tall poppies 31 may 1986

I categorically fail to understand the reference to Michael Hodgman, who was a minor Tasmanian conservative politician. Although I guess now I've written it down, it kind of makes sense. What could be more of a fall from grace for a young turk. 

Koskenlaskijan morsian (1923)

'The silent drama The Bride of the Rafters (1923), directed by Erkki Karu, is based on Väinö Kataja's novel of the same name. In Perä-Pohjola, the mutual resentment of the hosts of Nuottaniemi and Paloniemi (Konrad Tallroth, Jaakko Korhonen) causes a dangerous situation during rafting. Hanna (Heidi Korhonen) from Nuottaniemi rescues Juhan (Einari Rinne) from Paloniemi and his beloved Koskenalusta Ant (Oiva Soini) from a ferry that broke down with a brave action.'

Great stuff except it keeps stalling at the 50 minute mark just as the rafts are coming back from Lapland.

I have been to Perä-Pohjola, though I don't remember it, but the map tells me that when I took the bus from Luleå to the railway station at Kemi (i.e. the southernmost land route between Sweden and Finland) I passed through it. 

who loves you

I got a copy of the Four Seasons' album Who Loves You from a discogs vendor in Italy a few months ago, it's really scratched and fucked up just the way I like it. When the title track came out as a single, it kind of spooked me with its strange haunting intro vocal and then a misunderstanding I never really processed at the time (I was ten): 

Who loves you, pretty baby?
Who's gonna help you through the night?
Who loves you, pretty mama?
Who's always there to make it right?

I think I might have mentioned that I was ten, and I suppose I had never come across that weird, weird WEIRD American thing of describing a girl/woman who is not your mother as 'mama', but also a minor but crucial mishearing had me understanding the third line as 'Who loves your pretty mama' and imagining some scenario whereby the probably newly acquainted older man is asking about who the other men are in the life of mother-daughter household i.e. 'do you have a boyfriend? You don't? OK and does your mother have a boyfriend?' 

It was a long time ago and I am pretty sure that I had not encountered weird porn tropes about this kind of thing (as far as I recall, but then again, it was a long time ago) so I just wrestled with the idea as best I could on the information available. It was something that probably happened in the adult world, because most things seemed possible there. 

It was also super confusing that the Four Seasons were like an old, old, old group from the early 1960s, which seemed a much longer time ago in 1975 than it does now, and just to add to the confusion they had a new song about December 1963. Did my head in.

I don't remember thinking about this but I suppose the who loves you schtick had something to do with Kojak which was so hot right then. I can't remember ever watching that show but I probably did (it was a kind of Batman-Superman thing with Columbo) but the catchphrase was everywhere. 

A propos of nothing except thinking about Kojak, it occurred to me that the character name always sounded super fake, so I went looking to see whether there have really been people with that name and yeah, it's a name. However, I don't think it's a Greek name, which is the conceit of the tv show. Here's an example of why it might not be, from the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle of 16 September 1927:

Although of course there was a big Jewish Greek population and so maybe I should do more research before I make these kinds of claims. I promise to come back to this before now and the end of time. 

*Update: I looked on a website called Forebears and found that according to a website called Forebears, the name Kojak is most prevalent in Egypt, they even generate a map to show you where it appears in concentration: 

So there is no-one called Kojak in Greece (or New Zealand or Greenland). 

I thought maybe the name 'Kojak' (with a so-called 'hard J') was perhaps related to the name 'Kodak' but imagine my surprise to find that the name 'Kodak' as applied to the famous photographic products company was a name made up in 1888 by George and Maria Eastman using 'an anagram set' whatever that is. However, it is a name, and its highest occurrence is in Turkey. 

tall poppies 24 may 1986

 

oh good more records

I am an unreconstructed Swell Maps fan yes it is true and so when I heard this album, called Mayday Signals, was coming out I was up for it. It's a collection of mainly unreleased recordings by them either before they actually entered a studio or, around side 4 I think, a bit later. It's one of those stupid things: if it's a third as good as Jane from Occupied Europe then it's gonna be pretty good. I will let you know. 

So I bought this online from Monorail in Glasgow and well since I was buying one thing from them I figured I may as well buy two. I had been meaning to get this since I heard it in Glasgow whenever, October 2019? So I bought it as well. 

So far so good, it's the only one of these I've played so far. So while I was walking to the bank to do my ID check and release the loan contracts, I got an email from work to say there was a parcel for me there, they do that now, I'm not sure why but I'm not against it. It was the two records above. I am not sure why they went to my work but I had ordered stuff from Monorail a few years ago back when I lived in Albion and I more commonly had things sent to my workplace because I didn't want to have to go to Sunshine West to pick them up if the postal delivery worker didn't leave them. So then I got home, got these out and started to regard them, when there was a knock at the door. It was a postal delivery worker with some more records that apparently I had ordered some time ago, though I don't remember doing it.  They were these: 

That's right not one but two Barbara records

And a John Coltrane record which I probably just grabbed because I was already buying the other things and so postage was free and so it was probably a negligible cost but I'm certainly looking forward to it*

Oh and this! Which is the EP that came free with the first pressings of the second Martha and the Muffins album, but which wasn't in my copy of that album. So, for what it's worth, I have it. I definitely do not remember ordering this. Hmm, actually, or any of it. Perhaps I was drunk. 

Don't look down your nose at me my life's been really hard. 

*Actually a Wilbur Harden/John Coltrane album that was reissued in the mid-60s with Coltrane's name given absolutely greater prominence 

only lonely

I may already have been a bore about this group but now I have the actual album. It's SO WEIRD in a bland kind of way, but amusing and even engaging too. So the first thing is this odd aspect: they were from Turku and in Finland, they were called Bogart Co. 

I was instantly entranced by this cover. It's so amateur it's incredible. The six rock balls, the weird little face on the stone, the fucked up sand... the city in the background. It's appealing.* 

But check out what I got when I ordered this album from some discogs vendor in, I suppose, Portugal since this is a Portuguese pressing. And apparently they were known by this name in a number of territories. I just want to know why. I suspect it's just because 'Bogart Co.' is such a richly terrible name, but still, I want to know why.

I am also a bit thrilled that someone spent all of six seconds getting out a texta and a bit of paper to alter the cover art (this by the way is the printed cover) of my copy to credit the album under a different name (someone later has come along and in neat ballpoint put the numbers 1, 3, 2 and 4 on it). Intriguingly though for the Swedish pressing some time was actually spent on comparatively cohesive art.

I suppose I am also intrigued about why the other territories didn't just, you know, give it a decent cover. And I mean, the guys in the band weren't horrible looking by the standards of the era so why not put them on the cover? Instead of this madness? Here they are on the inner sleeve:

You'll be stunned to hear these are stage names. I don't know which one I like the best, but I guess to be boring it's most likely Sam Eagle. Reddie aka Ressu Redford's real name was Esa Mäkelä; Sam Eagle was Sami Piiparinen; Vinnie or perhaps Winnie Lane was Veijo Mäki, Guy Stoneman was Kai Stenman and Johnny Gustafsson, inasmuch as Johnny isn't really a Finnish name, was Johnny Gustafsson. 

And look it's piss easy to joke about this stuff and I do actually like the record, either because of or despite the fact it is essentially every frickin' 1986 cliche you can imagine in a Duranesque group. If I wrote lyrics in Finnish, which I can't because I only know about three words in Finnish, they would be meaningless. These are pretty trite songs but they hold together, but of course, there is that very slight 'offness' about them, which makes them much more fun than if they were completely coherent. (I am reminded of a review in NME of one of the Lilliput albums that made fun of their Swiss German attempts at English and how I am still offended by that review thirty something years later - so - why am I inviting you to laugh at this? I'm not actually - that's on you). 

'The morning's breakin' and I'm waking up/ Cold shower an' I dress up real cool/While havin' the breakfast, the morning paper/Tells me what to do an' what to think (God dam it)'. 

'Come the midnight there are millions of lips/An' they're moving'/Come the midnight there are millions who kiss/ An' they're ooh'

'Rainbow in your heart/ Those warm sunbeams an' those tears in your eyes/ Form a rainbow/ The rainbow in your heart/ I realise, you can't stand all his lies/ And that's why/ The rainbow's inside you.' 

'Day after day we flow with the rush (ooh)/Knowing there's nothing we can do/ Step after step we watch where we go/ To avoid the slush an' the slime/For all, after all/We worship the matter/ To continue the world as it does'

Continuing as it does, the world is an amazing place. In 2021 I discovered both Martha and the Muffins (properly) and Bogart Co. Oh also the Mess Esque and Blue Divers albums are really good. I have been playing a lot of Bananarama too. Indeed, this morning I raced to a garage sale where I knew for a fact that the edition of WOW with extra LP of remixes was going to be for sale. Guess what it was only $2 as well. Also guess what: the copy of the second Bananarama album I bought a few weeks ago had two, whatever you call them, bags in it so when I discovered that one of the LPs in this edition of WOW didn't, all I had to do was transfer it across. Do call that justice. 

By the way I bought the first Bananarama album on the same day I bought the first Velvet Underground album, probably in 1983. But today I only have the first Bananarama album (and the second and third). 

March 2023 update: When we were in Finland in February Laura and I saw a lot of Bogart Co. records around - I don't know why I didn't buy any. Also we heard 'All the best girls' played in the bar at the airport. It sounded cool! 

* The cover is designed by Gerold Gerdes. Someone called Gerold Gerdes was born in 1964 and died in 2013 but I don't know if it was this Gerold Gerdes. A Gerold Gerdes designed quite a few Finnish record covers. 

army of the dead

I am currently as I write watching Army of the Dead really only for the entire reason that Tig Notaro is in it, not being funny or anything, just being herself but I am kind of up for anything with her in it. I was also entranced by the idea that apparently she shot all her scenes alone and was either cut and pasted into scenes or is just alone. 

Anyway, I don't have much more to say about it, I'm not that thrilled by it so far but it's fast-paced and seems to take on tropes I am pretty used to. That said, I have a feeling I'm going to be looking up the plot on wikipedia before too long. 

The music used in the film is contemporary covers of old songs. What's that about.

cheesies and gum

 

Remember all the times I told you not to be a one-hit wonder. I hope you have listened, I have not yet heard your one hit but when I do hear it I'm going to be sure to be keeping an ear out for a follow up because there is nothing worse than only having one. 

I have probably mentioned to you how much I have been enjoying Martha and the Muffins lately but when I play their first album I make sure to skip the first track, and you know why. It is not inherently crap or anything but I have just heard it so-damn-often over the years. And it is by no means their best song. And its existence is the reason I have shied away from Martha and the Muffins for like, ever. Imagine if I'd died before I turned 56! I might have gone to my grave always thinking that Martha and the Muffins is not really a band I liked that much. And yet now I have their first three albums and I play them a lot. I particularly like the 2nd one Trance and Dance and suggest that is where you start when you want to discover or even rediscover the joy of Martha and the Muffins. 

What do they have? The songs are packed with ideas, some of the lyrics are now charmingly arcane from a forty-years-later perspective (I mean 'Suburban Dream' - shooting fish in a barrel - I bet the postpunkers could, and did, write lyrics like this in their sleep). (Just makes me think of Tracy Mann's character in Sweet and Sour, going to the back of the warehouse in a bad/pensive mood, muttering something about 'I'm going to write a song about plastic conformity now'.) It's not slick music though, or unimaginative or passionless at all, and it sounds really dynamic but they're great players together too. 

Three songwriters in the band for the first two albums (then two of them chucked the third one out. It would have been really problematic for them if 'Was Ezo' became a hit when it was released as a single because Martha Ladly wrote and sang it and apparently they had thrown her out of the group by the time it came out. But fortunately for Martha and the Muffins they never really troubled the singles charts again after their first humungous hit, except in Canada, with a few other random exceptions. Luckily for them also yes they had two Marthas so removing one of them made the band name actually more truthful. (The third album This is the Ice Age is pretty good too, I haven't heard anything else). 

So if you were listening to them on spotify, cleanse your palate with 'Primal Weekend', then go to 'Was Ezo', 'Luna Park', 'About Insomnia' and from the first album, 'Sinking Land', 'Cheesies and Gum', 'Paint by Number Heart', 'Hide and Seek'. They also do a much better cover of Chris Spedding's 'Motorbikin'' than Spedding's own (I actually bought CS's relevant album for that song and this version is a huge improvement - trust me). (It's not like trusting me for the time it takes to compare is going to be a risk for you really is it).

BTW weep not for Martha Ladly I think her subsequent career was a fuckload (as they say) more interesting and rewarding not only than the other Martha's or the Muffins' - made a couple of great singles, briefly in the Associates at their peak, then she goes on tour with Roxy Music etc. And she is now a professor at the university where Martha and the Muffins originally formed. 

OK so I just recommend you listen to a lot of Martha and the Muffins particularly the first two albums and try to keep away from the big hit if you can, the other stuff is really rewarding. 

I've had enough, now I want my share

 

I am fascinated by the central entitled assumption of men, who have been accused of particularly intrusive behaviours, about their own importance. This is such a busy day that I don't have time to properly craft what I want to say about this, and in fact, it's a movable feast of not really knowing how to put it, and new things keep happening, so I am basically unable to see where I am in the whirlwind, but I'm thinking in the vein of, Craig McLachlan crying in a TV interview (I haven't seen it, should probably watch), Robert Doyle crying in a (radio) interview (so I couldn't watch if I wanted to), and so on. That said, Matt Gaetz, a whole different kettle of fish, made me write this. 

So the idea is that a middle aged man's importance is more important than other people's. But I am also very clear, having grown up as I have over the time period I have, that men of my age, and definitely older, and also probably also definitely younger, have always been told, by men and women around them, how important they are and what an impact they can and should have on the world. I am not saying therefore they are permitted to encroach on other people's liberties, or anything like that. I'm saying that the aftermath of what they've been accused of is, well, I'm still really valid. That's what interests me, and obviously also that's the attitude that arguably causes the original problem, too. 

I'm not for one second saying that men who harass women (or anyone) deserve a free pass by dint of their upbringings and/or social attitudes, they still should have enough awareness to not abuse their status (it might also be true that people who seek celebrity/develop certain skills and talents, like acting or being a politician for instance, are people we should be slower to revere and quicker to be suspicious of - maybe these aren't callings for a lot of people, and more like outlets for a particular personality type we shouldn't be encouraging). (To be fair to the world, I think that's a big part of the stereotype around both those careers, so it's not like it hasn't been previously identified!). Once again I'm really just interested (sorry to be so glib about a serious social issue) in the way accused men behave in the aftermath. 

It's actually odd when you think about it that after Grab'embythepussygate, Trump didn't say 'geez, I've always been told this is fine' (when obviously, he had been) but that it was 'locker room talk', which is apparently what men do with other men. This leads me to another strand in my slow and foolish coming to grips with shit. I have had to contend with what I believe to be bad behaviour (by others) in the workplace in the past and I have never been satisfied with the outcome i.e. particularly gross men have not been made to bear consequences for their actions, as far as I'm concerned. What I've been given insight into has been small beer compared to what makes the news, or at least, the people involved have not been actors or councillors, but the reality of it has been much the same as far as I'm aware. Ironically I was brought back to square one on this kind of thing because it's not me talking about my experience - it's me trying to shed light on others' experience and famously, for obvious reasons, women won't come forward and/because when they do, they are not taken seriously. 

I bit off more than I could chew here. I'd love to see what Arthur Horner would do with today's 'tall poppies'. 

tall poppies 17 may 1986

 

nothing

I'm drinking whisky and listening to Soul II Soul. My feet are really cold. 

This little soldier is right next to me. 

This little soldier is under the couch, basking in the heater gust. 

That's all. Nothing. 

outré

I stole this picture of the Young Marble Giants because I think a blog post looks better with a picture. It was either this, or a picture of Nancy sitting on a cutting board. 

'Instead, the former president has launched a personal “communications platform,” otherwise known as a blog—a throwback to the style of pre-Instagram personal websites that celebrities once used to share their daily goings-on with fans.'

I'm not 100% certain whether this is Vanity Fair actually explaining the concept of 'blog' to its readers or whether it is hedging its bets - or even poking fun at the idea of 'communications platform' - ??? Anyway it sort of drives home to me the reality that blogging is a little outré or should I say it took me from knowing it 'intellectually' (to the extent I know or appreciate anything intellectually - you know what I mean) to knowing it in my heart 'where I live'. Well, that's OK. I am fine with it. 

Do you know what I did the other day, I played not one but two CDs.* In fact, after rescuing another box of crap from under the house at Lorraine I discovered quite a lot of CDs of albums that I have more recently bought on vinyl in a 'wow, I love this album, why don't I have it' moment not realising that I actually did have that album, just, on CD (the albums I'm thinking of were Wire's Pink Flag and the Young Marble Giants album, though boring detail, the YMG album I bought on vinyl has a whole extra LP of everything else they did, notwithstanding I never really understood why the Testcard EP was by YMG given that it didn't have Alison Statton on it, but let's not go there**). CDs are actually pretty good you know. They take up less space, they don't get scratched (yeah, I know, they do skip annoyingly if you don't look after them) and often they have bonus tracks on them that you didn't get on the original record. 

I know you know all this. I'm just recounting it as if I woke from a dream, that's all, or as if I travelled into 1995 from 1985*** and had to ask someone why they listened to music on little shiny discs not bigger black ones. 

The great/weird thing about the CD stash is that it'll be a bit of an archive particularly of Melbourne indie music (or indie music that visited Melbourne) in the 90s. Mia also told me recently that there's at least four other big fat repositories of four other people's junk under the house at Lorraine, lol. Two of those people are overseas apparently permanently, and the material is more in the realm of abandoned snakeskin or vomit the dog will not return to than I-can't-wait-to-get-back-to-my-beloved-possessions, it's probably all mouldy and full of dirt too. I guess she told it to me in the spirit of I had more right to store my stuff under there but now she's the sole owner of that house, that's probably not really true anymore! It's a surprise to discover as well that those plastic bins that are still sold by the stacked pile as storage solutions? The plastic gets really brittle really fast and breaks into long, sharp bits. I threw the lid away on the current box of crap already (I 'recycled' it but the only recycling I can see for that shit is as weapons, the 21st century version of the broken bottle). 

Anyway this is diversion, I've spent four days trying to write a promotion application and I'm at that point where I've nearly reached the word limit and it's time to refine, which is anathema. But it is intriguing of course to have this blog at my fingertips, so I can remind myself of the post from a decade ago where I talked about 'the necessity of applying for promotion... which has essentially got me nowhere'. Some would see this as a reminder that one can be dispirited and yet succeed in spite of oneself, actually for me it just causes more anxiety (apart from anything else - the pandemic has dulled me a bit I think, at least, I hope it's the pandemic). Anyway back to the grind. 

*Scott 3 and Next Stop... Soweto

** Also most of the other stuff is substandard tbh. And I will never listen to it. 

*** Which by the way I did. It took ten years. 

tall poppies 10 may 1986

 

great mysteries

How on earth are decisions like this made? Neither Ram nor Venus and Mars are PmcC solo albums, but if 'solo album' means 'since the Beatles', why no Band on the Run? Not that I rank that particularly highly. As I bragged to Laura the other week, my Wings most favourite-least favourite list is Speed of Sound, Back to the Egg, Wild Life, Red Rose Speedway (2LP vers), V&M, BOTR, London Town. Although TBH I expect to revise my opinion of London Town someday, so watch out BOTR. Carmel gave me a copy of V&M for my birthday which is nice to have, with the cool posters (and sticker!). So I went to sleep before 9, woke up at 2 and have been awake hanging with cats and reading. It's been good.  Should get a copy of McCartney III.
 

me explaining 'bart simpson' to the readers of australian left review thirty years ago

This is from my magic box of crap.

 

rabbit

Barry in April last year.