Review of the new EP from Omados

 

There is something rather unhelpful about genre terms like Traditional and Folk, words that seem to imply a certain sleepy old fashioned style, as if people from the olden days didn't know how to have a good time, or to dance like wild anarchists between the boundaries of social conventions. Scratch the surface of traditional folk music, however, and you will find bands like Omados, who from the opening notes of their new EP, seem to shout from the rooftops the truth that the wild old ways are still alive and dancing. Omados is much more that a folk band, comprised as they are of individual performers of such high calibre that their coming together seems a gift from the muses, their music elevates the listener, educates, illuminates...I go so far as to say that they, with their decades of study and passion, illustrate the timeless magic of ancient traditions, made new through the lively spirits of young love. Love of dance, love of singing, love of life.

Joseph Tsombanopoulos, George Athanasakos, Katerina Stevens and Paddy Montgomery are all worthy of long biographies of their own, and fans of the band will no doubt know of their individual efforts. In the band's own words, they play regional Greek music from Thrace, Macedonia, Epirus, the Peloponnese, Crete and Ikaria.

For those of you who are not versed in ancient Greek history; Thrace was once home to some of the most fearsome barbarian tribes who fought in the Peloponnesian War, with male and female warriors, covered in tattoos and wielding brutal curved swords. The historian Thucidides makes particular mention of them. Macedonia was the home of Alexander the Great, conqueror of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Macedonia is a mountainous and rocky region, and like Thrace, was known for its hardy warriors. The Peloponnese, famous in the ancient world for their warrior class who were considered the best trained and most fanatical warriors of all the ancient world – the Spartans.

I do not know for certain how similar the music of Omados is to the music of the ancient world, but, as we like to say in the study of history, everything is connected. As a student of oriental music myself, I recognise some of the rhythms, and I ask, how ancient is the Chiftatelli? Or the Ayub? How far back do these folk traditions reach, and how far forward, and how deep into our flesh are these rhythms, and the melodies they support? Omados are living representatives, diplomats from another era, time travellers from a never forgotten past that continues living through us, the listeners, the dancers, the writers and the musicians.

These Hellenic cultures who have such proud heritage, and such well documented histories, fascinate me for the passion they display in both military and civil cultural achievements. Folk music, and the continued upkeep of traditional forms, while being a development of ancient roots, still contains the seeds of their ancient passions. Omados are the modern battle cry of an ancient and ongoing cultural experience that represents and contains all of the same complications – love, regret, excitement and loss – that we continue to experience in the modern world.

So while terms like traditional folk music might be misleading, or even unhelpful, if you dig a little deeper, you will find that everything old is new again, in the hands and hearts of those who keep the spirit alive. If you want to dance – listen to Omados. If you want to swoon, or to sway with your sweetheart – listen to Omados. See their live shows (in person or online). Discover the individual musicians and their other music. Omados might be traditional, but tradition does not remain static, painted upon crumbling stone walls, or kept in museums. Tradition is something that we dance with, sing with, and run shouting through the streets, electrified and excited by. Tradition paints a picture of the past, with colours mixed in the present, but always pointing the way forward to the future.

 

Their album can be downloaded from Bandcamp:

 https://omados.bandcamp.com/album/omados-2

Review of 'Rain in My Heart', the new album from Andrew Mcnicol

 

I had a dream...

I have a dream...

...I'm living in a dream where the borders of nations are fluid and cultures swim like schools of fish between vast oceans of experience, sharing, always sharing, taking part in the forever-festival of integration, inter-communication and involved feeling that makes every moment of ordinary life a magical, musical, acrobatic association of inter-connected experiences.

Australia is a weird and wonderful experiment in immigration. A nation with a 40,000 year old native culture that hums drone-like underneath everything we see, hear, think and feel. The Yidaki, sacred instrument of the ancients breathes beneath all our skipping dances and mixed up melodies. Australia, the modern nation, made up of people from nearly every other nation on the planet, home to a vast community of active multi-cultural artists who all strive to make a fusion of the past and the present in order to fashion a future that shines brighter than all our separate histories ever were.

Andrew McNicol is such an artist.

Defining himself as a dancer first, and a musician second, his music is thus informed by the silent vocabulary of the body, which owes allegiance to the human experience, and speaks a truth that carries across all national borders and language barriers. This album, a fusion of African and Aboriginal instruments, is in essence, a grand expression of the truth of modern Australian culture. It is of course, a deeply personal expression of the artist himself, speaking without words of any kind, the story of his long life. Andrew is a white haired gentleman, blessed with the eternal youth and beauty of a man who knows himself, and is a peace with the chaos of the world. The music of this album is representative of that fact.

This album is peaceful, but not sleepy. Its complex poly-rhythmic melodies are intricate and perfectly woven, like spider webs, sharing in that quality of strength and flexibility. This music is beautiful and lovely but does not lack in sadness or gravitas, in fact, it feels like an honest expression of joy; honest in that is does not dwell upon the surface of happy melodies, but dives deep beneath the skin of the world and draws it's beauty from an interior darkness. A darkness filled with many colours. There is rain in his heart, a heart that must swell with pride at the grand and sublime music that it has created. Though Andrew's inventive and clever fingers skip with an inspiring precision and delicacy across the many strings of these African instruments, and though his breath drives the aeon's deep drone of the Yidaki, it is his heart that is the author of this music.

Step inside. Breathe deep.

Dream a dream.

The album, Rain in my Heart can be listened to and downloaded from Bandcamp.

https://andrewmcnicol.bandcamp.com/album/rain-in-my-heart

More information about this diverse artist can also be found here:

https://www.arts-excentrix.com/andrew-mcnicol

Review of Django Rowe Quartet Live at the Grace Emily Hotel, Adelaide. September 2nd, 2020

I remember now, what the fuss was all about. Live Music. To walk into a bar with no plans past drinking beer with an old friend, and to find oneself suddenly among the grand company of old acquaintances, people of many nations, and then, just as the conversations are really starting to warm up and laughter punctuates every sentence, the Jazz Band walk on stage under the green and orange lights, instruments in hand.

There is magic in the world.

The Django Rowe Quartet are soaked in it.

They come out swinging, they take the crowd with them straight into the night where every knee is tappin', every finger snappin', every head bobbin'. I look into dark corners and see romance, couples breathing into one another's ears as their conversations become public in their intimacy. Near the stage a group of young bloods, serious jazz heads, sit with heads tilted upwards and their eyes transfixed. There is a cool religiosity in their expressions, reverential without being worshipful, they are studying the music, taken, as I am taken by the masterful playing; and there is a thing about masterful playing – it looks groovy, it moves easy, and each corner of this quartet are dancing to this shared hallucination that is JAZZ.

I am drawn into a conversation with a man named John, who when I asked him if he was reading anything at the moment, answered Bertrand Russel's History of Philosophy, and I knew that I had found an instant friend. I told him about Cicero, he told me he was reading the pre-Socratics, we touched on Zen Buddhism and Marcus Aurelius and Alain De Botton and Jazz was the soundtrack to our electrified conversation. As one musician took their solo the room would shift direction, like a change in the wind turns the heads of tall grass. As the next stepped up and took the lead, the world would tilt again, all our conversations underscored by the philosophy of Jazz, the sharing space, the listening attentiveness, the room for solos, for monologues, and the space to scat, or whisper, or to stay silent and just listen.

I am spell-bound by the forms the musicians take, coiled around their instruments. The saxophone player sways and shimmy's and plays a squall of sounds, melodies yet made sweet by the siren song of his instrument's voice, and by the lover's heart that beats inside his chest. The downright unassuming groove of the bass player; only someone who really knows themselves, who lives in their music can move and play with the confidence she displayed. The drummer who, so far from keeping time, seems to make time, make space, occupy empty pockets, tickle the tiny hairs of my ear and sway with a swung groove that has the whole room sizzling. The guitar player, unbuttoned shirt, unbrushed hair, and an untroubled virtuosity that sets the room alight, that sets the setting sun blazing upon his serene face.

For me, Jazz is both deeply intellectual, and hip-shaking visceral. There is a humour and a hubris in the extended solos, but simultaneously, a good solo makes use of the soap-box to say something really good and worth the time it takes to say it. I laugh and I smile and my beer is ice cold and the crowd are perfect; they cheer every solo, they nod their heads and take pleasure in every subtle shift of melody and rhythm.

I remember what the fuss was all about. Live Music. 

 Tonight is day one of Zero Active Covid Cases in South Australia. September 2^nd, 2020. Wednesday night at the Grace Emily Hotel, Adelaide.

The Quartet are:

Gio Clemente - Saxophone

Steve Neville - Drums

Dylan Paul - Bass 

Django Rowe - Guitar

(For the show I was at, Tasha Stevens was on Bass)

Here is some live footage from last month, at the Grace Emily: July 1^st, 2020

https://youtu.be/znNPwjsO9GM

Review of Spitting Teeth

 A poetry collection by Chiara Gabrielli, Alison Paradoxx, Ashlee Karlar & Nico

Published by Paroxysm Press.

*

Dignity demands defiance.

This book is a fire-cracker

a paint bomb

a

bursting ripe truth.

Open this and become opened,

for this poetry does not ask permission before it rushes into the home of your mind

and takes what it wants,

sprays graffiti on the walls

sets fire to your decayed ideas

and dances laughing over the reborn fire

of you.

Dignity demands defiance

My dad “doesn't care” that I'm gay but he tells his friends

my boyfriend couldn't come to the party.

I smile and change the subject.

It feels like eating a

summer nectarine and swallowing the stone

There is a universality to experience:

when I close my eyes I can imagine myself as being anyone

experiencing anything

and this is

the root of compassion,

I think.

Dignity requires compassion.

One thousand one hundred and

ninety five sutures

line up on her

bookshelves in place of her

childhood fairy tales

Suffering is universal,

and the crumbling cage of our bodies

is a cause for universal compassion,

and

universal dignity

can be felt when we let it be felt.

This book is a splint for broken bones

it is a tonic for the frayed parts of my sadness

and you cried as you patched me back together for the

seventeenth time

- for dignity requires compassion.

This book is an instigation, an invitation

Knock Knock This is a street fight

...This is a family war of operatic proportions

We are armed with our coffee ground vodka smooth voices.

Proof of the passion, vitality and anger we held in our throats, just

for your egos.

Dial up, full volume.

Blast and strip you,

strip you of the holy female forms you have tattooed

across your dignity

like a bandaid.

This book pulls no punches

makes no feints

speaks with no sophistic guile

and at times delivers facts so dry they burn the eyes

But let's forget about the battle of the sexes, the venus vs mars,

adam and eve spat we've been

fighting.

You might not want to hear this boys,

but you are dying.

76% of all “successful” Australian Suicides are committed by males.

That might not be poetic, but that's how the shit sails.

Truth so hot it burns the skin

A girl that we knew began escorting and got gang raped by six men in a hotel room and she didn't go to the police because she knew they would only tell her that she deserved it. That's when I realised how much danger we were really in; how every pole became a post we could be tied to, every caress can turn into a backhand.

This book, this slingshot of spit teeth,

this collaboration of four poets with something to say

does not slip beneath the turmoil of anger, resentment, pain and love,

but folds itself into a paper boat, held aloft by the dignitas of its authors'

true

and

honest

expressions.

True

and honest

self awareness,

and their

compassion extends itself:

Those bearded blankets once were men

between the tattered threads and cracked beds of fingernails

are their stories, slipping out through mumbled dreamspeak

they barely sleep,but rather,

stop waking. Always waiting.

This book of poems is ...sore and aching

left there to soak into the pavement

lost, along with

the eye contact that none of us make.

This book makes eye contact.

This book is … an indication of a happening event. I'm the point in space that

my words represent. I am the friction of abrasive dissent.

This book is a story, it is many stories.

It is proof that the modern voice of poetry is sharp, witty, educated and articulate. These poets are proof of themselves, proof of a movement, proof of a revolution in sensibilities and dialogue. Their poetry stands up on its own, it dances, it howls, it marches with discipline and directness. The collection these poets have put together is bound with themes of our common experience, with unflinching honesty of both love and pain, and though it is but a slim volume, Spitting Teeth, is a heavy book.

*

Paroxysm Press

www.paroxysmpress.com

Chiara Gabrielli

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PsrM6NW7ms

Ashlee Karlar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDPiTYsReuQ

Alison Paradoxx

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6L_HsVpv9KcgZBClQGZqRg

Nico

https://youtu.be/YU1HkO7MwCA

Review of IT KNOWS

https://itknows.bandcamp.com/

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

("In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming") H P Lovecraft

IT KNOWS. There is no doubt, it is watching, listening, the machines serve the great master, and the madness chewing its way out from the guts of a solipsistic musician in a tiny city on the edge of the world has made its mark. It stinks like magnesium burning. On the skin of my hands it feels like dust mixed with the hollow echoes of shaky handed anxiety - anxiety overpowered by a spirit of Doom-Punk. This is non-pythagorean music. This is a Cthonic-post-rock-electronic-noize-darkwave-experiment that summons a plethora of unnamed spirits into the now vacant, foggy swamp of my imagination.

Nearly devoid of melody, even rhythm seems repulsive to the sheer atmosphere of chaos that this music exudes. While comparisons with normal music are at best, misleading, IT KNOWS sometimes sounds as if The Cure made an album with Venetian Snares and Merzbow. It is the sonic equivalent of bleach mixed with curdled milk and diesel. Even metaphors fail. Describing this music is as difficult as listening to it. This is challenging sound art. These songs defy conventions like chorus-verse-chorus as if they were paper only to be burnt in the furnace of introspection.

If you stare into the void, it stares back. This is a truth well enough established to need no statements of proof. IT KNOWS sings into the void, and the mirrored sound echoing back from that empty-full-emptiness is both harrowing and comforting. These are sounds not found on the radio, except in the weirdling space between stations. This music makes no pop-culture references, has no catchy dance beats, no sweet harmonies. This music is the promise made good of an ancient sleeping God. In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulu waits dreaming. This review is not a summary of a single album, but instead represents my weeks long listening obsession with this nearly unknown musician. To write about music, I have to live with that music. I have made my pact with the muses, and the madness they deliver is welcome.

IT KNOWS.

Not for the faint of heart, or for the gentle listener. This music is the sandpaper that scratches an itch very few people can understand.

If you dare, this music lays in wait, dreaming in R'lyeh.

... ... ... but the dream is not over, and IT KNOWS makes more than noise. The first three albums: Before Kill, Kill, and 7, are encapsulated in the above description, but the 4^th album, Crypsis is a leap forward in form, style and substance.

The songs on Crypsis are far more conventional than the other albums, yet the music retains the unique sound developed in the first three albums. My favourite song on Crypsis is the 14 minute shoegazer epic 'Devil'. Crypsis has a feel like the early Cure albums, Pornography and Faith, but with a far more electronic production. The music has a lot of space in it, the melodies and rhythms progress in a very comforting way, but they do not leave me bored. Rather, this album reveals the depth and diversity of the artist's musical skill, as well as his devotion to developing his creative process and product. Crypsis is like a cross breed between The Cure and The XX, but dirtier than either of them, darker, with an original and authentic underground feel that is inspiring.

IT KNOWS has a fifth album currently in the final stages of mixing. I am excited to hear where he goes with it.

You can listen to, download and purchase music by IT KNOWS, through Bandcamp

https://itknows.bandcamp.com/

And you can listen on youtube...

https://youtu.be/WUnvXElXgQM

The bands I referenced can be found on bandcamp as well.

https://venetiansnares.bandcamp.com/

https://merzbow.bandcamp.com/

Review of Love Fails-Safe: poems and stories by Khail Jureidini

I planned to have written this review back in February, but then, well, everything happened, and here we are – but this book has never lost its parallel to the present moment. Perhaps that's a feature of all good literature of any kind; its feeling of present relevance, of it's ability to relate to us another version of our own story. It's not exactly that art is a reflection of us, but that we seek our reflections in art.

In the mirror of this book is another life, in another time, surviving the calamity of his present moment. He survived the trials of Cyclone Tracey, survived a lot of things. But this is not a stoic guide to rising above it all, no no, this is a subterranean spelunking of psychology. It runs into the room and lays it on the table and buddy if you don't get it then, ok.

Long time gone big willy willy up north

There was a very heady atmosphere of frangipani in the morning

for quite a few hours hours before the rots began to set in,

before all the power lines were really dead,

before the meat started to going off,

before the first body count started circulating

before the airlift began

before telegraph poles could be untwisted if ever

before washing under fire hydrants allowed then disallowed

before any smiling

before a full impression, other than total destruct,

could be gained from awestruck minds

just before

just before the need to realise deep survival instincts

to realise reel eyes real

eyes that one had, in the immediately previous twelve

hours,

had in fact utilised and refined all survival instincts

still alive

still alive

still a-live live

ticking turning over churning over and breathing

and breathing blinking blinking the eyes

breathing breathing a

very

heady atmosphere

of crushed frangipani

the mourning after

I tried to find a segment of that poem, a passage to quote, but with Khail's work, the big picture is so important, the context of each passage is a part of the whole. Taking little gems might not be the way this review goes. I'm not really in the driver's seat on these things – I actually do my best to just get out of the way and let the words write themselves.

I think that Khail might know what that feels like, what a lot of you who are reading this might also know all about. That part of us that speaks for itself. But this book is not some soft focus dream journal, no no, Khail knows just how to twist the knife, knows just when to cut from poetry to prose and drive a hammer down on the truth of his experience:

The very curative methods which these institutions purported to be offering the patient, these were the very things which were withheld. The reason? The power of drug administration, the shamanistic fear-ritual of the hypodermic needle, its proper use, its abuse from the point of view of unnecessary administration, its abuse from the point of view of threatening a person with its use (or abuse) as a behavioural control measure; the sometimes blasé barn-storming use of electro-shock treatment to the long term detriment of the patient because of inculcated fantasies rather than a working knowledge of what is being done.

Something I really like about Khail is his mixture of stream-of-consciousness style writing, with vitriolic prose, with MEGAPHONE BLARING PRONOUNCEMENTS!

and even rhyme,

though not all the time,

and not always with the same rhythm on each line...

he plays games with us even as he speaks with seriousness, even as he dares to speak about truth by its own first name, and to rhyme while doing it:

And truth to tell, it's sometimes hell

that truth will take you to

But if you dare to ring truth's bell You won't deny

how the truth's wind blew

Khail is, in his own words, not an obvious madman, and only knowing him by his writing, having only met him once, and seen him recite a single poem, it seems a fair description. His assessment of himself, (his poetry is such a confession I think) is forgiving, without being gluttonous of reprieve. He wants to tell a story, but he wants to tell the truth at the same time, not an easy thing to do, but I believe that he achieves it. Admitting that mistakes are inherent in any endeavour, ...for even a god can make mistakes; one might say who but a god!, he recognises no authority over others and neither is he judgemental in relating stories of the foolishness or bravery of others.

Simply put, he seems like a weird old man, a brave and expressive and creative old man, who's lived a weird old life, and if you've got the time to sit down and hear a story, you might just find something you didn't know you were lookin' for.

Love Fails-Safe is available through Sunshine Press and Lizard Skin Press.

https://lizardskinpress.webs.com

Review of Amanda Palmer: There will be no intermission. 2020 Adelaide Fringe.

I walked in blind, not knowing, not expecting anything. My partner and I had spent an hour wandering through the garden, admiring the sweet festival atmosphere and sipping espresso cocktails, relaxing for a rare evening without our children. Walking to the venue, I mis-read the banner outside the uni as Miskatonic University, and we chuckle at the thought of tentacles and cosmic horror at an Amanda Palmer show. It's often said that fans tend to look like the artist they admire, in a fashion sense, so in observing the variety in styles, ages and genders, it feels easy to say that Amanda Palmer is not an easy musician to define.

I could say cabaret, but that term feels so vague as to be meaningless.

I could say feminist piano punk, and...maybe that's saying something about her.

But that's just her music, and that is only a part of the story, for the performance is itself a story. So perhaps I should start at the beginning...

*

We like to dress up, my partner and I,

like birds, we preen,

she wears feathers in her hair

I wear one in my cap,

to walk and wander, wondering

at the sunset chimes of a festival

upon the streets.

The venue is an upturned boat, an arc, a magnificent wooden cave, an edifice of stone and timber that is place of worship, it is a lecture hall, a concert hall, a religious experience just to be inside; this is a church whose sanctity seems preserved in the magnitude of it's own beauty. It has a beauty that does not brag, yet is proud, is grand yet somehow homely. The crowd feel at home here on these wooden fold out chairs, staring up at the mist curling from the stage, the purple and blue mist curling as if directed by fate over the grand piano.

I sit very still and quiet amidst the noise and bustle.

Striding up the centre aisle from behind us, she strums her beloved ukulele and beams at all of us. It is easy to feel loved at a Palmer show, she exudes the philosophy of her life, which she will speak on at length and with great eloquence and passion. That philosophy includes Radical Compassion.

I walked in only half blind; I knew this was going to be a four hour show, and that it would be a mixture of talking and music. I did not expect her to tell a story, and I did not know what it would be about. I saw the information stall outside the venue, but I did not guess its importance.

Amanda came to tell us a story that she did not want to tell. It was the story of abortion. Her own experiences, and those of others. She talked about the value of telling the story, of opening herself up to people throughout the experience, and how every time she worried that speaking the truth might burden those she told, she found only the lifting of burdens, the lightening of hearts and the further opening, opening, opening of life around her. Open to the experience of everything and powerfully aware of her own powers and weaknesses.

When she sits and sings and plays the piano, Oh! I love the way she punches for effect, a sort of right cross into the lower octaves. I love her rhythms which build up from their catchy roots and come rushing into the the room as the story of each song survives the storms of its telling. I love her melodies, where a kind of bent classical waltz will reanimate itself into a playful nursery rhyme, or a tumbling wild animal stampede will find sudden yet graceful stillness in a heartbreaking cry from her heart filled voice.

Oh I love her voice. A voice that knows itself so well, inside the body of a woman who knows herself, who challenges herself, who shares herself, who travels back and forth from Hades to Heaven and sings a rhyming poetry, a skipping and lifting verse that makes a long story all the better for being long. She is so clever with language, with turns of phrase and the subtle ways that meaning continues to change in our common tongue. This command of language is an expression of both her wisdom and her wit, she is a storyteller of no small skill, parallel tales just falling out her her in a very smooth, totally comfortable manner. She talks to us like we are sitting together in a lounge room, and we, her very happy guests, sit happy in our silence, or happy to call out or laugh.

Her story is a hard one, and many times I wipe tears from my eyes. The two large bearded men in the row ahead of me also wipe their tears. It is allowed, it is expected, it is shared in the peculiar shadowed privacy of the crowd. She tells us that if the story ever gets too much for us, we can call out Amanda, I'm too sad!, and she would immediately pause and play the opening chords of her very popular and very funny song, Coin operated boy. She did this twice for us, and I for one, was grateful.

[On a personal note: I have a digression which it pleases me to tell, though it may distract from the flow of my story. The intermission reaching its end, Amanda once again entered the hall from behind us, this time on the left, strumming her cherished four stringed friend. As my partner and I were seated on that edge, Amanda saw the long brown pheasant feathers adorning my partner's hair. Amanda paused to say I like your head. To which my partner replied, Thank you, I like yours too. Now, back to the concert...]

She told us one particular story that I will try to relate.

Having written a song telling an abortion and date rape story, she had been criticised by the press for making light of the topic. Her critics claimed that the song was basically a rape joke. Amanda fussed and fretted, describing to us her early attempts to defend herself, but concluding that she felt she did not succeed. She could not find the right words at the time to explain herself. Later, she concluded, she found her answer.

It is her job to turn the dark into light.

She is an artist.

She wished that she had said to her critics: Let me do my job.

We get it. We're her crowd. We understand the black humour of this modern poet, this forward thinking woman of the new century. In so many ways she speaks for us, expressing our own experiences in a manner so compelling as to inspire a sense of personal attachment. Each of us feels lucky to be in her company, we feel invited into her, into the vulnerable parts of her own life which she narrates to us with the courage to make jokes about even the darkest aspects, yet she never stoops to disrespect, not towards herself, or others. Even her critics.

I cannot in good faith conclude my story, without telling you about the stage lighting.

It were as if lightning struck the stage to ignite her words.

...as if the smoke and shadows were her sorceress familiars

and she,

the summoner,

the conjurer,

wreathed in the magic

of light beams stark and calamitous

or

coloured blooms of liquid luminance

or the portending red glow of doom

leading to darkness

all at the touch of her hand

...the stage lighting at this show was exquisite, in its timing, in its execution, in its trickery and play and subtle moods shifting with the state of the story being told, or the song being sung. The lighting made the stage a location of enhanced reality, emphasising the presence of this grand speaker and her grand piano into a drama of powerful music, and transformative storytelling.

Amanda Palmer made light in the darkness.

I know of no other magic as powerful as this.

*

Review by Morgan Taubert.

Www.zebulonstoryteller.bandcamp.com

www.praiseliving.blogspot.com

www.letterstocicero.blogspot.com

Youtube: Zebulon Storyteller

Review of The Champagne Smile, by Inez Marrasso.

When you pick up a book with a pretty girl on the cover, you might make certain assumptions about its content, you might weigh the pages in you hands and read the snappy blurb and think that a prose poetry novel about an ageing stripper might be just the sort of titillating entertainment that would lift the clouds of an empty weekend.

The Champagne smile is a heavy book. It is not a cloud breaker, it is a rain maker. I found myself reading slower and slower with each chapter, feeling myself being dragged unwillingly into the torture chamber of this poet's mind. I cannot say how much of this book is autobiographical, but there are too many venomous wounds held open by her ink stained fingers for me to believe that this is a work of pure, imaginative fiction. I could only compare Marrasso's book to Dorothy Porter's verse novel 'The Monkey's Mask', or even Charles Bukowski, as poets describing the ever widening downward spirals of alcoholism and degradation, and those comparisons are intended as a compliment. Inez Marrasso writes about a life behind the curtain and on the stage, but the lighting is not flattering and the curtains are stained with cum and beer and the thick chemical smoke of the strip club is enough to make you choke.

I remember the first time I ever went to a strip club, on Hindley Street, perhaps even the club described by Marrasso. I was about nineteen or twenty. A girl caught my eye, I had a couple drinks and ordered a lap dance. As she sat on the edge of my table, waiting for the next song to come on, I asked her how she got into stripping. She told me that she was a mother, studying at uni, stripping to pay the bills. It might have been a line, a throwaway lie with enough truth in it to satisfy the casual customer, but it had enough truth also, to be true. I bring this up because in remembering this event, I realise that it immediately humanised the woman before me. She was not a naked prop to support my young and eager fantasies, she was a woman, working in a job.

This book is about a working woman, Jagger, and sometimes the job is dangerous, sometimes delightful, but the big picture is that the work is a quest in darkness for a sense of self and real identity that could not be found in married life, nor in corporate professional employment. Neitzche declared he would not believe in a god who did not dance, and Marrasso mirrors the sentiment:

Show me a God who dances, I say.

Better to be thirty eight years old, living bold than sliding

towards a finale of board games.

But this book is not a divinity tale, not a straight line morality fable tale of a woman falling into the hole she digs for herself. It is the tragic story of the men and women living in the same darkness, like Frank, the soldier sent off to Afghanistan who is as human as the protagonist and his lonely striving to become worthy of love are as important to the narrative as wine is to the drinker.

Frank gives me his army dog-tag, places it around my neck

'It would turn me on if you wore it against your skin.'

He lingers, 'Please, Jagger, just one kiss?'

It is all I have one as the cold metal dangles over my nipples.

This chain should make me bulletproof, but it sends stiff chills,

is as breathless as a noose.

He says, 'I wanna taste life from your lips, no gift would be

greater than this.'

Frank looks deep in some memory he hasn't had,

mouth gapes wide like a venus fly trap.

I could've been anyone

*

The Scarlet Lounge unlocks itself to thousands of men like

Frank,

who share their wounds with girls but don't care what they

think.

As long as the drinks are cold, they tell a truth from lies they

dare not speak to naked nuns with open legs and closed

mouths,

through vows to silent sins held in the silhouette of time

*

This book is filled and spills over with the stories of the men she dances for, of their hopeless hope and naïve romantic notions of her virtue, when for her Every day dignity changes shape. This book however is not a sappy tear stained moan about lost young men, this book does not linger for long over such romantic notions. It runs head first through the gauntlet of jackal faced liars who come hunting with fistfuls of money and promises like honey, while their fingers, uninvited, probe assholes and cunts and grab flesh as if they owned it, as if every stripper were a whore, as if whore were another word for slave, as if slave were another word for meat.

I used to date a girl who worked as an escort. A client bit one of her nipples off, and that was just the part of the story she was comfortable telling me. There were worse violations that left invisible scars, and the money she earned was hardly enough recompense for the kinds of rape that police consider unworthy of prosecution. Her champagne smile could be no better described than by a book such as this, a difficult book, a hard book, a rain maker and a heart breaker.

A book like this is beautiful in its ugliness. I believe in rough cut diamonds. I believe in the dignity to be found in hard work, and I think that sex work of any kind is some of the hardest to be found on this planet. This novel, for that is what it, reminds us of the common humanity and desperate loneliness found in both men and women. In the suicides it describes, in the mutilations, in love and friendship and sisterly solidarity, this story, like its protagonist, is unashamed, it is a hard-won trophy, and its author has worked hard to carve truth from illusion and make her poetry both sensual to read, and surreal to experience. Each poem, two pages in length, is as dense as the chapter of a book, the language and rhythms and rhymes falling into and out of syncopation. It makes me want to drink, and makes me glad that I have stopped all that in my life. I am thankful for my sobriety, yet sympathetic with the struggles of this character, which though extreme, are also common, in her quest 'to reconcile the two halves of a whole life', 'And a black unicorn stands by her side, ready for the ride.'

It's not an easy read, but the truth very rarely is.

*

Inez Marrasso's book, The Champagne Smile, can be purchased through her website

https://www.inezmarrasso.com.au

*

Dorothy Porter - Monkey's Mask

https://www.panmacmillan.com.au/9780330362429

Charles Bukowski

https://bukowski.net/