oh good more records

I am an unreconstructed Swell Maps fan yes it is true and so when I heard this album, called Mayday Signals, was coming out I was up for it. It's a collection of mainly unreleased recordings by them either before they actually entered a studio or, around side 4 I think, a bit later. It's one of those stupid things: if it's a third as good as Jane from Occupied Europe then it's gonna be pretty good. I will let you know. 

So I bought this online from Monorail in Glasgow and well since I was buying one thing from them I figured I may as well buy two. I had been meaning to get this since I heard it in Glasgow whenever, October 2019? So I bought it as well. 

So far so good, it's the only one of these I've played so far. So while I was walking to the bank to do my ID check and release the loan contracts, I got an email from work to say there was a parcel for me there, they do that now, I'm not sure why but I'm not against it. It was the two records above. I am not sure why they went to my work but I had ordered stuff from Monorail a few years ago back when I lived in Albion and I more commonly had things sent to my workplace because I didn't want to have to go to Sunshine West to pick them up if the postal delivery worker didn't leave them. So then I got home, got these out and started to regard them, when there was a knock at the door. It was a postal delivery worker with some more records that apparently I had ordered some time ago, though I don't remember doing it.  They were these: 

That's right not one but two Barbara records

And a John Coltrane record which I probably just grabbed because I was already buying the other things and so postage was free and so it was probably a negligible cost but I'm certainly looking forward to it*

Oh and this! Which is the EP that came free with the first pressings of the second Martha and the Muffins album, but which wasn't in my copy of that album. So, for what it's worth, I have it. I definitely do not remember ordering this. Hmm, actually, or any of it. Perhaps I was drunk. 

Don't look down your nose at me my life's been really hard. 

*Actually a Wilbur Harden/John Coltrane album that was reissued in the mid-60s with Coltrane's name given absolutely greater prominence 

cheesies and gum

 

Remember all the times I told you not to be a one-hit wonder. I hope you have listened, I have not yet heard your one hit but when I do hear it I'm going to be sure to be keeping an ear out for a follow up because there is nothing worse than only having one. 

I have probably mentioned to you how much I have been enjoying Martha and the Muffins lately but when I play their first album I make sure to skip the first track, and you know why. It is not inherently crap or anything but I have just heard it so-damn-often over the years. And it is by no means their best song. And its existence is the reason I have shied away from Martha and the Muffins for like, ever. Imagine if I'd died before I turned 56! I might have gone to my grave always thinking that Martha and the Muffins is not really a band I liked that much. And yet now I have their first three albums and I play them a lot. I particularly like the 2nd one Trance and Dance and suggest that is where you start when you want to discover or even rediscover the joy of Martha and the Muffins. 

What do they have? The songs are packed with ideas, some of the lyrics are now charmingly arcane from a forty-years-later perspective (I mean 'Suburban Dream' - shooting fish in a barrel - I bet the postpunkers could, and did, write lyrics like this in their sleep). (Just makes me think of Tracy Mann's character in Sweet and Sour, going to the back of the warehouse in a bad/pensive mood, muttering something about 'I'm going to write a song about plastic conformity now'.) It's not slick music though, or unimaginative or passionless at all, and it sounds really dynamic but they're great players together too. 

Three songwriters in the band for the first two albums (then two of them chucked the third one out. It would have been really problematic for them if 'Was Ezo' became a hit when it was released as a single because Martha Ladly wrote and sang it and apparently they had thrown her out of the group by the time it came out. But fortunately for Martha and the Muffins they never really troubled the singles charts again after their first humungous hit, except in Canada, with a few other random exceptions. Luckily for them also yes they had two Marthas so removing one of them made the band name actually more truthful. (The third album This is the Ice Age is pretty good too, I haven't heard anything else). 

So if you were listening to them on spotify, cleanse your palate with 'Primal Weekend', then go to 'Was Ezo', 'Luna Park', 'About Insomnia' and from the first album, 'Sinking Land', 'Cheesies and Gum', 'Paint by Number Heart', 'Hide and Seek'. They also do a much better cover of Chris Spedding's 'Motorbikin'' than Spedding's own (I actually bought CS's relevant album for that song and this version is a huge improvement - trust me). (It's not like trusting me for the time it takes to compare is going to be a risk for you really is it).

BTW weep not for Martha Ladly I think her subsequent career was a fuckload (as they say) more interesting and rewarding not only than the other Martha's or the Muffins' - made a couple of great singles, briefly in the Associates at their peak, then she goes on tour with Roxy Music etc. And she is now a professor at the university where Martha and the Muffins originally formed. 

OK so I just recommend you listen to a lot of Martha and the Muffins particularly the first two albums and try to keep away from the big hit if you can, the other stuff is really rewarding. 

Whatever happened to burcin kapkin

This morning is a mental health day as they say which will involve a long dog walk, review of six book chapters back from the editor, and I dunno what else. The newspaper is still too much of a downer for me so I started watching old Home and Away on 7two. Instantly I was swept up in a story of Roo being coerced into surrending baby Martha (played by Burcin Kapkin) by Brett Macklin, under threat of Alf being driven out of business by the Macklin Corporation. Compelling.

It’s interesting isn’t it how so many Australian soaps include massively rich businesspeople with multi-million dollar projects that impact on everyone. It’s amazing how Paul Robinson for instance can move amongst people many of whom depend on him for their salaries, etc, but while relations with Paul are never that easy in Ramsay Street there is certainly never any sense that he is better than anyone – he doesn’t even seem to think so. In fact, most people seem to assume he is worse than them. I guess Brett Macklin, who was a much lesser character, is kind of similar. That said, it’s a different world in soaps where people always have to be ‘reset’ every few weeks or written out. Now I’m watching Shortland Street, which was a great favourite in the early 90s when SBS used to run it. I do enjoy New Zealand soaps – Outrageous Fortune etc – particularly because it doesn’t just seem to be a parallel universe, it is one. And because SS is a Grundy production (or whatever they’re called now) they often have actor crossover with Neighbours. Well, historically that’s been so though the episode I’m watching now is difficult to get into. I did enjoy the fugitive with eczema being referred to by his former girlfriend as having a poxy face (thus you knew he was innocent and she was flying off the handle, using his affliction against him).

Shortland Street is a classic soap premise, hospital, and must be wonderfully cheap particularly the cheap clothing (they’re usually wearing light blue pyjamas, like all hospital employees, even the doctors). They don’t seem to do too many second takes either if the amount of accidental furniture kicking, etc that goes on is any indication (nb this is just based on one episode – maybe a weirdity).

I must say that SS’s multiracial cast shows up Neighbours for its unrealistic whiteness, something I know is an issue but tend to forget in the day to day.