amc

OK, I was able to upload this by dragging it into the post rather than uploading it from file (exhausting tech talk I know). 

It's a lot of fluff yeah particularly the first few paragraphs but there's some interesting detail both in direct relation to her, and also, sign of the times stuff. It's from the SMH 22 April 1974 p. 25. How cool do the Victor Borge LP Show and that ep of The Waltons sound? That's right, negative to the power of fucktillion cool. 

(sigh)

I probably mentioned in the past that I was pray to a kind of nervous twitch that involved always spending half a minute every day or so updating my Neko Atsume game which basically just meant topping up the cats in the yard's food. Ridiculous but maybe calming? I don't know. Anyway, the game is now glitchy and I can't actually buy any more food with the gold fish I have. This is not a major issue in a world gone completely to shit, I know that. But Laura noted, correctly, that's how it goes with these kind of online things, they start to crumble, it's interesting. (The cats don't starve and die, by the way, like tamagotchis - they just don't come to the yard anymore). 

Anyway, quite a few times now blogger has refused to upload pictures to my blog, and in fact during the course of my last post it refused to upload a news clipping about Amber Mae Cecil. So, maybe there's an end of an era coming here too. We shall see. 

amber mae cecil and bill hunter in cop shop

 5 & 8 June 1978 

can't stop it

I was pleased to get my copy of the vinyl reissue of Can't Stop It in the mail today. I have played side 3 and side 4 (I had nothing to do with side 4, except insofar as Guy asked me if there was anything I thought should go on it and I said no, or perhaps I said yes the Chocolate Grinders but they're not on there). I wrote a sleevenote of sorts which is printed so tiny that my poor eyes can barely pick out the words but whatever that's fine. I am not unhappy with the collection, I think it holds up as they say. Or do they say 'stands up' anyway, it works. 

As I say in the sleeve notes, when Guy and I put this thing together 25 years ago, it was a genre people tended not to regard very fondly, and you could still get a lot of the records - particularly ones by people who didn't go on to be in the charts, etc - very cheap, it was a real IYKYK situation. It seemed like a weird thing to like. As I also say in the sleeve notes now you can go to the supermarket and hear 'post punk' music playing like it's something most people remember, but trust me, most people were listening to 'Old Time Rock 'n' Roll' and, god, I can't even remember, awful things. Most people loved awful things then. Most people also concurrently hated good things. Yes, I haven't forgotten. 

15 years ago a work colleague made me laugh by referring, somewhat but not entirely self-parodically, to her 'awesome taste in music', which I still find funny, but it would be as funny if I said it, because I don't have an awesome taste in anything, except perhaps close associates. But I am not unproud of being a part of this, as tiny an effort as it took. 

Pictured is a special Amoeba Records pressing in the US - I nabbed this photo from https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1112578207580551&set=a.620750710096639&comment_id=1088393409823998&notif_id=1749528796197367&notif_t=feedback_reaction_generic&ref=notif
 

sunshine yesterday

 

Various things seen. Last picture is my first meeting with my 9th or 11th niecephew, Hetty, b. late April. 

walkway to the hotham hub children's centre

 

cop shop episode 42

IMDB doesn't say anything about Bud Tingwell being in these eps of Cop Shop (41 & 42, I think) but it has the most unusual storyline about Tingwell's character Keith York, a high-up in the police, who's being blackmailed by crooks who have tapes of his psychiatric sessions wherein he somehow does or does not confess (?) to being homosexual, or actually I think just having urges in that direction which he has not and most definitely will never act on. There is a most peculiar sequence in which, for no obvious reason, he and his wife (played by Cecily Polson) have spectacular sex and then talk about it (the sex). The situation is not solved, which is to say he presumably continues to be gay, though the blackmail materials are recovered. But the Yorks seem very happy. 

I don't really know what was going on here. It was like a script written by AI where AI was told that gayness was a dose of nits. 

SMH 'Monday Guide' 22 May 1978 p. 5

yarraville to tottenham along stony creek

Perry and I decided to take a walk from Yarraville to Tottenham today. Actually, we decided we would walk to Sunshine but my foot hurt too much (don't ask) and I abbreviated the operation. Perry didn't mind. He was at the stop and sniff everything stage of the walk anyway. 

As so often happens when I uploaded the photos here they all came out in the reverse order I took them, but whatever, doesn't matter does it. Here are a few pictures from the Tott end, a bunch of houses I like to imagine are Anders Hansen homes from the late 20s-early 30s but I don't really know that, except he was the main builder in that area and these houses are all more or less the same dimensions and same age. This boarded-up one is interesting...

I love this brick 'n' weatherboard creation it's rad as:

This 'is what it is'... 

I'm in a guessing mood (after about 3/4 hour of fruitless research) so I'm going to say this could once have been the premises of Riverside Manufacturers. It was apparently a big concern in Paramount Rd, Tottenham, in the middle of last century. 

I like to document Pam the Bird wherever/whenever. 

I have a very soft spot (as Rowena Wallace's character on Cop Shop, Pamela, said to George Mallaby as Glenn in an episode I just watched - 'in the head' - for late period Housing Commission homes, which is what I think these might be, in a dead end street in Yarraville. They're nice.

A-a-a-a-anyway, it was a decent enough walk, Perry was extremely well-behaved, it was too hot and glary, which is just life going forward I suppose, I mentioned the bit about the sore foot, fuck that, 

still watching cop shop

I am continuing to enjoy Cop Shop - I'm on the second volume now, there are 22 of them (gulp). Above see Luigi Villani as 'Patsy' in episode 1.28, in-between Terry Norris and John Orcsik obvs. 

It's a hard rhythm to get used to. There were two episodes a week. Storylines seem to overlap across a few, more than two, sometimes, episodes - but I'm not keeping close tabs on that so maybe I'm wrong, maybe the crime plots are resolved in pairs while the soap storylines are endless or infinite or whatever. It's interesting seeing actors more used to hard TV cop roles wrangle softer plots. Perhaps viewers were having trouble keeping track of things - there's a lot of recap at the beginning of each episode, dare I say way too much. 

Peter Adams has the biggest shoes to fill. JJ is such a child, at the same time, has to do street chase cop things, and not only be pervy with the girls but also a lover (fiance!) to Valerie. Phew! Tough stuff. 

Here's an article from the Age 2 December 1978 p. 22. 

sometimes when I'm a bit bored...

 

I like to look at real estate listings for incredibly cheap properties in Tasmania and imagine what it would be like to live there, and consider what kind of appalling life changing situations would make me up stumps and go and live in for instance Rosebery where I saw this mural on the wall of a room in a house in a Domain listing. 

 

camberwell market, etc

Laura and I went to Camberwell Market this morning, we barely bought anything tbh,* but there was a lot of interesting things to look at. For instance, the art of Lin Van Hek.

I thought I knew all about Lin Van Hek and I was certainly right to think that she was a part of Joe Dolce Music Theatre and I'm pretty sure the second single from the Shaddap You Face album was essentially a song by her. I gather she is also known by the name Lyn Van Hecke and perhaps also other variations. Here is her name in an ad for Ram from 15 April 1983 p. 8. 

It's odd to see Tears for Fears there because oddly enough Laura overheard a lady complain that she was unable to find a copy of Songs from the Big Chair then being assured by a vendor that it was very rare, and with that in mind I specifically spent time at this record stall trying to find a copy, because I was sure it wasn't rare in the least. But it wasn't here because in fact there was no T section at all, I shit you not. 

We also spent a moderate amount of time in Burke Road Camberwell and there is a kind of a retro thrifty place upstairs in Burke Road accessible only from a lane behind, I went in there but got no joy. 

And also for what it's worth I noted that the Chocolate Box Centre, which was such a marvel in its day, no longer exists (probably hasn't for ages), but there's still the signage. 

 

From the Age 15 September 1990 p. 159. I can't find anything in the newspapers about the original launch of the Chocolate Box as a shopping centre/ arcade but I think it must have been in around 1979-80. I'll find out sometime OK. 

*The only thing I bought was a film marked 'Morwell'. Who knows what that will be. I was going to buy a Nigel Olsson album for $8 but the guy running the stall just refused to engage so I put it back and walked away. Rule number one of selling trash: don't let the customer have time to reconsider. 

The same stall had an album by Sprit that I would have bought except I looked at it and it had weird scratches on it.