Thursday, May 31, 2007
Song of the day
With an album as sprawling and disparate as "I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass", it is inevitable that songs will fall through the cracks (especially when the album starts with a return to the big-rockin' Yo La Tengo of yore). On a blind tasting, I failed to pick "Black Flowers" as being by Yo La Tengo at all, nothwithstanding that I have listened to the album several times. My only reference point was "Paris, 1919" by John Cale. I know enough to know it wasn't that, but it is remarkably close, even down to the "ghost" of "la, la la, la la, la la": how did they learn to sound so Welsh?
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Song of the day
"FM" by the Junior Boys, from their second album "So This Is Goodbye". This comes closest to the coiled-snake, all-tension-no-release aesthetic of their first LP. But, sitting as it does at the end of the record, it works more as a kind of elegy.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Discovery
Listening to John Fahey's "Dance Of The Inhabitants Of The Palace Of King Philip XIV Of Spain", from the live disc "The Great Santa Barbara Oil Slick", recorded in the late 1960s, I was surprised to discover that John Fahey invented Led Zeppelin.
But then, stranger things have happened. For example, I recently found the template for the entire recorded works of the Laughing Clowns buried in the first few minutes of "Bakai", the opening track on John Coltrane's "Coltrane", on Prestige, from 1957. (Oh, and by the way did I ever mention that Jeffrey Wegener is the greatest rock'n'roll drummer in the history of the universe? Apologies to the late John Bonham, but you know it's true.)
But then, stranger things have happened. For example, I recently found the template for the entire recorded works of the Laughing Clowns buried in the first few minutes of "Bakai", the opening track on John Coltrane's "Coltrane", on Prestige, from 1957. (Oh, and by the way did I ever mention that Jeffrey Wegener is the greatest rock'n'roll drummer in the history of the universe? Apologies to the late John Bonham, but you know it's true.)
Monday, May 28, 2007
Song of the day
"La La La" by The Bird and the Bee. I'm beginning to see a pattern here ...
And yet the self-titled album by The Bird and the Bee is crammed full of terrific pop songs, any one of which, if it shuffled its way to the top of your iPod, would be an instant Song of the Day.
And yet the self-titled album by The Bird and the Bee is crammed full of terrific pop songs, any one of which, if it shuffled its way to the top of your iPod, would be an instant Song of the Day.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Centenary
I hereby declare today International Rachel Carson Day, in honour of what would have been the 100th birthday of the woman who, seemingly single-handedly, woke the world out of its slumber in relation to the damage that indiscriminate spraying of chemicals was causing to humans and to the planet. You can read what the master, E B White, wrote after Rachel's death here.
What is becoming increasingly clear, as the news regarding climate change goes from bad to worse on an almost daily basis, is that the world now needs another Rachel Carson to brush the cobwebs from our eyes. But who will it be? Elizabeth Kolbert (who writes here about Carson, and who herself has covered climate change for the New Yorker with horrifying frankness)? Or will it be Al Gore? (Some time ago I formed the view that the only person standing between us and oblivion is the next President of the United States, whomever it may be. Although their first job, not a small one, will be undoing the damage done by the current President. The problem being, of course, that the people who should be voting the the next President are all the people who cannot do so, namely, the rest of the world.) Tim Flannery? Bindi Irwin? Me (Heaven help us)?
What is becoming increasingly clear, as the news regarding climate change goes from bad to worse on an almost daily basis, is that the world now needs another Rachel Carson to brush the cobwebs from our eyes. But who will it be? Elizabeth Kolbert (who writes here about Carson, and who herself has covered climate change for the New Yorker with horrifying frankness)? Or will it be Al Gore? (Some time ago I formed the view that the only person standing between us and oblivion is the next President of the United States, whomever it may be. Although their first job, not a small one, will be undoing the damage done by the current President. The problem being, of course, that the people who should be voting the the next President are all the people who cannot do so, namely, the rest of the world.) Tim Flannery? Bindi Irwin? Me (Heaven help us)?
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Friday, May 25, 2007
What Have I Done For Me Lately?
Sorry for the lack of activity around here but, as John Cleese said one one of the Monty Python shopkeeper sketches, I think it was the Dead Parrot Sketch, “I’m sorry, I have a cold”. If it wasn’t that one, it was the Cheese Shop Sketch (“Oh dear, the cat’s eaten it”) or the Adventure Holiday Sketch (“Bounder of adventure” - which Michael Palin turned into arguably the most successful of the post-Python careers, although not the most interesting, that surely goes to Terry Gilliam who has made a career out of magnificent failures*).
*Speaking of Terry Gilliam, we recently exposed the boys to “Time Bandits”. They were right into it. What I found surprising was how much a seven year old and a nine year old were able to bring to the movie, much more than even I could as an adult and watching it for the third time. “Oh, look, it’s Theseus and the minotaur.” “There’s Little John.” Perhaps education standards today are not as low as wot some people say they is.
*Speaking of Terry Gilliam, we recently exposed the boys to “Time Bandits”. They were right into it. What I found surprising was how much a seven year old and a nine year old were able to bring to the movie, much more than even I could as an adult and watching it for the third time. “Oh, look, it’s Theseus and the minotaur.” “There’s Little John.” Perhaps education standards today are not as low as wot some people say they is.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Let's Pretend
Seven-year-old: "Just pretend that I'm not here, dad."
Dad: "Okay. But can I talk to you?"
Seven-year-old: "Sure."
Dad: "Okay. But can I talk to you?"
Seven-year-old: "Sure."
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Portishead: their part in my downfall
There are some records, the key to unlocking which remains perpetually just out of reach. “Portishead” by Portishead, for example. I was put onto the first Portishead album, “Dummy”, by the late Doctor Jan Breward, who in those days had been my connection to the Dunedin music scene, partner in record-shop-raiding sprees around Melbourne, and thoroughly reliable spruiker of all the things I didn’t know that I would like. Jan described “Dummy” as a “guilty pleasure”, but you only needed to listen to a song like “Wandering Star” to know that this was a group at least as interested in substance as style, and that intriguingly murky depths lay not far below the surface.
After too long a wait, and having endured the kind of rumours that reclusive next-big-things are forced to endure at the hands of the always impatient music industry, Portishead launched its second, self-titled, album onto the world. That was when we were living in East St Kilda in a ridiculous free-standing double-fronted 1880s Victorian half-mansion half-slum, with at least four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a combined living-and-dining-room that alone was bigger than either of our two previous abodes, and which we struggled to occupy, there being only the two of us, plus one small black cat, and, for the final few months before we moved to Canberra in early 1999, an equally small (at least for a while, but that’s another story) human, called Carl.
Anyway, for a period of a few months in 1998, I could be found, most afternoons, walking my regular circuit - through Alma Park, bisecting the wonderful playground that we would move away from before Carl could really do anything with it; briefly along noisy, smelly Dandenong Road; across Chapel Street at the Astor Cinema, last bastion of genuine movie houses, with honest choc-tops and comfy art deco chairs in the foyers; along Wellington Street, walking very quickly past the dilapidated once-palatial residence which had been converted into a rooming house, and which we briefly flirted with buying, having convinced ourselves that we could play the role of slum landlord until we could afford to do the place up, until, with an inner sigh of relief, the first bid at the auction was higher than the maximum price we were prepared to pay; around a few back alleys; until coming out at St Kilda Road, just near the Chinese restaurant which had always been there, despite being located on a virtually inaccessible traffic island in the middle of St Kilda Junction, and which must have been a front for something, although the income from the enormous billboard at the top of the building, which the proprietors presumably owned (and which the family of one of the two partners of the law firm at which I then worked had owned some years previously, before being forced to give it to the government in lieu of death duties), would have brought in more revenue than even a bustling, prosperous Chinese restaurant could manage; past the dodgy string of establishments further along St Kilda Road, including a massage parlour or two, a tattoo parlour (before they became suburban chic), and a newsagents with a strangely limited range of magazines, few of which could be sold to minors; and back through more backstreets and lanes until returning to Alma Road and, thence, home - all the while listening intently to a copied-onto-cassette dub of “Portishead”, trying in vain, day after day, to crack the code of its deepest mysteries.
That was a long time ago, and the wait for anything further, the live companion album aside, has been painful, and still it continues. And “Portishead”, which I have continued to listen to regularly, if less frequently, eluded me still.
A week or two back, the three members of Portishead appeared in a video clip on the internet, performing live, very recently, before a small audience, just the two guys sitting quietly and intently with their guitars in perfect counterpoint, and Beth, in the centre, also sitting, displaying all of the shyness for which she is known, and singing “Wandering Star” like an angel descended from heaven. And at that moment, hunched over my laptop, peering at the tiny, slightly out-of-synch images on the screen, it all made sense. Far from being a hesitant departure from a perfect first album, “Portishead” was in fact the opposite: an inevitable, and necessary, refinement of the singularity that appeared in nascent form on “Dummy”. How could I have been so blind? “Portishead” was an uncompromising statement of these three extraordinarily talented, and extraordinarily synchronised, people. It was the sight, and sound, of Portishead, entirely self-absorbed, withdrawing from the world in order to pursue their singular vision wherever it needed to go.
Everything that I had previously recognised to be problems were, in fact, necessary solutions. Thus, I had previously thought, “What was the point of creating sounds of their own to sample, when they could have sampled stuff that was already out there, with the same effect?” Previously I had pulled against Beth’s moments of “doing” Billie Holiday, “doing” Shirley Bassey. I was wrong. The point with the sampling, I can now see, was not just that they could do it, but that they had to do it. What purpose an act of withdrawal if other people are all over it, even if in not recognisable form? And as for the vocals, if there is anywhere that the human voice isn’t taken on this album, either by Beth’s own gifts or via her fellow knob-twiddlers in the studio, then that is somewhere the human voice wasn’t able to be taken. (What I can now be reminded of is The Knife’s “Silent Shout”, where, having regard to today’s technology, similarly remarkable things have beene done.)
It is an odd thing, listening, as if for the first time, to an album that has been a part of you for what seems like forever. I had a similar kind of experience once before, when, following a brief conversation with a girl at a party, letters were regularly exchanged for the next couple of years before we met up again one day at Leo’s spaghetti bar in St Kilda. Even though we could barely remember what each other looked like, it was as if we were the oldest of friends. And the rest, as they say, is history. We may even have the privilege of listening, together, to the third Portishead album. Although when that will be, only they know.
After too long a wait, and having endured the kind of rumours that reclusive next-big-things are forced to endure at the hands of the always impatient music industry, Portishead launched its second, self-titled, album onto the world. That was when we were living in East St Kilda in a ridiculous free-standing double-fronted 1880s Victorian half-mansion half-slum, with at least four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a combined living-and-dining-room that alone was bigger than either of our two previous abodes, and which we struggled to occupy, there being only the two of us, plus one small black cat, and, for the final few months before we moved to Canberra in early 1999, an equally small (at least for a while, but that’s another story) human, called Carl.
Anyway, for a period of a few months in 1998, I could be found, most afternoons, walking my regular circuit - through Alma Park, bisecting the wonderful playground that we would move away from before Carl could really do anything with it; briefly along noisy, smelly Dandenong Road; across Chapel Street at the Astor Cinema, last bastion of genuine movie houses, with honest choc-tops and comfy art deco chairs in the foyers; along Wellington Street, walking very quickly past the dilapidated once-palatial residence which had been converted into a rooming house, and which we briefly flirted with buying, having convinced ourselves that we could play the role of slum landlord until we could afford to do the place up, until, with an inner sigh of relief, the first bid at the auction was higher than the maximum price we were prepared to pay; around a few back alleys; until coming out at St Kilda Road, just near the Chinese restaurant which had always been there, despite being located on a virtually inaccessible traffic island in the middle of St Kilda Junction, and which must have been a front for something, although the income from the enormous billboard at the top of the building, which the proprietors presumably owned (and which the family of one of the two partners of the law firm at which I then worked had owned some years previously, before being forced to give it to the government in lieu of death duties), would have brought in more revenue than even a bustling, prosperous Chinese restaurant could manage; past the dodgy string of establishments further along St Kilda Road, including a massage parlour or two, a tattoo parlour (before they became suburban chic), and a newsagents with a strangely limited range of magazines, few of which could be sold to minors; and back through more backstreets and lanes until returning to Alma Road and, thence, home - all the while listening intently to a copied-onto-cassette dub of “Portishead”, trying in vain, day after day, to crack the code of its deepest mysteries.
That was a long time ago, and the wait for anything further, the live companion album aside, has been painful, and still it continues. And “Portishead”, which I have continued to listen to regularly, if less frequently, eluded me still.
A week or two back, the three members of Portishead appeared in a video clip on the internet, performing live, very recently, before a small audience, just the two guys sitting quietly and intently with their guitars in perfect counterpoint, and Beth, in the centre, also sitting, displaying all of the shyness for which she is known, and singing “Wandering Star” like an angel descended from heaven. And at that moment, hunched over my laptop, peering at the tiny, slightly out-of-synch images on the screen, it all made sense. Far from being a hesitant departure from a perfect first album, “Portishead” was in fact the opposite: an inevitable, and necessary, refinement of the singularity that appeared in nascent form on “Dummy”. How could I have been so blind? “Portishead” was an uncompromising statement of these three extraordinarily talented, and extraordinarily synchronised, people. It was the sight, and sound, of Portishead, entirely self-absorbed, withdrawing from the world in order to pursue their singular vision wherever it needed to go.
Everything that I had previously recognised to be problems were, in fact, necessary solutions. Thus, I had previously thought, “What was the point of creating sounds of their own to sample, when they could have sampled stuff that was already out there, with the same effect?” Previously I had pulled against Beth’s moments of “doing” Billie Holiday, “doing” Shirley Bassey. I was wrong. The point with the sampling, I can now see, was not just that they could do it, but that they had to do it. What purpose an act of withdrawal if other people are all over it, even if in not recognisable form? And as for the vocals, if there is anywhere that the human voice isn’t taken on this album, either by Beth’s own gifts or via her fellow knob-twiddlers in the studio, then that is somewhere the human voice wasn’t able to be taken. (What I can now be reminded of is The Knife’s “Silent Shout”, where, having regard to today’s technology, similarly remarkable things have beene done.)
It is an odd thing, listening, as if for the first time, to an album that has been a part of you for what seems like forever. I had a similar kind of experience once before, when, following a brief conversation with a girl at a party, letters were regularly exchanged for the next couple of years before we met up again one day at Leo’s spaghetti bar in St Kilda. Even though we could barely remember what each other looked like, it was as if we were the oldest of friends. And the rest, as they say, is history. We may even have the privilege of listening, together, to the third Portishead album. Although when that will be, only they know.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Asking the hard questions
Carl said to me this morning, "Dad, why do you like reading Bob Dylan books?"
He then said he had to turn the book away from him because it seemed like the man on the cover was staring at him. I can sort of understand where he was coming from. Those eyes ...
He then said he had to turn the book away from him because it seemed like the man on the cover was staring at him. I can sort of understand where he was coming from. Those eyes ...
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