Young and Boring

It sounds like a media scam when you think about it and we do know it goes back a long way, this strange idea that Young People are Cool. It is funny on reflection to consider that, while I do kind of tacitly accept Young People being Cool as a concept, in the same way I get through life with the general notion that not everyone in the world thinks Make Mine Mink is the funniest film ever made or that people who climb mountains, rather than being locked up or just barely tolerated, are feted – a dual reality, if you will – Young People were never cool when I was a child, a teenager, or in my twenties. And I work a lot with young people now and if they are Cool they are incredibly uncoolly good at keeping this a secret, to the extent that I’m pretty sure they are actually not at all Cool. Oh, except inasmuch as many Young People are the objects of lust and envy amongst older people, I guess. That could be mistaken for Cool, in the final analysis it’s only Cool the way Clapton; Tintin and Snowy after the solar eclipse; or Captain Cook in Hawaii were gods – you know, they weren't.

It is such a relief to realise this because I keep finding myself listening to Young People’s music, enjoying it and fearing that someone will accuse me of trying to be Cool from it. I guess the fear is actually more accurately that they will accuse me of that and I will believe them. Well, as long as Young People aren’t Cool, it’s not going to be a problem.

I am thinking particularly of Operator Please and the Young and Restless. The first of these is a genuine young band, because they are under 20, the second is overall older I think but presumably appeal to young people (all I really have to go on for that is the comments on YouTube which seem to be written by 5 year olds) (mind you the video below is so silly it made me question my allegiances a bit). OP’s album is actually a little sugary and tweaked for my liking – the singles are great, particularly ‘Leave it alone’, but the album generally is crafted to an inch of its life and the drumming is too programmy, even when it’s trying to be anything but (eg on ‘Zero Zero’). Mia thinks that OP could be famous and successful forever, and I will take that on, after all I am the one who (bet I’ve told you this before) forced friends to sign a statement in 1996 that they thought Silverchair would be successful two years later, because I so completely did not believe it to be so – having been bitten by Zillian and the ZigZag Men, I suppose, and shy.

Young and Restless are a lot of fun. On reflection I’m not quite sure why I put them in the Young People’s Music category. Maybe because of their name – just like Sonic Youth, John Paul Young, Baby John Burgess, You’ve Got Foetus on your Breath, right? The drumming is sensational (the first thirty seconds of ‘Satan’, yes they have a song called that can you believe it!, is so inspired), the bass is grunty, and so on. Their record is probably in its way every bit as calculated as Operator Please’s (most records are, frankly, there's no reason to dislike records or like them on this basis) but they went the extra yard to make it seem less so, or alternatively it all just fell into place or-gan-ic-ally. My favourite song of theirs – can’t remember its name – is the one with the least amount of tune (my mp3 player doesn’t like this one all that much, so I don’t hear it very often on random) but the tune ones are grouse too.

Also at the moment I’m listening to the unyoung sounds of:

Jane Dust – A spray of red from the deep what a sensational album and the song below is one of my favourites
The Muddy Spurs – the best Muddy Spurs album I’ve heard - never made a video or were videoed it would seem so all I have are memories
X – At home with you – the recent reissue with the live album adjoining which I haven’t listened to yet
Stereolab – Sound Dust – the last album with Mary Hansen and only two bucks from Dimmeys this morning
Mandu – natch
Magic Dirt – the Snow White album which is ten bucks at JB at the moment and highly recommended by me
Kes Band - Kes Band

Yesterday was the day for loud conversations on public transport. In the morning it was a LOUD discussion of how teens/20s conversant was so drunk (on the weekend, I’m guessing, or some time in the recent past), she was ‘lying vertical to the stairs’ (I’m not sure how that works) and had ‘a huge bruise from my hip to my arse, I’ll show you when I get to school’. Also how, although she had been working in the same job on a Friday evening for 18 months, she forgot last Friday that she had to work. OMG. The man opposite her was wincing at her moronic pronouncements I tried to catch his eye in sympathy but he was wincing too much to want to notice.

On the way back it was a woman probably my age talking to ‘Darl’ – her cockatoo I suppose – regarding ‘are you on this train?’ I mean, really, where would we be without mobile phones? Hamstrung, in limbo, frustrated, unable to talk to people 20 minutes before we see them face-to-face.

Watching Underbelly the last few nights I have been interested to note the one big important way that you can tell the story takes place in the recent past is the size of their mobiles. It must have been hard to pick the right-sized mobile that would have credibility yet not bring forth howls of contempt and derision from the viewing audience. Oh my god, a brick! The guy that plays Carl Williams is tremendous, in fact most of the cast is really good; so nice to see Les Hill back in action after all this time. I am mildly aggrieved by the gratuitous breast shots (not Les’s) which seem terribly 70s but I guess the alternative – discreetly placed sheets etc – might also seem contrived, it’s hard to be sure. I am also not entirely sure what to make of the sex scene in the ecstacy pill kitchen with the embracing couple and the pill press popping out pink tabs – is this a metaphor or just something that happened? The eternal question in all textual analysis (as we used to beseech our long-suffering though not really to be sympathised with literature teacher at the end of high school, why can’t a story just be a story???).

Last night April came over to wreak a bit of jovial havoc, so it’s lucky we love her. The noodle soup Mia made was too spicy (she added two small chillies from the garden, which packed an amazing punch) for a -2 year old, so I made her a bagel with Slovakian plum jam on it which I ended up eating most of, which suited me though I was interested in how you can make a child eat something at least temporarily in small bursts just by showing her that you’re eating it. That has to be primal. Then we went through many funny charades, many of which revolved around picking up things, identifying whose they were and then passing them to that person. I don’t unenjoy this rather safe play, though you do end up with a bit of a pile of ‘your’ stuff before long. I always feel selfconscious playing with a small child, I think because when I was a small child I always felt patronised and let down by adults generally, there was a miscommunication overall. That’s how I remember it anyway. Probably these were only isolated incidents.

The new Verlaines album Potboiler is really, really good. I played it once a week or so ago and liked the music. When April and her parents whatstheirnames came over last night we had it on and it sounded even better. I think the much less provocative/oblique lyrics Graeme Downes produces these days compared with early Verlaines take some getting used to for some of us but on the whole, the thing sounds terrific and third listening will, I suspect, have me totally hooked. Also we played a bit of Fairport Convention beforehand which was probably the best kind of appetiser you could have. Mia is now reading Joe Boyd’s White Bicycles.

I went to the library yesterday for the first time in yonks (I had a big fine there, which I came to realise on facing up to it was much less big than I had thought it would be) and borrowed the life of Jade Hurley (he can’t have it back till I’m finished with it), Barry Crocker, Silverchair (Jeff Apter’s book which came out before Young Modern) and a book by the humorist Tony Martin whose work I have often admired. Martin is an interesting individual in lots of ways and one of those ways is that his humour is (usually or often) subtle and in another country he might be a kind of David Sedaris contemporary, yet for us he works in the mainstream. I suppose in the US, DS works in the mainstream too so what am I talking about. What I mean is Martin – like a lot of people in Australian showbiz – gets away with pretty sophisticated work and does very well in very mainstream areas up against much dumber humour just by not making a big thing of it.

Trip to work this morning (on which I wrote the above) was under an hour door-to-door, which is a good result in my opinion. The only irritant was attempting to buy a ticket in three different places (this is not an exaggeration) and only managing it on the fourth. No skin off my nose though in the final analysis.

PS Later 19/3: I finished reading the Martin book, called Lolly Scramble, and was most impressed. There is a backdrop of, if not tragedy, then something close to it, behind a lot of these somewhat mundane, but humorously told, anecdotes. And I sure identify with Martin's nerdy, fannish inclinations.

in bed together