the egg store ilk

I do have a few holy grails of records, and there is one I've been looking out for forever but never seen until today, when the cash I forked out some weeks ago finally bore fruit. It's a copy of Richard Earl's one and only album The Egg Store Ilk, all the way from the Netherlands.

Richard Earl was a member of the Swell Maps, of which at their peak there were about six, although the main ones always talked about are Nikki Sudden, Epic Soundtracks, and Jowe Head. No-one thinks much about the others - Phones Sportsman, Biggles Books and Golden Cockrill, ha ha what hilarious names they all had. Richard Earl is Biggles Books although apparently neither of those are his real names (I assume Dikki Mint, which discogs tells me was another name he went by, wasn't his real name either). 

In my opinion the absolute best Swell Maps record was not a Swell Maps record, it was Soundtracks and Head's 'Rain Rain Rain'. Thereafter I am on the spectrum between awe and staggering ambivalence, and there was a lot of self-indulgence there, actually (hold the front page). I really like the sound and style of a lot of the work. I love side 4 of Whatever Happens Next and pretty much all of Jane From Occupied Europe but I have a strong feeling, based on testimony from someone I trust, that Nikki was a jerk and it spoils my enjoyment. I liked Epic a lot (met him - why didn't I put that in my last blog entry?!) but I am rare amongst people with taste in not enjoying Epic's three solo albums much (so strange that I don't; maybe I should visit them again but every time I think of that 'stay in school - obey the rule' song or whatever it is I want to puke and cry). Nikki wrote most of the songs, and I guess in a way he probably inhibited Epic (to a lesser extent Jowe, who has had an amazing solo career and whose Swell Maps songs are a godsend). Nikki's lyrics, nine times out of ten, sucked a big turd in the mud, and once he went solo and got all folky-stonesy with the scarves and jewellery you sort of wanted to slap him. Also, as I say, personally I gather he was a jerk and I go into a bit of a tither when I try to grapple with what I know about him and how I feel about cancelling someone who's dead anyway. (I really resent not being able to enjoy 'The Big Store' which is a great song, and some of the other works). (Sorry to be obscure but it's not my story to tell). 

But I love the ambience of the Swell Maps records and the adventurousness of them, the milieu, the privilege, the strangeness of them. I think Epic's drumming was something else, and he was really happening, when he was colouring the work of others. Classy. 

So, Richard Earl, who was like the fourth Map (or the 5th or 6th - dunno) and who made a record and disappeared. I found a little bit of text about him on a weird music blog (that is, a blog about weird music) from 2008, which intrigued me:

Hi many coincidences. I just remet Jowe Head of the Swell maps (and others) in a gig in a small town in the Catskills in NY state. We used to be neighbours in London 1980-82. I shared a house with two of the Swell maps - Epic and Richard, and as a young filmmaker, shared the Swell maps' TEAC 4-track for my sound work. Jowe was recording his first solo album 'Pincer Movement' and Richard was building bikes and recording - or building - his first solo album - the Egg Store Ilk It took several months while he learnt the sax and handmade several percussion instruments. The film myself and girlfriend were working on was called 'A Sense of Waiting' and originally the last song on Richard's album was to be used as the title song (a Big sense of waiting) others related to our common film fetishes (Werner Herzog's 'Heart of Glass' inspired Hypnotism of a Film Cast) the title was bounced off a weird shop on Stamford Hill called The Egg Store (we lived in Stoke Newington) and Richard's family name is NOT Earl, but I'll leavce him his privacy. Yes, he was Biggles and he HATED the nickname. He was a very decent bloke and now - apparently - constructs classic racecars for pleasure somewhere in the Cotswolds. I haven't seen him since 84??? and I have been looking for any sight of this album for decades, so thanks for that. The cover was hand printed from woodciuts Richard did and one of the percussion implements was a series of beer tops strung together at the end of a broom handle. the whole was banged on the floor. I know this because Richard's floor was my bedroom ceiling! Though The Egg Store Ilk had nothing to do with me, I felt unreasonably proud of it. In a sense we were all part of a community without realising and everyone's ideas and enthusiasms filtered into everyone else's work. I still make videos which owe a lot to the d-i-y ethos and I'm pleased to see me old mates are still awarded some kind of kudos by younger generations. Nice to see this blog so appreciative of Richard's winter work at a time I know he was finally getting back into playing after what he considered an unpleasant chore (live concerts left him sick to the stomach with nerves) and, ultimately, musically unrewarding. best regards Russell from Woodstock, NY

So the record, which I've known about for decades, is finally in my possession. I won't say I dreamed about it every night but I have long been intrigued and I have never had the opportunity. It's been a long day and I'm thrilled to have it in my house. I'll let you know how it goes down (almost 100% certain, of course, that it will be a disappointment - how could it not be - even when I really just do not know what to expect!). 

Really looking forward to new Swell Maps record compiled by Jowe from his own tape stash - all new stuff, apparently. 

at least you can say you've seen it

I actually did not see this show. I have seen Barry Humphries live at least once though, possibly twice, but in the 90s, not June 1974. 

'The other week, in the Spectator, Mr Harold Nicolson was consoling himself as best he could for having reached the age of sixty. As he perceived, the only positive satisfaction in growing older is that after a certain point you can begin boasting of having seen things that no one will ever have the chance to see again.' So wrote George Orwell in a column published in the Tribune on 24 January 1947. He goes on to talk about some celebrities he saw in his life: Marie Lloyd, Little Tich, and 'a string of crowned heads and other celebrities from Edward VII onwards'. He then focuses on two important moments: seeing Pétain at Foch's funeral in 1929 and a decade before Queen Mary at Windsor Castle, although at that time he says he was more entranced by one of her grooms, a 'strange archaic figure... immobile as a waxwork.'*

I have to put aside the weirdness I feel at someone consoling themselves at reaching 60 as though it were some kind of grand old seniority, although since the way stats are headed in Victoria it seems likely I will die from coronavirus sometime next week, I guess I will never really know what 60 feels like. But of course like almost anyone who's read that column or reprints of it in the last 73 years, I have been moved to wonder about the things I've seen, that no-one will ever have the chance to see again. Like Orwell, I initially think less of things and more of people, that is, people who in many instances stayed alive long enough for me to have seen them living, and I feel like I have quite a few strings to my bow there, although I also am reminded of the show title At Least You Can Say You've Seen It, a Barry Humphries joke that I still think is funny every time I think of it. 

OK, so if existing in the same place/time as someone is valuable or important, which it isn't, except if a bomb hit that place and time everyone would remember the famous person dying and occasionally there'd be a completist list somewhere of the other people who died and my name would be on it, I have:

Met Ernie Bourne at a party or some kind of social function where I was too young to distinguish fact from fiction

Seen Uncle Norman and Joffa Boy

Had a coin taken out of my ear by Norman Hunter

Shaken hands with Roald Dahl

Seen the Aunty Jack show at Dallas Brookes Hall

Shaken hands with Daryl Somers 

Saw Prince Charles at Robert Menzies' funeral procession down Collins St, 1978

Those are pretty good, aren't they, although really all except Uncle Norman and Joffa Boy were currently active and famous when I saw them. Then in adult life, I've:

Seen Snakefinger's legendary show the night he had his legendary heart attack.

Look at all the man bands, May 1981. I don't regret my choice.

Seen The Human League (three times, but most importantly the legendarily terrible 1983 era when they were barely knew their own songs, let alone how to play them); The Birthday Party; The Gun Club; New Order in their legendarily terrible etc etc see above description of the Human League; Camper Van Beethoven; Beat Happening; The Smiths; The Fall four or five times between 1982-1990 and of course met and spoke with Mark E Smith in 1982 and had a brief correspondence with him; Jesus and Mary Chain, apparently, though I don't remember that at all (I reviewed it for a British music magazine, and I'd remember if I faked it). I saw PiL after they started to go downhill (1986 maybe?). I saw, you know, Australian Crawl. Obviously I was an active participant in the 'scene' including the Go-Betweens, Triffids, Laughing Clowns, three groups I see as so radically distinct from each other I can barely put them in one sentence but time-wise it's doable. This list devolves into people I met when I worked for Smash Hits so it starts to get meaningless - I've 'met' Kylie Minogue, twice, but that's day job stuff that means little, ditto the weirdness of being part of a 'group interview' with Mel Gibson in, of all places, a hotel in Albury. To be honest, and sorry George, most of the above doesn't mean that much to me but as mentioned, I was participating in the culture, not observing relics. On the other hand I'd much rather have seen Little Tich, d. 1928. 

I have also had an argument with Barry Humphries about the rarity value of one of his early LPs (at a book signing), and I have held momentary eye contact with Germane Greer, I don't know why that happened, perhaps more excitingly it was at the Russell Cinemas, now sadly gone but very important in my memory. I did see Gough Whitlam, launching one of his late period books at the Atheneum, and come to think of it he's probably the only PM I've seen in person, unless you count Robert Menzies in his coffin (where he belongs). Relatedly, though, I once saw Nico stuffing corn chips in her mouth in the foyer of the Bondi Cosmopolitan. 

I think this post has to be an active repository. Things will come to me that qualify as 'things that no one will ever have the chance to see again'. Here's one that just occurred to me: people smoking in restaurants, cinemas and on aeroplanes. I don't think I'll see that again. But in the main such things are probably less likely to be people (even people now dead) and more likely to be places, but at present I can only think of the three houses I grew up in, all long since demolished. Oh, I have been on a Ballarat tram, so that means before 1971: my father took me to Ballarat specially to travel on one, as they were weeks away from being decommissioned. I think we went around Lake Wendouree, but that might be a false memory, but it's also fairly likely. 

*George Orwell (ed. Ian Angus and Sonia Orwell) The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 4: In Front of Your Nose Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1970 p. 317

i told her it was just a story

Laura and I had one of our drawing sessions last night. She can actually draw, whereas I just internally (occasionally externally) whinge about this bizarre disaster I have got myself into. I remember in the past going on extended drawing jags where I ended up producing things I actually felt good about, while recognising that they were not really conventionally excellent. In this instance I am just grinding through it. I had a long sequence - three or four pages - that was to take place over a telephone conversation and then I realised: I don't know how to draw people holding telephones. Also, one of the characters, Grace, doesn't really seem to have ears, which made the placement of the phone difficult. On top of that, three times I ruled up a page of frames and drew Grace in the first frame holding a phone and it - the phone - was disproportionately large. It was a relief to realise I could actually rewrite the whole sequence to remove the phones altogether. There was no reason for them to be talking on the phone, they could just as easily be talking in real life. 

In other news, I have no other news, so that's interesting.  

mondayitis

I know it's perverse but just as 6am is basically my favourite time of day, Monday is my favourite day of the week. It's a refresh and a restart. I essentially enjoy my job (in the way that I enjoy being alive - there are things about it that suck but seriously, on balance, it's great and not just because I am lucky to have a job in this climate). Also, on balance I think I am quite good at it - I maintain a balance, at any rate, so while I perhaps don't peak in any particular area (except getting published - even in that regard I don't peak in terms of publishing in A+ journals etc, which is part of a recognised rubric for people in my line of work, but at the same time, there aren't that many urban history/history journals that fit that measure anyway) I don't crash and burn in any either. Level hand on the tiller, you know, like Peter Costello I think used to boast of, maybe it wasn't him maybe it was some other a-grade fucknuckle. 

So today I have a list of things to do, most of which I will enjoy because they involve writing up research findings, and some of which are just banal ('cat food' - sorry cats). Also yeast because my bread making has been top notch lately, either because I am just lucky enough to have a great oven here or I've finally learnt how to do it right every time - ??? 

I did my usual monthly RRR stint this morning and the whole time I was talking my voice was echoing back in my ear. I don't know why this is so incredibly distracting but it is. You'd think you could block it out but there's something in your brain that stops it, I don't know whether it's the politeness gene (you can't get it out of your head that someone else is talking and you shouldn't be) or some kind of innate echo response like a bat would have. So I powered through at least as distracted by the sound of my own voice as I was by the internal monologue patting myself on the back for being such a fuckin' pro. PRO PRO PRO

Two Buddies

To be honest I don't have the time, energy or motivation to listen to this all the way through (it's on youtube) but the snippets I have listened to suggest that it is largely a horrible version of Holly Days which no-one in their right mind would want to own. I can't really speak with authority on this, but no-one else on the internet seems to have cared enough to reviewed or written about it as a product. In sum, tracks 1-8 might be 'demos' for Holly Days (the other tracks are a completely jarringly different piece of music perhaps from McCartney II era, and some live tracks recorded with the Crickets at the third annual 'Buddy Holly Week' in 1979).* But it's surely extremely suspicious that they are presented in the same sequence of tracks 1-8 of Holly Days and that they sound like someone turned on a tape recorder in a room where the Holly Days album was playing, or perhaps, did something weird with EQ to a recording of Holly Days. 

I am not sure why this engages me as a topic, so let's not bother worrying about it any longer OK. 

*'Twenty Years After', London Guardian 1 September 1978 p. 8; Sylvie Simmons, 'Beatles reunion scuttled by publicity', Fort Worth Star-Telegram 3 October 1979, p. 33

 

100 reviews # 12: Holly Days

I wonder who won the holiday and whether they also made an album 

What were you doing in 1977? Well at least for a short part of that year Paul, Linda and Denny were hanging out at Paul and Linda's Scottish farm and Paul having recently purchased the rights to Buddy Holly's songs they decided to bash out an album of Buddy Holly covers for Denny to sing. When I say they, I guess I mean Paul decided: 'On the four-track recorder Paul laid down the basic tracks, overdubbing each instrument himself. Denny and Linda added a few licks and all three joined in on the vocals... Denny singing lead and Paul and Linda harmonising.'

The gentle contortions that led to the creation and attribution of the resulting album Holly Days are therefore pretty interesting in McCartney 70s lore, and the 70s let's be fair is his (as opposed to 'Beatle Paul's) most interesting period. As I said, Paul owned the rights to Holly's songs (I don't really understand how this works/worked, to be honest, since Holly was generally only a cowriter of most of his songs, but I guess he and his collaborators were all signed to the same music publisher and the songs were bundled up as 'Buddy Holly songs' for convenience - ?) so that was one new toy to play with. He had his little home studio 'a wood-lined, tin-roofed shack known as Rude Studio', another toy. I'm not going to call Denny Laine a toy, he seems to be largely a decent chap and journeyman and let's not diminish the importance and value of someone who, for instance, co-wrote one of the biggest hit songs of the second half of the 20th century, by which of course I mean 'Mull of Kintyre'. I am going to suggest that putting Denny's name on this record, and prioritising him on the sleeve (there are 17 pictures of Denny Laine on the record, although the front cover is a picture of a really beautiful horse)* and there is also one picture of Paul McCartney, alone, and some of him in the same frame as Denny) is a way to make a record and let it come out under the radar, so to speak. It publicises Buddy Holly songs, which Paul owns, and it gives them a bit of a 70s twist that BH might not have imagined i.e. it puts forward some serving suggestions (one of the songs here is 'I'm Gonna Love You Too' which Blondie released as the first single of Parallel Lines a few years later. It wasn't a hit, except in the Netherlands, but the fact that it seemed like a good idea at the time suggests that Paul's idea to update/repackage was also a good one). I also would like to propose that Paul was kind of scared of John Lennon's scorn, or at least aware of it. He wouldn't have wanted to do a whole album of Buddy Holly songs himself in case Lennon then went into some kind of public paroxysm about how McCartney'd never be Buddy fuckin' Holly, or Holly spinning in his grave or whatever. So he did do one himself, and Denny Laine did all the lead vocals. 

The Holly Days album comes between Wings at the Speed of Sound and London Town, (actually it comes between Wings Across America and London Town but of course WAA is a live album, so I'd tend to look at that as a kind of stocktake/stocking filler/statement of chops than anything else) but it has much more of a feel of Wings Wild Life leading into McCartney II than anything else. I have a particular fondness for the experimental stuff, not just because obviously Paul McCartney's throwaway albums are more consequential and valid than most artists' career-defining ones. On something like Holly Days, Wings (for that's who it is) don't have to be anything other than creative people producing something fun and friendly. A 'Denny Laine solo album', the very title of which indicates 'no major life-redefining cataclysms to see here', allows them to be as funny and strange as they want, and if they get to mess around with some great pop songs, so much the better. Wings were already controversial and the records they made scrutinised (and criticised) to within an inch of their lives, and it must have been nigh on impossible to make good records under those conditions, even notwithstanding they often sold in their millions. There's so much nothing like 'Silly Love Songs' here, in any sense, except I suppose in the sense that there might on some level be a similar value placed on the disco beat of 'Silly Love Songs' and the casio (?) drum machine used on a few of these songs. Oh, and that it's silly. It's a silly bunch of love songs, I guess. 

I'll get the silliest silliness out of the way: the speeded up voices on 'Take Your Time', which was sensibly placed as the second last track, just before the instrumental 'I'm Lookin' for Someone to Love'. So often with PMcC you wonder what he's driving at with his various peculiarities and while it's tempting to say he just doesn't care/ can't self-edit, I suspect it's closer to the way one is when one knows that one has been an inventive innovator in the past, and putting weird speeded-up voices (not that this was such a huge innovation - Alvin and the Chipmunks etc) on a track might be the way of the future. Or perhaps it just made the kids laugh. Or it made stoned PMcC, LMcC and DL laugh. It's not exactly bad (it adds texture) but nor is it exactly explicable. 

That said, there was obviously some serious muscle put behind this album, notably the promotional and production work put into 'Moondreams' which was released as the second single ('It's so Easy/Listen to Me (Medley)' was released before the album, the effort of reading let alone announcing its title surely enough to put off any DJ). 'Moondreams' is a crafted gothic ballad not a million miles away from, let's say, PMcC's 'Waterfalls' from a few years later. As a pop record it undeniably works very well. Other stuff - like 'Fool's Paradise', would have fitted nicely into any Wings album, probably somewhere in the middle of side two. 

Each side ends with an instrumental, which I'm going to take as a kind of 'Singalong Junk' approach - 'we didn't necessarily quite finish these, but we like them as they are.'

So I do sort of wish that Denny had been inspired to, that he had been encouraged to, write at least one song of his own for the album, something that fitted, in the way that PMcC had three songs of his own on Run Devil Run in amongst the 50s covers. But that's OK not having something like that to focus on means we can better the regard the album as a whole, a pristine concept. 

Oh just one more thing: remember how people used to pore over Beatles albums for clues to shit, well, here's an intriguing detail I think we need to know more about. What did Paul, Linda and Denny get from Western Australia that they're so keen for us to know about?! 

*I had to say that, because if I said 'a horse' it would come across as if I was saying 'wtf', but of course all horses are all beautiful.

bread nancy and appreciative criticism

marcella s3

So I started watching Marcella season 3 last night - as my treat for, um, writing a list of 8 things I had to do and nearly doing half of one of them. 

I was impressed by its audacity. Whereas S2 was a melange of paedophile/crazy madwoman tropes set against a backdrop inspired by someone who never really grew out of their student films inspired by Metallica videos (by the way: I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that - I devoured the whole in a day, trying saying that in a norwegian grindcore voice) S3 is sort of like a whole new story with I think about two of the same characters including Marcella except she's not called that anymore. It's a little like someone wrote a story - a very, very different story with a very different tone to S1 & 2 of Marcella and a different setting entirely (Northern Ireland, not London) and someone else said 'let's turn that into S3 of Marcella then, all we have to do is change everything about Marcella to fit it' (continuing to be sort of fair/ hedge my bets, I've only watched the first episode of S3).

So I critiqued S2 as a bit obvious and scary-clown, well, S3 obviously heard me because it is completely impossible to follow. I love the idea that the makers of Marcella were like 'we have the audience now, so let's go full obtuse'. Now, she's undercover in N Ireland (this was set up at the end of S2 in a very random, abstract, entirely unbelievable way which nevertheless included a skerrick of expositional detail which only those who had taken notice of a couple of little scenes in S1 where she buys some DNA from a homeless woman, would understand but - fine). She's been living almost a year (exactly ten months) with some guy who gives her what could be an engagement ring if she wants it to be (she doesn't). Then (spoiler coming up) he is shot at close range in the garden of someone's house while admiring some parasitic mistletoe while she's standing next to him and she seems entirely indifferent to the whole incident, which is sort of... OK. Suddenly she's a part of the family who killed her boyfriend. I am not sure why but she is. Is she sure why? We have no idea. 

So I'm at a crossroads. I really don't know what to make of S3 and whether I should persist, though in truth it's all the things I was criticising S2 for not being. 

One thing about Marcella the person I just want to note: a lot is made of her intense instability, her blackout rages, her suicidal impulses and general despair that I guess some people would deal with through drugs or alcohol (or exercise or blogging) but which she deals with through being intensely devoted to crime solving. But in S1 and 2 her house was so beautifully neat and her fridge always stocked and problem-free. Did she have a maid or some other kind of servant? In S3, the house with the boyfriend is even better: so incredibly fastidiously tasteful. In some ways it's the scariest thing about the whole show. 

> Update 20/7: The whole backstory of the move to N Ireland is at the beginning of episode 6, for some strange reason. It doesn't seem thematically connected to anything that late in the story, but I guess I still haven't seen the whole thing yet. 

> Update 27/7: I finished watching it and completely forgot about it. The end is a farce. But I would like to see a season 4 although I imagine it will be all about (SPOILER ALERT) will she kill her accidentally appropriated baby like she killed the one she gave birth to? 

north melbourne housing commission

So I have been going past these North Melbourne housing commission flats a little bit in the last few weeks and documenting their demolition, some were aesthetically gorgeous (the ones with the rotary clotheslines on the roof) and some less so, in my opinion. I gather the plan is to rebuild sustainable affordable/social housing on the block. I am a little suspicious of this kind of shizzle but at this point let's just remember how this block was an experimental/model space for the Housing Commission of Victoria in the 1940s and there were multiple walk-up flats built over time and just imagine all the lives and experiences and generations played out in this area. 

drinking

I know this is the kind of thing that alcoholics say but I genuinely don't drink much, and those close to me know I can take it or leave it. The last time I remember needing a drink was in the late 90s, after I addressed the Royal Historical Society of Victoria (!!!) about one of the key figures of my thesis, and saw his daughter sitting in the front row. Not that I was doing anything but hagiography, but still... you have to read three sentences ahead when you know you might inadvertently upset a nice old lady. 

Last night however I celebrated the end of a difficult week by drinking the remainder of my Vana Tallinn, a spiced rum spirit that I have had on or  around the coffee table for about two weeks now, untouched. There was a third of the bottle left, maybe less, not sure and the first tipple I had went down well, so I emptied the bottle into the glass and there was actually a lot more than I expected but it was quite expensive and I'd already put ice in the glass so it would have been a waste to not drink it all and feel seedy as the next day. 

Could be worse, I haven't thrown up and the cats are being nice to me (Nancy is always nice; I went back to bed for a little while an hour or so ago and Helmi, who you will remember spends every day under the bedclothes, put her head on my leg). 

I've found another fucking Netflix chewing gum murder series, this time Marcella. God it's a hot gothic mess with the flawed but gorgeous (season two: always wear a shirt too big for your jumper) titular character and the flawedly flawedacious men in her orbit. Season one I have to say I consumed bittily, particularly as I got pretty drunk towards the end and lost a lot of understanding but who cares, it's like folk music, you just tap your foot and follow the tropes. Season two is full of the noir version of cheap laughs, in which Marcella et al have encountered a sophisticated, wealthy paedophile (unclear where he gets his money from, particularly to me who only half pays attention) who Marcella et al really don't like. They really don't like the paedophile, and they really don't like him one bit. If I did not know anything about paedophilia before this, I would have come away at very least knowing that it is very socially acceptable to not like paedophilia and paedophiles, even (or particularly?) the ones with, apparently, a very sophisticated knowledge of their condition.* Anyway, the murders are beyond bizarre and grotesque, and the mystery is deep, and there are still those ridiculous elements such as people talking on the phone who, once they get the information they seek, don't say anything like 'Right, well thank you very much for talking to me Mrs --, and if there's anything else that occurs to you please don't hesitate to get in touch. Alright, cheers then, thanks a lot and have a great day.' (Much less 'please hold for a survey about your customer experience'). Instead, they just hang up as soon as they get the key information (anyone on the other end of a call like that would assume they were cut off and call back) and look into the middle distance, as you would if you were a mere receptive synthesiser of diverse informations. 

I'm going to keep going though because I feel seedy and this, Roti and Eno are keeping my head above water. 

* To be clear, I don't like paedophilia either (does that even need to be said) and I don't knowingly know any paedophiles, it just seems to me to be too easy a shot, even in a show like this which is really just your standard nicely acted, tasteful(-ish), gory, somewhat rock-videoesque crime drama. 

as it goes

It just goes on and on. Sorry to complain but I am finding this bizarrely difficult to proceed with. It really shouldn't be this hard because it's just simple menial work. I guess I am hoping that once I get to the half way mark (probably on Monday) I'll start to see the light at the end of the tunnel etc and it will be easier to move toward. As is, I still have a fairly (unreasonable?) attitude that the narrative works reasonably well in a 1990s indie movie way. 

flexible tuesday

It is the evening of a day I boasted to some colleagues was a 'flexible Tuesday' in case there was anything they needed me to do on a particular project that's been hanging around like a really nice constant smell for some years now and which might actually be submitted for funding sometime before the end of everyone's life. Well, I did manage to make this the fourth day in a row when I exceeded 10 000 steps - it's harder than you'd think and time consuming. This time I walked to the chef supplies shop in Elizabeth st, the (QVM) market, and an asian supermarket, each time I went in I put a mask on, Laura was nice enough to make me some great masks and they work really well but yes, how do you stop them misting up your glasses?! Either hold your breath or don't wear your glasses all the time - obvs. Still, it's a drag. That walk accounted for 6000 steps, a little more. Then in the evening my brother Michael came by and we traversed the 'Royal' Park a little bit and I got up to 12000, it is really wearing me out but I assume that's a hump you get over. 

Now, I'm about to go driving to Richmond to drop off some tapes to Al. I'll tell you about the tapes later OK, I have to do this now. 

Playlist for today: Godley and Creme Freeze Frame; Pere Ubu Song of the Bailing Man; Snowy Band Audio Commentary; Summer Flake Whatever the Second Album's Called - I think it might be Hello Friends? Also, finally started listening to the most recent Philip Pullman novel as audio book. 

why bother

You know, you can spend so much time trying to rescue something that you use up all the time that you could have done it again, only better. I am just going to redraw this it wasn't that nice looking in the first place. Particularly the bottom row of panels where the jagged centre frame just looks like shit. I don't know what I was thinking. 

the rest of quiglet

I did this in early February this year and when Steve asked me if I'd do a graphic novel I decided to expand on it, which has meant redrawing these pages. You have seen most of the redrawn stuff. It's interesting to me how when I'm drawing freehand I seem to take many more adventurous leaps with my drawing which means bigger errors and weird bodies etc but when it's good it's better. I don't think I got a pencil out once for this little publication. 

whistle woooh yay

What's that joke about I've suffered for my art, now it's your turn? Was that a Hey Hey it's Saturday thing? Anyway, this page was for some reason a real psychological hurdle for me and I finally surmounted it. It's not that great or interesting or worthwhile as a page, I drew it without any pencil, and it is more or less adequate but this whole section is just going to be talking heads and not very nice ones either. 

Have you ever had the displeasure of watching the film The Allnighter? I can't remember where I read about it but it got 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, it stars Susanna Hoffs and Joan Cusack and it was written and directed by Hoffs' mother. I'm watching it now and much to my surprise I am 3/4 of an hour in (I thought it was about 15 minutes) but I really think I have to stop. 

one side - side one, actually - of how dare you

So I have really only listened to one side of How Dare You which is I think the fourth 10CC album so they were probably (whether they knew/acknowledged it or not) trying to get over the hurdle of having the massive fuck off hit of 'I'm Not In Love' and stay true to Christ knows what they thought they were doing. I don't wish to sound derogatory. I'm super impressed by the bits but it's so-o-o disjointed! (Maybe I shouldn't say 'but'). It's described in various places as 'art rock', obviously most art rockers would not expect to sell a million albums particularly with a selection of sweetly played deconstructed hooks like this. 'I'm Mandy Fly Me' is so much not single material, it's a fucking mess, silly histrionic George Harrisonesque guitar (Todd Rundgren has this problem on some of his 70s material too, it's gross) and a really basic tune and words that... look, maybe it's just that the world has moved on in the last 45 years and so it should have. Of course, what do I know - I wasn't in one of the biggest selling, best-known bands of the 70s - I guess they were doing it right. I'm still amazed at how bitty the album is, it's like a freaky scrapbook.

As per the first album, there are bits of songs which I can't get out of my head they're just so catchy and so good, but most songs are a shamble with a strong presence of indigestible, fibrous, matty crap in there that make it hard to listen all the way through with pleasure. So, 'I Wanna Rule the World' for instance has a brilliant opening, an amazing section (the slightly ska 'watcha gonna do...' bit) and then sort of ridiculous chanting and silly theatrics... then the ghastly 'child vocal' section... who are these people!? It's like they are trying to make something new, but they only have these limited, archaic tools at their disposal. That track is more like a radio play than a song, and it's not much like a song - ! Then you know 'Icebergs' - what was it with the 70s and their obsession with the 30s? I blame it on Paul McCartney, but I guess stars like 10CC were entering their 30s in the 70s so their own parents were in their 50s/60s and had the 30s as their reference points... they're engaging a bit with their parents' culture (and I guess their parents' culture was what they saw as 'adult'). 

Exhausting! Can't wait to play side 2 (although I have waited 44 years). 

(Later: I watched the 2015 BBC documentary on 10CC tonight, whoever uploaded it has inserted some completely bizarre material towards the end with captions across the screen justifying scenes from soap operas etc as being thematically related to 'I'm not in Love'. I had to stop watching.)

rabbit rabbit

two months to do three times as much as I have done in the last three months

So now I am at the beginning of the second chapter. I have written the whole thing, but I have only drawn about four pages of it. There are pros and cons. There are more pictures per page (8) but I have already constructed most of the frames already, photocopied on A3 pages, and the action is largely static, with some bits that are more complicated than my talent as a drawer can handle. If I got another 20 pages of this thing done by this time next week, however, I would really feel like I could relax and pay attention to the whole; this chapter 2 is kind of an arduous grind but in the scheme of things an easier get. All the characters (I made up the three publicity ladies, above, this morning) are created and I feel like overall it's more the boredom of repeating the same scenery/people that will be the challenge (boring for the reader and me) rather than the difficulty of conveying things. 

This chapter is about the actress/performer known as 'Biltong' who appeared as the robot maid in The Rest of Quiglet. She is promoting a memoir and if there's anything funny about this chapter it is that she has had an exceptionally adventurous and extraordinary life, but the host of the tv show she's appearing on just keeps bringing conversation back to the fairly dull details of the Quiglet show. Even when she talks about that she gives up all kind of information that he fails to absorb or quiz her on. Ha ha, right? I don't know if it's funny or not. Also, she keeps berating the stupidity of the studio audience, who are extremely fickle. 

As the philosophers say, 'it is what it is'.