Forum - Week 5 - Mass Debate 2

Another week of collaborations. I begin to wish I had such a diverse topic to present, rather than my irrelevant gender one. Luke presented first, with my hard-done-by laptop providing media support. I am afraid to admit that I have never heard any Sigur-ros (or whatever), but what I did hear sounded interesting, if not a little cliched. I have been witness to Luke swinging his whatsits around, and seeing somebody do the same but with fire was quite entertaining. Daniel Murtagh spoke of Mike Patton, another person whom everyone seems to find weird that I didn't really know about. I have unknowingly been a fan of some of his work, from Faith No More to... like, other things too. I am amazed at the diversity of music that he a has taken part in, and it was no surprise that he worked with the eclectic John Zorn.


Next was Darryn Slyn, who instantly has my respect for fitting two 'Y's into his name. His presentation (or should I say lecture) was surprisingly intoxicating, as he spoke with much astuteness on collaborations such as Steely Dan and various Frank Zappa sessions. This would have been quite comfortable in last year's Perspectives class, had it been a little more centralised. The final student was Alfred Essemyr, who tried to establish a collaboration theme between musicians and the DJs who rip them off. It might just be Uni talking, but if you want to be the worlds greatest DJ or hip-hop producer, why are you here? You don't need a University degree to be big in the pop music industry, you don't need musical talent at all! Look at these kids who are "the sh*t" because they have had their music played on Fresh FM. Did they have any formal musical training? I'm sure it's hard setting up loops on a machine, and stopping them at the end of the song. It's almost sad that one day they will grown up and realise that there is so much more to music than throwing together samples, by then they would have dropped out of Uni and wasted a nice amount of money.

1. Stephen Whittington. “Collaborations Pt 2”. Workshop presented at EMU space, 5th floor, Schultz building, University of Adelaide. 29th March 2007.