"His word against mine' and 'today ends at dawn'

'His word against mine' is an interesting penultimate episode for D4 because it seems like it's really keen to not say what it wants to say, which is, this is the final episode with Gerard Kennedy as Frank Banner. The storyline aside from Banner's resignation (to get married) is a bit slender from a 2025 POV but perhaps it had more impact when it was first broadcast - it's a slightly non-sequiturish story of a local councillor who's accused of being gay and ultimately, well, is. Or is bisexual, rather. He concedes/confesses this to the Ds but he doesn't outright confess to his wife - which isn't the usual D4 way, there's no real closure there, not that we necessarily needed it.

And nor is there any real closure on Frank Banner. We simply end on the three originals in the car driving to do some job or other, I'm not entirely sure what. 

The following episode starring John Stanton still has Kennedy in the opening credits, i.e., they didn't bother making a special opener for what they already knew was a dead show. Stanton's character Tom Morgan is completely brilliant, very non-sexy (but how sexy was Frank Banner?) and more like Columbo than anything else. The character has taken a transfer from Bairnsdale, where he's been a long time, and he has attitude plus. 

The moustache isn't a bad look for Stanton but presumably also he had to distinguish himself from the character of Pat Kelly in Homicide. Those Homicide eps were still screening while this was being filmed. 

I'm 99% certain these images above are from a car park close to the Crawfords Abbotsford premises, somewhere near Duke St. 

Mick Peters here is reading the Age from 16 April 1975 p. 2, probably the article by John Pinkney, below. If the third paragraph in the second column isn't an easter egg, what is?! Add to the mix the fact that John Pinkney (who was married to my aunt) also wrote scripts for Crawfords shows, and you get... um... something added to the mix. I don't know what pen name John used, he didn't use his real name, I suppose it would have been a conflict of interest considering he was also a TV critic.*

Admittedly the episode does end on a rather crappy note with a madwoman wandering alongside the Yarra saying 'boy, where are you boy?' - fairly silly really. But D4 could have gone so much further into the late 70s with Stanton as Morgan, in many ways (from what little we saw) a lot more complex than Banner whose character roots were in tawdry soap opera. 

* Though IMDB says he wrote thousands of episodes of Bellbird so, I don't know. 

division 4: the human factor

The final year of D4 was patchy. 

This might be (I haven't looked it up - yes I just did - and it is) the last of 13 appearances of Keith Eden in the show. This time he's an older man in a car accessories firm who sets fire to a computer because he can't stand progress, or whatever. 

He's good. He has a twinkle in his eye. I have a lot of time for him. He's gone now. He died in 2003. 

I'm guessing this opening shizzle was shot from atop the Crawfords building in Abbotsford. I haven't compared anything but it looks familiar. All of this. 

This is not the greatest episode, particularly given the weird bit where even though Eden's character commits arson, then steals some car radios to try and cover it up then dumps them, then tries to do himself in, the company still wants to redeploy him to personnel (!!!!!!!!). Explain why!

OK one more thing of note: this twenty-year-old. It wasn't her first TV appearance, she'd already been in The Box for six episodes as 'Office Girl' and 'Debbie - Office Girl' and now here she is: 

For some el weirdo reason IMDB thinks she is reprising the role of 'Office Girl' and also that this is true: 

But it is not true:

I don't think she says anything, but I didn't notice her in the show until I noticed her name in the credits. I am looking forward to seeing her in The Box though. 

unpublished teeth & tongue review from November 2014

TEETH & TONGUE AT SHADOW ELECTRIC WITH KANGAROO SKULL, THE ANCIENTS + TIME FOR DREAMS + KEITH DEVERELL (projections) and FULL UGLY DJs

With an unprecedented rain presentation ongoing in the world outside there were clearly concerns amongst the Teeth and Tongue contingent particularly that no-one was going to show up however great the lineup at the Shadow Electric, a remarkable but in the scheme of things pretty out-of-the-way venue right on the edge of Abbotsford. After all, it was not a launch or a ‘special’ event, other than the exceptional fact than we were all alive at that moment and wished to commune in a listenable environment. Irregardless the place was already impressively populated when Time for Dreams took the stage early in the evening.

This two-piece spearhead the shoegaze renewal with that very 21^st century innovation of a looped and ‘generated’ backing (not sure what was bringing the rhythm but Tom Carlyon had at least ten pedals of various descriptions on offer). Of course this kind of set up means all songs have to have extended intros which are actually just getting the loops and shit in order. Amanda Roff was barefoot and her bass was at times booming and at others muddy but given the weather you couldn’t call that inappropriate. Things progressed well until the end of the set, with what Roff described as ‘our final thing’, and then it took off, and while it was uncertain whether she was singing about being ‘high on religion’, or a ‘high population’, or perhaps ‘hi, I’m an engine’ the main thrust came from a soaring 80s glam stadium rock exercise which managed to marry firstly a Neil Young ‘Everyone Knows…’ vibe with that weird ‘chinesey’ sound you used to get in keyboard-based bands of thirty years ago. That was a triumph.

The Ancients’ Jonathan Michell’s banter sprinkled throughout their set on this remarkable evening was possibly some of the least inspirational ever uttered aside from nothing, on the other hand, if you go looking for inspiration in band banter you were probably in trouble long beforehand. The group – one of the finest, hands down – presented a thick pastiche of subtly re-rendered takes on previously released songs and material presently being worked up for a new album. Two instrumentals emerged thus, one a pounding, esoteric and double-barrelled supercharged ‘Ride of the Valkyries’-styled sturm und drang powderkeg played as Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry might conduct an orchestra comprised of members of Can and Black Sabbath… until its second part, which comes closer to seventies Lou Reed’s full sonic potential as only dreamt by Tony Visconti after a surfeit of pina coladas with Amanda Lear. An extraordinarily glamorous band brimming with sex appeal, The Ancients have no problem uniting the sounds of the traditional church organ (very appropriate at that place of pain and shame that is the Abbotsford Convent) with a jig in the style of Big Country. They cannot be underestimated and their 2015 album is already one of next year’s best.

A moment to mention the Full Ugly DJs this evening. It is always advisable when DJing to play as much Prefab Sprout as one can. The lilting, wry observations of singer-songwriter Paddy MacAloon, facilitated into the near-mainstream as they were by a distinguished cohort such as Everything But the Girl and Aztec Camera, do not get enough dancefloor action in this day and age and should, in fact, be compulsory particularly the song ‘Appetite’, which was not played this evening but fuckin’ should have been. Nonetheless, excellent selections.

Kangaroo Skull evoked a woodpecker in a rifle range. No-one knew how to dance to this but thought they could anyway.

Teeth and Tongue owe nothing to anybody. The argument continues whether Jess Cornelius has a right to continually promote the group as a solo project that just happens to feature four other hard-working and talented musicians who have consolidated into a stunningly fine and fluid collective; it’s a solo project the same way you and I are solo projects, but we still need other people and even Margaret (‘there is no such thing as society’) Thatcher played with a team. Marc Reguiero-McKelvie, one of the world’s most inventive and eloquent guitar players, is an integral part not just of the T&T sound but also the dynamic core of each song; when he enters the fray it’s like taking your shades off in the art gallery. Listen to his work with his solo project Popolice and his other band New Estate if you haven’t. And if JC is going to continue to insist she is Teeth and Tongue, she should consider that (a) even if she is, Teeth and Tongue wouldn’t be half as good without the other players, Marc in particular and (b) giving Marc half the front cover of the Tambourine album suggests she knows this whether she knew it or not. None of this is germane to Teeth and Tongue’s show at Abbotsford, except it’s germane to Teeth and Tongue altogether. So T&T will close the set with a cover of ‘Total Control’, which JC will sing with deft passion alongside the utterly complimentary and beguiling second vocalist Jade McInally, and you know she has in no way lost that control, except then Marc comes in half way through and gives a whole new reading to the song’s possibilities.

The jungle vibe to so many of the Teeth and Tongue set at the moment is visceral and hard-leaning. There is a My Life in the Bush of Ghosts sense to the whole, with a kind of throbbing jitteriness that counters the goth sensibility of the layered, searing set (nods to the foul ‘Kokomo’ aside). Only last week the amazing Pauline Murray was doing a very, very, very, low, low key tour, and it’s Murray’s work with Martin Hannett as the Invisible Girls thirty years ago that provides one great touchstone for the current T&T sounds. I mean they probably haven’t heard it. Except it’s everywhere in the culture now.

In sum at the end of the day, a brilliant night of realised potential. Thank you all for coming. It worked. 

* note from late 2024: I have absolutely, utterly, no recollection whatsoever of this show - none.