"Point That Thing Somewhere Else", by The Clean. I try to resist this song. I can escape its clutches for the first two bars, but I always trip on the next note and tumble headlong into its endless corridors and its many rooms. There is something primally thrilling about "Point That Thing Somewhere Else". I can't say exactly what it is. Perhaps it is not so much a song as a template. Certainly, that is how The Clean treat it. There are several live versions floating around, and they all take on lives of their own. The most recent, and the one that prompted this post, is the opening song on "Mashed", a live recording of a recent Clean tour, and presumably the opening song of the set from which it is taken. How a band that gets together briefly once every few years, perhaps plays a few gigs, perhaps makes a record, can instantly hit such peaks of creative intensity is a credit to the Dunedin drinking water, I guess. There are not that many live recordings that genuinely make you wish you had been there.
Meanwhile the influence of The Clean continues to show up in surprising places, e.g. the forthcoming second album from Wooden Shjips, whom I had previously nailed as acolytes of Crazy Horse (itself no bad thing) but who seem to also be drawing from "Point That Thing", or perhaps more accurately "Point That Thing" filtered through a prism of early Suicide.
And another meanwhile: word is getting around that there will be a new album by The Bats (the "other" band of Robert Scott, when he is not playing bass with The Clean) in June. If their last two albums are anything to go by, this should be worth waiting for. "Couchmaster", in particular, which must by now be ten years old, is a key Dunedin recording. In fact, I think I know what I will be listening to tonight.
