Reverse migration

[ataxi]

Cabaret is dead to me

I've been watching a tape of the band Sons and Daughters programming Rage* that I stuck on to record just before collapsing into the sack last night.

Sons and Daughters played a lot of stuff I'm going to call "cabaret-ish" where the focus narrows in on singer as icon, idealised as a replacement for some set of virtues. They

Comments

[ataxi]

Oh yes, sort of. In a way more because it's a great platform which means you have people to listen to what you have to say about anything regardless of how stupid it is, than because I really wanted to make music. My sister and I wrote the lyrics to a few dodgy pop songs though ;-)

Laos is fantastic. I remember you agreeing with me last time I said that. But it is!

[strangedave]

There has been a bit of a resurgence in music that fairly closely resembles actual cabaret lately, enough that I've heard some critics refer to the 'New Cabaret' movement. Though it does appear to be an entirely artifical movement, most lists of artists who make such music consist of the Dresden Dolls, The Tiger Lilies (who have been around for years - they did the Blackadder 2 closing music), and some bands that even less people have heard of than the Tiger Lilies.

I love the reverse migration concept. My work is very portable, but Karens emphatically not, unfortunately, so in Australia we remain.

Apparently only 50% or so of Congress hold a passport. No wonder its foreign policy is so incredibly crap.

I agree that Momus is interesting enough to justify his pretentiousness. Its funny how he manages his public persona as a musician despite only producing one song that even most indie cognoscenti can recall. But I do like that song (a complete history of sexual jealousy parts 17-24).

[ataxi]

50% of Congress? Yeesh. That is pathetic.

Max loves the Dresden Dolls in a "bought their CD the minute she first heard a song by them" way, personally I think they're quite good, but the gimmick wears off for me after repeated listening and then I need an extended break. Haven't heard the Tiger Lilies.

[eclipsedeyes]

Agreed re the dresden dolls

[strangedave]

I like the Dresden Dolls, but I agree it wears a bit thin fairly quickly. Still, rather wish I had got to see their live show.

The Tiger Lilies are an odd band. Lots of accordion, and lots of falsetto. We saw them as part of a stage show a few years ago (Shock Headed Peter) and they were great. They also did an album based on Edward Gorey poems, which probably gives you a fair idea of their aesthetic if you are familiar with Gorey.

[ataxi]

Probably Morrissey ;-) sad Smiths fan that I was at age seventeen. Anyone with style, credibility and a big mouth though.

[alias_sqbr]

Yes, before I could remember your name(*) you were "That guy in the Smiths shirts", luckily I got the hang of it before you stopped wearing them :)

(*)Everyone I meet goes through this phase, sorry!

[ataxi]

Ah Sophie. I was hoping you amongst others would enjoy the comic bits and pieces I just linked. Go check them out!

[tommmo]

** Can't really say why, but indie music at the moment seems to hold relatively few frontpeople with anything original or interesting to say. Lyricists seem to have gotten better at imagery and worse at substance. Probably, I'm just getting old.Do you think it has much to do with the fact that, in the "indie" scene, there aren't many singers that go to lengths to project that image of "larger-than-life-ness" that was so predominant in decades past? A great many bands these days seem to go to great lengths to look and sound like they could quite conceivably live down the road from you, rather than in a gold mansion atop the clouds. Or something :P

[ataxi]

Hmm, I'm not sure I really agree. I think maybe it's one or two things: firstly, bands that do have something identifiable "to say" now often do so as a group, instead of as musicians-behind-frontperson e.g. Sleater-Kinney, Stereolab, GYBE

[eclipsedeyes]

it's really interesting to see you say these things about reverse migration, since I've been thinking a lot recently about the fact that so many Australians (particularly intellectual Australians) leave, that I've had such thoughts and that it's (in a way) a giant copout - that we're somehow unable to accept the meaning/identity of home. Not that there's anything wrong with travelling, specifically, but the fact that so many australian writers and thinkers seem incapable of focusing on the local is very sad.

read this in a book of translated excerpts from Iranian blogs the other day: "God invented war so that Americans could learn geography!"

[ataxi]

Love the quote, though unfortunately I doubt many Americans have learnt geography as a result of the war (I don't think I know much more about Iraq than I already did - maybe a couple of additional place names

[eclipsedeyes]

I should mention that when I said I've been thinking about those things I didn't mean "I have formed the opinion", more that I was literally trying to figure out why is it that people need to leave and whether it is that suburban life as you put it actually lacks meaning or if it's just that we reject it as meaningless because of what we think it represents and thus reject ourselves. I think I just mean that so many Australians (not you, necessarily, by the way, in wanting to live O/S) seem to need to escape what they are

[ataxi]

It wouldn't be reasonable for me to reject the "suburban life" out of hand. For one thing it'd be a bit of a blow to my mum and dad and basically everyone I know here if I did. It's more a case of it urgently needing to be put in proper perspective. Particularly with respect to how privileged a life it is, how different a life it is to that lived by the bulk of the world's people, how easily it can alienate people from their communities, and how irrelevant the corresponding material goals can be to happiness