coburg trash and treasure

Wow, ct&t was at its lowest ever this morning. What happened to all the stuff that people were supposedly rinsing out of their lives during the pandemic? Has it all resettled in other crevices? There were about half as many stalls as usual when I was there this morning and what was on display was pretty uniformly horrible. The only thing that I found mildly interesting was this artefact, which was more strange than anything:

I'd just never seen it before. But as I stood around with it in my hand briefly thinking maybe this is an item of interest, looking at the vendor retrieve a Val Doonican album that a potential customer's trolley wheel had dragged away from its propping place to be under another potential customer's shoe, I thought, fuck this... even if it is rare or unusual I don't want it in my house. So I put it back. I looked it up on discogs and no, it's not even slightly rare or unusual, except in my experience. 

I did some other shopping then went to Savers Preston which was also a great disappointment. A couple of good shirts with stains that just looked insurmountable. A keyboard behind the 'jewellery' counter which I waited to have a look at but after counting to 100 (a common way to restore equilibrium while figuring out how long I should reasonably wait) nobody came to show it to me so screw that, too. 

Perhaps the poor showing (of vendors) at CT&T is down to the weather; the papers are talking about a 'cold tongue' from Antarctica, and it was raining lightly this morning at various times. I can never tell whether a long weekend means more people looking for mindless leisure such as is offered by CT&T, or less. But I suppose to be honest when it comes down to it I mainly enjoy looking at stuff and I was not unhappy that I didn't have a bunch of crap in my hands when I got back home. 

dealing with stuff

I mean seriously I have always been this way, at least, since the early 70s. I accumulate stuff and I can't see how it is actually cumulatively detritus. Very probably my desire to accumulate stuff (which feels more like a desire to not get rid of stuff and/or to protect it) controlled my destiny eg I am a historian dedicated to physical (usually paper-based) sources and I comprehensively reject the idea that the whole story can come from digitised (mediated) materials. For me, even the extremely undeniable advantage of (for instance) streamed music in terms of storage is outweighed by the fact that I don't trust it to give me the full picture/experience/context. 

So, I am presently digging through some boxes retrieved from under-the-house at Lorraine. They are full of media (cassettes, videotapes, small print publications, letters etc) that go back up to 40 years, to my very early adulthood. A lot of things in here that at one stage formed major enthusiasms, things I pored over and adored, then stored. There are also a lot of things that I suppose I didn't process or value quite as much, so I filed them away ('filed' is too generous a word). Some examples: 

I have always loved the work of Al Larsen. His band Some Velvet Sidewalk are that most unusual beast, a group that just got better and better (from an excellent beginning) and then kind of blew up (OK I just looked at discogs, this tape/booklet combination has been sold once, for $30+. My booklet is a little water damaged so I suppose it's worth less. I don't want to sell it. All I then discovered was there's a whole other SVS album I didn't know about, from 1997. I could obtain a copy for $10 plus $40 postage, ha ha, funny but also true. Memo to self: the point here is not to continually add to my storage/acquisitions but to stop accumulating things, even records by bands I really like). 

Changing the subject entirely: in my last couple of years in Sydney so, early-to-mid 90s, I got to slightly know Robert Tilley. If I remember correctly, Robert was doing a PhD in Divinity? at the University of Sydney. Yes, I do remember correctly and here he is. I think we got on pretty well but I always got the sense he was on his own path and indeed he was. He had been a cartoonist in the upper-level alternative press (I'm thinking Nation Review but let's not push memory to its limits) and I am pretty sure, though I don't entirely recall, that I actually scored him $20 cartooning work in some dodgy teen magazine I was involved in in the 90s. His cartoons deserve more recognition than they get. I hope I find more of these Lord of the Cloudses.  

And then there are tons of this kind of thing. Like many up till - I don't know - 2005, 2006? I was in the habit of owning videotapes of 'keeper' stuff, and videotapes that were just on rotation as keep-until-watched-then-tape-over. This was one of those. There was no program called Nomad, I just made up titles for tapes because somehow it made it easier to remember what had what program on it. The tape inside this box at present is labelled 'Garry Shandling Show >March '99>'. I have quite a few videos of the Garry Shandling Show because it is of course one of my favourite shows of all time, but as I think I have observed previously hereabouts, I have the entire show on DVD now and haven't even watched it all lol. 

The one time I'm sort of pleased I did this was when I was living in London in 1986 and taped the debut of Neighbours. My glitchy tape has been on YouTube for ten years now and it's triply interesting firstly because it shows how intensely mind numbing British TV could be; it shows the original version of the debut of Neighbours with the extraordinary nightmare sequence part of which I gather has since become 'non-canon', if that makes sense; and thirdly it shows that there is a sub-sub-subset of geek who is just fascinated by whole sections of broadcast continuity (they have a word for it which I don't remember) of programs that are otherwise available in more pristine formats. That's crazy but I also get it.

But look I think it's time to bite the fucking bullet. It's too late to say I don't want to become a hoarder, I have been a hoarder of sorts for fortysomething years, and the extent of my hoarding is such that I don't even really recognise it as hoarding (and also, like extreme enablers of all kinds, I feel a stab to my heart when someone tells me they threw something arguably culturally valuable away, even worse if it's personally important*). I don't see the junk. I remember when moving to Lorraine Crescent however long ago I thought I can relax and just accumulate material, because I'll never have to move again.** And now here I am in another 'forever home' where I am arguably able to relax and just accumulate. It's a dangerous space to be in! I mean I'm not in whatever the 2020s version of the keeping-every-newspaper stage is, and I have absolutely no problem letting go of things like books which I know exist in libraries etc. 

I think what I need to do is find a way to communicate the pleasure I get from the randomness and potential richness of this stuff - videotapes of old tv shows with ads and news and stuff in them for instance, which is historically interesting because it conveys a time you hadn't thought about since you just generally accepted them in the understanding of 'this is now'. Does that make sense? I am thinking I might set up a website and just start to scan or digitise things and put them up there - then jettison them as I do so. It will be therapeutic I reckon. 

* Personally important to them. I mean, I should mind my own business. 

** Not the reason I wanted to buy a house, except I suppose its's part of having 'agency'. 

rowland and ollie at trash

I saw this on Rage a few months ago and it was (and remains) incredible!!!!! I assume Trash is the shop that Karen Ansell and Uschi Flett ran? Ollie and Rowland's band (Young Charlatans) played about 10 times I gather. How could they not have been incredible!?