Simple as ABN

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Dear Uncle Terry,

We have got some gigs and the venue says we are subcontractors so we have to give them an ABN. Is this right?

Chris, Thomastown

Dear Chris,

Whether you are subcontractors or employees is a very complicated question involving the intricacies of Industrial Law. It is in the interests of many people in the music industry to treat you as subcontractors since they then don't have to abide by minimum award payments, pay superannuation (in some states), give you workers compensation insurance (in some states) and they can demand that you provide public liability insurance. None of these can occur if you are an employee. To complicate the matter further, decisions in the Industrial Relations Commission have set a precedent that the provision of an ABN is not sufficient, by itself, to make you a subcontractor. Confused? wait...there's more!!

The Australian Tax Office requires that you have an ABN if you are a subcontractor but not if you are an employee. It is possible that the ATO might determine that you are a subcontractor and the Industrial Relations Commission might determine that you are an employee for the same gig! You might even be deemed a subcontractor on some gigs and an employee on others in either of these jurisdictions.

This is a long answer to a short question but that's the way it is. Take some heart from the fact that this mess doesn't only affect musos and it's not limited to Australia! The final answer to your question is: it depends...

Holden drives Terry

Dear Uncle Terry

Who's your favourite Band?

Kevin (via email, no address given)

Dear Kevin,

Uncle Terry doesn't have a favourite anything, he's terminally grumpy. This would have been obvious to you if you had read the heading of this column.
[Ed: But we can tell you, Kevin, that Uncle Terry's favorite performer is Mark Holden. Many's the time we've snuck into his cave, and beheld him listening to I want to make you my lady on repeat, the tears making tracks in the grime on his craggy old face...]

Claiming your name

Dear Uncle Terry

We want to register our band name so no one else can use it, how do we do it?

Mardie, Ballarat

Dear Mardie,

Uncle Terry has been told that the only way to ensure complete protection is to trademark the name. This is a very long and extremely expensive process. As has been said before, Uncle Terry is not a lawyer but understands that as soon as you are playing under a particular name you have some interest in it. If that is so, you can make a case out in court for "deceptive or misleading conduct" or the "tort of passing off" if someone is using your name to pinch gigs from you.

Many bands lodge their name as a "registered business name". This is not expensive and can be done at "Consumer Affairs Victoria" (http://www.consumer.vic.gov.au/cbav/fairsite.nsf/pages/of_bnames) in Victoria or its equivalent in other states (This site gives you links for the relevant body in each state: http://www.complaintline.com.au/consumeraffairs.html) They should also be able to give you more details about the extent of the protection this process gives.

Uncle Terry .

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The drums! The drums!

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Taiko is always physically impressive - the power and discipline of the drummers never fails to inspire. The postures taken by the drummers are part of the performance and often extreme; they would probably not be Alexander-technique approved!

The drummers bounded on in sleeveless vests, men and women alike rippling their biceps in anticipation. But the first piece was a kind of call to mediation. Played by Riley Lee, Australia's premier shakuhachi player, with his usual precision and aplomb, Tamuke was a traditional "blowing meditation". His playing was quite stern and rigorous; possibly an appropriate way to start a taiko-driven gig, but lacking, I felt, in some subtle expressive nuance. Lee's work is always technically and sonically astonishing, but sometimes wanting in the gentler passions. As he finished, and without allowing applause, he took his place with the other taiko drummers.

The second piece Mono-prism, by Maki Ishii, was essentially an extended taiko/percussive soundscape embellished with orchestral textures. Don't go looking for tunes you can whistle in this one. The orchestral accompaniment featured repeated short figures or penetrating crescendi and tutti, as well as providing a kind of halo or ground for the taiko drumming to emerge from. Much of the time the orchestra was barely audible, at least from where I was sitting at the back of the somewhat sound-deadened stalls.

The huge percussion section, on the other hand, was having fun. But the most impressive fun was being had by the taiko drummers. When, early in Ishii's piece, they first began to play, it was with arms fully extended, and with the most delicate strokes - a departure from tradition, because taiko is normally anything but quiet.

Mono-prism is a great show for both traditional and more extended styles of taiko. A long duet played by two of the drummers on either head of the o-daiko (enormous drum) would not have disgraced any traditional performance, and literally shook the Concert Hall with thunderous intensity (and impressed the audience with the precision and sheer endurance of the drummers - try pounding the wall above your head with two baseball bats non-stop for twenty minutes in a complex, fast and precise rhythm, and you'll get some idea of the fitness of these players). Another section, in the best traditions of modern Western composition, had the drummers bouncing their sticks off the nagadou heads in an aleatoric pattern,.

Iwaki's conducting of the piece was relaxed and undemonstrative, and a model of a practical way in which to deal with a complex and sometimes indeterminate "modern" piece.

At the close of the piece, to enthusiastic applause, taiko drummers and orchestral percussionists faced each other with expressions of mutual respect. As well they might - the rest of the orchestra had merely provided a faint halo around their glory. A bright traditional encore for flute (Riley Lee again) taiko and orchestral percussion saw TaikOz relaxed, happy and showing off to everyone's mutual pleasure.

The second part of the concert was taken up with a performance of Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss. The introduction (Sunrise), so famously used at the beginning of the Stanley Kubrick film 2001, is one of the best-know orchestral passages in the world, and perhaps is the closest in spirit to Nietzche's high adventure of philosophy on the road less travelled. Hackneyed though it may be, it still lifted the hairs on the back of my neck.

The rest of the piece is somewhat more submerged in Strauss' complex whimsy - the most famous exponent of the tone poem, although purportedly basing his piece "freely...after Fr. Nietzche" gives an extremely personal and idiosyncratic reading here of Nietzche's work.

Strauss is anything but straightforward, and uses an extreme divisi especially among the strings, sometimes to the point of sonic obscurity. Granted this may have been partly a problem of performance (there was certainly some uncertain pitching in a divisi bass section at one point) but the dividing line between divine complexity and effectless mess is sometimes drawn a bit thinly in Strauss orchestrations. There were, however, moments of breathtaking beauty , among them the quiet final section of Night Wanderer's song, bringing the piece to a hushed and tonally ambiguous close.

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