frontrow@drummedia.com.au
B
ill Bailey is sitting on the other side of the world talking fondly about coming to Australia. While any artist can pay lip service to a place they’re coming to visit (and Bailey does acknowledge the British Vegemite black market with appropriate reverence) he has previously made a point of paying us special attention. During his last tour he dissected Australian news themes, a much more masterful local reference than the standard ‘Wow, Bondi Beach is pretty, isn’t it?’ “I love the news, in all its forms. And I had such fun that I think I might bring that one back into the fold, only because I’ve sourced a couple of other new ones as well. You know, your news themes tell you a lot about a country, I think, about how you feel about yourself and your news. Are you comfortable with your news? Are you proud of it?” Bailey asks. “In America, news themes are very reassuring, it’s as if the music’s going ‘don’t worry, everything’s fine.’ The world might be going to pot but in America the music doesn’t let you know; the chord progression, the chord modulations tell us that it’s all going to resolve and be lovely. And then I love that in other places the news music is a lot more urgent, a lot faster as if to say, ‘Come on it’s urgent, we’ve got urgent news, come on!’ And that urgency is thoroughly false sometimes, you listen to it and then think, ‘I didn’t need to know that,’ but it’s kind of interesting.” Bailey’s attention to musical detail is where his genius lies. While lots of stand-ups have made their money by observing life at large, Bailey’s focus on music, along with a healthy love of the ridiculous, is what makes him. “Yeah, I think that’s right, I think that’s so much of what I do. We hear so much music all the time, it’s always around us all the time, we’re kind of bombarded with it. And we cease to process it as music; it’s just a thing around us, just noise around us as background. But actually, someone’s had to record it, think about it, arrange it, you know, and that element of it, the creative element of it, the process of it, the creative process, really fascinates me in a way. Why did they make it like that? Why did they choose that sound? What was the thought process behind that? Particularly when we’re in a 24-hour blogosphere of news feeding off Twitter feeding off Facebook feeding off... So there’s no escape from it now, music is always there, creeping in all different kinds of ways. And I’m quite fascinated by that.” Bailey’s fascination has also given him license to spend a lot of time talking about music, including a long
TAKING GRAF FROM THE WALL TO... THE WALL
THE NEW
In their first completely indoors show, Sydney graf artists Giels Fish and Woes One bring their techniques from wall to canvas, ironically enough at an event called THE WALL, the weekly Wednesday art showing at The World Bar. Frontal Lobe Def, which refers to the artist’s suspicion that indulgence in drugs and alcohol results in awesomeness as well as atrophy of the brain, is on Wednesday 28 July, from 8pm.
BAILEY
MORE SCREEN LIVE ANNOUNCEMENTS
WE KNOW HIM BEST AS MANNY IN BLACK BOOKS, BUT BILL BAILEY’S MUSICAL COMEDY HAS SPREAD FURTHER AND WIDER THAN BERNARD BLACK’S BOOKSHOP. LIZ GIUFFRE TALKS TO THE COMEDIAN.
stint on British panel show Never Mind The Buzzcocks (a big brother to our Spicks And Specks). While Buzzcocks well and truly established his name in the UK as a funny bugger, the music show also meant he got to geek out as a music fan. “Buzzcocks was great, it was kind of anarchy you know, anything goes. And I got to meet Martha Reeves and Jimmy Cliff, you know, total legends. So that’s not a bad day at work,” he laughs. In order to really be able to get to the heart of observing music Bailey has mastered the craft himself. His position as a musician in his own right is something that sometimes gets overshadowed by his flair for the funny, but not too long ago Bailey used this as leverage to do a comedy tour with the BBC Concert Orchestra. It was something that wouldn’t have worked if he hadn’t been able to convince them of his own chops.
“A lot of orchestral players are very cynical... particularly some of the older players,” begins Bailey by way of explaining his collaboration, which toured the UK and has since made it to DVD. “[These older ones] were just like, ‘Oh, he’s just some comedian and he’s just going to make us dress up in silly costumes and play watering cans or something, right, it’s one of those bloody shows!’ And actually I didn’t do that, and I demonstrated that I could actually play an instrument - well, several instruments - and then they were like, ‘Oh, so he’s actually quite serious about music,’ and they kind of warmed up to the idea of playing with me. “The show was more of a double act between me and the orchestra. I would very often set up a musical joke and the orchestra would then pay it off. And for some of these players that was a complete
Three new combinations of silent film and live music (convenient, right) are coming up in the Screen Live programme at the Sydney Opera House (super-convenient!). There’s avant-garde jazz with The Georges Méliès Project - featuring screenings of his films - on Sunday 22 August, a 1926 version of The Wizard Of Oz accompanied by boogie-woogie piano Sunday 19 September, and Friday 15 October sees contemporary collaborations in live film and sound. Sessions are introduced and contextualised by Jamie Leonarder, and commence at 5pm. Tickets and more info through sydneyoperahouse.com.
revelation, a totally new experience about being the focus of the show.” It might be tempting to think that doing gags with music means that music is to be tossed aside or treated disrespectfully, but for Bailey it’s the opposite. “I think that I’ve always approached music with respect, and it’s an affectionate tribute in a way. In order to really get the pastiche that you’re aiming at, you have to really pay due service to the music and reproduce it as accurately as possible, and that’s certainly what serves the comedy theme better too. But a lot of it was out of genuine affection for the music that I’m having fun with, and I think that you have to understand it and know it to really get the most out of it.” WHAT: Bill Bailey WHERE & WHEN: State Theatre Friday 23 July to Tuesday 27
SHANNON MCKINNON, THE FACE OF SECRET WARS AUSTRALIA
SECRET WARS COMES TO SPA’S HOME One of our favourite events in Sydney is the Secret Wars art battles that’ve been happening monthly at Name This Bar, Darlinghurst over the past seven or so months. Taking the idea of the rap battle and adapting it for street art, the nights have involved two artists battling it out on Name This Bar’s wall over the course of 90 minutes - taking a blank canvas and turning it into art with just black markers and the venue’s wall. Well, we’re proud to announce that the Secret Wars Grand Final, which will be hotly contested by Houl and Creon, will be held at Street Press Australia’s (home to The Drum Media and 3D World) new home at Church On Chalmers, 142 Chalmers St, Surry Hills Saturday 7 August. Doors open at 6:30pm - caps off at 8:30pm. Head to secretwars.com.au for more details; tickets through Moshtix.
THE DRUM MEDIA 20 JULY 2010 • 53 •