Back on the Radio
Tonight I’ll be back on the radio, tune in around 10:30 to hear what I’ve got to say about the Tour de France. You can listen to 101.5 FM on your radio, or listen online at http://radio.adelaide.edu.au/
Tonight I’ll be back on the radio, tune in around 10:30 to hear what I’ve got to say about the Tour de France. You can listen to 101.5 FM on your radio, or listen online at http://radio.adelaide.edu.au/
A couple of new announcements today, Ed Kuepper is finally coming to Adelaide for his first full show since releasing the brilliant Jean Lee & The Yellow Dog. He’ll be bringing the Kowalski Collective (Jeffrey Wegener & Peter Oxley) with him as well. Kuepper has just finished a tour of Europe supporting Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. Even though he hasn’t been to Adelaide for a while I did catch him in Sydney at the end of last year and in Melbourne for the Don’t Look Back series, and I can’t recommend this highly enough, don’t miss out.
Also only just announced, the New Pornographers are going to play at the Gov in October.
JULY
AUGUST
SEPTEMBER
OCTOBER
On the Stereo
JULY
AUGUST
On the Stereo
Yesterday in the Oz: Airport Overload as passenger numbers set to double.
I was quite surprised at this, particularly in the context of the week’s other airport related news -
there have been instances of airlines cutting back services, and talk of discount airlines going bust, if fuel prices stay high. For anyone familiar with peak oil then the expectation is that fuel prices will be getting quite a bit higher yet and we won’t be seeing big increases in air passengers. On top of this, if serious steps are made to deal with global warming then we can expect it to raise the price of flights as well to reflect their true to cost in terms of environmental impact.
I found the report referred to in the article here, and see that they do take these factors into account in Chapter 5 - Sensitivity Analysis. Here they consider two scenarios as alternatives to their main forecast, one with cheaper flights and one with more expensive flights, and find that the effect on the overall passenger numbers is not huge. This is, admittedly, not my area of expertise but I do have some problems with it. The “peak oil” scenario has a 50% increase in fuel price. This seems very conservative for a peak oil scenario, particularly in the light of recent trends in the oil price. It appears that this scenario involves only changing the cost of airfares in the model. Other effects, as we have seen this week, are that airlines may cut back the number of flights as some become uneconomical. Also, especially in Australia, there are not that many players involved. If some go bust, then the lack of competition has further effects on prices beyond simply the price of oil. Perhaps even more importantly, under a peak oil scenario it is not just the cost of flights that is effected. The cost of pretty much everything goes up. When, as is already starting to happen now, people have to use up more of their income on things like travelling to work, and food, then it can be expected that they have less to spend on luxuries like flights.
So basically, I have no problem with the model predicting a response to a 50% increase in airfare but I think that the future is rather more uncertain than that.
On a related note, check out ABARE’s encounter with Senator Christine Milne in Senate Estimates recently. Make sure you read the linked transcript, it is quite an eye-opener. Their “peak oil scenario” is that it might happen in 30 years and will have no effect on oil prices in the near future.
Via Decomposing Trees I’ve heard about Independents’ Day on July 4, a celebration of independent record labels. As part of it you can vote for your favourite Australian independent releases here. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the greatest Australian album ever is listed even though it is slightly obscure in that it never got a stand-alone cd release (the tracks have all appeared as part of a compilation though). In fact it has been out of print for a long time since Prince Melon records went out of action some time around 1982-83 when the Clowns signed to Hot, but it does seem that they are now back in action with a new live cd.
Back to the poll - nice to see two excellent Ed Kuepper solo albums listed too, but I would have liked to have voted for his latest which is as good as anything he has done in his solo career.
This Tuesday SBS are showing the film The Story of the Weeping Camel as part of their Hot Docs series, though it is not exactly a documentary, as some scenes are acted, but they are acted by the “real people” who are the subjects of the documentary, nomadic herders in Mongolia. I don’t like to give away too much detail about movies (I like to know as little as possible before seeing a movie, however this can sometimes have disastrous consequences), so I won’t say much more, just that it’s a really beautiful story that is well worth your time.
There’s some new music (or reissues of old music) coming out that are looking good.
I was very impressed by Philip Jeck last night. Also Headdress of Neon Flames were still in fine form after a long break from gigs. There is another big one coming up at the Jade, Rafael Toral from Portugal.
A couple of other items of music news:
MAY
JUNE
JULY
On the Stereo