Great party on an icy Saturday night in Vienna.

Great dancing from this group of friends
this is what I love about goa
the music, the light and the joy
flowing through one's whole body.
Perfect moment.

Beautiful people. Nice atmosphere. Full, but not too crowded. Nothing worse than a goatrance party where there is no space to dance.

Austrian GoaTrance Photos: Cosmic Party WUK 27-1-2007 Continues »

In the Eroica Hall of the Austrian Theater Museum in the Lobkowitz Palace, I was both a fortunate participant and observer of a wonderful talk given by Christa Ludwig, a former opera star about her time in the limelight together with Maria Callus.

Christa Ludwig in the Austrian Theater Museum

Christa Ludwig - Personal Recollections of Maria Callas Continues »

On a sidenote, I am certainly glad that I bought the CD's at the concerts as from both the Viktoria Tolstoy website and the ACT music website for her albums My Swedish Heart and Shining on You, there are no direct links to buy either of her CD's. It shouldn't be this hard to buy music. I criticise the Americans for their crass commercialism, but a discreet buy here link would be just fine.

Zeebee does a little better with a direct link on the album page to its page at the iTunes store. But no link to actually obtain a physical CD.

We are a long way away from (and in aesthetic terms, thank heavens) from the CDBaby site.

Zeebee - Priorities (album cover)

I was at the ZeeBee album launch on Saturday night where legendary Vienna DJ Klaus Waldeck was playing afterwards. ZeeBee is an FM4 Vienna creation. If you don't know FM4 is an Austrian phenomenon. The radio station has an incredible popularity among most people from 20 to 40. Personally I don't like FM4 much.

The English langauge DJ's are annoying and some of the German-speaking ones even more so, with a kind of cool pushed to insupportable. The musical taste strives to cover all its bases a little too much for my tastes. Many of the DJ's seem to play whatever is ghetto and cool in the United States (not the mainstream charts, but underground ones) without thinking much if they like it or not, if the music is any good or not, or whether the music means a damn thing to someone sitting in beautiful Vienna.

But I should be careful what I write about FM4 - as I said, FM4 is very popular. They do contribute a lot to cultural happenings around Vienna with all kinds of promotions of clubs and releases of special compilation albums.

What do I listen to then? Osterreich Einz. Great talk shows and special reports and cultural news and great classical music with a midnight book reading every evening. But the Austrians are right about one thing - those are the only two conceivable choices on the Vienna radio dial. Austrian radio would be much poorer for the absence of FM4.

Zeebee came out of their studios and playlists to a cult following for her first album Tender in 2003. Then she disappeared for a couple of years while making her second album priorities which was released on Friday.

Zeebee played us a short set from priorities in the Rot Bar (in Volkstheater right next to Museumsquartier just outside the first district - great location).

The sound was catchy and engaging - it was just zeebee and her keyboardist. The show had a lot of panache - many songs of spurned love, much about independence.

be good to yourself
stop eating when you're full
preserve the beauty
for times when you are angry

the time with yourself
is no luxury
these are my priorities
a simple life is all i need

Two problems. The volume gradually became too loud. When will people realise one can't push speakers and amps to the breaking point without destroying the music with distortion?

Second problem was that too many of the songs sounded the same. Zeebee has this little girl raspy vocal style. Think of Portishead's Beth Gibbons. Which would be alright - except that a lot of the music reminds one of Portishead's instrumentation and style as well. Too much. Much too much.

After listening to the CD a couple of times, there are a few outstanding songs but too much filler. It's not a CD I can listen to straight through without pushing the skip track button four or five times (there are thirteen tracks). And all of it too much like ten year old Portishead. On the other hand, the music is well enough executed that a Portishead fan might be thrilled to get Zeebee's Priorities into his or her hands.

Zeebee has a lot of style and her website is a wonder to behold full of great photography and some amazing photoshop work - according to the credits zeebee does a lot of both herself. Well worth a visit to take a look yourself and for a second opinion. A lot of reviews of her earlier work are posted there.

Viktoria Tolstoy

Tonight I managed to get out for the second half of the Viktoria Tolstoy concert over at Porgy and Bess, Vienna's best musical club (mainly jazz but not only). Viktoria Tolstoy is a female jazz singer in the Rebekka Bakken mode. Tolstoy herself is a tall, fairly good woman with a good stage presence. Apparently she is a direct descendent of Leo Tolstoy's son (also named Leo, who emigrated to Sweden).

The crowd went wild for her performance, bringing her out for something like four or five encores. What amazed me was the great work of her pianist Jakob Karlzon who occasionally hit the keyboard like a demon and sometimes light as an angel. The piano seemed to take on a whole life of its own. The bass player and drummer in the tight three man group also seemed to be enjoying playing together very much and each put in a good effort.

Viktoria Tolstoy has a very nice voice, smooth and velvety. She doesn't have perfect pitch though. In normal singing, it's not noticeable but occasionally Tolstoy catches one of her extended notes wrong and we have to suffer for about twenty seconds while she finds her way back to the instruments. It happened often enough to push things back from brilliant to very good.

Most remarkable though is that Viktoria Tolstoy's singing is much like three or four other jazz divas (and it's not a genre I spend a lot of time with) - it could be her ACT label mate Rebekka Bakken, or any of the others up there on stage if you just close your eyes singing,

I thought we were meant to be
Time has brought some changes
In love I feel alone
I thought it would last forever
But now I am standing all alone

But no one seems to mind when Jazz singers sound alike. All we care about is their individual delivery. The quality of their voice. The emotional intonation they can impart. It's something like classical dance. All the ballerinas dance more or less the same steps, with more or less the same style (within any one national school). Yet some (myself) are happy to go back and see a bunch of different versions of the same Swan Lake or Gisele.

Many of the female vocalists in country music are indistinguishable as well, unless you are looking at them.

What I don't understand is how we have so little tolerance of sonic resemblance in alternative and pop music. If something sounds too much like another group, it irritates. Zeebee is less like Portishead than Viktoria Tolstoy is like Rebekka Bakken, yet the resemblance is far more grating in the first case.

Viktoria Tolstoy was promoting her second album My Swedish Heart which is a tribute to something called Swedish jazz - when jazz first came to Sweden in the 1950's and through the 60's. It's a silly title and I've listened to My Swedish Heart a couple of times and can tell you I don't like Swedish jazz much. But her first album Shining on You, entirely composed by well known composer Esbjörn Svensson, is a much more coherent and stronger bit of work.

Viktoria Tolstoy's version of "Things that Happen" is particularly moving. But generally on CD her whole performance has a superficial and commercial gloss which I don't find at appealing. While the voices may be similar, there is whole lot more sincere emotion in Rebekka Bakken's work.

Two derivative but strong singers, two genres, two totally different reactions. If anyone else has any ideas on why our standards for originality are so different for jazz vocalists and pop singers, please let me know.

Remember Van Halen?

Well I do. Lead singer David Lee Roth was referenced in an article I'm reading so I decided to check up on him. Apparently he's done a dozen things since then, none of them to quite the same fame and fortune than his halycon Van Halen days.

His latest ongoing gig is as a radio host. But what is really shocking is that David Lee Roth now looks like my childhood Jewish dentist. Really. David Lee Roth. Time is marching on all of us. (Speaking of which the pictures of Slobodan Milosevic this year and in 1990 were a real shock as well. Whatever his crimes, Milosevic always looked hale and hearty. Not at the end.)

I suppose Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrison were onto something. Those blokes died rock stars. Mick Jagger is somehow managing it as well - one begins to wonder about the early Sympathy for the Devil songs...did the man cut a deal with Satan to be able to maintain his energy and his voice in the face of massive drug and woman abuse? I mean, I understand our Tyrollian farmers and their Swiss neighbours remaining spry into their seventies, but how the hell does Jagger manage it.

In any case, not to take the spotlight away from David Lee Roth, it turns out he is quite a witty chap. There is a whole page of his bon mots at Wikipedia:

It's not who wants to sleep with you; it's who wants to sleep with you again.

After all these years of bright lights, I still don't need glasses--I drink straight from the bottle.

I used to have a drug problem, but now I make enough money so that it's not a problem anymore.

For some reason David Lee Roth is also doing double-duty on emergency ambulances as a paramedic. Good on you DLR! I much prefer the reincarnation to the original.

The last good goaparty I went to was in February. This last while I've just been deluged with work. I took some pictures but not as many as I usually do. The decoration was fabulous at Fiat Lux! - Es werde Licht. People were wonderschön. Lots of friends and acquaintances.

The best set of the night was played by the beautiful and ethereal Gaby. What was amazing was as she played she danced, playing the music for herself and the crowd. It was almost like a live-set, she hit the mood so well.

I thought what a beautiful Austrian girl - no, DJane Gaby is Slovenian. Met another beautiful girl there as well her boyfriend. She turned out to be Ukrainian. Vienna the capital of beautiful women from elsewhere. I know more beautiful Polish, Russian, Georgian, Ukrainian, Czech, Slovakian, Serbian and Slovenian women here than Austrians.

I suppose nothing much has changed from the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The standard of living is higher in Vienna and life is better organised here. So many people from the old Empire still continue to come through Vienna in a traditional pattern. The fall of the Empire is still less than a hundred years ago.

But the evening was not about beauty but music and light. And Gaby's set flowed so high and far that when the curtain came down hard at 6am the publich was not too happy. The DJ's had to hide for almost 15 minutes while the organisers worked on dispersing the crowd.

If you get the chance to attend a party where DJane Gaby is at the tables, it is an event not to be missed.

It was a very good thing that Gaby came on. The main event DJ of the night (might be her boyfriend from what I can tell - if so I hope Gaby gives him lessons on playing to a crowd) was a serious letdown. I'm not sure if it was Indika (Mexico) or Phenix (Austria). The music just drifted, not going up or down. No real goa feeling to float on. Just another techno/trance type evening. Lots of enjoyment to be had in the small room though.

There was an after party but I don't have the force to go somewhere else at seven in the morning. Bed is too sweet. It was a beautiful sunny morning I remember. The day after pictures are actually sunset when I went out for a walk to Heldenplatz and then to Rathaus where I observed the Eistraum. For once, Toronto outdoes Vienna. For the rather cramped skating quarters at Rathaus, one had to pay something like 6 euros to skate. The skating rink at Nathan Philips Square is much bigger and it's free.

Apparently there is fabulous skating on the Donaukanal. I missed it this year (a good icy skating day is a rotten day for cycling - next year I'll just have to take the U-bahn).

I haven't managed to hit the nightlife much for the last few weeks. It's a combination of things. So much work. And also with the camera, it adds yet another task. I am also tired of all the smoke, both from cigarettes and smoke machines. Too many nights.

And instead of goa a whole lot of balls. Pictures to come shortly.

Vienna world capital of the Viennese Ball and of GoaTrance.

Of all the arts, dance and poetry are my true passions.

So I've seen a lot of dance in Vienna. Been to the theatre a few times. I have yet to see an opera.

The dance this season has been deeply disappointing since the fabulous Jan Fabre-blessed season at Tanzquartier a couple of years ago. The dance which is being commissioned and presented is conceptual. Abstract.

Hardly dance at all.

So in despair I have turned to music, buying a host of albums which I will review here, going to concerts at Flex, becoming a member at Porgy and Bess.

I've often said dance is the poetry of motion. One could turn the definition on its head and say that poetry is the dance of language.

At the root of both poetry and dance is music.

There are only a few things which Austrians do better than anyone else in the world. One is skiing. The other is music.

The ballet orchestra at Staatsoper is head and shoulders above any other in the world. I recently attended an evening of As You Like It. The choreography is dull, the characterisation trite, but to hear the Staatsoper orchestra play Mozart made for an excellent evening.

I would never have guessed that a people who are so repressed emotionally - living in Vienna is like a timewarp to English Canada 30 years ago where repressed emotions were also the order of the day - could be so expressive emotionally.

All this repression can be agreeable at times - very rarely does one see people shouting at one another in the streets here. Bar fights or harsh words are rare. People are remarkably calm in the course of a day's interaction.

Somehow all this repression must force the emotions out elsewhere.

And it appear the outlet is music.

I am tired of second-rate dance or worse not dance masquerading as dance.

So I will be writing a lot about music this year.

I had the chance to hear Electric Indigo live again on Friday night at Flex where she played the Jugend Innovativ party. Her set was long and fabulous. What marks the outstanding DJ from the ordinary, is his or her ability to tap a room's animus and move the people from where they are into the DJ's world. This isn't done with a single song or single riff but with a careful musical progression, even a spiritual center.

Electric Indigo is often called Austria's best woman DJ or the World's best electronic woman DJ. Time to drop the gender epithet. Electric Indigo may be the most consistently brilliant electronic DJ in the world. Full stop. I have heard her spin at least a half dozen times since I came to Vienna two years ago and her set was always outstanding.

She has her own record label (unfortunately the representative MP3 files are not representative of her sets) and maintains an international music resource site called female pressure. Here is an extract from her official bio:

Electric Indigo, DJ and musician, has rocked clubs, raves, and festivals in 34 countries. Her name stands for an intelligent interpretation of the terms "techno" and "party". She started her DJ career in Vienna in 1989 with jazz and funk sets, but soon found her style in the Detroit and Chicago techno sound. In her Berlin years (1993-1996), she was responsible for purchasing and communication for the legendary record dealer Hard Wax. In 1998 she created female:pressure, an international database for female DJs, producers, and visual artists who work in the fields of electronic music. female:pressure is a unique, web-based resource of female talent all around the globe and was built to enhance mutual support and communication as well as the general level of information about female artists.

Catch Electric Indigo next in Vienna at flex on 12 December and at Tanzquartier 22 December. For her worldwide dates online.

For the PONI performance, I have some authentic pictures of the event. PONI is a Brussels based international performance band.

We saw PONI the night before as part of the We are all Marlene Dietrich FOR show at Akademietheater. I preferred their performance in the context of the larger show.

Left to their own devices, PONI has no shortage of entertaining tricks. Many different kinds of masks, body painting, bondage with electric cords, hysteria.

As a group they have tremendous energy.

But musically it felt too much like a direct assault on our sensibilities rather than a complex voyage. Their roots are deep in punk. If you are missing punk from the eighties dressed up in a modern sensibility PONI is not to be missed.

Here are the pictures:

Main PONI front man Rodolphe Coster, Belgium

PONI - Erna Ómarsdóttir, Iceland

Julie Andrée T, Montréal
Kate McIntosh, New Zealand

Kate McIntosh in bondage

Applause in Casino am Schwarzenbergplatz

The concert and the closing concert took place in the Casino on Schwarzenbergplatz. Many of the parties have been here and it has been a good location with its baroque elegeance, high ceilings but a certain casual energy. The Casino is also one of the second stages for the Bürgtheater. Every last Friday during the theatre season, the Bürgtheater actors put on a small show on this stage as part of an internal program of artistic development.

The party itself didn't have quite energy of the opening party as at the end of a month of festival and workshops, people are a little bit tired. There are another five days of performances to go and three days of workshop. I was warned at the start of Impulstanz to take it slowly. It was good advice. I will follow it next year.

If you get the chance to come to Vienna and participate in Impulstanz it is not to be missed. It is the best organised and most enjoyable festival in the world with the possible exception of TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) which is many times the size. Great dance, great parties, great staff, great city.

Photos - Alec Kinnear

Anyone who has any doubts about what the major record labels do to artists and why one should support independent artists whenever possible, should have a look at Janis Ian's long piece on music downloads. As a recording artist for the last twenty years, Ms. Ian has seen all the systems come and go. She's had her own grief and pain with them and seen others win and lost more. In short, she has the long perspective on how we got to where we are now.

Among the astonishing revelations is how her label insisted on negotiating a reduced royalty rate with her for CD's as they were a new medium. And subsequently sold the CD's at a price higher than the original vinyl.

Beside brigands like this, filesharers are naught but modern-day Robin Hoods sharing the music widely. As Ms. Ian points out every new listener is a potential concert goer or someone who may purchase her albums as a gift for others. Frankly I also often see people who discover music via downloads (legal or illegal) subsequently go on to purchase the CD's afterwards.

BMG has a strict policy for artists buying their own CDs to sell at concerts - $11 per CD. They know very well that most of us lose money if we have to pay that much; the point is to keep the big record stores happy by ensuring sales go to them. What actually happens is no sales to us or the stores.)

NARAS and RIAA are moaning about the little mom & pop stores being shoved out of business; no one worked harder to shove them out than our own industry, which greeted every new Tower or mega-music store with glee, and offered steep discounts to Target and WalMart et al for stocking CDs. The Internet has zero to do with store closings and lowered sales.

And for those of us with major label contracts who want some of our music available for free downloading... well, the record companies own our masters, our outtakes, even our demos, and they won't allow it. Furthermore, they own our voices for the duration of the contract, so we can't even post a live track for downloading!

If you think about it, the music industry should be rejoicing at this new technological advance! Here's a fool-proof way to deliver music to millions who might otherwise never purchase a CD in a store. The cross-marketing opportunities are unbelievable. It's instantaneous, costs are minimal, shipping non-existant...a staggering vehicle for higher earnings and lower costs. Instead, they're running around like chickens with their heads cut off, bleeding on everyone and making no sense. As an alternative to encrypting everything, and tying up money for years (potentially decades) fighting consumer suits demanding their first amendment rights be protected (which have always gone to the consumer, as witness the availability of blank and unencrypted VHS tapes and casettes), why not take a tip from book publishers and writers?

As Courtney Love suggested in one famous discourse, one would better reward one's favorite artist by downloading their music and sending a cheque for $20 to their own address - than by purchasing it in a store. They would make more money than if you went in to buy five of their albums in a store.

More examples and information on recording royalties here.