Shutter Island (2010)

Excellent psychological mystery/thriller. Set in a mental asylum on an island off the coast of Boston in the 1950's. Directed by Martin Scorsese, and featuring Leo Di Caprio and Ben Kingsley. Love him or hate him, it's hard to deny that Di Caprio is getting better and better as he ages -- and this performance is no exception. The film has a great atmosphere -- conjures up Hitchcock with a dash of Kubrick (I'm thinking of The Shining).

Based on the novel by Dennis Lehane -- on the strength of this film I wouldn't mind checking out some of his other books.

Raiding the Con Library

Have recently been exploiting my library membership at the conservatorium to the hilt, and plundering its impressive collection of books and dvds. Here is a brief summary of what I've been reading/watching:

Books

"Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker", by Gary Giddins. A fairly light-weight, but nicely written, biography of the bird man from Kansas City.

"Miles: The Autobiography", by Miles Davis & Quincy Troupe. A great read and an invaluable insight into the thoughts of one of the all-time greats -- though not for those easily offended by "colourful metaphors".

"Kind Of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece", by Ashley Kahn. A bit disappointing -- didn't seem to give a lot of insight beyond what's readily available elsewhere (a lot is lifted from Miles' autobiography, for instance).

"Forward Motion", by Hal Galper. Expounds on the concept of "forward motion" as an approach to jazz improvisation and music in general. I've only scratched the surface, but there are plenty of interesting ideas.

"The Jazz Theory Book", by Mark Levine. Okay, this one was actually "borrowed" from the internet, in pdf form. Very thorough and approachable book that explains the main theoretical ideas underpinning jazz music. A great feature of this book is that it is loaded with musical examples and references to recorded versions where the examples are demonstrated. At the moment, I'm giving it a light initial read on the bus, to let the main ideas wash over me; but I'll be returning to it later, guitar in hand, to play through the examples and get a deeper understanding.

"When Giants Walked The Earth: A Biography of Led Zeppelin", by Mick Wall. Borrowed but haven't started this yet. This one has been on my "to-read" list for a while.

DVDs

"Parallel Realities Live": Pat Metheny, Jack DeJohnette, Herbie Hancock, and Dave Holland. Really enjoyed this fusion concert. Four masters at the top of their game.

"Keith Jarrett: The Art of Improvisation". The title here is slightly misleading as this is really just a documentary on Jarrett's career. He's a phenomenal musician (the Köln Concert, for example), but also a fairly eccentric character.

"The Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong". Hour-long documentary on the great Satchmo. Covers a lot of the same ground as Ken Burns' Jazz and features contributions from many of the same critics. Pretty good.

"Frank Zappa: Apostrophe & Overnite Sensation": a "making of" documentary focussing on two of Zappa's best albums. Some really interesting contributions from the likes of Steve Vai, Dweezil Zappa, and even Billy Bob Thornton. The more I see of him, the more I admire Frank Zappa as an intelligent, uncompromising creative force. But I still struggle to listen to his music for more than a couple of songs at a time.

"James Brown - The Godfather of Soul: A Portrait". Cheesy, fawning documentary that had all the hallmarks of an "authorized" biography -- I was reminded of the biographical video of Biff Tannen that plays at his casino in the alternate 1985 (and serves as a shameless explanatory device) from Back to the Future II. Would be nice to see a unified, critical documentary treatment of funk music.

"Jazz Icons: John Coltrane LIve in '60, '61& '65". Great footage of Trane in his prime, playing with The Rhythm Section (Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb). Stan Getz also appears on a couple of tracks. A lot of the content is on YouTube.

The Bamboos @ The Manning Bar (Friday, May 20)

Caught this show last Friday night. The Bamboos are an 8 piece Melbourne-based funk band, founded by Kiwi born guitarist Lance Ferguson and featuring Kylie Auldist on vocals. They were billed as "Australia's premier funk band" and based on this showing I would be hard-pressed not to concur. They had a great, energetic sound, propelled by Ferguson's driving funk guitar and an extremely tight, grooving rhythm section. I was already reasonably familiar with their stuff (having listened to their albums "Side-Stepper" and "4" several times), but they substantially exceeded my expectations.

I was also very impressed with the venue -- The Manning Bar, nestled in the heart of Sydney University's main Camperdown campus. Great sound, great ambience, cheap(ish) drinks, surrounded by plenty of nubile young uni students -- as well as more than a few fellow aging, leering also-rans. What more could you ask for?

One curiosity that I've now encountered several times in the last couple of shows I've been to: an unusually late start time. The concert was billed as starting at 8:30pm; however, on arriving it turned out to be only the first of two support acts that was kicking off at that time, while the main act weren't due on until 11:00pm. Not a big deal, but it meant that instead of reaching for a beer, I was going for a coffee -- and hoping that I'd still be awake by the time the band came on. So much for being fashionably late -- we were unfashionably, and conspicuously, early.