what's the word

There should be a word for the feeling you have when someone calls you while you’re in the middle of a conversation with someone else, or in the middle of doing something important, and you kind of don’t want to fob them off and nor do you want to call them back, just exchange a little bit of important information then hang up, but you don’t really give them the attention they perhaps deserve, and then when you do hang up, you kind of end up thinking, were they a bit offended or something? And you try to remember the way they sounded towards the end of the conversation, but you can’t. What could be the word for that?

Don’t give me some pat answer like ‘poor time management’ thanks. I want a new word.

birthday

citizens' arch

chiz

I got on the bus this evening and the radio was playing ‘Cheap Wine’ (I was expecting it to be playing the last number one in the world, so there you go). I was once again reminded of so many interesting but not necessarily wonderful things about the Chiz, eg the good tune/ bad singing/ good and bad guitar coming out of the one amazing guitarist/ the line about rocket fuel… you know, all the things. I was surprised to see on facebook a few weeks ago some people full-on having a go at the Chiz when they failed to realise that what they were having a go at was that turkey Barnesy, but the Chiz are one of those muslim constructions indicating nothing is greater than god by having an imperfection, and that imperfection is the Barnestoermer himself. There was a moment, I don’t know if you know, when Barnesy quit the Chiz – this is before they had a record deal – and Mossy took over. Mossy is not only a guitarist’s guitarist, he’s a grouse singer. And so Chiz played with Mossy as singer for quite a few months, I think Barnesy had replaced Bon Scott in some band or other the name of which will return to me and I will put it in here when it does. And then he quit that and went back to the Chiz. Awful. But the worst thing is that tosserama Gudinski saying he wished he’d signed Chiz but when he heard their demo tape, Barnesy wasn’t singing (like, that’s a reason not to like them). Remember that joke from the Simpsons, I got Paul McCartney out of Wings? Well if only someone had got Barnesy out of Chiz forever… Don Walker’s (and the others’) amazing songs, and the incredible band, and Mossy up front. They would have been the greatest band in the world, instead of what they were, the greatest band in the world with a little pus-filled gutbucket up front belting out a kind of modified robot baby scream.


Whatever. Gudinski then signed Mossy and Mossy had a number one hit, so what was his problem with Mossy? Don Walker’s last album Cutting Back continues, for my money, to be a complete work of absolute genius, which keeps producing new greatnesses, so I am right into that, and I think Walker is in some ways a great bush balladeer whose music isn’t quite up to his lyrics (like a lot of great lyricists, think of Bob Dylan, if you like Bob Dylan), but it certainly has room for great musicians to work within, as ‘Cheap Whinge’ (as any song with Barnesy singing it could be called) shows.



I recently witnessed a quite good conference paper about oz rock and western Sydney in the 80s. I was up for it. I still think that oz rock is a misnomer; there’s no such thing in terms of sound (Icehouse was ‘oz rock’ as much as Chiz or anything else you care to name of a guitar-power chord persuasion; and for that matter, to take a random example and as much as they’re – or because they’re so – despised, the Angels were often as post-punk as anything else; think of the similarities, for there are so many, between the Gang of Four and ‘Take a Long Line’). I think the Angels are unfairly despised in many quarters. I admit I agree the later 80s saw them get a bit too hair-metal at least for my taste or the 21st century’s, the earlier stuff was very hardy. I advise you to reassess at the earliest opportunity.

ouch

Headaches have been plaguing me this week. Usually on the left hand side. On Tuesday it was particularly bad, and this morning it is not great either. Last night we went to the launch of Vagabond Holes, the book of reminiscences/ skerricks/ discussion/ etc about David McComb, and Beautiful Waste, a collected poetry tome. D McC has now been dead a decade, and he is obviously still sorely missed by many. I contributed a piece to VH which seems now to me to be a little outside the spirit of the rest of the book but whatever – that was the editor’s decision to make, not mine, and they must have been happy with it. There is a lot of interesting shorter memoir stuff in there which I enjoyed reading. I guess there is an elephant in the room when it comes to D McC (the drug stuff) which no-one is addressing in print. If it’s irrelevant, then perhaps we at least need to have the discussion about why. I don’t think it’s tasteless to bring it up. But in any case what really stands out for me in VH and what I find really interesting is his absolute dedication to his craft, and his concerted reworking of ideas and writings throughout. Last night we had Judith Lucy and Robert McComb reading a couple of poems each; Graham Lee and Robert McComb performing a couple of songs; the Black Eyed Susans performing about five songs.

Speaking of poorly functioning heads, Millie’s eye is back with us, what it is of course is not her eye but what a buildup of pus is doing to her eye, by distorting her cheek. It gives the right side of her face a sleek look – a bit deco – which in itself is not entirely gross but it doesn’t measure up well against the left. She is back on the antibiotics.



A co-worker said to me this afternoon, ‘are you sick or just tired?’

be grateful

While listening to one of the funniest Just a Minutes for a long time I put an eraser on Asha's back three or four times with comic responses from her each time - confusion, unable to locate it visually, then inability to realise that gravity would rid her of the burden if she only tipped a little way one way or the other. The payoff was she finally grabbed it between bared teeth and dropped it on the floor. Just be grateful I did not video this and put it on YouTube and get 7 000 000 hits.