit of dirty Fats Waller or growly early rhythm n blues. I danced my pants off, sweating through three shirts and asploding my poor knees. I was leading an awful lot, more than following, and by the end of the night I had complete brain drain and couldn’t string two moves together. Need. More. Moves.

I think my favourite part of the night was dancing to a particularly awesome mashedup version of ‘Shake That Thing/Shimmy Like My Sister Kate’ with a really fun friend who also likes to dance de solo, and also does dancehall, so she’s packing serious hip isolation. No, wait, the best part of the night was dancing with her near some older rock n rollers. Older rock n rollers can be very conservative about gender stuff, so they were quite disapproving.
Actually, I know my favourite part of last night was after the band had finished, watching Bruce and Sharon dance to a rock and roll song and finally understanding why people dance rock and roll. I really can’t stand that partner stuff where the guy kind of hunches forwards with his elbow glued to his right hip, his arm bent 45 degrees, and kind of bobbing his head up and down, looking at the floor while he spins and spins and spins his partner. Boring Town. But Bruce and Sharon – with their exciting, dynamic amazing dancing of amazingness – made me realise what the big deal is, and I was almost moved to Cross The Floor and take up something a little more modern. Almost.

I liked it that the gig was at the Marrickville Hardcourt Tennis Club, which is also a Portugese social club, and that meant the food was interesting. This is one of the positives of the Australian social club scene. And I liked very much that the band played that Donald Harrison/Dr John version of ‘Big Chief’. The nice thing about a crowd from different dance styles and scenes is that there’s going to be someone out there who will give each song a go.

But today I am feeling very seedy.

Last night followed a busy Friday night where Alice and I taught at Swingpit and I realised that when I’m teaching dance I’m just as ‘on’ as when I’m tutoring or lecturing, except I’m doing the equivalent to aerobics at the same time.
I was so bloody buggered afterwards. It was total fun, though, and it was really nice to talk about Frankie Manning to a bunch of new dancers, and the importance of pretending you’re a 90 year old man on his third hip. I think the best part of teaching is figuring out that the silliest (yet most authentic) jazz steps make other people giggle like fools as well. It’s very, very nice to see people who enter the room shy and uncomfortable at their first dance class transform into exhibitionists, simply through the power of ridiculousness. I’m also kind of fascinated by the fact that I’m talking about pretending to be a man when I’m dancing while I’m standing in front of a crowd of men who then use me as their model for movement. Genderflex to the power of n, to the point where it’s not even really worth bothering trying to figure out whether we’re using ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ movements. And I keep coming across deaf dancers, dancers who really get what’s happening in dance. Oh yeeaaah.

After we finished that, I social danced like a crazy person until I realised I was dying of dehydration and a bit tired and overwhelmed by the noise and had to sit outside for a little bit. Then I danced some more.

I do love dancing. I love it so much. And I’m quite enjoying not DJing as much. More dancing. More. Now I am madly frustrated by my lack of moves for leading. Luckily, there’s a solution for that problem.

Ok, so now I’m sitting on the couch, kind of melting in the humidity, but at the same time still stupidly dehydrated. Trying to get my brain around some music for the Speakeasy, and not doing so well. Everything feels a bit loud and a bit annoying. Really, the only solution is a little Japanese funk.

Osaka Monaurail, Quick Sand

Or, really, a bit of light weight soul would be a better fit. I really like this particular version of I Need A Dollar by Aloe Blacc:

But, really, the best of all things is a bit of Sharon Jones

All that is the kind of action that goes down well at a Speakeasy (I’ve written about this event lots of times because I love it). I know, the name suggests a sort of 20s vibe, but it has that name because that’s what it was at first. But now it is legit. I like to do this soul/funk stuff, but I find it gets a bit old after a while, and I really tend to lean on people like Big Mama Thornton and then over into the gutsier vocal blues at higher tempos. Last time I did this gig, I really wanted to play the Propellerheads doing ‘History Repeating’ with Shirley Bassey because I remember dancing to it in nightclubs, but it doesn’t actually work that well when you compare it to really good music. I mean, it’s good, but it’s not brilliant. Shirley Bassey is, though.

I really like the way all this stuff is in stereo. It kind of blows my brain.

Really, a successful Speakeasy set ends up being 3 parts NOLA, 1 part Big Mama Thornton. But right now I think I need to watch Olympia Dukakis disapproving of weak-willed men for a couple of hours.