Maximum Anything #3 is happening today (March 23rd)!

Come to Cross St from 2:30 for an afternoon of music and games! Here is the line up again:

• 2:30pm - Basketball

• 3:45pm - Radio play Act 1

• 4pm - Building Blocks

• 5pm - Radio play Act 2

• 5:15pm - The Mind (all invited!) + musical accompaniment

• 5:45 - Radio Play Act 3

• 6pm - Trivia!

There are drinks available and some amazing food close by - Lygon St could be closer! Feel free to bring a book or CD to swap also.

There is also a trophy for trivia later in the evening!! Hand made by Ronny Ferella!

Find out everything you need to know here

Sunday November 12th was the first performance presented by Maximum Anything, and we think it was a great success! Thanks to all who attended and enjoyed the afternoon. There was Basketball, CD’s, books (and records!) were swapped and some great music was performed. Thanks to Oliver for putting together a great group of people to write and perform some really beautiful music.

Here’s a very short snippet!

The next event is planned for December 9th so feel free to pop that into your diary! It’ll be a big day filled with lots of music and fun. More info to come soon, so stay tuned.

Last night I watched on youtube a lecture delivered by Stan Grant. This took place last week, so a couple of weeks after the referendum, which was not the main theme, but it was also not, not, the main theme. The title of the lecture, The Witness of Poetry, The Silent Breath. Throughout this lecture Stan Grant spoke on how it’s ok to be silent after bruising times and to admit one doesn’t know about things, but is trying to find out. If you don’t know…….

He spoke about and shared with us some words from the great poets and asked us to consider their view. Consider the poet’s view- where there might be some truth to be found. Because, as he suggested the rest is really just noise and has become an industry delivering noise to the voracious public, taking in anything to escape what it is the poets are trying to get us to listen to.

For example, second story of the Guardian feed yesterday… Tony Abbott debunking climate change during a speech in the UK- that’s not news, that’s the water we swim in. An idiot expresses an idiotic thought and we then have to wade through it.

I do want to be “in the world” but I’m kinda tired of that type of discourse.

As someone involved in making music with others- often quite strange music- are we also poets? Trying to find a truth by weaving together things we don’t quite understand. I like to think so and I have for a time now, but how do we listen to that sound? Where is the guide for the understanding of this dialogue? In the same lecture Stran Grant also spoke of the brokenness of words in our modern discourse, words no longer operating as they once did. We now have speak-not words but code.

Have we done the same thing to music? Can we still hear the words or do we just recognize the “code” the particular model we are already familiar with? Some will argue music has always operated like this… genre/style/fashion. But some music is meant to not operate like this- the spooky stuff, the stuff that can mix your insides up and change you forever-

Who’s job is it to help us recognize the difference?

speaker -listener-convener-critic

Maybe that’s too hard to get to right now and maybe it’s ok to not know and to let a breath of silence take the space.

Maximum Anything aims to create an open dialogue with other interested folk- “the curious”. We want to know what is going on, what is being thought about, where the action is. Be it music, art, science, tech, books, films, whatever-let’s share.

I’ll start….

If one wants to “be in the world” then there’s no escaping the digital version that we all have been enmeshed in- I’m not going to tell you what I think that world has become but I’m pretty sure we can do better. There are others with much clearer thinking than mine on this topic- Here is a link to an interview with the sci fi writer, future thinker Cory Doctorow. I particularly like the title-Platform capitalism and the curse of "enshittification".

And why Maximum Anything?-

The name was inspired by my light research into an early 90’s Punk scene that took place in East L.A. Creative, energetic people with a DIY approach making the art that felt important to them. When that scene was ticking along nicely (before the money got too big) they had the support of a local venue, a radio station, and a magazine (Maximum RocknRoll) nice… There is a fun doco that tells this story. It’s on Kanopy - a great free streaming service. This book SELLOUT by Dan Ozzi is also an interesting insight into that time and place.

And this brings us to here….

Substack might be the future. It’s essentially a platform that allows readers to subscribe to (and yes, pay for) writers of their choice. The subscription payment goes directly to the writer not the platform- It is free to “publish” on Substack but it does take a 10% commission on paid subscriptions. The difference here is that the platform is not curating the content in any way. There are also free subscriptions- but it is the writer’s choice.

Once again there are others who know much more than me on this. Here is an article on Substack from the Gaurdian. It’s a couple of years old but the good news is that things haven’t changed much in the way things work on the platform.

Thoughts….?

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Cross St is such a hub for the creative community in Melbourne. We want to help it grow more.