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Tim Guy at Serge Gainsbourg’s house, 21.8.2010

This week I was lucky enough to host Tim Guy for a couple of nights in Paris. Tim is a New Zealand-based singer-songwriter and is currently touring his solo show through Europe alongside Sam Prebble (Bond Street Bridge).

Sam and Tim played to a small but dedicated audiance at Espace B in the 19th arrondissement on Thursday. They’ll be making a circuit of the open mic nights in Paris over the next few days, before heading on to Switzerland and Germany. The objective of this tour is to get their music out there and make some contacts for another trip next year.

Although born in Australia, Tim has lived in New Zealand for the past five years, and calls our islands home. His music has developed over that time to carry many the traces of other great kiwi musicians such as Don Mcglashan, the Finn brothers, Anika Moa and Bic Runga. Here’s a taste:

Here are the next European dates for Sam and Tim’s tour. If you’re nearby, these are two musicians who are both well worth checking out!

26 Aug 2010 21:00 Cafe Kairo Bern, SWITZERLAND
28 Aug 2010 21:00 Cafe Galao Stuttgart, GERMANY
2 Sep 2010 21:00 Hafen 2 Offenbach, GERMANY
3 Sep 2010 20:00 hasenshaukel hamburg, GERMANY
14 Sep 2010 21:00 east of eden berlin, GERMANY
18 Sep 2010 21:00 The Royal Oak Prague, CZECH REPUBLIC

Tim Guy mp3s (amplifier.co.nz)
Bond Street Bridge mp3s (amplifier.co.nz)

Fishing boats at Gamborg. Fyn, Denmark

Looking back over the photos I took in Denmark, one would be forgiven for thinking that the country contained little except small fishing boats and wharves. Somehow, nearly half of the images relate to waterfront, watercraft and jetties of various descriptions. Perhaps this islander has been missing the sea while living in Paris?

Wharf at Moesgard beach, south of Århus

My three days in Denmark only provided a short glimpse of the country, but I liked what I saw (OK, I’m an avowed Nordophile). Apart from anything else, the Danes seem to be the best drivers in the world – I didn’t see a single speed camera or cop, but everyone stuck to the speed limit.

Countryside in central Jutland

The real highlight of my visit was meeting up with Sigurdór and his family. We’ve been friends on the internet for something like five years, but never met in person. Somehow it turned out that the midpoint between Paris and Reykjavík was a trampoline in the garden at Hingeballe.

Copenhagen

A short few hours in Copenhagen on my last day was not enough time to really get a feel for the city, but sufficient to convince me to return for a longer visit sometime. Although I’d probably come home with another bunch of photos of little boats.

Sailing boat at Svenstrup. Fyn, Denmark

Beside the Norsminde Fjord. Jutland, Denmark

On the beach at Løkken. Jutland, Denmark

I wrote last year about my chance meeting with Leanna Mills and her family in Montpellier. I was particularly moved by their story and have kept in touch with the family since.

With more surgery upcoming for Leanna and her sister Bethany, the family arrived back in France this week. They passed through Paris briefly on their way to Montpellier.

On Thursday evening I caught up with the girls and their father Nic for dinner. Afterwards we went down to the Eiffel Tower for some sightseeing. I’m still not much good at driving a wheelchair, and the evening crowds didn’t make it easier! Their little sister Olivia came with us, and had a lot of fun with the souvenir sellers…

Bethany, Nic, Leanna and Olivia in Paris

Bethany’s surgery is routine but still dramatic – she is getting the batteries replaced for the brain stimulator device that keeps her alive. The technology is slowly improving, and doctors  hope that her new batteries will last longer than two years. Bethany uses a wheelchair, but thanks to continuing surgery she remains fairly mobile and independent.

On the other hand, Leanna is facing a much grimmer challenge. In addition to her primary dystonia, she has recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease – terrible news for a 15 year-old girl.  Leanna now requires significant care, and the outlook does not look good for much improvement.

Mills Sisters Registered Charity

The Mills family currently need help raising funds to buy a block of land in Newcastle, Australia and to construct a disability-friendly home for the girls. They have a registered charity, and donations are accepted online at their MyCause page. These donations are tax-deductible in Australia.

In other developments, the sisters now have their own website. With permission of the family, I also have set up a Facebook page – so you can follow them if you’re on Facebook, and I hope to post regular updates there as I hear news…

Image: U.S. Army (Creative Commons)

I commend to you this interview with writer and historian William Dalrymple. A long-time observer of south Asia, (Born in Scotland, Dalrymple has lived in India for twenty years), he outlines concisely why western military intervention in Afghanistan is destined to failure, as has every foreign invasion of the country for at least 200 years.

The first half of the interview covers Dalrymple’s life story and his latest book, Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India. But the meat of the conversation is in the second half hour, where Dalrymple describes his latest trip to Afghanistan. Essentially in Dalrymple’s view, NATOs current strategy in the country is not working and will never work.

David Cameron in Afghanistan, June 10, 2010 (Downing Street: Creative Commons)

In our haste to liberate Afghanistan from the odious clutches of the Taleban, we tend to forget that the military strength and political clout of Islamic extremists in south Asia were largely creations of Western intelligence agencies in the 1980s in their clandestine war with the Soviets.

Many things that have happened since – mujahadeen fighting in Bosnia, years of violent theocratic rule in Afghanistan, terrorist training camps – are simply massive blowback for the meddling of years gone by.

Image: US Army (Creative Commons)

What is remarkable is how pessimistic Dalrymple is. He sees the only solution will be to negotiate with the Taleban, bringing them and more ethnic Pashtoun elements into the Afghan government. Without such a move he predicts the collapse of the Karzai régime within nine months. And if failure in Afghanistan leads to the collapse of nucelar-armed Pakistan, Dalrymple agrees with the recent prognosis of Salman Rushdie: “we’re all fucked.”

Quand on arrive en Nouvelle-Zélande, on se sent forcément loin de chez soi.
“Arriving in New Zealand, you inevitably feel a long way from home.”

Charles Juliet – Auckland, août 2003

On the recommendation of a Twitter buddy, I’ve been reading Charles Juliet‘s Au pays du long nuage blanc: his journal of six months in New Zealand in 2003 while on a writer’s fellowship in Wellington.

Like all New Zealanders who are by nature slightly insecure about their nation’s reputation abroad, I was initially interested to see what an eminent French author thought of our country. Indeed, Juliet picks up on many of the usual kiwi tropes: the friendliness and informality of people, the centrality of rugby to the national narrative and the lack of insulation and heating in our houses.

The journal oscillates between observations of some of the remarkable aspects of life in New Zealand and reflections on Juliet’s own craft as a writer and poet. Descriptions of the weather constantly intervene, as one might expect given that Juliet spent a winter in Wellington!

Wellington, NZ – May 2008

Juliet spends much of his time exchanging with some of New Zealand’s notable intellectuals: Vincent O’Sullivan, Dame Fiona Kidman and Gordon Stewart among others. In particular he describes long lunchtime conversations with Chris Laidlaw, (broadcaster, diplomat, politician, academic and former All Black). Juliet also devotes many pages reflecting on his long-time admiration for Katherine Mansfield.

Juliet’s journal provided a personal connection too: when Juliet visits Auckland, it is at the invitation Professor Raylene Ramsay at Auckland University, who supervised my Honours dissertation! It was a curious experience to have the name of a personal acquaintance dropped into the middle of a book bought at FNAC Montparnasse.

Charles Juliet (Image: Léa Crespi, Télérama)

Despite the obvious pleasure Charles Juliet derives from his time in New Zealand, the journal is haunted by his awareness of the great distance that separates him from his homeland, France. And when Juliet finally leaves New Zealand in January 2004, he acknowledges that he will never return to the Land of the Long White Cloud.

Au pays du long nuage blanc is an easy read (I finished it in just 2 days), and would be of interest to anyone who wants to explore strands of the relationship between France and New Zealand. It’s published by Gallimard in Folio for EUR5.60.

Finies ces longues errances
sous des ciels éteints
Finis ces combats truqués
Où j’étais toujours vaincu
Fini ce temps installé
Dans la misère du non
J’ai déposé le poids mort
qui obscurcissait ma vie
Long a été le chemin
qui m’a permis
de quitter mon enfance

Charles Juliet – Wellington, décembre 2003

Wyuna Bay, Coromandel Peninsula, NZ – June 2008

Even at the best of times, Charles de Gaulle is a historical figure that one can’t avoid in France. More than 3000 towns and villages across the country honour him with a street name. When Paris built the world’s most impossible international airport, there was only one name they could give it. And inevitably, France’s nuclear aircraft carrier bears the name of the man his military school classmates called “The Great Asparagus“.

This week France marks the 70th anniversary of “The Appeal of 18th June 1940“, and so Charles de Gaulle is even more omnipresent than usual – on TV, in newly-minted books, and on metro walls.

A few years ago, I visited the (now closed) Charles de Gaulle Museum in Bayeux, Normandy, and described the exhibitions as “creepy and obsessive”. Now, having lived in France a little while, I’ve come to understand a little better the influence that “le connétable” still exerts over the French nation and its sense of itself.  The obsession is certainly there, but perhaps it’s less creepy than simply necessary…

Whether you like it or not, many aspects of Charles de Gaulle’s “conception of France” form the backbone of the French nation as it enters the 21st Century: strongly centralised government, broad state involvement in the economy and French exceptionalism in foreign policy. For better or worse, every French President that followed him has  had to work within a political system largely conceived by de Gaulle when he founded the 5th Republic in extremis in 1958.

The event being commemorated this week, De Gaulle’s Appeal of the 18th of June, arguably marked the birth of modern France. The speech made by de Gaulle on the BBC that day in 1940 effectively created the Free French forces, and asserted that the legitimate power of the republic now lay with those resisting occupation, rather than with the collaborationist government headed by Pétain.

But in terms of re-establishing the French nation-state, de Gaulle’s stubborness in the face of his British and American allies was just as important as his fight against the Nazis.

Churchill and Roosevelt were constantly annoyed and bemused by de Gaulle’s insistence that France sit at the table of “great powers”, and Anglo-Saxon incomprehension of the monomaniac de Gaulle continued well after the war. In 1964, the General was famously portrayed as a Dalek in a cartoon in the Daily Mail.

Key to de Gaulle’s plan for the recuperation of post-war France was his insistence on establishing a national legend of  Resistance.  This week I visited Mont Valérien on the outskirts of Paris, site of the monument built by de Gaulle to the heroes of WW2, the Mémorial de la France Combattante. It was extraordinary to me to see how a monument that commemorates France’s triumph over fascism could look so, well, fascist…

But while De Gaulle still inspires awe, argument and occasionally derision in France today, there are some who are not scared to paint the Great Leader in a satirical light. Jean-Yves Ferri’s De Gaulle à la Plage imagines a cartoon Charles de Gaulle and his family on holiday at the beach in 1956, illustrated in hilarious and affectionate detail.

In some ways, de Gaulle has become immortal like Abraham Lincoln or Oliver Cromwell, a character who has become historical shorthand for a certain time period and a certain view of the world. Whether speaking on the radio from wartime London, cryptically addressing Algerian colonists with his Je vous ai compris speech, or lying under a sun umbrella on a beach in Brittany, Charles de Gaulle is going to be haunting imaginations for a long time yet.

This weekend was spent back in Montpellier, catching up with friends. On Saturday morning I visited the Marché des Arceaux with Ed Ward (read his Montpellier blog here).

With up to 80 local farmers and producers turning up each week, this is Montpellier’s premier source of fresh food in Montpellier – always worth a stop if you’re in town on a Saturday or a Tuesday!

Batucada Sound Machine is one of the many bands that grew out of Auckland’s funk/soul scene in the early years of the century. As far as I can recall, the scene congealed around a certain number of DJs and musicians. Club nights and the audience followed.

The scene was characterised by large-scale bands such as The Hot Grits, Tangent, Opensouls and one million dollars. If one were poetic and lazy one might say that the music reflected Auckland’s urban and cosmopolitan identity: jazz, soul, hip-hop, afrobeat, latin and funk congealing in one big sweaty mess.

Sound engineers either relished or dreaded the prospect of setting up a stage for a dozen musicians including horns, berimbau, harmonicas, surdos and multiple vocalists. A 24-channel desk was a minmum requirement. As were fun but low-budget music videos:

Of course, apart from a few forays to Australia, the sheer size of these bands has meant that they haven’t been heard often beyond New Zealand’s shores. BSM is an exception – a 2006 tour saw them play venues across Europe including WOMAD Reading.

This year they’re back in Europe for a month of gigs across the continent and the UK. They are definitely worth catching if they’re playing in a town near you. You will like them, and you will dance.

Here are the full tour dates:

June 11 2010 Blossom Festival, Alfândega da Fé, Portugal
June 12 2010 Ollin Kan Festival, Vila Do Conde, Portugal
June 15 2010 Music Box, Lisboa, Portugal
June 18 2010 Sala Caracol, Madrid, Spain
June 19 2010 Sala Joplin, Segovia, Spain
June 25 2010 Bitterzoet, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
June 26 2010 Afro Latino Festival, Bree, Belgium
June 27 2010 Wereldfeest, Utrecht, The Netherlands
June 28 2010 Colos-Saal, Aschaffenburg, Germany
June 30 2010 Universum, Stuttgart, Germany
July 1 2010 Café Hahn, Koblenz, Germany
July 2 2010 Scala, Leverkusen, Germany
July 3 2010 Bar Du Matin, Brussels, Belgium
July 4 2010 Lustspielhaus, Munich, Germany
July 5 2010 Spectrum Club, Augsburg, Germany
July 7 2010 Guanabara, London, UK
July 8 2010 The Stables, Milton Keynes, UK
July 9 2010 Durham International Brass Festival, UK
July 10 2010 Norwich, UK
July 11 2010 Mouth of the Tyne Festival, Newcastle, UK

Orchestre des Concerts Gais, direction Marc Korovitch
Concerto pour violon, Beethoven, Pierre Hamel
Symphonie #4, Schubert
17 et 18 avril 2010 – Temple des Batignolles, Paris 17e

It’s now Wednesday and I haven’t yet written about the weekend of concerts that marked the first “outing” (hoho) of Les Concerts Gais (et Beaux). If you can read French, I highly recommend diverting your attention towards the accounts of klari and zvezdo, which are far more detailed and wonderfully written than I could manage.

In the meantime, here’s a taste of what we played – although this version is performed by some random fiddler called Itzhak Perlman and an obscure German string-band conducted by Mister du Pré, (who is himself a part-time Argentinian pianist).

From my perspective, it’s been a most interesting and exciting few months being back in a classical orchestra – I’m of the firm opinion that your relationship to a piece of music changes utterly when you are allowed “inside” it.

Winter and spring in Paris for me has been punctuated by Saturdays crawling around within the frameworks nailed together by Schubert and Beethoven.  It’s been fascinating work, and we’ve eaten some good lunches too.

Playing in an orchestra in Paris is also very good for my French. I’m learning all sorts of great new words.

From a trumpet player’s standpoint, the music is not necessarily challenging – essentially we double with the tympani for most of the time, and because the parts were written for valveless natural trumpets, we play no melody at all – just declarative rythmic statements. In theory this gives you time and space to work on your dynamics (although as everyone knows, trumpet players only have two dynamics – LOUD and NOT PLAYING).

The trumpets’ three most important roles in the orchestra involve, counting bars rest; tweeting during the Larghetto ; and helping the timpanist not to get lost.  Great pleasure can be derived from doing such simple jobs well.

However, it was always a beautiful moment when, in the dying moments of the concert, Marc finally smiles at us in the 4th movement of the Schubert, and points his baton at us with a gesture that says ALLEZ LES TROMPETTES!

We know what we have to do.

FORTISSIMO!

In the summer of 1969, a mail sorter at a New York post office received a letter addressed “To The Greatest Drummer in the World”. There was no address or return address and the sorter wasn’t sure what to do.

Fortunately, there was a former drummer who worked the front counter of the Post Office who promptly found Max Roach‘s address and forwarded the letter.

Max Roach received the letter and said, “Oh no, I’m not the greatest drummer in the world.”

Max then promptly forwarded the letter to Gene Krupa.

Gene Krupa looked at the envelope and said “Somebody must’ve made a mistake.”

Gene then forwarded the letter on to Buddy Rich.

Of course, Buddy had been waiting his entire life for that moment.

He read the words “To The Greatest Drummer in the World” and smiled from ear-to-ear as he ripped open the envelope.

The letter began, “Dear Ringo….”