Motley Is A Fool's Uniform

Despite the cold and incipient threat of rain* I headed down to The Wheatie to see Dandelion Wine (or Dandilleon Wine as Elise refers to them), in their whistle-stop tour of Adelaide celebrating 10 years since they produced their EP Light Streaming Down which they credit as their inspiration for heading off to Europe. This duo comes with more than their weight in musical toys of various sorts. At one point Nick was playing both mandolin and electric guitar (one strapped above the other), whilst Naomi was playing flute and electronic drum. Not that this was over several delayed loops as well. Given the basis of the journey the music varied from the electro-trance of their early years to the more complicated and deeper electronica fusion they currently play. It even included a new song!

Hopefully they will be back after their next European tour with a new CD. And hopefully they'll play at a venue much more suitable for dance than the Wheatie (despite the fact it is a good venue the varying slopes on the floor are tricky). Then again, it wasn't really a dancey crowd, much as I would have liked it to be.

A large part of the crowd was actually was there to see Leigh Stardust (or it just might have been that they had an early bed-time), as the crowd seemed to have thoroughly dwindled for Dandelion Wine. Which was a pity. Then again, DW can be an acquired taste.

Anyway Ms Stardust was the opening act and she ran through quite a few of her new songs, with the accompanying logorrhoea of bizarre commentary that makes her performances a lot of fun to attend. You'll never attend the same one twice, even if it had the same set list. I actually had a song about the Armageddon enveloping Adelaide dedicated to me for the mere price of a chocolate frog. [There did seem to be rather extensive contamination from Brillig in her new songs: disasters, death, mayhem, and bad (and good) love affairs.]

Anyway it was lots of fun and I am looking forward to see both bands again the next time the play in Adelaide.

[* Aforementioned threat being realised on the way home outside the new hospital construction site (no shelter). Which meant that my celebratory mango sticky black rice was a no go.]

A very relaxed Clare Bowditch show at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. I'm fairly certain she didn't forget more than half the words from more than half the songs, but it might have been close. Seriously she covered well and you would have to be a musical super-genius fan of Clare average audience member primary school graduate to notice her clever improvised substitutions. I mean the escalating trill of "for-gott-tetten-eenn-en" was a bit of a fit in that one song, but otherwise...

On a far more serious note (such as the one Clare illustrated on the piano-forte in imitation of Gerard Depardieu in Green card) it was a lot of fun. There was a lot of new stuff (world premiere - 1 [as there was a show yesterday]), a couple of covers, and some from the last album. A lot of crowd participation was required, which met with mixed success amongst the generally older audience near the stage (critical mass was never really reached and sustained until just near the end). I'm sure there are a lot of illegal bootlegs of her new songs available somewhere, especially when Clare pointedly hinted that she didn't really mind bootlegs (although such was seriously against Festival policy, so no one was obvious about it).

The crowd was heavily biased towards the Adelaide Cabaret Festival attendees rather than Clare's usual run of much younger fans (at least gathering from the people seated around us, although I expect there was an age-reversal in the gallery. We were in fact joined at our table by a nice couple of afore-mentioned Festival-goers who were astonished to discover that we had seen Clare seven or so times previously (five for me I think). They were quite impressed and were looking forward to attending one of her future shows at The Gov with her full line-up (this had a much abbreviated line-up).

Was quite enjoyable, rounded out by dessert at Saldechin (a white chocolate and cheese empanada for me).

Looked like so many wonderful singers and shows at the Cabaret Festival this year. Almost tempted by a few, but I shall resist. Probably even resist Tripod since no one else is interested. <sigh>

Jeff Russell's Starship Dimensions.

A useful site giving visual representations of the size of many SF vehicles.

Useful for me since my "fighter shuttle" size in my 4X game turns out to be a nice match for a Boeing 747 - just the size of the Orion Shuttle. Which means, yes, most SF starfighters are G-class units (the equivalent of a grav tank or atmospheric vehicle). [H-class is human by the way. The largest class of "ship" is the A-class Assault vessels (a Dreadnaught by any other name would still cure constipation in an enemy), although star bases and battlestations can go to Z-class and above. Unfortunately I don't quite make P-class = planet, although S-class may make a star...]

Despite being in so much pain I was almost vomiting by the end of the night, I quite enjoyed the Sponsor's Concert by Damh the Bard. His presence down-under was effectively crowd-sourced, with the prize being this concert (and the special edition recording of it afterwards). I do like his work and do recommend seeing him live, even if you aren't a pagan.

Those wanting to catch him in Adelaide have one last chance tonight (at the PASA meeting at Marcellina's Pizza Bar [$5 entry]), and people in Melbourne (Thursday), Sydney (Friday), and Brisbane (Saturday) can catch him at the various gigs and balls he is playing with Spiral Dance. See the Spiral Dance gig page for details.

[And it appears that Reverence Pavane is actually a cute blonde veterinary nurse. Who knew?]

Today was the English Ale. The standard torch-lit procession, although I suspect this was the last time I shall be a torchbearer in the Ale. Not only was I told to shut up when I pointed out a flaw in their master plan (and was actually later proven right, although it wasn't something disasterous just something that could have been better done), but someone who asked the same question just afterwards was answered. It went reasonably well anyway. They had a nice flaming sculpture to light the wickerman and everyone enjoyed a good bonfire before heading up to the concert.

The gig was excellent, starting with what I suppose was a good traditional Punch & Judy show (actually I can't stand P&J for some reason), followed by Musical Hall devotees Bygone Error who enthralled with enlightened entertainment ad exotic witticisms and songs. Excellent at what they do, as always.

There then followed a set by Spiral Dance to which I danced - there was even an extremely cute person to dance with, although her daughter was deathly scared of me [excellent judge of character]).

Then there was Damh the Bard (pronounced "Dave"), who does wonderfully moving Druidic and pagan songs, which mostly turned into a sing-a-long. Although there were a couple of dances.

It was lots of fun.

Kudos to all the people that contributed to making it worthwhile.

I was sure I've filled you in on recent music acquisitions. But apparently not, unless LJ is losing posts, which really wouldn't surprise me. So it's probably going to be time for a big post soon. Probably after the 22nd.

Anyway for now, have a list of my recent acquisitions:

• Artificial Heart by Jonathan Coulton (he of Portal closing credits fame).
• The Mutiny by Sunday Driver.
• Live At The El Ray by Collide
• Things to Make and Do by Moloko (which admittedly was the one Moloko album I didn't already have for some reason).

Mostly it was finishing off the offering of many of the bands I liked, so there was no exploration. In the meantime I've received a few physical CDs, a few other downloads from Bandcamp and the like, the results of a couple of Kickstarters (Galanis, Amanda Palmer & Neil Gaiman). Plus all the stuff I picked up at the Fringe. Maybe I thought I'd listen to them first? Oh well. Not that anyone read these anyway. <wink>

I have just seen episode 8 of the third season of Young Dracula.

Wow.

They (exactly who shall remain nameless) broke Ingrid. Badly. And Clare Thomas' very haunting portrayal at the end of the episode, of Ingrid's forced realisation that she was never even close to being in the running as the world's Absolute Evil was just perfect. We shall now see what changes this causes to her, but it's definitely a turning point in her existence.