Not In Kansas .. Or Are We?

That concert that we went to on Friday night (which was super, by the way) was part of the jazz festival that was has been on here for the last fortnight or so, and look at their logo thingie:

Weird. Even better was the backdrop thingie on the stage:

Giganto instrument-wielding kangaroos. Odd.

SN-DTOMC - Tamworth

Well, I'm back. In case you didn't know or notice, I wasn't around for the last week. I was off on a Surprisingly Non-Disturbing Tour Of My Childhood.

The first stop was a night spent with friends in Tamworth, disturbingly enough at the time that the town's annual country music festival was reaching its climax. My friends there swear that they don't have any particular fondness for country music, but are adamant that the festival is super and that there's much more to it than just country music. Having harboured traumatic childhood memories of driving though Tamworth on the way home from Christmas holidays for many years (you couldn't get out of the car to buy a sandwich without being bombarded by yodelling buskers and people in unfeasibly large hats) I was always extremely sceptical about how much fun enduring two solid weeks of it could be. As it turns out, a single night isn't too bad.

We started in a bar somewhere, and after making the fairly amateurish mistake of leaving there after a few hours (the queue to get back in was surprising, but apparently not at all unusual) we went to see a band that was giving a free performance at another pub. As it turned out this was a band that my sister had seen in Sydney recently, and they were not country music-y at all. They knew their audience, though, and so instead of doing much of their own stuff, they stuck mainly to cover versions of Australia-heavy songs (this was also Australia Day. At one point some drunken dude on the dancefloor turned around and yelled at the semi-enthusiastic audience "Come on! It's Australia Day, it's Acca Dacca*, it doesn't get more Aussie than this!" which was a nice try but it didn't really result in anyone else embracing displays of unbridled patriotism) and they were super. Instead of ending on that high note, though, we stayed for the next band who we thought was some guy who was also not a country music band, but apparently he was on on a different stage** and so we accidentally watched a terrifyingly country bush band (with a guy in it sporting pyjama pants and the biggest mullet in the history of mullets) singing "click go the shears" and "give me a home among the gum trees" and that "I am, you are, we are Australian" song for 20 minutes or so until we managed to escape.


Unscathed but a little bit traumatised.



* Because they were doing a cover of some AC/DC song at the time
** The "stage" we were at was actually a truck that they had parked next to the verandah of the pub. I gather there was another room somewhere inside the pub and it had an actual stage. The inside of the pub smelt pretty strongly of vomit, though, so I'm glad we weren't too committed to the other band

Smoky Cats

We went and saw The Cat Empire in Zurich last night, which was good but not as great as I was hoping (sadly. That's what comes of getting your hopes up, though, I suppose). Last time I saw them was at a festival, I think*, and the stage was huge and the crowd was all pretty mellow and there was plenty of space and they did all this ridiculous dancing in a line thing on stage and I had no expectations at all (which were wildly exceeded, if that is possible). This time it was in a very crowded venue, and we had to queue for about 800 years to check all our assorted winter woolies into the cloakroom (it has been completely freezing here for the last few days. Although not as freezing as where Reto's brother lives, which is expecting an overnight temperature of -19C tonight, apparently. -19!), and as a consequence of all the excessive queueing we actually missed the first song (Hello Hello!). As it turned out that was pretty much the only song that they actually played "straight", ie. without endless amounts of instrumental stuff that isn't on the CD version of the songs. I'm all for movies being not exactly the same as the books on which they are based, and I am all for musicians having the chance to do their thing and not be limited to what everybody already knows and loves, but it doesn't necessarily mean that I enjoy it. And frankly, judging by the reaction of the crowd (which went from hysterically happy and leapy-aroundy to being like a bunch of people standing in a room) I don't think I am the only one that feels that way. Although I did enjoy the bit where the trumpet dude turned into a human didgeridoo, interspersed with some relatively high-pitched chirping, which was kind of excellent and kind of odd. All in all, though, it sort of reminded me of people who enjoy driving around roundabouts and not leaving them until all the other people in the car become annoyed and potentially abusive. It's kinda fun if you are in on the joke, kind of annoying if you aren't.

The zombie wave, which caused so much confusion at the Crowded House Concert, was a bit of a non-event at this concert, mainly, I think, because it only really happened in the gap before the encore (ie. when the band weren't on stage), and it kind of fizzled out before it reached its typical climax. Personally I was only too pleased to see the end of it, because the zombie waver just behind me seemed to be relatively short, and so his little outstretched zombie arms kept touching the top of my head, which was a bit unnerving, in the manner of being outdoors and having bugs land on your head. Actually (and happily only in retrospect), it reminds me of when I was attacked repeatedly by a bird while at a nursery (plant shop) last year. That was kind of terrifying, and it was really only me that the bird was swooping at.

By far the worst aspect of the concert (apart from the fact that everyone seemed to be really tall! I can't remember ever being at a concert where I had such a bad view, and we weren't even that far from the front, because it really isn't such a big venue. Probably smaller even than the Metro in Sydney, if you want a reference point. And it was a terrible change from the Rüeblimärt the other week, where absolutely everyone was teeny tiny. If I had lost Reto in that crowd I would have spotted him again in a second, but at The Cat Empire I would have had no chance) was the fact that it was so very, very smoky. Because I lead such a sad, shut-in, impoverished type lifestyle here I rarely go to pubs, and even though you are allowed to smoke in cafes etc here, there are rarely so many people smoking (and generally in the smoking section, which isn't actually separated by anything other than half a room, but it's better than nothing, I suppose) that it makes much of a difference to me. Last night, though? My god. By the time I got home I was feeling nauseous, and (strangely enough, since I only had a glass) as though I had drunk about 8 bottles of wine, all of which I blame on the smoke. Grr.

Anyway, it was a good night out and I'm glad I went, but the super-crowdedness of the place (we were really wedged in), and the super-smokiness, and the super-instrumentaliness of it all made it less shiny than it could have been. Which is really too bad, because The Cat Empire really are super.

And in other news, you'll all be pleased to know that I have now fulfilled my electoral responsibilities, filled in my voting form (in a cafe, while drinking a glass of wine, hee hee. Which is actually quite hard to do with the combination of the vastly huge senate form and a very small table), got an appropriate witness to witness it (thankyou Sarah) and posted it off.



* Is this right, Steph? Did we see them at the Blues Fest? Now that I think about it, I have no recollection of it at all.