barry gibb's unreleased 1970 album is 9/10ths bad

I don't know how I got to it but apparently Barry Gibb made an album straight after the Bee Gees broke up for realz in 1970ish, which may or may not have been called The Kid's No Good. What you see above is not its cover, but someone's imagined idea of what the cover might have been if it had come out. Well, anyway, it should of been called The Album's No Good, get it?! It's so weird how Barry is always pushed as the real solid centre of the Bee Gees but (notwithstanding he was probably worn out completely by the prior five years) this album definitely suggests that he was not much at all without his brothers. Then, anyway. They weren't much without him either although I think Robin's Reign is probably a pretty great album all in all, certainly massively better than this pile of shit (yeah, it's available on youtube by the way, or a version of it is at any rate). That said I think some of the value of Robin's Reign is similarly he didn't have his brothers around insisting he polish stuff, but in that case it kind of worked. Barry's Kid's No Good has songs like 'The Victim' for which the first ten seconds are incredibly good, could be a Stereolab instrumental or something, but why does he have to sing it like he is a tetchy idiot? Ugh, don't do it. (OK I admit it's pretty good really but I don't want to flimsify my bad-tempered argument).* OMG Maurice's album from the same time, The Loner, is also on youtube. And OMG it's ten times better than Barry's fuckin' album!!! O M G! 

But still the Bee Gees' obsession with/default to country music, which was clearly for some reason something they really wanted to do, was and remains kind of sick, well, because their take on country music was usually pretty shit. Yeah, I know, 'Lonely Days', 'Islands in the Stream', I mean sure, but most of the time it was horrible.  

In other news, I went to see if I could find anything called 'Killed By Death' that I had done. I have to concede I might be wrong about this. I found these little square pages of comic strip that in my memory had included something called 'Killed by Death' and I was totally wrong about that. I suppose it doesn't matter. I did find some other things I did about thirty years ago, which I probably never did anything with, excerpts:

I don't know why I found that funny, or why I still do. 

This is a curiosity that I might have done any time in the last twenty years, it won't mean much to you but it's a character from the graphic novel I'm working on now, only I've just drawn him with some harem pants and shoes on and added this rather extraordinary name, which isn't his name, next to him. I'm such an enigma to myself. 

*Update 19/4 I've actually decided that 'Victim' is basically the best song Barry Gibb ever wrote. I'm not sure whether this means that the overall average quality of the album goes up, or the extraordinary contrast between 'Victim' and all the other tosh creates a universal vortex that sucks the entire thing into a black hole. 

woolworths balaclava, texas milk bar, killed by death

For no special reason I decided today that I really wanted to get some Eskal dill pickles. Laura alerted me to a Jewish food in Australia site with Melbourne details and I could see a delightful day exploring these places but dithered until 1ish and instead jfgi'd the brand (which Woolworths everywhere used to stock but no longer do) to discover that Woolworths Balaclava had them and that seemed good enough for me. What I didn't entirely appreciate, or what perhaps wasn't explained on the Woolworths website, is that they only had them in 3kg cans. Well look having spent an hour getting there, it seemed silly not to get some. They're very good pickles, probably my favourite type. 

Out in Carlisle street (the 'street where I was born', or at least, my first address, although more at the St Kilda end than the Balaclava part) I saw this sign and I wondered about it. I have yet to find any information about the Texas Milk Bar but I want to put it on the list of things to find out more about. I think this is 294 Carlisle St but the internet is giving me conflicting information so possibly I just have no idea what I am talking about. The building itself is I guess nondescript and past newspaper mentions of 294 Carlisle St have been pretty mundane - a piano for sale, etc. 

This is the most interesting one. What I wouldn't give to go back in a time machine and look in an op shop from 1956!!! This mention is from the Australian Jewish News 5 September 1956:

After leaving Balaclava I went to Greville Records and bought a bit of stuff. This record, which I occasionally notice, intrigues me yet again, not because I'm dying to hear/own it but because I am pretty sure that heading - title - whatever you want to call it, is by me, from a comic strip I did probably thirty years ago, but which I can't necessarily completely remember. I took a photograph of it and put it here in case I come across something to compare it with. 

The 'Ds' look like mine. I think I did once draw a comic with that resoundingly stupid name, too, but I can't 100% say for sure. I'm not claiming to have drawn the image. Anyway, you can't say it's not interesting but it's probably only interesting to me.