The rookie Australian Poetry Centre Festival was an ambitious joust staged over three days/ two nights of the ANZAC day weekend in autumn-struck Castlemaine. In between and around the real program, (literary events stuffed with Bob Adamson, Judith Beveridge, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Esther Ottaway, Jaya Savige, Anthony Lawrence, Lauren Williams, Ross Gillett, Barry Hill, Sam Hamill (USA), LK Holt, Laksmi Pamuntjak (Indonesia), Lorna Crozier (Canada) and many more), sub-festivals and demi-parties raged and fluttered in anarchic fashion. By late Sunday the promised hail fell with a short, sharp flourish followed by a spectacular rainbow. The program was pricey (for poetry) and packed. Debates raged over who killed and who sucked (often the same people according to different punters). Interspersed with tracelike near-dozes which served to recharge batteries, the vibometer was pulsing along happily. Verdict: four horseshoes out of five. A fine idea brought to fruition - well done APC.

Aust Poetry Centre Festival # 1 goes off

boom shakalackalacka boom shakalackalacka!

Eagle

Bunjil

For Docklands’ ‘Eagle’ by Bruce Armstrong,
and the Wurundjeri and Kulin’s
legendary wedgetail protector of those who will accept his guidance


Bunjil
you are the spirit
seeing all that we have
done – the bright
madness of our gleaming
shells of metal
curling towards the Dome
the MCG, Docklands
cathedrals of Australian Rules
where young warriors
dig the possum skin again
leaping for your wings Bunjil,
that marngrook game we mixed
with English rugby

way up high
you
sentinel
though you sit unmoving
over the yellow eel twists
of the Birrarung and Melbourne’s
snake backbone of trains
the wild rushes through your feathers
like an aeroplane
like a storm

Sorry no longer the hardest word

At last - an inspiring and moving recognition of the stolen generations. Kevin Rudd made me proud to be Australian again after Howard's hideous white arm-band view of history. I look forward to taking more steps with our amazing Indigenous brothers and sisters into a new and better Australia. Brendan Nelson gave an offensive and deeply inconsiderate, partially incoherent speech referring to upsetting and most extreme abuse and black 'sacrifice' for a better Australia. How insulting and inappropriate. Every day we read of white men driving their kids into dams and hiding their wives in 44 gallons drums while the mistress moves in, etcetera etcetera, but that's just as irrelevant to 'sorry' as Brendan's mean-spirited ravings were. The fact that old paperwork may be missing or inadequate and tiny children and people who spoke no English can't explain their family circumstances when children were removed via force and subterfuge, separated from siblings and all family and tribal groups, frequently abused including sexually and often forced to work for stolen wages as unpaid slaves doesn't mean no widespread racially-based injustice didn't occur. It did. Rudd said around 50,000 black kids were taken, and this affected 10 - 30% of Indigenous children. That is a form of genocide. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

KRudd & JGill - Team Rocket

JGill

ACTING PRIME MINISTER JULIA GILLARD ACTING PRIME MINISTER JULIA GILLARD ACTING PRIME MINISTER JULIA GILLARD ACTING PRIME MINISTER JULIA GILLARD ACTING PRIME MINISTER JULIA GILLARD O HAPPY NIGHT ACTING PRIME MINISTER JULIA GILLARD ACTING PM JGILL ACTING PRIME MINISTER JULIA GILLARD Je vous adore

My friend G who knew me when we were 15 or something in North Balwyn recently got in touch and I ended up explaining my politics. He liked it so here we go.

Hi G,

Ah well you can't keep everyone happy, but you can't complain that the
coalition hasn't had a good turn in office! I daresay if Howard had left
Work Choices out of the mix, signed the Kyoto Protocol, and perhaps
forgotten about the nuclear reactors, he might have been reelected,
although the interest rate rises didn't help his case.

For me there was also the unthinking following into Iraq, the lies on
children overboard, the long-term wrongful detention of various
Australians with language difficulties and mental illness as well as
asylum seekers, the AWB fiasco where taxpayers slush-funded Saddam, the
onerous requirements for single parents and disability pensioners who've
been treated like dole bludgers since July 1, the very late conversion
to climate change and much more. I also think that counting someone who
does one hour's work a week as employed is wrong, and that the only
reason housing rates were lower under Howard when he was treasurer and
bank rates at 21% was because they artificially capped housing rates,
and that when Keating stopped that (backed by the coalition) they had to
come higher. there was low inflation in those days too and it was much
easier to study and buy a house. We have a situation now where household
debt has completely ballooned, houses are out of reach of the average
family unless they move to woop-woop and young graduates enter the
workforce with ten of thousands of dollars of HECS debts to their name
when they're barely adults, while uni education has been sold off to
international wealthy students at the expense of Australians with less
money. I also think science and research and development has been very poor, and believe we have incredible potential as a a source of
international scientific and medical breakthrough way beyond what has
been achieved if only the government would seriously back those areas.

Howard was also always confrontational at the State/Federal level which
left us with a legacy of mismanaged water etc. His announcement a few
months back that Australia's major food growing areas were about to have
irrigation completely stopped, and attempt to tackle it with a
last-minute, mismanaged plan with little State consultation was a
botched job. It's not his fault that we have drought - except insofar as
he has presided over 11.5 years of failure to tackle extensive
deforestation, greenhouse gas build-up, unsustainable practices, lack
of tackling capping, trading or fining schemes for industrial polluters
- in fact subsidising them at the expense of renewable sciences and
businesses. So in that sense, his old world beliefs have contributed to
drought-inducing climate change. Then there was gutting the ABC until
about a year ago when government began giving a little funding back(only after putting arch conservatives such as Windshuttle in to run
it)... So I am hoping these elements, or some of them, will make some
progress under a government with a different focus. I don't think
they'll be radical though, and I doubt if any reds are hiding under the
bed!

On the plus side, the gun buyback scheme was gutsy and well done, and I
think Howard did well on East Timor - I diagree with Keating on that
one.

Dweezil and Moon

Frank and Gail

Phydeaux IIIb; Frank and Gail at work in the studio

Zappa Plays Zappa Zaps Melbourne

Standing ovation for the ZPZ team led by Frank Zappa's eldest son Dweezil at their show at Hamer Hall in the Arts Centre last night. It was a very moving experience, knowing that Dweezil, a stunning guitarist in his own right, had chosen to spend a year studying and three months rehearsing a slice of his father's voluminous output with a fine ensemble to take on a world tour.
Quoted from the ZPZ website, DZ says: 'Prepping for the tour has been like preparing for a medieval battle where going into it your sharpest weapon is a spoon. But I'm pretty deadly with that spoon now.'

Also featuring...
Scheila Gonzalez
Saxophone, Flute, Keyboards & Vocals -
My personal favourite & all-round musical delite, exceptional versatility, funk and spunk (played with Ray Parker Jr. and Billy Preston, Sheila E.)

Aaron Arntz
Keyboards & Trumpet -
This guy is great (The Red Elvises, Telepathy Ascendant)

Pete Griffin
Bass -
Bad and funky (Hanson, Edgar Winter)

Billy Hulting
Marimba, Mallets & Percussion -
Neat (Maynard Ferguson’s High Voltage 2, Lou Rawls, Patti Labelle, Manhattan Transfer)

Jamie Kime
Guitar -
Individual, complimentary (Jewel, Michelle Branch,Malford Milligan in The Boneshakers

Joe Travers
Drums & Vocals -
The Zappa Vaultmeister since '95, a true gentleman and precision executioner) (Z [Ahmet & Dweezil Zappa], Duran Duran, Billy Idol, Lisa Loeb and Drake Bell.)

Ray White
Guitar and Vocals - (Frank Zappa, Don't Push the Clown)
A rubbery and rather extraordinary blues vocalist. Good improviser

Steve Vai
Guitar from Mars - (Frank Zappa, himself)

There was a big screen hitched overhead and the show kicked off and finished with Frank up there centre screen whipping it out with some dental floss farming in 'Montana' and socking out a monstrous solo. The whole ensemble accompanied him in an accomplished and highly-arranged style typical of his touring days. The rest of the time ZPZ did the show a la Dweezil according to the book of Frank with vocals scattered across the performers and lead sorties from DZ and Ray White.

My highlights were 'Willy the Pimp' from Hot Rats (rarely heard), a thoroughly enjoyable 'Dirty Habits', some opening songs which reminded us of Frank's R&B roots and teen background as a boy in the Mohave Desert region of California and the encore of a scintillating performance of 'Dog Meat', Dweezil's own favourite 'G-Spot Tornado' and 'Muffin Man'.

Dweezil relaxed into his solos as Frank did, treating the electric guitar as a serious compositional instrument capable of extraordinary expression and variation. His solos, like his father's, take you on an aural journey that the listener finds quite extraordinary, leaving her or him in a world a little better than the one they used to inhabit.

Despite his stated (and admirable) dedication to exactly reproducing FZ arrangements of certain Zappa/Mothers performances captured amongst enough reel to reel tape to encircle the world a few times, plus the digital catalogue (over 70 albums), Dweezil has his own very distinct style of playing. Challenging and intriguing, never flashy or shallow for the sake of a quick eargasm, Dweezil's work on the strings of his various Fenders and Gibsons, one of them apparently Frank's old SG, is absolutely seductive.

If I were to get critical at all it would be of Peaches En Regalia, a personal favourite which was a little hammered by the mass rock execution of its quirky signature, originally relatively minimalist.

A minor quibble though. It cost $10,000 (probably US)to bring this specialised gear - a HUGE set-up - to Australia, and certainly the mixed sex road crew were hard at work dismantling it after the show, en route to Adelaide, Sydney and Japan.

If you get the change to catch this show, go for it. There's a will within Zappa Inc to see it continue world touring. That would be a great service to the cause of international music.

Frank would be tickled.

WAAOAHHH - batton down the hatches punters!

Wild night at the Civic -hello Steve Lucas, you legend