death by a thousand zoom meetings

First world problems are the only ones that really matter. I try to do my work during the day - I have at least four important publication matters to attend to - but FFS constant meetings what are they? They're like little kids tugging at your sleeve trying to get some validation. Whatever it is, I'm against it. I can't concentrate on something in any deep sense when I know I'm going to have to disengage in 40 minutes to sit at attention at some fucking asinine online box-ticking exercise. 

the adventures of bunyip

Melbourne Argus 23 September 1955

Melbourne Argus 30 September 1955

 

pourdom

After my receipt of that Pete Shelley album yesterday and the realisation that I also owned another, I was reminded that some time ago I had purchased a book about/by him a few months ago that had never shown up. This happens. I figured oh well it hasn't come it probably never will and it's almost certainly no good anyway. So guess what turned up today. 

I have read a few bits and pieces of it (I'm mainly marking today so I'm not in the position to sit down and spend a lot of time on a book, but I do need palate cleansers of reading or listening to something or walking to the shop or I get confused between different essays). It's actually pretty good, he comes out as very personable and matter-of-fact. 

As I was walking around a little bit as well, I dialled up Pete Shelley on Spotifuck to discover of his four solo albums only the first (which I haven't listened to but which I believe is a weird little pre-punk experimental thing) and the last (which I listened to a bit of and which is horrible) are available i.e. the two I own on vinyl aren't spotifucked. When I went to the chemist this afternoon (helicopters everywhere - jesus christ people are stupid i.e. anti-lockdown protestor shits) I listened to the third Buzzcocks album on Spotifuck and, well, it's patchy I have to say. 

I guess that's OK, the secret to albums is that they have an ebb and flow, they can't be hit, hit, hit because then what do you get - well exactly, Singles Going Steady, the most perfect English male pop record of the late 1970s, we can't have that raising the bar for everyone, it's stressful. 

poured a bit more

 

I wrote earlier that I had forgotten what else I got in the mail but now I remember - this. Now, here's a weird thing. I really like Jowe, he's actually probably my favourite songwriter in Swell Maps, because even though he didn't write nearly as many songs as Nikki, he obviously put some work into his, whereas Nikki I'm going to say often just bashed them out half-considered. It's funny how there are people like that. JH is a really interesting figure and in a way you can imagine he would have come to some kind of prominence if he hadn't been a member of Swell Maps (and then the Television Personalities - I saw him play with them in, um, actually I don't remember when at all but I think it was at New Cross - wherever that is - probably in around 1990). 

So I had bought a copy of this record when it came out and somewhere along the way I lost track of it - it's been 40 years - and I was keen to replace my copy, to sit in with the recent Swell Maps compilation (put together by JH from his own tapes) and the Richard Earl album I got last year. It's weird though to listen to something that is very familiar, but nowhere near as good as you remember it. It's a queer fish on the whole because it sounds really good - and some of the songs (I'll say about three of the originals, and both covers) are great - but the rest is fill-in comedy dross, it just doesn't make for worthwhile listening any more. So throwaway, and not in a good way, probably the result of a lack of confidence which I'm sure he has dispensed with along the way. By the end you really feel he's throwing in any old cobblers to ensure it's being stretched out to album length. No wonder he re-recorded (?) (or just rehashed) the best tracks alongside some new ones, a few years later. 

I do still really like the cover though, and his ethos. And the good tracks are really good. I think I should pick up some more recent material. 

it never rains but it pours

I know what that expression means, but as it happens, it did rain and pour last night apparently and I believe it will do a lot more of both today. Like LITERALLY. 

What I meant by 'it never rains but it pours' was the extraordinary sitch whereby after randomly and periodically purchasing old records online last month, three packages came at once yesterday. It's as though they launch a special boat from Europe every so often, just records, maybe it's a whole boat and just my parcels thrown in the corner of the main storage area, at least that's how I like to think of it. I got some goodies, and as usual, it's the ones you don't necessarily have hugely high expectations of that give you a better experience, which is weird but sort of understandable in a human nature kind of way. Do you want me to tell you what they were? OK, but I'm not going to get out of bed to look at them or anything so you're going to have to cope with it just being my memory (I did get out of bed to make coffee, now I'm back in part to spend a little more quality time with Helmi before the break of day forces her into hiding as is her wont). 

The first thing I got was the Go Team! album Rolling Blackouts, as a picture disc with a special extra... picture disc. I was ambivalent about this tbh but I wanted it the album, my second favourite of theirs, on vinyl and I really love the Go Team! in a way that kind of worries me sometimes when I'm searching really hard for anything to worry about, and I did want to get those extra songs because yes, I am kind of a completist when it comes to this group. I actually bought it so quickly when I saw it advertised (it's a 10th anniversary special edition - fuck I'm gullible - in a 'dinked' edition, I didn't even really know what that was at the time but now I appreciate it's just a collector's item version - yuck) that I didn't realise the main record was a picture disc, and I was slightly annoyed by this when I saw this, because sound quality, but then - I have a sonos speaker and spotify, I can probably hear it better quality that way than off my record player anyway (I'm listening to it now). 

It is the habit of a man in his 50s to buy things he already has or has had. The Aints' second album, the first Aints album of original material, is called Ascension. I happen to think it's one of Ed Kuepper's best records, an inspired piece of work, although most of his 'canon' albums would also fit that category, perhaps all. I haven't heard absolutely all of them. I do remember when I saw him play with Jim White a few months ago at the Comedy Theatre thinking that he is one of the artists of whom I would have to say the fact that this person is presently producing art, and that I have had the opportunity to travel alongside as a witness to their creative processes/development, is one of the reasons it's good to have been born when I was and lived the time I've lived. I know that in one sense that seems too much, but in another, listen to a record like Ascension and get over yourself. It's six tracks and they're each densely packed with the most exceptional interrelated ideas, rich tapestries. So I've had this on CD for thirty years (it was actually recorded in July 1991 - belated happy thirtieth, Ascension!) and for no good reason I decided I would also like it on vinyl, and do you know what? I hate to say this but it sounds even better on vinyl. I don't know why. It does though. I bought it from the same person in Greece who sold me a copy of the last Laughing Clowns album Ghosts of an Ideal Wife, which is a great pop record (look it has two songs on it I like least of probably all the LCs' canon,* but they are still better than most songs - the LCs set a high bar - as does the rest of this excellent LP). A la Ascension, it's sometimes a barrage in which you can hear other things going on that might just be in your mind, I love that in a record.** 

What else? I finally got a copy of Ut's In Gut's House but I haven't played that yet (it's 2x45rmp 12"s and I have a weird feeling every time that I set my turntable to 45 that I'm setting myself up for that incredibly dreary task of putting the belt back on). I got a double bonus surprise with the second (really the third but who ever thinks about the first one) Pete Shelley album XL-1, in that (1) it's not a bad record at all, it sounds great, (2) it's got all the fabulous elements of the Human League Dare sound but with Shelley's even tighter, more focused songwriting at its best.*** Those aren't the double bonus, the double bonus is that when I put it in the shelf, having been faintly disgruntled that I had XL-1 but not Homosapien I realised, like Elton John finding a tram he forgot he'd bought in his ensuite warehouse... I do have a copy of Homesapien. WTF? I have no explanation of how I came to own it but I own it. Cool! You know once PS reformed the Buzzcocks (or actually I think he rejoined them after Steve Diggle and John Maher decided they were just going to use the name again) the group really ground their legacy into shit with some really really really awful songs/records, that showed once again for the one millionth time how common it is for artists to fail to realise what it was that made them good (let alone beloved) but it seems like he still had a well of great stuff with those early 80s albums. Look I don't begrudge him anything, he can make all the crap records he wants (well he can't now obviously, being dead) and I don't have to listen to them. I'm glad I have these though, and will enjoy further.

What else... memory fails me. Maybe that was it, it's probably enough! 

* In the interest of transparency and to stop people sidling up to me at Woolworths dying to ask the question, the songs are: 'Crystal Clear' and 'Winter's Way'. Yes, it was a cruel blow to me that 'Winter's Way' was retooled for the most recent studio Aints! album, but you know, it's not bad, it's just not a favourite. I'll cope. 

** BTW almost no EK or LC material is available on Spotify. You know what else is crazy? 'Barbados' by Typically Tropical is also not available on Spotify, but there are a whole lot of versions of 'Barbados' in the style of Typically Tropical! I wonder if there are any LCs songs in the style of. In the style of the LCs, or in the style of Typically Tropical, either would be good. 

*** For some weird reason I thought the PS solo material was done before Martin Rushent recorded Dare. Hey, maybe it actually was but came out after. Rushent was a pretty impressive producer but I remember reading an interview with him where he talked about how, when he was recording the first couple of Altered Images albums, he really wanted to fuck Clare Grogan. That kind of tempers my admiration for the man but you have to separate the artist from her/his art don't you. It's hard though. Maybe you don't. He's just the producer, for christ's sake, if you heard that the cleaner at the studio was a fascist, it wouldn't put you off the record would it? Yeah, but producers have a lot of input, and the fingers that pushed the faders here belonged to someone of sometimes low character. JEEZ IT'S TOUGH 

instant pressure pak spray-on british

So if nothing else this is a great example of how I can so easily be persuaded into any old rabbit hole by the flimsiest of premises. This morning on an fb group I am a member of, re: Aust Oral History, I saw someone from the UK had asked for information about a tv show - four half-hour episodes - announced to be made in Australia in 1972 produced by Bobby Limb for Channel 9 and starring Kenneth Connor, entitled Mad Dogs and English Fun. The article in question was by Nan Musgrove (Women's Weekly, 23 Feb 1972) and suggested Connor's presence in Australia was his first time here and only his second time out of the UK, and that this new show was to star him, but he would be 'helped' by Marty Feldman and Warren Mitchell and there would be 'contributions' from June Thody (who apart from umpteen Homicide eps was in the ABC's production of My Brother Jack in 1965 as Jack's wife Sheila) and James Condon. 

Connor was well-known in Australia at the time if the number of Carry On films shown on Australian tv in the early 70s is anything to go by, and he also had a sitcom popular that moment known as On the House. 

Mad Dogs and English Fun was probably not made, and if it was, it wasn't shown as far as I can tell. But the question led me to go looking. I won't bore you with all the detail, just this:

* Connor was the guest for four episodes of a variety show produced in Australia in 1969, hosted by John Laws, called The Pressure Pak Show, a revival of a much older radio-TV phenomenon. I know nothing more about this but there are four episodes of it available at the NFSA so I think it's my duty at some stage after the war, before I turn a hundred, to examine it. Perhaps Connor was only a guest in some filmed segments - that he was a guest four times either indicates, I feel, that he was in Australia (no other evidence for this) and spent an afternoon taping four episodes or, that he was somehow present via segments filmed in the UK. (By the way The Pressure Pak Show seems to have started out as a 2GB radio game show hosted by Jack Davey; Limb appears to have had nothing to do with it in particular but in a SMH listing from 5 September 1960 you see that he's all over every other show on 2GB, so there's a connection of sorts going back some way). 

* There was a show on Channel 9 all through 1972 called British Comedy Has Gone to the Dogs, hosted by ('Irishman') John McNally. At least some episodes are listed as featuring Connor and some others featured Marty Feldman, so those facts alongside the title made me think this was the Mad Dogs... show, but no. British Comedy Has Gone to the Dogs was one of those execrable programs no-one now remembers fondly, where a host would have the utterly impossible task of presenting segments of other shows (in this case, obviously, British comedy shows, though the time I remember actually witnessing this uncomfortable hybrid it was in the late 1970s and segments of Saturday Night Live - I shit you not - unless I was wrong but it was American satirical sketch comedy - uh oh, I see another rabbit hole) in-between greyhound racing or as I prefer to call it, greyhound fucking racing.

* A lot of the time, this was bits and pieces of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore shows. However, another show that the geniuses at Channel 9 seemed to have figured would lend itself to this treatment was Spray on British. This was, seemingly, a Marty Feldman show though it doesn't appear listed anywhere that I can make sense of, aside from here: 

The above is 7 August 1972. 

At least two episodes of Spray On British ('Spray on British No. 6' and 'Spray on British No. 7') were shown in August 1972 as part of British Comedy Has Gone to the Dogs. Whatever Spray on British was, when it was shown as part of the 14 August 1972 BCHGTTD, Connor was listed as a featured presence:

Was he a guest with McNally? Was he a star of Spray on British? What does that semi-colon mean exactly? Connor and Feldman were both, apparently, in Australia at the beginning of 1972, but it seems unlikely they were still here in August. 

Look all of of this is weird enough, but are you ready to have your mind blown? Thought so. This is from the Age Tuesday 28 November 1972 and it rewrites all the rules:

At this point I decided there was nothing else for it, and I have forked out a lobster for this tome via AbeBooks just to find any further explanation that might possibly be forthcoming: 

Thoughts and prayers if you don't mind. The hardest part of this kind of meaningless research is the turning off of your curiosity. I usually tamp it down so hard that by the time I get further information I no longer care. 

PS Here's an explanation that works for me, and it's now time to forget about it: Feldman and Connor started work on what Musgrove had been told would be called Mad Dogs and English Fun and which was instead ultimately called Instant Spray on British Pressure Pak Show or something along those lines.* The show was cancelled before it began, so there were only two episodes (this bit is hard to figure: why were they called 'No. 6' and 'No. 7'?  But whatever). The show was produced by Limb for Pressure Pak which was a manufacturer of aerosol products most famously Mortein the fly spray, and then TCN-9 cut it up for presentation in between the episodes of bread-and-circuses dog torture on Saturday night in Sydney, but Channel 8 in Bendigo got hold of the actual whole shows and presented them for the delectation of Bendigonians two Tuesdays running late November-early December. The two cities (it would seem these were the only two) where Feldman had taken his stage show Marty Amok in early 1972, Canberra and Melbourne, apparently did not get to see ISOBPPS at all. 

* Sorry for extra information but there was a straight-up Pressure Pak Show in early 1972 hosted by Bob Monkhouse... 

it was a more innocent time

 Melbourne Age 19 September 1921 p. 8

a year ago (16 September 2020)

Mid-September should be better than this but it isn't. It must be external factors which are making me feel so grim, and nothing much is really working at the moment, since I already wrote a grizzling post an hour or so ago complaining about life on other planets I thought I'd spread the crap around a bit like prisoners who dig tunnels and put the dirt in their pockets to sprinkle around elsewhere. Share the burden/angst. It's only light angst but I really would not want it to get any heavier thanks. I am finding that the things which might normally spark joy or whatever that nonsense phrase is, aren't, right now. I got the Beach Boys bootleg Adult/Child in the mail yesterday and I think it's great but I'm not, like, doing a jig about it. I just feel down in the dumps generally, also quite nauseated. I did a stop-motion video of Helmi washing herself and it made me feel kind of crummy, although I figured it might just be my mood so I put it on instagram, we'll see what other people feel about it. Hmm, stuff is kind of crap. Some loser plays flute in the street every late afternoon and I think that's just wrong. 

old-fashioned

 

I have no idea why I decided to read this book but I actually found it pretty readable in a way. However what really surprises me about it is its inherent sexism. It's ten years old (published 2011) and yet it seems as antiquated in its gender politics as the year it's 'about'. So interesting in that regard. So, basically, Browne puts a lot of interesting links (aside from: they were all massive and 'edgy' believe it or not acts of the year 1970, as western culture grappled with what the new decade was going to look like) sharing various backing musicians, managers, and being compared to each other (CSNY was regarded by many as the New Beatles apparently, as bizarre as that may seem now). Pleasingly to me with my historian's hat on, Browne generally resists telling us what happened after 1970, so basically if you know, you know but essentially someone could have written this book in 1970, it doesn't go far beyond, and even makes little insider references eg Art Garfunkel ends the year looking forward to an acting career, lol good luck mug. 

But also, we have the weirdest take on the times where Joni Mitchell is everywhere in Taylor's and CSNY's lives, and Carole King is a big part of Taylor's, and Rita Coolidge is yoko-ing CSNY (entirely in their own minds) but these women's actual careers are basically apartheided out of the story, happening in some kind of weird parallel universe. At very least, JM's a huge part of 1970, clearly, since she (for instance) gives Taylor's career a big fat boost and provides CSNY with a massive eternal hit in that (awful) Woodstock song. I would also say that seriously, while this is a story of 1970 and not a story of what came after it - except implicitly - Mitchell's 1970s were a hell of a lot more interesting than most of the people who are the subject of this book. I was surprised, for instance, to discover how much Stephen Stills was the Lindsey Buckingham of CSNY because tbf his subsequent fifty years of career have been kind of, well, less exciting than he or anyone might have hoped. Stills wrote some decent songs but Mitchell is basically a giant who the rest of these dudes barely match in ambition and scope - McCartney the obvious contender but even then, McCartney hasn't gone out on a limb in terms of threatening his own commerciality. 

So I guess essentially Browne was like hey, I've found a few connections in some classic rock stars, 'I want to write about the guys I want to write about. Some of them even dicked the same sheilas!' and Da Capo press were like cool Brownie. But I reckon even he would have to concede you couldn't write a book like this today, and perhaps also, there's a certain dishonesty to relegating the women of equal commercial and innovative status to homemaking duties? 

bit cranky

This is what you fuckin' want on a day of onerous tasks isn't it. So obviously I had to get tested ASAP so I went to the RMH. Last time I was there, it was a fairly quick process but this time there was a long queue. You just have to bite the bullet. 

The test is really fucking unpleasant but it's over fast and I knew the chances I had been infected were super low (actually I don't even know if the test picks up if you're carrying Covid without actually having it - that's a thing, right?). I do know I could still have it even though vaccinated. 

These are all on the traffic light pole when you come out of the hospital. So, anyway I had to go straight home and isolate until I got the all-clear. It took about 9-10 hours to hear the unsurprising news. In the meantime I watched the documentary on the Go-Gos, which I have to say was OK but not earth shattering, they seem like interesting people I guess. I also made this amazing bread - I feel like I've hit the jackpot finally on how to make amazing bread! After all this time. It's a bit of rye flour (organic) and the el cheapo cake / pizza flour from Cheaper Buy Miles. It's just so great!

Still I feel like today was a bit of a waste, although I did take the opportunity to do some minor admin tasks - the little things that I often avoid because they seem like death by a thousand cuts. Right now it's quite late (midnight actually) and I'm listening to Jen Cloher, who's always good. 

winding down

I woke up at 5:20 or thereabouts, initially almost able to go back to sleep, but Nancy heard me talking to Helmi so came into the room to hassle for breakfast, leading Helmi to a hissing/growling situation (that part of your mind where you are back a billion years ago on the savannah, it just starts to get you going when you hear the big cats in action) so I fed Nancy then went and had my coffee and toast, I by the way have made the best bread I have ever made, only yesterday, it was a mix of about 1/5 organic rye and 4/5 that italian cake flour, a very sticky dough which I actually considered quite unpromising, now I will seek unsuccessfully to replicate it many more times until I fail enough I start forgetting why I was doing it. But I suppose cakiness is the key.

Yesterday I foolishly put a tissue in the washing. I don't know why, I just did! I felt like it. So I had then (or, then had) to wash the washing twice more to try and get the shredded tissue off it. It didn't really work. Then I discovered that drying the clothes in the dryer did. You know, in grandma's day, by which I mean, great-great-grandma's day, well, there weren't tissues anyway, but you did have much less opportunity to process your clothes etc with machinery, didn't you. Apparently, yes you did. I am glad I wasn't alive then, as it sucked. Anyway the dryer is great but really I should only use it for partially dried outside clothes as if they go in wet big globs of water form on the ceiling, which is unpleasant, it's like a sauna in there. I can't let that happen so I guess the next time I decide to drop a tissue in with the clothes maybe I'll remember all the interesting activities that follow and how it gave me a chance to explore my world and consider how my activities are just a little nub of many millions of nubs tethered to a great pulsating economic-scientific miracle. 

This morning I also wrote a new tune in GarageBand with my guitar. I haven't changed the strings on the guitar for about 3 years. I have some strings somewhere but I am scared to change them in case I can't, although I suppose I know people who know how to tune guitars and if/when I fuck it up I can get them to fix it for me. Or, perhaps I won't fuck it up, I don't know. I don't fuck everything up but I find it helps to have low expectations e.g. high expectations of my ability to fuck things up. Little things. The tune was not terrible - I know that in a day or two if I listen back I will be like did I do that? How?! but like most of them it was just two parts with no extra variety - actually one version I did go off on a tangent towards the end and it sounded shit and so did the bit where I tried to come back into the original 'verse'. So, big mistake, learned my lesson there. 

So that was Monday morning. I have a meeting in 1 hour, 17 minutes (at which I have to give a short presentation I have only really half done) and after that I suspect I will be on low energy for the rest of the day, perhaps the rest of the week even, we'll see. 

September is the cruellest month

September sucks because it's when you kind of know there's every possibility of things just getting hotter and hotter until yeah it's totally summer and that is fucked. I am ok with the middle of summer because then I know that summer is on the way out although unfortunately February is the worst (March is terrible too because you're like 'isn't summer over?' and the world is like 'you're so naive'. 

In normal conditions (such as they once were) a February trip to northern Europe would be on the cards but that seems less likely every day (and that's saying something). Looks like it's just going to be a hot 2021-22 and more fires, death, disarray. I'm over it and I know I'm not the only one. Please save us Anthony Albanese. 

Some records came in the mail yesterday, four actually. Two were albums I had 'always' (well, since they came out) meant to buy and never quite got round to it. Firstly, John Foxx's The Garden. I was a bit of a JF fan in 1980 when I bought Metamatic and I particularly loved its vibe, all the synthesisers-only stuff and songs about sterile environments and patched-in emotions. The Garden was perhaps less enticing to me because it added in organic materials, although I didn't mind (nor did I out-and-out love) the single 'Europe after the Rain' (which I bought as a 12") I was uncertain about the LP. I bought it from someone in the Netherlands and I like a lot of it, actually, well, side one in any case. There's a greater variety of material including some Metamatic-style tracks which appeal the most and some even punchier things like the song 'Systems of Romance' (which, strangely, has the same name as one of the Ultravox albums JF was on but I don't even really care about whatever the backstory is there). I got the Dr. Mix and the Remix album, too, which was a record that used to intrigue me when I looked at it in Exposure records forty years ago, but having no context, I just didn't know how to take it. I must have at one time known it was a covers album but this information fell out of my memory at some stage and sometime since I had absorbed the false information that it was actually a remix/sampled album in the vein of, for instance, the Justified Ancients of MuMu's first record or perhaps Culturcide's Tacky Souvenirs of Pre-War America. Well, no. It's feedback guitar cover versions of fairly unadventurous 60s-70s songs of the type favoured by punks when there wasn't enough punk music (a Roxy Music cover, a Stooges, two Sky Saxon, the Troggs' 'Can't Control Myself' etc). It's good enough to play again in some moods. Some list it as a Metal Urbain record but really I think it's just one (ex-?) member of MU. It's odd that it is rather obscure still but strangely as well there's a manifestly appalling review from Pitchfork 15+ years ago online that starts off with the reviewer saying he doesn't like non-English music and ends up with him saying that the Dr. Mix record is a testimony to how great American music is (yeah, like Roxy Music, David Bowie and The Troggs - sure). Fucking idiot. And Pitchfork is a terrible piece of shit website. 

Then I also got the 'mistake' pressing of one of my favourite albums, Pere Ubu's The Art of Walking. This was a version of the record which, for whatever insane reason, was released in its initial incarnation with two 'wrong mixes' of two songs, most notably the track 'Arabia' which appears here as kind of a minimalist backing track - not in itself terrible but very strange to hear, particularly in context, when you're used to the 'real' version. It's a nice thing to have though I am not sure how much I am likely to be listening to it. Maybe a lot? I listened to it last night in any case while reading a bunch of reviews of the album most of which were takedowns by people whose opinions are stupid (none of them on Pitchfork though luckily). (I keep mistyping 'Pitchfork' as 'Pitchford', which I think is what I should call that website I set up to skewer Pitchfork at every turn, fortunately I'll never do that, because 'Pitchford' makes no sense). 

I also got a compilation album which I'll discuss either later or never, need to get further into it. 

crabstick news, from the box of crap

Note bizarrely I actually named Charlie Watts as a thing for 1991, why?!?! I guess I failed to add '2021'.

Other bizarre note: we arrogantly claimed that our first vinyl LP would be our last one. In fact, the band only ever released vinyl LPs (three of 'em) all through the 'CD era'. And nothing is on spotify.  

rabbit, rabbit