Well Met, Hello Again, and Vale

Phew. I have spent four out of the last five working days virtually in non-stop meetings on a wide variety of issues - from research and teaching planning sessions to team meetings for the ACID Press project (which has a very outdated outline on the ACID Website, I'm afraid), meetings of the AoIR 2006 conference organising team, preliminary work for a new book project, and a PhD confirmation presentation by Creative Industries student Stephen Harrington - and tomorrow is looking no better, with an all-day meeting of the team of our teaching and learning project using blogs and wikis at QUT. In between all the meetings about what work needs to be done, it would be nice to find some time to actually do some work... (At least I did find the time to accept an invitation to join the editorial board of New Media & Society, and I look forward to being part of it.)

That's not to say that some of those meetings weren't worth the time, though. I enjoyed Stephen's presentation today - he is working on a project investigating non-traditional TV 'news' shows (such as the Daily Show with Jon Stewart). Looks very interesting, and links well to my own work on collaborative online news production by participants outside the journalism industry, so I think we'll have a few chats along the way.

I did manage to find the time last Thursday night to see Krautrock legend and former Can frontman Damo Suzuki perform with a band of Brisbane musicians gathered by Lawrence English (and including Lawrence on drums). A very enjoyable performance, in turns calm and quiet with solo vocalisations by Damo, then building into a rhythmic frenzy not unlike Can improvs of old - and showcasing Damo's still considerable range from whispers to vocals in something that isn't quite English, German, or Japanese, and occasionally slips into what sounds like he's channelling the ghost of Louis Armstrong. I'll admit there's a certain nostalgia factor here - this is as close as we'll get to the spirit of Can, I guess - but I'm happy to say that Damo and the Brisbane boys didn't simply try to rehash old material, but performed what I assume was in the main a structured improvisation.

Speaking of past masters, though, like many others I was sad to hear of the passing of long-standing Soft Machine saxophonist Elton Dean - even more so as I'd only days before seen some footage of the 2005 'Legacy' version of the band on the German Rockpalast show, with Dean in fine form. One of the key attractions in Soft Machine for me had always been the interplay between Dean's saxello and Mike Ratledge's often equally high-pitched organ. But even in Ratledge's absence, at the gig in Leverkusen last November Dean played strongly and was received well by his audience of jazz-fusion fans. Let's hope he's remembered for those performances, rather than just as the person from whom Reginald Dwight appropriated the first part of his stagename...

By way of honouring Elton Dean, Soft Machine's Third album is in the player tonight. Like many (judging by the mixed reviews it's still receiving), I'm continuing to have some trouble getting into the whole of this album, but it sure is fun trying - and by the time "Out-Bloody-Rageous" hits the speakers, it's all been worth it.