ROCKSHOW – Wings (1980/2013)

When I reviewed The McCartney Years I said that it partially explained why Rockshow hasn’t been released on DVD until now and suggested that it might be because it doesn’t really stand up to modern concert films.

I. Was. Wrong.

I realise now that the main reason that the tidbits of Rockshow included on The McCartney Years were unsatisfying is because they were taken out of the context of the whole film.

It’s not that Rockshow is without its flaws. Indeed, it’s defined by them. The camera angles are either off to the side, looking down from a distance or pointing right up the band’s noses. These angles are sometimes blocked by mic stands, miss bits and are frequently out of focus. 

In other words, it’s just like being there. 

In the newly recorded introduction to the film, Paul claims that Wings started from nothing. This is true, if by “nothing,” you mean having only one ex-Beatle and an ex-Moody Blue. Still, something that defined Wings was a habit of dropping themselves into a situation without a plan - from an ad-hoc tour of any uni bar that would have them, to deciding to record Band on the Run in a half-built studio in Nigeria (what could possibly go wrong?) - and muddling through thanks to a combination of enthusiasm, showmanship and a musical talent that people would kill just to have just one tenth of. Rockshow is really no different. It was filmed over several nights at the end of the 1976 Wings Over America tour with seemingly no provision made for the filming or for continuity. At one point, Denny Laine manages to turn a black Precision Bass into a Blonde Telecaster bass, and Jimmy McCulloch changes it back a few songs later. There are a couple of other points where Jimmy’s fingers are clearly playing different licks to the ones being heard. 

What is really interesting about the set list is that although they were promoting the Wings at the Speed of Sound album at the time, it’s the previous album, Venus and Mars that is drawn on the most heavily. It actually came as a surprise to me when they played Band on the Run near the end of the set because I really hadn’t missed it. Naturally, the few Beatles songs that are dropped into the set draw huge cheers but the show is by no means built around them. Wings had no need to lean on the Beatles connection at this point, but Macca has always been a crowd-pleaser and knew that people would want at least a couple of Beatles numbers.  Also, there’s a real, live, 4-piece horn section. Remember how good that sounded, Paul? 

The new 5.1 mix is restrained, with the surround channels being used only for audience noise. I usually consider this a pretty lazy use of a surround mix but in this case, along with the photography, it complements the simulation of the concert experience.  The rest of the mix is a traditional rock and roll arrangement with guitars left and right, as it should be.

Of course, there’s plenty of 70s dagginess included as well. Mullets abound and Paul looks for all the world like he is wearing pyjama pants. Despite its flaws – indeed, probably because of them – Rockshow really is the perfect record of Wings at the height of their powers in what was a pretty high-tech show in its day. 

Highlight:  The segue of Rockshow to Jet. We all know it’s coming now, but it still sounds great.

Feature:  * * * * ½ 

Extras:  TBC

Audio:  TBC

    

Reading between the lines, Part 3 – It’s not you, it’s us

In the world of ‘odd spot’ news (which is all some outlets do these day), nothing last week could top the story of three men deported from Saudi Arabia, allegedly for “too handsome.”

While it seems unlike the Saudis to let someone down gently, something about this just screams “cover story.”  Whether it is or it isn’t, this is something Australia could learn from, and perhaps utilise.

For example…
“It’s not that we have anything against your refreshingly novel ideas on Islam and multiculturalism Mr Wilders, or your right to present those views to the most humble of our countrymen.  It’s just that with your glowing locks and beaming, boyish face, we have real concerns that you may cause our women to lose interest in our local men and possibly even turn some of those men gay for you.  I’m sure none of us want that.  I’m sure you understand.”

How easy would that be?
 

Reading between the lines, Part 2

The latest line from the Liberal party and their leader is that, should they win the election, Tony Abbott expects to “grow into the job,” of prime minister.  They back this up by reminding us that John Howard grew into the job.

Translation:
1:  After nearly four years as opposition leader, Tony Abbott is still not ready to be prime minister and he knows it.
2:  John Howard was a naïve git before he became a cynical arse.
 
 

Clive for Canberra? Why not?

Clive Palmer, the Queensland mining entrepreneur and until recently, major Liberal party donor announced yesterday that he is forming his own political party and wants to become the next prime minister.  The announcement has received derision from both major parties and their supporters but here’s my question:
Why not?

There are a lot of positive aspects to this.
For a start, comparisons are already being made with the Joh for PM campaign of 1987. In fact, it’s being referred to now as the “disastrous” Joh for PM campaign, which is nonsense. It was disastrous for John Howard.  It was great for Labor.  And for Bjelke-Petersen himself, it was neither here nor there.  For him it was just a massive ego trip which ultimately never became a real campaign anyway.  So if Palmer’s actual campaign manages to bugger up Tony Abbott’s then I’m all for it.

Lest people get the idea that this is going to be partisan, I’ve said before that I’m a swinging voter and I’ve also said I’d love to be able to vote against Labor this election, but I honestly believe an Abbott government would be dangerous.  Anything that mitigates that risk is something I see as a positive.

Palmer has said that the policies of his rebooted United Australia Party would be very similar to the Liberal Party’s.  That should be instantly attractive to people who naturally swing Liberal but can’t abide the race-to-the-bottom antics of Tony Abbott – and there are plenty of them around.  The major difference Palmer has laid out between his party and the two majors is treatment of indigenous people and asylum seekers.  That won’t be enough to counter the natural suspicion progressives have of the big business interests Palmer clearly represents, but it’s a start.

The most notable aspect of Palmer’s campaign is that it’s another massive rebuke of the Liberal party from someone who should be (and until very recently has been) a natural ally of the party and someone the Liberals would claim to represent.  If someone like Palmer, who was previously one of the Liberal party’s chief benefactors, has decided they’re not worth the money and that he could do a better job himself, then that should cause a rethink for anyone who was considering voting Liberal on the grounds of their economic management skills and business-friendliness.

What Palmer is really doing here is cutting out the middle-man.  Mum & Dad party donors may do so because they think it’s for the greater good, but when billionaires donate to parties, they want a return on their investment.  This means that they are buying influence over government or potential government.  If Palmer is prepared to bypass that system, put his policies to the people and be accountable to the people, then that is to be commended whether you agree with him or not.  More people who demand a say in the political process, from mining operators to talkback radio hosts to columnists to ’bloggers should do this.

I’m not here to cheer for Palmer – I’m sure I’ll be able to find lots to disagree with him on. I’m just trying to look beyond the knee-jerk, “he crazy,” reactions.  There’s little joy for Labor here.  The UAP will doubtlessly preference the Liberals and in the event that they end up holding the balance of power in the lower house, then they will surely support a Liberal/National government.  Of course, Tony Abbott is on record saying that minority governments don’t work.  He will jettison that comment like so much of the other drivel he comes out with if it means he can become PM.  The media will also completely fail to call Abbott a liar for making compromises in order to form a stable and functioning government.

This perhaps unlikely scenario offers some hope for progressives. Given Palmer’s stated positions on indigenous affairs and asylum seekers, the UAP may force any potential minority Abbott government to be less disgraceful on those issues in a similar way to how the Greens and independents managed to arrest Labor’s lurch to the right, for a time at least. In the really unlikely event that the UAP forms government and Palmer becomes prime minister, then if we have to have government by and for big business, then better to have the real thing than a bunch of opportunistic political hacks doing their masters’ bidding.

Yes, it’s all conjecture but either way, this election just got a little less depressing.
 

News from the future…

[some time between May and September, 2013]

Last night, Tony Abbott appeared on the ABC’s 7:30 programme for his second interview with Leigh Sales this year and his first live, in-studio interview of the year.

Mr Abbott was part way through answering a seemingly innocuous question about how the Coalition plans to pay for abolishing the carbon and mining taxes without reducing the tax-free threshold to pre-2012 levels, when Ms Sales leapt across the desk, drove her fist clean into Mr Abbott’s chest, tore out his heart and showed it still beating to his dying eyes.

Sales then calmly resumed her seat and turned to camera to introduce a report on the human cost of the drugs in football scandal.

The following morning, social media was abuzz with accusations from the left and hardcore Labor that Sales and the ABC had sold out and become puppets of Rupert Murdoch and the IPA for allowing Tony Abbott to prove that he had a heart.
 
 

This is the first page of Keith Murdoch's letter to prime minister Andrew Fisher informing him of the true conditions at Gallipoli.

Read the full text here: The Gallipoli Letter

Lest we forget

   

Why the NRA proposal is dumb

A couple of weeks ago, the National Rifle Association released their counter-proposal for increasing safety in US schools in the wake of another mass shooting last December. This is to be commended. It’s one thing to be against tighter gun control, but the NRA deserves credit for commissioning a study and coming up with their own ideas. If nothing else, it shows they agree that there’s a problem. The idea they have come up with though – putting trained, armed personnel in every school – is not a good one and I will explain why.

Before I get into that, let me first explain that for the purpose of this discussion, I don’t care where you stand on the issue of gun control.  I don’t care if you think all guns should be banned, or if you think every citizen should have one, or anything in between. I don’t care if you think safety comes from more guns or less guns. I don’t care what you think about the independence of the group that did this study. I don’t care if armed guards in schools would make you feel safer or if it would creep you out. I don’t care if you think the right to bear arms is absolute or if you think it should be tempered by modern considerations. I don’t care if you think the US constitution should be a living document which adapts to the times, or if you think it should be set in stone forever and a day.  I don’t care if you think the NRA are patriots defending the constitution or a relic of a bygone age.

The reason I don’t care about any of those things is because they are tangential to an issue that really comes down to a fairly straightforward case of risk management.

The principles of risk management vary slightly between regions and organisations but the process has four stages:

• Identify the risk
• Analyse and evaluate the risk
• Treat the risk
• Monitor the risk

Once the risk has been identified, analysing and evaluating the risk requires the use of a matrix* to plot the likelihood of the risk (from Rare to Almost certain) against the impact of the risk (Insignificant to Catastrophic).  This gives us an idea of the level of risk. For example, the likelihood of rain is almost certain, but the impact of rain in most situations is insignificant to minor so the level of risk is low. The likelihood of a large earthquake is much higher in San Francisco than it is in Miami, but in both cases, the impact would still be catastrophic. Conversely, the likelihood of a hurricane is far more likely in Miami than in San Francisco but the impact would still be major to catastrophic.

Having evaluated the risk, the next step is to decide how to treat the risk. The types of treatment can be broken down into four basic options:
Avoid the risk: This is clearly the most preferable – try to avoid or eliminate the risk completely.
Control the risk: Put strategies in place to reduce the likelihood or the impact (preferably both) of the risk.
Transfer the risk: The most obvious example of transferring a risk is insurance. Taking out fire insurance transfers the financial risk of a fire from the owner to the insurer.
Retain the risk: Decide that the risk is an acceptable one that doesn’t require avoiding, controlling or transferring.  We do this all the time. For all that we have done to avoid, reduce and transfer the risks of driving a car, it still remains an inherently risky activity and one that millions have decided to embrace.  The same applies to living in cities known to be at greater risk of seismic activity or hurricanes than others.

Finally, we continue to monitor the risk and evaluate the success of the risk management plan we have put in place.
Obviously, I didn’t invent any of this. My instruction on the subject came from a good governance initiative in 2004 but a quick internet search will return plenty of documents from all over the world that give very similar advice.

=       =       =

So let’s apply these principles to the issue at hand:

We have already identified the risk. The risk is that a crazy person takes a gun to a school and starts murdering people indiscriminately. Come to think of it, murdering people discriminately is hardly any better, so strike the last word from the previous sentence.

Next we must analyse the level of risk – what is the likelihood and what would the impact be? While we would all like to think that someone randomly killing school children is unlikely in the extreme, history is beginning to tell us a different story. So let’s put this risk in the ‘Possible’ column. The impact is a no-brainer. Obviously the impact would be catastrophic, however low the likelihood may be.

So how do we treat the risk? Well, rule number one is that where-ever possible, avoid or eliminate the risk. And that’s where the NRA’s suggestion falls down. They are opposing moves to avoid or eliminate the risk and jumping straight to transferring and reducing the impact of the risk. As I’ve already mentioned, there are numerous examples of risks that could be avoided but are instead retained and controlled because the benefit of adopting the risk outweighs the benefit of avoiding it. We make these judgements every day. So what possible benefit is there in not putting procedures in place to stop crazy people from obtaining the tools to murder school children? It doesn’t make sense. Of course, no-one is suggesting that weeding out the crazy people and not letting them get guns is going to stop every potential massacre. If armed guards were being suggested as an additional measure for controlling the impact of the risk after already reducing the likelihood of the risk, that would indeed be prudent. However, to accept that nothing can be done until the risk is imminent is just irresponsible.

This would be an open-and-shut case if not for the fact that the emotive issue of gun ownership is involved so again, let’s put that to one side. Imagine you were on a board of management developing a risk management plan. And imagine you were advocating for an expensive plan for mitigating a risk that could be greatly reduced if not eliminated for less cost, less work and with no detriment to the organisation or its interests. Such a position should give all other rational and ethical stakeholders cause to reflect on your soundness.
There is no rational reason why this risk should be treated differently to any other.

I know there are some who will say that this line of thinking fails to understand the United States or its constitution. As mentioned previously, I don’t care. Such an argument requires one to assume that a relatively small group of men in the 18th century could ever have imagined assault rifles, or mental illness, or what might happen if you mixed the two, and what they might have to say about it if they could. It’s an interesting intellectual exercise but if you ask me (and I know you didn’t), it’s about as useful as debating what Karl Benz would think about speed limits, Charles Babbage’s opinion of file sharing or whether Guglielmo Marconi would agree that you should have to turn your mobile ’phone off on an airliner.

The debate over the true intentions of America’s founders has been going for 237 years and won’t be settled by this generation. What we have at hand is a clearly identified risk and a few ideas about how to manage that risk. From a simple risk management point of view, the NRA’s proposal is dumb.



* I’ve always hated that word. If I’m in a meeting where the words ‘framework’ or ‘matrix’ are used, my first instinct is to run out of the room screaming, but unfortunately there is no better way to describe it.