Author Archive: Peter Jakobsen
Bandt Musik
"Google it, mate"
Leader of the Australian Greens, Mr. Adam Bandt, is on record as wanting – a Treaty; A Republic (for which he called on the day QEII died); eliminating coal and gas as sources of energy; wiping student debt and funding free education for all; a cheap housing construction orgy; tenure for all; an end to all forms of discrimination (including the good ones), and defenestrating the Australian flag. So here’s our Song for Adam (with apologies to Stuart and Marco): [For Michelle] “Well I’m standing here looking at you What do I see? I’m looking straight through It’s so sad,…
Continue Reading →Good
(written by C. P. Taylor (1981); Directed by Dominic Cooke, Harold Pinter Theatre, London, 25 June 2023) Regarding the grand achievements of the Third Reich, “As with Stalin’s Great Terror, only a madman could guess what was on the way. Even the perpetrators had to go one step at a time, completing each step before they realised that the next one was possible.”* In “Good,” A liberal German Professor of literature (NOT Victor Klemperer), named John Halder, becomes involved with the Third Reich’s war machine and the Final Solution. Halder, a ‘good man,’ shows all the moral courage of Albert…
Continue Reading →And Justice For Some
When one does a crime We expect one will do time: But today it all depends On who are your true friends. A lass who thought that Pell Belonged in deepest Hell Tried to justify this thought All the way to the High Court. The judges boxed her ears And conviction disappears, But confronted with bent cops She did not pull out the stops. In the Land of the Free, It clearly pays to be A member of the Club Who won’t even have to scrub A charge from his good name; There’s none to lay the blame. You can…
Continue Reading →Edge of Reality
(Created by Paul Grabowsky, Adelaide Festival Centre, 14 June 2023) Elvis Presley and Cabaret? But of course! If you Can Dream, avoid that Kentucky Rain, have a Little Less Conversation, perhaps have you Always on Our Mind, and do it My Way, it could work. And this night, it kinda-did, care of Paul Grabowsky’s absolutely clever re-working of the arrangements of the King’s greatest hits (and some lesser mortals), with a terrific jazz/rock/fusion band (piano, guitar, cello, clarinet, trumpet, fiddle, drums, glockenspiel?) and starring celebrated Australian vocalists Joe Camilleri and Deborah Conway, Edge of Reality is a unique tribute to…
Continue Reading →Richard Wagner: “The Ring” Reprise
The Ring on TV and in Adelaide On Sunday 28 May 2023, the Richard Wagner Society SA celebrated the Maestro’s birthday with a cake cutting, and an array of Wagner accoutrements (see below). And President Geoff Siedel introduced two documentaries on that well known “story of a man who buys a house and can’t keep up the payments”, the first concerning the televised premiere of a Bayreuth Ring in 1980; the second concerning the mounting of the Adelaide production in 2004. These items above were from the sublime Adelaide Ring. As we have written, with Asher Fisch rehearsing at great…
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