East Doncaster High School 'The Labyrinth' (1981)

 The way in which the post-1960's quality of 'freedom' filtered out from the counter culture into wider Australian culture cropped up in a variety of strange ways, one of which was in the world of high school musicals. School records and musical theatre records from the 1960's and earlier were usually awkward music hall, or religiously inclined mass choral workouts (and confined to the WASPiest of institutions), but from the early 1970's a new type of school musical began to emerge, the 'rock opera'.

The popularity of 'rock operas' (which often had roots, one way or another, in the alternative theatre scene of the 1960's) such as Hair, Joseph & His Technicolor Dreamcoat, Grease, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and the work of Andrew Lloyd Webber, provided a dynamic source of inspiration for High School drama students and teachers. Though overlooked by many 'collectors' of Australian private press records they are an interesting reflection of the trends taking place in popular musical culture, and a hidden source of local psychedelia and low budget but imaginative narratives - high school students letting their hair out. Some examples include Footscray Colleges 'There's An Elf In My Pocket', 'Cult: A Musical', Chris Neals' 'Man Child', 'The Boy Who Dared to Dream' (featuring arrangements by synthesist Andrew Thomas Wilson) and this record, 'The Labyrinth' by the East Doncaster High School HSC Drama class of 1981.

 

 (Newspaper clipping from The Age, 19 June, 1981, in the 'Amateur Theater' listings, the only reference I could find of the play)

The Labyrinth' is a mystical, science fiction drama;

"A reflective journey in music, voice and movement, through the maze of patterns of human aggression"….

Prologue:
"Five travellers convicted by 'The Leaders', of crimes of aggression, are sentenced to The Labyrinth - A maze in which people who have shown different types of aggression are trapped - people from different times, places and strange situations. The five travellers may only gain freedom, if they find the exit from the maze - guarding this exit is the legendary 'Minotaur', half man, half bull, a creature believed to be the cause of all human aggression. The legend states that if the 'Minotaur' is found and destroyed, the way to freedom will be revealed. At dawn, the search began…"

 A group effort by the students ("all lyrics written and sung by the cast,"), the instrumental line up includes a full rock band (dual guitars, bass, drums) filled out with synthesizers piano and clarinet, and dual male and female vocals. I presume this was printed in very small quantities, perhaps about 100 (?), for cast, crew, family, and friends who attended the drama.

One of the most curious aspects, as a 'Melbournian', is the fact this is from East Doncaster. For those outside of Melbourne, Doncaster is/was a relatively far flung suburban centre not famous for producing music. Though the urban sprawl in Melbourne has now extended far out beyond the limits of Doncaster, between the 1950's and 1980's Doncaster transformed from a green belt dominated by apple orchards, pioneered by German settlers, into the suburban fringe, the populated hinterland of Melbourne. That may go someway to explaining why this record sounds so….out of date.

Doncaster in 1980, like today, was isolated from the city centre by a lack of comprehensive public transport infrastructure - there is still no Doncaster train line in 2014 - and would have had its own network of discos, nightclubs and bars disconnected from the inner city trends/trendies. The record sounds somewhere about '72 - I am not sure exactly what they were going for, but some tracks are amateur progressive rock, others have a Laurel Canyon vibe, or a scrappy garage rock approach. The only track with any concession to the trends of the day is ‘Bad Habits’, which sounds like their attempt a ‘punk’ song. In the realm of private press progressive rock records in Australia it may not be as accomplished as Rob Thomsett's Yaraandoo or Simon Jones's Melanie and Me, though it is definitely one of the more interesting examples.

Download here.

Dudley Simpson & Margot Fonteyn

Dudley Simpson pictured with thee Dame Margot Fonteyn and David Blaire in 1962. Though he worked with Fonteyn and the Royal Ballet for an extended stretch he is 'known' for his work writing & arranging music for the BBC, most notably the incidental music (in collaboration with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop) for Doctor Who between 1964 and 1980.

Australians Women's Weekly, 30th May 1962
The Canberra Times, 27th October 1964

SAFEWAY CAFE 2

David Ahern & Vexations & The Avant Garde in Sydney, 1970

Sydney Morning Herald, February 22nd, 1970
Sydney Morning Herald, February 23rd, 1970
The Age, February 24th, 1970

The above articles are contemporary reports & reviews on David Aherns staging of Erik Saties notorious Vexations at the Watters Gallery in Sydney, 21st Februrary, 1970. This was the debut event for Aherns new music performance group Az Music, a collection of young musicians interested in avant-garde composition, improvisatory music, and electronic exploration. Alongside Vexations they staged pieces by Christian Wolff and La Monte Young (though Az Music were the first in Australia to perform many now modern 'classics', the first performances of La Monte Young in Australia had been staged by the Ubu Collective in the mid 1960's, though those were in the performative/happening sense then in a musical fashion). This performance (happening?) could be said to mark the beginning of a new generation of avant-garde musical production in Australia, a generational shift away from arch modernists such as Peter Sculthorpe, Felix Werder, and Richard Meale who, despite their important & interesting explorations within the Australian musical lexicon, and support for the emerging wave of activity (whilst their other more stuffy contemporaries were on the whole dismissive or outright hostile) remained relatively fixed within the pure 'classical' idiom. This activity happened in tandem with, though independent of, similar happenings in Melbourne (see Keith Humble, Jeremy Noone, Chris Mann, Warren Burt etc.) though comparatively to Melbourne it received rather generous financial and institutional support (as was always the case of things in Sydney, see also the way modern jazz fared in Sydney compared to Melbourne).

Though he tragically died at the young age of 40 in 1980, having become a washed up alcoholic living in seclusion in Adelaide, David Ahern was one of the prime figures in the history of avant-garde music in Australia. His career had began early, an upstart teenager in Sydney who, by at the age of 15, had become obsessed with the idea of becoming a composer. At the age of 16 he sought out contemporary classical figures, Richard Meale and Nigel Butterly, embarking on study with them. His first major composition, After Mallarme (1966), was performed by the South Australian Symphony Orchestra, at the age of 19. He soon embarked overseas, studying with Stockhausen at Darmstadt, and with Cornelius Cardew (where he was participated in the Scratch Orchestra), as well as allegedly being invited to New York by La Monte Young to join the Theatre of Eternal Music.

Unlike many other Australians who quite happily seeped quietly into the international background Ahern returned to Australia in 1970 determined to compose, promote, and perform 'new music' locally. He conducted free classes on improvisation through the Sydney Conservatorium (known as Laboratory of the Creative Ear, they were open to anyone interested. The subject matter covered in the classes included; "Stockhausen’ s Aus den Seiben Tagen, La Monte Young, Cardew and the Scratch Orchestra, audition (modes of listening), Satie, Cage, some eastern thought and the forms of composition and improvisation,") and began writing about new music in the local press and presenting radio programs (promoting the likes of Musica Electronica Viva via the ABC).

Arguably his most important contribution was via the new music performance groups, Az Music and Teletopa. Az Music (A to Z Music, "think of it As Music," etc.) performed a range of compositions both international (Cage, Wolff, Riley, Reich, Feldman, Ashley, Cardew, Lucier, Kagel, Berio, Young, Jennings etc.) and, just as importantly, national (David Ahern, Ian Bonighton, Ron Nagorka, Richard Meale, Robert Irving, Cameron Allen etc. - Az Music provided an avenue for adventurous local composers that otherwise might not have been available) whilst Teletopa were concerned with group improvisation (featuring amongst others jazz/classical crossover saxophonist Roger Frampton). Teletopa even managed an international tour, playing in the Phillipines, Japan, America, and Europe, culminating in their participation in Harvey Matusow's International Carnival of Experimental Sounds (ICES '72) in London.  He remained in contact throughout the 70's with Cardew & Stockhausen along with John Cage, Gordon Mumma, Steve Reich, and Toru Takemitsu - all of whom he unsuccessfully attempted to arrange Australian tours for - though Stockhausen did visit Australia, finding little to like about the country, and Toru Takemitsu did visit Sydney briefly, as described by JHB Humberstone;

"Ahern had visited Takemitsu in Tokyo, although the dates are uncertain: possibly as part of the Teletopa tour in 1972. Their relationship, according to Barnard, was close (“David used to take him down the West End Hotel, the roughest pub in Balmain”) and while Ahern did not manage to arrange a tour for Takemitsu, it seems that he was taken at his word when he promised to show him around Australia and introduce him to important Australian musicians. Takemitsu simply turned up in Sydney and phoned Ahern:
 
He just decided to be here by himself... “Herro, are you A-hern? Composer David A-hern?”. “Yeah. And I’m very bloody pissed.”. “Herro, this is Toru.”. I said, “oh god, Toru, this is something else. Where are you Toru?”, ie, “are you in Japan?”. Well, that’s what I thought. He said “No. Synney.” I said “OK Toru”, then we just organised everybody. Very quickly. But we couldn’t find where Peter was," (Humberstone, pg. 79)

The best biographical source of information is JHB Humberstones Masters Thesis "The Music of David Ahern" (2003), available here, most of the above information was sourced from this document. Sound recordings (including a full length recording of Journal (1969), very much in the style of an Antipodean Stockhausen) are available via the Australian Music Centre, and there are several articles on Az Music available to read via Rainer Linzs' archives. I may put together a follow up post with some of Aherns colourful Letters to the Editors and the accompanying negative reviews he received in the newspapers at the time.