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.

I decided finally to go all the way

Every Friday I teach peremptorily in South Melbourne, and becuase it doesn't happen until the afternoon and at the end of a fairly overstrenuous week I find myself often running late. The temptation is always too great to drive to the station (or a station) and take the train into town. Last Friday (I was going to say 'yesterday' but I realise it has just turned 10 past 12) I had a long work-related (if you were wondering) phone call around noon and I thought, no, today I can't even drive to the station - I'm going to have to drive all the way to South Melbourne. A minute later I had a song in my head. I realised it was 'Go All the Way' by the Raspberries, and in fact it was the rockin' bit at the beginning, not even the actual chorus where they sing 'Drive all the way - all the way to South Melbourne - down Clarendon Street and park in the ACMI car park in Park St'.

I know I'm not unique in this but it does amaze me how a phrase - not even a spoken phrase but I thought one - will trigger the memory of a song. Is this some distant cousin to synaesthesia?

I have been marking essays all day, with a short detour to Shane and Olivia's housewarming. The same old crap keeps turning up. I tried to explain to my second years (and I think I succeeded) a few days ago that there are weird mistakes that flow through essays each semester in waves. At the moment it's the word 'countries' for 'country's'. A few years ago it was the word 'intern' for 'in turn'. Somewhere in there it was the word 'apart' for 'a part'. These last two infuriating errors still show up but less so. Right now it's countries for country's. It probably doesn't look that horrible when you only see it a couple of times. Try seeing it a hundred times. Try getting to the last page of an otherwise pretty seamless and intelligent exploration and there it is three times in the last two paragraphs. Go on, try.

new harry potter

There is a strange stillness in the air around Jacana/Broadmeadows/Westmeadows and I can only assume it is because everyone is tucked up in bed with the new Harry Potter. I have only read the first two and I think this is the fifth, so I have some catching up to do/surgical graft of interest before I get onto this one. Last night was The Cannanes at the Town Hall Hotel. I think there were about three people there I didn't know by name and those I'd seen before. And it was a small crowd anyway. A lot of people (well, four: Shane - Mark - Debbie - Olivia) were there earlier in the evening en route to something else (mainly the GoBs, but Olivia was going to some bizarre Arthouse thing - what was that about!?) but S, M and D returned to the Town Hall about half way through the Cs' set along with Toby. Olivia has a friend called Tristan who she and her friends call T-bone. I thought there was probably potential for giving everyone an initial+ name, and James said Toby was already known as T-boy (which is particularly good as it is an anagram too). But then I stalled on Olivia (I could only think of O-zone, which is pathetic - it's funny what other words come into your head, like I was thinking 'O for an Osram' - which was and perhaps still is a brand of lightbulb - in the Good Weekend last week they suggested that lightbulb brands were generic and no-one distinguished between them, of course I immediately thought 'O for an Osram' then too). For me, I could be D-notice, though I don't know what a D-notice is. Shane could be S-bend, or S-club 7, I'm sure there are plenty more S's. Marc I said could be M-train, but I bet there are many other M ones too. A people could be A-grade, A-bomb, A-political; B-grade, B-flat, B-good... C-plus, C-side... oh, I'm so good at this. X-file, Y-front, Z-andtwonoughts. D people could also be D-sease. The Cannanes show got off to a pretty bland start but it picked up and by the end they were really firing. Before that to kill time primarily I went to the Nova and saw My Summer of Love which struck me as having a very predictable and dull plot. I knew kind of what was going to happen (girls in small town fall in love, it goes bad) but I could tell from about the first five minutes (maybe that's an exaggeration - let's say ten) how and why and so on, and I was thinking 'oh, no, not that line of dialogue' before it happened. I really was killing time. I was actually about as bored during the movie as I had been during the pre-movie ads, most of which were repeated. What I really wanted to see was Sin City - even then only becuase it got such rave reviews and I wanted to scoff at the idea of a film that takes visually from the style of comic books/strips - just like I once scoffed so happily at Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy - but there were no appropriate sessions. Before the movie I went to the Architecture library and before that to Billy Hyde's and bought a hi-hat stand. It was pricey. But I really love it. So far. I spoke to Mia just as she and the entourage were pulling into Oakland. They're playing in SF tonight. They have made a second Possum Moods album (as Possum and the Moods now). Something to look forward to. I have run out of suspension files, which is fucked. Hopefully when I return to work on Monday I will be able to pinch or recycle some. People often just throw out suspension files, but they're pretty exy - well, about $1.50 at the cheapest stationery places, and that mounts up very fast. I must say the filing cabinet has never looked so healthy. I also borrowed Bob Dylan's Chronicles from the library yesterday but haven't really started on that yet. Instead for some reason I'm reading Wreckless Eric's biography which was also at the library. Today I am going to be cleaning, filing if possible, perhaps practicing drums and definitely finishing off my paper for the Wellington conference next year. Music played this morning: Both sides of The Motors' album (I really only like the first song each side), second side of Dave McArtney and the Pink Flamingos' first album (in honour of S. Moritz's particularly visceral response to the album cover artwork) and side one of Herbie Mann's Push Push, just to confirm I still don't like it. Next on the list? I think Flash and the Pan.

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).