Author Archive: Peter Jakobsen
Paris – The Moveable Feast
How to take the gloss off the Eiffel Tower
June 23, 1940: Herr Hitler strolls around his shiny new toy, Paris, taking in the architectural marvels under the tutelage and guidance of those well-known art lovers, Albert Speer and Arno Breker; the former a drawer of nightmare-constructions that never took shape, thank goodness – the latter a grafter of dubious, neoclassical trash that would make Phidias and Alexandros laugh (we except Breker’s bronze bust of Wagner at Bayreuth). The Nazis represented the worst threat in memory to art. They were thieves, of course. And what they did not understand, or disliked, they simply destroyed. They spun idiotic theories and practised…
Continue Reading →Buried Alive in the Blues
Glenelg v Sturt at Glenelg Oval (June 19, 2016) Good news first – there were heaps of examples of grit and endeavour against the top team. We had 3 more scoring shots and a lot of contested possession. A statistician would be pleased, but in the final analysis, the only stat is we got beat. Turnovers and missed shots for goal (7.17, if you please!) killed us, and Sturt aren’t the quivering mass of jelly they used to be. So, we show evidence of want and will, which is half the battle…let’s now work on verve and skill, which when…
Continue Reading →Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm
Songs in Our Heart # 15 Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm (Crash Test Dummies) (Written by Brad Roberts; released October 1993) [Song for the bereft.] (Anyone who bases an album cover after Titian can’t be bad…)
Continue Reading →Mon amour est bleu
Venetian Songs (Elder Conservatorium of Music) Adelaide 17 June, 2016 This was a nice programme of short, light but not inconsequential French song cycles, beautifully sung (in French) by soprano Rosalind Martin accompanied by Roy Howat on piano. Composers such as Chausson, Poulenc (from poems by Apollinaire, including a great slacker’s song where the protagonist says he’d rather smoke than work), and Satie, created varying moods, most of them moving. Though my dodgy French found it hard to keep up, I liked the Satie song (Le Chapelier by René Chalupt) that has the Mad Hatter complaining that his watch is three…
Continue Reading →Dear oh dear oh dear – take 2
Elizabeth R gets the bad news from the Prince: "Apparently, the Tigers were never in it..." (photo by Philip Allfrey)
Glenelg v North Adelaide, Queen’s Birthday, Monday 13 June 2016. After a long lead-up to this game, an important one, especially in light of the launch of the ‘Save the Tigers’ campaign, with a good and good-natured holiday crowd, we really expected better, although we’ve had trouble with North recently. The Bays were thrashed, and thrashed all day, losing every quarter, despite a strong final term effort. North were simply faster, more focused and made few errors. With the visitors leading 16 goals to 4 at three-quarter time, it was a relief to end-up only having our score doubled, not…
Continue Reading →