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Tide turns against record industry
The Triangles
sparkle By Nike Reikjavike One thing must be said from the outset. This band is daggy. Not just ordinary daggy but transcendently, weirdly daggy, so daggy that in fact they have created a daggy black hole which has sucked them into an alternate, cool universe. Not brassy, but still gleaming Album:
Gold Vince Jones, along with James Morrison, is a rare creature: an Australian jazz musician who has achieved widespread popularity. Yet, unlike Morrison, he has not achieved notoriety with technical mastery, but per medium of an impressive musicality. Jones's voice is not especially virtuosic, and his flugelhorn playing is, to be generous, modest (some might go further and say it has reason to be bashful). But his vocal phrasing and control of dynamics is genuinely affecting and subtle. His voice has a pleasantly husky tone, but, lacking a wide range, his melodies are as much a part of a broader musical texture as the primary focus. Welcome to the ezine Welcome to "The Dues", the official, and for that matter unofficial, on-line magazine of the MUA. The site, which will be deeply impressive, even readable, will cover three general areas:
The main story of the first edition is an interview with Mark Murphy, widely, and justly, regarded as the world's best living jazz singer. We also have a number of other interviews with local musicians, and will be including brief selections of their music. We hope you enjoy this first edition; we look forward to developing it to meet your needs in the future. Disclaimer: |
The Best Living: Mark Murphy World's
best jazz singer has breath control, amnesia, and an unusual passion.
His secret? Simple. The breathing. "Since I have been teaching, the last 10 to 15 years, I have perfected my breathing so that I have a large rib and lung capacity. That is where your control is. How much air do you have to parcel out when you want to? I tell my kids (students) 'Like, you design your silence as much as you design for your vocal'. It is a motivated emotional desire. How you feel at the moment, what words you are working with. I am very pleased the way it moves people." The style was also part a necessary response to circumstances, which for jazz musicians are often less than perfect. "I used to work in a noisy club in the North Bay of San Francisco. The (jagged phrasing) bothered them. 'What the hell is he doing?' But at least I got their attention. The first thing you have to do is get their attention or you are wasting your time."
By Peter Haydon Nasrine Rahmani has been banging a drum since she was fifteen. And her family loves it. And not just her natural family. Rahmani believes that music crosses all cultural and language barriers -- a communication that everyone understands. A member of Melbourne
band Tumbarumba, Nasrine and her sister started off as dancers but now
both play percussion. "We had no real family background in music. Our
parents always loved it, though, and Mum's our best fan." When Nasrine
was still a teenager and It's hard not to dance
to the funky Afro-Brazilian rythms of Tumbarumba. Familiar at major festivals
and around town, they delighted the enormous crowds at the recent St Kilda
Festival. Sam Green: Russian Roulette in the desert By Peter Haydon Musicians routinely run the gauntlet with audiences, but few have done it in quite such dangerous circumstances as singer Sam Green, a relative of Dylan and Bernstein. On one occasion, it was literally a life and death matter that he please his audience. "One time I was in the Sinai Desert, sleeping out under stars," recalls Green, smiling reflectively. "I woke up in the middle of the night with a man standing over me. He said "I hear you play good music. Come and play for me and my friends." I said, "No I'm tired, I just want to sleep!" He put a gun to my head and said "You play. If I like I no pull the trigger." I played for four hours while we all got drunk. Eventually they gave me some water and I walked away."
"My mother's family came on Sundays to sing their Russian songs" said Sam. "My father, a published poet in Russia, read poetry to me." Send us your email, notes, memos, random thoughts, trenchant complaints. Tell us about your adventures, strugggles, disasters, disappointments and successes as a musician. We give preference to letters of 200 words or less, but try your luck anyway. We may edit your letters for reasons of space, or possibly because we're just a bunch of interfering bastards. Despite that, we welcome your feedback, comments and observations. You can use a pseudonym if you wish, but please include your real name, suburb/town and, if you are writing from outside Victoria, your state/country. Email us at musosunion@aol.com. Got a problem or question relating to the music biz? Ask Uncle Terry. Whether it's contract negotiation, how to get paid by a venue, or if there is such a thing as an honest manager, Uncle Terry will answer your questions, or die trying. It's good to have an uncle in the biz... You can email Uncle Terry on musosunion@aol.com.
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More booty lies over the ocean By Theo Schulsus Pecs Gigs on Ships Cairns Drop the act &
offer distribution Orchestras go molto
largo Where comedy goes
will music follow? ...click here for more Intelligence Don't mention the music! Reviewer: Polly
Coufos By W.Earl D'Moussec Polly Coufos has achieved something of a record. In a review of 402 words she has avoided mentioning anything at all about the music being performed until 182 words have elapsed (that's about 45.27% of the article for the statistically minded). Spiritual intoxication Reviewer: John
Slavin By Maeve Prose Slavin's review is a near perfect example of the Berlioz inspired "review from the heart" style, although in this instance the source definition should be broadened to include at least "the gut" and probably regions further south as well. His statistics are impressive: four unsupported assertions masquerading as fact, four non specific descriptors conveying nothing, 6 examples of "purple prose", one inappropriate use of a technical term and one overuse of a term. All of this contained in a neat 378 words! His score on "The Dues Noun to Moderator Ratio Index" (TDNMRI) is a staggering 78.72%! One can't resist the opportunity to present some excerpts: "... a nice fruity lower register...", "...a lyric tenor with steel in his voice...", "...a sweetly swooning duet..." HARMONY
Part One in a series
by What is harmony? Simply the business of playing more than one note at the same time. A lot has been written about this subject over the last few centuries, much of it under the title of "theory". In this series we will view harmony as "fact". The fact in question is that certain combinations of notes have an urge to move to certain other combinations of notes. The Young Shark's Guide to Negotiation First in a two-part series By Verite Soon In this article we are considering, specifically, negotiation in the music industry but the ideas could be applied elsewhere. The ancient Romans had a word "otium" which meant leisure or recreation, by placing a negative prefix in front of it, the word became "negotium" meaning business or work, so leisure was first and work came second. Our word negotiation comes from the "negotium" and that fact should remind us that negotiation should be conducted in a business-like manner. Filter fatigue in the home studio By Steve Smith The recent advent of PC-based and digital workstation based recording has meant that now Joe Public can set up a home studio of outstanding quality for very little outlay. There is one angle that hasn't been explored in the popular press in relation to digital gear, and it is a lesson that might be deduced from many years of dealing with analog devices. This is the notion of "filter fatigue".
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Is it piracy, the changing times or just sheer bad management? The music
industry as we know it is sinking, but there may be good news for musicians.
They
wear SES uniforms or have a string of parsnips hanging around their necks;
the impossibly young and pure and blond singer wraps a computer mouse
round her waist, the baby-faced drummer wears a long silver top hat with
the word "HOPE" emblazoned on it. Yep. But somehow, they are never cringey.
Mark
Murphy is one of the world's great jazz singers, perhaps the finest living.
The man who devised a radical phrasing style that is at once surprising
and reassuring, rhythmic and tender, has established a standard of evocativeness
few have equalled. Preferring to think of himself as a musical poet, Murphy
exhibits a type of jazz prosody: rhythmic enjambment, jagged caesura,
iambic syncopations. 
Nasrine
Rahmani: drumming and the human family
performing regularly, her mum drove her to gigs, and provided a rehearsal
studio for her daughters in the family home. "At our CD launch, she even
got up on stage and danced with us!" said Nasrine. 
Not
all of Sam Green's musical life has been so dramatic. Related to Bob Dylan
on his father's side, and the composer Leonard Berstein on his mother's
side, it was hardly surprising that at six he developed an ear for music
and poetry. 
