all the great men were in the video age - 1

 

the video age #2

I had a quick look at the Video Age when I was in the State Library this afternoon. It's less of a thrill than you might imagine, though I don't know what you imagined, obviously. Here's a bit of taster. I'll post some pages in the next few days. Don't get your hopes up though. 

the video age

Ad in the Age 24 March 1983 Green Guide section p. 12. I don't remember this publication at all, but I am super intrigued. 

world of hits vol. 4

Coming back from the dog park this morning I was thinking about Brotherhood of Man and their song 'United We Stand'. As a child - I'm surprised at the diversity of my tastes at that age tbh - I liked their song 'Save Your Kisses for Me', as well, which was let's face undeniably sugar syrup sludge. It was  not really the same band (no common members) but it was the same franchise and to their credit the Brotherhood of Man who hit it big at the 1976 Eurovision Song Contest with 'Save Your Kisses for Me' (Christ, it was like punk hadn't yet happened) have been together ever since (!!!!!!!!!!). 

Anyway according to wikipedia, this album of theirs from I think 1980 was only released in Australia and NZ, and I am confident I have never seen it because if I had seen it - fuckin' hell what a cover! - I'd have bought it. Or at least remembered. 

I don't know why I took to Brotherhood of Man (or at least two of their songs, one from the late 60s and one from the mid-70s) (they're very different songs - I mean 'United We Stand' is sentimental claptrap too but it's a rousing anthem, not a moron's ditty like 'Save Your Kisses for Me') but it might have had something to do with the context provided by this:

I bought this album for probably tuppence in probably about 1975 in the op shop in Auburn Road not far from the corner of Riversdale Road (shop's still there, barely changed really) and 'United We Stand' was absolutely not the best song on it, but not bad. 

Marmalade– Reflections Of My Life; Arrival – Friends; Amen Corner– High In The Sky; White Plains– My Baby Loves Lovin'; Small Faces– My Mind's Eye; Dana – All Kinds Of Everything; Frijid Pink– The House Of The Rising Sun; Jonathan King– Let It All Hang Out; Alan Price– Hi-lili, Hi-lo; Cat Stevens– A Bad Night; Chris Andrews – To Whom It Concerns; Brotherhood Of Man– United We Stand.

I mean to be honest the only really, truly great song on here is 'My Mind's Eye'. But 'Let it All Hang Out' is a crazy bit of sixties madness, and 'Hi-lili, Hi-lo' is fun. 'A Bad Night' is about as good as Cat Stevens gets - it's a bunch of songs stuck together in a weird way. 'Reflections of My Life' is pretty decent. The Amen Corner and White Plains tracks aren't bad either (I should be more purist and at least not put those two - a real live (and Welsh!) pop group with members that went on to amazing things and a shabby if monstrously successful 52 years ago studio concoction -  in the same sentence but whatever, feeling reckless). The Dana track is grotesque and the Chris Andrews is, whatever. Arrival and Frijid Pink are differently stupid. OK sorry Arrival isn't that bad, but you know. Didn't add much to civilisation. Unlike Jonathan King lol. 

the mightymite mystery

Something about Mightymite, which is my preferred alternative to Vegemite, a product which I find hard to take for some strange reason considering I am dinky-di. Mightymite promotes itself as a gluten free alternative ('Mightymite was formulated and launched to give Australians the chance to buy an Australian Made, Gluten Free Yeast Spread' the website claims) although I know it's been around much longer* than 'gluten free' was a thing, if you know what I mean - well if you don't, I mean people who can't tolerate gluten had a raw deal for a long time, and my recollection is that it's only in the last ten years that 'gluten free' has been a major marketing storyline on 'mainstream' products. I reckon that Mightymite was launched when there was controversy regarding the ownership of Vegemite by Kraft, even though that had been a reality since at least 1953. A-a-a-nyway that's not important. Neither is what I'm about to say:

I still love Mightymite, but I am surprised to find that for the first time - at least the first time I've ever noticed it - a bit of liquid is forming in my Mightymite over time, enough that I can tip a few drips of it out into the sink every week or so. It doesn't seem to make any difference to the product i.e. what's left behind doesn't dry out or anything. There must be a subtly different recipe though. Doesn't taste any different. This has now happened in two jars in a row.

They should make a comic book out of the kangaroo on the label and all the amazing things he can do with his big, blue nonsense flag. I'd pay to see that. 

* Apparently it's been around since 2001. So maybe I'm wrong about that. 

consumer choice is dangerous

In the last whatever, few days, because apparently (I'm told) the tennis is on, there have been headlines about people winning tennis matches, indeed the newspapers (which I don't read in paper form but which are websites to me with things I click on) seem to be leading with various announcements of what seem to be people winning tennis games. Every time I see this, just like every time I go to the home screen of my so-called smart TV, I think wouldn't it be excellent if I didn't have to ever hear about sporting events, and yet they are constantly being peddled to me, not because of my age or gender but because there is an assumption that this might be of interest to me or at least that I won't be offended by it. But I am actually offended by the whole thing, the faces being pulled and the logos and the gestures and everything about it. 

I suppose there might be an argument, somewhere, that my interests are different from most interests but of course also that I craft my interests precisely for that purpose, to make myself feel more interesting than and just generally different to general interests. That same argument might posit that I then sometimes align my interests with the mainstream solely so I can feel like / present as someone who's made a sensible, sensitive curatorial decision about what I will and won't like. 

But I also think frankly that I need that reality check. I need to be reminded that my tailored algorithm is not reality and that most people like sport and when I'm out in the street looking at the faces of other humans well, most of those people like and pursue and tolerate things I just could not even consider bearable. 

I suppose most of us believe most people essentially think what we think. I don't know. What do you think? I suppose I think I know. 

dog park

Perry loves the dog park more than anywhere else as far as I can tell. Even if there are no dogs there (this happens occasionally) he still just loves its dogness. I guess it just has an essentially joyful vibe with a little frisson of extra trauma and fear for piquancy. 

The dog owners are the odd ones at the dog park. I'm not going to go into detail with the personalities but if you knew nothing about the relationship between people and their dogs and you were were walking or even driving past and saw the way some of them helicopter their dogs you'd wonder what on earth weird experiment was going on. Personally, I let Perry get on with it - I figure he can work it out. He knows where I am if he needs me and he doesn't need me getting up in his shizzle. But some people really want to be a part of every moment - I suppose that's what it is? I actually don't know and I don't know how to ask. 

But then, all the dogs are different of course and maybe some of them have behavioural or even physiological issues that need attention. I don't know. I only know what it looks like.

How's your week been? Mine's been very busy, there are projects about to reach fulfilment after a long gestation and I can't wait. And new projects to begin I guess which tbh I can wait for, lol. 

'we hope you enjoy looking back and sharing your memories on facebook...'

 I do, thanks facebook. So this is one of my classic 'English, you are a stupid language' posts. Tres clevs:

Obviously this just struck me as odd. I clearly photographed it with my phone from a microfiche scanner screen. No idea what it's from. It possibly relates obliquely to the next thing:

by which I mean, the 'what about you':

So this is an early birthday party of mine, I don't know how old I was but I do know that the women are L-R Pat Knox, Mavis Nichols (ie my grandmother), Judy Hogg and Eleanor Curtain. I am pretty sure it's our house in East Kew which was demolished a scant few years later:

I liked to pretend, when living in Albion, that Leo next door had a romantic interest in Nancy, but actually what he wanted to do was come in the house, pester me for food then hiss at me when I tried to make him leave:

This is funny-ish, I have no recollection what it was from:

I guess interesting:

This was a fine day:

I miss A+. Last I heard they still kind of existed but with a different line up and are recording an album. In fits and starts I assume:

newspapers.com

Newspapers.com is absolutely my go-to for all kinds of insane things from actual information on stuff (particularly the Melbourne Age up till the year 2000, also the Sydney Morning Herald - the only two real Australian newspapers it features) to random nonsense for fun times. It's seriously depressing to see what its top five 'searched' words were in 2022 however. Presumably this is fool Americans trying to understand their world. But surely no-one actually searches on these words alone (it kind of makes it worse to think that they put these together, no doubt with their home towns or states, or their great-grandpappy's name). 'Wrestling' is of course the weirdest one, I mean, what the actual fuck?! 'Murder' is predictable but boring (this is the one I can imagine people do actually just search on - 'hmm, time for a murder. Sherman, set the controls for Dumfuck New Mexico in I think 1878 where Mr. Peachfuzz is just about to kill his five children with a cunning arrangement involving a candle burning through a rope attached to a guillotine.' 'Right away Mr Peabody!'). 'Died' is a funny one, too. But surely once again this is to find out when grandpappy died, not merely someone or something. Or when the dream of doing anything constructive with one's life died. 'Weather' and 'hurricane' are odd as well, I wonder if these are climate denialists or climate conformists? Probs both.  

Meanwhile in Australia the wonderful Trove is under threat and I'm bothered by that. It's actually a more sophisticated searcher than newspapers.com (it distinguishes, somehow, between advertisements, illustrated and non-illustrated articles, etc) and really provides a wealth of valuable minutiae not just on Australian stuff but on all the world's stuff. I love Trove. 

it's garry shandling's show season 4

Fifteen and a half years ago I wrote about how much I enjoyed It's Garry Shandling's Show and, well, Shandling in particular. Since that time I have also droned on about how hard it was to watch it in Australia and how great it was to get all episodes on DVD ten or so years ago but how ironic it was that having them all didn't mean I watched them all. Well, lately I have dipped in to the box set and particularly the fourth and final season. It's an interesting season because it features a major change: Garry is joined by a girlfriend, Phoebe played by Jessica Harper, who becomes his wife during that season as well. Garry also dies - close to the final episode but then is resurrected somehow in an awkward last couple of episodes (according to the commentary there was also an actual final episode filmed which was never properly completed, and instead the final episode is a parody of Driving Miss Daisy which to be honest didn't do much for me because I haven't seen the original; it has a farewell awkwardly tacked on to the very end). 

It's interesting to hear the commentary on the 4th season episodes from various people who worked on the show (and GS himself) where it's revealed that they thought the 4th season was a dud and that the introduction of Phoebe was a mistake, etc. I think they're completely wrong - to me, Jessica Harper absolutely holds her own with Garry and some of their scenes together (and the few moments when she is on screen by herself or with people other than GS) show her to be a great comedy talent. Listening to those Hollywood guys diminish various elements of the shows and the actors (whose names they sometimes don't recall) makes me like them less and the shows more. 

It's also noted in the commentary, and this is self-evident when you watch the show, that a lot of the people who worked on IGSS went on to work on, or somehow have an impact on, The Simpsons and really changed the way that people saw comedy/parody in the late 20th century. You can see some of that stuff being worked out on IGSS. 

So then I started watching a few episodes of season 3 and I'm like - what is this!!! Although there is a great episode where Pete is in a bad mood with everyone and Garry sneaks into his house and puts a dream hat on his head and sees that he's dreaming he wishes he was a lawyer and not a shoe salesman. That's a cool. But then there's also a purported live episode covering the Bush-Dukakis election which is just depressing and weird... 

Very weird too that Barbara Cason, who plays Garry's mother, died a few months after the show ended. She died of a heart attack, but maybe the weird thing for me is I think she was in her sixties and really just didn't look that old. That happens to me a lot. Laura and I watched Maybe This Time, a film written by Anne Brooksbank and Bob Ellis and starring Judy Morris, Bill Hunter, Mike Preston and about forty other people who were once in Homicide (including Leonard Teale as some kind of Jim Cairns figure) the other night and Jill Perryman is in it, as Judy Morris' mother, bemoaning being 53 and I'm just somewhere in my mind really confused about whether that's old or not, though of course since the whole film revolves around Judy Morris being perplexed about turning 30, her mother is likely to be somewhere around that age and clearly since we're on some level meant to identify with Judy Morris' character and her thirtyness, we're meant to regard someone 23 years older than 30 as old. 

But I'm 57 and the older I get the less I am able to understand what particular ages are supposed to 'mean', whereas when I was 20 it was easy, if you were over 30 it was like why aren't you dead already. 

the only upside is, nobody but nobody cares about my opinion of xtc

Stolen picture, sorry. if I monetised my blog would I also be pirating someone else's work for my own profit? 

This morning I saw someone I respect in social media had posted a glowing review of (and a link to) the 90 minute documentary on XTC, This is Pop, alongside a glowing reminisce about what the band had meant to him as a teenager. 

XTC intrigue me because they are a group I once had a lot of time for which I now find grotesque. But I am really unsure of why. I think about them quite a bit (I listened to Drums and Wires, for instance, a lot in the early 1980s and it kind of seared into my brain, but whereas I could listen to Pretenders or Soldier Talk or Freedom of Choice and still enjoy them immensely,* I now find Drums and Wires irritating to even listen to in my head!). 

So I started watching this This is Pop and I really did feel like, I don't know, someone's dad trying to understand what they saw in this rubbish. And I used to really love it myself. I bought so many XTC records in around 1982-3, probably ending with English Settlement which I never really took to, but I think it took me a while to realise that I had gone off them. That fucking 'Senses Working Overtime' probably or perhaps just the whole schtick of 'english settlement', ugh. 

You would not believe how much I have tried to explain to nobody-gives-a-loose-root how they make me feel. I can't put my finger on it, I think is the reason. The englishness rubs me up the wrong way, that's for sure. But whatever else, I just don't know. 

I mean honestly, I know they're not white supremecists, and I know the difference between celebrating (a very rarified, quirky version of) your own culture and seeking to diminish other cultures, but fuck it, everything about them just seems so squalidly inward-looking and exclusive. Also, and this is different but seems slightly related, the way Andy Partridge sing-shouts just gets right up my nose. I remember once being on a train between Sydney and Melbourne and some kids with a boom box were playing AC/DC tapes and one of them stuck his head up behind the seat and looked the old person in the next row in the eye and pointed his finger at them and mouthed the lyrics. Yes, Andy Partridge triggers me. 

The end, I suppose! 

*In fact, the other night I had a huge hankering for Freedom of Choice and played the whole of side one, except 'Girl U Want', but of course, including 'Whip It', which I must have heard about one billion times in my sad life, usually unwillingly.

monetising

As I have revealed previously I do potter around the back end of this blog a little bit trying to figure out for instance why some posts are exceptionally popular despite having no intrinsic higher quality than others (and continuing to marvel at how many people land here looking for information about the H. R. Pufnstuff theme or Amscol ice cream - in both cases, I can't really give you anything, I'm sorry). I also of course always want to check out where people are coming from, though I'm aware most of them/you aren't people but bots. That's your problem. 

Anyway anytime I'm lurking around at the back, I'm offered the opportunity to 'monetise' my blog, which I take to mean insert advertising into it. To be honest I've never considered this worthwhile really and I'm sure it will get me zero money (if I did make, you know, $2.35 a month, I'd give it to Save the Bilby or something). But it did occur to me that perhaps it would be interesting just to see if it made any difference to where people came from who read the blog, etc. I would consider doing it I guess just for the proverbial shits and giggles provided it was reversible. 

Any readers tried monetising? Any advice? 

flook january 1953

 

rabbit rabbit