Where are all the good female characters?

A little while ago, I downloaded Amazon Prime.  I was pretty much forced to - Amazon offered me a free trail and I forgot to cancel before they loaded €50 onto my Mastercard.  These are the perils of having an account in a language you don't properly speak yet!  Unfortunately you really do need to use Amazon.de when you live in Germany - using the .co.uk version only precipitates extra delivery charges, and there isn't a magic button you can press to have it all appear in English.  

It all worked out ok though, as despite the fact that most of the shows are in German, there's still a good proportion of them that appear in their original version, or "OV".  There are loads of things actually, and they're adding to the list all the time.  I was disappointed not to find Mad Men or Community under the list of shows that I could watch without paying extra, but had heard good things about Breaking Bad, so decided to give that a go.  Which...... pretty much put paid to the next two months of my life, as I developed a dependence in no time at all.  Wow - what a piece of work that show is.  Its Wikipedia page describes it as being "considered one of the best television shows of all time" and it is a well-deserved assessment.  I was going through my Mad Men and Game of Thrones stage when everyone was watching Breaking Bad, and I wish someone had told me about it!  The writing, the story, the character development, the conflicts, the acting - even just the concept is quite brilliant.  We've been told lately that we're going through a Golden Age of television, and with shows like these it's easy to see why.  It seems that have eschewed the tired cops and robbers/doctors and nurses/legal formats, and now we have mould-breaking, unique stories about seemingly real people with real conflicts and flaws.  Mad Men is similar - you won't find "New York period drama about advertising" in the Little Golden Book of Television Clichés either, and along with other intelligent programming like House of Cards, House and the afore-mentioned Game of Thrones, the claim has been made that we've finally grown up as audiences and are watching more nuanced, sophisticated storylines with more realistic, flawed characters.  Thank God.  We have the Sopranos to thank for it, apparently.    

And yet!  

The other day, to my intense regret, I ran out of Breaking Bad.  Along with everyone else who has seen it, my head exploded with the brilliance of the last episode and the sheer poetry of it all.  I watched and re-watched the last ten minutes or so over and over, read about the development of the series, learnt about the choice of final song for the closing stages, saw interviews with the actors online, and pretty much did all the things that sad, pathetic people who are hooked on a tv show do when they can't let go.  It seemed like I would never quite be the same again, but after the appropriate mourning period I set about trying to find something else to become worryingly addicted to.  I'd probably had my fill of harrowing violence and plot twists for awhile, so decided to try "Alpha House" - a light, fluffy sitcom about the Republican Party, which surpassed expectations despite the fact that I got bored of it midway through the second season.  I went looking for something a little more substantial earlier this week however, and had quite a lot to choose from.  In the 24 hours or so following a return from a really intense tour, normally premium time for me to put my eyes on screen-saver and take in as many films and tv shows as I can, I tried in no particular order, "The Man In The High Castle" (definitely promising), "Vikings" (up and down), "Transparent" (weird), and "Secret Diary of a Call-Girl" (meh).  Eventually I decided I might want to try some legalise though, and tried both "Damages" and "The Good Wife".  They both had good casts (Damages stars Glenn Close for instance) and are both clearly aimed at a female market, and I thought that along with my Facebook feed they might contribute to further rounding out of my slovenly male personality and dragging me just that little bit more out of the patriarchy.  Much of the above television that I've seen stars male and female characters, but men were invariably the main pro/antagonists - it would be good to see what female characters could do in hard-hitting drama.  

If you haven't seen either of them, here's a brief summary.  The Good Wife: a lawyer turned housewife is forced to return to the profession to support her family after her State Attorney husband is accused of sleeping with prostitutes on the government purse.  Damages: a hotshot young female law graduate accepts a position with a prestigious New York law firm, and becomes the protégée of the ruthless, manipulative senior partner.  Not bad to start with, huh?  Plenty of room for conflict, twists and turns and general character study, right?  Well.  

Unfortunately I was met with a big, fat bunch of cliché and total lack of plausibility.  Some of it was basic television cliché (everyone in The Good Wife boasts model-esque good looks and wardrobes, even the people that work in the call centre for strippers in the second episode), but perhaps more alarmingly, a lot of it was motivated from a sexual politics standpoint that verged on the downright irresponsible, if not just really boring.  Here's a brief run-down, taken from only the first couple of episodes and a bit of forward reading in the episode guides:

  

- Damages: the young protégée is never really seen to do any real work and always has time for her family and friends, despite the fact that she'd be expected to pump out an eight-day week and take loads of work home with her  

- Both: the protagonists have the ears of senior partners and play major parts in important cases from the outset of the show, desipte the likelihood (particularly in Damages) that they would start in very junior positions 

- Both: the bad guys are always men and they always lose, no matter how much money they've got and how many platinum gold lawyers they're toting.  This is taken to extremes in only the second episode of The Good Wife when the plaintiff, an achingly glamorous rape victim, turns down a $450,000 settlement on a point of principle for a crime she can't prove 

- The Good Wife: despite her husband being caught literally with his pants down, our herione Stands By Her Man with only token moments of anger at his obvious and public betrayal.  Her house is also always immaculate and her kids are perfect angels - insert "domestic Goddess" cliché here

- Damages: despite her Ivy League education, it is revealed that the protégée is from a working-class background, 'cos y'know, that's where all New York corporate lawyers come from.        

..... I could go on.  

So much of what has been impressive about shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad is that the characters are "real" people.  In some cases they're anti-heroes, who do frankly horrible things.  Don Draper is a sexist, selfish, philandering alcoholic and a bully.  Walter White is a ruthless, violent killer who will stop at nothing to get what he wants, no matter the collateral damage to his family and those around him.  These are bad men!  And yet we love them for all the horror they bring to proceedings, just as we loved Tony Soprano.  Finally we see that the messages television shows are bringing is not delivered on some pink cloud where all the protagonists are nobly motivated.  Have we grown up on that basis, though?

I'm not so sure, because it seems to me that these characters are all men.  Yes, there are plenty of "supporting" female characters in these shows that could be described as being realistic, but when it comes to genuinely plot-hinging character studies with just enough darkness, evil and menace, it's the men who portray them, and carry the shows on that basis.  We like these men because we believe in them, but we also like them because we're afraid of them.  Where are the female equivalents?  

What disappointed me so much about The Good Wife and Damages is that we saw women cast in pivotal, leading roles who were still playing the part of the "perfect" woman - or the perfect "modern" woman, at least.  The characters have it all - looks, carriage, money, great careers, power and influence, but tellingly, active and rewarding personal lives and families which they seem to maintain with ease.  They are shown in moments of domestic harmony and social and romantic bliss, and they never have an angry or impatient word for anyone, despite carrying what would be incredibly demanding workloads and working long hours.  These are women who have broken the glass ceiling perhaps a little more easily than you would expect.  We already know how difficult that is, but witness the other elements of their stories - the facile way that they're both employed, the responsibilities that are handed to them so early in their tenures, the Cinderella-story rises to influence so soon after being hired.  Answer me seriously - do women actually believe this crap?  

Maybe I'm being over-critical, though - we all like a bit of fantasy after all.  I have more concerns, though.  What frustrates me most about both of these shows is that they masquerade as feminist pieces about powerful strong women, when the opposite couldn't be more true.  Both our protagnonists are passengers, if not actual victims.  The storylines happen to them, not the other way around.  The Good Wife is forced to return to professional life after her husband publicly misbehaves, and has to deal with his rival trying to trip her up every step of the way.  She also only seems to represent women, who are also vicitims, invariably of male bad behaviour, who often seek solace from her on the basis that "she knows what it feels like".  The character in Damages is flung head-long into a maelstrom of greed, ambition, organised crime and violence when all she wanted was to augment her already already perfect life with a cushy job in a law firm.  At no stage that I have seen do either of either of these characters ever really take charge - the entire premise of the shows are that they are victims of circumstance, and inevitably, male lust and greed.  By contrast, television audiences all over the world can't get enough of chemistry teachers leading criminal double-lives, wildly hedonistic advertising executives, drug-addicted, sociopathic doctors holding entire hospitals to ransom, and forensic scientists who are vigilante serial killers in their spare time, all of whom make life-changing, devil-may-care decisions at every turn, because that's what men do.   

I don't know about you, but I know what I'd rather watch!  

As far I'm concerned, this raises some interesting thoughts about the perception of men and women within the broader community.  In the past few years, discussions on topics such as wage inequality, rape and sexual assault, domestic violence, sexism and mysogyny, fat-shaming, revenge-porn, and cat-calling have become more and more common.  You could throw in the continued criticisms of male-dominated religious institutions as well.  This has also been conducted to the backdrop of an economic crisis that (certainly if you're European) just doesn't seem to want to go away, which has affected everyone's lives on the basis of the banking sector's greed and mis-management.  It has become more and more apparent that when the world closes its eyes and thinks of the face of evil, the image that is brought to mind is one of a man, and a white man at that - something all these characters have in common.       

     

Is this why we're making television about male characters who are all bastards?  Who knows.  If so, it does seem rather ironic that the image of man has taken a beating, and what has transpired is some really good telly, and maybe even a pop-culture inspired carte blanche for men to behave even worse because that's what Don Draper would do.  Life does imitate art afer all.  It seems a shame however that the humble television show, one of our most ubiquitous and culturally influential art forms, continues to show women as largely cardboard cut-outs by comparison, even when it's clear that someone's making an effort.  Maybe we will only truly grow up when we are prepared to portray their flaws as well.  

A little something I prepared earlier (in the key of Urban Dictionary)

Evil Soprano Syndrome, or ESS, is a paranoid behavioural condition that is mostly restricted to classical and operatic sopranos.  Occasional strains have also been witnessed amongst the tenor and counter-tenor communities, where gay members are more at risk.  There is no known cure, although a slap across the face is known to be therapeutic.    

 

Symptoms include:

 

1. Acute self-obsessiveness, megalomania and narcissism

2. Extreme paranoia and inability to trust anyone, even those that the subject is close to

3. Dishonesty, and/or convenience with the truth.  The subject will regularly censor and re-tell history so that she always looks to be utterly faultless and perfect, or the injured party in any less-than-perfect situation  

4. The subject will always find a way to place herself above others in conversation, especially if the topic is music

5. No empathy, discretion or loyalty – any signs of weakness from friends or acquaintances will be taken down and used against them at a later date

6. The subject will never pass on leads for auditions or gigs, not even to other voice-types, as sharing her professional space with contemporaries might compromise her mystique

7. Dreadful social climbing

8. No real friends in the industry beyond those that can get her somewhere (see #7)

9. Resentful and rude about all others’ work, even non-sopranos    

10. Chronically paranoid and defensive when things don’t go their way.  Any attempt to discuss bad news of any kind – even if the intention is to sympathise - will result in sulking, freeze-outs and temper-tantrums from the subject.      

 

“Wow, she’s a real bitch!”

“Yeah, she’s got ESS”.

 

“She’s not misunderstood, she’s a poisonous, evil cow.  A clear case of Evil Soprano Syndrome at work”.

 

“Wow, you’re going out with a soprano?  Watch out for ESS, it can come on without warning”.  

“Say no to Evil Soprano Syndrome”.  

Why I don't like opera

As a full-time classical singer, i.e. not a singing teacher/waiter who does the occasional gig, I mean someone who actually lives and dies and pays the rent on the back of his singing - opera and the music world's obsession with it really pisses me off.  Don't get me wrong, I do like opera to a point - I've sung in many.  The spectacle, the collaboration of artists from different fields, the buzz and fun of being in a successful production with good people can be really great, but on the whole I think it is over-reported, over-funded, and far too much attention is paid to it in general.  This is evidenced by the fact that in common parlance, I am an "opera singer", because if you sing as a soloist in the field of classical music that's what you must be - there are no other genres.  

My quarrel is not with the ignorance of the common man however - I couldn't care less what the nextdoor neighbour thinks I do for a living - but with the industry and those in it.  Those that should know better.  You see, opera is for douchebags.  No, really.  It's for self-obsessed, nacissistic, air-kissing, evil, back-stabbing psychopathic douchebags.  I know this, because I have worked with these people, I have been "friends" with these people and I have seen what the people are like surrounding it.  Opera is basically Hollywood with singing.  No-one's particularly interested in making art, they're interested in their ego, and how they're going to look in their ball gown in Act II.  No-one is your friend, and people will do anything to get to the top, no matter how shallow, insincere or just plain pathetic it may be.  I'm told that the further up the food chain you go, the worse it gets, too.  My singing teacher, a very successful opera singer, will attest to all of this, although he goes the other way.  He's actually a decent and worthwhile human being, but in order to survive all the bullshit he has built a massive wall around himself to the point that the first few times I met him I thought he was actually a bit of a prick.  Later on when he relaxed a bit, I saw that it was just a defence mechanism - assume that everyone's basically an evil bastard until proven otherwise.  Not a great way to live your life, in my view.    

That isn't much more than a rant, mind you - and perhaps you'll be thinking that there are a few sour grapes in there because I didn't ever make it or something.  There could be a SHRED of truth in that, but not much more.  Yes, when I set out to become a household name (in progress!), it was originally operatic stages that I was aiming for.  I've also been burnt more than once by some of the above people, and walked away from more than one production thinking "never again".  Of course I have, though -  where would I have got all that vitriol if I hadn't?  I do have more issues with opera than just the fact that people might have been mean to me, though.  

The thing is for me that very often, opera just isn't that interesting or even particularly relevant, and that's where all the attention it gets paid really annoys me.  This is an area in which I can claim a fair amount of experience, because in various of my past lives I went to the opera a LOT.  As a music student I was lucky enough to have a father who worked for the principal sponsor of the Australian Opera, and I took a procession of pretty girls along to just about every production they put on for four years.  Similarly, as a publishing executive for a classical music media publisher in London I had my pick of ENO, Glyndebourne and Royal Opera productions to go to.  I haven't ever bothered sitting down to count how many I've seen but it's an awful lot on four different continents, much of it in some of the best houses in the world.  As a consequence, I think I'm probably more an authority from a watcher's perspective than a participant's.  

It seems to me that thematically, opera deals with "small" issues for the most part, by far the most dominant being love, of course.  Love makes the world go around I suppose, but unlike oratorio which I'll get to in a moment, opera tends to deal with love with a small "L".  Boy meets girl.  Girl has TB, is taken prisoner, is being blackmailed by a powerful local politician, is actually his sister, is on the wrong side of the law, doesn't know that he's going to take off and leave her with the kid.  They sing about it for three hours, sometimes four if you're really unlucky, and they're either gloriously united or she dies, one of the two.  Clearly I'm being pretty cynical and I'm mostly describing romantic opera and not much else, but yes, it really is that silly for the most part and if you've seen much opera this should seem pretty familiar.  By and large it's about personal relationships, it's not about anything particularly ....... global or important.  

This is in stark contrast to oratorio, which is all about love with a big "L", and as the world grows more extreme and violent by the day is frighteningly relavent as far as I'm concerned.  By the very nature of the religious experience, oratorio is not about self, but about the transcendant.  Oratorio teaches us about hope, charity and self-sacrifice, doubt, betryal, forgiveness and the search for something OTHER - call it inner peace, nirvana, whatever.  "Ah yes", I hear you cry, "but so does opera!"  You'd actually be right - well, sort of - but as far as I can tell what divides the two is that if these themes exist in an opera, they are dealt with on a personal level.  It's all about one person or one couple's struggle with something - it's very rarely about anything genuinely universal.  Oratorio by very definition wants to convey a message and is inclusive - it's about the audience and those in it as much as it is about the performers.  Opera is much less about that and about the girl in the pretty dress who gets to be a star.  That's not always true of course and I'm using pretty board brush-strokes here, but there's a lot of that in opera, and it's not very attractive.  It's probably why opera is such a breeding ground for the type of person I've described above.  "Me!  Me!  Me!!!!"  Yuck.  

What also stick in my craw is that the musical world is so opera-centric.  It's actually very difficult to find a specialist oratorio singing teacher for instance, or a repetiteur.  If anyone's a name it's nearly always because they've had an operatic career rather than a concert career, and it shows in the way singers are taught.  If anyone thinks about work and where they want to be, they think about opera.  La Scala, baby!!!  Choral work or oratorio is just the stuff you do when there's no opera about, and if it's all you do it's clearly because you failed as an opera singer and aren't very good by consequence.  

Well balls to that, quite frankly - I am not a failed opera singer.  I have made a conscious choice to follow the career that I've taken, and for all of the above I'm much happier for it.  

I'd look awful in a ball gown anyway.  

    

Over-heard in a rehearsal break

Swiss soprano: This conductor seems quite good. He's very efficient.

Me: Sure. A friend told me that he's a bit shifty, though. Not sure why she told me that, mind you - don't know why it should be relevant in this context.

SS: Shifty? What does that mean? You mean he moves the tempo around a lot or something?

Me: Well, no - "shifty" means not particularly trust-worthy. A bit dishonest.

At that precise moment, said conductor walked into the canteen, helped himself to a Coke from the fridge, and took off without paying for it.

True story.

People in the arts give me the shits sometimes

..... Which is kind've an empty statement, really. I mean, who doesn't get the shits from people they work with from time to time? I must admit, though, that the METHOD in which I'm given the shits from arts-based people is more than a little strange, and worth remarking upon on that basis.

A little while ago before Christmas I was singing in a Messiah. Awhile before the concert started, I was stopped by the soprano soloist, a Reasonably Well-Known Figure (names have been concealed to protect the fucking annoying). We had a good chat. She knew that I was Australian, knew that I was studying, and was full of questions about why I'd chosen to move to Holland, and what my performing history was. I thought it was all just meaningless small-talk, until she let slip that she was the Artistic Director of Reasonably Well-Known Dutch Opera Company, and would I be interested in auditioning for her - she's always after tenors to do small roles. Fantastic, I thought - maybe signing up for all these crappy gigs has actually led me towards something useful. Of course I was interested, and after she'd sworn me to secrecy (it doesn't do to be seen poaching singers from one group to another, particularly tenors) I took her contact details and said that I'd send her an email with a CV as soon as I could get to it.

The next week or so was pretty busy - I was singing with this group just about every night, and there was school to think about as well, so I didn't manage to get to sending anything straightaway. But I spoke with her quite a bit during the course of that week - more about Australia, more about opera, and quite a bit about big-band jazz, which we shared an interest in. And every now and again she'd remind me to send her "that" email.

So, one evening when I had a spare couple of hours, I sat down and did a proper going-over of my CV, and sent it off to her with a fairly extensive covering email. Was quite pleased with what I came up with - still am. And heard precisely fuck-all back for a week and a half. Thought "oh well, maybe she's busy" and thought I'd wait until after Christmas to talk about it with her again - January 2nd, to be precise.

Me: "Hi, Reasonably Well-Known Soprano, Happy New Year!"
RSWKS: "And same to you. Did you have a good Christmas?"
Me: "Not bad. Think I might have found that Mel Tormé recording you were talking about".
RSWKS: "Oh that's good! It's great, isn't it?"
Me: "Yes - fantastic! By the way, did you get my email?"
RSWKS [looks uncomfortable]: "What email?"
Me: "You know - you asked me to send you a CV and other bits and pieces about my singing".
RSWKS: "Oh! Er - oh! Oh! Was it YOU that sent me that! I was wondering who sent me that! Oh, er - right! [backs away slowly, hands move unconsciously towards the purse, presumably looking for the rape alarm]".

So I'm left standing there, feeling like a prize dick, wondering how I could possibly have mis-read the situation. But then I realised that I HADN'T - not at all, in fact. It was HER that introduced herself to ME - and she already knew a little about me. It was HER that asked me to send her the CV - and then SHE reminded me! So what gives?

I'd been air-kissed. There are thousands of air-kissers in the music world, and loads in the arts in general. I've run afoul of a few in my time. I was once approached in much the same way to do do some gigs by another reasonably well-known figure - this time an Australian - only for all my phonecalls to go unanswered and for the gigs to never materialise, resulting in me spending a Christmas in Sydney alone when I could have gone home to Perth. I've come across casting and theatrical agents who've done the same thing. Even in my publishing career - ESPECIALLY in my publishing career. The theme is always the same - YOU get approached for something, you do everything right, and then YOU'RE the one left looking like a dickhead when nothing happens. I've even had people having a go at me in these situations, like it was my fault that they got in contact in the first place.

Basically, as Bill Watterson remarked and I echoed in an earlier post, art is great, but it sure does attract its fair-share of pretentious blow-hards. People that like to get off on their own sense of power. People that like to play stupid pecking-order games. People that are basically complete morons. "This young kid in the tenor section has barely looked in my direction! He needs to think that I'm important. I know - I'll make up some bogus story about an audition so that he feels the need to impress me".

What a load of bullshit, eh? And completely counter-productive - all that I've taken from it is that I think she's a complete idiot! One thing's for sure - when I get to being Important, I'll be saving my best back-handers for any of my colleagues who act like that. It's just bloody stupid!! I'm sure I'll get my fair-few more bum steers before I get to that stage, though.....

This post is dedicated to Anonymous.

Everything I know about singing I learnt from cricket.

Or..... everything I know about cricket I learnt from singing.

Isn't this exciting? A post involving cricket AND Life, Love and Art. How post-modern of me. I shall have to try to make it a recurring theme.

OK. So. Cricket and singing. Might seem a bridge too far. But bear with me, 'cos all of this is true.

There are various elements of the game and the artform that are inextricably linked, as far as I'm concerned. All those fat blokes singing the same thing over and over? Cricket. Same with the sheilas with horns. All those funny little men in white with the cucumber sandwiches on the village green on British summer afternoons? Singing. And ergo with the hard, Australian men trying to kill each other in 40-degree heat. They might not know it, but it's ALL THE SAME THING. I don't think it was an accident. Pavarotti wasn't a Juventus fan - he supported Middlesex and the Bangalore Royal Challengers.

Here's why.

Cricket is a stage.

I'm not a singer that often takes a tremendous amount of inspiration from singers themselves. My knowledge of the great tenors (let alone the sopranos, mezzos and bass-baritones) is pretty lamentable, if I'm being kind. I get more of my inspiration from the the abstract. Sport. Business. Stand-up comedy (yes, really - but more on that later). And cricket is perfect to draw from, because it is often so focussed on the individual. When you've seen the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Viv Richards and Shane Warne play the game you've seen theatre of the highest calibre. They don't just walk onto the ground, they OWN it. Having long since convinced themselves and others of their genius, they exude self-belief, pride, ability. They take the focus, they take the momentum, they carry all before them and they take charge. Just like a great character actor, or singer. It is so often this quality that makes a stage performer great - and sometimes all the ability in the world just isn't enough without it.

They both require discipline, technique and mental strength.

From the cricketing side of the argument, I have four words and a date. Steve Waugh, West Indies, 1995. When you are carrying the hopes of a nation and a 6 foot 7-inch Antiguan is LITERALLY TRYING TO KILL YOU you've got to have all these things. And it's got to be instinctive. There's no time to think when Curtly Ambrose is bowling at 95 miles an hour at your throat. It's exactly the same with singing - there is no time to think when you walk onto a stage and strip yourself bare in front of several thousand people, either. There is no turning back - you're either up for it, or you're not. An old singing teacher once said to me that singing is a blood sport. He's dead right.

They both mess with your head.

Oh boy, this one's my favourite. How many fabulously talented cricketers are there that didn't ever make the most of their potential? Ramprakash. Hick. Hooper. How many times has that talented player worried himself out before he's even faced a ball? Got the yips and started bowling wides when yesterday he had it on a string? Doubt, and fear of failure are insiduous things. They creep up on you when you least expect it. I'm not good enough/I don't deserve to be here/Do I really want it after all? has gone through everyone's head at some point. It's what you do when you're there that makes the difference - and that doesn't often have much to do with ability.

You've got to have a ruthless, combative streak to succeed.

This is the easiest one of the lot. Any sport is like this - you're consistently required to perform in the face of any number of opposition whose very presence by definition is to make you fail, and sometimes in front of audiences of billions who want the same. Singing requires you to sacrifice everything. Leave your family. Friends. Move to the other side of the world. End relationships if they're not compatible with it. Maybe even give up on the idea of having children, if you're female. It's just something that you HAVE to do. Why do I sing? I have no choice but to. It's that simple. I can't not. Nothing else that matters matters as much as that, and no sacrifice is too great.

You're never bigger than the game.

Another personal favourite. All the Shane Warnes and Viv Richards and Don Bradmans in the world are never bigger than the game. None of the Roberto Alagnas, Angela Georghius or Luciano Pavarottis are, either. At every concievable level, you are part of something bigger than you. If you don't respect that, and those around you, ultimately it comes back to bite you. Be a force for the good, not the bad. Create, don't destroy. I try to keep these at the fore-front of my mind at all times. Will I be proven right? Who knows. But I'm convinced that I will be.

You've got to really want it.

Duh. This barely needs explaining. No-one made it to La Scala or a Lord's Test by just being good. Unless they were queuing up outside for tickets.



And - well, that's it, basically. I may think of more, there's bound to be a few out there. The trouble is that I don't know that many singers that are cricketers - and even fewer cricketers that are singers, so I can't really ask anyone else! I guess you'll just have to take my word for the fact that I'm right, and I really am the world's leading opinion on Love, Life, Art and Cricket.

And after all, what did you expect? Humility??? Pah - you're reading the wrong blog!

And now on a slightly lighter note....

Continuing my recent Youtube theme, I found this the other day.



"The Contest" has to be one of the funniest and most cleverly-written pieces of television I have ever seen, or am likely to ever see for that matter. It's pure genius from start to finish. The script, timing and concept are just pure gold.

You can read more about it here, although bear in mind my usual Wikipedia disclaimer - not everything from Wikipedia can be trusted, the sources are dubious and it's not written, vetted or edited by experts, etc, etc, etc.

I must admit that until recently I had sort've forgotten that Seinfeld existed. I know that probably sounds utterly incomprehensible to many, but the thing is that neither he nor the show are popular in the UK at all, and so hadn't been on my radar for quite some time. I quite often search for comedians on Youtube though, and the other day I recalled Seinfeld and his stand-up routines and tried to find some. Typed "Seinfeld" into the search bar and came up with about a thousand bits of episodes, and amongst them that clip. Watched it about a hundred times, rolled around on the floor laughing, watched it about a hundred more. I wish I had access to the full episode.

Can you remember where you were when Kennedy got shot? When the Twin Towers fell? When Australia and South Africa tied in the '99 Cricket World Cup semi-final? Well - I can remember where I was when I first saw this episode.

I used to attend a performing arts high-school in Sydney. Given that I was from Perth, I lived in the boarding house. Not your usual boarding-house you understand - this was not the domain of your inbred country boy with the two-word vocabulary and hobbies that included thumping the red-haired kid whenever he spoke, moved or breathed, oh no - that was my FIRST boarding school. This place was entirely different. There were only twenty-five or so students, and at the time, the end of Year 10, I was one of only four boys. All the students were either ballet dancers, contemporary dancers, actors, musicians, emotional misfits, junkies, or sometimes a heady cocktail of all of them at once.

In December each year when exams were over and preperation for the end-of-year performances began, the no-tv-on-weeknights rule was rescinded. Which meant that at 7pm every evening, Seinfeld ruled the roost. I had gathered with half-a-dozen or so of the Year 11 and 12 ladies, several of whom were actually decent human beings without eating disorders or drug habits, and in walks George into the diner, and utters those four little words. "My mother caught me". From that moment until the end of the show I was in absolute hysterics. And the thing is that none of my fellow audience-members understood. Through my tears I had to explain it to them - these aloof, supposedly worldy young women, who as a rule tolerated my 15-year old nerdiness but made it pretty clear who was in charge. I turned the tables on them that night, though. Maybe it was because like every 15 year-old boy, I knew a thing or two about the subject at hand (so to speak!)!

Just found the following, too, which isn't included in the first clip.



Try and find a better-written and delivered line than the one at 0:37. I think you'll be looking awhile!

I can't take it any more! She's drivin' my crazy, I can't sleep, I can't leave the house, and I'm here climbin' the walls - meanwhile I'm datin' a virgin and I'm in this contest, somethin's gotta give!

And they don't mention "the word" at any stage throughout the episode. Gold. Class. Genius.

Maestro, a little break-up music, if you please....

It occurs to me that I need to even the balance of cricket versus love, life and art if I am to remain true to my mission statement.

So, if you will, please turn your attention to the below - if you have the time, all 9 minutes 35 seconds of it.



If you finish it, here's the album version.



I can remember listening to this song with my Dad in the car when I was little, and liking it, but not understanding it - I recall asking how wind can be stupid, but how do you explain what the song is about to a seven-year-old?

I think it's a remarkable song. It comes from my favourite Dylan period, from Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973) through Infidels (1980). In the sixties there was genius, but in the mid-seventies through early eighties we got that plus humanity, confusion, and pain, which is much more interesting. Later this gave way in the 1980s to a treadmill of slightly laboured material that began with Empire Burlesque (1985) and finished with Under The Red Sky (1990), and since 1997 we've had this old bluesman who I have to admit I can't really relate to - maybe I'm just too young to understand what he's on about.

What stands out for me in both these versions of "Idiot Wind" is the energy he generates. The album version in particular just seems to spit with hatred, rage and self-loathing. Go to 2:40 and have a listen.

You hurt the ones that I love best
And cover up the truth with lies.
One day you'll be in the ditch,
Flies buzzin' around your eyes,
Blood on your saddle....

and at 4:11

I noticed at the ceremony,
Your corrupt ways had finally made you blind.
I can't remember your face anymore,
You mouth has changed, your eyes don't look into mine.

Pretty evocative lines it's true, but it's the vocal delivery that really gets me. Anyone who tells me that Dylan couldn't sing (I'm not going to dispute the fact that he can't anymore) needs to listen to this song. It's a remarkable performance - all of it is just so committed, so much so that it's a little confronting. It's just so raw, you know? Dylan has apparently denied that the songs in the album are auto-biographical but popular opinion goes against this - he wrote it during a seperation from his wife, Sara, who later divorced him, and as far as I'm concerned I don't think that you could really write something like this objectively, anyway. He is alleged to have said something else that rings pretty true, though, in a radio interview with Mary Travers:

A lot of people tell me they enjoy that album. It's hard for me to relate to that. I mean, it, you know, people enjoying the type of pain, you know?

Hear, hear!

(NB - I say "alleged" because I'm getting a lot of this from Wikipedia, which as we all know isn't always reliable. This particular quote wasn't referenced or even dated.)

The live performance is also fantastic version, and shows up all those who think that he isn't a good musician, too. I particularly like the punchy, rhythmic riff he uses earlier on and then after each stanza. I always like it when artists quote themselves, and this is taken verbatim from Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, where it is sung with a "Nah nah, nah-nah, nah", and is also reminiscent of material in Desire, which uses the same sort of Latin/Gypsy feel.

Speaking of the gypsy feel - I think it's really funny how assurred he looks in that headscarf in the live version, and yet the bandmembers that are wearing the same thing all look vaguely ridiculous. Is "gypsy" the right word, though? What are those things? They could just as easily be Arabian keffiyehs, which would be pretty funny given the fact that Dylan is Jewish. Either way, it's clear that style is not something that everything can do!

Where would we be without Dylan? It almost seems at times that anything I can feel he's felt ten times more, and expresses it in the most perfect manner imaginable. Usually people just say that he does this with his lyrics. I like the above because he does it musically, vocally, AND in line. That's pretty extraordinary. For his ability to do this (and he doesn't only do it with this song) he's got to go down as one of the most accomplished Artists we've known. And no, I'm not restricting that to pop artists.

And somewhat more flippantly - where would we be without Youtube? Every day I seem to find something on it I'd long since forgotten about. It's great.

Next up - just what are we going to do with Ricky Ponting? Stay tuned....

You little bewdy, back in business!!!

Which continues my recent classical allusions theme. Pat managed to pick "Clancy of the Overflow" below - although I must admit, I thought it was by Kevin "Bloody" Wilson - let's see who can pick this one!

Right! So the prodigal flatmate has returned and re-booted his modem. Thankfully he didn't notice my attempt to break into his room with a kitchen knife the other night. I now have access to all the internet I can handle!

It has been awhile, and no question. A pity, because it's been an interesting few weeks. In no particular order, since I last posted -

- Australia have drawn a test they should have won, were completely pummelled in the next, and are probably on their way to saving another as I type. They have also picked one of the most unlikely (and arguably one of the worst) players to ever pull on the baggy green in Cameron White. I refuse to discuss the Stanford Debacle on principle.
- I have become the only person on the face of the earth to benefit from the global economic crisis, care-of a tracker mortgage and plummeting interest rates. Hooray.
- Fulham FC have lost a few, drawn a few and won once. They will lose this weekend at Everton. Hull FC went bananas for awhile. Liverpool ended Chelsea's 86-match unbeaten stretch at Stanford Bridge and are top of the league with the equal-best start to a Premiership campaign ever, but they'll choke - they always do.
- Dabbling in Art is agreeing with me.
- I went back to London for a few days and realised that it's actually quite a nice place when you're not working for dickheads and stressed out of your mind.
- Am enjoying living in Holland. The Dutch are a nice bunch, and the (many) other nationalities in my course are pretty well-represented, too. Have realised after seeing quite a bit of the place that I live in the ugliest city in it, though! Oh well.

Which more or less brings us up to date... not the most fascinating of re-entries I know - but I'll see what I can do about that anon.

Oh - almost forgot! Despite being less than prolific recently, I have been Discovered! Head-hunted! Scouted! To whit, another blog wants me to write for them. Ain't that nice? Unfortunately I probably won't be allowed to write about cricket, and I might even have to write under another name - apparently this one is a bit obvious for their readership, *sigh*. Carrot - the man of a thousand faces.

And speaking of which - whaddaya think of the new profile pic?

There's one in every crowd

I like singing in choirs. It's not something that I want to do ALL the time, and I'd prefer to avoid being pigeon-holed as a choral singer if I can avoid it, but I've sung in choirs since I was seven years old, it's something I'm familiar with, and something that I enjoy, most of the time.

For awhile I avoided them. I was trying to find my "own" sound, and given that ensemble singing obliges you to blend and fit in with those around you, finding that in a choral situation is difficult. Choral singing also exercises a different part of your brain, too - it's very much a left-brain exercise that requires a lot of problem-solving (count, intonate, watch the conductor, let's see if we can decipher that tricky bit with the syncopation etc) and solo singing is very right-brain - it's almost closer to being an actor than it is being a musican. In solo singing you're communicating, emoting, maybe moving about on stage, and all the nuts and bolts of actually getting the notes right should be so well-learned that it's almost instinctual. Thus, I've found that choral singing, when you're learning how to be a right-brain singer as opposed to a left-brain one, can mess with you a bit. I guess a good analogy is trying to perform a task with your weaker hand. Until you've mastered it you probably don't want to do it with your stronger one, because you can confuse yourself, and next time you try to do it the other way around you've forgotten some of what you've learned.

Clear as mud? Thought so.

Anyway. Lately, I've found another reason why singing in choirs isn't always a good idea. To whit, THERE'S ALWAYS ONE DICKHEAD WHO TALKS TOO MUCH. Always. Without fail, there's some guy who sits there with his thumb up his arse and a self-righteous expression on his face, trying to give the impression that he knows everything. And I say "he" because that's nearly always the case as well. It's nearly always a man, and nearly always a tenor, as well. He asks questions designed to show everyone how clever he is. He second-guesses the conductor. He points out others' mistakes. He makes little self-depracating remarks that are designed to make you notice him. He's like the guy in the meeting who sits there and nods and goes "Mmm!" whenever the boss says anything. Ever wanted to punch that guy? REALLY hard? Oh my God, I have. Just SHUT THE FUCK UP, ALREADY.

I think it's borne out of a need for self-justification. Particularly in an artistic situation like a Conservatoire, people can be desperate to prove to others that they deserve to be there. Or that not only do they deserve to be there, but maybe that they're so Goddamned fantastic that they SHOULDN'T be there, because this is all so elementary to them. I think it's also driven by the fact that the arts are seen to be an "elite" past-time, so you attract people to it that use their singing (or acting or dancing or whatever) as some sort of exercise in self-grandiosement. "Look at me! I'm SINGING. And I know stuff! Aren't I clever?" And you'd think that when things get close to being at a professional level that people would learn to leave that sort of thing at the door a bit more. Unfortunately not. Sometimes it's worse.

I think it was Bill Watterson, of Calvin & Hobbes fame, who said "I like art. But it sure as hell attracts its fair share of pretentious blow-hards".

Hear bloody hear!