Singing out the weekend

Heard last night. Surprising, exhilarating, fabuloso!







PS - and we discovered this great new/old spot to eat before the show.We enjoyed the old Razor's Edge restaurant, so great to see it's been reinvented. I had the oven baked schnitzel and my husband had a great sirloin steak. And the hand cut chips were as good as they say! The upstairs section had only opened the night before -seems like a lovely outdoor terrace that we can look forward to using as the weather warms up.

I got tickets!

Been trying to see this band for well over a year now. Missed them in the Festival of Sydney - they were totally sold out. I then had (slim) hopes I might catch up with them in New York, but finally, finally, I booked us seats today to see them at the Enmore - and can you believe it (I can't quite)- they are here in a couple of weeks time! This was one of my favest songs of last year ... and yes, that's Michael McDonald of Doobie Bros singing - they recorded this b-side track, featuring his voice - I think the story goes that he was in the next studio and they got him to sing backing vocals and one thing led to another ... I love this version 10 times more than their original, which is wonderful, but not great like this ...

Much smiling is going on here!!

and another

More music for the afternoon. Loving Best Coast - they are the best! Great summery, beachy sound, just what we need in the midst of a chilly winter.
(and check out the 60's dance routines, matching beige outfits and The Hats!!!)

Just coz

Everyone needs some T-Rex now and again .... Yay!!
Good for when you need a 70s fix. And this looks like the German Countdown - everyone seems so neat, cool and in complete control!

And another Yay!! - to Australia Post. The first of my Etsy purchases appeared this evening. More details tomorrow!

Grace

It's a warm night here, summer has come. Cicadas chickering in the background. Crickets. Little wisps of cool breeze lick past me.

Earlier evening was stormy, black clouds gathered and some rain fell but all that is gone now. Lightening show in the distance, travelling north, illuminating the sky with sudden bright flashes.

Salad for dinner. One of the chickens I roasted last night and a delicious red cabbage salad with mixed beans, red onion, carrot, capsicum and a pumpkin seed oil and red wine vinegar dressing.

Afterwards, Dad and I shared watermelon on the deck, making the most of the cool air outside. Reminiscing, sharing a few laughs, planning for Christmas and a few weekend trips coming up.

A Jeff marathon has been playing in the background tonight on the teve. It's 12 years.

Not much more needs to be said really. It's all about grace isn't it.

Over to you Jeff ::::

Rocking my world

Just discovered a fun new toy today, MixPod - it's right here on my blog now and I'm busily adding to it - just hit an 80s vein and started adding stuff like XTC and Style Council but I'm back to the now again, adding a new band, Them Crooked Vultures (Dave Grohl, the guy from Queens of the Stone Age and John Paul Jones from Led Zepellin!) as well as Perth singer Felicity Groom - I really prefer her song Treasures, sounds very Go Betweenish.
As you can see I'm a bit of an indie girl, but I'll be adding plenty of mainstream stuff too. What fun!!

The thing I really wanted to blog today is jacaranda. I'll let this picture gallery tell the story:
Jacaranda

 This great (local) shot is by schizophonia

Declan McManus

Just got home after seeing another fabulous outing (our third) from this amazingly talented guy. Solo.

Tonight showed just how talented he is. Wow, he can sing and he can play the guitar - and he had quite a few of them! 2 hours solid, only 1 or 2 minutes off the stage before he was straight back into it.

And he had a great hat!

This was the final song and it's one of my faves. Just as electric as the first time I saw him do it here:



He played this tonight too and this clip reminds me of when we saw him at the Opera House:



And he did this one - it is just a lovely song:



The support act was great too - Shelley Harland. Nice songs, great band and she has a great voice.

And she had on a great pair of boots!

Happy Birthday!

Touring now ...

Visiting a theatre to pick up tickets for a show we are seeing on Sat night, I heard said performer ... performing a sound check. Who? Him of course! What a happy conincidence, I say!

Then this evening we visited a quirky music venue to see these amazing musicians (we had a different double bass player).

I'm in love with something I have never come across before, the Cimbalom. (Man seated with blindfold is the Cimbalom player - he played it perfectly!) It can sound like any number of instruments. Wow! What a show. I think I'll be trying to track down one of their records, like this one perhaps. Here is more about him and his band.

Oh, and we had v.yummy pizza, red wine, coffee and baby cakes. Noice!

What a lucky week of music this is!!

We like sheep ... (Handeltober)

This time of year sets me to thinking about a lovely thing I did a couple of times, a number of years ago. I joined an exceedingly large collection of voices to practice and eventually perform a long and involved piece of celebratory music.

The Radio Community Chest's Combined Church Choirs perform Handel's Messiah at the Sydney Town Hall every year and have done so since 1941. As with most experiences, the journey is almost as memorable as the performances. During the years I participated, we were schooled by a very skilled conductor who taught us how to pronouce words without an Australian accent - for example, most Australians would sing hal-lay-lu-yarr but we were taught to sing something more like har-laieee-lawww-yarrrr.

It is such an amazing thing to sing -  long, involved, full of emotion, an epic musical journey. It has the power to hold me in suspense, make me shiver, make me cry and fill me with great joy. And it makes me stretch out my toes - that's my indicator for music that really connects to me on a deep emotional level. Weird, I know.

Well, how about that! I just went looking for the name of our conductor and found not only that but two short clips taken from an ABC program, Compass. Fly on the Wall Messiah was made in 2004, the year before Clive Pascoe died, sadly whilst undergoing treatment for leukemia. What a character he was, he would rouse on us (rightly so, we were pretty tragic at the start of our rehearsals) but we always seemed to laugh all the way through. He had such a wonderful way of imparting all the things we needed to learn (like pronunciation) in order to carry off this huge performance. And he flew down to Sydney each week from Lismore, where he was a professor at the Southern Cross University. The last year I did this was, I think, 1995 and it was the year they recorded it and put out a CD. Silly me, I never got around to buying a copy. Hope I can track it down one day.

Funnily enough, I was in the city on Monday and I walked right past St Stephen's church, thinking to myself, it must nearly be time for Messiah rehearsals to start - and start they did that night! I was considering doing it again this year but I didn't get organised - oh well, maybe next year. But I'll head off to see the performance in December.
Hallelujah!

2nd evening of blogfesting

OK, what to blog tonight? - my idea this morning was Flowers in my October garden. I sat on the deck this morning eating my mainstay brekkie, porridge with blueberries and yummy greek style yoghurt plus a cuppa, black and well stewed. There before me were all my current floral emanations, not a thing to be dismissed as I am currently a ghost in my garden when it comes to tending it - I gaze at it all ... then re-fill the cat's water bowls. I did finish weeding all the pots on the deck recently, something I had begun doing only about 3 weeks before. Grouping all the pots into zones on the deck was an improvement but I currently have a pretty sad and seedy collection of things, although the lobelia, self sown, is doing well and the succulents hang in there. Walking around, snapping my flowers did uncover a few unexpected things ... the shot (top right) is of a succulent I brought back in my suitcase on the plane from Melbourne (ooops, should I admit that?) It was a plant that my cousin had grown from a cutting, one that our grandmother had grown - kind of nice to have something growing that was my Grandma's in Melbourne. Two things I treasure that she gave me - the piano sheet music for Sheep may safely graze and the book The Little white horse by Elizabeth Goudge, one of my absolute faves, not only because I loved the story so much as a child but that she gave it to me. So this plant makes three things I have that she loved - kinda nice!
Anyhow, LOOK!!! there are buds on it (they are the long purply things) - first time I've had that happen. How wonderful, I will keep my eye and camera on this.

Other plants I took, just the better shots:

I like the owl looking at the single strawberry flower. The little blue flowers in the grass come up every spring. The orchid is also a first, never before flowered in my garden. And there's the cat's water bowl I regularly fill, beside the self sown lobelia. Not too bad for a wild garden.

I do have to give a nod to  Amy's Ideas Hub and today's theme of Rocktober - coz I have a v.fave song at the moment:



Just adore this, the steely feedbacky (very technical description there) sound of that guitar at the start, that amazing voice of Michael McDonald from Steely Dan and Doobies fame, the great song in itself by Grizzly Bear and their sublime vocals. WOW!!! Haven't felt this immediate zing for a song for a long time - thanks JJJ for throwing this in my direction on the way to work one morning!! Bought the album on the strength of this - a little disappointed this version is only on the b side of the single so will hunt that down, but the album is fab, interesting and quite addictive. This has kickstarted my desire to rekindle my music collection - a bit neglected over the last many years, compared to my obsession with music once upon a time. So, yay! This is a great thing to celebrate on Rocktober day of Blogtoberfest.

P.S. I've gone pink for October - Pink awareness month. It's 10 years last August since my mum died. She would love the idea of a pink month and she would love my post today, celebrating flowers, one of her favourite things. I miss you mum xx