tall poppies 31 may 1986

I categorically fail to understand the reference to Michael Hodgman, who was a minor Tasmanian conservative politician. Although I guess now I've written it down, it kind of makes sense. What could be more of a fall from grace for a young turk. 

Koskenlaskijan morsian (1923)

'The silent drama The Bride of the Rafters (1923), directed by Erkki Karu, is based on Väinö Kataja's novel of the same name. In Perä-Pohjola, the mutual resentment of the hosts of Nuottaniemi and Paloniemi (Konrad Tallroth, Jaakko Korhonen) causes a dangerous situation during rafting. Hanna (Heidi Korhonen) from Nuottaniemi rescues Juhan (Einari Rinne) from Paloniemi and his beloved Koskenalusta Ant (Oiva Soini) from a ferry that broke down with a brave action.'

Great stuff except it keeps stalling at the 50 minute mark just as the rafts are coming back from Lapland.

I have been to Perä-Pohjola, though I don't remember it, but the map tells me that when I took the bus from Luleå to the railway station at Kemi (i.e. the southernmost land route between Sweden and Finland) I passed through it. 

who loves you

I got a copy of the Four Seasons' album Who Loves You from a discogs vendor in Italy a few months ago, it's really scratched and fucked up just the way I like it. When the title track came out as a single, it kind of spooked me with its strange haunting intro vocal and then a misunderstanding I never really processed at the time (I was ten): 

Who loves you, pretty baby?
Who's gonna help you through the night?
Who loves you, pretty mama?
Who's always there to make it right?

I think I might have mentioned that I was ten, and I suppose I had never come across that weird, weird WEIRD American thing of describing a girl/woman who is not your mother as 'mama', but also a minor but crucial mishearing had me understanding the third line as 'Who loves your pretty mama' and imagining some scenario whereby the probably newly acquainted older man is asking about who the other men are in the life of mother-daughter household i.e. 'do you have a boyfriend? You don't? OK and does your mother have a boyfriend?' 

It was a long time ago and I am pretty sure that I had not encountered weird porn tropes about this kind of thing (as far as I recall, but then again, it was a long time ago) so I just wrestled with the idea as best I could on the information available. It was something that probably happened in the adult world, because most things seemed possible there. 

It was also super confusing that the Four Seasons were like an old, old, old group from the early 1960s, which seemed a much longer time ago in 1975 than it does now, and just to add to the confusion they had a new song about December 1963. Did my head in.

I don't remember thinking about this but I suppose the who loves you schtick had something to do with Kojak which was so hot right then. I can't remember ever watching that show but I probably did (it was a kind of Batman-Superman thing with Columbo) but the catchphrase was everywhere. 

A propos of nothing except thinking about Kojak, it occurred to me that the character name always sounded super fake, so I went looking to see whether there have really been people with that name and yeah, it's a name. However, I don't think it's a Greek name, which is the conceit of the tv show. Here's an example of why it might not be, from the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle of 16 September 1927:

Although of course there was a big Jewish Greek population and so maybe I should do more research before I make these kinds of claims. I promise to come back to this before now and the end of time. 

*Update: I looked on a website called Forebears and found that according to a website called Forebears, the name Kojak is most prevalent in Egypt, they even generate a map to show you where it appears in concentration: 

So there is no-one called Kojak in Greece (or New Zealand or Greenland). 

I thought maybe the name 'Kojak' (with a so-called 'hard J') was perhaps related to the name 'Kodak' but imagine my surprise to find that the name 'Kodak' as applied to the famous photographic products company was a name made up in 1888 by George and Maria Eastman using 'an anagram set' whatever that is. However, it is a name, and its highest occurrence is in Turkey. 

tall poppies 24 may 1986

 

oh good more records

I am an unreconstructed Swell Maps fan yes it is true and so when I heard this album, called Mayday Signals, was coming out I was up for it. It's a collection of mainly unreleased recordings by them either before they actually entered a studio or, around side 4 I think, a bit later. It's one of those stupid things: if it's a third as good as Jane from Occupied Europe then it's gonna be pretty good. I will let you know. 

So I bought this online from Monorail in Glasgow and well since I was buying one thing from them I figured I may as well buy two. I had been meaning to get this since I heard it in Glasgow whenever, October 2019? So I bought it as well. 

So far so good, it's the only one of these I've played so far. So while I was walking to the bank to do my ID check and release the loan contracts, I got an email from work to say there was a parcel for me there, they do that now, I'm not sure why but I'm not against it. It was the two records above. I am not sure why they went to my work but I had ordered stuff from Monorail a few years ago back when I lived in Albion and I more commonly had things sent to my workplace because I didn't want to have to go to Sunshine West to pick them up if the postal delivery worker didn't leave them. So then I got home, got these out and started to regard them, when there was a knock at the door. It was a postal delivery worker with some more records that apparently I had ordered some time ago, though I don't remember doing it.  They were these: 

That's right not one but two Barbara records

And a John Coltrane record which I probably just grabbed because I was already buying the other things and so postage was free and so it was probably a negligible cost but I'm certainly looking forward to it*

Oh and this! Which is the EP that came free with the first pressings of the second Martha and the Muffins album, but which wasn't in my copy of that album. So, for what it's worth, I have it. I definitely do not remember ordering this. Hmm, actually, or any of it. Perhaps I was drunk. 

Don't look down your nose at me my life's been really hard. 

*Actually a Wilbur Harden/John Coltrane album that was reissued in the mid-60s with Coltrane's name given absolutely greater prominence 

only lonely

I may already have been a bore about this group but now I have the actual album. It's SO WEIRD in a bland kind of way, but amusing and even engaging too. So the first thing is this odd aspect: they were from Turku and in Finland, they were called Bogart Co. 

I was instantly entranced by this cover. It's so amateur it's incredible. The six rock balls, the weird little face on the stone, the fucked up sand... the city in the background. It's appealing.* 

But check out what I got when I ordered this album from some discogs vendor in, I suppose, Portugal since this is a Portuguese pressing. And apparently they were known by this name in a number of territories. I just want to know why. I suspect it's just because 'Bogart Co.' is such a richly terrible name, but still, I want to know why.

I am also a bit thrilled that someone spent all of six seconds getting out a texta and a bit of paper to alter the cover art (this by the way is the printed cover) of my copy to credit the album under a different name (someone later has come along and in neat ballpoint put the numbers 1, 3, 2 and 4 on it). Intriguingly though for the Swedish pressing some time was actually spent on comparatively cohesive art.

I suppose I am also intrigued about why the other territories didn't just, you know, give it a decent cover. And I mean, the guys in the band weren't horrible looking by the standards of the era so why not put them on the cover? Instead of this madness? Here they are on the inner sleeve:

You'll be stunned to hear these are stage names. I don't know which one I like the best, but I guess to be boring it's most likely Sam Eagle. Reddie aka Ressu Redford's real name was Esa Mäkelä; Sam Eagle was Sami Piiparinen; Vinnie or perhaps Winnie Lane was Veijo Mäki, Guy Stoneman was Kai Stenman and Johnny Gustafsson, inasmuch as Johnny isn't really a Finnish name, was Johnny Gustafsson. 

And look it's piss easy to joke about this stuff and I do actually like the record, either because of or despite the fact it is essentially every frickin' 1986 cliche you can imagine in a Duranesque group. If I wrote lyrics in Finnish, which I can't because I only know about three words in Finnish, they would be meaningless. These are pretty trite songs but they hold together, but of course, there is that very slight 'offness' about them, which makes them much more fun than if they were completely coherent. (I am reminded of a review in NME of one of the Lilliput albums that made fun of their Swiss German attempts at English and how I am still offended by that review thirty something years later - so - why am I inviting you to laugh at this? I'm not actually - that's on you). 

'The morning's breakin' and I'm waking up/ Cold shower an' I dress up real cool/While havin' the breakfast, the morning paper/Tells me what to do an' what to think (God dam it)'. 

'Come the midnight there are millions of lips/An' they're moving'/Come the midnight there are millions who kiss/ An' they're ooh'

'Rainbow in your heart/ Those warm sunbeams an' those tears in your eyes/ Form a rainbow/ The rainbow in your heart/ I realise, you can't stand all his lies/ And that's why/ The rainbow's inside you.' 

'Day after day we flow with the rush (ooh)/Knowing there's nothing we can do/ Step after step we watch where we go/ To avoid the slush an' the slime/For all, after all/We worship the matter/ To continue the world as it does'

Continuing as it does, the world is an amazing place. In 2021 I discovered both Martha and the Muffins (properly) and Bogart Co. Oh also the Mess Esque and Blue Divers albums are really good. I have been playing a lot of Bananarama too. Indeed, this morning I raced to a garage sale where I knew for a fact that the edition of WOW with extra LP of remixes was going to be for sale. Guess what it was only $2 as well. Also guess what: the copy of the second Bananarama album I bought a few weeks ago had two, whatever you call them, bags in it so when I discovered that one of the LPs in this edition of WOW didn't, all I had to do was transfer it across. Do call that justice. 

By the way I bought the first Bananarama album on the same day I bought the first Velvet Underground album, probably in 1983. But today I only have the first Bananarama album (and the second and third). 

March 2023 update: When we were in Finland in February Laura and I saw a lot of Bogart Co. records around - I don't know why I didn't buy any. Also we heard 'All the best girls' played in the bar at the airport. It sounded cool! 

* The cover is designed by Gerold Gerdes. Someone called Gerold Gerdes was born in 1964 and died in 2013 but I don't know if it was this Gerold Gerdes. A Gerold Gerdes designed quite a few Finnish record covers. 

army of the dead

I am currently as I write watching Army of the Dead really only for the entire reason that Tig Notaro is in it, not being funny or anything, just being herself but I am kind of up for anything with her in it. I was also entranced by the idea that apparently she shot all her scenes alone and was either cut and pasted into scenes or is just alone. 

Anyway, I don't have much more to say about it, I'm not that thrilled by it so far but it's fast-paced and seems to take on tropes I am pretty used to. That said, I have a feeling I'm going to be looking up the plot on wikipedia before too long. 

The music used in the film is contemporary covers of old songs. What's that about.