Tin Pan Aussie Shortis & Simpson at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, April 29 – May 1, 2010.
Reviewed April 29, by Frank McKone
I first reviewed the John Shortis and Moya Simpson team at the beginning of their Canberra Region history in 1996, in Shortis & Curlies
at the erstwhile Queanbeyan School of Arts Café. There’s always been a
certain gentleness in their musical humour and political satires
throughout their 14 year career, and a kind of earnestness in John’s
stage manner. There have been times when I thought the cutting edge of
political commentary was softened too much. But Tin Pan Aussie seemed
to me to get the balance right.
Shortis plays himself,
but with a note of humorous self-deprecation in calling himself
Professor. Yet when one considers the 44 songs dating from 1900 to 1957
which tell us the story of Australian popular music related to our
social history throughout this period, his research justifies the title.
Between the Federation Polka and Wild One we see and
hear the development from ragtime, through jazz, hillbilly and songs
from the wars which ordinary Australians wrote, played and sang. For
me, a 10£ Pom who arrived in 1955, here was a new understanding of the
culture that I belong to today.
But there is nothing
academic about the performances of Moya Simpson, whose range and quality
of voice has matured markedly in recent years, of Shortis himself on
piano and singing, and especially of the band – Peter J Casey, Ian
Blake, Jon Jones and Dave O’Neill – unless you would like to class their
skills at reproducing 44 pieces of music in each of the original styles
as an academic exercise. To me it was an involving thoroughly
enjoyable entertainment.
The choice of songs, so many
expressing vernacular humour, while often telling the truth about real
people’s experiences in the good times and the bad, has taken this
Shortis & Simpson show a step further towards the edge. There
is no softening here in “My Little Wet Home in the Trench” (World War
I), “Happy Valley” (from the Depression) or “Back in Circulation”
(written in a Japanese World War II PoW camp), and wonderful contrasts
in such songs as the pseudo-Hawaiian “Memories of a Lovely Lei”.
Instead
of relying on inventing satirical commentary external to the subject
matter, the selection of material creates its own comment on Australian
life from within. The result is telling, showing us now to ourselves as
we once were. And it shows me how Shortis & Simpson have grown
in musical and political stature since their School of Arts Café days.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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