more numbers

 

Just wanted to register the interesting (?) truth that there is another Numbers and Spotifuck thinks it's the same Numbers (the albumi Blue Café and the single 'No Smoking' are not by the early 1980s Sydney band) but I can't find any detail on this other Numbers at all. If you listen to the real Numbers a bit this more recent (but I suppose no less really real) Numbers comes up, they're not terrible. I've really got to get rid of Spotifuck but first I have to listen to all of The Real Thing's greatest hits. 

boogie fever

Not just 22 Original Hits by Original Artists, but 22 Amazing Original Hits!!! The biggest catch on this is The Real Thing's 'Rainin' through my sunshine' but there are a heap of amazing songs here. 1978 was a fucking trip. I adore that it's called 'Boogie Fever' but it doesn't have the song 'Boogie Fever' by the Sylvers on it. I also adore that it has such a non-conventionally sexy person on the cover, or should I say, a conventionally non-sexy person on the cover. It also has, on balance I'd say unfortunately, Sheila B. Devotion's 'Singin' in the Rain' - another one of those discofied classics. Additionally, while I adore The Motors' 'Airport', it's so far away from the feverdom of boogie it's not funny. Hilarious that it's first song side one. 

 

the numbers by the numbers #2

So my British copy of The Numbers showed up today, pretty swift. I am unreasonably pleased with it. Two things bear discussing. One is, the song 'I Don't Know'. I've been listening to Numerology which is the 15-year-old CD compilation of Numbers material, which mooshes both albums and the entirety of their first EP. 'I Don't Know' isn't on that CD, and I had kind of forgotten it,* except now I hear it again on this record I have to admit I absolutely had not forgotten one note of it - it is completely ingrained, it must have been playing on RRR when my portal was at its most receptive. Weirdly if anything it's been mashed in my brain with Blondie's 'I Know But I Don't Know' which is a more complicated but less pleasing song. 'I Don't Know' is classic teen angst of the kind of thing The Undertones excelled at (though it's not as rock). Two is the song 'Jericho' which is sitting at the end of side one of this English LP whereas it's not on the original version. It's a different version, and pretty special. A bit muddier than the version that was released as a single/appears on the second album, I guess it's kind of more primitive but/and still very enjoyable. 

I might spend some time comparing or I might not, but I suspect the whole album sounds a bit tougher and fuller than the original. It also has a lyric sheet, which my copy of the Australian version doesn't, but I don't know whether it did once. 

*I do have the Aust version of the album, so I've got two copies now - decadent! - but I hadn't played it for a while, I think because I had just assumed the CD was the entirety of the first album and about half of the second. Wrong.

railway canal

On the weekend Perry and I did a little wander down Moonee Ponds Creek almost to Docklands to check out whether there's any material evidence left of the loading dock for coal from the Railway Canal to the Spencer St railyards. We found this. I mean, really I just don't know. It seems weird to imagine that no-one had ever taken away this jumble of stone from what seems likely to have been the site of the dock, in the century plus since it was decreed redundant. But on the other hand, did they have any reason to take it away, and did anyone really need or want this little bit of the creek bank for anything else? 

The Railway Canal was a big project of the late 19th century which doesn't really seem to have been used at all much after about 1910. It's essentially one of the few canal projects in Melbourne to aid industry/infrastructure, curious that it was implemented to assist railways which had essentially supplanted canals long before this time. But the logistics made a certain amount of sense. But clearly it was pretty quickly revealed as a folly, and contributed to the ruination of the creek. 

To reiterate - I understand this amateur urban archaeology could well be way off. Way off. 

mound

Perry and I went to the dog wash place earlier today and we thought we'd just drop in behind these flats on Macaulay Road to check out the mound. I am interested in the mound and I don't really know what it 'means'. I could probably go in harder on the research but I lazily just went to that invaluable resource the Melbourne 1945 site. God bless that site but it just raised more questions. 

So I guess to the degree I thought about it, I thought that the gasometer on the site was probably set back a bit from the road and the mound in some way remediated the ground underneath it which probably couldn't be built on because, you know, a century of gas-related residue in the earth. But I see that the gasometer was at the road on the far southeast of the site and this is part that definitely has residential space atop it now. 

I am sure there's an answer to the question of the mound but today is not the day. I will say this: my reearcher tells me it is tasty. 

stories from the golf

Cliff Ellen and Monica Maughan in Stories from the Golf. In the service of one of my forthcoming books I am forced, forced to watch a lot of Australian comedy DVDs and this is one of them, from 2003. It's the first Robyn Butler/Wayne Hope series - 5 minute stories all revolving around one hire car (the Golf). Butler and Hope are the usual stars but sometimes there's some real surprises and this was one of them. A really simple and dare I say touching story with some funny things thrown in. Good series!