About Me
This site is maintained by Michael Bouwman (so his opinions and faded memories are his own, or not as the case may be)... The band:
Wondrous Fair was a cut above amateur but a few cuts below professional! Formed after the demise of early 80's dweeb-rockers, The Tangled Shoelaces, they performed around Brisbane for about 10 years, late last century. They got a fair few gigs at places like the Story Bridge Hotel, where they performed once in pajamas, did a support gig with Billy Bragg at Souths (?) the Licourice Lounge (where was that?) Babble-On and lots of benefits for the Greens and other lefty no-pay gigs. A great show was organised by WF at the Rialto (R.I.P. - its roof was blown off in a Storm and West End lost this old cinema/venue for ever) which 4MBS recorded and broadcast as I recall. WF played with a string section for the pieces written by Martin Mackerass, and some of us had to remember how to read music for those... A fantastic piece called "Tearing through the Night Sky Blue" was very... post minimalist?A cd and a few cassettes were produced over about a ten year period. Three songs are downloadable on the Spill site (Melbourne: www.spill-label.org/compilations.php), as these were on compilations released by Greg Wadley. There were a few videos made of the band, by Stephen Mackerass, I will try and see if I can manage to upload these... One was filmed at the old Target Buildings near the Valley Mall ('Mars'), 'Floor of the Forest' was done in some bushland in Hamilton, and at Mt Tamborine on film stock, 16 mm I think...The main PRODUCT was a c.d. Cosmological Clock, recording engineers Rodolphe Blois, Pat Ridgewell and John Hill, Audio Engineer Rodolphe Blois, Musical Producer Daniel Fournier. This was done on a shoestring, over about a year. There were previous tapes made, I can't find my copies, one of which featured the fine neo-classical bent of Martin Mackerass, who now lives in Melbourne I think. A lot of good pieces didn't make it to the CD, I shall try and dig them up.All the members went their own ways. I was a neighbour of Deborah and Stephen's at Lochiel Toorak Rd Hamilton, and most practices (and some recording) went on in that old colonial mansion inhabited by a perfumer (Jonathon Midgely) and a handful of gentle artists and it was the efforts of these folk who kept this heritage-trail landmark from being torn down with a petition, despite having been evicted. People power!Deborah Cavallaro, who's marimba playing underpinned a lot of the songs and gave WF a lot of their flavour, can still be heard around town playing vibraphone and singing with the band, 'The Golden Circles' http://www.myspace.com/thegoldencircles www.songpod.com.au/pods/thegoldencircles - everyone wrote and sang and swapped instruments, and occasionally everyone found themselves with a xylophone or glockenspiel in their hand at the same time, that was pretty fun. Bouwman did stuff with recording-only band Sniffy, see myspace/sniffy link below. Jeannette now lives in Florence, Richard Hagan has recorded music since: www.richardhagen.org and Leo Power lives in Japan and Stephen spends time between Japan and Australia with his Japanese partner and kids. To everyone who has been with WF, hi there, how's it going? You don't look a day over 40-something! Also, feel free to pull me up on anything I might have left out. I hope to scan some photos and put them up but my collection is rather limited..
