Oh crap

Read this and weep.

I have been in a state of moral and existential panic over global warming for two and a bit years now, and I'm not looking like coming to terms with it any time soon. But articles like this are (a) not helping and (b) probably not far from the mark. Remember the story about the frog sitting in the pan of water on the stove?

"Let's go shopping!"

For better or worse, I have decided to give eMusic a go. Fifty downloads a month for not too much money. It's a lot cheaper than iTunes, that's for sure. The quality is no worse, and there are no copy restrictions. It doesn't cover much in the way of major labels or classical, but a lot of what I'm interested in hearing is there, and if I want a classical recording I'm not going below audio CDs anyway.

So my first purchase (after using up the 25 initial free downloads on, finally, David Kilgour's "The Far Now" and a few other bits and pieces) has been made: "West Coast" by Studio. Swedish laid-back post-post-punk/balearic/yacht-rock music loosely comparable, I suppose, to Lindstrom and Prins Thomas although with less of the disco/Moroder. I think. Anyway I was playing it this morning at home for the first time and, on hearing a fragment of track 4, "Origin", Carl instantly said "I like this song, can I have a copy of it?"

I don't understand how Carl's mind works at the best of times, but in terms of music it seems that he catches a fragment of something, once, and it sticks. For example, he took a liking to "Hell Yes" by Beck, from "The Information", which is not what I would have described as the most kiddie-friendly song on the album. We have listened to it constantly now for a number of weeks with no sign of letting up. (I must admit it has also grown on me in the process.) I wonder what he is hearing. As Christopher Robin says, You Never Can Tell.

(Meanwhile, he and his little brother, and a couple of compatriots, have put together a Boy Band for today's school talent quest. They have stumped up the dollar fifty entry fee, and have even written a song. Of sorts. I hope they do well, but we have been trying our best to get them to keep a lid on it. Presumably the word "talent" appears in the phrase "talent quest" for a reason.)

Song of the day

"Disney's Dream Debased", by The Fall. I have always underrated "The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall". I know I have been wrong to do so, and each time I listen to it I am forced to bludgeon myself for my stupidity. "Disney's Dream Debased" is the closest The Fall have ever come to attracting the word "gorgeous", but gorgeous is what it is, proving that what Brix brought to Brix-era Fall was not all bad. (Although I will always hold the view, again likely misguided, that The Fall immediately pre-Brix were the greatest rock band in the history of the world, and that her arrival took them in a different direction such that we will never know how great they could have been. But then, The Fall have always been, and continue to be, heading in a different direction.)

[Editors' note: for further proof of the heft of The Fall circa 1982, head over to Kiwi Tapes and download the live "Fall In a Hole" double-CD.]

Space Is The Place

We give our thanks to the Dream Chimney kids for putting us on to this link, which will send you to possibly the greatest record ever made, "Moog!", by Claude Denjean, recorded for the masterful Phase 4 Stereo series in about 1970. (The whole site is well worth exploring, actually, although it is so full of widgets and gewgaws that it tends to crash my long-suffering laptop.) We have heard bits of this album before, but never the full experience. It is well worth grabbing and savouring. (And at the site you will find the niftiest download facilitation methodology known to man: so simple even I could use it.) Hear why Tim Gane owns three mini-moogs. (Bart, you need this.)

And my eyes fell out of their sockets

New work by Daniel Gillespie Clowes comes around about as often as Halley's Comet, so you would be a dang fool if it took you more than a few seconds to click away from here to here and thusly to his new weekly strip. And you don't even have to pay for it.

Come on baby, light my fire

Just what the world needs at this moment in history: a failed state with nuclear weapons.

A curious thing

In case you were wondering what I look like, the person on the left is me. Except, it's not me. It's Seth, who happens to be one of my favourite comic book artists. But it's my hat; it's one of my overcoats; it's my (says Adrienne) "sensibility". (It's not my satchel, but I wish it was.) The glasses and haircut are very much mine, too.

By an even stranger coincidence, the chap in the middle is Peter from The Beguiling, from whom I buy all my comics. (The guy on the right I know nothing about.)

[Photograph found on the Drawn and Quarterly website.]

When I See The Towers Fall

It still seems like yesterday; the images are still burned in; but it was almost six years ago that the planes hit the towers. It made no sense as it was happening. It still makes no sense really. Conspiracy theorists could insist that it never happened at all, and, from this distance, it is almost a case that could be made. Because how could it have possibly happened? But then you read Don DeLillo's "Falling Man", and you are right there in the centre of it, and in the aftermath of it, and in the ensuing years of increasing distance and increasing displacement. And it can only have been real.

Plenty of novels came out of the second world war. At least two draw on the Kennedy assassination (one by DeLillo himself). There have not yet been many Nine Eleven books. But there will surely be more. Many more. It's interesting that they are taking a while to come. William Gibson's new novel, unsurprisingly [not a criticism], mines the territory. Martin Amis had an early go, was hammered for it, and seemingly got cold feet (come back and have another go, Martin; I still have confidence in you). But I find it hard to imagine anybody besting DeLillo. It is so clearly his territory: heck, he even, arguably, predicted it, having already written one novel dealing with the psychic ramifications of an "airborne toxic event".

"Falling Man", then, if you ask me, is a novel that is almost beyond criticism. In its perfection it is, um, perfect.

And the perfect musical accompaniment must be Ricardo Villalobos's remix of Shackleton's "Blood On My Hands", with its incessant sense of dread, spread over 18 minutes, comprising little more than an understated (but not necessarily "simple") rhythm track, and some screwed-down vocals that convey a very disturbing sense of lurking dread. It is, if you (don't) like, the audio equivalent of those images: you cannot listen, but you cannot not listen.

The King is dead ... Long live the King

So, Mark Vidler, undisputed master of the mash-up, has decided to call it a day. I suppose now is as good a time as any; the genre has fallen into a kind of gimmicky disrepair of late - often the best thing about a mash-up is its name (e.g. "Hey African Ladies"). Perhaps all the good ideas have been had.

Anyway, for now, he has made available a CD-length best-of for download, and you could do far worse than head over to the Go Home Productions headquarters and pull it down. If you haven't yet heard "Ray of Gob" for the first time, I envy you.

Seven-year-old wisdom

"I know how to play James Bond.

...

Jump off things."

For The Record

I have, in fact, continued putting together hypothetical mixtapes, but somehow got bogged down with them to the extent that I couldn't bear listening to them again in order to write about them in any meaningful (or otherwise) way.

And so I list them, without comment, for anyone who's interested. As usual, all material could have been downloaded from the usual places.

January 2007 mixtape:

The Peanut, "Roman Rain"
DSK, "Winter Lane"
Barbara Morgenstern, "The Operator (Piano Version)"
El Perro Del Mar, "I Can't Talk About It"
Marit Larsen, "The Sinking Game"
Charlotte Hatherley, "Behave"
The Yardbirds, "Happenings 10 Years Time Ago"
The Everly Brothers, "Lord of the Manor"
The Hudson Brothers, "With Somebody Else"
Robert Wyatt, "I'm A Believer"
Galt MacDermot, "Ripped Open by Metal Explosions"
Felix, "Tiger Stripes"
Prinzhorn Dance School, "You Are the Space Invader"
Escort, "Starlight (vocal)"
Sinoia Caves, "Naro Way"
Electrique, "La Presse People"
Professor Genius, "A Jean Giraud 4"
Sachiko Kenonobu, "Look Up, The Sky Is Beautiful"
Skyhooks, "Love's Not Good Enough"

March 2007 mixtape:

Love, "Seven & Seven Is"
The Seeds, "Nobody Spoil My Fun"
Minimum Chips, "Know You Too Well"
Other People's Children, "On A Clear Day"
Drop Nineteens, "Kick The Tragedy"
The Houston Outlaws, "Soul Power"
Airliner, "Nostalgia"
McNeal & Niles, "Quiet Isle"
Queen v Sly & The Family Stone, "We Will Rock You"
Brian Eno and Robert Wyatt, "Flies (The Plague of Flies)"
Perrey & Kingsley, "Toy Balloons"
Future World Orchestra, "Just A Matter of Time"
Reverso 68, "Tokyo Disco (Part One)"
Mark-Almond, "City"
Jacques Dutronc, "Hippie, Hippie, Hourrah"
The Guess Who, "Undun"
Stereo Total, "Get Down Tonight" [a must: KC & The Sunshine Band rendered in the style of the Velvet Underground]
Graham Bond Organisation, "Wade In The Water"

May 2007 mixtape:

Backini, "Company B-Boy"
The Primitives, "Crash"
Silicon Teens, "Memphis, Tennessee"
James Brown, "Call Me Superbad (Cornelius Rework)"
Eddie Maelov and Sunshine Patterson, "Lines"
Sen Kumpa, "Niawal"
Miami Horror, "Don't Be On With Her"
Dave Pike Set, "Mathar"
The Professionals, "Theme from The Godfather"
Annabee-Nox, "Always On My Mind"
The Runaways, "Cherry Bomb"
Quarks, "Wiederkomm"
The Alessi Brothers, "Seabird"
Robert Palmer, "Johnny and Mary"
Glass Candy, "Miss Broadway"
Ada, "Maps (Mayer & Thomas Remix)"
Copeland Davis, "Morning Spring"

and, to bring us right up to date:

July 2007 mixtape:

Vallerenga Blues and Disko Combo, "Ballerina"
Datashat, "Stop The Message"
Hilary Duff, "Danger"
Glass Candy, "The Chameleon (Acapella)"
Shanghai Au Go Go, "I Cried All Winter"
The Seeds, "Can't Seem To Make You Mine"
Junior Senior, "Move Your Feet"
Junior Parker, "Taxman"
J-Walk, "French Letter"
Scott Walker, "Maria Bethania"
Manu Chao, "Rainin' In Paradize"
Zalatnay Sarolta, "Egyszer ..."
Lez Dantz & His Orchestra, "Louie Louie"
The Honeymoon Killers, "Histoire A Suivre"
A Mountain of One, "Innocent Reprise"
Liechtenstein, "Stalking Skills"
The Come Ons, "Hip Check!"
Ricardo Villalobos, "Baila Sin Petit"

Song of the day

Beck, "Soldier Jane". Wouldn't it be nice to be Beck? To be able to take your shopping trolley along the endless aisles of the music supermarket, pulling off the shelves a bit of this, a bit of that, and, when you get home, throwing them into a big pot, adding some dada poetry, and hey presto, it's another album of Beck songs. An ingredient I didn't expect to see him using, however, was Simple Minds' "New Gold Dream '81-'84". But that's exactly what he employs on "Soldier Jane" from his most recent album, "The Information", in the process creating a song that, unusually for Beck, has a bit of emotional heft. Only a bit, admittedly, but at least that's a start.

This goes with this goes with this

Of the many descriptors I have used for Stereolab over the years, I don't recall Giorgio Moroder coming into the frame. But there I was, casually listening to Sparks' "No 1 In Heaven" album, when "My Other Voice" started up. Clearly, there was the rhythm track from "Contronatura", the last song on "Dots And Loops", and one of three on that album produced with Mouse On Mars, with all of its walking-on-a-bed-of-snails crunchiness, waiting to get out.

And then I was compelled to listen to "Familj" from the new Dungen album "Tio Bitar" (which is not the instant classic that "Ta Det Lugnt" was, but is rewarding further, and deeper, listening), and there it was again. I swear.

Giorgio Who?

No, it's not Armani. No, it's not Moroder (although he will be mentioned here anon, if I can only find the time to do a little listening/research). Yes, it's de Chirico.

I used my lunch break to wander across to the NGA to take a gander at its new baby. Very nice it is, too. There may not be any trains, children rolling hoops, or shadowed piazzas, but there is quite a lot going on in such a small square of canvas. The colours are intense, especially the central orange and that big blob of green in the top right. And in spite of the lack of obvious visual signposts, it is still very much a de Chirico.

Disappointingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, I had the painting to myself for as long as I wanted to look at it. Send in the crowds.

A Handful Of Dust

Seems like we only fire up this blog when someone dies.

Today's unlucky winner:

Max

Roach

drummer.

Against Nature

There is a God. I thought I had called His bluff. Then when I wasn't looking He turned around and bit me on the bum.

Meanwhile, what is the song of the day? It is either "Boobs A Lot", by The Fugs, or "Rockin' Back Inside My Heart", by Julee Cruise, depending on when exactly you catch me.

Song of the (Sun)day

"Si Mi Caballero", by Françoise Hardy. The perfect song for a day when, to paraphrase the oracles (Roy and HG), too much melancholy is barely enough.

Dead Souls

This just in.

People seem to have either loved or hated Tony Wilson. Or both. But try to imagine a world in which he had never existed.

Surprise song of the day

"Cardboard" by The Cannanes. Unheard for probably 15 years, this popped into my head in the shower this morning, a song from the best years of my life, when the McCartin Street / Simon's Lane axis was in full effect, the seven-inch single was king, and songs like this could be heard on South Gippsland community radio (even if that was only because we played them). The Cannanes summed it up best: "1988 - Celebrate Everything Else."

Song of the day

"Girl", by Beck. "Guero" is an album which has been unfairly slept on around here (c.f. "The Information", which has only just now been acquired, second-hand, with a bonus DVD of unknown content, but with NO STICKERS - well, except the one on the CD case that says it comes with stickers: how's that for a paradox, it's messin' with me 'ead). However, given how easily its standout tracks have slipped back into my head, it must have gained some traction at the time, which is funny, because I can't actually remember the physical act of playing the damn thing (perhaps it was on an extended rotation in the car).

"Girl" is a fantastic song; Beck in full-on summer pop mode. What ices it is the way he sings the "Heeeey" in the chorus as if he were Hank Kingsley in "The Larry Sanders Show", the most lovably pathetic sidekick in the history of television comedy. (Somebody please go to Jeffrey Tambor's Wikipedia entry and get his psychopathic star turn in "Muppets From Space" on there.)

Say it ain't so

Well, we knew it was coming, but that doesn't make it any easier when you see it in black and white:

Mr Hazlewood, he gone.

Still, if you're going to die, you might as well die in Vegas.

Song of the day

"Vamp", by Trentemøller, from "The Last Resort". The cover of this album, by the way, is a thing of great beauty. 2007 must be the year of the bass guitar. What with the Shit Robot remix of Dondolo's "Dragon" (technically 2006), Prinzhorn Dance School, and now this fabulous track: there is nothing like some heartfelt thunking on the bass strings to get the hips moving.

July in August

I just read a couple of Miranda July pieces in the New Yorker, which I really enjoyed, and now I stumble upon a link (thanks SFJ) to the website for her new book. This, I think, is my second-favourite use of the Internet of all time, after Richard McGuire's beautiful Willing To Try (hint for that one: you have to allow pop-up screens)

But back to Miranda July: click on this link and keep clicking the right arrow (itself a beautiful object) at the bottom of the screen. And enjoy.

3.32pm update

Closely followed by Debra Dejean's [who?] version of "Time Of The Season", from 1981, which contains a lovely little echo of Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, for them what are listening.

Song of the (bad) day

"Für Alle, Die" by Klee. In the middle of the most stressful work day of the past 8.5 years, this is the perfect antidote. The fact that I have no idea what she is singing matters not.

Song of the day

"Shut Up And Drive" by Rihanna, because of the way it takes "Blue Monday" to places New Order could never have imagined.

Nouvelle Vague / New Wave

Someone had an idea: get a band that has made a career of doing cover versions of songs from (loosely) the New Wave era and have them curate a two-disc selection of (loosely) New Wave-era bands doing covers of songs from earlier times.

The result can be viewed here.

As you can see, they have done a pretty good job of it. Nice to see the Silicon Teens given top billing: they are one group that seems to have completely fallen through the cracks of the space-time continuum, sadly. Also full marks for avoiding "Money" by the Flying Lizards: "Move On Up" will do nicely (although the Jam also covered that, perhaps a little bit too reverentially for it to have been included on this comp, but that would have allowed in turn for the inclusion of the FLizards' fine version of "Summertime Blues"). And Magazine's Barry Adamson-led assault on Sly Stone's "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again)" should have been squeezed in.

Whatever. As things stand, this collection still manages to include three of my all-time favourite songs, covers or no: Snakefinger winding his way around Kraftwerk's "The Model", Devo's extraordinary version of "Satisfaction (I Can't Get Me No)", which I think I have mentioned before around here, and (ditto) The Slits definitively spoiling Marvin's "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" for anyone who may later have had a notion to record it, in the same way that Hendrix appropriated Dylan's "All Along The Watchtower" in an earlier era, making the song all but untouchable from then on (heck, even Dylan himself took to playing the "Hendrix version" in concert).

(There's probably a thesis in there somewhere, along the lines of why is it that someone's own song always seems like fair game for other artists, whereas a cover version of someone else's song can become an unimpeachable standard. But I'm not going to write it.)

George W Bush and the Deathly Hallows

Those of you with a morbid interest in following what must surely be the death throes of the American adventure in Iraq might spend the necessary few minutes reading Peter Galbraith's latest trawl through the tea leaves. He offers at least two jaw-dropping moments: one, at the start of the piece, which is of the blackest black humour (if it wasn't so damned tragic); another, further on, of pure horror. (Also a seemingly bad apostrophe, which can be a cause of distress to some of us; we have never before seen a bad apostrophe in the NYRB.

Not so sure about his proposed exit strategy, however: withdrawal to Kurdish territory, whilst it might provide some comfort to the poor old Kurds, who have been perhaps America's staunchest, or only, allies, and who otherwise would appear poised for instant annihilation, surrounded as they are by large numbers of people who hate them, can surely only bring with it the same problems as have beset the Americans ever since they set foot in Iraq, only with a reduced footprint. Although, to be fair, one gets the impression he is proposing this not so much as a "good" solution as one that is marginally less fucked than all the others he can think of. Which may be all anybody can hope for.

Song of the day

"Things You'll Keep" by the Apartments. Possibly the quintessential Australian song of melancholy hue. Sends me to the brink every time. With the ending of the Go-Betweens, it is timely indeed that Peter Milton Walsh has now brought the Apartments out of mothballs. More power to him; it would be nice to think that the Apartments could have a second coming, like that of the Go-Betweens, where recognition spread beyond the writers and readers of music magazines. All together now: "AS IF!"

Song of the day

"Another Station" by Lindstrom. I have been so hung up on "I Feel Space" that I hadn't been able to make room for this, what I think is the follow-up although Lindstrom and his pal Prins Thomas are so prolific it's hard to tell. It has everything "I Feel Space" has, and doesn't deserve to be lost in its shadow. I particularly like the high-pitched, whining synth line that has been pulled straight from Pink Floyd's "Animals", an album which I loved to bits as a 13-year-old but which I can't quite bring myself to listen to now for fear of disappointment.

Song of the day

"Torch (Extended Version)" by Soft Cell. "Torch" was always my second-favourite Soft Cell song (although I have always had a soft spot for the grubby, sleazy synths of "Sex Dwarf"). And yet I now know, thanks (as so often) to Mr Carlin, that I have only been listening to a mere fragment of the actual song, like walking in in the middle of a one-act play and walking out a few minutes later and thinking you have seen the whole thing. This version should really have been called "Torch" and the 7-inch (and album) version "Torch (Severely Truncated Version)". But that may not have been a strong selling point.

And speaking of iTunes (...) the rapidly ascending Australian dollar has brought about a serious pricing anomaly. We Australians are paying $1.69 for something holders of an American credit card can buy for 99 US cents, which is presently the equivalent of around $1.13 Australian. Doesn't seem quite fair to me. The Economist might think about publishing an iTunes Index to complement its Big Mac Index.

Song of the day (2)

"You Can't Please Everybody" by The Aints. Ed Kuepper's riff-o-rama anti-Saints project from the days when he was putting out three or four records a year. The rhythmic structure of this song bears a faint resemblance to "Wild Thing".

Song of the day (1)

Iron & Wine, "Peace Beneath The City". We recently, uh, "found" a copy of what purports to be the new album by Iron & Wine which someone had carelessly left unattended. In the nature of reclusive and introspective boys with guitars, Sam Beam has now chosen to expand his sound palette considerably. Such a move always takes some getting used to. (Paging Bob Dylan.) We will need to listen more closely to this album, but for now we would just like to say that "Peace Beneath The City" is as good a song as we have heard this year; it looks as if Sam has been listening to Brightblack Morning Light, which is not a bad thing to have been listening to.

Song of the (yester)day

Amerie, "Gotta Work": because I've just had a week off and now, well, I've "Gotta Work". I only wish I could be as enthusiastic about it as Amerie obviously is about her own "work". (It would also be nice to have a pair of legs like hers, but as a 43-year-old man I don't imagine they would do me much good.)

Song of the day

"Stay Away From Robert Mitchum", by April March. First, because it's a great pop song. Secondly, because when heard from the next room it sounds like they are singing "Stay away from rubber chickens", which, to a longtime Melburnian, brings to mind one thing and one thing only: Rod Quantock.

Aussie Aussie Aussie!

Oi! Oi! Oi!

It ain't what you do it's the way that you do it

Because you love lists, here is a list. Three albums which, according to computer matching techniques, I should be totally digging but which, like, I just can't seem to "get".

Battles, "Atlas": billed as the new thing to beat all new things; main dude's father is the actual Anthony Braxton; they have the chops, they have the technology. But (a) The Shower Scene From Psycho were doing silly helium voices possibly before Battles were even born; and (b) didn't Talking Heads and Brian Eno write the book on blending organic sounds and rhythms with electrickery on the "More Songs About Buildings And Food"/"Fear Of Music"/"Remain In Light" trilogy?

Tracey Thorn, "Out Of The Woods": as much as I worship at the feet of the Marine Girls and "A Distant Shore", I always found Everything But The Girl a bit too safe, a bit too supermarket-friendly, for my liking (first album "Eden" honourably excepted: "Crabwalk" was just the breath of fresh air a moribund 1984 needed). Sadly I can't seem to get out of my head the awful feeling that "Out Of The Woods" is cut from the same cloth as EBTG rather than, as hoped for, a Kate Bush-style long-delayed follow-up to "A Distant Shore".

Air, "Pocket Symphony": has the look and feel of having been brought into existence because it was time for another Air record rather than because they had to make it; a real letdown after the life-changing/affirming "Talkie Walkie". Where is the heart and soul? Notable for the most grievous misuse of Jarvis Cocker known to man. And the world didn't need another Air record anyway: we're still absorbing the quite wonderful "5:55", an Air record in all but name.

In case you were thinking I never heard a record I didn't like.

Alan freed, man

The only problem with this great piece of news is that (a) it had to happen at all (ie, the kidnapping) and (b) it took so damn long (ie, the release).

Song of the day

"Cowgirl In The Sand" by Neil Young, from "Decade". Because some days you need a 10-minute guitar rave-up to get you kick-started.

Song of the day

"Star Witness", by Neko Case, from the album "Fox Confessor Brings The Flood". Which has been around for a while, but for unexplainable reasons achieved maximum impact as it shuffled to the top of the iPod pack, while I was travelling home on the bus, in the dark, with the lights of Canberra appearing and disappearing around me. Neko Case may not have the most mellifluous voice going, but it is perfectly suited to the kind of country slant she gives the songs on this album. It is the kind of voice that picks you up and pins you to the wall. In a good way.

(There is another song on the album called "Margaret vs Pauline" which reminds me of work, where Margaret and Pauline have adjoining offices, although I have never seen any evidence of the use of "vs".)

Headline of the week

From the New Yorker.

The piece is worth reading, too.

Song of the day (slight return)

"My Uncle" by the Flying Burrito Brothers.

(On finding seven-year-old peering intently into laptop screen.)

"Were you listening to that song?"

"Yes."

"Did you like it?"

"It's funny."

"That's country music." (Dads always like to educate.)

"No, it's funny music."

"Okay, it's funny country music."

"Dad, it's funtry music."

And thus was a new genre born.

Lost on the freeway again

Sorry. I've been sick. And just when that "Song of the Day" thing was going so well. Well, I thought so. Mystery virus, unstoppable dry cough combined with fevers and drenching sweats. I save my antibiotic intake for events like this, so had no hesitation when Doctor Steve wrote the prescription. The cough is hanging on, but much less pervasive. Temperature normal, fitness levels critically low. Hanging in there.

Hell, I even had to miss an episode of "Life On Mars".

Normal transmission will resume. Some time.

Ridiculous photo caption of the week

From an article on the BBC website about the mayor of an American town banning a certain type of clothing:

"Low-slung trousers are fashionable among some young people"

Cool!

Whereas, what I really wanted to know was what exactly is going on in the Gaza Strip right about now, and, parenthetically, what it might mean for the fate of the kidnapped BBC journalist Alan Johnston.

Song of the day

"Smoking Her Wings" by The Bats. If "Pink Frost" wasn't so darned perfect in every way, this would be a strong candidate for Greatest Song Of All Time To Have Come Out Of Dunedin. Which, contrary to what you may think, is not an insignificant achievement.

Song of the day

"Rainin Paradize" by Manu Chao. It's hard to believe that it's six years since "Clandestino" knocked me sideways on first listen. It's impossible now to recreate the sheer "what the"-ness of that moment, but now we have a taster for the next album, which Mr Chao is very generously offering as a free download on his website. It's not itself going to set the world on fire but it is nice to have something new to chew over. Thanks go to SFJ for the tip.

Song of the day

"King Street" by John Kennedy, because it's kind of nice to be unexpectedly reduced to tears by a "mere" pop song.

Song of the day

Today's song is "Memories Can't Wait" by Talking Heads, from their 1979 album "Fear of Music". We give thanks to the great god of CD remastering for his tremendous work on the Talking Heads back catalogue. I still maintain that "Remain In Light" is their magnum opus, but the new, clear "Fear of Music" highlights just how innovative they were sound-wise. David Byrne has said that they tried to make each album sound distinctive, which is not always noticeable when listening to it by way of well-worn vinyl.

"Memories Can't Wait" works especially well on the new CD, as I no longer have to cringe at the unintended distortion when the stylus cannot cope with the extended frequencies adopted. The song reappears in its original pristine glory, a testament to the works of the great god of studio jiggery-pokery, Brian Eno. Probably very few Talking Heads fans would have had stereos in 1979 that could do justice to what he created. Now we know.

The only downside of the CD is that it doesn't come with the embossed faux-linoleum of the original record cover. But that's why you should keep your vinyl collection irrespective of how much you replace with digital media.

Bob Dylan predicts the future

In "Dylan On Dylan", there is a transcript of the televised 1965 San Francisco press conference, parts of which, if I have my facts straight, were included in Scorsese's "No Direction Home" documentary. Dylan's answers are variously unhelpful, cryptic, scornful, obtuse and contemptuous. In short, reading it is a hoot. One question and answer, however, necessitates a double-take on the part of the 2007 reader:

Question: If you were going to sell out to a commercial interest, which one would you choose?

Dylan: Ladies garments.

And it came to pass that, in 2004, Bob Dylan appeared, for money, presumably, in an advertisement for Victoria's Secret, purveyor of, yes, "ladies' garments".


[It is probably safe to assume that the missing apostrophe in Dylan's answer is not the fault of Dylan himself, although as what we are reading is someone else's transcription of what he said, we will never know. It is hard to recognise a spoken apostrophe.]

Song of the day

"Impossible Germany" by Wilco. The new Wilco album, "Sky Blue Sky", has generated rather a lot of hate amongst the hipster blogniscenti. Luckily, I was able to decide that I liked it before reading any of that. And I am not about to change my mind. (But then, I am possibly not the person to ask, given that my favourite Jeff Tweedy projects are Wilco's "Summerteeth", the Woody Guthrie project "Mermaid Avenue", and the first Loose Fur record.) What were they expecting? Battles, perhaps? (More about Battles anon.) Anyway, the second half of "Impossible Germany", or maybe the final two-thirds, is the best example of the Television methodology that I have heard since, well, since Television.

You're A Good Man, Jeffrey Brown

In which Jeffrey Brown, "cartoonist", takes a poem, adds images to it, and finished up with something of a depth that mere words, even poetry, cannot convey.

Song of the day

Kathy Diamond, "Between The Lines": it's not exactly disco, but not exactly not disco. It is too dark of hue, too redolent of early-80s post-punk navel-gazing, to inspire many conga lines. Imagine Magazine's take on "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again)" but with a (slightly) more cheerful, female singer on board. In fact, if you told me that the bass on this could well pass for Barry Adamson, I wouldn't raise any doubts. (But then, I've always been the gullible kind.)

Song of the day

"New Bully in the Town" by the Laughing Clowns. Four minutes of music so intense, so kinetic, it will leave you needing a cup of tea and a lie down. Did I ever tell you that Jeffrey Wegener is the greatest rock'n'roll drummer in the history of the universe? (Oh, yeah, I think I did.) This song is the proof.

Song of the day

"Danger" by Hilary Duff. There, I've said it.

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?

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.

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.)

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.

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)?

Endorsement

"I kept my eyes open for the whole movie. Except for the blinking."

Song of the day

"My Fair Lady" by The Bird and The Bee.

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.

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."

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.

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 ...

Thrill Power

Curse you, Tom Ewing.

In this piece he reminds me that I am thirty years older than I was when I held the first issue of 2000AD in my hand, and that I was a damn fool not to have held onto my collection of comics from the first three years or so of its existence. Judge Dredd. Judge Anderson. Strontium Dog. Nemesis. Ro-Jaws and Hammerstein. Giant spiders. Time travel. Cityscapes from beyond the imagination. This was a world that was way preferable to the one I lived in.

Nice to see that some of the early stories have been re-issued. I wonder how they hold up. It's a long way from 12 to 42. It might be like going back to your primary school as a grown-up: how on earth did we all fit into such a tiny room?

Obsession

At the moment (and, contrary to what you might think, this does happen from time to time), no matter what I am listening to, I would rather be listening to "From Here We Go Sublime" by The Field. Unless, that is, what I am listening to is "From Here We Go Sublime" by The Field, in which case, well, y'know, it's not such a problem.

I am unable to be particularly articulate about modern electronic music, as I have no usable substratum of listening to draw upon: my knowledge has jumped directly from 1982 to 2007. What I like about this record is its complete lack of focus; the way ghosts of songs (did somebody say "hauntology"?) appear at the periphery of vision, never quite clearly manifesting themselves. It also has a Fennesz-like way of constructing melody where you swear there are only collections of noise. (And wasn't I saying the same thing 20 years ago in relation to Sonic Youth and Husker Du? Except there the noise came from distorted guitars and feedback, whereas The Field gets it from machinery.)

Having said all that, the Number One song at our house at the moment is "Eye Of The Tiger" by Survivor.

Cure For Pain

Well, perhaps not so much cure as palliative care, but I have discovered that when, as now, the lurgi strikes, your mood can be at least temporarily lifted by:

1. Reading "On Chesil Beach", the new Ian McEwan novel, which is sufficiently small to accommodate the reduced attention span that comes with having a head full of snot.

2. Listening to the lesser-heralded W Minc compilation CD, "Where Joy Kills Sorrow", which allows you to dwell on other people's (manufactured) misery and thus feel uplifted yourself. It features everyone from the Queen of Soul, Renee Geyer, to the King of Pop, Dave Graney. Warren Ellis is even on there, with his dad. And Mick Harvey. And those magnificent Snarskis. And Robert Forster. Do I really need to go on?

I can't believe it's not ...

the December 2006 hypothetical mixtape, in April 2007.

The Go-Betweens, “Crystal Shacks”: a charming, laid-back mostly instrumental hidden on the “Worlds Apart” ep; whilst I may not be totally convinced that their best work was still ahead of them, yet I still cannot quite come to terms with the idea that they are at an end.

The Shakers, “Who Will Buy These Wonderful Evils?”: from the title on, this is as fine a piece of sixties garage psych as you are ever likely to uncover. It gets quiet, then it gets loud, then the Formula One cars go by, almost but not quite spinning off the track.

Kaleidoscope, “Faintly Blowing”: if you had told me this was a lost early Pink Floyd track, I might have been fooled. I am so in love with this song.

Calico Wall, “I’m A Living Sickness”: in the same, uh, vein. This one starts off like imitation Ennio Morricone, but soon dispels that idea. Sometimes it seems like there’s massive untapped wells of these sixties “nuggets” just waiting for excavation, and that we will never have heard the last of them. Which is just fine by me.

Tunng, “No Man Can Find The War”: one of my favourite folktronica exponents turn their hand to Tim Buckley’s Vietnam “protest” song and make it their own. I confess to being too close to the original to really be able to say how well this stands up under its own steam, but I venture to suggest Buckley neophytes would enjoy it as much as I do. I like the way they don’t try to out-vocal-range Tim Buckley - nobody could - rather, they play it dead straight all the way. Beautiful.

Shirley Collins and Davy Graham, “Reynardine”: which leads us, somehow, to Shirley Collins’s own ethereal voice, about which I know all too little.

Seekers Who Are Lovers, “It’s A Hard Life”: it starts off with a looped organ and serious vinyl hiss, which sits beneath somebody whose voice reminds me of somebody else (perhaps the singer from Rocketship, or perhaps, no, it’s coming to me, the guy from 14 Iced Bears - I think), singing about some of those universal truths young rock musicians like, or have, to sing about. (Even when that “young rock musician”, I later discover, is in this case Will Oldham.) For the first couple of minutes you are very conscious, not in a good way, of the 6.50 running time, but soon enough you are dragged under and time disappears. I find the 2006 copyright date both unlikely and extremely heartening.

Jean Paul Sartre Experience, “Own Two Feet”: a long-lost piece of minor-key gorgeousness from New Zealand circa the mid-1980s.

The Monochrome Set, “He’s Frank”: one of the things I have discovered in this era of MP3 theft is how great the Monochrome Set were. The guitar in this song just kills.

Depeche Mode vs Nirvana, “About A Girl In My Dreams”: Nirvana, unplugged, unexpectedly justifying their existence by providing the backing for Depeche Mode’s typically angst-ridden vocalisations and electronic squelches and squiggles. A rare example of two diametrically opposed sensibilities fitting together perfectly in the laboratory. Under controlled conditions.

Rosario Blefari, “Partir y Renunciar”: a pleasing blend of electronic noises and gentle Brazilian rhythms and vocals. If you said “Juana Molina” you wouldn’t be far wrong. From a CD called “4 Women No Cry” of which I like what I’ve heard.

Cal Tjader, “Gimme Shelter”: tacky but somehow perfect.

Blue Oyster Cult, “(Don’t Fear The) Reaper”: umlauts over the “O”, if you please. Man, this is is a blast from go to woah. For a “sell-out” record it so does not sell out. I assume that I am not the only person who hears quite a lot of later-period Husker Du (two more umlauts please) in this.

The Veronicas, “4Ever”: you got a problem with that? Sometimes all I really wanna do is jump up and down and spin my arms in giant circles.

Belle Epoque, “Miss Broadway”: if Suzi Quatro had donned sequins and white flairs rather than black leather, this could have been the result. (But then I wouldn't have been buying Suzi Quatro records in 1974.)

Ellen Allien and Apparat, “Turbo Dreams (Pier Bucci Mix)”: a messed-about-with version of one of the best songs from one of the best albums of the last little while.

Space, “On The Air”: a year or so ago I discovered that there has been, in a parallel universe to my own, a type of music entitled “space disco”. It has lately been reprised by such players as Lindstrom and Prins Thomas, and the Quiet Village Project, amongst others. This would seem to be a classic example of the genre. It is thematically similar to some of the big instrumentals from Yellow Magic Orchestra, let’s say “Rydeen”. (Can you use the word “thematically” in the context of an instrumental?) As the name suggests, this would have been a bitchin’ theme tune to a 1970s current affairs show on the ABC.

Einzelganger, “Untergang (Ruin)”: Giorgio Moroder. 1975. From the same album as “Warum”. What more do you want?

Komeit, “Summer’s Gone”: in this hemisphere, at this time of year, this song evokes a perfect mood. Melancholy, wistful, drifting in a still autumn early afternoon, sitting on the back deck, before the damn mosquitos start to zero in on me as the sun swings around to the west. (Postscript: I can't google this up to save myself. The name of the song is quite possibly wrong. The photo on Komeit's web site kind of fits the music.)

Democracy At Work

Dear Friends,

I have just read and signed the online petition:

"Age of Mythology: The Titans exspansion pack for mac computers"

hosted on the web by PetitionOnline.com, the free online petition
service, at:

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/titans12/

I personally agree with what this petition says, and I think you might
agree, too. If you can spare a moment, please take a look, and consider
signing yourself.

Best wishes,

Carl

Highway Child

While you’re here, head on over to No Commercial Potential, a fine weblog which may even belong to a fellow Australian (g'day there), scroll down a bit, and download the Oxford Union Speech delivered by Gerald, er, Gerard, Hoffnung, an extraordinary piece of oration, timeless in both content and delivery, which I was only once previously exposed to, some twenty or so years ago.

There I was, back at the farm, where I had spent the weekend in order to get away from college food for a couple of days, killing time on Sunday afternoon before catching the bus back to Melbourne, when there came a knock at the front door. At Fish Creek, nobody ever knocked on the front door. There on the doorstep stood Doctor Jim, whom we have previously mentioned in these pages, and the now missing-presumed-reclusive Michael Clark. They had spent the weekend at or in the vicinity of Wilson’s Promontory, and had kindly detoured on their way home to see if they could give me a lift back to the city.

Of course they could! The bus trip from Leongatha to Melbourne was always a dispiriting affair. If you weren’t covered in cigarette smoke (not all nostalgia, you see, is rose-coloured), you found yourself sitting next to somebody who knew somebody who knew you, and who wanted to talk about their personal problems for two hours when all you wanted to do was absorb yourself in “Midnight’s Children”, or “The Name of the Rose”, or “The Dispossessed”. Then, when the bus pulled into Spencer Street Station, after dark on a Sunday evening, the city was a desolate wasteland. This may seem hard for today’s young city-apartment dwellers to understand, but as recently as the mid-1980s Melbourne’s central city was almost entirely devoid of people from 1pm Saturday, when the shops shut, until Monday morning. The only signs of humanity on a Sunday night were fellow travellers returning to Melbourne after a weekend with the folks in the country; the permanently drunk; the presumably up-to-no-good; the mentally infirm and/or homeless. This made waiting for one of the infrequent connecting trams all the more depressing, and often caused one to choose to walk the lonely mile to one’s University digs.

So, this once, I was spared from that ordeal. Instead, an entertaining drive back to Melbourne ensued, featuring Hoffnung’s very silly “lecture”. I don’t know how many times we listened to it in that 90-minute journey, but it was certainly enough that, on my reacquaintance with it however many years later, it feels like being reunited with a long-lost, and much missed, friend.

Errant apostrophe of the week

Or month. Or century.

There it sits, prominently, at the foot of page two of this week's Sydney Morning Herald TV Guide, waiting to be seen by many, in striking, large, white-on-black letters, using a very attractive sans serif font. In an ad for some kind of navigation system. It says

Overtake the Jones'

Just like that. It has taken me a few days to determine whether, in my state of flabbergastedness, I was overlooking some kind of elaborate joke or pun. But no. It is, I am sure, wrong in every possible way.

Whichever advertising agency was involved (it looks too professional to be in-house) obviously wasn't able to use the navigation system concerned to find their way through the wild and tangled woods of the common apostrophe.

Pour Down Like Silver

Current listening

All eight discs of the complete Miles Davis live at the Plugged Nickel, 1965. They make it seem all so easy, you can be fooled into thinking that you could do it.

Various live recordings of Richard Thompson, legitimate and otherwise.

Second albums: “Portishead” by Portishead (about which, if work ever gives me a chance to do some writing of my own, more soon); “Secondhand Daylight” by Magazine (I was such a big big fan of that band; missed them by a year when they toured Australia, but then “Play” was released, easing the pain a little; could never understand the Roxy Music comparisons that seemed to permeate the English weeklies - I necessarily came late to Roxy (first album came out when I was eight years old - although my crazy Melbourne cousins had copies of “Siren” and “Country Life”, the covers of which were of some interest), and couldn’t be at all objective re Magazine, but could they not see beyond the fact that both bands had someone who could play the sax?); “Heaven Up Here” by Echo & the Bunnymen.

“The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall” by The Fall, which I had always relegated to the “second-rate Fall” category on account of its being swamped by the twin peaks of “This Nation’s Saving Grace” and “Bend-Sinister”. I now realise I made a big mistake, and have some catching up to do. There are passages that can only be describe as "beautiful". Who'da thunk it?

Anecdote

I spent today at work notwithstanding it was a public holiday in Canberra, so I took the boys in with me, one at a time, to provide some respite on the home front. Julius and I had a brief wander over to the National Gallery. He is fascinated by the Sidney Nolan series of “Ned Kelly” paintings upstairs. When we got back to my office he sat down and drew his own, very convincing, Ned Kelly picture using various shades of highlighter pen. He asked one of Justice Kirby’s associates to give it to the judge. Justice Kirby is known to the boys only as “Kirby”, as this is also the name of a Nintendo character. I wonder what kind of mental picture Jules has of the judge.

Wanted

If anybody has an MP3 or equivalent of “Coward of the County” as rended (sic) by Alvin and the Chipmunks, you will find our email address on the right-hand side of this page.

A few words (not mine) about "Sound of Silver" by LCD Soundsystem

What he said.

Ghost Who Walks Can Never Die

What drums say?

Hal Hartley lives; makes new film.

How To Do It

1. Do not tear this package.

2. Find the object. Break the small water-bag inside the package which will be full of air immediately. Drop the bag beside the object.

3. When the bag pop and air.

4. Eating prohibited.

The above being the instructions printed on the packaging of a mature and sophisticated "novelty" item, the Fart Bag ("BOOM"), which the boys brought home from a recent birthday party (thanks Lyn, thanks Rob).

Instruction 2 takes on added significance when the user realises that he has no idea what is the "object" referred to. I can read instruction 3 over and over with no diminution of pleasure. When the bag pop and air. That about says it all, really.

My Autumn's Done Come

You probably know the story of Lee Hazlewood. Lee isn't going to be with us for much longer. He has just released what is going to be his final album, "Cake or Death". It would be churlish to be critical of anybody in such circumstances, but in all honesty there is quite a bit of this record that, it seems to me, perhaps should not have seen the light of day.

However, by the time you get to the end of the last two songs on the disc, there will not be a dry eye in the house. Lee Hazlewood understands that music can do this. Misgivings about this record do not in any way undermine the legacy that he will leave to us. Thank you, cowboy.

Progress Report

So. I finished reading Ian McEwan’s “Amsterdam”. Can’t now understand how I could have taken so long to make a start with it. Aspiring novelists should both read and not read this book. Read it, because it is perhaps the closest thing to a “perfect” novel that I can think of: characterisation, plot, pacing, tension, place, time, anything else you care to mention. When the trademark McEwan shocks occur, you are not only there with the characters, you are inside their heads, feeling what they are feeling, which is something I last remember experiencing while reading “The Comfort of Strangers”, in 1986, lying on the lawn in Carlton Gardens, where the Melbourne Museum now sits, one afternoon, until it started to cool down and darken, whereupon I went back to the flat at 666 Lygon Street to finish it off. That is the only book I have ever read in one day.

Whereas aspiring novelists should, also, not read it, because it can only leave them with an overwhelming sense of “Man, why would I bother?”.

Meanwhile, readers of “serious” fiction who have been hearing about these things called “graphic novels”, but can’t quite get beyond the idea that they would never be seen dead reading comic books, might break the ice with “La Perdida” by Jessica Abel, a well-written, well-drawn story about a somewhat misguided and/or naive young woman who goes to Mexico to find her roots and instead gets into a bit of, er, trouble. Abel may not be in the same league, writing-wise, as McEwan, and she may also not be as great an artist as, say, Picasso, but the particular skill of being able to combine writing, and especially narrative, with a strong visual sense, is something rare, and deserves to be appreciated on its own terms. This book's relationship with superheroes does not exist. I read some of it on the bus, and some of it sitting in cafes, and the world didn’t end. Go on, be brave.

(I also, to keep things a bit lighter, romped through another hardcover work of graphic fiction, “Get A Life” by Dupuy-Berberian, an absolutely gorgeous collection of Monsieur Jean stories, translated from the French, and packaged to the exceptionally high standard we have come to expect from the good people at Drawn and Quarterly. For those of us whose next visit to Paris is some years away, it’s the next best thing to being there.)

“Stranger Than Fiction” is a better movie than you might think. I had never seen a Will Ferrell “vehicle”. The closest I have ever come is watching him interviewed by Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show Global Edition” some months ago. I took him to be a glorified ham actor, but there is nothing hammy on show here; it is all very quiet and understated, perhaps bearing comparison with Adam Sandler’s surprise turn in Paul Thomas Anderson’s last film. The story itself, meanwhile, is the kind of mess-with-your-head concoction that has appeared in recent years in films like “I [heart] Huckabees”, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, and especially “Adaptation”. What the creators have done here, however, is to transpose these seemingly post-modern avant garde ideas into the mainstream, and they have done so in such a way that you don’t notice the joins. It won’t win any awards (although Dustin Hoffman should be noticed for his beautiful performance as a literature professor/sleuth, not a million miles away from the character he played in “Huckabees”) but there are plenty worse films out there at the moment.

Over in the world of the blogs, Woebot has, as you might expect, be the first of the old guard to embrace video streaming, if that’s what you call it, with Woebot TV, while over at his usual home he has posted a scantastic tale of his grandparents’ record collection, which would appear to bear a striking resemblance to that of my own parents. (No Winifred Atwell, though?)

Elsewhere, Mark K-Punk has finally put up the second and third parts of his too-difficult-by-half-but-that’s-how-we-like-it discourse on The Fall’s “pulp modernism”, while our man Tom Ewing has brought some much needed freshness to the frequently uninspiring pages of Pitchfork with a nicely meandering essay on the Beatles and the music-hall tradition. Marcello Carlin, meanwhile, has produced four consecutive pieces of writing that are up there with his best (which, of course, is way out of reach of us mere mortals), dealing, in turn, with the new Stooges album (and in the process totally nailing the fan’s urge to welcome any new, and especially any new and unexpected, material from a long-dormant favourite as a “stunning return to form” - yes, we all do it; I even had kind words to say once upon a time for the Howard DeVoto/Pete Shelley sub-Buzzcocks reunion album, the name of which I can no longer even recall, and the desire to hear which is zip), “Treasure” by the Cocteau Twins, an album which means more to me than almost any other album by any artist anywhere ever (i.e. it’s quite good), and, by way of two posts, Judee Sill, whose “The Kiss” destroys me every time I hear it. Good work, fella.

And a final mention to new blogger on the block, Sammy Harkham, comic-book creator and editor of the cutting-edge graphic anthology “Kramer’s Ergot”. Sammy is doing a fairly regular blog which is tied in with a Los Angeles store called “Family”, which I can’t help thinking I would spend way too much money in if I lived anywhere near it. Sammy’s blog is to some extent “advertising”, but it is sufficiently stand-alone, and he is such a natural at this blogging caper, that it merits a regular visit.

Oh, and I have also bought the Tom Waits triple-disc set “Orphans”, which will take a while to digest, and I would like to have bought the new David Kilgour except the guy behind the counter at Canberra’s “hippest” record shop had no clue who or what I was talking about. Sheesh. Dude is only a living legend ...

So, what have you been up to?

Where It's At

A friend writes to advise that she is about to undergo a kind of voluntary sonic colonic (solonic?) irrigation, flushing out all of the old music in her head to make way for new sounds. Or unheard or forgotten old sounds. What, she asks, should she be looking out for in 2007?

Well, I have given this some thought, and here is what I would be cramming my head with, if it were me.

First off, I find that a lot of what I am listening to at present is being made either by waif-like females (at least, they sound as if they should be waifs; some I cannot vouch for the way they look, as they remain little more than spectral digital presences): “Ys”, obviously, but she already knows about that; but also Marissa Nadler; Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton’s “Knives Don’t Have Your Back” and Neko Case’s “Fox Confessor Brings The Flood” (both being members of Broken Social Scene, perhaps suggesting that half the Canadian youth population are Scenesters, which may in fact be true) and, not so much waif as tough, Joan As Policewoman’s self-titled album; and, from an older school, records by Karen Dalton and Vashti Bunyan; or by what Mojo magazine, the home of dad rock, would be calling beardo folk, or New Weird America, or folktronica, or back to the Appalachians: by which I mean, I just can’t get enough of “Espers II”, “Brightblack Morning Light”, Six Organs of Admittance’s “The Sun Awakens”, Tunng’s “Mother’s Daughter and Other Songs”, and “To Find Me Gone” by Vetiver. To enter these records is to enter a world where time has stood more or less still, where new sounds are being made in the old ways, and old sounds are being made in the new ways.

Otherwise, I find myself at the moment skittering between shortlived “phases”. First there was my Led Zeppelin phase, inspired by watching Disc 1 of the “Led Zeppelin” DVD on a big TV on New Year’s Eve. This needs to be watched, not just for the music, but also for their youthful good looks, immaculate dress sense and superior hair care. Next, and still happening, is my Crosby Stills and Nash phase, brought on by accidentally hearing a couple of songs of theirs, “Dark Star” and “Wooden Ships”, on the download. Interestingly (to me), both of these were pockets of music I have looked down upon since I turned 15 and discovered 2JJ and New Musical Express. Which is perhaps my bad, although I wonder where I would be now if I had continued down the path that had me listening almost exclusively to Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Status Quo, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd and so on. It probably wouldn’t be pretty.

In fact, I am feeling another phase coming along, and appropriately enough it is a Steve Reich phase (many of his earlier pieces had the word “Phase” in the title). Steve Reich would be very suitable for listening to if you were, say, working on a D Phil thesis and needed at once to concentrate and to have some music in your life. If you ask me, I would say start with “Music for 18 Musicians” (any version; I like the Nonesuch one from a couple of years back, but then that’s the one I have) and “Tehillim” and, maybe, the Deutsche Gramophon two-CD set that has “Drumming” as its centrepiece. The Necks can serve a similar purpose, buy you already know them.

I also think it is always a good time to revisit Tim Buckley. Right now, I would say that the time is right to dig back into “Dream Letter”, a double live CD (I have it on vinyl only, which leaves out a couple of songs from the concert) which I would like to think is still available, although now that you mention it I haven’t seen it around for a while.

Which is probably enough for now. Except to say that on a personal level, I am looking forward to new albums by Air, Au Revoire Simone, LCD Soundsystem, The Bird and The Bee, and Electrelane. But especially the new David Kilgour. It is always a good year when you have a new David Kilgour.

Make Love Not War

Introducing the Explosively Formed Penetrator.

Hmmmm.

(Don't) Rain (on my) Parade

I had the job of explaining to Julius (now aged seven) that Australia had lost the rain-damaged second one-day cricket final against England, and hence the series. As someone whose cricketing consciousness has developed at a time when, the 2005 Ashes debacle aside, Australia has been on top of the world, he was understandably disappointed and, in the tradition of Australian values and the notion of the "fair go", tried to find someone to blame. (He eventually settled on "the god of weather".)

Mr Duckworth and Mr Lewis (or is it Mr Duckworth-Lewis?) have devised a system which, though it seems able to deal with every possible eventuality, is inexplicable to seven-year-olds, and hence breaks one of my own ground rules: if you can't explain/justify something to your own children, then you probably shouldn't be doing it. (Okay, nobody mention d*wnl**ding music from the Int*rn*t.)

He insisted that the result was Not Fair, and I must admit I found it difficult to wholeheartedly disabuse him of that notion. (Although I did point out that finding themselves at 4/40 was not the fault of anyone but Australia's upper order.) It does seem, on the face of it, a bit skew-whiff [now there's a word you don't see enough of] when, after one rain interruption, the number of overs to be bowled is reduced by eight and the victory target is reduced by a mere 13 runs.

Nevertheless, as an aspiring young cricketer, the experience will do Jules some good. Hopefully it will also help the Australians, as they ramp up their preparations for the World Cup, the (as I pointed out to him) only one-day series that really means anything at all.

The final word is Jules's: "But we still have the Ashes, don't we?"

And here is the news

Let me reproduce for you, without permission but I'm sure they won't mind, the last paragraph of the editorial (they call it a "comment" for historical reasons) in this week's New Yorker (cover by David Heatley, by the way, well done that boy), written by Elizabeth Kolbert, whose work on climate change over the last two years has sent me into alternating waves of proselytising and abject despondency:

"Carbon dioxide is a by-product of just about every aspect of contemporary life—from driving and flying to farming and manufacturing and watching videos on YouTube. To reduce emissions by sixty per cent—or eighty per cent, as Senator Boxer advocates, or by two-thirds, as the McCain-Lieberman-Obama bill calls for—will thus require significant, and doubtless also disruptive, changes at every level of society. This may not seem an attractive prospect, but, as the latest I.P.C.C. report makes clear, change is not something that anyone at this point has a choice about. All that is at issue—and it is critically at issue—is how disastrous the change will be. Already enough CO2 has been pumped into the air to alter life on earth for thousands of years to come. To continue on our current path because the alternative seems like too much effort is not just shortsighted. It’s suicidal."

Whitney Bailliett R.I.P.

We are obliged to mark the passing of Whitney Bailliett, erstwhile New Yorker jazz critic, who, like the best of that magazine's critics (here we are thinking of, say, Lewis Mumford and Pauline Kael; there are others), called it as he saw it, and saw it very well. We weren't around in the late fifties, when Bailliett first appeared at the magazine, but we are willing to wager that not every writer for a major newspaper or magazine was as prepared to be thrilled and amazed by the new sounds of jazz as it evolved into, and beyond, bebop in what must have seemed to have been the blink of an eye. Even now, almost fifty years later, you go back and read one of his columns and feel compelled to rush out and listen to whatever it is he was writing about that week. And you just know that, if he liked it, it will still sound good.

Who Killed The Polar Bear?

We did!

Who killed the Great Barrier Reef?

We did!



Next!

David versus Goliath

Over the weekend I found myself reading, with rising anger, Joe Lelyveld's piece in the New York Review of Books about the mess in which America finds itself with its misguided (to put it kindly) policy of locking up foreigners, sorry "furrners", indefinitely, offshore, and without charge, in pursuit of the so-called War on Terror. Lelyveld, who as I understood it was supposed to have moved from the New York Times to the New Yorker, but who appeared once in the latter only to have vanished, Joseph Mitchell-style, ever since, puts in clear and rational terms the combination of barbarity, inhumanity and inextricability that can only lead to ever-larger chickens coming home to roost at some point in the future.

But for the Australian reader, concerned about the terrible plight of David Hicks and his total abandonment by his own government, this passage, written for purposes other than to highlight Hicks's predicament, does just that:

"In all, more than 250 Guantánamo prisoners have been repatriated. In some cases their release appears to have had more to do with diplomatic pressure applied by allied countries in which they had legal residence than with the facts of their particular cases."

Hello? Didn't we blindly march backwards into Iraq, side by side with America, without even waiting to be asked? Haven't we remained there, through thick and thin, as practically all other members of the "coalition" have seen Iraq revealed as America's own folly, and gone home? That doesn't seem to give us as much clout as I would have thought it would, particularly given the "special relationship". Or maybe nobody in Canberra has thought to test it out?

No, he only smells that way

I put on disc 1 of Tom Waits's "Orphans". After a few minutes, Jules says: Dad, who is this man singing?

I say: This is Tom Waits.

Jules says: Is he dead?

[I resist the urge to explain that, actually, Tom Waits sounded old when he was young, but that now, through some miraculous process of ageing backwards, he sounds like a young experimental noisemaker ready to take on the world on his own terms and tear it apart limb from limb. An almost-seven-year-old wouldn't understand.]

Astounding headline of the week

From The Age (and from memory):

"Hicks's mental state not an issue: Downer"

So, after letting the guy rot in Guantanamo Bay for five years you can confidently say, from your Canberra air-conditioned bunker, that David Hicks is as happy as Larry.

Since when is Australia's foreign minister a psychiatrist? How many sessions on the couch (or, more likely, the waterboard) did they have together?

Even assuming that "due process" would apply to any trial, which is now demonstrated not to be the case, wouldn't his mental state be a, if not the, crucial issue?

And I thought the government might just have been trying to come to terms with its appalling handling of this appalling matter. Not so: still the dissembling continues.

Against the grain

And speaking of the New York Review of Books, given the critical hammering that has by and large been meted out to Thomas Pynchon's "Against The Day", it was surprising, and also refreshing, to see it described by Luc Sante in such a way as to make it sound like something you would not so much want, as have, to read. (Sante tends to know of what he speaks; and his book "Low Life" is perenially near to top of my "books I really must read" list.)

(And while we are all about books, what is it with Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times? Three times, now, she has been guilty in recent months of describing something as reading like a parody of a book by the author she is reviewing: first the new Richard Ford novel, then "Against The Day", and now, in a review of the new Martin Amis, she has felt compelled to use the same description in relation to his previous novel, "Yellow Dog" (which I actually enjoyed, precisely because it read like a Martin Amis novel). Isn't such an observation (as well as being a cheap shot) as much a vindication of a writer's distinctive style as it is a criticism, if not more so? Isn't she really saying, "I don't like this book because I liked other books like this written by this person?" I mean, what if the new Thomas Pynchon read like a novel by, oh I don't know, Ben Elton? Would that make it alright? Just asking.)

(Of course, if Michiko Kakutani were reviewing the previous paragraph she would point to its excessive, and confusing, use of parentheses and say that it read like a parody of one of my paragraphs.)

Monopoly money

Strange coincidences abound. Yesterday I decided to plunge headlong into Mark Danner's long but essential article from the New York Review of Books in which he looks through the rear-view mirror to establish exactly how the United States could have convinced itself to invade Iraq, given how obvious the resulting diabolical mess now seems. Therein I found this sentence:

"If attaining true political authority depends on securing a monopoly on legitimate violence, then the Americans would never achieve it in Iraq."

Securing a monopoly on legitimate violence. At first glance it seems to be describing the establishment of a police state, but it is in fact setting out a precondition for individual liberty, as long as it's the good guys who hold the monopoly (although words like "legitimate" can readily slide through one's fingers).

Anyway. There I was this afternoon, making good headway with Ian McEwan's "Saturday", when, on page 88, I read this:

"Holding the unruly, the thugs, in check is the famous 'common power' to keep all men in awe - a governing body, an arm of the state, freely granted a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence."

Okay, the phrase might well, for all I know, be covered in Lesson One of Political Science 101, but to stumble across it twice in 24 hours, well, you have to admit that's a tiny bit creepy.

(Yes, I have finally started "Saturday", after having suffered from reader's block for the best part of 12 months. I don't know what was stopping me from picking it up, but it has sat beside the bed, and sat, and sat, and in the meantime I haven't read any other novels because I wanted to read "Saturday" and didn't want anything else to get in the way. Oh, I torture myself sometimes. Well, after a gorgeously languid, yet meticulous, start, it suddenly opens out, around page 87, into a typically brilliant, stomach-tightening Ian McEwan set-up.)

Uncle Ray

Yesterday, one day after what would have been my mother’s 82nd birthday, her brother, Ray, my last surviving uncle, died. This news has, as usual, sent me into something of a tailspin of reflection and introspection.

He was 86. He and his wife, Margaret, were a pretty good team, and seem to have been able to keep each other going to what is a very good age. Although I haven’t seen them for a number of years on account of physical distance, we have kept in touch, and they seem to have been in quite good health (although, curiously, they both became diabetic late in life) and in full control of their faculties, although uncle Ray, I am told, had withdrawn into himself in the last little while.

Which might have been difficult for an outsider to notice. Ray was a quiet one at the best of times, a Hewson trait of which I am an inheritor (as was my own mother).

Ray was the survivor of the four Hewson children. For whatever reason, genetics, circumstances, or mere coincidence, none of his three sisters fared entirely well. Mavis, whom my mother spent some years looking after, contracted juvenile diabetes, went blind, and died young. Muriel, mother of the three Coulter boys, also died much too young (when Geoff, the youngest, was only a teenager; he spent some time living at our house, which I was too young to really remember); and mum died at 68, not that young, I suppose, but also not that old, and she had been in varying degrees of poor health for a number of years. Ray, however, was made of stronger stuff.

(As for myself, I don’t think I am a particularly well-made human being. I have had poor eyesight since at least the age of five; my spine is twisted at various angles; I have strange neurological symptoms consistent with, but not, apparently, amounting to, MS; and yesterday I scored 35 in a test in which anything over 28 is indicative of Asperger’s syndrome.)

Perhaps because of my status as an only child, I have never really understood families. I seem to have voluntarily estranged myself from most of my cousins on my father’s side, on account of bad things that happened after he died; and the Hewson side is prone to long silences and infrequent contact. Nevertheless, and notwithstanding that we have never really spent a great deal of time in each other’s company, I feel a strong sense of connection with my cousin Gay, Ray and Margaret’s daughter. Whether this is because we are both only children I couldn’t say, but it probably does have something to do with it.

Gay is a few years older than me, but not many, and we both were born to relatively old parents (for those times). She grew up in Dandenong, which was the closest part of Melbourne to our farm, so we did see them for a few hours at a time, from time to time, and stayed with them occasionally - enough for me to carry a number of lasting, but general and perhaps distorted by time, impressions. They had a caravan, a budgie called Marmaduke and a cat whose name now escapes me. Later, they built on an extra room, which came to be dominated by a billiard table which I was quick to gravitate towards whenever we paid them a visit. (Ray worked for a company called Southern Billiards, if I remember rightly, making billiard tables for a living; he was also a keen gardener and, after his retirement, a fine lawn bowler.) Gay had Stephen King novels in her room, and listened to David Bowie (whose surname Margaret insisted on pronouncing so that the “Bow” sounded like “bow wow”, much to Gay’s disgust - I suspect this was Margaret’s way of expressing her disapproval of this man who wore copious amounts of make-up, had coloured hair, and even wore dresses). They came to our house most years on Christmas day, along with the Coulter cousins. For a long time my prize possession was a postcard from Gay which was sent from Fiji, featuring a policeman wearing a white uniform, directing traffic. I have no idea what impression, if any, Gay formed about me: probably just that I seemed like a strange sort of kid from the country: which, I suppose, I was.

Specific memories? Only two, and one of those not so much a memory as a story.

When I was very young, maybe around five, Ray and Margaret took me out for the day, to what I now believe to have been Venus Bay (where Adrienne and I, much later, went for a long walk on that fateful weekend in 1989 when she first visited me in Leongatha). I was wearing a new pair of black shoes (new shoes, new anything, was something pretty special in my family). I was under strict instructions from Margaret not to get them wet. I was busy for some time playing at the water’s edge, lost in my thoughts and oblivious to anything else that may have been happening around me (such as the tide coming in). There was a shout and a severe reprimand from Margaret when it became obvious that my new shoes had indeed been immersed in the salt water, and who knows for how long? (But why was I not in bare feet like normal kids would have been?) I felt terrible, having failed to follow instructions and, I was led to believe, destroyed my new shoes into the bargain. No doubt I got into more trouble when I got home, but that I don’t remember at all, only my betrayal of my aunt and uncle, who had been good enough to take me to the beach in the first place, a treat which, in my own mind, I clearly didn’t deserve and which would never happen again.

Second, there is a story recounted by my mother of my cousin Max, one of the Coulter boys, at a young age, sitting on the floor at Ray’s feet, while Ray was, characteristically, sitting in an armchair, reading. They stayed there in complete silence for some time, until somebody, perhaps my mother, perhaps Muriel, Max’s mother, said to Max, “What are you doing, Max?”, to which Max replied, “Talking to uncle Ray.”

That story, while it may or may not be entirely true, certainly rings true. Ray is best remembered as a quiet figure sitting in an armchair, reading a magazine, a book or a newspaper, or doing a crossword, seemingly oblivious to events around him but in fact entirely attentive, making the occasional comment, always worth waiting for, and then going back to what he was doing. In some people this may have been considered rude, or arrogant, but Ray conveyed so much generosity of spirit, kindness and goodwill that he could get away with it. In fact, not just “get away with it”: it was who he was.

Spam Header of the Week

"Cow strife".

Specifically and individually targeted, no doubt, to the "farmer in the city".

Snake oil

Yesterday I picked up, second-hand, a copy of "Big Iron World", a rollicking 2006 record by Old Crow Medicine Show. It contains some fine pickin', fiddlin' and blowin', and is augmented by appearances by David Rawlings (who produced) on guitar, and Gillian Welch on drums(!). As Gillian fixes go, it's not much, but it was all we had (leaving aside the Robyn Hitchcock disc, which wasn't really in the ballpark). Which leads us to our hopes for 2007:

1. A new Gillian Welch album. Please please please. It's well past being about time.

2. The repatriation to Australia of David Hicks, freed from governmental interference and armed with a seven-figure book deal, which for once I wouldn't be in opposition to. Think about all you have done in the last five years. Whatever it is, even if nothing more than sitting in a chair and looking out the window, is more than Hicks has been allowed to do, in whatever appalling conditions he has been kept (and you would have to think that if the conditions were in fact better than we have been led to believe, someone in authority would have made that clear; that they haven't speaks volumes). So perhaps he was hell-bent on killing Americans; more likely he was a misguided young man who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. For which he has paid with a large chunk of his life and his mental health.

3. World peace and happiness. Obviously.

Happy New Year To You

Each year at Moistworks, Alex does a new-year mix. It is always a treat, and this year's is no exception.

Off you go, then.

Ho Ho Ho

Santa gave me a Batman Lego kit which includes a Lego Catwoman, looking stunningly curvaceous - well, in a blocky Lego kind of way - in skin-tight black leather (or maybe it's PVC) and carrying a whip.

I like Santa.

Just A Quick One Before We Go

There is not much left to do around here before we sign off for 2006. We should briefly mention three notable albums from this year which haven’t otherwise been mentioned around these parts:

Charlotte Gainsbourg, “5:55”.
Beach House, “Beach House”.
Peter, Bjorn and John, “Writer’s Block”.

We didn’t get too inspired by films this year, except for “Who Killed The Electric Car?”, and, of course, “Borat”; we read, in effect, no novels. We created a small vegie garden. We watched the boys move into new stages of their lives.

The only other duty is to say Thank You to all who click here from time to time. We do this for ourselves, as a kind of mental clearing house, but we also do it for you, as a way of maintaining some form of communication without confronting our fear of the telephone.

Stay safe.

A few words about "Coles Corner" by Richard Hawley

I finally got a chance to listen to “Coles Corner” by Richard Hawley. If you have ever found anything to love in, say, the first three Blackeyed Susans eps; Mick Harvey’s takes on Serge Gainsbourg; the Blue Nile; the first Lloyd Cole and the Commotions lp; Lee Hazlewood; Tex Perkins in introspective mode; Dave Graney ditto, then I am sure you will find something to love here, too; the above being not so much a list of names as a particular state of mind.

Och Aye The Noo: it's the October 2006 hypothetical mixtape

Miho Hatori, “Barracuda”: this first appeared to me as a stunning piece of video animation. Of course, I have long been very fond of Cibo Matto and, more recently, Miho’s work with Smokey Hormel and her vocals on the Baldwin Brothers’ sublime “Dream Girl” (swoon). Suffice to say, this song is no disappointment. She even, perhaps, nails the sense of updated tropicalia that Beck has been striving for, and makes it sound easy.

The Passions, “I’m In Love With A German Filmstar”: there is no way anyone can ever successfully argue against my firm conviction that this is, quite simply, the greatest song of all time. It never fails to take me back to where I was the first time I ever heard it: well, I actually have no idea where that was, but it at least brings to mind very clearly, and for once in a not negative way, the latter years of secondary school. And, for historical value, it totally nails a certain aspect of that post-punk sound.

King Tubby Meets The Aggrovators, “Dub Station”: the other thing I was listening to round about that time was Jamaican dub. There is good dub and bad dub (e.g. I never warmed to the more digital end of the spectrum, witness later Lee Perry, and much of Adrian Sherwood’s On-U-Sound stable). This, however, is clearly good dub although, unusually, it doesn’t start with the usual couple-of-drum-whacks-and-into-it: we get a full minute of mood and atmosphere before the rhythm section kicks in. Which kind of makes it a novelty, I suppose. But not a gimmick.

Donovan, “Season Of The Witch”: you can slice this number any which way and make it work. But you can also listen to it au naturel.

Me First And The Gimme Gimmes, “(Ghost) Riders In The Sky”: sometimes loud fast rules. I could have said “sometimes pleasure heads must burn”, but that would be stealing. Nor would it make much sense. This song demonstrates the literal meaning of the word “cowpunk”. I once imagined a thrash-metal/speedcore cover version of “The Sounds Of Silence” which, if actualised, might have been in a similar ballpark.

Feathers, “Old Cutler”: I have no idea what this is; or when; or where; or even why. But it has a beautiful horn bit two minutes in which I can’t resist.

Lindstrom, “The Contemporary Fix”: they call it Space Disco. That’s fine by me. What Lindstrom brings to the party is a sense of joyfulness, and some lovely chord changes. And just a hint of real people playing real instruments. What???

Regina Spektor, “Edit”: my reverse autobiography. “You can write but you can’t edit” as opposed to, in my case, “You can edit but you can’t write”. That hurts.

Minimum Chips, “Know You Too Well”: we don’t seem to listen to much Australian music any more. Whether that’s a factor of our advanced age, the way we acquire/hear new music these days, or living in the Nation’s Capital, which is, of course, devoid of any form of live entertainment now that Tilley’s seems to have lost interest, it’s difficult to tell. Min Chips are from Melbourne, like us, have been influenced by Stereolab, like us, and come across as quaintly homespun in all the best ways, like, um, us?

My Robot Friend, “One More Try”: cute; with Antony of the Johnstons on vocals. They say he is the new Nina Simone. I can’t hear it myself. More like the new early Bryan Ferry.

Vetiver and Hope Sandoval, “Angels’ Share”: hailing from the school of, say, Calexico, Iron & Wine, and others of a quietly acoustic and pastoral bent. This song in particular caught our attention on account of, well, I think you can guess why.

The Velvet Underground, “I’m Sticking With You”: Mo Tucker’s finest moment. Apart from every moment on each of the first three Velvet Underground albums.

“Hollaback Gun” (Commodores vs Gwen Stefani): it seems that “Hollaback Girl” can have anything mashed with it to mutual benefit. Not that it wasn’t a great song to begin with.

The Louvin Brothers, “The Christian Life”: these guys took vocal harmonies to the next level. Elvis Costello covered one of their songs on the underrated “Kojak Variety” (since when can an album featuring Marc Ribot be all bad?). Elvis may have suffered from identity fragmentation in recent years, but he has always had impeccable taste in music.

John Martyn, “Cool Tide”: I can’t actually make my mind up as to whether this is any good at all, but when you enter 12 minutes of slowly drifting John Martynisms, well, you are in a place beyond good-vs-evil anyway.

Ricardo Villalobos, “Fizheuer Zieheuer Part 1”: as previously mentioned on these pages. I love the fact that after 15 minutes it ends, roughly (in both senses), mid-beat. Well, where else could it have gone? (Onto the other side of the record, abruptly restarting as “Fizheuer Zieheuer Part 2”, of course.)

Curiouser and curiouser

Readers of Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's "From Hell" will be amazed at the extraordinary coincidence (if coincidence it be ... dun dun DUNNNN) that, unless I misheard the radio this morning, the policeman in charge of investigating the latest round of English prostitute killings has the surname "Gull". Life imitates art imitates etc etc.

Seven And Seven Is

For me, the best thing about the Greatest Test Match Of All Time occurred while I was on the bus coming home from work. For some time now, the boys have been interested in the idea that you can score seven runs from one ball. I'm not even sure where they got the notion from; it hardly ever happens in real life. So we have talked about "hitting a seven" quite a bit.

When I got home, the boys ran to the door screaming "Somebody scored a seven!" In normal circumstances I wouldn't have believed it, but the way the wheels had fallen off the England jalopy that day, nothing would have surprised me. I only wish I could have seen it with my own eyes.

Come on Doctor Jim, what are you bidding?

Many eyes are on this.

As I said to someone else, this would appear to put the Velvet Underground on a par with John Lennon Memorabilia, notwithstanding that the Velvets presumably have sold a very small fraction of the number of records sold by the Beatles. (I have done no research whatever to back up that last statement.)