January 2015 Capsule

Reading – Gallipoli by Peter FitzSimons

Although it – mostly – isn’t anything I hadn’t read before, the latest book (which will be the first of many about the Gallipoli campaign in this it’s centenary year) on the fateful campaign that opened Australia’s involvement in the First World War, is good. And this from someone who didn’t particularly like the way FitzSimons wrote when I opened his Ned Kelly book last year.

Count me as one of the converted now. The former Australian rugby representative – who’s done pretty well for himself, all things considered – has written a brilliant and easy-to-understand (for those who aren’t military historians or tacticians) account of the Gallipoli campaign, and does wonders in making the confusing geography of the Peninsula much easier to understand.

Crucially, and because there’s always another side to these events, the Turkish response is examined in fairly good detail, particularly Mustafa Kemal’s experiences. For example, I had no idea that the famous Turk, who would go onto greater things post-World War One, had been evacuated from the battlefield before the Anzac evacuation. Nor did I quite understand just how many Turks were killed defending their homeland. For all Australia’s losses (more than 8,000 by the time all was said and done), they were nothing in comparison to the death toll suffered by the Ottoman armies, more than 86,000 dead. Those are horrific losses.

FitzSimons does a good job preserving the ANZAC legend, and also shining light onto little-known aspects of it, like the fortunes of the midget submarines AE1 and AE2, British operations at Suvla Bay, and the back room political wheeling and dealings in London, particularly involving Lord Kitchener (a distant relation, I’m led to believe) and Winston Churchill.

Watching – T20 Big Bash League Cricket

This is a great month for sport. We’ve got test cricket, one day cricket, tennis of all sorts – including that Fast 4 thing that I never got into – and the culmination of both college and pro football in America. But last month, barely a night went by when I wasn’t watching the T20 Big Bash League cricket. It’s great to be able to turn on your TV pretty much any given night between the middle of December and late January and catch a game.

Sure, some people – particularly the cricket traditionalists – will thumb their noses at this new concept, but you can hardly deny the excitement and tension that these twenty-over concepts seem to produce every single game. Nor can you deny the crowd numbers and television ratings. The fourth season of the franchise-based league has provided wonderful entertainment from beginning to end, even if my chosen team, the Sydney Thunder, has been pretty bad ever since the first.

Channel Ten’s coverage has been sensational. Their commentary team is a serious breath of fresh air from the inane dribble that Channel Nine provides.

I even took myself out to ANZ Stadium to watch the Sydney derby between the Sixers and the Thunder. Not the result I wanted, and potentially the least-interesting game of the season, but still good fun. I can see expansion in the League’s near future. Can’t wait for 2015-16!

Listening To – Dee Jay Silver

 

Stick with me on this one. Dee Jay Silver is a Nashville native who’s made a pretty nice career for himself mixing popular country songs with dance and RnB tracks. He has a nationally-syndicated radio show called ‘The Country Club’ that goes to dozens of stations across America every weekend, and is a regular at big-time country concerts, particularly genre superstars Jason Aldean, Rascal Flatts and Brad Paisley.

When I first heard what the guy did, I thought it sounded ridiculous – I mean, who wants to hear Run DMC’s ‘Walk This Way” mixed in with Alabama’s “If You're Gonna Play in Texas (You Gotta Have A Fiddle In The Band)”? Apparently people do, because his live shows absolutely bring the house down, and fill in those long intervals between sets at concerts.

Halfway through January, I started listening to excerpts from ‘The Country Club’ via SoundCloud on the suggestion of a friend who was born and raised in the American south – and is responsible for getting me into a lot of country music – and although I wasn’t sure, I kept an open mind, and, you know what, it was pretty cool.

Silver’s remix of Alabama’s classic “Dixieland Delight” features rap group Nappy Roots, and I find myself playing it often on my iPod.