thank god for...

Well no need to thank god but I have had a shitty week to say the least and I realised the problem was probably something to do with not having played side 3 of the double Easybeats compilation for some weeks. You know, mind, body, spirit, the general centring validation. Well, I accidentally put side 4 on instead (I think there is a version of 'Come in you'll get pneumonia' on both sides or something, or maybe I'm just vague and confused). Side 4 is not as great as it has 'Good Times', 'Music Goes Round My Head' and 'Peculiar Hole in the Sky' three songs in an otherwise sumptuous oeuvre which I have never had much time for. But the rest is still pretty amazing. Yesterday I was looking at issues of Rolling Stone from 1979; Australian RS in those days justified being called Australian RS by the inclusion of some Australian album reviews once every three issues or so, a page of Aust. news and lots of Australian advertising. The advertising for Australian records seems to be what kept it going back then, which is interesting in itself, considering there's not much corresponding advertising. I have never really liked RS very much, and this as a former contributor (yes, I liked their word rate). Like a lot of things - Van and Jim Morrison, Tarantino, Robyn Annear, Hunter S. Thomson - there's some kind of tone that bugs me and it's so unclear and hard to isolate that I am not sure I'm not imagining it. Sometimes I break out of these appalling prejudices though luckily for me I completely forget I never liked something once I start to like it. Anyway, the reason I brought this up was I was reading RS from 1979 and it had one a full-page ad for Flash and the Pan's album Flash and the Pan, and I was moved to consider once again what a bizarre album cover it is, and wonder why anyone would ever put that on a record they wanted other people to buy, and what kind of relevance it was supposed to have on the music within. The first F&P album has a song on it that sounds a lot like 'Women in Uniform', but even as I write this I fear that I might be repeating myself on this blog and I apologise if so. Without wishing to sound boring and pathetic (no-one ever wants to, though we all deep down know we are don't we) I have had an exhausting and mildly depressing week which started with being informed by a student whose opinion I respect that my lecture on Monday was 'pissweak' and ended with being pilloried in a public internet forum, a situation which I suppose had elements of karma but - a la Nelson on The Simpsons taunting himself in the mirror and then realising it hurts - I realise it hurts.

Adam Ford sent me the latest issue of his Jutchy Ya Ya which reveals he is moving to Chewton. I always thought this was where Thomas the Tank Engine lived, although you're right - Ad Ford is kind of like Australia's answer to T the T E. I saw someone reading his novel on the tram a few weeks ago, and wanted to talk to her about it, which is something I have disturbingly started to do with people reading interesting books on the tram, but there wasn't time. You know, I would've needed hours.

I started reading Ada Holman's memoir this morning. She spends a lot of time apologising for not being personally interesting and kind of complaining about how she had to subjugate her life to her husband's (he was Labor premier of NSW in the years just after WWI). I imagine she doesn't want to sound boring and pathetic but there you go. I flicked on ahead and she seems mainly to be reminiscing about great British people she met in the 1920s. It might be mildly interesting. I am really only interested in her because I want to know how she came to have a novel published by C J De Garis in the early 1920s, and I suspect already she's not even going to mention that at all.

I am really interested in The Nice still but don't feel I can justify paying up for the box set. I guess I'm going to have to get drunk and order it from Amazon sometime. Repent at leisure. There is also a Jack Bruce album from '78 that was only released a couple of years ago, which I am really keen to hear. Sounds like it would be amazing.