Long Was The Year

This is what 2004 meant to me:

My new Apple iBook G4.

Julius Emmerson, aged four, as a kookaburra in the Hughes Pre-School 2004 Christmas concert.

McSweeney’s No 13.

Two boys riding bikes without training wheels.

New Yorker subscription.

A whole world of previously unheard music (much of which has previously been mentioned in these pages).

Making only one late-night visit to Canberra Hospital’s emergency ward for the entire year.

Carl Emmerson’s (now aged seven) great progress with both swimming and reading, although not both at the same time. His excellent taste in music is also a never-ending source of surprise and delight.

Blogging.

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings @ the Playhouse, Canberra.

The feeling that, after almost six years in Canberra, we now have a solid circle of friends up here (even if some are away on foreign service) and that, even if we haven’t yet earned the right to call ourselves “locals”, we can at least call Canberra home. Which is not to disregard all of our loyal friends in Melbourne and elsewhere, with whom we have been in much less frequent contact than we would like.

"Knock knock." "Who’s there?" "Cowsgo." "Cowsgo who?" "Cows go moo, not who." And other jokes told by four-to-seven-year-olds.

Adrienne’s uncanny ability to think in three dimensions. (And, ahem, her seemingly limitless patience with my frequently erratic and unhelpful behaviour throughout the year. There, I’ve said it.)

The continuing allure of Santa Claus.

Construction Site: The i(Po)diot

Or: I went through the living hell of undertaking extensive renovations to both ends of the house while struggling to live in the middle as workmen crawled around and amongst us for six long months and all I got was this lousy iPod.

After the News

Unsurprisingly, Christmas Eve seems to have been a slow news day. But what about this, the main headline in that day's Melbourne Age, under the banner "Exclusive", usually reserved for significant exposes of a corruption or nepotism nature: "Underworld Recruiting in Prisons". Well, as we used to say at Foster High School circa 1979, der.

Meanwhile, coming soon to a weblog near you: 2005.

World of Echo

Like magpies, Stereolab have made a career out of borrowing bits of other people's sounds and building their own newfangled nests out of them. What I didn't expect was to be strongly reminded of their song "Emperor Tomato Ketchup" when listening, for the first time, to Harry Nilsson's "Jump Into the Fire" (thanks to Spoilt Victorian Child). The rhythmic structure, drum fills, and propulsive bass lines all have their analogues [ahem] in the Stereolab song. What the groop didn't borrow was the Stones-y guitar riffing and the Robert Plant-style echo on the vocals (two of the few recogisable musical tropes yet to be employed by the 'Lab). For which we are grateful. Although both suit the Nilsson song just fine.

Postscript: a fraction of a second after hitting the "Publish" button on this entry it dawned on me that there is a Stereolab/Nilsson connection: the soundtrack to "Midnight Cowboy", best known for the Nilsson recording of Fred Neal's "Everybody's Talkin'" (but personally loved for the mournful harmonica-driven title track, by John Barry), contains not only two songs by something called The Groop (by which moniker Stereolab have long described themselves) but also a seven-minute epic called "Old Man Willow", performed by Elephants [sic] Memory, which in many ways can be seen as a template for all that Stereolab have done.

Quiet Is The New Loud

Respect to the artist Agnes Martin, who has died aged 92. By all accounts she was still painting up a storm at least up until last year. I don't, as they say, know much about art, but I know what I like. For some time now the National Gallery of Australia has had two of her paintings up, which I have been drawn back to time and time again (except when I was momentarily distracted by the recently acquired Gerhard Richter, mentioned here a while ago). Both paintings are so minimal as to be almost blank canvases, and yet they have a power all their own. I had never heard of Agnes Martin until Adrienne's mum mentioned her in conversation one day. Then she kept appearing wherever I turned. Isn't that always the way?

Construction Site: Careful With That Axe, Eugene

In an ideal world, I would never be left alone in the house while builders were around. Here it is, 5 o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, Adrienne has taken the boys to the pool, you would think I would be pretty safe. But no. As I look out the window, a dirty great semi-trailer backs up the street, with a forklift on the back. Soon the forklift, and its operator, are in the backyard. I sit here at the computer looking like the pathetic excuse for masculinity that I undoubtedly am. He knows I'm in here. I can see him staring at me as he sharpens his power tools. (Is that what you do with power tools?) I can run but I can't hide. Keep away from me. Keep away ...

The engineer

Not everybody who makes a mark on the culture ends up a household name. You may not, even if you have dub coursing through your veins, have much of an idea of who Errol Thompson was. But, as this obituary of the man shows, he worked on so many cornerstone reggae discs, and with so many superheroes of the genre, that it would be remiss of us not to acknowledge his passing.

Impressions

It’s probably about time something was said about a few acquisitions.

It took a long time to convince myself I needed to hear Stereolab’s “Margerine Eclipse” and Belle & Sebastian’s “Dear Catastrophe Waitress”. Apprehension abounded. Stereolab’s recent output has been about equal parts struggle and joy. Each of the last three studio albums had their share of downtime. Three songs might profitably have been chopped off the end of “Sound-dust”, while the middle part of “Cobra and Phases” remains hard work, if an admirable attempt at matching minimalism with pop music. So why is “Margerine Eclipse” such a breath of fresh air? Beats me. It just is. It’s less longwinded, for a start. There is also the use of the kinds of sounds employed in their work with Mouse on Mars, circa “Dots and Loops”. Somehow there seems, as much as anything, to be more space for the groop [sic] to move around in. Inevitably they sound different given the loss of Mary Hansen, with Laetitia’s vocals doing all of the harmony work. It may not be “better”, but it is, in its own way, different.

Then there’s “Dear Catastrophe Waitress”. For a long time I didn’t know if I could “go there”. The admirable-in-theory “democracy at all costs” approach had led the band to lose sight of their strengths (mainly, Stuart Murdoch’s songwriting), and had also caused some unfortunate juxtapositions: the deeply affecting “The Chalet Lines” into the hyper-twee “Nice Day For A Sulk”, for example. (You could, if you were so inclined, burn an extremely good single CD-R from the best parts of the last three albums.) And the thought that they were now to re-work their sound via Trevor Horn, while throwing Murdoch back into the foreground, had me thinking that they may be one step too far removed from their roots for salvation to ever take hold. Of course, I was wrong on all counts. It’s not all Murdoch, and that’s no bad thing. The songs are, to a man, wonderful. The production is brilliant. The entire history of the English pop charts is in here somewhere, down to Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back In Town”. Even a song with the unhopeful title of “Piazza, New York Catcher” gets an unambiguous thumbs-up. How could I ever have doubted them?

Meanwhile, Stephin Merritt is back with this year’s Magnetic Fields, “i”, the first on a major label. “No synths”, they loudly proclaim, and while some of us doubt that this is entirely true, it produces a setting wherein the hitherto self-consciously “retro” 80s sound can no longer inhibit, as it does when one is feeling less charitable, enjoyment of the songs themselves. Merritt will one day make a fortune as people with voices more friendly to the masses than his own discover the universality of his songs about love. Above all else, Merritt should be treasured because he is the first real lyricist that “we” (by which I mean anyone born after the Second World War who takes any more than a passing interest in popular music) have had. Merritt seems to have absorbed everything that he has ever seen, heard, or read, and to be able to squeeze little pieces of it into songs that are somehow able to turn the most unlikely material into something witty, clever, profound, or all three together. (Nobody else that I’m aware of has applied the Pantone colour system to the pursuit, or loss, of love.) Your grandparents were lucky enough to have had Cole Porter and Irving Berlin. We are lucky enough to have Stephin Merritt, but, as yet, too few of us know it.

And, of course, there’s Nick Cave, who gives us not one but two albums, a wordtorrent even by his standards, supported as ever by the shambolic majesty that is the Bad Seeds. Blixa is gone, Mick Harvey steps up to the plate in the way that only he can, and an organ has been thrown into the mix. It will take time, as Cave records always do, to absorb, but for now it is an unexpected pleasure to set either disc spinning. We had our doubts upon hearing “Nocturama” about the pursuit of a nine-to-five ethic in the world of creativity. We may well have been wrong. Who said all work and no play would make Nick a dull boy?

But wait, there’s more. Thanks to the mantra of “free downloads before 7 am”, and no less thanks to the generosity of my work colleague (for one year only) Sarah, who had the good sense to put me onto folks like Sufjan Stevens, Devendra Banhart, M Ward (saviour of the universe, notwithstanding that the “M” only stands for “Matt”, which is not quite as romantic or mysterious as, say, “Miracle”, or "Manfred"), songs:ohia, Iron & Wine, and others of that ilk, I have spent much of the last few months drowning in great music of all hues. And yet, even with such a steady and varied diet of diverse, “new”-sounding music (even when much of it also sounds “old”), do I find myself reaching more often than not for two albums of unashamed old-fashioned pop music - you know, the kind with guitar lines you can play along to, and hooks that you can’t get out of your head - Snow Patrol’s “Final Straw” and A C Newman’s “The Slow Wonder”? I’m not even going to write anything about these records (there’s really not much I could say, beyond “I don’t know why I like them but I do”), they are not particularly "cutting edge" or otherwise startling, they simply brighten up a dull existence. For that I say, thanks, fellas.

Memories Can't Wait

Some very interesting things float to the top, occasionally, at Bumrocks.com. This morning I noticed that they had posted a song called “Spooks in Space” by the Aural Exciters. Gosh, that rings a bell, I thought to myself. On listening to it, I realised that I failed to remember anything at all about the song itself, but also, on the other hand, that I had a clear and vivid memory of the voice of Mac Cocker, latterly outed as Jarvis’s long-lost father, back-announcing the very same track over the airwaves of the old 2JJ back in 1979 or 1980. I can recall every inflection of his voice as he said “blah blah blah by the Aural Exciters”. The mind is a strange and unfathomable thing.

I was at the same time trying to place “Spooks in Space”. All I could come up with was, it's a bit like what the B-52s were doing, and something about it suggests the first Madness album (a long shot), but that it has an overall sound strongly reminiscent of a lot of what came out on Ze Records. And then a search of the Internet revealed, to my delight and amazement (and if I had ever known this it was long forgotten), that the Aural Exciters were, in fact, a side project of the guy who ran Ze Records, and most of the people who appeared on the label were in some way involved. You can find out more here and you can, at least for now, download the song (which has a certain charm to it, and presumably a James Chance cameo on sax) here.

Happy Sad

Happy: taking last Friday off work, and finding the New Yorker’s annual Cartoon Issue in the letterbox. Studying closely the beautiful cover by R. Crumb and wondering whether he might be the first New Yorker cover artist ever to insinuate a picture of himself into a cover drawing (he’s the beardy old guy with the cloth cap, on the right-hand side of the cover); opening up a seemingly innocuous fold-out Johnny Walker ad, only to find four pages of new work by Seth lovingly wrapped inside its covers (marred only by that horrible word “advertisement” at the top of each page); noticing that Dave Mazzucchelli and Paul Auster’s comic-book adaptation of Auster’s “City of Glass” has been reissued by Picador. If any book is able to demonstrate the utility of the phrase “graphic novel”, this would have to be it.

Sad: going into a bookshop yesterday morning and reading “Michael Rosen’s Sad Book”, written by Michael Rosen and drawn by Quentin Blake. I had heard a bit about this book, made by two of the kings of British children’s books. But I wasn’t expecting to be reduced to silent tears on the floor of Paperchain Books in Manuka. I had to take myself off to a nearby cafe for a while to compose myself. I knew I had to go back in and buy the book, so that I could take it home with me and have a really good cry. (Which I did.) This is the saddest book I have ever read. (It is also very beautiful. Quentin Blake draws the best eyes.) I can’t even begin to imagine Rosen’s own sadness - to lose your 18-year-old son: I “only” lost my father when I was 25 years old (and with him my entire life’s fabric and history) - but Rosen’s evocation of his own grief in this book cuts so close to the bone of my own sadness that, like a dog with a snake, I am torn between being too frightened to read the thing because of what it is likely to set off inside me, and yet being unable to leave it alone. If it’s possible for someone else’s writing to talk to you, “Michael Rosen’s Sad Book” is talking to me.

New old music alert

We now have The Mark Of Cain over at the Music Box. Go to it, kids.

The Covers Record

Four weeks, four New Yorkers, four New Yorker covers. As follows:

Week one: a gorgeous cover for the Fall Books issue, drawn by Adrian Tomine, creator of the "Optic Nerve" series of comic books, published by Drawn and Quarterly. I have always loved Tomine's drawing style, but only intermittently dip into "Optic Nerve" out of a feeling that his writing lacks the depth that I'm looking for (okay, we're not talking Tolstoy here, but even in the world of comic books we require a degree of substance). I fear I may be totally wrong in this judgment, and hereby vow to give him a second hearing.

Week two: a typically clever Bruce McCall cover. McCall's connection with our comic book shelf is a one-page "What's Wrong With This Picture?" in Art Spiegelman's first "Little Lit" collection. McCall's trick is to remove any kind of personal style or statement from his art: which, in 2004, is, of course, a kind of statement in itself. He also writes very funny pieces for the New Yorker, such as a guide for applying for Canadian citizenship a couple of weeks ago ("Please use a soft pencil").

Week three: Ian Falconer. Creator of the "Olivia" books (ostensibly for kids but we seem to like them more than the guys do: they are rarely dragged off the shelf other than by us and forced upon the boys in a fashion akin to green vegetables). Falconer also appeared in the second "Little Lit".

Week four: R Crumb. What more need be said?

Some of us, obviously, would be hoping that this comic book connection would continue at least until we get another Richard McGuire cover. But we're not holding our breath.

Penguin Dreams

I ask you, how can you get to work on time, when the ABC is showing new episodes of Pingu at 8.15am weekdays?

Jules at Gym

I had the immense pleasure this morning of taking Julius (the four-year-old) to his final gymnastics class for the year. It was a big Christmas break-up lesson and all the various groups got the chance to go through their paces together. There is nothing quite as gorgeous as a group of variously talented four-, five- and six-year-olds doing such routines as reaching up to a horizontal bar above their heads (or being lifted up) so that they can lift their legs up, lower them again, jump down onto the floor, and do the “presentation” (one arm up in the air if you are a boy, both arms spread wide if you are a girl. Just like the Olympics).

It’s interesting how, if you can find something that will motivate a child, it can be just like operating them by remote control. At one stage Jules decided he had done enough, and came and sat down next to me. I said to him that if he didn’t go back in with the other kids he might miss out on his certificate. He was back in there before I had even finished the sentence.

At the end of the lesson everyone got their certificate, and Santa Claus turned up to give out bags of lollies. Julius tells me it was really Santa. I didn’t get close enough to have a proper look, but Jules is a much better judge of such things than I am.

Check the record

Each time I use the facilities at home I am confronted with a big bottle of blue liquid labelled "Nu-Clenz". On account of the slightly unorthodox way my brain works, this unfailingly makes me think of The Fall's "New Big Prinz", and has me shouting "Appreciated!" until I move on to the next thing. Some people have a life.

Extricate!

I had a wisdom tooth pulled this morning.

I have to say, it wasn't one of the most pleasant experiences I've had.

Now I'm just sitting here waiting for the anaesthetic to wear off and the real fun to begin.

Where are the drugs?

Silence is Golden

We're not dead. We're just having a little rest.

Zorn free (... sorry ...)

For anyone that's interested in things John Zorn, a couple of days ago, here, there was a concert available for download of the Bar Kokhba Sextet (inc Marc Ribot!) playing in Warsaw in 1999. As I write, the site seems not to be accessible, but it would be worth trying again later, as it is a wonderful concert, an excellent companion to the "Bar Kokhba" two-disc set of the Masada Chamber Ensemble, and with great sound quality. And introduced by the man himself. The Masada pieces may be the motherlode of John Zorn's work; they seem to be open to an endless amount of recombining, reworking, genre-hopping and other forms of jiggery pokery. But every new interpretation seems as valid, and fresh, as every other one. The original Masada studio recordings may, in fact, end up being the least necessary of the lot, as the original quartet outdoes itself with each concert recording that becomes available ("Live at Tonic", I think, is the high point so far, but that's a matter of opinion).

Of course, it is an expensive exercise just trying to keep up. And then Tzadik announces that it's putting together the ultimate completists' package of the Naked City recordings. Do I hear seven CDs? Maybe the kids would be happy with two meals a day.

He is not appreciated

In one very small respect, the re-election of George W Bush might be the right result. It is, that the whole mess the world is now in is solely due to the actions of the first Bush Administration, so is it not fair that he should be the one who is now required to clean that mess up? Iraq is now, more than likely, an intractable problem: the Americans can’t leave, because of the likely state of lawless civil war that would result; but nor can they stay, because of the “Q” word, the “V” word, and the timely re-appearance of Osama bin Laden, who is still, surely, the real object of the so-called War on Terror. (Not bin Laden, as such, who may, after all, only be a Dr Evil-type figurehead, but his lieutenants, or footsoldiers, or the leaders and functionaries of whatever separate and disparate groups it has been convenient to group together under the rubric of “al Qaeda”.)

Which is not to say that a second Bush Administration won’t make an even bigger mess of things by the time the President finally swaggers off into the Texan sunset in January 2009. Four years, for example, is plenty of time for the re-emergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan; the assassination of General Musharaff in Pakistan and his replacement by someone less in the pocket of the Americans (don’t forget, Pakistan is a sovereign nuclear state); and the “successful” completion of nuclear weapons programs by both Iran and North Korea.

But if that is the case, then perhaps the American public might see the light, and we might then have stage two of the Clinton family hegemony, as Hilary steps up for her moment in the sun. Or the newly minted Senator Barack Obama. Or even a “moderate Republican”. Or perhaps the powers behind the throne might even now be finding a way to postpone the 2008 elections indefinitely due to a (self-inflicted) state of emergency, or to change the rules so that the President can seek a third term of office.

Or we could wake up tomorrow and discover that the last four years have been a bad dream, that Al Gore has just been elected for a second term, the terrorists have been rounded up and dealt with by lawful means and with meaningful international assistance and support, the Palestinians have been given a fair deal, a program of education and aid in the Middle East and elsewhere is serving to marginalise extremists of all hues, and John Peel didn’t die.

Mystery Dance

If you head over to the Music Box you will find that something has been added for your downloading pleasure. But it won't be there for long.

Fell In Love With A Girl

When we first moved to Canberra we lived for six months in a modern but soulless townhouse in a modern but soulless street in a modern but soulless suburb. The townhouse had two bathrooms; one of which included a spa, something that we, being afraid of anything new, never used. When Carl was around 18 months old he became mildly obsessed with anything that had buttons or knobs. One evening during his bath his eyes lit upon the button that switched on the spa. He duly pressed the button, and was given the fright of his life. For some time after that, bathtime would find Carl torn between desperately wanting to press that button again, and being unable to do so out of fear of what would happen if he did so. He never in fact pressed the button again, but his finger spent many a long minute hovering over it, quivering.

I know just how he feels. I have for some time now been in love with a song by the Baldwin Brothers (whoever they might be) called “Dream Girl”, featuring the vocal talents of Miho Hatori, from Cibo Matto. There are times when all I want to do in the world is listen to that song. And yet I know that if I hear so much as a tiny fragment, it will be stuck in my head for the rest of the day and I will have considerable trouble getting to sleep at night. Do I give in and listen to it? Can I resist its charms? I can’t stop thinking about listening to it. I CAN’T STAND IT. Is this what junkies go through?

Fantastic Life!

I have only ever really wanted to be two people. One, as you know, is Harold Ross of the New Yorker.

The other is John Peel. Which is odd, in a way, when you consider that John Peel was (and how fiercely that “was” jars the typing fingers) a London radio DJ and I have spent my entire life about as far away from England as it is possible to be. But it also, maybe, serves to highlight the extent to which Peel loomed large over the lives of anybody interested in the popular music of the second half of the last century that, even in rural Australia (not exactly the “outback”, but two hours by car from Melbourne, the nearest city), a teenager could be profoundly influenced by this bearded gentleman known only through his regular namechecks in the pages of the NME.

Towards the end of 2003 I discovered that I was able to stream his regular BBC1 programme through the Internet at work. One of my first thoughts was, I suppose the old bugger will retire now. Well, as it turns out, he didn’t get the chance to retire (not that you can imagine him ever having wanted to); his cold dead hand was, at the end, as firmly on the pulse of the independent music scene as it had ever been: who else has been giving regular airtime to Maher Shalal Hash Baz, say, or Vive la Fete? His shows were always patchy, but there was also a sense that if you didn’t like the song he was playing you only had to wait for it to end and something better would come along.

The show was one thing. It is now consigned to the annals. But Peel’s real legacy lies in the vault after vault of recordings known as Peel Sessions: get a band into the studio and have them perform four songs; commit those to tape; play them on the show; and, if they turned out to be of some consequence (as they so often did), make records out of them. The sessions served two purposes: to give an opportunity to a bunch of kids that they may never otherwise get; and to document bands at different stages of their development, in the absence of outside producers, studio trickery and the like.

Putting to one side The Fall (always a special case - and, outside of Peel’s immediate family, there is nobody that I can imagine feeling more gutted at this moment in time than Mark E Smith), my candidates for definitive Peel Sessions subjects would be The Smiths and Magazine. The Smiths because, like a lot of people, I was first blown away by them when somebody on 3RRR got his hands on the first batch of Smiths Peel Sessions and played them on his show. The Smiths never sounded like this again. That rawness, freshness and sheer excitement was to be cruelly erased from their sound by the anaemic production given by John Porter to the eponymous first album. Okay, “The Queen Is Dead” is unarguably their masterpiece, but by then they were quite a different band: three albums in, considerable fame, a touch jaded and bickering amongst themselves. I can often be found arguing that the best Smiths album is actually “Hatful of Hollow”, primarily because of the BBC sessions it contains, and in the absence of which it may be hard to remember what made the fuss that was made over The Smiths so much more intense and obsessive than the usual fuss that surrounds a “new” sound (actually an old sound revisited).

In the case of Magazine, what the four Peel Sessions contained in the Magazine box set reveal is a quite different band trajectory from that found on their studio recordings (this also makes “Play” one of the small handful of “necessary” live recordings). Magazine, much neglected these days, made the unintentional mistake of releasing albums that didn’t really serve to accurately reflect what the band were about. Listening in particular to the second and third of the sessions they did with Peel, what is striking is how well he captured a band at successive creative peaks, and how poorly the contemporaneous album releases served to do so. Not that there is anything at all wrong with “Secondhand Daylight” and “The Correct Use Of Soap” (the latter being one of my desert island records, truth be told), but both albums do seem to be skewed towards the “art-rock” end of the post-punk spectrum. The Peel Sessions, on the other hand, throw you into a maelstrom every bit as focussed and intense as that generated by, say, The Stooges at their peak. Which, if not for Peelie, nobody now would be aware of.

You will no doubt have examples of your own.

The Peel Sessions serve to document a kind of alternative history of the era. Of a couple of eras, in fact. Eras that all of those CD-Rs and seven-inch singles that would have been in the post to Peel’s producer last Tuesday will, sadly, not be a part of.

More about John Peel

I had this thought: does "Teenage Kicks" now become the "Candle In The Wind" of the indie generation?

Also, here is Paul Morley writing about Peel; which almost makes it seem just like old times. Except it will never be just like old times again.

Check also Marcello Carlin's typically sad, poignant entry on his own weblog (link at right).

Meanwhile

Here's Sasha Frere-Jones on the Greatest Double Album Ever Made.

And timely it is, too, on this first Peel-less day. About which, more will be said.

Well I woke up this morning ...

... and heard that John Peel has died. And it's kind of messed me up.

Construction Site: And you may say to yourself, "This is not my beautiful house"

Three months in. As Sid Vicious sang, "and now, the end is near". The new parts are accessible if not quite livable (no lights, little power, no floor coverings or curtains). Tradesmen are engaged in a kind of chess game, as the plumbers have to wait for the tilers who have to wait for the electricians who have to wait for the plasterers. And so it's a fairly slow process; we are still living in small spaces and out of boxes. But we do have a kitchen. And, while one shouldn't count one's chickens before they are hatched, I can almost feel my fingers sliding gracefully across the wheel of the iPod that lies at the end of the rainbow.

Never Trust A Critic Part 3

From the New Yorker, issue of 5 October 1957:

Reviewing “Voss” by Patrick White: “Mr White is a very conscious stylist, with, for the most part, unfortunate results.” Later: “... a rather disagreeable mixture of symbol and human pettiness.” Aspiring writers take note: this must be how you win the Nobel Prize.

Reviewing “On The Road” by Jack Kerouac: “Mr Kerouac writes as if he had just invented American slang.” Actually, it’s hard to tell, from this distance, if that is a compliment or a put-down.

Never Trust A Critic Part 2

There are, of course, exceptions. You would do well to wander across to Slate (link at right) where a discussion has been taking place between the music critic (classical) for the New Yorker, Alex Ross, and another Alex, about the new Bob Dylan memoir. Ross wrote the single best piece I have read on Dylan, a longer story which didn’t really answer any questions, but asked some very good ones. I read most of it riding the tram to North Balwyn, about five years ago, a copy of David Sylvian’s “Dead Bees On A Cake” tucked firmly under my arm, on the way back from the city to Adrienne’s parents’ house, one of the last times before they decamped to Geelong.

The Slate dialogue, if nothing else, gives you a link to that piece, via Ross’s own weblog, Therestisnoise.com. (There you can also find his Radiohead piece, which places that band firmly in the compositional tradition, giving them possibly more credibility than they deserve.) I’m not sure if this is the same Alex Ross as the one who wrote a piece on the Dunedin sound of *that* era (Chills, Clean, Bats et al), which I stumbled upon many years ago on one of the early webzines, Feed.com or Word.com or one of those.

It's not yesterday anymore

Strange to think that it is fifteen years ago tomorrow that my father died. What a time that was. Inevitably, some of the detail has become fuzzy, the sequence of events has been lost, and some elements of pure fiction, I’m sure, have become truth through repetition. Also inevitably, the weeks leading up to his death are mostly viewed through the fractured prism of the pain, grief, and human stupidity that came after.

It happened this way. I was working as a solicitor in Leongatha, and living in the weatherboard splendour of 84 McCartin Street. Adrienne had been on the scene for about six months. Dad had been feeling run down for a couple of weeks, and eventually retired to his bed. Tests were run. I moved back to the farm at Fish Creek in order to help out. Leukemia was diagnosed. He was rushed to hospital in Melbourne, and died three weeks later. He was 63. I was 25.

What follows are the moments that are frozen in my mind.

It’s a Tuesday night at the farm. I have been feeding the animals. Mum and I are having dinner; dad is in bed. His doctor calls. The test results are in. It’s leukemia. There is a bed organised for him at the Alfred Hospital in Prahran. We have to get him there the next day. What’s leukemia? It’s a type of cancer. Oh. How does he feel about that? (As in all things, he takes it in with a calm equanimity.) Mum and I struggle to finish our dinner in silence, then make some phone calls.

The drive to Melbourne. Mum, struggling with her own poor health for some months, has been packed off to stay with her brother and sister-in-law at Inverloch. Uncle Jack (dad’s brother) is furious that an ambulance couldn’t have taken dad, but I am grateful for the chance to spend some time alone with him. Before we have travelled the mile and a half from the farm gate to the main road, dad says that I shouldn’t be upset at what might happen, because he has already lived a good life. He tells me to keep my eyes on the road and my hands on the steering wheel. Later, I begin to see this as metaphor. Maybe he knew that the period after his death would not be easy.

It is a Saturday afternoon, two and a half weeks later. Dad has been through the hell of intensive chemotherapy, but the only thing that seems to be upsetting him is the quality of the food. “You’d think they could at least get porridge right.” He is in good spirits; he talks about getting back into lawn bowls, and about his (our) plans for the farm. Driving back to Adrienne’s house, I feel bouyant.

I bound into the hospital next morning, in boyish high spirits. The door to dad’s room is closed. Various medical staff are running around. Something has happened overnight. I am not allowed to see him and I can’t find anybody to explain the sudden turn of events. I feel lost, confused; I might as well not exist. I leave, not knowing how serious things really are; I drive back to Leongatha and try to put myself into the right frame of mind for work the next day.

Sitting in my office. It’s now Monday morning. The phone rings. It’s my dad’s sister, who has been looking after dad’s daily needs and feeding me information. The doctors say dad has 48 hours to live. What can I say? “Thanks for letting me know.” I arrange not to be at work for a while. What I really need is to talk to Adrienne.

Tuesday. I drive mum to Melbourne on the Tuesday. She has neither seen nor spoken to dad since he and I drove off down the hill in a cloud of dust, not quite three weeks earlier. This trip is, obviously, a big ordeal for her. When mum walks into dad’s hospital room, his face erupts in pure joy. I cry. They don’t really talk, as dad is (and this is a huge shock to all of us) beyond any sort of lucidity. At some point he calls me over, and struggles to tell me some very important, but almost totally incomprehensibe, information that seems to involve Kerry Packer and six million dollars. His last ever coherent sentence, addressed to the hospital pastor, who happened to drop in while we are there: “This is my wife.” As we are leaving, the decision is made to increase his morphine intake. There is nothing more to be done.

The drive back to Inverloch occurs as if in slow motion. Nobody says very much. I try over and over to make sense of dad’s story about Kerry Packer and the six million dollars. I decide it is probably the final manifestation of his long-term plan to turn the farm into a golf course and sell it to a rich businessman, and that he is handing over the reins to me. (It is not to be.) Adrienne and I spend a very strange, otherworldly night at the house on the farm.

The next day, we are sitting on the brick retaining wall outside the Alfred, eating some lunch and watching the traffic drive past, knowing that, a few floors up, dad is nearing the end. I am in no hurry to head up. Dad’s brothers and sister are in there, and I don’t particularly feel like seeing anyone. It is a fine and sunny spring day in Melbourne.

Sitting across the room from dad, for three hours, the only sound is the rasp of his breathing. As his breathing becomes more erratic, I instinctively hold my breath at each pause, waiting for his next intake. The pauses are increasingly unnerving. Then the breathing stops altogether, everything is silent and still, and he is gone.

Never Trust A Critic

Well, you can’t, can you.

Robert Hanks, writing recently in the Independent, began a review of the latest Jonathan Coe novel as follows:

“With the withering of Martin Amis’s talent ...”

Not only is that line totally unnecessary for the review that follows; it is also an illustration of the kind of endless loop that can be generated when reviewers read too many other reviewers. One might even raise the suspicion that Hanks himself is one of the many people who have not read “Yellow Dog” but nevertheless “know” that it is one of the biggest “dogs” in recent literary fiction, thus qualifying themselves to perpetuate that “knowledge” (“the Information”, indeed) by tossing it, seemingly at random, into their own writing. “Look at me; I’m on the team.” Ignoring the huge contribution that Amis has made to English letters over the last 25 years. Ignoring that critics aren’t always right; they are just like you and me, except that they get paid for having an opinion (the bastards). But more significantly, ignoring that “Yellow Dog” is a damn fine novel in its own right, on its own terms. The sad thing is that I, too, was almost prepared to write Amis off, on the strength of the sheer weight of numbers of bad reviews (as well as my own disappointment with some of his recent fiction - fiction only, though; “Experience” was a stunning piece of autobiography/soul-searching). Which would have been my loss. It just goes to show, you can’t believe everything you read.

A "This Goes With That" Triple Play

Bob Dylan, "Like A Rolling Stone"

Lee Hazlewood, "Dark In My Heart"

Stereolab, "Tone Burst (Country)"

A slightly dodgy connection, this, but there is a certain guitar jingle-jangle that, erm, comes following me.

Did he jump or was he pushed?

In today's London Independent, buried towards the end of a piece on US election funding, Rupert Cornwell makes reference to "fright-wing causes". Which, given the state the world has been driven into in pursuit of said "causes" over the last four years, is not necessarily a typo.

The Dead Boys

Christopher Reeve: bah humbug.

Jacques Derrida: a thousand RMIT architecture students circa the early 1990s are weeping.

Max Geldray: don’t tell me you didn’t notice. Not as well known as Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe, admittedly, but Max was one of the band leaders who worked the orchestra at various intervals during the Goon Show. We shouldn’t just remember the Big Names.

Keith Miller: “Where are the Ashes?” “Miller Hassett in a Hole” - one of the many little rhymes my father imparted to me, all of which meant nothing to me (although the singular/plural disjunction caused me some distress) and would mean even less to our own kids. I’m surprised, therefore, that his death has had such an impact. Which leads me to: should someone remembered only for their sporting prowess be entitled to a State funeral? It’s just a thought, but blokes who are good at hitting or kicking or bowling a ball around (or in Miller’s case, all three) aren’t necessarily statesmen and ambassadors in relation to the wider world. Even Bradman had problems of his own (shh, don’t tell the Prime Minister). In Keith Miller’s case we can make an exception, but a line has to be drawn somewhere, otherwise we will be gathered in officially sanctioned mourning (at some date well into the future, god willing) for Warney. What kind of message would that send?

Love Is A Battlefield

Fred Kaplan writing in Slate last Thursday:

"Second, about those 31 coalition members: All told, according to the report, they're contributing about 24,000 troops. The British alone are supplying about 8,000. So the remaining 30 countries have a total of 16,000 troops in Iraq—an average of just over 500 troops per country. The United States has about 130,000 troops over there—more than five times as many as all the other 31 countries combined ... — which include such powerhouses as Albania, Azerbaijan, and Tonga ... This is not a coalition in the recognized sense of that word."

Well, I don't know. Speaking for myself, I think I'd feel quite comfortable being under the protection of 500 Tongans. Those are some pretty big lads.

This Is What We Find

A lot can happen while you are spending a couple of weeks in the wilderness. Viz:

1. We return to a house with no kitchen, no laundry, four working power points for the whole house, very few working light fittings, every manner of filth, from dust and builders’ detritus to a large number of dead cockroaches, the house crawling with builders. The first thing Colin the carpenter said to us when we walked in the door was, You should have stayed away for another week. He was right. We have invented a new, inexpensive (and not at all enjoyable) type of holiday: camping out in your own home. We have been operating out of a microwave and the barbecue. The fridge and microwave, neither of which have working internal lights, have been placed in the new part of the house in a pitch black location, requiring the use of a torch to see what you are doing (thus restricting action to one hand), and also requiring for power the longest extension lead known to man, which because of where the power point is located is frequently knocked out, necessitating a long walk to the other end of the house to get the power back on, so that by the time you get back to the “kitchen” whatever is in the microwave has been overdone. Meanwhile the bathroom sink has seen use at various times as a bathroom sink, laundry trough, kitchen sink, and repository of soiled and/or vomit-laden clothing: sometimes all at the same time. Canberra, outlying satellite of the third world. At some point I had to resort to retail therapy: the second volume of Alan Moore’s “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”, and one of only a very small number of essential “live” records (jazz and classical excepted), “The Name of This Band is Talking Heads”, just now released on CD for the very first time, so that I can once again hear the young David Byrne saying “This song is called “New Feeling”, and that’s what it’s about.”

2. It is a punishing blow to have to return a book to the library when you are half way through it - especially if that book is a real page-turner like William Gibson’s “Pattern Recognition”. I probably should just buy my own copy and be done with it.

3. Gillian Welch is coming to Canberra. Oh boy!

4. We now have two boys who can ride bikes without training wheels. They both took to it on the same day, using their girl cousins’ bikes, at the RACV caravan park at Cobram. It is surprising how much mobility this has given us as a family. They rode with us to the local school yesterday to help us do our bit towards ridding the nation of the odious Mr Howard (maybe next time). Jules’ first question to us this morning was, “Who won the vote?” This being Canberra, we have to go through the process again next Saturday for the local elections. (Still, rather that than live in a dictatorship, I suppose.)

5. Alan Moore’s “Watchmen” is just as remarkable now as it was in 1986. I was worried that it wouldn’t be. There once was a time when we accepted as“good” anything recommended to us as such by certain writers at the NME. Our collective judgment was generally pretty good; but occasionally the passage of time, and the art of growing up, caused the scales to fall from my eyes. I guess I was scared of losing such a sacred tome to the ageing process. I needn’t have worried.

6. Either the new Jim Jarmusch film has been and gone in this town while we were away, or it’s coming, or it’s not getting a run here (a frequent problem lately, with the closure of one of the two independent cinemas).

7. Whatever personal demons cause Marcello Carlin (link at right) to periodically push his constant love-hate relationship to blogging sharply in the direction of “hate”, he is mercifully still with us, in both senses. Now working his way through 1974. He is the same age as me. 1974 was a very important year, trust us, but maybe you had to be 10 years old.

8. While we blinked, three of the big guns have released new albums: Nick Cave (reputed to be quite strong); Elvis Costello (ditto, but you never can be too sure these days); and Tom Waits (a bit of a no-brainer there, as our broker might say).

9. “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell is Carl’s newest favourite song. I think I know how he feels. It once was for me, too, but I was about 10 years older than he is.

Better late than never: another mix CD

We present, with reliable tardiness, the hypothetical May 2004 mix cd, comprised entirely of things purloined from diverse internet sites. The first version contained a continuity error too embarrassing to recount. Rest assured, it has been repaired, and you’ll never know.

1. Patsy Cline, “She’s Got You”: there is a live version of this done by Elvis Costello, included as an extra track on the Demon CD re-issue of the indispensable “Almost Blue” album, with gender reversal in place. But that Patsy, she’s hard to beat.

2. Suicide, “Dream Baby Dream”: the 12” of this is one of the things I would run back into the house to rescue in the event of fire. Then, having removed it to a verifiably safe location, I would head back in for the children, if I still had time.

3. Skip James, “Devil’s Got My Woman”: prototype blues. Ed Kuepper has done this in a number of different ways, as if working out its essence (the version on “Today Wonder” has probably not been bettered); it also appears on John Martyn’s “Solid Air”. Some pedigree. But it’s worth taking a step back to the original. Which this may well not be, anyway, things were at the one time more simple and much more complex back then.

4. Kraftwerk, “Das Modell”: you all know the song, but maybe not in the original German. Notable for being possibly the only Kraftwerk song to depart from their trademark monotonal vocal delivery (if only for one word), which is not repeated on the English version.

5. Tocotronic, “Jackpot K.O. Kompakt mix (Thomas and Dettinger)”: name and band name as downloaded. What would I know? Very (presumably) German dance number, nice and understated, some dub influence (can’t argue with that) until about half way through it gets all Giorgio Moroder on yo ass (I think they say), necessitating rapid and sustained increase in volume and somewhat embarrassing body movements.

6. Nuffwish, “Blu Cantrell v L Jones”: like, your teenage sister might have some idea what the novelty value of this is; a seemingly standard top 40 vocal number dumped on top of a classic Studio One-style dub track. I think this is known in the trade as a “bootleg”, or maybe it’s a “mash-up”. Whatever. It works for me.

7. Althia and Donna, “Uptown Top Ranking”: you want me to comment on this?

8. Novos Baianos, “Preta Pretinha”: my guess is that this is an authentic example of the "lost" Brazilian music that was “discovered” a while back (think Os Mutantes). It is totally lovely, the way it floats on a gentle wave, and floats, and floats, and you almost don’t notice that all the time it has been building up to something much more urgent and necessary. And then it ends. Seven minutes to heaven.

9. The Free Design, “Light My Fire”: now I can hear why Stereolab have for a long time been linked umbilically to these fellows. I also have a very nice version of the same song by Astrid Gilberto: “ze time to ’esitate is t’rough”.

10. T Rex, “Ride A White Swan”: for many years now, I never took the time to listen to this properly. That was my mistake.

11. The Only Ones, “Another Girl, Another Planet”: I guess you shouldn’t call them one hit wonders, but I’m not capable of linking them to anything else. Didn’t Peter Perrett succumb to “personal issues”? Not unlike “Marquee Moon” condensed to three minutes, this, too, hovered like a beacon of calmness in the eye of the punk hurricane. The first song I ever downloaded, too. Come and get me, lawyer types. Of course, I already own the seven-inch.

12. Josef K, “Revelation”: a fine band, lost somewhat in the shadows of Orange Juice, but noisier. You can buy “The Only Fun In Town” on CD. Did I say “can”?

13. Scritti Politti, “Wood Beez”: “Cupid & Psyche” would be high up on the list of records I never owned but wished I did. Smooth as silk.

14. Would-Be-Goods, “Emmanuelle Beart”: capturing the spirit of what made punk rock such a good time. Three minutes of fun. I used to own an El Records collection called “Sydney Opera House”. If you ever find it, would you mind returning it to me?

15. Au Revoire Simone, “Through The Backyards Of Our Neighbors”: yes, this is the kind of song that pushes certain buttons - languid, breathy female vocals working around a sublime, quiet pop moment. It won’t set any worlds on fire, but I suspect that’s a large part of its appeal. My psychoanalyst can figure out the rest.

16. Katerine, “8eme Ciel”: Bart once lent me a Katerine CD. I don’t remember it sounding quite as adventurous as this, but my ears have become somewhat differently tuned in recent years: more is getting in these days. It starts like it thinks it’s Simon and Garfunkel, but then weird stuff starts to happen in the margins, including some beat action around the two and three and a half minute marks, just the way we like it.

17. Stars As Eyes, “La Methode Francaise (Dwayne S”: whatever that means. The download came with the words “loud new shit”, which I suppose is about right, although you shouldn’t expect, say, Whitehouse, or even Jet. This is just a marginally more in-your-face example of what we fancy around here. Probably wouldn’t exist without My Bloody Valentine, but that’s not a crime, is it?

18. Pram, “The Owl Service”: this has a tone about it that reminds me of The Raincoats circa “Moving” (although I can’t be sure, since that’s a record I likely haven’t heard for 15 years). When we were in New York in 1996 I passed up an opportunity to see The Raincoats and the Bush Tetras on a double bill at Brownie’s. Proof of a line from a Butthole Surfers song, “It’s better to regret something you have done than something you haven’t done”.

19. Robert Wyatt, “Shipbuilding”: comfort food, of a sort, in time of war.

Leave The Capitol!

This blog is shutting up shop for a couple of weeks. We are off on a short break, partly so the boys can get together with their four adoring girl cousins; partly because we are about to be subjected to a home invasion. The building works so far have kept to the outside of the house, so that Carl and I, two of the least mess-tolerant human beings of the modern age, have been able to pretend it hasn't been happening. No more. The new construction is almost at lock-up, which means there is nowhere for the builders to go but indoors: we will be losing the kitchen, the laundry, and quite a few hitherto external walls. What we will come back to we do not know. Once the screams have subsided, I will let you know.

Pop Quiz

The question (ABC Radio National, this morning): who invented the telescope? Julius (aged 4), first guess: "John Hawke". (This is a name he has been coming out with lately; it may or may not be an amalgam of John Howard and Bob Hawke. Imagine that (as Vince Noir might say).) Julius, second guess: "Colin from daddy's work". Colin is the second-in-charge security guard at work. He doesn't quite come across as someone capable of changing the course of history, but he is a very nice chap, and you never know ...

He's Back!

Art Spiegelman returns to the New Yorker. Astute readers of this blog will remember that we put out the call a month or two back. Consumption of humble pie on Spiegelman's part was probably limited by the fact that his wife remains the magazine's art director; we hope she made him jump through a few hoops, nonetheless. We also, somewhat more cynically, hope that his reappearance is more than just a one-off, timed as a cross-promotion for the release of "In The Shadow Of No Towers". No, the magazine would never stoop so low. (Also in this week's issue an Alec Wilkinson profile of Gillian Welch. If we didn't have an airmail subscription we would undoubtedly be buying this one anyway. And a Bruce McCall cover, too. And David Remnick editorialising on his special subject, Russia. What, they do this sort of thing every week?)

Construction Site: From the mouths of babes

Julius, following a builder around our house: “and I’ve got dinosaur pyjamas, and ladybug pyjamas, and cow pyjamas; but the cow pyjamas are in the summer clothes box”. By the time this job is finished the builders will know more about our lives than I do.

Meanwhile, Carl, who is doing his best to pretend that the renovation/extension isn’t happening, came home from school: “Mum, can you do the diarrhea club at school next year?” Clubs are something the kids do once a week for a few weeks, usually involving chess, kite making, computers or some other fun thing, and often with the help of a parent or two. A few more questions established that what he meant was the “diorama” club. A simple, but potentially messy, misunderstanding.

Carry bag man

Another Saturday, another visit to the local library, to stock up on kids' books and some CDs. Sadly, someone had reserved William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition", so I had to give it back even though I'm only half way through. Serious crimes have been committed on flimsier grounds.

The Band “The Shape I’m In: The Very Best of The Band”: Many years ago I was listening to Double J late one night, when the DJ put on the Band’s version of Bob Dylan's “I Shall Be Released” and went out for a nature call or a cup of coffee. The record stuck, in the middle of the line “I see my light come shining”, forever. Or, at least, for a very long time. Listening for possibly the first time since, it sounded wrong when it didn't stick this time.

Burning Spear “Living Dub, Volume One”: Is there such a thing as bad dub, in the way that there’s bad jazz? It’s a harder thing to gauge, I think. You know bad jazz as soon as you hear it. With dub, once the echo chamber kicks in my critical faculties go out the window. Minds may differ where the On-U Sound label is concerned; but anything from the Jamaican sound factories of the 1970s does the trick. Winston Rodney may not be recognisable as a titan of dub, but there is nothing to be lost by having this record in your milk crate.

The Orb “U.F.Orb”: Dub action here, too, with a barking dog no less (echoes (pun intented, I guess) of Lee Perry's infamous cows?). The entire Orb/Future Sounds of London/Underworld/Aphex Twin movement dodged me at the time, so I don't bring any of my usual preconceived ideas to this one. (Who said that?) Now I've listened to this, and totally got into Underworld, I think I may have made an error of judgment. I don't remember what put me off in the first place. I think Adrienne said something like, it's like Kraftwerk without any warmth. Which, y'know, can't be argued with; but, the sounds, man, the sounds ...

Freddie Hubbard “The Artistry of Freddie Hubbard”: No bad jazz here (see above). Just good solid bebop from the Impulse label, circa 1962. Even trombonophobes like myself can enjoy.

Cowboy Junkies “Pale Sun Crescent Moon”: I would have preferred “The Trinity Sessions”, but it seems that that one has already been destroyed, in the way that only CDs borrowed from a library can be destroyed, or has been returned to another branch. Cowboy Junkies are another band floating on the edge of the “must listen to” list, a list that gets longer by the week.

Bjork “Vespertine”: I find Bjork spectacular in small doses but quite wearing over the length of a CD. There are two songs near the start of this disc that are totally gorgeous. It also has fabulous sounds: glitches; harp; music box. I prescribe one track per day, and see me in the morning. By the way, there was a great profile of her by Alex Ross is the New Yorker a few weeks ago. You may or may not be able to find it on his web site, “The Rest Is Noise”. Go and have a look; try also to find his piece on Dylan from around five years ago, which should be the first and last word on that subject.

“Organ Jazz” (one of a series on Fantasy records): Proof of how much fun a cheap, badly packaged compilation can be. Did I already say that the one thing I fought for (and lost) with the house extension was a Hammond Organ and a room to house it in?

Orb “Orblivion”: Whatever I said about this, I would be lying. I’ve listened to the first two tracks only. This is five years after the one referred to earlier. A lot can happen in five years, even if your music moves at a glacial pace to begin with.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds “Nocturama”: My brain’s too tired to give this the going over it deserves. There are flashes of Cave’s best songwriting here, the Seeds are (“Babe, I’m) On Fire(”), and if nothing else it’s notable for being Blixa’s last go-round with the band. As Cave’s catalogue keeps growing, it is harder for a new record to establish itself as the one you would reach for in a given mood/situation. Whether we have had the last truly revelatory Nick Cave record remains to be seen. Neither this (too patchy) nor “... and no more shall we part”(way too long) quite matches the clarity of “The Boatman’s Call”; but you could easily put together a package of edited highlights that would go very close. He certainly still deserves his place as national living treasure.

Where have they been

For most of the last two weeks I have been a slave to my job. What I do is quite mentally draining, and cramming the equivalent of 13 working days into a 14-day period wasn’t exactly my idea of a good time. It had to be done, and now it’s done. The deadlines I have are frequently short and always immutable. Some days I haven’t even had time to put on a CD. How sad is that?

Bad Politics, Baby

I think I would have been more interested if it had been the Publicans Convention.

Mere pseud mag ed

Over 18 months ago Bill Buford left the position of fiction editer of the New Yorker to become the magazine's Europe correspondent. Although I had long held the view that Buford is a much better editor than he is a writer [not that there's anything wrong with that ... ] his last couple of pieces for the magazine were excellent, and I looked forward to seeing what he could come up with in his new role. We waited. And waited. And then we waited some more. And then we kind of forgot about him. Until this week, when his first piece in his "new" job appears in the "Food" issue (his last piece was a profile of a NYC chef (name forgotten; the issue is in a box somewhere) and involved Buford himself working for a time as a kitchen hand, so it kind of makes sense). It was something of a jolt to see his name in the table of contents. At this rate he matches the Joseph Mitchell of the 1950s, who averaged something less than one article a year (but they were all crackin' pieces).

Transfiguration of Stanley

M. Ward, where have you been all my life?

Construction Site: State of Play

The roof came off at both ends of the house. It rained. Then it rained some more. It kept raining. Canberra had two inches of rain in less than two days, which is more rain than we have had in total since last December. Did I say the roof was off? There were tarpaulins to keep the rain out, so we weren't too worried until some of the light fittings started to flicker, and then to buzz and pop. It was around then I had a closer look at the shelves were the cds and good art books were (and where my best comics had been until a couple of days earlier). Casualties: Byrds and Robert Johnston box sets; Ralph Steadman's "I, Leonardo"; a David Hockney book of photo collages; a book on Piranesi. Before it stopped raining we had water coming into four separate rooms in the house, and lost the use of a number of lights and power points.

But everything's fine now, There are new brick walls up; roof trusses up; formwork happening (like I know what I'm talking about); and only a matter of a couple of weeks (perhaps) until lock-up. Which sounds good until we realise that that is when we will be losing the kitchen and laundry for a while.

We Are Time

Monday morning. Usually I catch a bus that takes me to work by a rather circuitous route; this gives me some rare time for Reading For Enjoyment. But there is one day each year when spring, or an early sensation thereof, reveals itself to Canberra dwellers and allows us to hope that the worst of another long, bleak winter is over. Monday was that day, so instead of my usual bus I caught the express, which arrives in no time but involves a 10-minute walk from the bus stop to work. So there I was, feeling good within myself, stepping out along the treelined avenue, Bob Dylan’s “Time Out Of Mind” album playing on the Walkman to drown out the traffic noise. And I set to thinking about what a surprising thing that record is, unnecessary (as Dylan records have been for 20-odd years now) but utterly mesmerising; how Dylan is singing songs about death with a voice that at times is almost not there at all, as if softening us up for the day we will wake to the news that he has gone; how the harmonica at the end of “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven” sounds like the wind blowing through the instrument after its player has left the stage. Then I got to thinking that if I live to be as old as my father, who considered himself to have lived a full life, then I will only experience the uplifting vibe of this particular one day of the year 23 more times. And then I started to think that that would also mean there will only be 23 more Boxing Day test matches; 23 more Christmas days; 23 more Eurovision song contests. And that I’m in no way ready to start any kind of countdown of that nature just yet. At about that point I decided I should have ignored the call of springtime and stuck with the serious business of sitting in front of the television watching the Olympic Games. (Only five more Olympic Games? ... Oh, stop that.)

In Trance As Mission

It’s no use. Whatever I try to do, I am hopelessly distracted by the Athens Olympic Games. Synchronised diving, beach volleyball, women in top hats and tails performing impractical acts on horseback (no, wait, that was a porn channel I accidentally stumbled upon), and countless other, more traditional tests of human physical achievement: who’s got time for anything else? So I think I’ll bid farewell for a week or so, leaving you with one final instalment of this ongoing externalised interior monologue.

More CDs borrowed from the local library, ingested and returned:

Rickie Lee Jones “The Evening of My Best Day”: Ian Penman, whose own shortlived blog was the reason I got interested in this caper in the first place, has long been an advocate of Rickie Lee Jones’s voice. While I can appreciate its unusual mix of vulnerability and strength, her songs haven’t always grabbed me. It’s really the same with this disc. I expect I will come back to it someday, because it has left some kind of positive mark on my brain, and any record with guest appearances by Bill Frisell, David Hidalgo and Mike Watt (!) cannot be lightly dismissed, but I’m not yet ready to heap as much praise on it as I would like. Any song called “Tell Somebody (Repeal the Patriot Act)” would normally have me running for the exit doors (pop music and politics don’t usually mix well), but Jones manages to somehow turn into a handclapping, gospel-tinged singalong that even the right wing of the family can enjoy.

Velvet Underground “The Velvet Underground & Nico: Deluxe Edition”: boffins can probably itemise the differences between the mono and stereo versions of what is unquestionably a cornerstone of the canon. I will concede that the mono version has more of a sense of restrained menace, but that might be due to nothing more than a natural consequence of the confined physical space that goes with monaural sound. Would happily listen to either version, but can’t honestly see the reason to own them both.

Gene Ammons “Boss Tenor”: nothing particularly startling or ground-breaking here, just a session of good old straigh-ahead hard-bop blowing, and there’s always room for more of that.

“Scotch and Sofa”: if I had a “lounge”, and that “lounge” played “lounge music”, this is the kind of “lounge music” I would play. A themed “remix” of assorted songs from the Blue Note vaults is an appalling idea in theory, but works perfectly well in practice.

Ultravox “Vienna”: I had this idea that I had allowed my teenage hatred of Midge Ure (for backstabbing John Foxx out of one of the great early post-punk bands) to cloud my opinion of this record. I needn’t have worried. With the exception of the title track, which, if nothing else, was at the time a genuine new direction, this is puely and simply a bad record. Songs about a New Europe, the nuclear threat and future humans over unremarkable synth and guitar work. The upside, of course, was two bloody brilliant post-Ultravox albums by John Foxx, which we may not otherwise have had.
.
Youssou N’Dour “Nothing’s In Vain”: I never really took to this supposed titan of African music (then again, I was never that much of a Bob Marley fan, either). Give me the simple purity of Baba Maal’s “Djam Leelii” any day. A curse on those French for luring so many great musicians to Paris and making them record albums containing synthesisers and horn sections.

Phillip Glass “Koyaanisqatsi”: a bad CD remaster means that this doesn’t add much to the vinyl version I have owned for many years. But it’s still a great soundtrack.

The Byrds “The Notorious Byrd Brothers”: the best bits of this fairly dull instalment of Roger McGuinn’s ongoing vision already appeared on the Byrds four-disc box set (in particular the remarkable David Crosby outtake “Triad”, which seems to be about shacking up with not one but two blonde underage girls (well, we are talking California at the turn of the 1970s). David, it may have seemed a fine idea of a thing to do, but the merits of then writing a song about it are lost on me.) This reissue is notable for “Moog Raga”, a totally self-explanatory song title for a piece which is interesting for 15 seconds and then goes on, and on, and on, and... DJ Shadow might be able to do something with it.

Construction Site: Stairmaster

The footings and flooring substructure (I'm making that word up) are now done. As part of that exercise, they built the new front steps, which look a bit strange now as neither the new entrance nor the new landing are yet in evidence. Julius was quick to dub them "the stairs to nowhere". It's a phrase which seems to have stuck. It makes a good title for an Aldous Huxley-type novel; or maybe a Stereolab song.

The Reynolds Trilogy

Terrific post by Simon Reynolds (Blissblog, link at right) on receiving music in the mail; brought back lots of memories. Yes, I think the whole music blogging thing does in many ways amount to a “scene” in the way that fanzines do/did. It is also, as has been said elsewhere, reminiscent of the kind of world of ideas/arguments that was the NME in those Good Old Days. The best thing we ever received in the mail, unsolicited, in the days of Zeeeeen!, was a box of cassettes from some people called Growling Porcupine, who were based in Canberra. That man Darren has the box and its contents to this day; I saw them sitting beneath a desk at his house last January. It might be interesting to listen to them now: with their blend of low humour, and disco rhythms driven by cheap synths, 2004 could have belonged to them. Sample song title: “Ofra Haza Went To The Plaza”. What I didn’t know then that I know now is that the “Plaza” referred to is a big suburban shopping mall in south Canberra that would be in walking distance of our house if we weren’t so darn lazy.

Reynolds, author of what will surely be the definitive (even if only through lack of competition) book on the post-punk era, also sent me a nice email recently, to which I guess this whole rambling entry is a reply. He listed therein two of the four Things I Can’t Abide (Music division). Those four things are, with exceptions noted, the following:

1. Lou Reed (previously mentioned hereabouts). Exceptions: the obvious.

2. Sting. Exceptions: the second Police album, and parts of “Synchronicity”.

3. Bono. Exception: “The Unforgettable Fire”. I was coming to the end of The Eno Years, and the thrill (such as it was) was to discern his hand on the tiller; e.g. backing vocals on “Pride (In The Name Of Love)”.

4. Free jazz. (By which I mean the kind of bad scene where you have six or so people on a stage yelping and bleating away without a script or score until someone decides it’s time to go home now.) The Necks should never be thought to be of that ilk, notwithstanding lazy journalists’ categorising them accordingly. The only thing “free” about the Necks is the freedom they give themselves to set rigid constraints on what they are going to play, and to work within those constraints, playing out an idea until it can go no further. The difference, as I see it, is a matter of taste and judgment. And, just maybe, the listener’s own preconceived ideas as well. We only let in what we want to let in, only hear what we want to hear, etc.

Lately I have found that I am becoming open to musics that in earlier years I would never have given the time of day to. I suspect this is in some way hormonal. (I am also finding myself on the brink of tears with some regularity these days, Olympic medal ceremonies included, but also, and I can’t explain this either, upon hearing songs, even familiar ones, suddenly in a new way that sets the waterworks in motion. Life is interesting, isn’t it?)

The other thing Reynolds did recently on Blissblog was to restore some long-lost credibility to a record that got me through the summer of 1985-1986, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions’ “Rattlesnakes”. I don’t see why that record should be anybody’s guilty secret. I’m not going to critique it at this late stage; it’s either a small piece of you or it isn’t. I had taken a tape of it back to the farm for the University holidays, and barely had it out of my ears for the whole time. My father had me doing quite a bit of tractor work for pocket money, and I was lucky enough to get to use the white Case tractor, which had a cabin, so I could listen to Lloyd Cole as I worked. As well as keeping out much of the external noise of the tractor, the cabin acted as essential protection in case a blade were to shear off the slasher in the direction of the driver. I don’t think such an accident has ever actually happened, and I don’t know how much protection a tractor cabin window would be against a flying slasher blade, but safety was the order of the day, and anyway the alternative would have been to use one of the numerous grey Ferguson tractors that lay around the property, in various states of repair. The Fergy was the king of farm tractors, but was completely open, noisy as heck and thus not compatible with listening to music, which, let’s face it, was the object of the exercise: if I had been lying on the bed with my headphones on, my mother would have mysteriously found fifty jobs for me to do. (I still have no idea as to the purpose of getting up a ladder and cleaning out the gutters when there was no tree within 100 yards of the house.) Much better to be out in a tractor with the Walkman strapped on, and getting paid for it too.

The other thing about “Rattlesnakes”: I had had the record for about a year when one day, having previously vowed to use the CD player for nothing other than classical and Brian Eno discs, I suffered an inexplicable rush of blood to the head and bought the CD of “Rattlesnakes”. One listen to the depth and clarity of “Speedboat” and I had a serious freakout episode: I instantly knew that this would mean I could never be happy to listen to any of my vinyl collection ever again, on account of diminished sound quality. After enduring a sleepless night of worry and panic, I did the only thing I could think of: I rang my friend Anthony Elliott and offered to sell the CD to him at a greatly reduced rate, to be rid of it, an offer he was glad to accept notwithstanding his being a bit nonplussed at my explanation, and my sweaty palms as I handed it over to him. And that was the way things remained for several years, until there was no longer any choice but to give in to the tidal wave of Digital Audio and enjoy guilt-free superior-quality sound (sorry, purists) in any musical genre.

Disco inferno

According to this week's Harper's Weekly Review (link at right), "a flaming rabbit burned down a British cricket club". This may not be quite as bizarre a story as it first seems. There may in fact be some cross-cultural terminology confusion going on. Consider: in Australia, "flamin'" is a pretty harmless form of cuss word, as in "that flamin' sheila". And in cricket terminology a lower-order batsman (aka a "tail-ender") with a correspondingly low degree of batting ability is known as a "bunny". Imagine if a tail-ender had become so frustrated with his inability to make any runs that he set fire to the clubhouse. The source of the story could have been an Australian cricketer saying something like "Some flamin' bunny burned down the cricket club". There are a lot of Aussies playing cricket in England at this time of year.

By such simple mistakes are world wars commenced.

On the other hand, maybe a flaming rabbit did burn down a British cricket club.

Well done, that boy

Having very much admired the work of Canadian cartoonist and illustrator Seth for many years (well, since the third issue of Palookaville), I was very excited, and pleased for him, to see that he finally cracked the cover of the New Yorker this week. The impression one gets from Seth's work is that he very much sees the world through the eyes of the New Yorker of the 1950s (nothing wrong with that whatsoever), and in the case of his story "It's A Good Life If You Don't Weaken" he even puts the central character on the trail of an obscure (and, as it would appear, entirely made up) NYer cartoonist from that era, so one may even go so far as to suggest this might be something of a dream come true for him. And so we say, "well done, that boy". It's just a shame this uplifting story will be kept from the wider public because of saturation Olympics coverage. Oh well.

Construction Site: Stand

As of tonight you could, if you wanted to, although it would serve no practical purpose to do so, stand on what is going to be the floor of the new family room. You would be cold. And the neighbours would be watching you. And you would be looking pretty silly. But none of that stopped us.

Construction Site: Demolition Man

On Friday a man who looked to have recently been rescued from a desert island turned up with a big hammer and commenced to knock the heck out of the brick cladding on those external walls which will eventually disappear. He became a little too enthusiastic at times, with the result that we can now see daylight from a few places. We can also see daylight through one power point, which I am not too sure about. His over-enthusiasm also led to him having to give up before he could attack the other end of the house, on account of a sore back.

Today a different man with a different hammer appeared and finished the job. Also the "chippies" appeared, to make a start on the framing. This was a great disappointment to the kids, who were expecting the kind of "chippies" you can get from McDonalds.

Leaving aside the laughter of children, is there any better sound than that of a circular saw going through a plank of wood?

I'd rather be watching ...

... "The Mighty Boosh".

But for the next fortnight it's wall to wall Olympics.

Negativland

I found a copy of Elvis Costello's Deutsche Grammophon song-cycle album, "North", at the local library. I borrowed it, fully expecting to put it back on the pile after listening to the first five minutes. But you can knock me down with a feather: against all odds (and possibly against my better judgment) my inbuilt love-hate elviscostellometer is reading "love" again.

This just confirms that my philosophy of life is sound: if you set your expectations low enough, you are bound to have a large number of pleasant surprises. I first took this approach with my choice of football team: Melbourne last won a premiership when I was four months old. Since then they have played in two grand finals, both of which resulted in humiliating defeats.

But back to Elvis: why does this album work, when the collaborations with the Brodsky Quartet and Burt Bacharach didn't? I'm not at all sure; maybe in some way they were test runs for this record. Maybe he is just not a good collaborator (although I thought the recording he did with Bill Frisell worked quite well). The biggest complaint that I would aim at recent Costello is that he is all over his own records, to their detriment (which leaves someone in his position in a bit of a spot, when you think about it). This time, there is room to breathe. The arrangements are quite spare. They wander into the "classical" sphere, sure, but they nevertheless don't sound either forced or inordinately "tasteful". Costello doesn't try too hard. Steve Nieve, even since the early days, has been a good influence on Costello, and it is possible that his appearance here is what tilts the record to the good. It's a record for late at night, sure, and therefore not compatible with having young children about the house, and I may look back at this in a couple of months time in horror, but for now I'm giving it a tick.

Construction Site: Another Brick in the Wall Part 1

Joe the bricklayer is here this week, putting up the footings. We can now stand in what will be the new family room and master bedroom, and imagine the walls going up around us. I feel a bit like a goldfish in a bowl. We arise somewhere between 6.45 and 7am, open the curtains, and there are the builders, already hard at work and (we imagine) looking in at us. I'm sure they do this all the time, and don't even notice the humans dwelling inside the houses they are working on. But I still feel as if they are looking at me. Did I already mention that builders make me very uncomfortable? I should probably get help.

Under Heavy Manners

Maybe I have been looking in all the wrong places, but did anybody even know that Fripp and Eno had been working together again? And then there's an album review on Pitchfork. After checking that it wasn't April 1, I sat back and asked myself how I felt about this unexpected development. After all, both of their careers have been patchy at best for the past 20 years. Eno's only two really indispensable albums since "Apollo" have been "Thursday Afternoon" (the reason I bought a CD player in the first place: Brian Eno as progenitor of the Killer App) and the collaboration with Jah Wobble, "Spinner". Fripp, meanwhile, was involved in the only David Sylvian record that is anything less than indispensable. And the unreleased tracks on "The Essential [sic - where was "An Index of Metals"?] Fripp and Eno", entitled "Healthy Colours I-IV", seem to be little more than off-cuts or prototypes of Talking Heads' "Electricity". So I don't think I will by tying myself up in agonising knots of indecision the way I did with Kraftwerk's "Tour de France Soundtracks" (what a fool I was). But I am at least intrigued to hear what direction the two boffins might have pushed themselves in this time around.

All that scratchin' is making me itch

Whoever it was out there in the wide world of MP3blogs who made available (from the original vinyl, no less) "Trees and Flowers" by Strawberry Switchblade, I am not worthy to lick your Dr Marten's boots. Here is a song I haven't heard even once since the days when it was on reasonably high rotation on Melbourne's 3RRR, circa 1982, and have been desperate to hear again ever since. Thank you thank you thank you. Remarkably, it is just how I remember it, and also just as special as I remember it being. (Yes, tears of nostalgia have been duly shed, for those thrilling days when all of our gang were living in those tiny "dog boxes" they give to the first-year students at Trinity.) Have I already said thank you? Whoever you are?

Steamin'

So, last week the High Court upheld the Australian government’s right to hold people in immigration detention indefinitely. There are two remarkable things revealed by this litigation: first, that on the Australian statute books is a piece of legislation that allows a person to be kept behind bars for the term of his or her natural life, not because of their having been convicted of some terrible crime, or for any other reason justifying their segregation from the community on grounds of their own, or others’, safety, but simply because they tried and failed to obtain permission to reside here, as a refugee or otherwise, and the Australian government has had no success at sending them somewhere else. (The Court’s decision appears to say that as long as the government still maintains a present intention that the person be deported, the person can be detained, notwithstanding that no deportation is imminent, or even likely, and not just in the short term or indeed for any reasonable length of time.)

The second, and even more remarkable, thing is that this government has been prepared to go to the highest court in the land in order to enforce such a law and have its validity upheld. In other words, it sees nothing wrong with pursuing as a legitimate policy the action of keeping a human being in incarceration (call it immigration detention if you will, but in my book a gaol is a gaol) until that human being dies. One could suggest that this is the sort of ruling behaviour against which Australians have on many occasions gone to war, including in the very recent past. One could also suggest that, surely, instances of people having no country which is prepared to accept them (or, in the case of one of the parties before the High Court, being in effect stateless, ie, having no “country of nationality”, in the words of the Refugees Convention) would be rare, or at least sufficiently rare that it would cause very little practical harm to quietly send them off into the community on some legitimate basis until such time as they could be sent away. We may be inundated by stateless Palestinians, I suppose, but somehow I doubt it. Australia is proceeding to send very negative messages to prospective refugee arrivals as it is; a small handful of legitimate exceptions, on humanitarian grounds, is hardly likely to cut across those messages.

It is all very sad, not to mention cruel, and, as Justice McHugh said in his judgments in each of the two cases, “tragic”, and, anyway, my mind keeps turning to the Italian, Jewish, Chinese, Vietnamese and all the other communities around the nation who have, over successive waves of immigration, helped to make this country stronger, more prosperous, more multicultural, more interesting, more culinarily (?) adventurous ...

Does it really make sense to turn a handful of desparate persons into “non-persons”, keeping them in custody at the public’s expense, when they could be living amongst us, pulling themselves up by the bootstraps, as previous generations would have said, and becoming responsible members of this thing we are proud, most of the time, to call Australian society?

End of sermon.

Dig The New Breed

So, which Movie Show are you tuning in to?

We're with the kids.

Murphy's Law Is In Da House

It turned out to be true: Canberra's only broad-spectrum music store has sold out to the big boys. I went briefly to what was supposedly the last day of their closing down sale, but realised that I wouldn't have time to stand in line to pay for anything I found before I had to meet Adrienne. All queues for the checkouts were at least 20 people long. But all was not lost: they were still open the following weekend, all vinyl was still 50 percent off. So for not very much money I bought the following. All English (in the general sense). With roughly a 3-year gap between each. It's a kind of potted history. Potty, anyway.

Black Widow: Sacrifice. Allegedly from 1971, although this copy is an Italian repress from 1998 (180g vinyl!) and the only other copyright info says 1992. I'm still not convinced it isn't a hoax. Purchased because of "Come To The Sabbat", made available by Tom Ewing during the heady days of PopNose.

Sparks: Propaganda. 1974. I'm not sure what to expect here. I only really remember the "hits" from around 1979, but I know they're still going and well regarded. I like the cover, too. And it's on Island, which really was the home of the hits in them days.

David Essex: Gold & Ivory. Because Marcello Carlin said so. 1977.

Orchestral Manouevres In The Dark: Architecture & Morality. Not as perfect as I remember it, but at least four songs that stand the test of time. 1981.

Simple Minds: New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84). From 1982. One of the records that I used to own that I have long regretted parting with (I abandoned it to its fate out of anger at how bad subsequent records were). This looks like an English pressing and there's nothing on the record to suggest it's not, but something makes me suspect otherwise. I used to be able to tell just by picking them up, you know.

Propaganda: "Present The Nine Lives Of Dr Mabuse" (12" single). Parts 3 and 4, to be precise. From 1984 (I could have sworn it was a couple of years later). This is an itch I have been needing to scratch since I last heard it, which I think I can date back to a weekend on the farm in 1989, not long before dad got sick and we had to say goodbye to all that. "Why does it hurt when my heart misses a beat."

Enter Murphy's Law: before I could get through any more than the Propaganda and OMD records, the knob fell off my amplifier, in such a way that I can now listen only to CDs. It could have been worse, I suppose; we could have been limited to the cassette deck. And in a month or two all records and tapes, and probably most of my CDs, will be farmed out to willing borrowers while we lose most of our internal living space to these accursed renovations. But for now it is very, very frustrating to have bought records for the first time in some years, only to have them rendered unplayable on account of my lack of (a) one Allen key and (b) any practical and/or handyman skills whatsoever.

And the big men fly

I found myself watching a bit of footy on TV on Sunday afternoon: St Kilda v Geelong. Discussing with the kids who to barrack for. Carl spent the first year and a bit of his life as a resident of St Kilda. The grandparents live in Geelong. It was a tough call. Julius chimed in: "Is granddad playing?" Given that granddad is Scottish, 75 years old, of not inconsiderable girth, and has demonstrated in the time I have known him zero interest in any kind of ball sports, I had to say that I thought it was unlikely but that we should keep looking out for him just in case. Which gave me an excuse to keep watching the game, when Jules would have been much happier to turn over to Speed Week on SBS.

Snow Crash

We took the guys to see some snow on Saturday morning. I had been making a nuisance of myself around the house and driving Adrienne crazy with my continual harping on to her about finding out whether we would need chains or if there were other hazards relating to driving of which we should know before heading off. I kept regaling her with stories of how we would be trapped for days after our car slid off the deserted backroads, having to eat our own legs before help was at hand. It turns out that the reason it was so hard for me to get an answer was that the question, I know now, was itself completely ridiculous.

Where we were going was no more than 15 minutes from the outskirts of Canberra. The entire countryside was as dry and arid as if it were the middle of summer. The landscape was barren; devoid of any moisture whatsoever; and any vegetation had been corpsed in the bushfires of January 2003. We found the snowfield without any trouble: a rectangular, sloping patch of ground covered by some kind of artificially made "snow", guarded by a man charging $8 per person to enter, and $6 to hire a little orange plastic "toboggan". Not exactly Aspen. Not exactly the Winter Olympics. But a whole lot of fun for 4, 6 and 40-year-olds regardless. It was a beautifully sunny morning, so nobody cared about sopping wet trousers. Well, Carl did, but once we explained to him that he would stay warmer if he ran around, he was fine. Winter in Canberra.

Used Songs

More disc slippage from the local library.

Bjork “Post”: I like the idea of listening to Bjork more than I like actually listening to Bjork. In this, she is like Laurie Anderson. I can take both of them in small doses but find that it soon becomes hard work. (Which is not to deny that “O Superman” is a cornerstone of the repertoire.)

Various Artists “The Best Ever Disco Album”: it can’t be the best one ever, because “I Feel Love” fades out around the four minute mark, just as it really starts to head off into the stratosphere, and “We Are Family” seems to have acquired a suspiciously 1980s-sounding introductory section which I don’t recall being there the last time I heard it. But as someone else’s guess at what I would consider “best ever” it’s actually quite close.

Various Artists: “The Love Handle Lounge”: hands up who remembers the Loungecore craze, those heady days when we all took off for the nearest second hand record stores and op shops to buy any Martin Denny records we could find before Bruce Milne got his grubby hands on them and put them up on the wall at Au Go Go for $60 a piece. But even if it only served to rescue Esquivel! from obscurity it was a force for good. This tawdry compilation, however, is really scraping the shavings off the floor. The name “Rod McKeun” appears all too frequently on this CD, inauspiciously appearing as "producer" as well as writing or co-writing about half of the songs. My personal favourite of the cocktail-set CDs was, and still is, “Shaken, Not Stirred”, which as well as being consistently good has the Rykodisc seal of quality.

Ry Cooder & V M Bhatt “A Meeting By The River”: it’s easy to dismiss Cooder as a kind of self-promoting, thinking man’s Eric Clapton, or a white-shoed Bill Laswell, or something. And he is probably not averse to wearing his hair in a ponytail. But I try to remember that he is also responsible for the “Paris, Texas” soundtrack (which his own playing here sometimes echoes), and for producing one of the great modern recordings, Jon Hassell’s “Fascinoma” (which appeared on the same label as this). “A Meeting By The River” is a very listenable set of four longish instrumentals. File under “World Music”, sure, but don’t let that get in the way of your enjoyment of it. After all, it’s just a label.

Roxy Music “Avalon”: (sigh).

New Order “Get Ready”: this was never going to change anybody’s life. But gee, wasn’t it good to have them back.

The Chemical Brothers “Surrender”: yeah, okay, but I really think the moment has passed. Nevertheless no record featuring Hope Sandoval can be dismissed out of hand.

Various Artists “The Ice Storm” (soundtrack): how could such a wonderful film have such a patchy soundtrack? Everything from some long early-70s numbers by the likes of Zappa, Free and Traffic to Antonio Carlos Jobim, “Montego Bay”, “Too Late To Turn Back Now” and some Bowie song that I can’t place but that I assume must be fairly recent because it was co-written by Reeves Gabrels. I’d see the film again before I gave this a second listen.

Pictures On My Wall

Find myself involved in friends’ domestic shenanigans. Feeling a bit shaken, I retreat to the Gallery during lunch in an attempt to calm the savage beast. The international galleries have never been as well hung as they are now. Pretty much everything you want to see is there. “Blue Poles”, of course, lifts the spirits no matter how many hundreds of times you have stood in front of it. The David Smith sculpture is there, Brancusi’s birds, Rothko, a bit of Agnes Martin. Not sure about having Leger’s sublime acrobats facing Anselm Keifer, but what can you do? I am not yet convinced by the recently acquired Kitaj biblical allegory painting, but I’m working on it. On the other hand, I would happily take home Leon Kossoff’s Christ Church, Spitalfields, painted from almost the exact spot at which we stood on the Hawksmoor pilgrimage leg of our visit to London in 1996. I still get the shivers thinking about it.

Two turntables and a microphone

The only other thing I will ever want to say about Rachel Stevens' "Some Girls" is that it reminds me of the time our brave and true friend Darren, back in the days when all of the gang did shows on the South Gippsland community FM radio station, brought into the studio a record of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop "doing" the Doctor Who theme music, put it on one turntable, put Gary Glitter's "Rock And Roll Part 1" on the other turntable, got them both spinning, and proceeded to spend the next couple of minutes of airtime cross-fading from one to the other. This was around the time of "Doctor In The Tardis" or whatever it was called, and Darren was no doubt driven by the "anyone can do that" spirit of punk. That he couldn't quite get the two songs in sync only added to the charm.

Construction Site: All quiet on the northern front

Not much sign of activity at the moment; concrete for footings has been poured, has got quite wet, is drying out. We await bricklayers: one week or two. Meanwhile we do the on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand shuffle over such intrinsically exciting things as single v double glazing. The joys. The backyard, a barren landscape leavened by piles of old fencing and such, looks not unlike the World Trade Center circa September 12, 2001. Adrienne calls us the Little House On The Prairie, which sums it up nicely. There is very little grassy space for the poor suffering guinea pigs.

The Dustbin of History

Editor's Note: the previous post was, it would be obvious to anyone who read it, hacked out at speed and not reconsidered in any way, contrary to the usual practice around here: I had had a long day at work, it was getting late, the kids were sick, etc. I have therefore spent a restless night worrying about how bad it actually was. I have now gone back to it, fixed up the most obvious mistakes and misguided statements, and re-posted it. I hope nobody minds. It won't happen again.

Footloose and Fancy Free

No, I don't want to be Marcello Carlin. But I do take a lot of notice of what he says, and have a sense of expectation whenever has has a new post on his weblog (link at right) similar to that I used to get around 1981 whenever an NME turned up in the old cream can that served as a letter box back on the farm. And yes, if he told me to put my head in a fire I probably would. (Mostly who I want to be is Harold Ross, founder of the New Yorker and its editor until his death in 1951.) Nevertheless, I do have some minor concerns about some aspects of his finely wrought piece on NYLPM about the state of pop in 2004. As to the specifics of his argument, well, nobody has been further out of the loop, popwise, than I have since the onset of children and our move to Canberra five years ago. Nevertheless, his main thesis, that the pop charts a year or two after a watershed year are a barren wasteland, brought about by the inevitable record company-induced law of diminishing returns, i.e., what was a good idea two years ago when first revealed soon becomes a pale shadow of itself, is worthy of further study. Certainly, everything that was bad about 1984 can be traced very closely back to everything that was glorious about 1982. But is this scenario confined to the rarefied atmosphere of the pop charts? In other words, what about non-"pop" watersheds? I remain convinced, for example, that the years 1977-1982 were a time of ever-increasing quality in modern (c.f. "pop"?) music; each step forward was followed not by two steps back but two more steps forward. If you assume that (from memory) 1978 was the year that punk vaulted through the earth's crust and into the charts, why then was 1980 (and 1981, and 1982) an even better year?

I suspect that what I am doing is confusing movements with phenomena. The answer might be that punk (and, more crucially, what came after) was itself drawing on earlier musics (garage, mods, rockers, dub) and gave rise to healthy cross-pollination in the form of a "scene" (albeit highly fragmented), whereas the kind of music he (and I put my hand up here, he's not the only one) looks back to from 1982 with such fondness really appeared from out of nowhere (as much of the best, and most lasting, music does) and, having exploded in the sky, had nowhere to go to but nowhere. Or, as Carlin says, to Howard Jones (much the same thing really).

None of which was what I really wanted to say. All I intended to do was add a couple of slight caveats, one general, one particular. General first: the danger in taking up a rigid, immutable stance against a particular aspect or trend in popular music is that, for most of us in this corner, music is about emotional responses, and, as any fule no, it is unwise to second-guess the ways of the heart. He who rails against Rachel Stevens's "Some Girls" today for the way it cynically picks up on the current vogue for all things no wave and post-punk and moulds them into stick-in-the-head chartbuster may well find himself helpless in the face of a song he might hear tomorrow that crawls out of the same swamp and pushes the same buttons, but in a way that produces in him, for reasons he cannot explain, paroxysms of pleasure instead of anger. One thing that I have found about turning 40 is that it lets you open up and allow onto the radar music that was previously Now Allowed for reasons of "style", "attitude" or (usually) "disco sucks". One thing, for example, that I can now do that I couldn't do a few years ago is absorb large quantities of disco music and begin the process of sorting out the good from the unecxeptional (and just how good IS Silver Convention's "Fly Robin Fly"?).

As to the particular, I found a copy of "Some Girls" floating in the digital ether, and I must say that on a few listens it seems a pleasant enough kind of pop song. I actually like the way it borrows liberally from Gary Glitter and from the class of 1982, but beyond that, well, I just like it, and who can really say why? (Maybe if one was in London and hearing it 15 times a day, one's attitude might be different. I gave it three spins in a row while typing this, and that was quite enough.)

Oh, and by the way, thanks also to Tom Ewing, also on NYLPM (link at right), for finding and reproducing Paul Morley's piece from 1982 on the state of the pop charts then. I was at that time coming to the end of three years of reading every word of every issue of the NME, so I must have read it at the time, but I don't think I really appreciated at the time what he was saying (did anyone??), so it is nice to read it again now, with the benefit of a further 22 years of real life behind me. How did Morley, Penman etc get to be so wise so young?