ISSUE # 4 - VOLUNTEER GENERATION

Dear valued colleagues and friends of PY-TV, Its been a while but there is a lot to digest in this issue of PY-TV : Volunteer Generation. First off we have three music reviews and a photographic essay of the Glastonbury Festival 2009, an event that is increasingly popular, and considering the importance of live music as a cultural mainstay, as important as ever. This year saw the heavyweights like Bruce Springsteen, Blur and Crosby Stills and Nash battling through the mud alongside emerging stars La Roux, Lady Gaga and Bon Iver. To see the live music scene so vital and appreciated is refreshing in a climate of sluggish media sales and the demise of high street music superstores like Virgin, Tower and HMV. What is important in terms of our theme is the massive contribution that the festival makes to non-profit organisations like Greenpeace, Oxfam and WaterAid - via the effort of an army of volunteers on the Eavis' farm in Pilton - very inspiring. Now although this issue's theme concerns the rise of volunteering work done by creatives the world over, we have noticed a sharp decrease in the participation of our own members, ironically. Whether this is a function of the stress that the downturn in the economy or not is debatable, but what is generally acknowledged in media circles is the rapid decline in philanthropy and donations to non-profit organisations. Indeed, the world over the recession is hitting the people who need it most - the beneficiaries of charity. Spare a thought and do what you can to help.PET SHOP BOYS - YES, REVIEWED It could have been as late as 2001 with Miss Kitten, or maybe earlier in 1999, with Basement Jaxx, but somewhere around 2000, a subtle shift occurred in dance music tastes - not that it was ever a homogenous entity to begin with – certainly not at the time anyway. THE REAL HEROESIt is always exciting to stumble over a new talent like Clint Strydom, but it is not often that such photographic prowess grows silently in the background, away from the media centres of the world… and then explodes with such a distinctly fresh approach.THE WERDMULLER CENTRE - WHY DID IT REALLY FAIL?ILZE WOLFF, submits a paper presented to the South African Journal for Art History conference 2009 - 'Extraordinary Arti-facts' - on the contextual reasons behind the failure of one of South Africa's most exemplary modernist buildings, Roeloff Uitenbogaardt's WERDMULLER CENTREWERDMULLER CENTRE - BYPASS? AMPUTATION? MUMMIFICATION? Earlier in the year, a group of 4th and 5th year architecture students at the University of Cape Town undertook an elective design studio with Don Albert to assess and make recommendations towards the adaptive reuse of the economically defunct Werdmuller Centre in Clairmont, Cape Town. In KIRKEBY ON THE BRINKPer Kirkeby is renown as one of Denmark's leading living artists. No surprise then that the English simply don't get him. Kirkeby - born 1938 - has struggled with his painting, sculpture and poetry over the last four decades and although internationally acclaimed (elsewhere) he has never had a major exhibition in the United Kingdom until now - at the Tate Modern no less.GLASTO GIG HIGHLIGHTS IN SOUNDBYTESThere was simply too much going on at the Glastonbury Festival to cover in huge depth, so here we have an very edited account of the highs, mids and lows of the standout gigs:.PRODIGY IGNITE GLASTONBURYThe normal procedure for "the press" (journos and photographers like yours truly) to cover a show at Glastonbury is within the confines of the press pit, i.e. in front of the barricades yet just below the stage itself, to afford a clean and safe view. screeming fans beyond...WALKMAN - 30 YEARS ANNIVERSARY TRIBUTE30 years ago the walkman - the portable tape casette player - was launched as the in thing for the disco-pop generation. FUTURISTS IN REVIEW - IT AINT WHAT IT USED TO BEThe TATE MODERN'S current show FUTURISM brings out a few big guns, but doesn't create enough energy to convince this reviewer that the self - proclaimed avant garde movement spearheaded by Italian poet Marinetti almost a century ago was up to the hype of his original (rather manic and misogynistic) manifestoes. BON VER - WEAVE AND WOOAfter a forty-minute soundcheck peppered with embarrassing "check one's and twos" that the crowd rightly took the piss out of, one would have forgiven the couple of thousand people for being even more offhand towards these scruffy American's when they finally took up their positions on the Park's rather intimate stage. Not so. These disciples had waited patiently, one comes to understand, because acoustic and electronic perfection is so central to Bon Iver's genre defying style. THE CHIMURENGA LIBRARY - RECLASSIFIED PY-TV emerges parched from one of the Chimurenga Sessions currently on at the Cape Town Central Library with a clutch of questions posed to the design and production coordinator, Cape Town based artist Douglas Gimberg. NO ANGEL - IAN HENDERSON Cape Town based folk singer/songwriter Ian Henderson has released a new video to accompany the second single off SUPERGLUE, his latest studio album. PY-TV takes a good look and dials up the heat.