mental as anything, more about

Still suffering from the deceptively minor time difference between NZ and Australia, I went to sleep too early last night and then woke up for an hour or so and baked bread and watched Mental as Anything videos on youtube. I recalled that, while I had never owned a lot of MaA albums 'in the day', I did invest (I seem to recall in tandem with my siblings) a commercially released VHS of their videos. As mentioned, they embraced their art student side in many ways and you can really establish a thread through for instance Garry Shead's Pip Proud film into some of the aspects of these videos (some members of MaA exhibited at Watters Gallery in the late 70s I think so there's that connection too). 

My favourite MaA clip is definitely the one(s) for 'He's Just No Good for You' which you may recall were done in real time in a street in either Sans Souci or Monterey, depending on how much you care to check on google maps for the truth of it. The story is that the whole street were involved in playing parts in the video(s) (they did umpteen takes and chose three for release, so you never knew which one you were going to see on tv). The one that's on youtube right now has them spending quite a bit of time at the end outside the milk bar, I think others spent more time on the actual street. Anyway it's a huge amount of fun, and it also celebrates the mundanity and beauty of the suburban street, in a very beautiful fashion. They never miss a chance to include the dogs. 

The other thing that I think is really important and interesting about MaA is that even though they were, as mentioned yesterday, incredibly male, their songs were also often about male fragility. I have them running on a loop right now and 'Date With Destiny' came up, a song I normally wouldn't spend too much time on, but I noted the way that Greedy's songs are so often about inadequacy; he's singing about going on a date and he just throws in the line, 'Hope I'm good enough'. 

Martin's singles are generally more often about domestic friction from a regretful point of view. I have a huge amount of respect for 'Brain Brain'. But I was mentioning yesterday how I don't mind the one MaA album I have, and it has 'Come Around' on it, which is not about friction but more an attempt to be seductive in a very cool way with an underlying fear, which is nicely done indeed. A bit in the 10CC 'I'm Not In Love' field but less obvious. 

All in all, while the overall body of work is uneven,* as almost any would be, particularly over forty-something years, the highs are very high and I think they're a classic case of a group whose impact on the culture has been so strong that it's hard now to see how huge it was. 

* obviously I'm not au fait with every bit of it but I know enough to know this is true. 

Image is from the Sydney Sun Herald 2 August 1987 p. 105

the pip proud-homicide connection - 54 years ago today

It's all very well to say 'what I wouldn't do to see this episode of In Melbourne Tonight (7 April 1969) because, you know, I just love Lucky Grills lol. Well I don't hate him but of course what fascinates me is that this is the episode that my long gone and much missed friend, Pip, was on. I vaguely remember him telling me about this - that Preston tried to put him down and Pip turned the tables on him on live TV - don't know how. I was only dimly aware of who Mike Preston was when Pip mentioned this story - I think I was mixing him up with someone else. 

But I don't think I quite appreciated until a few minutes ago that MP was an actual celebrity, who'd had his own IMT for a long time, and that like Lionel Long, his tenure in Homicide was probably more of a 'get new audiences in with a famous face' thing than it was a 'here's a new guy for the long haul'. 

Anyway the NFSA, which as far as I know is the only real place for this kind of thing, has some Mike Preston's IMT from 1968, and a fragment from 1969, but I have to assume that the Pip episode is gone, gone, gone. Sad but real. 

*BTW (10 April) I thought to check up who else was on that show. Lucky Grills, already mentioned, was of course the comedian who later played Bluey in the cop show Bluey. Nelson (not Neilson) Sardelli was/is a Brazillian-born US-based singer of Italian descent, famous for having had a relationship with Jayne Mansfield (who had died two years before this show was aired). Elaine McKenna is/was a singer famously associated with Channel 9 in the 60s. Laurie Wilson was a TV personality. Ted Hamilton was in an episode of Homicide (Break Out, 1968) and also 227 episodes of Division 4. Overall, very, very conventional showbiz - Pip really needed gumption to be amongst those people. 

like a dream

OK so this is kind of like a dream. If you want something to compare it to, imagine that there is this artist whose work you have always admired, and find compelling and brilliant in all kinds of ways, and then you find out that there is actually every chance that there is a bunch of material by this artist that has not been heard for 45 years, and it's sitting in a box next to you on the couch. That is my present condition, I kid you not. 

There is every chance they are in such degraded condition they won't play; they might just fall to bits. On the other hand... they are going to get the very best of care in a transfer process, so they'll be on the operating table before too long. I am almost scared to let them out of my sight, but by the same token, I know I'm not that great with looking after things like this! 

What is important to remember is that two weeks ago I didn't even know they existed. So if they don't really 'exist'... well... just back to zero. They can't be as good as what is already known to exist as part of the artist's published oeuvre (can they)? At the absolute least, I'll just be glad I know now that Pip once had a song called 'Golden Clown'!!!

(Oh and to tantalise a little extra: Graham Churchill appears to have had something to do with Joni Mitchell's very early career and to have produced an album associated with the children's TV show Rainbow; Dylan Loussier, if that's a person's name, is lost in the mists of time; and 5 Devonshire Ave Sutton? These days, the numbering in Devonshire Ave seems to start at 6 and there could surely have never been anything on the other side of the road...!) 

pip end january 2010 (two years ago)

We went to see Pip Proud at Colton Close today. He was as usual happy to see us and he looked better than the last couple of times I've seen him but he obviously isn't. He says the cancer is back (actually, it never went away let's face it) and he may have to have more radiation therapy or chemotherapy but as far as I know those things were just mooted as possibilities that weren't going to cure him just prolong his life a while. He wore out more quickly than ever today and ended up wanting to lie down when we took him back to his room. I think this is the home stretch. He is still very lucid though. Talking about Obama, Haiti earthquake, etc. Very keen on Tom Waits (I downloaded some TW for him).

pip proud 1949-2010

I just realised it has been a year and a week since Pip Proud died. My memory had him dying late in March. It was not a shock when he died particularly since the last time I saw him he looked like he was already dead (he was asleep/unconscious, and clearly in a terrible state).

I had actually cut Pip off somewhat up until the last year or so of his life because I had come to feel he used me as a way to get cigarettes and alcohol, which he couldn't get in the normal course of a day, or not as much as he wanted. He was occasionally manipulative about it too, playing me off against his sons in various ways which I didn't appreciate. Even though I am aware alcoholism is an illness. But I miss him very much. A conversation with Pip was always a surprise, almost to the end of his life he stayed connected to the news - he had a much better handle on world events than on things in his own life - and had a whole wry commentary of his own on the world.

He is most certainly going to be the subject of a future book. He had a tragic life in so many ways, starting with a horrendous family life - Pip casually related episodes of family violence like it was a film he'd seen. So for all that it was amazing he had such a poetic soul, and not at all surprising he was so angry at the same time. I feel (and so did he probably) that his life ended entirely unresolved. Along with Alastair Galbraith, Nic Dalton and Craig Stewart I played a little part in helping him find a new audience for his music late in life, and I think that was a good thing for his life narrative, even if it also gave him completely unrealistic expectations about his future. I had a lot of contact with death last year and it was terrible each time, I suppose Pip's has been the hardest one because he was not ready to be philosophical about it, except in the occasional expression of bravado, which is not the same - in fact, probably the opposite.*

*The opposite of bravado is not cowardice and I don't mean to imply that.

dying man's wishes

Cleaning up my office I found these notes I made on behalf of Pip who was hoping to get out of the hospice he was in (he didn't, or at least, in the last few days he did but that's all) and also some lollies and chips. He was always hungry.
The most indecipherable line is 'musk sticks'. The last line was I think written while walking.
By the way, Tamsin did have a good suggestion for a place that might take Pip, but he was too sick to go anywhere really, and I was a bit uncertain it would be ideal, as it was apparently fairly Catholic and Pip was over godbotherers.

* Later, just wanted to say a piece I wrote about Pip has just come out in the latest Yeti, buy it here.

pip proud 1949-2010

Pip Proud died yesterday from throat cancer aged 62.
His last seven or eight years (following the stroke that left him blind and partially paralysed) were unenviable in so many ways. He was a big part of my life for the last 15 years with a range of frustrations and delights, and I will most definitely miss him very much.
1st pic stolen from http://www.messandnoise.com/discussions/382382 

recording with pip

Karl, Pip, Simon.

rock n roll friends

I have been reading Dean Wareham's book Black Postcards, a very readable piece of musical biography with no strong female characters. Thanks Shane for lending it to me on NYE.
I enjoyed Rage on Saturday night, with an episode of Rock Arena from late 1984, an episode of Countdown from I think 1988 or thereabouts (?) and inbetween an overlong documentary about Countdown from 1979. This was particularly interesting because it started with the Marc Hunterless Dragon doing ‘Love’s not Enough’ in the studio and later, a discussion of the updated group’s appeal (or lack of) by members of the Countdown Committee. Fabulous.
The Rock Arena was amazing for a number of things, all going to remind me of how much fun 1984 was. About half of the show was the Machinations live from the Chevron. I am 99.9% positive that I saw my old rock ’n’ roll (and otherwise) friend Sue Grigg in the audience. I am pretty damn sure it was her. She was wearing blue. Not atypical. That she liked the Machinations is not in any doubt: I have a few of her Machinations singles, which she was going to throw out and which I rescued, with her name written on them, in her handwriting no less. And anyway she wouldn’t deny it. It was a thrill to see her on TV. Within two years she was playing in Chad’s Tree.
The Countdown was OK, ‘Take On Me’ by A-ha (or is it a-Ha?) is still one of the greats, and the Kids in the Kitchen song was so hilariously awful it made me love them again, but when it came down to it I think the Machinations show took the cake. They actually had some really good songs, and that first album is very adventurous. When they became overly funky and shit, they got shit. There is no way to say this nicely but I feel the need to say it for some reason, that Fred Lonergan was an extremely unlikely looking frontperson. I wonder if his unlikely-lookingness (oh. I have found a way to say it nicely) cost them fame and fortune? As it transpired, he had a serious accident where he broke his neck or something and they band sold all their equipment and started up computer shops (the story goes). Someone should do a sociological, and anthropological, study of the bands from various private school catchment cohorts. Machinations were all north shore, erm, St Ignatius or something? Not an Iggy reference. Cockroaches/Wiggles, where were they from? More working class catholic boys I think. Now we’re talking about it, poor Rowland S Howard, the only member of the Birthday Party/BND who wasn’t from Caulfield Grammar, but I guess he got lumped in with that shit. That’s the other thing Rage did on Saturday night – played a massive amount of Birthday Party in honour of RSH. A lot of BP but insufficient Crime and the City Solution or RSH solo, and maybe there just wasn’t that much video of that stuff though really I would have so much preferred C&CS to that hoary old BP guff which was awfully exciting in 1980 and I still love Junkyard and the subsequent EPs but shit, RSH was much more than a Nick Cave adjunct – he was, well, better by far. A charming and interesting man, too, in my experience of him.
My one RSH reminiscence, which has little to do with RSH himself but perhaps says something about the ambient myth: at one of the final Birthday Party shows (when the band came back to Aust without Mick Harvey and Des Hefner filled in) I was in the foyer with my friend Michael and we were talking and then he said, sh, here comes the most beautiful man in rock ‘n’ roll. It was RSH of course.
Pip Proud is recording some vocals to music by Kes Band next Sunday. Pip has a song called 'Slimy Fighters' to which he wants a dance piece performed probably best described by the song’s title. Pip is doing alright, all things considered (throat cancer for which the tumours have apparently stabilised; stroke; alcoholism). You could argue these things were if not caused by each in succession (in reverse order to which I have listed them) then they aided and abetted. He is on a lot of drugs and his radio won’t tune properly but he can get a distant, fuzzy News Radio which he loves and for which I say, thanks ABC.
Music myself I am still greatly enjoying the Dacios album (probably along with royalchord my pick for 2009, though I may have forgotten a few others) and continuing to love Emerson Lake and Palmer, not least for my discovery that shows my own innate dumbness and slowness to catch on and willingness to believe whatever stupid flip assessment was put before me by others, that ELP are yet another prog rock band who are decidedly unpofaced, all things considered, and often fairly witty or at least amusing. I enjoy that. Actually, my dismissal of ELP did not come just from my willingness to accept punkers’ evaluation of them; I did unwittingly see their Pictures at an Exhibition film about thirty years ago at the Valhalla and it kind of sort of made me think, there has to be more to rock music than this pretentious bollocks. I don’t know if I missed something then, or what. I like the self-titled album and of course Tarkus. Actually I love Tarkus. Tarkus is hott.
Who has memories of the Chevron? Is there a facebook group?







The other thing that was on Rock Arena was, excitingly, not one but two videos feat. Noah Taylor - I'm Talking's 'Trust Me' and Beargarden's 'Finer Things'. If I remember rightly these were Noah's first two filmic experiences, yes, even preceding Doggo Goes to Jail.

pip anoints ariel pink

Pic by Greg W.

i don't know what i expected but i certainly didn't expect absolute brilliant success!

Pip played at the East last night supporting Ariel Pink (pic is from soundcheck - I know there are more pics around which I will put up here asap). I mean Pip's short set was pretty iconoclastic if not bombastic, and there was stuff in there guaranteed to upset almost everyone. So even though I knew the first song came out really well, I had no idea what the audience would make of it - I could see them all but they mainly looked a bit stunned. But after the first song was over, their reaction was so incredibly positive. That made everything worthwhile, seriously. But after the show was over Marcus and I ferried Pip out of the room and everyone was slapping him on the back and calling out his name and so on, telling him they loved him and what a great show it was! I can't remember ever being at a show where people were so positive about a performer. People were telling me it was great, and I'd say 'go and tell Pip, I'm sure he'd love to hear that', and they'd say, 'Oh no I don't want to bother him'... he came away with a new record offer, and a pre-existing one triple confirmed...

It brought a tear to my eye, and I'm not joking, because we were all scared of course about how it might go, but also because I know Pip's day to day life is pretty nasty and brutish, and to then play his first show in 37 years to people who by and large weren't born until, probably, ten years after then, and for them to be so overwhelmingly into it, was amazing.

I think 'amazing' is the word of the day. Thanks go to the Pip Proud Group: Marney who was so encouraging and supportive of Pip even on stage, Julie who held the whole thing together so brilliantly with actual organisation and superb sitarring, Mia who is always with me, and me. Also Greg for mixing and Louis and Mickey for driving and always being there for their father and many others besides whose names I will add in later and pretend they were always there. Also the other bands of the night were grouse, Das Butcher, Kes, and not forgetting Ariel Pink who was a hell of a guy and his scratch band - never has a scratch band sounded less scratchy. I am as I would never otherwise say blown away. Seriously. It was probably the best show I ever played, certainly the most emotionally affecting and rewarding.

pipdate and voice recognition software

It is Pip Proud's 57th birthday today, despite the number of times he has told me he is going to be 60. Unless he lied about his age in his entry in Australian Poetry NOW! in 1970 when he said he was born in 1949. Anyway, Pip is probably about to do his first live show since 1969 when he played the Arts Vietnam benefit (unless the Best in the World concerts came afterwards - I thought they did). He will be supporting Ariel Pink later this month somewhere, I forget where. His backing band will be me, Mia, Julie and Marney. There will be at least four songs, all new. As I just a short while ago said to confirmed Pip fan Ash Wednesday, it is guaranteed to be interesting.

What's bugging me though is the driving to and from Healesville. It's not that long, really, a bit over an hour and as I've said in this place before, it's a marvellously pleasant drive through Kangaroo Flat and Christmas Hills. But I went to and fro yesterday and I am just totally and utterly exhausted (of course, waking at 2.23 am and going back to sleep after 4 didn't help).

Yesterday afternoon after rehearsal Pip and I went to Campbellfield K Mart to buy him some Lego. He wants to build Lego things to get some strength and movement back in his left hand, which is pretty useless after the stroke and some bad surgery. It's very interesting to me to hang around with a blind man - other people's reactions, from the 10 year old boy who said loudly 'That man's blind', upwards. Most people are just very respectful/ scared? Pip regaled me with the various condescensions he's suffered in recent months, from the nurse (I think it was a nurse) who said in his hearing that blind people were quite intelligent, upwards. He told his doctor he was hoping to get some improvement in his arm movement and the doctor laughed, which naturally makes Pip very angry.

Pip is an incredibly intelligent man (not just because he's blind - joke) with various problems brought upon him. I am very keen for him to get a computer with voice recognition so he can write his life story. Anyone got any recommendations? It's been a long time since I've seen this in action - probably the late 90s - and it seemed problematic to me then, though I suppose you could create documents that someone could clean up/work with. I guess I could go online (hey, wait - I already am on line! How's that for efficient!) and search for it. Dragon or something? But I'd like to hear other people's opinions.

* PS Pip's short memoir of his music career is in the next Meanjin, or at least I think it is.

various excursions and an abduction

Yesterday afternoon after finishing marking all the non-problematic essays (i.e. the ones that are not probably plagiarised) I picked up the first year exams and then drove on the Healesville to visit Pip, possibly the last time I'll see him there as he seems determined to move from that particular 'care facility'. He was looking exceptionally well, and even had quite a nice jumper on. He wants to record a new album with me, Marney, Chris and Julian. He wants to call it Left-Field Flyball and appropriately when we went to a hotel in Healesville proper he not only had three beers but also two glasses of a local sauvignon blanc called Left Field. He is determined to make a record that will make him the subject of a fatwah. En route to Healesville god told me to stop at a particular Croydon op shop and I must remember to thank god as there, for 50c, was a copy of Rocka, the jewel in the crown of Australian hits collections; I believe this thing sells for $50 or so most places if not more when AC/DC completists are involved - it contains two tracks by the Marcus Hook Roll Band. Now, I did get that MHRB single online for almost no money and it was bad, but these are different tracks I believe (haven't played it yet). Rocka also has a fantastic cover, a goanna which has apparently covered a rock with an Australian flag. A dung beetle, some ants and a frog look on. But even more amazing - I've spent quite some time looking at it since purchase, it captivates me - is Austrock '77, which I had never seen before. It's wonderful partly because it features The Saints' 'I'm Stranded' (in between Mark Holden's 'Last Romance' and The Angels' 'You're a Lady Now') but more importantly because of the cover image of four young Australians, three white girls and one black boy, seen only from the shoulders up but apparently naked. He is standing behind the girls and has his arms around two of them and his hands resting on the shoulder of the third (who has put her hand on top of his). All of them have their faces painted, with slightly cosmic designs. This is a World Record Club release, so it's not surprising I've never seen it before. It's funny to think the Saints had any kind of presence on Australian greatest hits albums in the 70s, but they did. They are on Explosive Hits, too, which has cover art by the same guy that did the Rocka cover, Alan Puckett. This time some astronauts are hovering around a spacecraft in the shape of a microphone, amongst some asteroid fragments. The Saints' 'Erotic Neurotic' is on this one, in amongst Showaddywaddy, Hot Chocolate's 'Heaven's in the Backseat...' and Pussyfoot's 'Ooh Ja Ja'. Two other albums purchased at this place: Megan Sue Hicks, who I've never heard of but who apparently recorded her album in Australia obviously some time in the early 70s (there are some Aust. musicians on the record, but there is nothing that identifies it as an Australian release) and an LP called For Mature Adults Only, which is the kind of thing that when you buy it at the op shop you want to say to the nice lady, 'I know what this looks like but as far as I can tell it's actually a Christian record of adolescents' poetry set to orchestral/choral music - look, there's a sticker on the back from the Presbyterian Bookroom!' but nothing you can say can change the general impression that you're some kind of eccentric collector of aural porn. It is a long drive back to Melbourne from Healesville (58 km) but luckily I had two tapes to keep me going: the Troyka album and the Mekons' first album. Had a lot of fun with both. Both very flawed albums, both probably about 50% unworthy. The Mekons have too many silly jokey songs (that one about outer space particularly shits me). Troyka are mesmerising. There is one song in particular about burning a witch which rhymes 'the prisoner started to burn' with a line about 'the people didn't come to learn' and then the payoff: 'they were IGNORANT!' which is hilarious. At the end of side one, someone whispers 'turn the page please'. These things are incredibly funny and appealing to me. There's another song about driving down a backroad, and seeing a pretty woman, and drinking wine with her, and getting so drunk you both roll into a ditch, and then roll out of it, into a house, upstairs and into a bed. Classic. And the whole story is repeated twice. I really want to tape this Troyka album and give a copy to everyone I know, but I expect from experience that the response is unlikely to be as ecstatic amongst my cohort. Perhaps partly because there's the big game element: I bagged it by sifting for an hour through a bunch of James Last records. It is mysterious. It is also a new addition to my slavic rock collection which is growing and which I am becoming more excited by all the time. In the evening, after feeding the animals and quickly watching Neighbours (by the way, on the promos earlier in the week they said Izzy was a murderer; I assumed they were talking about Darcy, who she put in a coma. But in last night's promo it became clear that Darcy was about to come out of the coma. So who did Izzy kill? Gus? Unclear) I decided that, since I was awake and it wouldn't be hard and so on, I would go and see Flywheel & Paper Planes (and Marc, but he had finished by the time I got there). It was at Mayfields in Smith St which is possibly a good venue but on this occasion seemed a bit drafty and echoey and strange. You had to pay $5 to get in to see the band, but the band was perfectly and utterly visible and audible from across the bar in the area that you didn't have to pay nothing to be in. Oh well. I talked with Olivia (she loves Shane) Peta (mainly about the (lack of) future of universities - my whingeing - butand I think she plays devil's advocate a lot in our discussions) Jane (Gavin writes amazing short stories and so does my brother) and Fiona (I'm not sure what she was saying as Oliva was saying stuff at the same time in my other ear, giving me a stereo-confuser experience). At 5:50 this morning I awoke to hear a woman outside saying 'drop it! drop it!' and a man saying 'just get in' and another man saying 'I don't want no trouble'. I got up and looked out the window and saw a car drive away. There is a leather studded wrist band on the footpath where the abduction took place. I went to the Vic Market with Jane (my mother) and told her about it. She is of the opinion that, partly becaue they won't do anything but also since I have no real information, there is no point in telling the police. I am in two minds. I suppose basically I would feel better if I told the police, but I basically have nothing to tell them. At the market I had a Portuges Polenta which is a new experience. It had pimentos on it. Also a ginger-celery-orange juice. I also got some great looking brussels sprouts and some red pears. I would like to provide more pictures here but after a couple of days of fiddling with the Picasa program I downloaded I think I am going to have to scrap it and start again. I might be able to augment with visuals soon, and also the long-awaited graphic novel (of which I have completed one frame in the last two days, but only because I am trying to figure out how to print out a photograph of a tram I took which I want to use as a basis for the next frame. This is the exciting part, when the small boy gets taken home by a strange woman he meets on the street with the promise of taramasalata, leading to a discussion of evolution - so Shane Moritz - Shane's life, I mean, not his writing).