walk just after sunset

This is the foundation to the old Johnston Street bridge with the later bridge behind it laughing.

That's right - another drone. This time a man and child were in control. Nearly hit some birds.

 The culprits

taco bill's on a saturday night

 

It's so interesting how often good ideas turn out to be bad ones. For instance, for some unknown reason I thought I might enjoy going to Taco Bill’s in Clifton Hill by myself for a meal. I really, really, really wanted mexican food – that was part of it (a big fat part). Also, while I’m not sure I had ever been to Taco Bill’s in Clifton Hill before, I was pretty sure it would be some iteration of a nostalgic experience. Once arriving there (in driving rain, which didn’t help the mood) I came to appreciate that I had probably not ever been there before and that it was a fuckin’ noisy place, particularly when filled with a bunch of rambunctious kids having a birthday party. I guess it was once a bank building or something similar, and the ceilings echoed extraordinarily. The food was fine (salsa particularly good) but the soundtrack was dreadful – I almost walked out the minute I walked in but then had a funny untrue  premonition that they would all be leaving very shortly and it would soon be a peaceful place (though still look like the inside of a 70s school cafetaria) anyway the noise was dire all the time I was there and I found it very troublesome, not that I was necessarily there to do anything enjoyable other than stop feeling very hungry. To add insult to injury the birthday children people turned the lights off to have a cake and candles (‘sorry other people!’, yelled an 8 year old girl; an adult associated with the party also came around and apologised, saying she did not know it was going to happen). Anyway all in all at the end of the day all things considered when you get down to tin tacks, I wish I hadn’t gone to Taco Bill’s on a Saturday night.

(This space left intentionally quiet)

soft porn

Alec Marshall asked me a few months ago to draw a cover for the cassette split single of Hot Palms and Lehmann B Smith covering two Pip Proud songs. 'Hey Gus' was Pip's first single, but it was released about thirty years after he started making records, he was an albums artist in the sixties. 'Sleeping Jane' is, in my memory, either a 60s/70s lyric he wrote music for in the 90s, or a 60s/70s song he recorded for the first time in the 90s.

The cover versions are amazingly good.

I did a lot of drawings in the white spaces of the most recent issue received of the New Yorker. It's weird how if you don't draw for a while you need to do it before you are reminded why you like doing it. This is a soft porn drawing in recognition of Pip's saucy side. He would have been very into it, I suspect (I am not like Robert Crumb, I don't draw my fantasies, OK). The semi-circle and the accidental text are from an ad. I spent a lot of time looking at the ad and I can't really figure out what it's for.

The single will be out in April. (NB Jane is the slender girl in the bath. The semi circle is God, who is referenced quite a bit in 'Hey Gus').

(A few days later: Now I'm not sure I even really like this. It was inspired as I said by Pip's earthier side and I have to say that was not my favourite of his sides. On the one hand, I'm tempted to scrap it and do something else, though I'm also tempted to try and expand the scenario somewhat. As it stands it is the most sexless potential-sex-scene I can imagine. By 'expand the scenario' I mean perhaps add some more images to give it more dimension as a 'story'. But am I overthinking. Yes)

jacana reserve this morning between 6 and 7

These are not in order. That's why the light changes. 

I am quite impressed by the cactus garden planted at the back of this Gladstone Park home. Not sure if the fence is to keep the cacti contained or what.

The below image is something I've wanted to record for a while now. I mean, bizarre. These gates block off the stupid access road to the Western Ring Road that was a big part of the rebuilding of the new part of the road. Someone has smashed them, but I wonder if this was deliberate or not.

Below: Gladstone Park PS

Below Barry. Barry is so much like Millie it is sometimes scary. He is similar in attitude as well as looks. You probably think 'they all look the same' but I know they don't.

Ferdy. They were both on leads because it was so early in the morning everything apparently smells amazing at that time.

jacana reserve on wednesday

Nothing much to report, really. Ground still dry. Sky looks nice though doesn't it.

- Update from 8/3/14 - all the sporting club scrub has been mown down, for reasons unclear. Hares can't be happy, or snakes or probably even foxes

Return of Pip

From March 7, 2013 (I thought I'd delay this 6 months a year because despite my confident air of the inevitability of the legacy's acceptance, you know, I didn't want to jinx anything with any kind of hubris or smugness) 

Pip Proud used to tell me (particularly when he was in his cups, which wasn’t that unoften) that his value would only be recognized when he was dead. I used to roll my eyes, partly because as much as I loved Pip and felt honoured to be a part of his life, I am never that interested in what drunk people say to me, and the more ardent it is the more stupid it is – you know how the drunk are.

But it’s so strange that two years after his sad demise (that sounds sarcastic but it is sad – extremely sad) his opinion is being proved true. It wasn’t long after his death that I noticed this: Garry Shead released a DVD of his 1960s films including the film De Da De Dum, about Pip, and the ABC nonironically, and without comment, used some of Pip’s music in a story about the DVD. Which is to say: no-one said, this is weird, this is nuts, anything went in the 60s (nor did they say, ‘this is Pip’), but it was just used like it was music, not the ravings of a mental invalid. More recently, though, more has happened. A Japanese record label is putting out a compilation LP of Pip’s 1960s work; I’m playing a minor part in the release, going to write some sleevenotes and so on. More bizarre: these English DJs are doing an Australian psychedelic mix, I dunno, something, and there are two of Pip’s songs included, alongside ‘The Real Thing’ and Marty Rhone and the Missing Links and the Masters' Apprentices (who Pip loved).

What would Pip say? I don’t know. He liked his new (1990s+) music more than his old music, while at the same time admitting his own inability to really gauge what was good and what wasn’t amongst the newer stuff or to remember a lot of the older stuff. He had little memory of the specifics of his 1960s work but obviously regarded it through the filter of an extraordinary sadness because he put himself ‘out there’ and got rejected by showbiz and the industry. Then he had a stroke and he didn’t really have many options to make music at all, except those amazing two tracks he recorded with Kes Band a few weeks before he died, which were almost like Pip rapping over a prerecorded backing. When those songs are released is when I think Pip will finally join the ranks of Amazing Artist. Listening to those songs, even if you didn’t know he was dying (and even if he was, to a significant degree, in denial of that fact - at least in his day-to-day conversation) you get a strong sense of a man grappling with impending doom. (Well, I could be wrong, because I can’t listen to those songs without knowing the context and remembering Pip recording in the palliative care facility). In any case it’s an interesting time for the P Proud legacy, and it’s only going to grow. 

Update 7/3/2014 OK the album still hasn't come out, but it's well on its way, and a single has been released. Pip would have been pleased that one side of the single is a more recent track. I'm just pleased that it's happening, slowly but surely. Also, there are going to be reissues of the two Phonogram albums on vinyl & a fabulous single of 2 x cover versions about to come out on Why Don't You Believe Me next month. It's all happening for Pip. 

david mccomb march 1984

I'm looking through some old letters sent to me 30 years ago in my capacity as co-editor/publisher of Distant Violins, a fanzine which ran to about 30 issues if I remember properly. I put up a short letter from Tim Hemensley a few months ago, and there are a lot of other really interesting ones. I'd like to post them here but it seems a bit nasty to do it with people who are still around. Tim isn't, and neither is David McComb, still it seems a little mean to make public their correspondence, but here's a historically interesting page from one of his letters and a handbill he also sent.