a scritti politti record review from fifteen years ago. not sure where (or if) published.

Scritti Politti

White Bread and Black Beer

Rough Trade/Shock

I never set much store by record labels, although I suppose there might be something in the notion that a certain culture at certain record labels give a certain something to certain artists. And this could perhaps explain why the new Scritti Politti album – the group’s umpteenth but their first back on their basically-original label Rough Trade – is their best since their first album, Songs to Remember.

The above paragraph was so freakin’ complicated, I didn’t want to have to add in the additional information that the group is not really a group, just a guy, or perhaps the guy, Green Gartside, this just-pretty-much-a genius, at home doing some recording on equipment that, if it doesn’t exactly constitute a home studio, is at least enough recording equipment to fit into his home. The album is sparse, fragile, slipperier’n an oily rag, and glows like a gold brick. I think it’s a masterpiece.

Scritti last bothered the charts in 1984 with ‘Wood Beez’, a song that was surely a hit because it was an early example of a record no-one, including its perpetrators probably, could ever sing along to (so you had to buy it). T(he)y had a pretty prominent near-hit in the ‘91 with a minor Beatles song, ‘She’s a Woman’, in which Shabba Ranks often popped in and said ‘Shabba!’ (or did I dream that?). And then there was a decent album called Anomie and Bonhomie a few years ago which I haven’t listened to since it came out.

Now, Green appears to have a beard and has become funnier than ever. Even as slight a slice of funk as ‘Throw’ is a hoot (‘you could throw a party and maybe I’ll be there’, he sings, which amuses me, anyway). Green, like Jon Michell, likes Marc Bolan, and like Jon Michell, it shows (just listen to ‘After Six’, forget the strange godbotherer references, and imagine it speeded up – it’s Jesus in a Jeepster). He also – you’ll remember he once covered the Beatles – likes, or likes to sound like, Paul McCartney; that final track, ‘Robin Hood’, one of the best, would have fit perfectly on any McCartney album except, um, Run Devil Run. There’s a crazy, slightly creepy song called ‘Mrs Hughes’ which is kind of Simon and Garfunkel and scary but totally brilliant.

Can’t recommend this record highly enough.

By the way (this is me in 2021 now), I still stand by this review, uninterestingly written as it may be. I see that in the original I slightly erred in the record's title - it's White Bread Black Beer, that's not particularly important. I would like to hear this album again because who knows what's happened to my CD of it. I think it might have come out on vinyl but I'm trying to keep a lid on my vinyl purchases if at all possible. Instead I'm spending all my dosh on books and films, what a prat. And ornaments and car repair. And food. And, you know, bills. 

tall poppies 5 july 1986

 

woody allen

Blogging (sigh) you want to be able to revel in the freedoms you are allowed by it, particularly as there's a good argument they are always tenuous and they're a muscle that'll waste away if you don't use them often and freely, and you don't want to be deterred from wading into the mire just because there's a general distaste for those that do. Remember when I got the shits about an old Fall song and got a snapshot of a genuine racist troll in the process for what it was worth (precisely nothing, or at least, it just made me feel dirty). 

I read Woody Allen's memoir Apropos of Nothing yesterday, as prep for something related to work, and it's true, I am the kind of flip-flop whose opinion can be twisted by whatever argument I was most recently exposed to. But I have also read Mia Farrow's memoir from long ago which discusses the same topic (I tried to watch Allen vs Farrow but I couldn't, but I tend not to trust documentaries even when there is far more evidence they are even-handed). I am not going to argue the intricacies of everyone's testimony - just say that the court of public opinion usually sucks as a court, and while nothing I get to hear about in the day-to-day makes me feel that the real legal system in the US has a huge amount going for it, WA has never been found guilty of anything. It seems to me there's a better case that MF cynically weaponised her children against WA using the most awful accusation she could think of, but there I go, getting caught up in the intricacies of testimony, which isn't my place, and a silly blog like this one is not the place to make pronouncements on anything serious unless - and this is a huge 'unless' - the blogger in question is willing to go all out and treat it in a journalistic fashion like a pro. 

I often think of the Joe Orton diaries, where - I'm going to paraphrase because I don't have the book to hand but if I made this up in my unconscious imagination then I have bigger problems than I thought - he records someone in mid-late 60s Britain congratulating him on the decriminalisation of homosexuality and he says well I'm a paedophile and that'll never be decriminalised. Of course Orton is extremely dead (and liked to shock and disgust people) but I note there's not a lot of mention of this self-identification in his wikipedia entry, aside from something about 'rent boys'.  Obviously these 'boys' weren't Kenneth Halliwell's children, but I do still see a bit of a double standard going on, insofar as Orton - his star admittedly a little on the wane these days, based as it is on a brief flurry of celebrity/productivity fifty years ago - has much of a profile to be cancelled. 

Apropos of Nothing is not a great book, I'm sorry to say. It starts out good humouredly, an overview of the artist's first thirty-plus years, including his first two marriages, interesting (to me) bits and pieces around the way a boy humourist in New York in the early 1950s could make twice as much as his parents' combined income in a few hours of typing up jokes-to-order. His he is in his late 30s by the time he is actually making his earliest canon films. He mentions (I think - I didn't tabulate) all his films and if he doesn't actually do justice to each (some discussions are just an anecdote to tick a box), well, there's been a lot of them and in his defence he never watches them again after making them and never reads his reviews, an approach I endorse (that said, for someone who's really down on awards, he often mentions his own and others'). When he gets to the Farrow period he drops the jokiness and adopts a monotone. Following that, back to an extended, and also rather jarring after the two very different tones we have been exposed to, reflection on later career, and finally an account of the 20-teens cancellation, after which the whole thing kind of grinds to a halt. 

I am not sure if it's tone deafness that makes him want to mention without comment Bill Cosby (at least once) and Roman Polanski (in a couple of different contexts) without making any pronouncement on their famous sex crime controversies or whether he's trying to be provocative (he distances himself from Harvey Weinstein professionally saying he wouldn't work with someone who insisted on reediting movies, without making any comment on HW's behaviour; he also makes some oblique comments on Louis CK getting into trouble, without saying anything about the nature of such trouble). I am pretty sure that you can't be in show business for over sixty years without hearing terrible things about everyone, which isn't a reason to turn a blind eye, but might make you less inclined towards believing social justice is achievable even in small measure, particularly if you feel you have been completely denied it yourself as WA apparently does.

One of the real freedoms of blogging IMO is that you don't have an editor saying 'weak conclusion, you need to revise', as though anyone ever reads to the end of any article, ever, anyway. I don't have a conclusion. I don't recommend reading Apropos of Nothing though. You don't learn much, and you don't have much fun along the way. 

a review of the winduptoys from fifteen years ago

Winduptoys

Double Exposure

Clan Analogue

Winduptoys really know how to string it together. ‘Lost and found’ is not entirely non-reminiscent of Herbie Hancock’s ‘Rockit’. ‘WindupDUB’ has this kind of Arabic, painted-mural-on-a-café-wall kind of aspect that the trebly reggae beat does not dispel. ‘Switched on’ has a similarly wild muslim feel, which has to be embraced. Other tracks take a really revolutionary unbassy but furious, heady approach, suggesting that these are not just a couple of guys probing around with jacks and units, but actual thinkers making thoughtful and, well, atmospheric (though atomspheric would be a better word) somewhat druggy music that would have gone down really well in that scene in the film Dalmas where the cops bust the trippy club. Sometimes the psychedelia buttons get stuck and the guys are just there, in their pyjamas, eating Angas Park dried fruit salad and constantly probing their ears with their pinkies because they hear this whining noise. And at the same time you can see the most definite trails back to rock, Public Image (who they cover) style rock, or the Pop Group who have always been a personal favourite of mine, or back further to blues workouts from the 60s, or The Twilights or whatever. Absolutely highly recommended, my friends.

världen är liten

I occasionally peek at the stats for my blog. I am not obsessy about it, because after all, why bother. I am amazed anyone reads this stuff at all, as it's unlikely really to mean anything to anyone other than me and Nancy and a few other nearest and dearest and even they are unlikely to get too much of enormous value out of it - IMO. Particularly since I am fairly sure it's repetitive anecdotes and/or versions of the same general philosophies, if you could call them that. Anyway. I am still intrigued at the top five above, although frankly I am not sure what period that covers - the last 15 years or however long it's been since I started this shizzle? The last year? The last month? It's not clear. Nor is it really important. It is weird though that Sweden is leading the way, it's not famous for its bots, but maybe that's what they want you to believe. The Netherlands, similarly, I don't really get although when it comes down to it, I don't absolutely get any of these countries' interest particularly, although of course I know all too well that the majority of visitors are coming attracted by the blood-in-the-water of a particular keyword or one of the very popular entries I have come up with such as the one where I muse on the words to the H R Pufnstuf theme song or the one where I muse on Knockout comic from the 70s. I'm not going to link to them you'll only click on them and continue to skew the demographic for those especially boring entries though tbf maybe slightly less boring than most of the others, at least in what they promise. Since you've read this far I'll tell you what I've been doing today: I was writing a lecture this morning, and watching The Towering Inferno (I'm about half way through it) - this is not as random as it seems, or at least, it is but the lecture was at least in part about The Towering Inferno. Then I had two meetings, one IRL and one online, with men whose PhDs I am cosupervising. Then I tried to revise/boil down my CV for an application I'm helping someone with at work and it didn't save, so I spent probably all up one fruitless hour divided into two fruitless half-hours in contact with Apple to try and figure out why, when I have almost 300GB of memory on my laptop, a simple word document was causing the computer to tell me I had no memory left. I got some messages from Alanna asking if I would be able to go to Daylesford or Castlemaine or wherever the hell it is Jon Michell lives to record some drums/percussion on a couple of her wonderful songs, which of course I would, although I am woefully out of practice when it comes to drums and never really mastered percussion (yet). Also, late in the day a delivery man came and gave me some things I had ordered in the mail, including this book by Bret Lunsford which looks really good and suitably delightfully esoteric (I haven't read much of it yet, but I note that Harry Smith doesn't get born until around p. 83 of a 200-page narrative, which by the way I'm fine with). Also some recent record releases from K and some button badges which I didn't order but I'm very happy to have. 

Pretty cool huh

So tonight I think I will most likely finish watching The Towering Inferno, maybe have a light supper... packet soup? Possibly finish drinking the bottle of Lakka I have in the fridge and maybe try and write some more book-chapter-that-has-been-hindered-by-the-house-move, and also possibly put a few more things away, although I'm really hanging out for Lachlan to build my shelves - then I'll know I'm really ensconced, although the curtains in the bedroom are a very find grounding (thank you Laura). 

midway 2021

Alright so I will say that 2021 has been extremely unexpected overall, but then, what year does turn out the way you expect? I hope I never have one like that. I am sitting here in my new home, there are things piled up everywhere because I don't feel enabled to settle properly until I get my shelves built (the install I think starts on Friday - waiting to hear) so I have, for instance, a huge pile of CDs atop a cabinet and I haven't even really started thinking about unpacking CDs (CDs are like something I don't even really think about much, and the ones I have are only around because essentially I throw very little of anything out - !).  I also have a big pile of junk at one end of my car parking space down below. 

It has come to my attention that a pipe in the ceiling outside the laundry is leaking, so that's the first big wake-up call re: home ownership, but OK, I can handle whatever it takes for the right to put pictures on the wall as I please and not have an inspection every six months. I have been told in any case that this might be remedied today... we'll see... (not because anyone responded to my request for a repair, but because a repair was scheduled anyway). I also have ordered a new stove because the stove here sucks and also - unpleasantly - it's kind of grimy and I deserve better. So I will receive my due soon enough. 

The big problem for me that worries me the most is Helmi is clearly very unsettled and unhappy, and while I actually wouldn't have described her as happy at Parkville, at least there were times when she would come out and spend the day with me and Nancy. Now, as far as I can tell, she has not left the bedroom and adjoining bathroom since we got here and spends most of her time either under the bed or in hiding somewhere, I'm not sure where. I hope she will rally soon because it can't be good for her to be so scared and sad. 

Otherwise, everything's pretty great, to be honest. 

rabbit