Tuesday, June 29, 2021

WHY



I spend so much important valuable time pretending Nancy is more than a cat that it really bothers the hell out of me that she constantly, when washing herself on this crocheted blanket I am using as a couch cover to hide the everyday reality of the corners she has clawed from the upholstery, she gets to the edge of herself and gets to the blanket and starts chewing it. WHY. It can't be a pleasant thing to do, surely it isn't, and it seems to suggest a problem distinguishing between herself and the blanket. When I catch her doing it I put my hand on her and tell her to stop and she looks up like she is woken from a little stupor/trance. It's all pretty strange. 

Saturday, June 26, 2021

nancy's broadened horizons



So I took the plunge two days ago and let Nancy out into the courtyard. Its walls are probably slightly lower than the fence at Albion, where the (court)yard was probably bigger, a bit more foliage and of course included the famous stump which she so relished clawing on a regular basis. I can't remember totally but I'm not even sure Nancy had to have a litter box at Albion (maybe there was one for emergencies) because basically she had a big outdoor toilet. She would hate to think I was discussing this in a public forum. Anyway, I let her out into the courtyard where there are slightly lower walls but they are brick, and probably not scaleable, though I imagine if she was motivated she probably could get over them, but I don't think she is motivated. What she is, though, is absolutely in love with the courtyard and keen to spend a lot of time out there. I did not realise how deprived she was when she was 100% inside, as she was at Parkville, where her outside experience was once or twice when I took her out on the front door balcony and a couple of times when she went to the vet (in a carry cage). She seemed completely accepting of her circumstances, and had no desire to leave the flat, at all, as far as I could tell. But she absolutely has the desire to go outside into the courtyard and just experience the ambience of it. The birds here are very loud (particularly for winter) partly I suppose because there are big trees in the street outside and also because there is smaller foliage in the garden area (where nothing can grow too huge as the whole development is atop a car park). 

I am told there is a lot of cat action in the garden area and indeed news has already travelled about the new kid in town as we have had at least one big fluff invade our territory, press his/her face up against the glass and make a big hero's noise at Nancy. I think she'll be able to control her territory and I doubt she will want to venture beyond it and I think on balance, considering it now as I write, I don't want her to.* But I am happy the whole scheme worked (so far) and while I had semi-considered getting a flat without a garden something in the back of my mind kept telling me that the Nancy I knew who spent whole days on the couch actually had a more adventurous individual hiding inside her and wanted to explore. 

So now Nancy has got four things she loves - food, me and warmth have to make room for outside.

* to the extent that if she starts jumping the wall I'll put some kind of barrier around it so she can't. 

Sunday, June 20, 2021

eyes & pip

 

Peripherally relevant screenshot from recent fb post. Everything needs a picture that's all

Eyes are weird things although I am glad I have mine. I have noticed in the last couple of years a new quirk which I suppose I could class as deterioration or degeneration and it might be but if so the question is also whether it is brain-related or actually associated with actual the eye/s it/themselves (with the obvious proviso that it takes a brain to have eyes that work). It is seeing things move out of the corner of my eye. It happens quite often, though it is never major, but it’s convincing and I never can’t look. Black shapes that cause me to believe either that a small thing (an insect or a rodent perhaps?) is passing just at the edge of my field of vision, or that perhaps the shadow of something behind me is registering on something closer by for instance on the edge of my glasses.

 

I am reminded of Pip Proud’s stroke and the effect it had on his vision. He was very functionally blind, no doubt about it, but it was his brain not his actual eyes – naturally, because I can’t imagine your eyes would generally be affected by a stroke. So, his eyes would send a message to his brain which would give him a picture of something associated – presumably from fifty plus years’ stock images stored away. If he saw a dog or a cat, for instance, he wouldn’t see it but his brain would give him the pictogram of ‘dog’ or ‘cat’. He could read really large words, too (he once read a newspaper headline from a point-of-sale poster to me) which I suppose might suggest that words were hieroglyphs. He wasn’t very good at describing what he saw to me or I wasn’t very good at understanding it, or both, but in any case, it was unusual. 

 

When I think back to Pip’s situation as it unfolded I think there was probably more opportunity to bring him back from that stroke with therapy but (a) it wasn’t my job, which sounds cruel and rude, but he did have family who didn’t need me pushing in to his situation and were doing the best for him as they were advised (b) I don’t think it was clear when it first happened what had happened (c) he was his own worst enemy, or at least, circumstances from his earliest days had conspired against him and set him up psychologically to be terrible to himself, both accepting things he shouldn’t have accepted and lashing out against people who were acting in his own best interests. The (d) I guess is that his alcoholism and depression fed on each other and made him, to say the least, difficult. That, in any case, is how I saw it. But then again I don’t know how much of his own assessment of his post-stroke situation was paranoia and how much was true. I mean I always took his side, and kept my opinions on what was and was not true to myself. I actually don’t know ultimately who was making decisions on his behalf. 

 

This is probably a weird place to get to from ruminating about my eyes but it happened.

Thursday, June 17, 2021

moved

So I finally got it together to move and I have moved, with the caveat that I still have 9 days left at the Parkville place to get a little bit more stuff out and clean it (though that is best left to a cleaning agency as far as I’m concerned, and also, as far as real estate agents are concerned). 

 

The new place is full of boxes some partially unemptied, most not at all. I also have a lot of packaging which is a huge drag (inc. the boxes that I think the removalists will take back, but I’m a bit confused about that tbh). I received a new bed last night which I couldn’t handle doing anything with last night but I assembled it this morning, it was stunningly easy to do, to the extent I wasn’t sure I did it right. I really, really needed a bed without slats, because they suck, and I got one. I didn’t really want a bedhead but I was compelled to get one but I don’t think it’s integral to the structure. 

 

So right now I am in a café in Errol Street called Toast and about to embark on a day. I had three meetings this morning, one was cancelled by the other party, I wriggled out of the other, leaving one. I am fine with that. I think I need to get out of the moving-cleaning world for a little while. Apart from anything else it is really stressful and this is presumably why I (a) have a swollen finger and (b) have a swollen lip, I am pretty sure these are both allergic reactions to who knows what. What I know is telfast is working on the lip, slowly but surely. Or maybe it would have gone down anyway but telfast sure didn’t hurt it. 

 

This is dull I know but it’s all I’ve been thinking about.  


Friday, June 11, 2021

some show, some 11 June, some year

 


Yep so I really don't remember what year this was, maybe around 2004 or 5? There were only three Grey Tapes shows as far as I recall, it's kind of extraordinary that we played with Jessica Venables (!!!) and Peter Head (!!!) supporting. I have no recollection of this show at all, absolutely none. To the degree that, if it didn't actually go ahead, I wouldn't be at all surprised, though if Grey Tapes hadn't played, I am pretty sure I'd still have been there, and I don't remember it. Is there any more emphatic way I can say I just don't remember it? 

I kind of like the flyer though, as meaningless as it is, or perhaps, because it is so meaningless. Also it's not very legible. 

Grey Tapes was me, Gavin, James, Marc and Mia. 

(Update: it must have been 2005, because this band didn't last more than a year, but curiously I didn't mention playing this show at all on this blog for 11 June... but I did for 20 June 2005?!)
(Update: it was 2006, because that was the only possible year June 11 fell on a Sunday)


yesterday was interesting but this analysis probably isn't, really

Yesterday was interesting because I got a text message at 8:15 asking if I would be able to do a 3-hour emergency fill on RRR starting at 9. I was able. I imagine the text message went out to a few people, as it was not personally addressed to me, but presumably I was the first responder. I grabbed a lot of records and hastened there. It was a pretty random selection of records plus three or four MP3s from stuff I had downloaded off bandcamp the previous week. It is hilarious that, essentially, all of this:

constitutes what I felt was required for three hours of music (I probably only played half of these records, admittedly. I didn't have time to prune before I left). But essentially I could just come in with a USB in my pocket and play everything off that if I wanted to/thought I had enough quality stuff. Anyway, this is what I played: 

Mess Esque - Listen, the Snow is Falling; Summer Flake - Heaven Knows; Amii Stewart - Paradise Bird; Cool Sounds - Back to Me;  Aztec Camera - Walk out to Winter (extended); Dragon - Sunburst; 13th Floor Elevators - Slide Machine; OMD - Bunker Soldiers; Carole Bayer Sager - Don't Wish too Hard; Value Void - Bariloche; K5 - Stretch Marks; Siouxsie and the Banshees - Happy House;  Ed Kuepper - Real Wild Life; The Supremes - Once in the Morning;  slimbillgates - Princess; Hello People - It Wouldn't Have Made Any Difference; Martha and the Muffins - Motorbikin'; Joni Mitchell - The Jungle Line, Little Green; Skaldowie - Yearning; Myrth - Fading Image; Chic - Le Freak;  Snowy - Everyone in my photos; Blue Divers - Bending; Hot Half Hour - Caprice; LCD Soundsystem - Oh Baby; Waterfall Person - I'm Your Ghost; Roberta Flack - Gone Away; Edith Granger - The Octopus and the Salt Cave; School Damage - Two Friends; Sleeper and Snake - Great Question; Harry Nilsson - Listen, the Snow is Fallin

The reason I list is I was thinking about RRR's periodic imprecations to play a variety of material. I counted last night and the above is just under 50% women artists, without me even thinking about it, though then you get into the minutiae eg well Listen the Snow is Falling is written by a woman but Paradise Bird, Once in the Morning, Motorbikin', I'm Your Ghost and Le Freak were sung by women here but written by men (and an uncredited man sings on part of Once in the Morning). Don't Wish Too Hard was written by two women and a man. Happy House was written by one man and one woman. Sleeper and Snake are one man and one woman, and no-one sings on Great Question. Edith Granger, by the way, is a 'band name' for a man. slimbillgates is I suppose in some sense a band with a man's name, but it's not a band, it's one woman (as far as I'm aware). 

As for being ethnically variant, I think I probably didn't do the right thing there. Four, essentially, black artists. Some of the bands with Anglo (I'm guessing?) singers include non-Anglo instrumentalists. There was always talk of the Hunter brothers being part-Maori but would Dragon count as non-Anglo? By the way, when I say 'Anglo' I am not even sure what I mean precisely; 'white' bugs me but of course Skaldowie are white as, but they're not Anglo, they're slavic. So, I guess you can slice and dice things in various ways. It still ends up pretty meaningless IMO but I would say that, coming as I do from the dominant paradigm. 

* I realise looking at the above that I forgot to write down that I also played a track by Mia and Marc's band Blueprints, the name of which now eludes me. Oh well. 

Monday, June 07, 2021

tall poppies 7 june 1986 (terrible reproduction, i'll try and get a better version)

 


prime ministers memorial garden


The Prime Ministers Memorial Garden is 25 years old today. The story goes that Dame Pattie Menzies visited Melbourne General Cemetery in 1995 and didn't like what she saw just inside the main gates; somehow she conveyed this to Ron Walker, who, when Pattie died the following year saw the opportunity to turn a patch of otherwise under-utilised and ugly ground into something noble, commemorating some of the nation's leaders specifically those born in Victoria and the Prime Ministership itself as an institution.  

Thus, when you enter the PMMG now, on your immediate right is the anchor baby of the garden, containing the ashes of both Robert and Pattie. I always believed that story that no-one had ever bothered to pick the pompous old fool's (I mean Bob's) remains up from Springvale crematorium, so I'm glad that there's at least a pretence they're here, mingled with those of the woman who tolerated him for umpteen years (and it really did seem like umpteen I'm sure). 

Appropriately also across the way we find mention of another rogue who couldn't keep it in his pocket, but no body of course. This is a nice one for Holty though.

There's also one for the best of a bad bunch (ie Lib PMs), Gorton, which I think might even have a real body in it. There are actually no Labor PMs in the garden, though there is this tasteful plaque to Scullin who is buried elsewhere and we are 'welcome to visit' the site of his teeth and decayed pulp if we so wish it. 


At the east end is a little roman temple of PM names, so you get to namecheck your faves or rank them in order of sex appeal. 
I love Earle Page for his New Stateism and his stunningly punk rock style tenure as PM, a veritable 'Read About Seymour' of service (of course, he had no say in the matter really). I also love his middle names. Anyway they all get one of these, but this and Frank Forde's are the funniest. 

It's going to be a lo-o-ong time, I'm going to guess, before we fill this space. Maybe not even in my lifetime. But that's sad, I'd like to see the garden fill up with a few more corpses of Victorian PMs. Well we are living in strange times, maybe we have a bit of a ninepin/domino situation coming up.


Information re the origins of the PMMG from Sybil Nolan, 'A suitable place to remember Menzies', The Age 8 June 1996 p. 3 By the way Malcolm Fraser is hiding here too but I'm not sure where. 

Sunday, June 06, 2021

something I wrote for the sydney morning herald yonks ago

This is Bogan Delusion-era publicity, 6 June 2011. I found this file on my work computer. It may have been edited a little before it went to print, who knows, who indeed cares. 

I had 13 years as a Sydneysider. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I went to the western suburbs beyond Auburn – which in itself, to my mind, was far beyond the border of the ‘west’. In those days, I probably would have looked a little askance at Summer Hill. In the early nineties, returning from work in Darlinghurst or after classes at the University of Sydney, I might very occasionally stay on the train and go to Rockdale or perhaps even some distant berg like Blacktown, just to see what was there.

I now appreciate I was at the very beginning of escape from my middle-class illusions about the superiority of life at the centre. There was, and still is, an enigmatic, subconscious idea that, if you aren’t living in a street with a view of Centrepoint, you are somehow disconnected from the radiant beacon of city culture – the only culture worthy of the name in Australia. I did not hate ‘westies,’ as they might have been known, but I certainly feared and shunned them in any interaction where they did not recognize (for instance) Newtown as the Sun to their Pluto. Little challenges erupted occasionally: if you’re roughly my age, you might remember that Mental as Anything video set in a street in Sans Souci. A solid, funny, kitchen-sink drama song set in a solid, funny, neighbourly street where there was never a dull moment? I had to exercise my mind to appreciate that as a celebration of suburban life, not a satire on the dull absence of a pulse of the world 5 km beyond the GPO.
I was a snob, and my only defense is that I was a snob because the snobbery was, and I have to say largely remains, pervasive. Inner-city elitists in Australia continue to project views about large groups of otherwise diverse people simply on the basis of their geographic location.

In Australia’s inner cities now we (or should I say ‘they’: I’ll always be middle-class, but I am no longer inner-city, having relocated to a suburb 20 km from central Melbourne) have the bogans. The word has murky origins, possibly related to the region and the river in central NSW, then popularized by Kylie Mole and the Comedy Company to become a nationally understood synonym for what were known in Brisbane as bevens, Hobart as chiggers, and Perth as bogs. Whatever: to my mind, it’s code for ‘working class.’ I am reminded of the Kurt Vonnegut novel Breakfast of Champions in which a well-to-do couple have a secret code which allowed them to discuss African-Americans in front of their ‘coloured’ maid: they discussed the ‘reindeer problem’.  In a Sydney context, one might simply compare this with the derision daily suffered by the people of Mt Druitt, for instance, or Green Valley: the idea being that the residents of these areas are ‘bogans’ but because they are too primitive to realise it.

Bogans are, first and foremost, ‘just a joke’
, in TV comedies such as Rebel Wilson’s Bogan Pride – in which, incidentally, many of the funniest characters weren’t bogans but ‘nerds’, or in retooled versions of the ‘Irish jokes’ we once told at school. When the joke isn’t funny anymore, bogans are cast as a ‘cultural’ not a ‘class’ issue. But when the distorting contradictions of this assumption are stripped away (using incisive questions like, ‘what’s the difference?’) the word ‘bogan’ is laid bare: it’s a new way to sustain class resentment, to pigeonhole people and places. So poorly defined is the term, it’s difficult to criticize its use in everyday life: it’s applied to Julian Assange and Julia Gillard, and then to violent criminals, if not by the same people at least in the media in the same week. Publicising my book The Bogan Delusion on talkback radio last week, many callers were of the opinion that bogans existed because they’d seen them: even listening to the multitude of differing definitions of this peculiar word did not seem to deter radio audiences from the firm belief that their prejudices affirmed their experience.

I’m just happy to see the conversation take place. I want to see Australians pull themselves out of this holding pattern of demonisation of ‘bogans’ who dwell ‘out there’ on the suburban fringe, so commonly described in anthropological terms as though there was some kind of sub-species hitherto undiscovered, and as though anti-social behaviour was irreparable because innate to a ‘species’ of uncultured poor, the victims who deserve their blame. I would also be quite happy if those who describe themselves as ‘bogan’ recognized that to self-identify as such is to demonstrate too much awareness to be truly a ‘bogan’ in most people’s minds. I would also be very happy to see an end to the assumptions that comedy and film – for instance, Angry Boys and Snowtown – are actual representations of truth, rather than dramas based on extreme amplification.

Is all of this ranting against the word ‘bogan’ a plea for political correctness? Possibly, but not the way ‘PC’ language is usually discussed. It’s a plea for precision: it’s about calling the disenfranchised, or marginalized, what they are – rather than a reindeer. Besides, if Assange, Gillard, Shane Warne and Eric Bana (yes, the charges have been laid, not just because he once played one on TV) are all bogans, who isn’t a bogan? Is it praise, blame or demonization? Some clarity in the argument might grease the wheels of the discussion, and who knows, we might just get somewhere.

Saturday, June 05, 2021

obviously notes I wrote while in London sometime, but when and why???!!!

Michael Raedcker, Beam (2000) https://www.saatchigallery.com/artist/michael_raedecker

Tooting - God Only Knows playing (fr radio) Quiet except that + crazy old skin (?) saying 'rock it out baby' over + over. Bought tasteless coconut drink + Guardian. Went to Colliers Wood to look at 157 Robinson.* Numerous wrong turns; didn't recognise it at all. Memories from this house - AL 'nobody mention bottoms'** - but over road - I decided not to take tube back because it is so boring + hot. This morning slept fitfully woke looking about 70 but scrubbed up ok. Has been warm since I've been up (abt 2 1/2 hours). Went to a LIDL store - didn't know what it was - just a cheap supermarket - nappies, milk additives, alcohol. Now ABBA's Mama Mia. I shd read the Gdian. Mama Mia has made old man say over + over 'want a smack in the head?' 3 private school (?) kids in black black suit uniforms regd him nervously. Variations on 'what, smack in the head?' And now 'He's got no hair anyway has he? Fuckin' baldie'. Now 'Only 16'. Worried abt laptop. Flat seems very secure. Signals change, I can hear something in the distance - trebly - Grassy edge to platform. Very quite considering it is just below v. busy st - feels a bit like stepping back in time - 

Steep cutting - covered w/some kind of ivy + bramble - god knows how many millions of ha London has of this space - shd invent tube houses - + god knows how many bodies are buried or things hidden there - streatham. 

Stopped at a rooftop covered in grass + weeds an empty rusted barrel and a small brick hut covered in graffiti . It wd be great if I cd see a little face in there, someone was secretly living in it.

I move to another seat + can see right in. Furniture pulled away from walls. Some rags, an old fridge, newspaper. It looks like someone was squatting in there once.  It's glary in the carriage hard to see. Someone has started to paint the walls brown w/a roller. 

Move off + v. shortly came to the river. Creep over the bridge. My forehead twitching. London Blackfriars. Long piece of driftwood.

Walk for ages around Thames trying to find Millennium Br. but despite all signs to it it seems there is no actual way through - just lots of odd road tunnels and disused/ partially dismantled forecourts to high rise office blogs, and silly churches that were presumably once on the edge of the river, w/silly names like St Andrews of the Wardrobe.*** Finally I get across and seek out Bermondsey St. Everyone I pass sounds like an Australian tourist.

Michael Raedecker - acrylic and thread canvas.****

* This is where I lived for a few months in 1986

** A joke occasionally made by housemate. 

***I thought this was the dumbest joke I had ever made, but I looked it up and basically it's true, only it's St-Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe. I shit you not. 

**** seems to be an extra note unconnected to the rest. 

Friday, June 04, 2021

yeah anyway

So I have probably not said much here about lockdown #4 or possibly not even too much about previous lockdowns (I can't remember, and finding out would require like a minute or two of looking) but this one is... fine in the scheme of things, only for some reason - either because I'm a weak wuss or a fine-tuned machine or both, you know, like a crystal radio - I am finding it not only very difficult to walk outside much with a mask on but also enervating (headache, tiredness, nausea). I am assuming that this is oxygen depravation but maybe it's merely something as stupid. 

The above is I think yesterday's step count (possibly the day before's, as I say, finding out would require etc etc) today's is far superior if higher is better, as I walked to Crumbs of Kensington and then to the supermarket and so on, but whether I will venture out again is a known unknown. Still, packing boxes requires moving around so if I just put my phone in my pocket I can probably trick the machine. It really irritates me that I do sometimes walk without it so it doesn't know everything, I think you should get a 10% rule on those things. I feel like true history is not being recorded. 



Wednesday, June 02, 2021

adventures in spotify

 


So first things first Spotify NO NO NO after I finish enjoying Waiting I don't repeat DO NOT want to hear the first Fun Boy Three album. I can't even imagine why you would think I would, or indeed why anyone would!!! I am also really repelled by your smooth move from me listening to seventies Todd Rundgren (was it 'Fade Away' maybe?) to presenting some John Cale song to me. Who the fuck do you think you and I are? And then craziness - I go to listen to the Closed Circuits compilation I did a few years ago and instead of starting on the first song, first side, you go straight to Karen Marks. Why would you do that?! 

So I took advantage of having spotify to listen to some of McCartney III. I thought, it's really messed up this time playing this song as the first song. But 'Long Tailed Winter Bird' actually is the first song. That is mental. Then I switched to listening to Use No Hooks. I grabbed it off the record shelf a few days ago with the intention to listen to it again as I wasn't that impressed the first time around. This was the first time I had really, really listened to the version of 'Spoonful' on that album. It sucks so bad. Question is, when something on an album really really sucks, and you know it sucks and you think that possibly the group knows it sucks, indeed the point might have been 'let's make something that sucks', does it suck more? Or less? Or the same? 

Back to Waiting, I just want to say, it is a really great album with a great sound (David Byrne production). Whereas the first album sounds like it was recorded on a grimy 4-track with three grimy ideas, the second one is almost on par with the second Specials album (and conceptually similar I would say, in some respects). The troubling bit is 'Well Fancy That' which seems to flippantly deal with child abuse and I've heard Terry Hall talk about the experience the song is based on and he was somewhat flippant then too, which is his prerogative. 

This afternoon coming back from the shop I dropped in to look at my new home (2 weeks to go basically). I mean all I could see was the front garden, such as it is. 


I will soon be calling that trellis mine for real. I must come back earlier in the morning and see how much sunlight there is maximally. To tell Nancy.

Tuesday, June 01, 2021

wizard visions the year 2021


 

amazon kindle



I understand why this might seem like an extravagance but I bought an amazon kindle from officeworks last week and they (got someone to) deliver(ed) it yesterday. I should have done this a year ago tbh but resisted because fuck amazon then de-resisted because who gives a fuck what I think about amazon and my $ are a drop in their ocean, less than. Essentially it's from my frustration with new books, particularly library books, being available as ebooks and the necessity to download them onto the computer and then if I want to refer to them while writing, having to click back and forth between screens or do that ridiculous balancing act of having two screens - a necessarily full-size pdf screen and a ridiculously narrow word document screen - open at once to take notes. That, or take notes manually from a pdf on the screen and then type them back in (yes, also one can copy and paste from a pdf but it's difficult to negotiate and also the formatting is fucked up). So: having a kindle means I can refer to an e-book just as I would if it were a book at my elbow, and I have to say it's also surprisingly readable too, surprisingly, actually, surprisingly readable. It's also very light and compact. Yes, there is a constant urging to buy stuff off amazon as though this were the only possible way anyone could ever buy/read a book but also the kindle has its own email address so I can send it pdfs of things I have scanned, or downloaded, which is my main interest. 

I am not sure what the size is because I have no sense of dimensions or scale but I do know that it is entirely possible to read an A4 document at this reduction. I was surprised by the people who reviewed this thing who said they could slip it into their back pocket, because I know of no back pocket big enough to fit something like this but maybe I just don't look around enough at the backs of people's pants, but it could at a pinch fit into a coat pocket I suspect. It is also, weirdly, ostensibly waterproof presumably unless you actively pump water into its unprotected 'mini usb' hole, but all the stuff about 'you can read it in the bath' I mean who the hell... yeah, I know people take baths and read in the bath, but it just seems like reading an e-reader in the bath is a little too much of a niche requirement.* 

However, all things considered, I am going to say that this falls into the category of my purchases which is Not a Stupid Purchase, compared to many other purchases I have made which were definitely stupid (most of them). For instance, I bought the first Dexy's Midnight Runners album from a greek discogs man and it was so scratched to shit the way I don't like it, that I basically paid for it, and for it to be shipped to me in Australia, to just throw it away immediately (or put it in a brotherhood bin, but that's actually a poxy thing to do isn't it because it's just passing the buck; anyone who bought it would surely feel ripped off to the max and they would be). (I guess there's always that 1% of me thinking - is it unplayable because of my tone arm? Whatever that is). But just playing one side of that album from beginning to end reminds me how much I like it and want to hear it again, so I guess I will purchase a proper copy. And that will be it. No records after that, it is the last record I need. 

That reminds me, I can't rem (did I tell you about the facebook group for my old high school where one of the girls from my year wrote a few recollections where instead of 'remember' she wrote 'rem' not once but many times, it was really interesting, I have never seen it before or since but I often want to do it myself) I can't rem if I told you, but about um three years ago (!!!) I recorded an album with Dani Marich and Philip Clifford of their songs, instrumentals, and we decided on the band name More, which is named after a Pink Floyd album on the basis that I (I don't know really what they think) hate Pink Floyd.** It was actually great to play music with them. I don't know if we'll ever do anything else but I promised long ago to put this record out so it's happening. 120 copies of a transparent vinyl LP in the minimal packaging of No Sleeve At All. It will be out before the end of the year, I am going to give no free copies to anyone but will sell it for I guess around $25, have to do the maths. I will still end up with a hundred copies under my bed. Speaking of throwing money away... makes an amazon kindle look like a bare necessity. Middle aged boutique self-indulgence lol. I've earned the right, don't judge me.  

* Though if they wanted to make something great of this amazon should have paid someone to update the Death of Marat so he's holding his kindle, perhaps with Frank Heath's 1940 Report (on his office's plan for Swan Hill) in his hand. 

** We did our due diligence by borrowing, and watching, Barbet Schroeder's 1969 film for which PF wrote the soundtrack. We watched it all the way through. I remember absolutely none of it. 

rabbit x 1


 

the early 70s was all juxtaposition

October 1970, everyone had their arms out in the air, from Barbra to, um, whoever that is on the left, to Thumbelina. This is from the Sprin...