Music For Small Audiences

We all have our idiosyncrasies. Two of mine are closely related, in that I love a good quotation, and I am a sucker for a good cliché. In both cases, I like to think of them as bits of distilled wisdom that have stood the test of time. But as Abraham Lincoln once dryly noted, the problem with looking up old quotes on the internet is that you can never be too sure if they have been attributed correctly. With that said, it has been a really interesting couple of weeks, both for me and for some of those I am closest to. For some, new beginnings and new hope. For others, closure and completion after a period of turbulence and difficulty. It is a strange thing to see so much change clustered around the late April and early May period. As Alexander Graham Bell may or may not have opined, when one door closes, another one opens. This is Episode 109 of Music For Small Audiences. An extended set, it evolves over a series of distinctly different phases, each with its own energy and emotional content. I hope you enjoy.

A commonly accepted definition of sustainability is the ability to meet the needs of the present without compromising the needs of the future. So how then to make a future worth waiting for, without shortchanging our ability to fully seize the present moment? There are many tradeoffs and worse in daily life as we try to ensure that today is OK while not robbing ourselves of tomorrow. Stay up late or get up early? Smash the fun button, or play it safe? Keep your eye on the prize, or sit back and enjoy the spectacle? Focus on the destination, or enjoy the ride? Recent weeks have given me a newly refreshed appreciation for both sides of that balancing act - leading in turn to the inevitable question, why not both?  

The summer holiday period is drawing to a close here in Australia, and we have just come back from a few weeks travelling through New Zealand's South Island. The landscape is extraordinary to the point of being mind expanding, and every day was a reminder of just how beautiful the world can be. We were fortunate to have had excellent weather, meaning plenty of time to hike and bike and further explore a very special corner of the world. Travel is often an opportunity for personal growth. In this case it also provided a catalyst for a bit of longer term, whole life planning and reflection. Thinking at these longer time horizons leads to some existential reflection, and the realisation when trying to talk it out that not every emotion has a name. As the old Hans Christian Andersen quote goes - and with due credit to Eelke Kleijn who duly reminds us at the start of each of his podcast episodes - where words fail, music speaks. This is episode 107 of Music For Small Audiences. It was recorded live just a few hours before Santa's anticipated arrival down the proverbial chimney on Christmas Eve, marking the first day of my summer holiday break. It has some very new tunes, some timeless classics, and some very new reworks of some even older timeless classics. As befits a proper end of year celebration it is again an extended affair, best enjoyed wherever you happen to be.

There is something exciting about covering new ground. The transition from known to unknown brings with it a sense of renewal and energy, and it can be quite fun to explore that little bit further, and to cover a little bit of new ground at the edge of a previously understood boundary. One of the things I quite like about Melbourne is the quiet sense of perpetual renewal I feel when exploring it. While the city’s infrastructure is not perfect, it gets incrementally better each year. The paths get a little bit wider and more clearly marked, the streetscapes and amenities are refreshed and the structures and signage are rebuilt, meaning that even familiar territory is constantly evolving. Sometimes when I’m out on foot on one of my usual routes, I even find a well-worn path has a new addition at the end of it – adding a little bit of unknown at the end of a well-trodden familiarity. New can be challenging, but new can also be invigorating.

It has been an unusual weekend. It has been an unusual year. Springtime in Melbourne often brings a bit of rain. With another La Nina apparently on the horizon, we have seen quite a bit of rain already. So much so, in fact, that it has exposed the failings of our second story roof drainage system. Not a fun way to spend the weekend. While there is plenty of truth in the old adage that if you want something done right you have to do it yourself, there is an added element of excitement and uncertainty when the task involved requires working at heights. Even still, if 2022 has taught me anything, it has taught me that life is short. As such, there is a balance to be struck between getting things done and staying alive. The joys of home ownership indeed. This is episode 105 of Music For Small Audiences. It was recorded live the evening of a belated birthday celebration, and at four hours and twenty two minutes long, it represents a bit of a catching up with regards to some of the music I have been enjoying in recent times. Having spent a few months overseas this year the episodes have come a bit more slowly, but the good news is that the travels have introduced me to some fantastic new tunes, some of which are here, and some of which I will be showcasing in the episodes to come.  

Winter has arrived in Melbourne. To me that means short days, falling leaves, and the occasional smell of a wood stove across the city at night. It can be easy at this time of year to withdraw a little bit, to bunker down and count the days off until warmer weather returns. Of course winter here means summer somewhere else. As is the case with many things, where one is experiencing the sunset, another is experiencing the sunrise. Nothing lasts forever, and we all get only as long as we get. Soon enough the winds change, the cycle repeats and things begin anew. This is Episode 104 of Music For Small Audiences. It was recorded on a lovely winter evening in warm surrounds.

Coordinating travel, as with coordinating a lot of things these days, involves a lot of time waiting on hold on the telephone. As such, I am becoming something of a hold music aficionado. On many recent calls the music has been punctuated with a repetitive series of apologies explaining that, due to the pandemic, hold times are longer than they might otherwise be. If the past two years have taught me anything, it is the extent to which a pandemic involves an awful lot of waiting, and more than a few apologies. For more than two years, it has felt that relationships with friends and family overseas have been on hold. As such it was great to reconnect during a recent return trip to Canada, and to spend some quality time with loved ones. While telephone and video connections are valuable, they do not fully replace the magic of real human connection.

As I grew up my two older sisters were a constant source of musical guidance and inspiration, taking me to concerts, bringing me records from overseas school trips and keeping me up to speed on the hottest bands across the genre that was then called New Wave. Throughout our early years growing up in suburban Toronto, one radio station in particular was held high as the mythical point source from which all good music came. That station was CFNY, 102.1 FM. Following on from high school some years later, I managed to convince a local synthesizer shop to give me a job in sales. The shop owner became a dear friend, and the shop was quite popular with local dance music makers, in part because of the owners incredible collection of vintage synths. Channeling my paternally inherited passion for all things beeping and flashing, I got quite into learning every bit of gear I could get my hands on, with my mother eternally patient while an endless parade of boxes, wires and devices began to take over more and more rooms of our house. As luck would have it, one day the Roland product rep called, asking if I could demo their new DJ oriented stereo sampler to one of CFNYs on air crew, by bringing it to demo live on air during their midnight to 6AM weekend dance music broadcasts. At a time when the Toronto rave scene was exploding and so many new genres emerging, there was no shortage of amazing music to be played each week. To make a long story short the experience up close was eye opening. In the process I learned a lot about how to build and shape a six hour set through the wee hours to sunrise. This is episode 102 of Music For Small Audiences. A suitably extended set, it reflects to me the free spirit and genre exploration of those all night radio broadcast sets thirty years ago.

Ah yes, life in a pandemic. I suppose every now and then life throws up a bit of turbulence, and so this is our time. But what is the difference between flying and falling, really? There are some parallels shared with the difference between drowning and waving. Beyond that, falling also carries with it a sense of inevitability, of a ballistic trajectory, of a future impact. No wonder that dreams of falling are so common, or so confronting. At a time when friends and family can feel so very far away, and as humanity fights a pitched battle with the everchanging swathe of infectious agents that seem so determined to further postpone our return to normality, who knows what lies ahead, or what comes next? Sometimes the best one can hope for is a soft landing.  

As I write this I am just over three hundred kilometres from home. May not sound like much, but after an extended pandemic and all of the restrictions that come with, even a little bit of travel is a really big deal. The past few weeks have been a reawakening of sorts. Social reconnections, the relaxation of restrictions, and a new sense of freedom and possibility for space and place. Seeing old friends in person again. Travelling to the places that we had always meant to see. Revisiting the places that we have been away from for far too long. Meeting new people. Booking overseas travel, and planning new adventures abroad. Hard to believe this is the furthest I have been from home in more than two years. This is of course episode 100 of Music For Small Audiences. It was recorded in one take a few weeks ago on the first weekend of social reconnection after many months apart. A special double length set filled with sparkling musical gems, it celebrates both the recent reconnections with friends and family close by, and the promise of seeing again those who we have been away from for far too long. As befits the context, it has more than a few nods to musical memories of years gone by. As a mix it is a fairly stretched out, groove driven affair, perfect for popping onto the hifi in the background while reconnecting with your own friends and family.

Whether we are talking about social gatherings or impending natural disasters, there comes a point at which leaving is no longer an option. A point when, to paraphrase an old movie quote, there can be no turning back, and there is no choice but to ride it out. Whether bunkering down or busting a move, once the decision to stay is made, the die has been cast. Once those present have made the commitment to stick it out and see where it all ends up, there is a bit of peace provided, because there is no longer a decision to be made. One way or another, things are in motion. Batten down the hatches and settle in, as the end game is underway. So too it has been with the Australian response to the pandemic. In recent weeks the strategy has shifted from one of elimination to one of accommodation, with the assumption that anyone still in Australia was going to have to make peace with things washing through to a certain extent. In hearing the announced shift in strategy, and in reading the emotions of those communicating it, there felt somewhat a parallel with that pivot point in natural disaster emergency broadcasts where the messaging shifts from strongly encouraging immediate evacuation, to advising that evacuation was no longer possible and that come what may, the only option remaining was to shelter in place. This mix was recorded during the time of this strategic shift. As such it reflects equal parts encouragement, relief and nostalgia, and is well suited to settling into a well protected place for an extended start to finish listen.

I love a good World War II documentary. While the world is today a very different place, there is still so much from that era that rings true, including the misplaced optimism in 1939 that suggested 'the boys will be home by Christmas'. Similarly, when the global pandemic started here in the twenty-first century, there was a sense that things would return to normal within some reasonable period of time. And yet, here we are. As children in the back seat during road trips of interminable length - as they all were - we would too often and too soon ask the adults in charge 'are we there yet?' To the extent there are adults in charge of getting us to the end point of this interminable worldwide trip, those adults are in the laboratories, in the manufacturing facilities, and in the supply chains supporting the design and delivery of our global vaccine program. Waiting for time to pass is difficult. As anyone who has ever sat on the tarmac waiting for takeoff for longer than expected will tell you, it is doubly difficult when we are not quite sure how long we are meant to wait for. From Blaise Pascal's timeless observation that humanity's inability to sit quietly is the root of its collective misfortune, to the painful existential grind of Samuel Beckett's no-show Godot, it seems at times that the only thing worse than a deadline is no deadline. For all these reasons and so many more, it sure was nice to get my second shot. This mix was recorded the evening following. As befits the mood of the evening, it touches a few different nerves of past, present and future.

It is the start of the longest night of the year here in Melbourne as I write this. As you may infer from the titles of my podcast episodes over the years, I have a recurring interest in the pivot points, the transitions, the turning points, the fulcrums, the thresholds, the apexes, the zeniths and the nadirs, and the point at which ebb becomes flow. Raised as I was with equal-tempered reverence for astronomy and astrology, the solstices hold a particular mystique for me. For many years, I took to playing the classic James Holden track Solstice on the summer and winter solstices. Close listeners will no doubt have heard the tune sneaking its way into the closing minutes of MFSA094 recorded a few months ago (admittedly closer to the equinox). Perhaps my fascination with turning points comes from some innate need for stimulation, change or newness. Perhaps it is a natural fascination with contrast, and the sense of fresh and different that comes from taking a new direction. Whatever its origins, I have learned to embrace it. This mix is a three hour set filled with plenty of changes in flow and tack. It was recorded live on a cozy Saturday winter evening just a few days shy of the winter solstice, in patient anticipation of the sunshine and spring soon to return to the southern hemisphere.

I am not a fast runner, but I like to run. After so many cancelled events it was great to again run in an organised event last weekend. It was a road run along the Great Ocean Road on the southern coast of Australia. The weather was wet but not rainy, with the run highlighted by an improbable number of seaside rainbows. Fittingly, the pub in which I had my celebratory post run beer bills itself as the southernmost pub on the Australian mainland. Running long distances has a way of letting the mind run free, safe in the knowledge that nothing can be actioned, and that we are exactly where we need to be. For a longer run there is also this balance to be struck, between pushing hard enough to chase a personal best, while also keeping enough in the tank to make it through to the finish line and the shower and pub beyond. While I firmly believe that pushing oneself is the best way to get good enough to make things easy, I also feel it is important not to beat oneself up too much. One can only do what one can do. I am fortunate enough to know some exceptionally hard workers. In getting to know them it has been refreshing and inspiring to learn that those that push themselves the hardest are often also those most adept at loosening up and letting things go when the finish line has been crossed, the project has been sorted, the deliverable has been sent, and the deal has been done. At the risk of repeating myself, balance is key.

While the whole world may be going through a global pandemic, the experience of every country and every individual has been different. As my good friend Dan has put it, we may all be riding out the same storm, but we are definitely not all in the same boat. We have each had our own unique difficulties and quiet victories over the course of the past year, and we have each found our own way of coping with the circumstances that have been thrown at us. For me, keeping things on an even keel over the past twelve months meant making quite a few suboptimal dietary choices, with the collective result leading to a recent reckoning as I now confront the reality of having to fit back into my work suits and shirts. As I assess the consequences of the last year and develop a course of behaviour to right the ship, I am struck again by the importance of balancing hedonic and eudaimonic priorities. Bad food feels good, but so too does being healthy.