rowland s howard and new estate tote 30 march 07

ponderin'

So much to catch up on diary. Batrider were really good last Friday - they are amazingly tight these days and either they have a style all their own or, I'm just not up on things. I suspect they do have a style all their own. It's both hilarious and chillin'. Mum Smokes didn't sound as great as the previous week. It happens. Suze bought me a felafel and Mia a (oh that'll never be easy to say, luckily I'm writing it) kebab. What a generous soul. I was to take her and Toby to the collectables fair in Camberwell on Sunday but they were 'tired'. I'm not using those inverted commas to imply they actually had better things to do, just quotin'.

At the collectables fair - actually a mega record fair with a few Star Wars figurines and ba-a-a-a-d comics - I got the following: Australian Crawl's Sirocco for only $2; Jethro Tull's This Was for only $3 (cool album); Mississippi's self-titled and only album for, well, $15 (I figured if it had one song half as good as 'Kings of the world' on it, it'd be worth it, but, well, side two doesn't, I'm looking forward to one day hearing side one); Roxy Music's Flesh and Blood; Phil Manning's I wish there was a way (which I note some pedant has titled on the spine, 'I wish there were a way'; Queen's A day at the races (I've wanted a copy of that for thirty years, now I'll wait thirty more to play it), a Polish prog album one song per side keyboard whiz it would seem; that's all I can recall at the moment though I am sure there were more (I've put them away now, never to be seen again). Oh, and the Bay City Rollers' 'Rock and roll love letter', which is just an amazing single.

I think that's about it. I'm looking forward to Easter. How about you?

post office

Well, I borrowed Tagore's Post Office and read it on the train on the way home, it probably took about twenty minutes. It's about a small boy called Amal whose adoptive father keeps him indoors because he is poorly. When Amal discovers a new Post Office has been erected by the King he is thrilled:

AMAL: Say, what's going on there in that big house on the other side, where there is a flag flying high up and the people are always going in and out?
WATCHMAN: Oh, there? That's our new Post Office.
AMAL: Post Office? Whose?
WATCHMAN: Whose? Why, the King's surely!
AMAL: Do letters come from the King to his office here?
WATCHMAN: Of course. One fine day there may be a letter for you in there.
AMAL: A letter for me? But I am only a little boy.
WATCHMAN: The King sends tiny notes to little boys.
AMAL: Oh, how splendid! When shall I have my letter? How do you know he'll write to me?

I also borrowed a PhD thesis about Tagore that has shown me he is someone I should actually have heard of, so I feel a bit foolish. He was the first Asian (the way people in the US & UK define 'Asian' and Australians generally don't, i.e. he was Indian) to win the Novel Prize for Literature. Looking forward to gleaning more from that.

I also learnt a little more about the Parthenon in Grange Road by general dipping into the Sands and McDougall directory. In 1919 it was the home of Mr. Louis Smith. Ten years later the listed resident was Mrs Louise Smith. I don't know if Louis changed his sex or what. More bizarre possibilities cross my mind. I think I need to go to 10 Grange Road. Though the Smiths probably don't live there anymore.

meal not a car

how not to pick up girls or get to Sunshine

Melbourne Age 8 November 1960 p. 6

It was a bit awful to witness such a disastrous pickup attempt as was made on the train yesterday afternoon between a not unattractive stubbly young Indian man and an also not unattractive young woman of middle-eastern origin (she claimed, though I wouldn’t necessarily have picked it – similarly, the young man identified as Indian). She was drawing, I couldn’t see what (they were both sitting opposite me, on adjoining seats in a way that made me wonder when I boarded the train if perhaps they were actually 'together', but also that if so, the lack of communication between them for much of the journey was odd). He complemented her on her drawing skill at a certain point, probably Ascot Vale, and she thanked him, and then having broken the ice, he became very pushy. He extracted her name from her and was then agitating for her phone number. He didn’t have any friends in Melbourne, he didn’t know how to meet people, etc, and then he suggested she should be his friend, a notion she rejected politely, by claiming probably correctly that the few friends she had were sufficient and then when he insisted, she resisted him more firmly by saying that she knew what he really wanted, a suggestion he did not address, except to say that his friends in India told him he was a good friend. By the time we were approaching Pascoe Vale, he mentioned something about the weather, which misleadingly led into discussion of wanting to go to sunshine, which she took as a desire for a warmer clime. Then it became clear he did actually just want to go to Sunshine, which is of course on another railway line entirely. This was when I got drawn into his life for the first time, and he asked me how he could get to Sunshine. I told him he would have to go back to North Melbourne so he got off the train at Pascoe Vale. ‘Thank god,’ said the girl. ‘What part of “no” didn’t he understand?’ said the woman two seats up from me. The girl said that the man had told her (he must have said this quietly as I heard most of what he said) that in India no means yes. The woman two seats up said that in Australia, no meant no. I make it a rule never to feel sorry for horny young men (or any horny person at least not on the basis of their horniness. I am sure he was lonely. I imagine it’s quite possible he had even just got on the wrong train to sit next to that girl, and then used Sunshine as a way of getting off the train when he realised it wasn’t gonna happen. In another context I might like the bravery of the whole enterprise, though he was, let’s face it, acting way too desperate for any credibility once he started talking to her. Judging by what I witnessed I can pretty safely say it was in no way meant to be. I had just come from the State Library where I was reading various Kew newspapers relating to the town hall. In the early 1960s (I shouldn’t have been reading this, because it actually had little to do with the town hall) there was a big debate in the local newspaper over the white Australia policy. A local clergyman had spoken out against it and had the words ‘Fool traitor’ daubed on his front footpath. The paper reported that Robert Menzies deplored this act (though RM would also have deplored the guy’s politics too). This news gave way to a series of letters regarding the role of white people to lead black people, etc. One woman in particular wrote a long series of letters about communism’s pernicious influence over non-whites and the duty of Christians (not whites per se) to lead them instead. Not I suppose a very original idea for the time but very heartfeltly expressed in long letters to the editor. Ten years later the ESA was still worrying at this shit, running some line about they hoped the Springboks didn’t get the wrong idea about Australians. Geez!!! What really thrilled me however was some other news items from an entirely different age, my favourite era, the 1920s. Kew was growing as a suburb but most of the older settlement was in the west. A group of people in East Kew, which was fairly sparsely populated at that time, started up a theatrical society called the Live Art Club at a house (I’m assuming a house) called The Parthenon. ‘Kew is fast gaining a reputation as a centre of culture’ claimed the Kew Advertiser on 21 April 1927. ‘during the last year numerous literary plays have been produced for the first time in Australia. ‘There have also been many lectures on artistic, psychologic, and philosophic subjects, either under the auspices of the Live Art Club or the Youth Advance Australia Society.’ In April there was a performance of a play by Tagere called Post Office. I have no idea what this is, but the combination of the author’s name, the play’s title, and the year in which it was performed combine to make something quite thrilling to me [Looking in a library catalogue I realise the author's name is actually Rabindranath Tagore. The play was published in 1914]. The Advertiser article continues: ‘All this activity is not only a culture influence in Kew, but it is making Kew magnetic, and already those interested in the movement are looking for residences in Kew to be closer to the work. Quite a community centre on a big scale is anticipated.’ I love the structure of that last sentence. By the middle of the year the Live Art Club was giving a performance of the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet and ‘a revival of Tagore’s “Chitra” at the club’s headquarters, 10 Grange Road, East Kew.’ The performances were essentially fundraisers for the community centre/ Live Art Club building, ‘a centre where the playwrights, musicians, actors, dancers and artists of the club can experiment and find self-expression. Among the experiments that are to be tried are several that have been successfully carried out at the Edward Gordon Craig School in Florance [sic] and in Russia, but never before in Australia. In both these places some remarkable developments in the art of scene designing are entirely different from what we see in this country.’ (Kew Advertiser 16 June 1927 p. 1) All this information is utterly enticing to me, as a historian who (probably like most historians) enjoys the possibilities of tantalising glimpses into the unknown at least as much as the known/ solved, well, let’s face it, probably more. Of course if I dwell long on it the Live Art Club becomes some kind of insidious lair for a predatory proprietor there at the Parthenon, 10 Grange Road, but if I instead consider it as nothing more than a polite outer suburban middle-class piece of weirdery I can still enjoy the idea of anxious and skinny individuals in loose-fitting or perhaps just oversize clothes rubbing their sweaty hands together and accidentally almost knocking potted ferns from atop plaster columns, ardently muttering about things they’d read in two-year-old British magazines and saying ‘step into the salon for a scone’. I wonder how bohemian they were there – full on? Speaking of bohemians Mia has made an amazing stop-frame film of her creation of her triptych, and put a soundtrack to it with garage band. It all looks and sounds pretty incredible. I hope she puts it on YouTube. Also speaking of bohemians, Batrider and Mum Smokes at the Northcote Social Club on Friday night – should be a blast.

and in a probably unrelated development....

There's this kind of darkishness in the mornings, I can't really put my finger on it, but I deduce it is like this all night. Could it really be the end of summer?

i think it must have been rain

The day had a most unusual effect on it, kind of water falling from the sky or at least from above. I imagine it must have been what they used to call rain. I didn't really know how to deal with it. I actually bought a 'rain coat' at a garage sale in Oak Park last year so I put it on to go to work but then when I left work I forgot it and so I got wet going to the library. All very novel.

I have to do some scanning for tomorrow's power point so I had better not go into the large rambling musation that might possibly burst forth if I sit here randomly typing and thinking about Santo Santoro and the Neighbours revamp and the last quarter of pizza in the fridge and so on.

then other things happened

Yesterday evening we went to Exile on Smith St because Mia was playing a short support set to Guy Blackman and his amazing dancing bear, and it was a good afternoon generally, not only was the show tremendous (I wish I'd recorded it) but Guy and Brad said there was a new record shop in Johnson St and guess what, there was, and I got the last Dingoes album (which having listened to the first 1/4 I have to say was bad) a Doug Ashdown album (his 3rd, Source, which has a rad cover and sounds generally cool particularly the closing instrumental), The Reels first album (where did my other copy of this get to for christ's sake?) and a 1970 approx. compilation called Unforgettable Hits featuring groups like King Fox, Toby Jugg and Samael Lilith - as if there were really groups like those. Mia was doing songs from her bird album so she had a backing track on CD and played a bit of her new steel guitar over it. The bird album is extremely arty. The image reveals that once again at EOSS I was in the whores' section. The film being played is probably self-evident. It had a lot more nudity than I remembered, and I only saw it (again, again) a couple of years ago.

exile

Last night we went to Exile on Smith Street to see Go Genre Everything and Mum Smokes, also there was a band playing called either Flying Scribble or Flying Scrabble (they were spoken about, and written about on the chalkboard, with both names). FS were pretty amazing actually, I would definitely go and see them again, love that drummer-multi keyboard combination. Go Genre Everything are pretty much everything I want in a rock band these days, because I love that drummer-guitarist combination, also they have funny ideas. Mum Smokes are Important and I don't mean that sarcastically at all. They just merely are. Karl didn't sing enough songs. I think he only sang one. And he didn't sing in his Kes voice which was interesting.

We got to watch from the up the stairs part, very Deadwood, I expected the whores to come out any moment, but seriously, they didn't.

Very gratified to discover that the use of 'sexx' in my label for the last post has boosted my traffic, though not as much as I thought it might.

yeah

just got back from dinner at korean restaurant drank a lot of plum wine ate korean food prior to that was at art prize award a good picture won it was well done now i can't believe the lame things people are searching on to get to this blog who the hell do you think you are and what did you do to desrve to walk pright and call yourself a human being to be from iceland and search on the internet for something as masssively pathetic as 'werry good porn' i am almost sorry i got sitemeter though in fact i am glad i was never greatly illusioined about humanitty just so you know however i woudl be extremely disillusioned if i had been 'werry good pron' indeed.

These typing errors are not fake but regardless i will fix them tomorrow.

altona reverie

Went to the dog beach today, at Williamstown or at Altona perhaps (or at Seaholme). Charlie went apeshit over certain dogs that came near her, who were probably expecting something immature like to 'play'. In a sense she almost did kind of play with a couple of them, in the I'm chasing you away no I'm chasing you away way, although it might easily have gone horribly wrong. Then we went and got me a large icecream (pecan and caramel, coconut and raspberry in a waffle cone) at Altona Ice, at which time C&M stood guard outside. Both at the dog beach and later I spent a li'l time with Jeremy, Narelle and Edith. All fairly laid back. Narelle lent me Rhett Hutchence's book. We also talked briefly about Freud's newie. That's Freud, James Freud. It's called 'Shaken not stirred, I believe I'll polish me a turd'. Speaking of which Charlie barked at a nice-looking charcoally-grey dog of breed indeterminate while in the water. In response, said dog just shat 6 shits into the pristine sea. His/her owner could be seen a few seconds later brandishing a plastic bag, presumably to scoop 'em all out. That's dedication. Personally I would just assume dog shit feeds the bream, or whatever gets fished out of Port Phillip Bay every day.

In truth the James Freud book is called I am the voice left from rehab. With the title and the curious lack of reference to the previous book (I am the voice left from drinking) on the back cover blurb, I initially thought it was some kind of repackage of the first. But nah, it's just the continuing Adventures of Colin McGlinchy, dinky di tales of the drunk punk Freud.

hello this is joannie

Paul Evans’ single Hello this is joannie is a sensational double novelty record, as well as being a very catchy tune, which is probably the most important thing about it. It has the novelty effect of, firstly, celebrating the advent/ availability of the telephone answering machine; secondly, being a grisly death song utterly belied by the jauntiness of the sub-disco pop of the tune (the bass in the opening verse - sweaty!) and production (perhaps that’s the fourth impressive thing about it – it’s jaunty yet gruesome/ morbid). I remember having the song explained to me by a friend, before I’d actually heard it (funny how often this happens, still). The explanation had to start with a rundown of the concept that some people now had these devices that answered the telephone for you if you were out (later another friend lent me a tape of a Bob Dylan bootleg, including a song he put on his answering machine; so the first answering machine message I ever heard apart from Joannie's was Bob Dylan's). What I didn’t realise was that such devices had existed in some form since the 1920s, when messages would be recorded onto a wax disc; certainly it wasn’t a piece of technology that particularly excited me in itself. The explanation then went on to describe the song as being about a man whose girlfriend dies in a car accident and he calls her number to keep on listening to her voice. It is sick. ‘Hello this is Joannie’ begins with a strummed guitar, a ring tone and then the answering machine message itself – it’s the chorus, and it’s the only time that it’s not included as part of the narrative; while its inclusion at that early point is strategic and clever, it does disrupt the flow. The first chorus is Evans’ character telling us that he and Joannie spent some time (‘last night’) at his house. He (not she, apparently) got drunk (‘I drank a little too much red’) and they fought. When she left in anger, Evans’ song persona was left bereft (‘I felt so damn bad’). He calls her the following morning and receives the answering machine message – the chorus again. He leaves a message for her: ‘Joannie I’m sorry and I’m feeling oh so small’; later, he calls again – chorus two (well, three really) during which Evans ‘oohs’ anxiously. We are then treated to a short middle 8 guitar solo, indicating a fraught waiting period, and then the music takes a step back as Evans lets us know that when the phone finally rings it’s not Joannie, as he hopes, but ‘a friend’ who tells him Joannie has been killed in a car accident. It was, apparently, due to angry driving: I never should have let her drive home angry from my place I’ll never hold her again and kiss that funny face A lightbulb, however, goes off above his head. He realises he can still hear her talking if calls her answering machine, another chorus, during which he riffs ‘I’m so sorry Joannie’, the most poignant part of the whole. Like some of the very best pop music, the whole record explores a deeply tragic (what the Victorians would have called ‘pathetic’) story with absolute flippancy. There is a hint of Hitchcockian obsession about the tale, though of course the events conveyed, including the final calling of the answering machine, take place in a very short space of time (under 24 hours, almost certainly). What is most confronting in ‘Hello this is Joannie’, however, is the absolute bouncingness of the tune, which might almost be called saccharine but for the tuff rubbery bass which provides bountiful structure and support from the outset (but particularly in the opening 30 seconds).. I have never seen a video clip for the song, or a video of a live performance – should check YouTube – but I can only imagine that it couldn’t go down very well; Evans already sounds too joyous on the record, without visual confirmation. I can only imagine the way that the song could be interpreted visually is in some total subversion of the story; for instance, with Joannie still alive and gaily singing to Evans over the phone while her many glamorous friends silently try not to cack themselves in the background. Any other interpretation would require the people who made that long Renaldo and the Loaf video. I must say I feel the song does Joannie a disservice. Sure, road rage is an issue, but the distinct impression one gets is that her anger was Evans’ narrator’s fault, not Joannie’s, and it was the compliant way she tacitly allowed Evans to upset her so completely that her anger distracted her from proper road behaviour. I know what you’re saying – perhaps I’m doing Joannie a disservice; we’ll probably never know. Evans is on record as saying there was no Joannie in real life, which does her a further disservice if you ask me. The song made no. 10 in Australia in 1979; Evans had already had two hits in this country, twenty (!) years earlier, in 1959 and 1960. He also wrote songs for Elvis, including the b-side of 'Are you lonesome tonight', which is something to mention. http://www.paulevans.com/

3:33

I hope you don't mind me using old Dragon songs as my post headings (I could hardly use new ones could I. After all, even New Dragon doesn't use new ones). Actually I looked at a bit of Marc Hunter on YouTube this evening. I find it hard to find Dragon, because of course there are lots of other things called Dragon, not just them. So I was searching on Marc Hunter but I pretty much just found Marc Hunter. Not that that's a bad thing. There is a clip of him doing 'Big City Talk' on Countdown in '79.

So tonight I did a few things I want to share on you (in a few years, people are going to be saying that kind of speak is so mid-noughties). I finished, finally, the first draft of a paper I am co-authoring and I even did a bit of detective work I am quite pleased with, re: a certain parliamentarian leaving parliament due to ill-health but somewhere else (a source published 55 years later) it says a certain p'tarian resigned because of something he DID to the honour of the country, and I think I have put two and two together - it's the same month and everything (May, but I'm keeping the year to myself). The only thing that queers my pitch is that the p'tarian did actually die (of ill-health) less than two years later.

One dead 20th century guy per paragraph, that's me, although I'm about to spoil my average.

Then I watched a couple of eps of Veronica Mars. It's going to be hard to explain to Mia when she gets back from her fishing trip tomorrow that I have watched a lot of Veronica Mars while she's been away but sheesh. What can I say. I like it. Here are the things I like about Veronica Mars:

1. Her dad
2. She is always accusing people of things, it's really catty and you know that she is almost always wrong when she does it, and then you think 'well - that accusation did actually get them to tell her something else...'
3. There are some really good lines. I laughed twice in the two hours I was watching it tonight. I can't remember what at specifically.
4. The theme song
5. Wallace
6. Backup
7. It is not that cheesy
8. Veronica and her dad eat a lot - just like me
9. Piz
10. Themes sometimes relate to planning/ governance/ politixx

Anyway I have to go because tomorrow I am helping (by bringing the tapes) put the Sidewinder demos onto a CD. Simon did a rough mix of the live tapes and they're pretty OK. If the demos are good, the album will be really good.

Other good things on YouTube: Hello Sailor, Th' Dudes doing 'Walking in Light' - yo check it out.

Tomorrow also I am going to the dog beach. Should I take the dogs? No, those ingrates.

can't get good help these days

It takes fifteen days to fix an escalator at Melbourne Central. I mean, I'm not a compulsive public transport whinger or anything, but does that seem a tad long? And what's with this 'with it'? Hello? Don't they teach appropriate english expression underground?

nifty 1924 consul's family

Sydney Morning Herald 28 May 1924 p. 14
Consul's families were so much better then (sigh). That kid at the front's probably 41 now.

middle aged man has strong reaction to rock and roll show

...as performed by slightly older, and also of course middle aged, men and women.

Last night we went to see David Kilgour and Yo La Tengo at the Corner. I didn't like David Kilgour's set at all, or rather, the only bits I liked were the rock out bits at the end of about 3 or 4 songs. Part of this I ascribe to his apparent desire to reference the sound of late 60s Dylan. It has come to my attention that I don't really like Bob Dylan's music that much. I guess the mid-to-late 60s is his best period but nevertheless: I don't like it that much. But I really don't like it when people feel they should base their sound on him, and particularly when people try to sing like him. I also don't like it when innovative artists lose their verve and gain a strong desire to become craftspeople doing work 'as good as' their heroes'. Anyway, really great drummer aside, I wasn't that into DK, but maybe I just wasn't in the mood.

It must have been about the 6th time I'd seen Yo La Tengo. I have always enjoyed almost all of their work, and I admire them very much. The first half of the show - from about 10 to about 11, up until they did the Beach Boys cover - was amazingly excellent. Just after that the whole thing totally jumped the shark. The second half of the show was a gruesome debacle that went on incredibly long and seemed to feature one song that may as well have been the sound of a peanut shelling machine with the cogs askew. It was woeful. Some guy about 1 1/2 years younger than me ran up to some other guy and said 'that was totally fucken incredible! that was the most amazing thing I've ever seen!' which it may have been but I doubt it, because it was shocking.

I conveyed this to the car on the way home and Shane said at least the encores were good and I agreed with him but I was telling a lie (inasmuch as I was faking agreement) because I just wanted to forget it all.

If more people went to Circus Royale more often, they would realise what a show was all about.

circus royale

The circus was, as I said to Mia immediately after, about ten times better than I could possibly have imagined. Everything was amazing, and there was nothing I didn't love. Interestingly, the animal acts are pretty short and sweet, which is probably as it should be. You should have seen the delight on the faces of the kids when the little horses came out. Perhaps surprisingly the animals with the most tricks were the fantale pigeons, who walked up and down little trapezesque things and ladders and in and out of a little house. They were marvellous. I loved the way some of the animals ran out like 'at last, how exciting' - the camels were like this, and they were practically the last thing on. The cows were also good (a shetland pony runs under their legs). Llamas jump over the camels' necks. You probably think, reading this, either 'damn those spoilers' or 'he was obviously on drugs'. Neither! Anyway, I haven't hardly put in any spoilers. There is an acrobat/ juggler/ other thingser whose name might be Arora Borealis (that was what they seemed to be calling him), who came on second and was unbelievably lithe. Another segment involving a pea-whistling clown who lets a big floppy clown out of a box could have gone all wrong but was unbelievably good - I know Mia thought I was naive for saying it but I couldn't believe there was an adult woman in that floppy clown suit.

I have never said 'no way' out loud so many times in two hours. It was genuine glamour! The primary clown, who probably had more stage time than anyone, was called Justin Sane and at one stage he got a five year old boy, Charlie from Glenroy, to do some juggling. Charlie was tremendous, running over to different parts of the audience to bow to them etc. It was very funny.

Everything was in fast-paced short segments, which is great for me, as I have a dreadful attention span. If there's a little bit of repetition - various permutations of ladies wrapping their legs round their head 10 metres in the air - well, I've never seen such a thing before and doubt I'll see it again much at all. Overall, I have to say, a genuine hit. I highly recommend it.

jenny from some company

Jenny called me just before to talk to me about real estate development in my area. This sounded like a survey I actually might know the answers to, so of course I said yes Jenny. I thought she might have been reading from a sheet. She asked me about advertising I might have seen for Craigieburn, and I said yes I had seen advertising re: Craigieburn on television. She asked me what message I got from it. I said that it was a friendly and inclusive community and that people liked living there. She reeled off some other estate names (some of them were actually companies and others were actual places eg Aurora). I had heard of most of them, but not all. She then asked me where I lived. I said Jacana. Tracana? No, so I spelt it for her. She said I was not on her list of places so my answers could not be used.

At last my answers were good and they couldn't be used!

It wasn't like the survey from Louise the other day, although it kind of was. Louise had a New Zealand accent. She sounded like she might have been reading from a sheet except for the bits she skipped over once I told her that I had absolutely no interest in being any kind of a spectator to a swimming event that apparently was being held some time later this year. But she said stuff like 'I just want to go home' and after I went through the whole survey with her, cheerily giving negative answers to everything, she seemed really grateful. At one point she said 'Oh David', which was a nice thing for someone to say, although it doesn't actually mean anything except I suppose it is friendly.

a world first

All my avatars together at once in a universe entirely created by me and called 'Swanston St'. The background building is a little fake looking I know (LOL) but I only had a few hours spare. L-R Jancey, Prudence, Lourdes, Banal-one, The Piker Twins, Fabula, Renendez, Carlo Poncey, FLNQR, Banal-two, Bombo, Queeyore, Pubear, Astrolopithecuss, Glancer, Rappaport, Tsunamee, Quoylezwar, Argarabeth. It was a great get together though also a drag as I wanted to catch a tram and you can't tell an avatar anything, can you. They are all aspects of you which you basically find objectionable and hive off into avatarial beings. Making so many wouldn't have been so easy if mother hadn't tied me to the piano when young.