Tuesday, July 19, 2005
The Spiegeltent
Soundtrack: "Like You Do... The Best Of The Lightning Seeds" by The Lightning Seeds
Good morning this morning.
The Spiegeltent has set up in town for the Queensland Music Festival. Apparently, QMF is the largest in Australia, and the largest in the world in terms of the area of land that it's spread over. Now, the Spiegeltent is this Belgian tent that travels all over the world to act as a live venue for all sorts of different types of music (I believe the Cat Empire played in it for a couple of years at the Edinburgh Festival). It's all decked out Art Deco style, and the interior walls are completely lined with mirrors, so it looks as if the tent just goes on and on for all infinity, which is very cool indeed.
I turned up yesterday to see the two live acts that were open to the public. They were actually showcases for scouts from other festivals to pick up these acts, but they let in the public so it felt like a real crowd, and they gave us free drinks, which is always good. The first act was an Aborigine group called Yilila, and though they got off to a slow start, things soon picked up with the Aborigine version of ska. Yay for ska! It was basically ska, but with a didjiridoo and traditional Aboriginal singing added in, which was cool. And then they did one that sounded like Dire Straits: the first half was like one of those long, drawn-out atmospheric instrumentals from "Brothers In Arms," and then the tempo picked up and it sounded like "Sultans Of Swing." I couldn't help but smile.
The second act was on in the afternoon, a fairly good jazz group called the Tom Vincent Trio. Mr Vincent himself was a bit eccentric, like all proper jazz musicians should be, I suppose, and he kept on having to pull himself back onto the piano stool. The drummer was also really getting into it. The bassist just stood there with this smile on his face as if he didn't really take it all seriously and was trying not to laugh at the other two, which I can really relate to. I really enjoyed myself, sitting there in a tent covered in mirrors, listening to jazz in the afternoon, watching that guy fall off his piano stool.
Good morning this morning.
The Spiegeltent has set up in town for the Queensland Music Festival. Apparently, QMF is the largest in Australia, and the largest in the world in terms of the area of land that it's spread over. Now, the Spiegeltent is this Belgian tent that travels all over the world to act as a live venue for all sorts of different types of music (I believe the Cat Empire played in it for a couple of years at the Edinburgh Festival). It's all decked out Art Deco style, and the interior walls are completely lined with mirrors, so it looks as if the tent just goes on and on for all infinity, which is very cool indeed.
I turned up yesterday to see the two live acts that were open to the public. They were actually showcases for scouts from other festivals to pick up these acts, but they let in the public so it felt like a real crowd, and they gave us free drinks, which is always good. The first act was an Aborigine group called Yilila, and though they got off to a slow start, things soon picked up with the Aborigine version of ska. Yay for ska! It was basically ska, but with a didjiridoo and traditional Aboriginal singing added in, which was cool. And then they did one that sounded like Dire Straits: the first half was like one of those long, drawn-out atmospheric instrumentals from "Brothers In Arms," and then the tempo picked up and it sounded like "Sultans Of Swing." I couldn't help but smile.
The second act was on in the afternoon, a fairly good jazz group called the Tom Vincent Trio. Mr Vincent himself was a bit eccentric, like all proper jazz musicians should be, I suppose, and he kept on having to pull himself back onto the piano stool. The drummer was also really getting into it. The bassist just stood there with this smile on his face as if he didn't really take it all seriously and was trying not to laugh at the other two, which I can really relate to. I really enjoyed myself, sitting there in a tent covered in mirrors, listening to jazz in the afternoon, watching that guy fall off his piano stool.
