trevor horn adventures in modern recording

 

OK another music book as an audiobook and once again it's an interesting story not particularly well told (but read OK, by the author). Trevor Horn has worked with some great, great people (Dollar, ABC) and some less great ones (Malcolm McLaren, I mean, really...) and made some great records. I enjoy the industry context and so on, and the weirdness between for instance him making a shit-hot pop dance record for Yes of all people (I'm talking 'Owner of a Lonely Heart' though tbh not one of my favourite records by a long chalk). This memoir contains the immortal line 'the year 1982 gave way to the year 1983'. Anyway I'm up to the bit where he's done Propaganda and he's about to do the Art of Noise (I assume) and it's still pretty interesting. But hell... why don't people write these things properly? Maybe there's actually no such thing as a proper way to do it. 

Update 30/8: It gets worse towards the end. The worst worst bit is the bit in 1989 where TH works on some stupid Tom Waits cover* with Rod Stewart of all the fools, and there's an extended section (with bad gruff American accent no less) where Lester Bangs calls TH because he's writing sleeve notes for the Best Of that the track is supposed to be on. Lester Bangs had been dead for seven years by this time so I am going to say... that some books need a bit more judicious editing and fact checking. 

* The song is 'Downtown Train'. I couldn't recall it when reading about it but the way it was discussed in the text made it sound really interesting structurally however when I started watching the video I realised that I did know the song, and it was not for me, and I couldn't in fact bear to watch or listen beyond the first 40 seconds or so. 

perry is one

 

Perry was born a year ago today, and he's a healthy active curious young man. Barking is a problem, and there are some other behavioural quirks which I am working on ironing out. 

Yesterday at training the trainer saw something and said something about Perry: he said 'he's checking in with you all the time'. It had not occurred to me, or rather I had been aware of it but not what it meant, that as we went through the various loose-lead, sitting/lying ('dropping') exercises, Perry was frequently trying to catch or actually catching my eye. The trainer said this was something I needed to capitalise on (not easy) and reward (ditto) and I see what he means. I have always had this sense that Perry thought he knew better than me, but of course that's just projection - he needs my guidance and he is I think aware that I am the gateway to his getting what he wants. I know that he definitely wants to learn. 

Dog ownership is not cruisy, especially in the first couple of years, but I feel that there are only two columns ('satisfactory' and 'needs work') and no third column ('give up it's hopeless'). The excessive barking is lessening on the whole, certainly he is now aware that he can't bark for what he wants, although we do have a bit too much barking-at-noises-in-the-front-yard but we're working on that. Not sure if we'll ever be able to handle 'barking on tv', though this is a peculiar one, as he looks at the tv when he hears it i.e. he knows it's on the tv not outside. He also, the minute the tv is muted, stops worrying about that. So... why can't he apply logic to this situation. I'll have to take that one to the tribunal. 

deadloch

Have you watched Deadlock? I am a few episodes in. It's got a lot going on. It's very complex, much more than you'd imagine at the outset, so a lot of characters who you initially think are silly cliches become a lot more. 

I was pleased to see that Prime Video automatically gave me Finnish subtitles, which have been a lot of fun. This word, which has surely never been used anywhere else at any time, means 'ginger bread man house'. 

kororoit creek

Yesterday Perry and I went for a long walk along this stretch of Kororoit Creek. Would recommend. 

The area is very sculpted, a lot of mown grass is what I mean, which I know is not to everyone's taste, but it does give it a bit of a dreamscape quality - once again not to everyone's taste obvs. I can enjoy it in small doses, I think in part because it has a non-specific nostalgic feel to it. 

The heavenesqueness of it was only strengthened by the appearance of actual pearly gates labelling on the horizon.

This is the Glengala Drain. It's a long space with precisely no access to it anywhere along its length - only at the ends. Which is stunningly bad planning really. 

After we got out of this part of town Perry and I went to my old hang at Perth Avenue, Albion because I just wanted a quick look at the Westgate shops big w. And bought some pierogi. 

Then a quick stop off at the op shop in Hampshire Road where the only really interesting purchase was a 1964 cook book with pictures like this:

 nom nom 

killing thatcher

Margaret Thatcher was a poisonous automaton, and the very best interpretation that could be made of her behaviour and attitudes is that she was severely misguided in a way that kind of set her understanding of the universe at probably a very early age where up was down and vice-versa. 

I can’t recall why on earth I decided to purchase the audiobook of Rory Carroll’s Killing Thatcher however as I have never had a strong interest in the intricacies of the Irish struggles, etc, only an innate sympathy, not because I have anything other than antipathy for patriotism or even religious affiliations but of course I can see the ways in which a British presence in Ireland is a retrograde oppression (the worst kind of oppression). Also, British history is pox. I really should write down my motivations for getting involved in things as life almost always moves on and I forget. However, also, it doesn’t matter. 

 

It's a good book, and it’s a good example of how to make history gripping,* though of course it’s a story that would be hard to fluff – the ins and outs of the IRA plot to kill Thatcher at the Conservative conference in Brighton in 1984. Carroll appropriately paints all players (eg the IRA, the Conservatives) as equal pawns in a conflict they’ve inherited, rather than instigated although Thatcher with her robotic ‘strength’ in the face of near death (or anything) is a horrorshow who gives every impression that, if she had been killed in the bombing, she wouldn’t have noticed. The stories of others who were injured are sensitively told and naturally excruciating to hear about. 

 

As you can see I haven’t got to the end yet. I’m in part 3, which looks at the slow and steady (I’m assuming) process by which the bomber is (I’m assuming) caught. Carroll makes a good fist of turning people, whose jobs are just to be cogs in a machine, into inherently interesting and engaging people, with little biographical fragments and explanations for turns of phrase and approaches, that make you feel like you kind of know them, although you're really filling in most of the detail yourself. All these men – ok, there are two or three women – have a place in one of two power structures (UK government vs IRA) and the two power structures seemingly found/find value in keeping the battle going – as per The Wire, as per the three nations in 1984. Ultimately it’s not even my place to have sympathies but I am always going to be hostile to British imperialism (actually any imperialism). 

 

Fortunately none of this shizzle is ‘about’ me. Actually that’s probably the best bit of the whole book for me – thank Christ I wasn’t born in the British Isles! Though I have to say Ireland is one of my favourite places in the world, a superb country I want to see more of and hopefully will – quite soon. I know that’s a glib way to end but as I always say, this is my blog, not a review I wrote for Casual Supine Dickhead magazine where the glib endings have to have a cast-iron bottom. 

*as in - gripping like a thriller, as opposed to engaging like history often is

judy nunn presumably late 1987 or early 1988

 

More recording - five years ago

(Aug 2018): Dani, Philip and Al overdubbing the More album. I hope it is the first of many but who knows. I think it's one of the best things I've been involved in but I've felt that way about so many things I've done in recent years, my positivity astonishes me. Maybe it's delusion. LET THE PEOPLE DECIDE

chat gpt must try harder

Canberra Times 6 October 1987 p. 16

I asked chat gpt to generate a list of a hundred one-syllable made-up words that sound like English words. It came up with this list:

Zorp Dweeb Snook Blik Quib Flonk Plib Grank Vlurp Triz Splosh Zink Gork Frib Blip Snorf Dlunk Plint Chorb Scrax Frizzle Crump Quorp Snug Zlurp Jank Flump Prang Glorp Throb Krunk Snit Vlank Plink Grump Snaz Bork Flit Zank Brisk Glint Fwip Crang Thwack Skrunk Plump Squib Snock Trank Blonk Plorp Snish Grizzle Drang Splork Sklank Floop Twang Blunk Prink Quix Skrill Bort Zorp Slank Brinx Spork Zlank Chomp Quill Snirt Blort Grank Frink Drib Squirt Trill Zlork Flank Snix Glink Thrunk Skank Plib Brump Spint Frob Zib Glurk Splink Snack Plong Squink Trink Blop Quirk Snib Crunk Splint Grink These are all imaginary one-syllable words and have no actual meanings in English.

Off the top of my head, and ignoring the lazy repetitions, 'dweeb'?! 'blip'??! 'snug'?! 'prang'?! 'throb'?!! 'grump'!?!! 'flit'!? 'brisk'??!! 'glint'!!!!???? 'thwack'? 'PLUMP'???!!! I stopped reading after that, as chat gpt clearly does not know the English language and thinks everything's stupid. On the second point it may be correct but... 'snack'???!!! 

draft of a review of a Don Walker album from August 2013

I wrote this bunch of cliches and almost thought I'd written a record review, then realised, fuck this is poor. So you can read it ten years later OK.

Don Walker

Hully Gully

Sometimes the smart thing to do would seem to be to wait before passing judgment, and in the case of a new Don Walker album I would like to take about five years just to be sure. Of course that doesn’t suit the people who paid for/released the record, or the people who promote the shows to promote the record, or the artist himself I would imagine. Certainly all of them could validly point out that, considering Walker’s last solo album Cutting Back – released in 2006 – remains one of my favourite albums of the 21^st century, it’d be at very least contrary to be finicky about passing judgment on this one. So, of course, I will naturally concede that this one’s already got me in its grasp, and after only a few quick and cursory listens I can tell that it’s a doozy, perhaps more pop (perhaps more facile, or maybe just less miserable) than Cutting Back, but still brilliant.

I don’t especially buy into Walker’s various mythologies; to a certain degree I think they are a front that keep him away from writing about his true self – caveat being that anything other than a very abstracted version of his true self wouldn’t really connect with anyone, and he’s probably right. His true self is a respected and moneyed songwriter who surely has no need to ever work again – a million miles from, for instance, the drifter protagonist in his song ‘Young Girls’ or most of the other narrators in his songs. For all that, there is no particular reason why a great songwriter should write about his ‘true self’ – who cares and why would they? – anymore than a novelist should always write autobiographically. It’s part of the weirdness of the Australian class system that Walker, an artist with working class origins, made his fortune and his name writing Cold Chisel hits which remain the soundtrack to umpteen working class Australian lives and gave everyday Australians icons like Barnesy, continues to write about people he cannot know anymore if he ever really did, (and in fact who are probably by and large a fiction now if they ever really existed) but now for a slender portion of the public. Don Walker is too weird for most people!

It’s funny also how Walker is genuinely one of the great lyricists of our time, but how often his music doesn’t come close to the brilliance of the words – you can imagine this may well be deliberate (not only does flashy music get in the way of great lyrics, but it would also intrude on the laconic and/or even-tempered and/or suppressed rage of the various stories told).  The way Walker sings is a counterpoint to that. It’s a natural voice, unusual for a singer, a bit nasal, just slightly higher than you might have imagined, but completely appropriate to the disappointed middle-aged man tales within. (Exceptions to both of these include the title track and the marvelous mid-paced ‘On the Beach’).

[END] 

ascot vale public housing

 

Barry and Charlie 8 August 2013

 

raiders of the lost etc

 

Lacking Homicide and having gone all the way through Special Squad I am now randomly watching the shitty old films that my ill-advised subscription to various streaming services allow me. My choices are somewhat driven by the reviews I read/hear of various new iterations of old franchises so, there's a new Indiana Jones film out (I suppose it's not that new - it's like a month old) so I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark, which I guess is one of those films I almost certainly saw when it came out - I was 16 or so, maybe I was a tad too cool but nah probably not - but I remember nothing, absolutely nothing about it, except whatever has been communicated to me via the zeitgeist. I watched this film in bits and pieces over a week or so. Ditto Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation - I watched this shizzle in instalments, barely comprehending the story or perhaps comprehending there is not much of a story, and taking in interesting bits of information along the way, like, that apparently Simon Pegg has been a regular member of the supporting cast in these films for over a decade now, I never knew. 

Anyway what I really want to see is the Barbie film but this pleasure is being denied me. I would also quite like to see the new Mission Impossible film I think. Or maybe I should wait five years. 

hotham hill neighbourhood association

 

I am not entirely sure of the date of this map (is it a map?) but it was in amongst the early North Melbourne Association materials in the State Library (these, perhaps counterintuitively, are in the Richmond Association files - because Anthea and David Eyres, who were formative in the NMA, moved to Richmond in the late 60s and clearly took the early stuff with them, for reasons unclear). Anyway, what intrigues me is this Hotham Hill Neighbourhood Association stuff, established 1963, so three years before the North Melbourne one. I can't find any information on them anywhere, to the extent that this is the only mention I have ever seen of them. There must be something!

The NMA was initiated by people who massed, largely, around the intersection of Abbotsford and Haines St; Haines is north of Arden, so, these NMA people were right on the boundary of their 'terrain', which is interesting in itself given that a lot of what has been asked about the NMA and similar residents activist groups of the 1960s-early 70s (by me and others) is the extent to which they believed and/or could justify their claim to be a representative voice for the whole community, given that the majority of the community was low-waged, unheard, unused to making demands about their rights or their environment; and the residents activist organisers were generally middle-class, used to being taken notice of and so on. 

It's also interesting that these two groups, according to whoever drew this diagram, were represented as having a line of communication with the major organisations controlling planning and services in the area. Are those pink arrows aspirational?

samuel hatty's service medals

 

Laura found Samuel Hatty's service medals at work, where they were 'among the unloved items we use for school students to handle and learn from'. It gives her sinister coincidence (what the Finns call synkkä yhteensattuma) vibes but I think more likely Samuel himself was something of an unloved item who put his head above the parapet enough to still make a little impact a hundred years later for someone (me) who likes a bit of arcana, but also, he was probably not that cared about after he died so something like this could well end up as a will-I-throw-this-out-or-will-I-see-if-the-Shrine-wants-it situation for his widow or some other relation.

Or perhaps he never picked them up in the first place, which presumably a lot of people didn't?  

'well it's something in your life'

When I got married my grandmother congratulated me and I mumbled some response and she said, 'well, it's something in your life'. I am well aware that this is one of those comments that are just basically the mundane icing on a mundane cake, but it's stuck with me. 

Here are a few things in my life:

On the weekend Laura, Leonard and I went to some Open House places she chose from research. This one is a block away from us, the Ukrainian church c. 1962, and it was amazing inside, but I'll wait for Laura to blog about it, her pictures were better than mine. 

This is bullshit as all bullshit - well - I'll hold off on opinionating about the concept of building an apartment block purely for renters but the whole 'we're local' thing is just preposterous. So League of Gentleman, mainly I mean in the sense of local shop for local people rather than Pappa Lazarou but perhaps a bit that too. I note that the building site has some indigenous-styled art on it as well but I won't make any appropriation accusations in that dept either, I have no information. 

Home life 

If I may indulge in a little more duolingo paranoia I'm coming up to my one-year streak and I have a strong feeling it's making things much easier for me (I will do the above no worries) in preparation for me feeling good about renewing my superduolingo subscription. I probably will.  

exclusive! guy pearce interview!

Not that exclusive actually. It seems like I sent this to Idols, the celebrity photograph agency, on 2 August 1991 to provide editorial to go with photographs of Guy Pearce. I suppose this was the few months of my life when I was trying to be a freelance writer of some description and using the very few contacts I had, mostly via Smash Hits, to achieve that not-very-dear dream. Is this interesting? I can't know. 

I have always liked Guy Pearce so it's nice to have done this, I don't remember doing it at all. It's almost possible that I cobbled this together out of other people's interviews with him but more likely I spent ten minutes with him on the phone and he delivered these goods. This was the time just after Neighbours when he did a quick small role on Home and Away and was also working with the director Frank Howson who was wasting no time at all putting together a bunch of Guy Pearce films, all of which eventually came out to limited success. Heaven Tonight is the one that has a particular fame as a funny 80s (though of course it's 90s) old-pop-star-vs-young-pop-star 'just gotta do my thing' movie. But there were others, Young Flynn came out some years later as Flynn (IMDB lists it as something else entirely - My Forgotten Man if you can believe that!) and if GP actually did write the soundtrack for Friday on my Mind, well... I don't know what to say. 

 

Perhaps you'll be interested to see what this was all printed out on the back of - it's layouts from Smash Hits at the time, waste paper I guess, probably printed out to be proofed (hence the deletion symbol on the dash below). 

I also really liked Betty Boo and in fact I bought her Boomania LP a few years ago but couldn't play it because it was scratched to bits. Anyway it checks out that Smash Hits would have been getting her to review the singles at this time because she toured Australia in July 1991 and indeed this was the time of the infamous incident where she was revealed to be miming to a record at a Frankston nightclub appearance. Big deal! She was good. Look at the singles she go to review! A lot of well-known artists but I can summon barely any of these tracks to mind, although 'Make Out All Right' is a title I recognise  - that and 'Rush You'. 

Still amazing to think we had pen pals, but at least by this stage (due to a complaint from a parent on entirely justified grounds) we stopped printing our readers' addresses and instead had some poor moderator to filter letters. 

And finally... the page that the printer always created whenever you turned it on. 

Now, having shown you these pages, I'm going to put them in the recycling.