Below are the 11 most recent journal entries recorded in brucegillespie's LiveJournal:

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007
10:09 pm	Frustration -- and some unsubtle advertising I've spent an hour tonight trying to get into my Blogspot blog, but can't do it. I seem to have mislaid my codes so completely that I can't even guess at what it wants. Why should that matter for LiveJournal readers? Because the tradition here is not to run long entries, whereas I need somewhere to post a whole lot of my articles in HTML. Looks as if I might have to do that here. Most of these articles are already available in the many issues of Scratch Pad that can be found on http://efanzines.com, in my section; or in the issues of SF Commentary, The Metaphysical Review or Steam Engine Time that can be found there. That's an advertisement... Another advertisement: As you might remember, a whole lot of Australian, American and even some British fans donated a huge amount of  money in 2004 to send me on the BBB (Bring Bruce Bayside) Fund Trip: 17 February-13 March 2005. I visited Seattle for a week, then San Francisco for 10 days, including two conventions -- Corflu and Potlatch -- then off overland to Las Vegas, three days in Los Angeles, then home. American Kindness: The BBB Fund Trip Report is now available from: (Australia) Bill Wright, Flat 4, 1 Park Street, ST Kilda West, VIC 3182 (or during August directly from me at 5 Howard Street, Greensborough VIC 3088), for $A10; (USA) Robert Lichtman, 11037 Broadway Terrace, Oakland CA 94611-1948, for $US10; and (UK) Mark Plummer and Claire Brialey, 59 Shirley Road, Croydon, Surrey CR0 7ES. The report is 44 pages long, 32,000 words, lots of photos, cast of hundreds, and a colour cover by Ditmar (Dick Jenssen). It looks pretty on the shelf. (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, June 10th, 2007
5:29 pm	Gobsmacked Gillespie Gets the Gong Members of Fictionmags might take awhile to catch up on this news, but I'm so over the moon I have to relay this note sent out to Australian fandom in general... I was so gobsmacked last night at ConVergence 2 (the national Australian convention, Rydge's Hotel, Melbourne, 8-11 June 2007) by receiving the A Bertram Chandler Award that I didn't say any of the things I might have if I had had time to think. So here's a later effort: 'Thank you to members of the Australian Science Fiction Foundation for what I regard as the ultimate honour that can be received in the Australian science fiction community. I feel as if I had been knighted. On the other hand, it feels a bit odd to be honoured for what comes naturally -- publishing fanzines. Much of the pleasure of receiving the Chandler Award comes from being honoured by one's peers, people who have also seen the gradual birth and infancy of Australian pro and fan activity since the 1950s, through the triumphant years of our first two Worldcons, through to the boom years of the 1990s. It's a lot of good history, and thanks for appreciating my part in it. Thanks also to the Foundation for your continuing activity, most of it behind the scenes, to support new ventures in Australian SF. Personal thanks go to Elaine Cochrane, who has put up with me all these years and saved me from bankruptcy a number of items. Every fanzine publisher needs an angel. Thanks also to Paul Kincaid and Maureen Kincaid Speller, my co-editors on the first three issues of Steam Engine Time, and Jan Stinson, the current co-editor. It's been a long journey, originally inspired by four great Chandler Award winners -- John Bangsund, John Foyster, Lee Harding and George Turner -- constantly threatened by rising postal charges and periods of unemployment, but constantly inspired by well wishers and contributors. Next goal up ahead -- the 40th anniversary issue of SF Commentary in 2009.' I'll think of other things later. Best wishes Bruce Gillespie 5 Howard Street Greensborough VIC 3088 (03) 9435 7786 gandc@mira.net (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, June 9th, 2007
10:29 am	Triumphant return -- and some housekeeping Because Mark and Claire (sorry, I don't know their LiveJournal names) visited our place in Greensborough, Melbourne, on Thursday afternoon, I'm a bit more au fait with working with LiveJournal. A bit. However, I suddenly realised that I've allowed Orrible Spam to infiltrate Comments on my past pieces. I don't know how spammers get into LiveJournals, but I've done my best to winkle out recent offensive spam. Now to find some time to start posting again. Since this is the weekend of ConVergence 2, the national Australian convention, being held in Melbourne, I probably won't do much for a few days. Also, I have to index a 400-page book at the same time. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, October 3rd, 2005
11:56 am	THE DARK SIDE OF PARADISE To Elaine and me, refugees from the inner suburbs, Greensborough spread out before us like a beautiful piece of green park with houses and streets inscribed on it (and a dirty big ugly shopping centre in the middle). Surely we would find here the quietness and clean air that, when we lived in Collingwood, we always knew was out there somewhere. Clean air, yes. Quietness — yes, except for the host of dogs who sometimes take part in a chat sessions across the suburb. The other side of our back fence there is one particularly idiotic dog (noise = stupidity = dog) that seems to bark at anything. Possums, the kids down the road, the people who deliver junk mail, the sound of Polly’s bell as she skips around the yard. Anything. But that dog does shut up for hours at a time. In selling up in Collingwood, we hoped that the income would pay for a large house on a large block somewhere out this way. The house is just right for our needs, except that we keep having to replace things that did not look wonky when we moved in. Three burners out of five on the electric stove top don’t work. Elaine is just getting around to replacing the stove with a gas stove top. The back fence needed replacing. The giant air-conditioning unit on the roof, which was going to give us bliss during summer, proved to be so corroded that it probably hasn’t worked for years. The heating unit worked for two months, then conked out. With its computer control unit replaced, it has been working since. Et cetera. I stick to the inside of the house as much as possible, except when I go for walks. Elaine works in the garden whenever she can. It’s her garden. In Collingwood she spent eight years creating a native plants garden. She hopes to do the same here. Elaine’s plan is to rip up all the lawn eventually, and replace the whole garden with Australian native plants. She is a member of the Eltham branch of the Australian Plants Society. At one of their garden visits, she saw a demonstration of a novel method of conserving water. (This has been the first time in ten years during which we have received continual winter rains, and the decade-long drought is still by no means broken.) Put rubble in trenches between raised garden beds. Water runoff flows down through the rubble, and circulates upward into the soil. The principle is the same as that used by seemingly dry creek beds that one finds lined with trees. A week later, Elaine was walking along Alexandra Street when she saw that, while demolishing a large house, the demolishers were dumping all the roof tiles in a truck. ‘How much do you want for them?’ she asked. ‘Nothing,’ said the workman. ‘Where do you live? I’ll bring them around for free.’ Which he did. There was one problem. There is no way of getting a truck into our back yard. The only access is through the garage. The bloke backed his truck onto the front lawn and dumped the lot. The broken tiles covered about three-quarters of the front lawn. This did not worry Elaine. She wanted to destroy the lawn anyway. She started breaking the tiles into smaller bits and lugging them around the back as she prepared each trench-and-garden-bed. A few weeks later a bloke knocked at the door. He was very polite. He was from the Banyule Council. He said that a neighbour had made a complaint to Banyule Council about the tiles on the front lawn. We needed to move them within a month. We were flabbergasted. Who could have made the complaint? Nobody had complained to us. What right did anybody have to complain? This is where we reveal the dark side of paradise. ‘Paradise’ out here is defined as ‘gardens’. Most gardens are large, and bog-standard Australian in design, i.e. European trees and flowers, with lots of carefully manicured lawns. During spring, lawn-mowing is one of the major industries. So Elaine had inadvertently committed heresy by allowing an ugly Thing, i.e. a vast pile of tiles, to sit on the front lawn. We can only guess that the complainant is our 87-year-old next-door neighbour. (Many of the people in our street are nearly 80 or over 80 and show no signs of slowing down. As I said, the air is healthy out here.) But we might be being unfair to her. She does tend to treat us as if we were her ten-year-old nephew and niece. She can’t believe that we have five cats. ‘Get rid of them!’ she said. She can’t believe that, in her eyes, we have already destroyed the back garden, with all that lawn. And she does seem to believe it is her business, which is a bit of a surprise to anybody migrating from the inner suburbs. We did agree with the unknown complainant that the tiles were in the wrong place. Of course we would have had them dumped at the back if that had been possible. Now we had to find a way within the next four weeks to carry them through from one side of the house to the other. We set out filling the barrow that we were given when we moved in last October. Its tyre burst. Elaine bought a much bigger, sturdier barrow. We started at the top of the pile and began filling it. I trundled the barrow through to the back. Within a week my elbow went out, and my thumbs felt like hell. (I suspect this was because I was wearing thick gloves to handle the tiles, rather than the tile-chucking action itself.) I went off to see my masseur and chiropractor to try to get my arm and thumbs working okay again. I hadn’t had visited them for six months. That cost $77.00, and my thumbs still felt like hell. About that time, our wonderful builder Harjinder phoned us. He had finished some gigantic project, and had a few spare days before the next one started. We had a page-long list of things for him to do, so he started on the last stage of the inbuilt bookcases. He brought his pleasant Indian assistant, Mika. ‘Can we pay him extra?’ said Elaine. ‘Could he take the tiles through when he’s not working on the shelves?’ A fit twenty-year-old lad makes one feel old by comparison. In a total of three days’ work he carried through the rest of the tiles. It had taken the two of us three weeks to move about a quarter of them. What next? What happens when we actually start turning the front lawn into trench-and-garden-bed patterns. Suburban wars? (17 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2005
10:15 am	THE GREAT TASK FINISHED? When I accepted the offer of a trip overseas, I did not realise that writing the Trip Report would take five times longer than the trip itself. And I couldn't wriggle out of writing it. The Bring Bruce Bayside Fund was not like your usual DUFF or GUFF fund. There, if the winner doesn't write the trip report, the saved funds can be paid on to the next winner. In the case of the BBB Fund, the administrators decided long ago to donate excess funds to other fan funds. They couldn't do that until I had written my report, and it had been printed, posted and paid for. Day-to-day travels that seemed very interesting at the time can seem dull when you have to write about them a few months later. Also, it's a ghastly job remembering exact details of anything. I took detailed notes for the first week of the journey, but did not have time after that. I had to rely on scurried notes in my small diary, plus memory prompts, such as convention program books, other people's reports of the same events, souvenirs and postcards collected during the journey, photos taken, etc. So the report should have been short, shouldn't it? No, I'm just a gabby kind of fellow. I stopped at the 8000-word mark, mainly out of boredom at my own prose, only a few weeks after I returned from America. I had no paying work when I returned, but then received the one substantial piece of editing that's come my way since late last year. That was a good excuse to stop writing the report. Then another lull in the workload, so I went back to the report. At that stage, the report hadn't even left Seattle, let alone travelled to San Francisco. The lull in paying work lasted long enough for me to finish the first draft: 32,000 words. I'm not sure what possessed me to write the second draft rather than merely patch up the first. Since I've been writing on computer, I've become very lazy about second drafts, as have most computer users. Paul Collins is the only writer I know who shoves away his first draft then starts a second draft from scratch. It works for him. The second draft went very quickly, but was stopped by quite a satisfactory burst of paying work -- enough small jobs over a four-week period to stop me 5000 words from the end. A week and a half ago, I was facing yet another work drought, but I had to finish my own ANZAPA contribution and collate the mailing. Then I get back to that final 5000 words. Late Sunday afternoon, I finished: 34,000 words. I began to think of all the bits I left out. (Just which night did I have dinner with Lauren McGregor in Seattle? Did he join the group with Jerry and Suzle at the waterfront cafe, or Alan and me on my final night in Seattle? It's facts like these that can spook you.) I've sent uncorrected versions to a few of the people involved in the fund -- I'm waiting for the deletions, additions, corrections and expostulations. And perhaps a few more photos. (I know I saw a photo of John Hertz somewhere. But it's no longer on my hard disk. Did Chaz take a pic. of him at Corflu? Was John at Corflu or at Potlatch?) I keep collecting stuff associated with the trip. Marty Cantor, who made the original suggestion on Trufen that led to the Fund, sent me detailed maps of most  of Los Angeles. I thought I would hate LA, but it fascinates me. All it needs is a good public transport system instead of bloody freeways. Alan Rosenthal finally sent me a picture of him and Janice together. Janice caught a cold just before Corflu, and was so struck down with flu that she was hardly seen at the convention. Hence, Chaz didn't take her photo. But I owe so much to Janice and Alan, that I had to find a photo of them together. The Trip Report still has a long way to go. It will be sent free to One-Per-Centers, the people who donated $25 or more to the Fund. Otherwise it will be $A10 from Australia, $US10 from Robert Lichtman in America, and 5 quid from Claire and Mark in Britain. But don't hold your breath or send money yet. There is still a lot of photo scanning to be done, plus proofreading, printing, etc. At the current rate of production, it might get finished in my lifetime. (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 20th, 2005
4:42 pm	SUPERNATURAL BEING and ANZAPA MAILING 226, AUGUST 2005 SUPERNATURAL BEING Last Thursday, 18 August, was a special Nova Mob meeting to meet Karen Joy Fowler, who was in town for the Melbourne Writers Festival. She didn't remember meeting me ten years ago when she was in Melbourne. But I remembered her. She looks exactly the same as she did ten years ago. She's only a few years younger than me, yet she looks as if she's hardly hit thirty. Some writers are supernatural beings. Karen had just come off a fourteen-hour flight from Los Angeles, yet she managed to speak and field questions for nearly two hours without umm-ing and ah-ing, without hesitation, and keeping us in captive silence. Mesmerising stuff, although I suppose all she was telling us was how she became a writer (without knowing what sacrifices the process would take) and how she achieved some of her more notable triumphs (by 'not knowing any better'). Her modesty is no doubt genuine, but a bit hard to believe nevertheless. A certain steeliness underlies her affability and modesty. She took six years to achieve her first sales -- with, at first, a contract with her husband by which she would 'find a job' if she didn't achieve a sale within one year; then a five-year extension of the contract... and those sales took all that time. Many writers tell similar stories of waiting years before their first sales. How do they do it? Why do they do it? Writers are indeed alien beings. I could not stand rejection for six years. I probably could not stay in the game after the first rejection, even if I had any ideas for fiction. Compare this process with fanzine publishing. In 1968 nobody knew who I was when I turned up at the Melbourne SF Conference. Exactly a year later I was greeted on all sides because I had published SF Commentary 1 and a few apazines. No wonder I publish fanzines. Karen had lots of good yarns: about her appreciation of the work of James Tiptree Jr, and how she and Pat Murphy set up the James Tiptree Awards. About the extreme difficulty of selling her first novel Sarah Canary, although she had been asked for a first novel to follow her first book of short stories. About the origins of Sister Moon, not only the only Fowler book I don't own, but the only one I had never heard of. Justin Ackroyd says he can get it; if he can't, I really will get on the Internet in search of it. Karen brought up the issue of the kind of writer she is. On the one hand, her career leads her toward science fiction, and her great pleasure was discovering the world of SF writers and fans; on the other hand, there are fewer and fewer SF and fantasy elements in her main books. When she rang her current agent, on the eve of the publication of The Jane Austen Book Club, to tell her that a story had won a Nebula, her agent said 'Shit!' and made sure this fact did not appear on the cover of the new book. However, Karen finds that the audiences for SF and Jane Austen are very similar, and their conventions are even similar. It was still judged that the kind of reader who enjoys The Jane Austen Book Club will not want to know that the author has ever had anything to do with science fiction. That's even more so in Australia; I wonder how Karen will fare during her sessions at the Writers' Festival. ANZAPA MAILING No. 226, August 2005 I'm the OBE of ANZAPA (Official Bloody Editor of the Australia and New Zealand Amateur Publishing Association). The title of my official position is a joke invented by Gary Mason many years ago. Gary disappeared from sight in the early eighties, reappeared for Anzapacon in the early nineties, was OBE for a year, then disappeared again. In his honour, on the cover of this mailing I've published a photo of him as he looked in 1968. Mailing No. 226 was supposed to be collated during the weekend and sent out on Monday. Instead, I took advantage of the privileges of high office and finished my own contribution, *brg* 44, over the weekend. Then I had to write and publish the OBO (Official Bloody Organ), which somehow took until Wednesday afternoon. Bill Wright arrived on Thursday afternoon, and we collated the mailing and put it into envelopes before we went into town to attend the Nova Mob. Apas are what SF fans did to communicate before email. Many of us still find it a much more satisfactory way of communicating than any of the speedier message-exchange systems. People have to consider what they say, write their stuff properly, design their zines, print them and get them to the central mailer. Trouble is, instant gratification has become so universal that the members of ANZAPA today represent most of the surviving fanzine publishers in Australia, plus some superstars from overseas. Our members are: Derrick and Christine Ashby (Victoria), Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer (London), Garry Dalrymple (Sydney), John and Diane Fox (Sydney), me (Melbourne), Karen Gory (was Karen Johnson from Melbourne; now married and living in Florida), Michael Green (Melbourne), Sue and David Grigg (Melbourne), Jack Herman (Sydney), Kim Huett (Canberra), Eric Lindsay and Jean Weber (Airlie Beach, Queensland), LynC and Estelle Newall (Melbourne), Dan McCarthy (Dunedin, New Zealand), Jeanne Mealy (Minneapolis), Murray Moore (Mississauga, Canada), Terry Morris (Melbourne), John Newman (Castlemaine, Victoria), Michael O'Brien (Hobart), Cath Ortlieb (Melbourne), Spike Parsons (San Francisco), Lucy Schmeidler (New York), Nick Shears (Brisbane), Roger Sims (Orlando, Florida), Gerald Smith and Womble (Sydney), Alan Stewart (Melbourne), Bill Wright (Melbourne), and Sally Yeoland (Melbourne). We need new members to take us up to full strength (30). Every two months you send your contribution to me (at the moment, it's 32 copies), and I send you yours and everybody else's contributions. That's usually 180-200 pages of reading every two months. To keep your membership, you need to contribute at least six self-written pages every six months, and pay your annual dues ($8 if you pick up your copy by hand; $20 if you live in Australia, and equivalent of $A60 if you live overseas). (15 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 17th, 2005
9:32 pm	HOW PLEASED AND BLESSED WAS I How pleased and blessed was I that the committee of Continuum 4 called upon me to be their Fan Guest of Honour on 2006 in Melbourne, Australia. (Continuum is the annual Melbourne SF-and-a-a-lot-more convention, and is usually held in mid-winter; next year it's during the first weekend of August.) Actually, the committee did not call upon me and anoint me as the Fan Guest of Honour. Elaine went up to Ian Mond at the most recent Nova Mob (Melbourne's monthly SF discussion group) and offered him money -- both our subscriptions for Continuum 4 -- and Ian turned her down. It is astonishing that Ian refused to take money. He took her aside and mentioned that actually, um, the committee was going to ask me to be their GoH. Which Ian did a few minutes later. He said: 'I know you are going to say that lots of other people should have been fan guest instead of you, but you're it.' Yes, he was right. I can think of vast numbers of other people who should be Fan GoHs before me. You might remember that that was my schtick in 1999 for my Fan Guest of Honour speech -- I told not-completely-complimentary tales about all those people who had entered fandom before I did (end of 1967) and should have been honoured rather than me. Since we lost John Foyster to a brain tumour only a few years later, it is doubly a disgrace that he was not standing there instead of me. (But he did a great job as Toastmaster at the Opening Ceremony. That was the finest speech he ever gave, although nobody taped it.) If we consider people who have entered fandom since 1968, a vast fleet of people might well be considered as Fan Guests of Honour at Australian conventions instead of me. Van Ikin is probably the name that would come to mind first for most people -- I became aware of him first in the mid 1970s and he began Science Fiction in 1977. Then there are all the members of New Wave Melbourne fandom of the late eighties, not to mention all the vast number of people who became involved because of the first two Aussiecons (1975 and 1985). All the more argument for following the principle of America's Corflu (annual fanzine fans' convention) and picking the guest of honour's name out of a hat. We are such a distinguished lot that this ruse would probably work. I'm still not sure what a Fan Guest of Honour does except stand around awkwardly and greet as many people as possible. I have a few ideas for a Fan GoH speech, if anybody wants to listen. I have a few ideas for panels, if the program committee wants to listen. But generally my role is to encourage people to send their money to the committee, and make Continuum 4 as successful as Continuum 3 was. (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 13th, 2005
8:28 pm	It was a quiet two weeks in beautiful downtown Greensborough I don't know how people find things to write about here. Okay, if you've been to Glasgow for the Worldcon, you would have much to talk about, but you would be too exhausted to plug in the computer. I'm jealous, sort of. I had my wonderful two conventions in February/March. Each of Corflu and Potlatch had 120 attending, which is Quite Enough. Vast thousands of attendees sound like vast thousands too many, but that's not the impression of Interaction that I get from emails and LiveJournal entries. Sounds as if all you had to do was gather in the bar, and you were right. For two weeks I've been shanghaied by two indexes and a proofreading job. For somebody who's been feeling very unemployed this year, all this hard work has been a shock to the system. Just shows: if the deadline lingers near enough and the jobs are interesting enough, even I can get through a fair amount of work in a short time. I did catch up with some socialising, especially the August Nova Mob meeting. Murray McLachlan told us much of what he knows about New Zealand science fiction. In Australia, we don't know much about New Zealand. At least we thought we didn't. Murray mentioned quite a few names we did know. Philip Mann did very well in Britain for awhile, then disappeared. M. K. Joseph published The Hole in the Zero out in the late sixties. Stanislaw Lem expressed disappointment in the novel in SF Commentary 22 in 1972, but I remember it as being very entertaining. Margaret Mahy will be the main guest of honour at ConVergence (Australian national convention, 2007, in Melbourne). I found her latest novel in Readers Feast the other day, and it looks delicious. Now to find time to read it. I was in Readers Feast because I was browsing with Randal Flynn, and Randal Flynn had nearly caused me a heart attack by phoning me a few days earlier. The previous time I had seen Randal he was riding his bike down the footpath in Fitzroy, and he just missed me. When we lived at Collingwood, Randal called sometimes, but never after phoning. However, this week Randal had good news -- he reminded me that it was the thirtieth anniversary of when we met in 1975 before we all went up the hills to the Ursula Le Guin Writers Workshop that accompanied Aussiecon I -- and bad news. Ted Mundie, who I had met at that workshop, had died. Seems he was much older than I had remembered him; Randal thinks he was 75. He and Philippa Maddern had been married sometime in the late eighties or early nineties, but I had heard that news only by accident. I certainly didn't know what was going on between them while they were both living in Melbourne. Pip is now head of Medieval Studies at the University of Western Australia, and has stopped writing fiction. Ted had published quite a few 'how to' books after the 1975 workshop, but I don't think he published again after he went to Western Australia. Randal phoned to set up a lunch with Rob Gerrand, who was at the 1975 workshop, and Carey Handfield, who helped set it up. Carey, Rob and I were Norstrilia Press for ten years. It's not often that the three of us are in one room at a time. Not that we nostalge much about Norstrilia Press. Rob is busy writing, Carey is busy helping people save their businesses from ravages of the evil GST, and I'm busy being unemployed. Randal is writing lots, and has hardly changed a bit since 1975 (at least not in terms of enthusiasm). I've read A Tour Guide in Utopia, Lucy Sussex's second books of short stories. This has a great cover, but that cover is odd because it doesn't tell of the various awards that the stories have won. Lots of good stories. A review will follow. The best movie I've seen recently is Sunset, Blake Edwards' 1988 film starring Bruce Willis as Tom Mix and James Garner as Wyatt Earp, causing a mini riot together in Hollywood in the mid 1920s and battling with Malcolm McDowell as a truly sinister movie mogul. Huge fun, and it has the gorgeous Mariel Hemingway as well. $9.95 on DVD at the local DVD-Ezy shop.  I also bought Bertolucci's 1900 -- $13.95 for two discs, each nearly three hours long! No wonder people are no longer going to the movies (which is the news that came out of today's Film Buffs' Forecast (3RRR) special report on the decline in alternative and art cinema). After six years of denying that they are an item, Janice Gelb and Steve Boucher have announced their engagement, and Janice is moving to Melbourne. I read it first on LiveJournal. How about that. I have no idea why they kept up the strenuous denials of the perfectly obvious. I just hope Janice can beat the Immigration Department. (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, July 29th, 2005
9:55 pm	Thanks for offers of help Thanks to various people, especially Del Cotter, from Acnestis British apa -- amateur press association) who've tried to get me started with LiveJournal. I haven't done a lot of searching yet. A week or so ago I had little paying work. Now I have two big jobs in a row. I had also promised Irwin Hirsh, famous Australian SF fan who's been a bit quiet lately, that I would have lunch with him in his part of Melbourne. I hadn't visited Glenferrie Road, Malvern, since I was a kid. Irwin and I had lunch at a good Chinese restaurant. Then I went looking for the Malvern store of Readings, which has four stores throughout Melbourne. Malvern's strength is classical music. It must be the last classical store in Melbourne that takes some trouble to import the CDs being promoted by Gramophone magazine. I shouldn't have bought anything -- but I did pick up the second Solti version of Mozart's Magic Flute. I think this is the Solti version of which I've heard bits on the radio. Maybe this will prove to be The Version, the one that hits every strength of the opera. The Magic Flute is my favourite opera, and might well be the best piece of music ever written, but not even the two Karajan versions get it all right. Any excuse to listen to new versions. Not much other news. I've nearly finished the second draft of the Trip Report (the report on the trip I took earlier this year thanks to the BBB Fund), but need another day. Then I can add pictures and get it off to the printer. I'm still not sure what's happening with Acnestis itself -- but hope for the July mailing every day. Meanwhile, I must leave time to cobble together the August mailing of ANZAPA -- the Australia and New Zealand Amateur Publishing Association. I'm Official Bloody Editor (OBE -- see?). The job takes two full days every two months, and I hope my trusty colleague Bill Wright is back from sunning himself in Thailand before 12 August. Somehow I don't think he has Melbourne friends in mind at the moment. ANZAPA still needs a few members. (Just a mention.) Will do reviews when I have time. Not the sort of thing to do off the top of one's head. I bought very cheaply and saw Blake Edwards' 1988 comedy Sunset. Nobody talks about this film, but it's great -- rather reminds me of My Favourite Year. Bruce Willis, James Garner, Mariel Hemingway, Malcolm McDowell and all other cast members are great. (Comment on this)
Sunday, July 24th, 2005
6:29 pm	Ry Cooder's Chavez Ravine Ry Cooder is one of those musicians who has followed the tracks of our lives -- the tracks, that is, of the lives of people like me, who are the same age as Ry (58). He began as a session guitarist in the late sixties, most famously on the Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed. That's where I noticed the credit to his superb, bluesy, atmospheric guitar playing. A year later, his first solo LP came out: Ry Cooder. Then two albums within a few months of each other: Boomer's Story and Into the Purple Valley. Each combined folk blues with various other traditional American musical styles. Also Ry gave the hint of always sending up the music as well as exploring it. I saw his concerts on three different trips to Australia. In 1988 he gave up trying to make solo albums. In interviews he said that each album merely added to the 'debt' that the record company claimed he owed them. The only money he could make was from touring, and he hated being away from his wife and family. His one hit album, Bop Til You Drop, wiped out the debt, but still made him no money. Meanwhile, he found he could make a living with soundtrack albums of film music. The film companies paid him a set rate for this work; he no longer had to worry about the record company's creative accounting. So all of Ry's output in the last few decades has been film soundtracks or specialist 'world music' collaborations with African or Caribbean musicians. He seems to have lost interest in American blues, and instead become obsessed with Central and South American music. This led to his soundtrack for Wim Wenders' movie Buena Vista Social Club. Ry and Wim found and filmed a host of great Cuban musicians who were still living in Havana, although they had had little work since the revolution. Many were in their eighties, and have died since the film/album came out. But there is a wonderful scene in the movie where the Cuban musicians wander wide-eyed through New York, before playing to packed-out houses. Chavez Ravine is the first Ry Cooder album with his name solo above the title, but it is as collaborative an effort as Buena Vista Social Club. Ry sings on very few tracks, and on a few tracks he does not play guitar. The concept is his, though -- making a sound documentary about the destruction of the Mexican-American community in Chavez Ravine, a neighbourhood of Los Angeles, in 1943. The site was eventually converted into the Dodgers Stadium. As you would expect, the music has a lot of melancholy. The sound is quite ghostly on some tracks. Older Los Angeles musicians feature on most tracks, but Ry Cooder does take centre stage for two tracks that were actually recorded first in the 1940s -- 'Chinito Chinito' and 'Three Cool Cats'. He also impersonates the city boss who ordered the destruction of Chavez Ravine, in the best track 'In My Town'. The CD is highly recommended, but some tracks will take more listening than I've given them so far. You need to read the lyric booklet as you go, as most songs are in Spanish, with the English words supplied side by side. I believe there is a book as well, and a documentary film, but neither has hit Melbourne yet. (Comment on this)
Friday, July 22nd, 2005
2:06 pm	Entering the big wide world of LiveJournal Hi. I've asked various people about How LiveJournal Works, but decided to try it for myself. My only experience with blogging so far has been a bit disappointing. You broadcast out there, and you don't know if anybody is reading. I'm told that it's much easier to reach other bloggers in LiveJournal. Not a lot happening in beautiful downtown Greensborough, which is why I've been reluctant to get into blogging at all. I'm still recovering from Continuum, the Melbourne convention last weekend. Also twiddling my thumbs, hoping some paying work turns up sometime. Main project at the moment is finishing my Trip Report about the journey I took, all paid for by SF fans, in late February and early March. It was a hard slog writing the first draft (32,000 words) of the report, but the second draft is coming along fine. With lots of photos, it should come out as an A4-sized 40-page book real soon now. Most recent book read was Larry Niven's Ringworld, which has just been reissued by Gollancz's SF Masterworks series. I still don't see why it is regarded as an 'SF classic'. Most recent CD heard was a collection of the Flying Pickets issued in 1995. This a cappella group includes some instrumental background and a lot of clever riffs on music then current. Most recent DVD watched is Kinsey, which is remarkable, but somehow unsatisfying as well. Biopics are difficult to do; they always skate over what you would really like to know about the people they biograph. I thought Ray, about Ray Charles, was better. (7 Comments |Comment on this)