Soundtrack To My Youth – Part 5

As far as I was concerned, the late 1970’s were all about long music and loud hair and I wasn’t having a bar of it!  My way of thinking went something like this; “you musicians  want to be so modern then why do you still have long hair and insist on using a guitar?!”  Judgmental …. me …. never! Many of my friends were into bands like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and even Status Quo.  (I was nearly responsible for killing the entire band in 1992 but that’s another story) It’s not that I didn’t like rock music, it was just a bit too predictable for me and I couldn’t be bothered to spend time or my money on that kind of music.

My outlook was towards the future.  I wanted to leave my home town, Switzerland, Europe, in fact I wanted to travel to another planet! Did I mention that I was also fascinated with astronomy and space travel? My interest in the possibilities of intergalactic travel led me to discovered a new kind of music that would allow me to do this, at least in my head.  By the end of the 1970’s I was spending time in my own alternative universe thanks to bands like Tangerine Dream, Pink Floyd, Jane, The Far East Band and basically anything that I could find on the Brain record label. And no, I never inhaled! I just loved the sound of synthesisers and I am absolutely thrilled that these days, I can have my own space music lab in my room.  In fact, I carry my synthesiser on my phone.  How cool is that!

As the decade came to an end, I was gearing up to leave Europe an start a new life in Australia; I was moving to Melbourne!  My music choice today reflects that transition from a provincial town to the big city on the other side of the world.  I have this recording in my collection as a glow in the dark 12 inch single, its a old party trick favourite. If you happen to come around to my place to listen to music, you will be treated to this ‘light’ spectacle!

Kraftwerk ‘Neon lights’

Soundtrack To My Youth – Part 4

The freedom ride! 

The jeans have lost their flair inserts, they are straight legged again, however they have gained a couple of safety pins.  Not to hold them together, but to make a mild punk statement.  I did try to pierce my face with one but that hurt!  So on to the trousers they went.  ‘You look ridiculous!’ my Mother exclaimed, ‘and what will the neighbours say? They all know I am a good seamstress!’ She shook her head and walked away.

It’s 1978, I had been to London and Punk was the order of the day, albeit a neat and tidy order in provincial Switzerland! In fact, I couldn’t imagine living in a more boring place than where I was.  As far as I was concerned, absolutely nothing ever happened in my town.  I needed to get out. I wanted to see the world, meet new people and have adventures …. but first I had to do the dishes.  Then my best friend Cello got his car licence and a nice blue Opel Ascona.  Freedom had arrived!  Now we would be able to get out of town, cruise the streets and be men of the world.  The car came equipped with a neat eight track cassette system and half a dozen old tapes.  Percy Sledge’s Greatest Hits being the best of the bunch.  On the day Cello got his license, he picked me up at around six in the evening and off we went.  Oh the feeling of independence, the old cassette deck was turned up to 11 as we cruised around the hills singing along with Percy.

And then we crashed! Coming round a sharp bend we hit the side of the road, the car spun around and headed straight for the side of the mountain.  We were stopped by a long wooden fence, of which we cleaned up about 10 metres, a wooden plank finally smashed through the front windscreen, narrowly missing us both.  The car eventually stopped, but  Percy Sledge was still singing ‘When a man loves a woman’.  We turned to each other, both looking pale but thankfully unhurt.  We turned Percy Sledge off and got out of the car.

And that was the end of our great freedom for a while; drivers licence and car both gone in the one day! So today’s song is not Percy, he still gives me an uneasy feeling when I hear him!

In 1978 I listened to a lot of different music, but this track seems to sum up an eventful year in an unremarkable town.  (Besides, It has a camera on the front cover!)

Elvis Costello ‘Pump it up’

Soundtrack To My Youth – Part 3

Music can be a time capsule, but the meaning of the song or tunes also evolve with time.  I have chosen to trace some key events in my earlier life, from growing up in Switzerland through to moving to Australia in my early 20’s.  This soundtrack to my youth is a seven part series.

We could be Heroes! 

I still believe this!  When I started to write this online exposé of my musical tastes, this was the first piece of music that came to mind. I have never really been a fan of a particular band or artist (OK I admit there was that episode in the early 1970’s with The Sweet but please don’t tell anyone!).  What I mean by being a ‘fan’ was, that I had to have every track the artist ever made and needing to know all of the background gossip of his or her life.

The closest thing I got to being a ‘fan’ is how I regard David Bowie.  The funny thing is that lyrics are an important part of Bowie’s work and yet when I discovered his work in 1977, my English was still at kindergarten level.  That didn’t matter, it was the sound and vision (pun intended) that got me hooked.  Heroes, was famously recorded at Hansa Studio by the Wall in West Berlin. The music also reflected my other musical obsession at the time, progressive German electronic music.  Looking back, the album had it all: music by Bowie, recorded in Germany, black and white photography on the album cover by Japanese photographer, Masayoshi Sukita and the LP was mixed in Montreux Switzerland. I’ve always loved this kind of serendipity.

A couple of years later, in 1979, I would read Christiane F. ‘Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo’, in which Bowie’s music was an integral part.  Best of all, David Bowie also released a German and French version of this song.  Now I could finally get the lyrical brilliance as well.  It’s a song that transports me straight back to being a teenager, and also reminds me about my early years in Australia. It still fills me with joy.

So while I am still not a ‘proper’ fan, David Bowie really is my Hero!

David Bowie ‘Heroes’

Soundtrack To My Youth – Part 2

The flared jeans that I am wearing used to be straight legged pants but I pestered my mum to insert some panels, so now I had multi-coloured flairs.  This way I could truck down the road like all the other cats.  Mind you, I wasn’t allowed to wear platform boots and my hair had to stay at a respectable length, but at least I was able to grow my record collection.

In 1975 music became a form of travel for me.  Part of that travel was a regular journey to the local record bar, where I could listen to the latest vinyl offerings.  I started to take risks and began moving away from the glam rock and top 40 boxes and found myself gravitating  toward the funk and soul section. There I found records with artist names that I had never heard of and exotic looking album covers; bands like Osibisa, who had a flying elephant on the cover!  This had to be worth a listen.  So I gave up on Schlager music and became a Soul fool!  The only thing the two had in common was the letter S!

Today’s choice is a cracker soul tune by William DeVaughn, from a bargain basement original, as advertised on TV, K-Tel record.

I still have a pair of flared jeans in the wardrobe I just know they’ll make a comeback. As for the long hair, that is another story!

William DeVaughn ‘Blood is thicker than water’

Soundtrack To My Youth – Part 1

Music can be a time capsule, but the meaning of the song or tunes also evolve with time.  I have chosen to trace some key events in my earlier life, from growing up in Switzerland through to moving to Australia in my early 20’s.  This soundtrack to my youth is a seven part series.

Becoming a teenager was all about small rebellions and one way to cause a ripple in my environment was to listen to my own choice of music.  I wanted to listen to stuff that wasn’t on the family radio.  In about 1972 my mother purchased a record player and we had a handful of LP’s, mainly easy listening and some light Jazz.  I remember that one of my favourite records was Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 “From the New World”.  I played that and Louis Armstrong a lot.

Then something big happened, I got my own radio! Now I could listen to what I wanted whenever I wanted.  Mind you there wasn’t much on the radio in well behaved Switzerland in those days. There was the weekly Hit Parade, a must listen if you wanted to keep up with the kids at school.   Listening to music, was rarely about lyrics for me, as the music I listened to was mostly in English and I couldn’t understand anything beyond ‘yea yea’ and ‘I love you’.  But I could understand emotions and feelings,  most of all I got rock and roll. In 1974, I was 14 years of age, I discovered an American GI radio station from Berlin on my AM radio. Every week it presented an hour long rock n’ roll revival show, complete with old radio jingles from the 50’s.  I was hooked! One of the first LP’s I bought, and still have, is a Little Richard album which has a selection of hits on it plus some more obscure tracks.  I bought it for the two recognisable hits, but for me the stand out track was this slow bluesy, soulful number.  It also paved the way for my Soul music obsession which was to follow.

From an early age, music became a form of travel for me.  This had something to do with my mother who started to travel in the mid 1970’s.  Freshly divorced she went on to explore the world beyond the iron curtin and travelled to Hungary and Romania in 1973, returning back with folk music recordings.  This was a real eye opener form me.  There was a world outside my window waiting to be explored.  An idea that is still with me. My dear mother has since passed away but I still carry her philosophy that everyone is potentially good at heart.

Little Richard ‘Don’t deceive me’

 

Merci Marc!

There he was, climbing up a wall with a ladder to get a better view of what was on the other side. A quote stated something along the lines of ‘there are times you have to change the viewpoint to get the right image’.  This small image of photographer Marc Riboud demonstrating how he created some of his iconic photos, struck a chord with me.  I was in China visiting the 2010 exhibition: THE INSTINCTIVE MOMENT – A Retrospective, at the Shanghai Art Museum.  I was aware of his more famous photos, the Eiffel Tower painter, the woman placing the flower in the gun and the fabulously framed antique shop dealer photo from Beijing. These images by the renowned Magnum photographer were all there to see.

Shanghai was about to host the World Expo and the city was busy’ cleaning up’ its urban spaces.  This translated to, among other things, the destruction of many old, traditional neighbourhoods, the so-called Longtangs.  The homes were bulldozed and the occupants moved into new high-rise buildings.

Prior to seeing the Riboud exhibition, I snuck into an old Longtang neighbourhood that was in the process of being demolished.  To my surprise, there were still people living among the rubble, refusing to move. I spend a couple of hours taking photos and got out before I ran into trouble with the local authorities.

Having seen Riboud’s photos, many taken in China between 1957-2002, I kept thinking about that little photo of him looking over the wall.  This was a metaphor for me, to look beyond the obvious and to take some risks in my photography.  The next day I went back to the Longtang to take more photos.  As I wandered among the rubble, I saw it, a wall that prevented me from seeing what lay beyond it.  Instinctively I climbed it to look over.  The moment I had reached the top I saw a lone man cycling past a grand old house that was still standing. I lifted the camera and captured a photo that to this day I will remember as my Marc Riboud moment.

Merci Marc, you inspired me to focus closer on the moment and the emotions that can be found within that reality.

“Seeing is the paradise of the soul.”

Marc Riboud
(24.06.1923 – 30.08.2016)

‘Merci Marc’ by Roman W. Schatz, Shanghai 2010

The Number 1 Bus to North Korea

It looked ominous. Suddenly we were surrounded by dozens of tanks and army personnel carriers. On every street corner soldiers stood guard. The sound of the tanks rumbling was only superseded by the occasional screech of fighter jets overhead.

The tranquility of our ride on Bus Number 1 along the east coast of South Korea had come to an end.  I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised, as Bus Number 1 from Sokcho heads up to the North Korean border. The destination for the day was the Demilitarised Zone in Goseong, also known as the DMZ. The observatory there is the closest to North Korea and the northernmost point of South Korea.  More than one million people visit this area on an annual basis. Visitors can see the Geumgangsan (Diamond Mountains) and the Haegeumgang in North Korea, and unlike many other observatories, there are no restrictions on photographs.

As luck would have it, the South Korean army was staging a military exercise, and this underlay the seriousness of the ongoing tension between North and South Korea. Looking out the window of the bus was like traveling back in time, as the villages had a 1950’s appearance.  This region is a long way from the modern mega-cities that are in other parts of the country.  The road winds its way north, past farmland and beautiful beaches. However there are constant reminders of where we are, as the beaches are fenced off with barbed wire and there are a number of observation lookouts along the coast. The threat of invasion from the North is still extant.

 After an hour’s bus ride we arrived at the last stop, a little bus depot on the side of the road. We then had to walk the last fifteen minutes to the DMZ registration office. It was a quiet day with only a few visitors and the souvenir shop vendors looked sleepy.  Once we registered ourselves, the officer ordered a taxi to take us to the observatory.  To get there we passed the border crossing between the two countries. There is a multi-laned highway leading up to several check points, however they are not operational. There is nowhere you can access North Korea from South Korea.  After passing a military checkpoint, where the car was carefully inspected including the boot, we were cleared to access the observatory.

There is a time limit of one hour to be on the site.  We were lucky to get the best taxi driver in Korea on the day, and he drove us right to the top of the observation point, saving us the walk up the hill from the carpark. He lent us his good binoculars then left while we explored the surreal environment that is the DMZ.  The first thing that struck me was how peaceful it was, after all it was still an active war site.  The weather had turned and we found ourselves looking into North Korea on a grey, misty day.  The sound of tank artillery from the distant military exercise by the South Korean’s gave the experience a poignant soundtrack. Up here at the observatory it was quiet, with only a handful of visitors, although the big viewing platform with many seats and mounted binoculars hinted at how many people frequented this place. However, it wasn’t just people looking across the border, also facing the one party dictatorship of North Korea were giant statues of Buddha and Mary; a symbolic gesture of the openness of South Korea.

The ride home on Bus Number 1 offered the same adventurous view as the journey north.  More tanks and army on the move, but by now we were used to them.  This was only an exercise and I can’t imagine the terror that the local population went through during the active War in 1950 – 1953.  I see the old people and know that many of them have families across the border, that they may never see again. A sombre feeling juxtaposed by the peaceful landscape that we were passing through.

Back in Sokcho, we finished the day off in the Abai Village, eating a delicious North Korean meal of Ojingeo Sundae (오징어 순대) stuffed squid sausage.  The village consists of a small group of houses and shops located on what used to be a sandbar offshore from the main city of Sokcho. As the North Korean army retreated from South Korea in 1950, a large number of North Koreans ended up trapped on the southern side of the newly established border between the two nations. With nowhere else to go, what began as temporary accommodation eventually became permanent.

My hope is that in the near future the Korean people will once again be united to live in peace and as one nation, and that Bus Number 1 will take passengers all the way to Pyongyang.

The Hiker and the Heavenly Maidens

The sun’s rays transformed the water into a river of gold, the trees danced in the breeze and the path leading up the mountain beckoned me to explore the Park’s treasures. It was springtime in South Korea, a perfect season to experience the beauty of Seoraksan National Park. I was staying in the small town of Yangyang in Gangwon province, near the park, and it was here I met a local woman who offered to be my guide.

We set off from the Osaek Hot Springs and headed towards Daeseung Falls.  The track followed a mountain stream and I stopped frequently, not because it was an arduous walk, but the mountain views took my breath away.

My guide pointed out a waterhole in the river and commenced telling the Korean myth about the Woodcutter and The Heavenly Maidens. In the story, the heavenly maidens descend to Earth to bathe in a secret waterhole in the mountains.  They are spotted by a woodcutter who steals the clothes of one of the maidens, preventing her return to Heaven.  While listening to the tale it dawned on me that I was familiar with it. My wife, who is a storyteller, told this story to school students when we had previously visited Korea.  It was one of her favourite myths and here I was, in the very place of it’s birth. Not only was the landscape beautiful, it now felt magical.

Too soon my guide had to return home, so I hiked on by myself. Seoraksan National Park is a popular destination for Koreans and foreigners alike, especially in Autumn when the leaves change colour and the park becomes a spectacular kaleidoscope of Autumn hues.  Hiking in Spring however has the advantage of the park not being so crowded, so for much of the time I was on my own.

As I was walking along I couldn’t stop thinking about the story, and at one particularly deep waterhole imagined that perhaps the maidens also came there to bathe. Although the track to the actual setting for the waterhole in the myth, the Twelve Angels Bath (십이선녀탕) was closed due to maintenance, I sensed the whole area alive with the presence of the maidens.

My daydreaming was interrupted by the sound of voices. I turned around and saw seven catholic nuns approaching. Wearing their traditional habits, they appeared to be floating towards me. Was I dreaming or had some heavenly maidens stepped out of the story and come to visit me? We greeted each other and the nuns proceeded to climb down to the water, take off their shoes and soak their feet. I couldn’t believe the myth was unfolding in front of my eyes.  Unlike the woodcutter in the story, I had no intention of stealing their shoes, but being a photographer I wanted to take a few photos. They nodded their assent and asked me to come and join them to share some fruit. Together we sat, our feet cooling in the waterhole, eating watermelon and enjoying the sunshine.

Eventually it came time to leave and continue my journey. I was saying my farewell when they said, ‘Stop, we a have a gift for you.’ They all stood up and sang. Their voices, pure as the snow melt soared up the mountainside and into the heavens.  Tears welled in my eyes and I felt blessed. After we parted, I could not stop smiling for the rest of the day.

Seoraksan National Park is a truly magical place, with its sublime landscape and great hiking trails where you can meet cheery hikers and if you are lucky, perhaps a heavenly maiden!

Brisbane Suburban Views

I continue to experiment with the Prisma app around my neighbourhood.

I am a lazy artist!

I’m happy to use whatever gets the work done the easiest and quickest way.  Granted, ‘easy’ and ‘quick’ are relative terms. The idea of achieving results in a shorter time and with less effort has always appealed to me, a decisive factor in my early adoption of digital photography.

In 2001 I purchased my first digital camera, a secondhand Kodak DC220, a 2 (!) megapixel beast of a thing. My film cameras started to gather dust from that point on. Not only did digital photography offer instant images, something that I hadn’t experienced since shooting Polaroids in the 1970’s, it also allowed image manipulation without the need for a dark room.  I was sold!

Nowadays I have a camera that has wifi and I can transfer my photos onto an iPad and edit my images on the go.  This has made a big difference to my travel photography, as I carry my ‘dark room’ in my bag!

In this spirit, I am always happy to try new ways of working with photography and image-making. So this weekend I am exploring the latest instant digital print making method, which kind of takes me back to my early photoshop printmaking methods.  I’ll be posting some images that have been made with the Prisma app.  I should point out, that I am not a fan of heavy manipulated photos but I see this app as creative printmaking method rather than a photo editing tool.

Besides, it’s easy and quick!