forgets

I have been forgetting a lot lately, well that's not entirely true I suppose, I have been forgetting occasionally lately, but it feels like a lot, because you kind of expect to have everything at your fingertips. This morning I was on RRR and I wanted to be able to conjure up the name of a colleague just in case I was asked about him (too much detail, don't worry) the point being I could only remember his first name, and the last seemed like not just an empty dank hole, but more like a penetratingly frazzled desert, where thoughts, ideas and names were vaporised. Look it's OK, I don't need to remember everything - most of what I have to remember is meaningless - but still. Sucks when it happens!

o.t.b.w.w.e.s.w.p.i.a.b.t.i.r.i.i.r.i.b.s.a.a.d.b.n.r.i.b.t.t.i.h.a.l.g.o.i.j.t.c.t.t.i.s.m.i.s.a.b.s.i.m.m.i.w.w.i.a.i.h.i.n.i.a.

On the bus with Wham’s ‘Everything She Wants’ playing. It’s actually better than I remember it, I remember it being sort of atonal and dull, but not really, it’s better than that, it has a lot going on. It’s just that chugging thing that I suppose made it seem a bit sluggish in my memory. I wonder what it’s about. I hope I never hear it again.

shaw

I wish I could do more in the Shaw alphabet.

I actually really believe in the Shaw alphabet , in the way I believe in vegetarianism and art. That is: everyone would benefit from it, I know they would. I have absolutely no doubt. You might as well say, ‘are potatoes yummy’, ‘is Sarah Silverman funny’. Of fucking course. Yet I also have to hold in my head simultaneously the knowledge that to embrace the Shaw alphabet is ‘too hard’ for too many people. (‘Too hard’ in the sense that: ‘I learnt something once, to learn an easier version is too hard').

I have probably said this on this blog before but OK I can say it again (maybe I’ll add something new via the wisdom of age): the Shaw alphabet is efficient, useful and good. 2018 English spelling completely stinks like ripe recently produced animal shit. No-one wants or needs that spelling. People ignore that spelling, because it’s obviously bullshit. It is a disaster and it should be avoided where possible, because it’s terrible. In the 1940s Shaw pointed out his name was really two sounds, a consonant and a vowel, but it was ridiculously wastefully spelt with four letters. True. He noted that the word ‘fish’ could also arguably logically spelt ‘ghoti’. Also true (I think it’s the gh in rough and the oti in… potion? Or something like that). He was right about English spelling. Not only is it illogical, it’s also inefficient and here’s something else he didn’t say – it’s unpleasant. And also, it wouldn’t occur to him that it’s classist and racist (it presumes a classical western education, and fuck that, right).

The Shaw alphabet would save us millions, every year. You need a lot less space to write things in Shaw. It takes less time and it also, incidentally, looks a lot better than horrible old whatever we call this, English Writing. People’s lame, unenlightened, sad, backward outlook and essentially people’s unwillingness to learn something new has robbed us of something beautiful, that is, a life in the Shaw Alphabet. People are jerks actually.

images from the invasion day march 26 january 2016

Late 1979, the wrap up

Ultimately my feelings about Summer Gold and late 1979 are mixed and colourful (you can have colourful feelings, right? Well, you can’t tell me I don’t). I do feel that you can sift out the album in all kinds of weird and wonderful categories, if you’re of a mind, into for instance disco pop, rock (there’s not much of that really – maybe three tracks), novelty (if you count ‘Up There Cazaly’, you’ve got at least two; except you might also count ‘Money’, although as we saw this was regarded as a ‘disco’ track at the time of its release at least in some quarters; you might also count ‘Twist A Saint Tropez’, I don’t know, you tell me). Then there are sublime ballads – about three of those – and, well, some outright shit that should be destroyed, but not much. I’ve made much of how surprised I am by the extensive lack of hits on the album, despite the extensive provision of artists who just had hits and/or were just about to have more, but not this time. So weird. That, in itself, doesn’t speak to the quality of the work. No album that features ‘Who Were You With in the Moonlight’ could ever actually be a bad album. And that song wasn’t a hit in Australia (by the way, I bought ‘Who Were You With in the Moonlight’ on iTunes a few days ago so I could play it on the radio, and I just want to say the rerecorded version of that song is one of the poxiest pieces of succulent pox I have ever had the displeasure of vomiting in response to. What a turd of a record. An absolute and utter turd. It’s always so strange when people don’t realise the value of what they’ve done, and seek to remake it for no good purpose whatsoever. Of course it's the fact that it's so good the first time, that makes it so bad the second time).

What kind of culture were we looking at in late 1979? I suppose the first thing to realise, and yes this was ‘my day’ in the sense of (whether I was listening to radio or not) there were very few songs in the top 40 at this point that I’m not extremely familiar with, and in various ways pretty positive about. There are a lot more drum machines and synthesisers in use than we were necessarily aware of in the moment, and a lot more studio experimentation on various records than was acknowledged. The lyrics were often highly dodgy, sticky stinky brown dodgy, and the sentiments and assumptions within and amongst them were shockingly awful, oppressive and dunderheaded garbage.

My high school, John Gardiner HS. A truly disgusting place and time. Photo credit: Fuck Off

I was 14 in late 1979, it was a highly horrible time to be growing up in Hawthorn going to the really, really bad high school and doing neither poorly nor well academically and essentially just wanting to get it over with. I may or may not have been listening to the radio 1979 but it wasn’t long before I really embraced pop music, at the edgy end. I note that the Pretenders’ ‘Brass in Pocket’, which I adored (and still have a super soft spot for) was a hit in early 1980. I spent a whole day willing that fucking song to come on the radio. I was so thrilled when I bought my copy of that single.

So maybe 1979 is not inherently interesting but interesting only to me. It seems like so much more! Probs not. That’s OK too. In fact, I sort of prefer it not being so perfect. Not least because it’s all dead and over now.

To finish up, a song that has nothing whatsoever to do with Summer Gold but which came out at the same time, I bought it a couple of weeks ago entirely on spec. Mick Drennan made a record and disappeared. Why couldn't more people do that?!*

* Perhaps even without the 'made a record' bit

Summer Gold: Two Man Band, 'Up there Cazaly'

I can't tell you how tempting it was to completely omit this, the last track on Summer Gold, from this overview. Not because I hate the song (at least, I recognise its genius) but just... because.

It's plain that whoever put together the track listing for Summer Gold, the artist formerly known as as muggins, threw zher hands in the air when it came to this track: it just has to go on the end, if for no other reason that a lot of people are likely to want to take the needle off the record at this point (or perhaps to try, with a hot pin, to make a new track right through this one to the label). Whatever it musters in catchiness, 'Up there Cazaly' is also a frustratingly irritating stadium chant that everyone knows and few would seriously want to sit down and listen to like, on a record. Apart from anything else, it's in most (I'm going to guess 70-80%) Victorians' and many (30-40%?) Australians' brains and cannot be purged, even with a strong dose of 'C'Mon Aussie C'Mon'.* 

With the subtitle 'Seven's Footy Theme' (this is omitted on the Summer Gold sleeve) this song was, essentially, a clever bit of doggerel calculated to generate a rush of blood to the head/penis at the mention of aussie rules football, a sport that apparently someone in 1979 thought needed a bit of promotion (not sure why). There are a few things that I do find amusing here, mainly lyrical; the suggestion early in the piece that football spectatorship is something a man does as a, well, turn on or mind-clearing (what's good about that?! Should I try it?) experience. I also recall the slightly askew way Mike Brady sings 'Me, I like football' as I recall a fellow student at my high school at the time this song was popular, singing this particular line many, many times as a kind of absurdist pop culture quote during the school day, and then proving it was true by going to have a forty year (so far) career writing about football in the media. 

To their credit, although Two Man Band (also known as 'Two-Man Band' - don't get confused) released five singles between 1979-1984 each with a song aside, they never tried to cobble together a cheap and nasty album out of their ten extant songs. Respect that. 

* Kudos to Mike Brady and Peter Sullivan for actually going into the studio and recording a fully crafted song here. The Mojo Singers' 'C'mon Aussie C'mon' is a shoddily-edited tape loop, in which someone has just said - 'put this... on a record? This... on a record? Well, ok, I'll just run it a few times till it fills up a side.' 'Up There Cazaly' is actually structured and smart, a bold pop culture (if not outright pop) statement. 

Summer Gold: Mona Lisa and Terry Young 'I Wanna Make It With You Tonight'

As mentioned a few days ago, Karen Dewey's Marcia Hines biography gives Ooh Child pretty short shrift but does mention tension generated by Robie Porter's attempts to put Mona Lisa and Terry at a comparable billing to Marcia. This went as far as the unusual step of putting at least one song featuring the duo on Marcia's album and then releasing it under their names as a single, released mid-79 and hitting the top 20 (this youtube clip says number 19, my source - the Barnes/Scanes Top 40 Research - says 14).

I note without interest that the wikipedia entry for the album omits the single's chart status.

Apart from the odd politicking behind its release, what can we say about the song? Only that it cunningly combines two things every teenager in 1979 adored - sex and drugs - in a confusing metaphor that produced symptoms of dizziness and bafflement not dissimilar to a toke backstage at the blue light disco. I wonder if they ever done it. Terry's enigmatic smile suggests maybe yes.