Cat empire plays prince of wales for a fool

Burma may be developing nuclear armaments. Apparently our government is calling upon the Burmese government to be transparent and abide by the nuclear anti-proliferation treaty they've apparently signed. Listening to parliament radio is a singularly comic and depressing experience, alleviated only by the furious intervention of "Order!" and "Your time's expired!".

We are a highly incoherent nation. My mother once counted the number of times my father said "Um," in a five-minute phone conversation (something like 87 times), but I think he could give our politicians a decent run for their money. (Their money? Sorry, I meant our misspent taxpayer dollars.)

Tonight we're en route to The Cat Empire's debut of their four-week residency at The Prince of Wales in St. Kilda. Back in yr 12 the bass (and double bass) player and I happily harassed each other in an underpeopled music performance class. Being the only two string players, we felt ourselves superior to the drummer, pianist, saxophonist and vocalist who slouched around us as our teacher (who'd majored in lute at university -LUTE!!!) droned on about perfect and plagal cadences and degrees of inversion.

I'm sure Ryan's found the niceties of music theory terribly invaluable in his subsequent career; identifying specific key modulation and chord inversions is crucial to the melodic trajectory of a good improvisation. (pffft)

There's music, and there's music, and all the theory in the world is going to be utterly useless unless you can PLAY your damn instrument... And the only way to do that is to immerse self in environment and play. Wow. Somehow this became a rant. I hope you're all feeling convinced. And if you're in Melbourne in the next few weeks, go to one of The Cat Empire's gigs.

Actually, read tomorrow's post for confirmation on that; it's been a while since we've heard them play. I will be devastated if they're crap; our first date was the launch for their first single ("Hello") and he crowd shot from that gig is the liner for their first album, so yeah, nice first date commemoration.