How do you know if you’re a ‘dance person’?

Not the TV show, mind you, I’m thinking of broader contemporary dance. I like dancing out at clubs – admittedly not as often nowadays. But I would have considered myself pretty much not a dance person before seeing Bangarra’s Mathinna last week.

Intense and harrowing at times, extremely beautiful at others. Abstracted, yes, but never obtuse or indistinct. The story was perfectly clear. The effect mesmerising.

A terrifically researched, frequently tangential, yet terribly interesting spiel – basically, the perfect accompaniment to a long bus ride. This American Life.

This week on our show on FBI 94.5. Sound artist, music maker, film maker and writer Jason Sweeney, in town for Liquid Architecture, came in to talk about his upcoming residency at CIA, Perth, and his new record Panoptique Electrical record on Sensory Projects.

Tessa Rapaport, Karl Logge and Diego Bonetto, the guys behind an installation at Underbelly called Hanging Gardens and Other Tales, also visited.

Musically:

Channel Two – 2562
Take Care of Business (Pilooski remix) – Nina Simone
Long Time Fish Pie – Seekae
Bad Blood – Ernest Ellis
Something Special – The Darling Downs
Episode II – The Small Hours
Girls – Walter Meego
Impossible (Studio remake) – Shout Out Louds
In The Garden – Leila
Wearing My Rolex – Wiley
Like It Or Not – Architecture In Helsinki
Action Figures The Cool Kids
Toe Jam (feat David Byrne and Dizzee Rascal) – The BPA
Different Handwriting – Prettyboy Crossover
Bobby, Mark and Carter – Panoptique Electrical
Blood On My Hands – Shackleton
On Any Wednesday – Nic Dalton
Make It So (feat Michael Johnson) – Daedelus
Scene of the Crime – Hot Little Hands
500 (Shake Baby Shake) – Lush

If all else fails try a list. That’s the normal thing, and usually radio shows fit the bill. This time though it’s the set I played last night at Glamour Pour Le Hammer.

Christine Harwood – Never Knew What Love Was
Junior Delgado – Fort Augustus
Velvet Underground – Ride Into The Sun
Bronski Beat and Marc Almond – Signs (and Wonders)
Imagination – Flashback
Winnie Runnells – The Letter E
Bus feat MC Soom T – Middle of the Road (Disco Dub Mix)
Jean Jacques Perrey – EVA (Fat Boy Slim Dub Mix)
Tom Ze – Gloria
Vampyros Lesbos – The Lion and the Cucumber (Dr Rockit Version)
Foxy Brown – Big Bad Mamma
Domino – Physical Funk (Instrumental)
Jon E Cash – Battle
Archive – Sun That I Know
UTD – My Kung Fu
Panda One – She Knows Not (feat Dena)
Bush Tetras – Too Many Creeps
Brooks – Man-size
Dr Israel – Above & Beyond
Pressure feat Warrior Queen – Money Honey
Soft Cell – Tainted Dub
The Mills Brothers with Sy Silver & His Orchestra – Opus One
Junior Wells – Hoodoo Man
Kid & Khan – Goo Goo Muck
Bootleg – Secretary Blues (Roman BNO Bump Ride Edit)
Todd Osborn – Nightfall
Steve Reich – It’s Gonna Rain
Hallucinator – Red Angel
Geiom – Zalim Maar Daala (feat Khalid)
Cesaria Evora – Angola (Get Down Dub by Pepe Braddock)

Illegal Gunshot – Ragga Twins
Like An Arrow – Baobinga & ID
Ti Tree Bush Mix – Big Low
Sandshoe – Peret Mako
Wayfaring Stranger – Jamie Woon
The Escape – Early Day Miners
Out the Window With the Window – Tunng
Remember Love – Noze
The Devil’s Crayon – Wild Beasts
The Bizness – Killaqueenz
Requiem In A-Flat Reprise – Dead Leaf
Winter Coat – Hit The Jackpot
Russian Websites – The Tongue
Kiss With a Fist – Florence and the Machine
Gang Sound – Lindstrom
Met Suf I Eyrum – Sigur Ros
Bright Tomorrow – Fuck Buttons
Introduction – Natural Causes
Black Members – Deadbeat Club
Heavy Gum – Vincent Over the Sink

I’m playing records next Thursday night, July 10, at the Colombian (corner of Oxford and Crown Streets).

Upstairs, that is, where FBI’s Jack Shit runs a weekly night of no-holds-barred music love, called Glamour Pour Le Hammer. I get the impression it’s like a Club Kooky that’s not so rooted in electronic music. I’m choosing records from 10pm. Jack Shit’s on after that. Plus avant garde and eccentric performances. It’s free.

Can’t say I’m a Pearl Jam fan. But when Robert McDonald posted about the band recently, I felt moved to comment (here, given his blog does not allow comments).

McDonald saw Pearl Jam, who he described as, “a tight, well-practiced band that was mostly just having fun playing, coupled with good acoustics and work on the soundboard.”

All throughout the show, hundreds of digital cameras or mobile phones were taking pictures of the stage. At one point I counted, and in our section about 1 in 20 folks at any time were taking a picture. A few folks seemed to be consistently taking photos the entire time. This is extraordinarily odd if you think about it. Given the distance between most fans and the stage, and the dim lighting, most of these pictures will be a blurry mess. Moreover, one could easily find a better picture of Eddie Vedder on the web.

He gives two reasons for this. Profound: the magical thrill and emotional resonance of the Pearl Jam gig (or whatever it is) in front of you. The shallow: people proving they managed to get tickets to the gig.

I don’t entirely agree the latter is so shallow. That ephemeral moment, that magic of seeing a band perform live is coming into focus as the centre of many music makers’ activities. Blame it on the twin factors of declining record sales, and the merch. and gig (oh, ad licensing too) based replacement economy. That live experience is the thing, but how to capture it? It’s such a fleeting moment.

Photos and audio were par for the course for years. Cameras are cheaper now, video’s replaced audio, and it’s so easy to share those pics. Why’s the guy taking 50 photos, probably because as McDonald said, “most of these pictures will be a blurry mess.” At such a bad signal to noise ratio, dude’s just trying to up his/her chance of taking a decent one.

Speaking of which, check my pics of Justin Townes Earle, Jamie Lidell, and The Herd at my flickr page.

A new site for all things poetic, When Pressed, launched last night at the tiny Serial Space warehouse (the old Jellyheads site) in inner city Waterloo.

Tom Lee reads at Serial Space.

Tom Lee and Amanda Stewart performed, while Nick Keys, Tim Wright and Pat Gordon basked in the glow of success. I really was quite busy last night – the headline’s not just a useful pun – and had to leave early, but it was obvious how excited people were from the buzz around the new site, the gang of writers and readers, and the generally great feeling of getting together for a mid-week dose of literary goods.

Homelessness is such a huge problem that it’s abstract, feels a long way away, just stats. An ABC doco called The Oasis (originally screened in April) brought it home in a gripping 75 minutes, built on several years of filming in and around the Crown Street homeless refuge of the movie’s title.

It’s an exceptional film that should be essential viewing.

Popcorn Taxi screens an uncut version of the doco on Monday July 7 at Greater Union Bondi, with the film’s teenage subjects available for a Q&A afterwards.

Producer and co-director of The Oasis Ian Darling joins me on FBI 94.5′s Canvas this Sunday morning (10-12noon) to talk about the project.

This will soon be a thing of the past.

I lose my records room soon – a luxury I built up to with a lot of dreaming – and in the process of preparing for that seismic shift, I’ve been culling CDs (and the odd record). Where do you go to sell CDs these days? Does anyone pay?