The Dust Blows Forward And The Dust Blows Back

Let me see now. Where was I. Ah, yes. Captain Beefheart.

"Tropical Hot Dog Night" is the one Beefheart song that even our boys can recognise. It exists on an endless playlist of 2,000-odd songs, of every hue, that I put on whenever I get a chance. (Which is not often.) It is a timeless kind of song, as are most of Beefheart's, in the sense that they exist outside of any particularly recognisable era. It is the thing that made him great, and that even Tom Waits, who tries as hard as anybody to position himself outside of the world in which he lives, can't quite manage in quite the same way.

What is interesting to me is how many virtual column inches have been filled with the Captain since his death, surely in no kind of proportion to how often people actually listen to his music. Take me, for example. "Trout Mask Replica" has been a fixture of my record collection for twenty-odd years, and it is easily one of my most cherished vinyl artyfacts, and yet it has sat on the turntable relatively little over that time. (In terms of playability, I have to say that I lean towards "Safe As Milk" and "Clear Spot". They lack the towering, over-stretching ambition of "TMR", but you can hum along to them.)

As usual, Sasha Frere-Jones writes some of the best words about Beefheart's legacy. And Reynolds gives good YouTube.

Sun's going down, like a big bald head

The last two instalments in Eno's "Seven Sessions on a Milk Sea" album-promo series are now up, here and here. Whilst I am not going to be as quick as others to write off the new album, I am troubled by the fact that I am troubled by it. It starts off well, but my early impression is that the wheels fall off about one-third of the way through. I might be missing the point. (I didn't like "The Drop" much, either, except for the final, sublime track.) I intend to come back to it many times with a view to adjusting my score.

Meanwhile these clips demonstrate a sense of vitality, of the joy of music making, that doesn't really come through in the finished album. Says me, as of now.

The Filmworks Haiku Series Kicks Its Last

Mercifully, these will be the final two entries.

"Filmworks XXII: The Last Supper".

Liturgical Zorn:

Not what I was expecting;

Beautifully done.

"Filmworks XXIII: el General".

I just love it when

Marc Ribot does his Spanish

Moriccone thing.

Next up in The Zorn Report: the three-quarter-time report from his 2010 record-a-month marathon.

Song of the day

"Circumspect Penelope", by Look Blue Go Purple. If you ask me, LBGP have never sounded as good, or as contemporary, as they do right now. Let the revival begin!

Song of the day

"Lucy Brown", by Black Mountain. A song that demonstrates yet another strand in the musical fabric of this immensely talented band. This time, there is a strong glam / RAK Records element, which takes it away from their usual hard rock template, while the lyrics, about how it's such a drag when your "mom" finds your "stash", suggest the song would have been right at home on the soundtrack to one of the earlier Richard Linklater films.

And it's on a Sub Pop Singles Club seven-inch, yeah? Just like the good old days.

No Hassle

Am I the only person on this planet who actually likes Robyn's "Dancehall Queen"? Heck, every time she gets written about on the Internet even now, months after this particular song first appeared, the writer seems to go out of his or her way to diss this song. It's so unfair. Anyway, it now has a video. Watch it here. (Possibly not safe for, y'know, work. Okay, seriously not.)

The master's hand

Click here and here to view the fourth and fifth instalments in Eno's "Seven Sessions on a Milk Sea" project. Just do it. It makes so much more sense when his shiny dome is visibly present.

Filmworks haiku series: mobile edition

"Filmworks XXI: Belle de Nature and The New Rijksmuseum":

Two soundtracks in one.
One: A Marc Ribot showcase.
Two goes for baroque.

(Is there any rule against starting two lines with the same word?)

Teenage Radio Star

I wrote a thousand words about the death by suicide of James Freud. But it was all about me, and the bad feelings I continued to harbour in relation to what I perceived to be his takeover of my beloved Models, and why I now realise I was wrong and misguided to have those feelings. But then I read it back, and I imagined it sitting on the Internet, exposed to the public and to the possibility (however faint) that it might be read by Freud's family, and I imagined that they would not be impressed by some pathetic whining bag of misery wallowing in self-pity on the occasion of their own grief. And so I junked it.

Instead, I just want to say this: when Sean Kelly invited James Freud to join the Models, in 1982, Freud had already shown his hand in terms of shooting for pop stardom. Kelly, himself no shrinking violet, knew what he was leading the Models into, and seemingly made no effort to stop it. The Models, James Freud version, were not for me. "Barbados" and "Out Of Mind, Out Of Sight" are both, it still pains me to say, horrible songs. But that was their choice, and plenty of good, right-thinking people like those songs, and the betrayal I felt might have just as easily been directed at persons other than James Freud.

And this: no matter what else he might have done, or been responsible for, or struggled through, or carried the can for, James Freud deserves a place in the annals for "I Wanna Be Your Baby", one of the few truly great Melbourne punk-era singles, by his early band the Teenage Radio Stars.

Song of the day: totally insane edition

"Vikram Vikram", by Kamal Hassan and Illaiyaraaja. This is why I spend half my waking hours scouring the internet for music. (Memo to my employer: this is not, in fact, true.) I can almost guarantee that you have never heard anything like it in your life. And yet elements of it are very familiar: everything from Tom Tom Club to Bob James to Giorgio Moroder to (I swear) Tha Dogg's "Drop It Like It's Hot".

You owe it to yourself to click your way over to the estimable XXJFG and download the damn thing, while it's still up. Even if you only listen to it once. Which you won't.

Song of the day

"Eanie Meany", by Jim Noir. Every year I put together a mix CD as a part of Adrienne's birthday present. This song is an early favourite from the 2010 edition. It's easy to see why, I think. Enjoy.

Get free stuff

No, it's not a trap to lure you into mortal peril. It's just versions of four Black Tambourine songs that weren't on the compilation. Scrap that "just". Get them here. Now.

Tick, tick, tick.

What? Are you still here?

Song of the day

"Search and Destroy", by The Stooges. A Monday-morning head-cleaner. The musical equivalent of a big chunk of wasabi.

YouTube of the day

This is the film clip for the greatest song ever made.

I have an idea that I watched this on late-night TV many years ago but I don't remember most of it.

Everybody looks so young. Sigh.

Not YouTube of the day

"Seven Sessions on a Milk Sea", by Brian Eno et al, the third instalment thereof. This one strongly harking back to the original "Music For Films". In a good way. I find it interesting to watch such impersonal music being put together by the hands of humans. The guitar atmospherics especially.

Song of the day

"Four Hours In Washington", by M. Ward. If Ward had called this song "Seven Hours In Tullamarine", it would have very neatly encapsulated what happened to us last Monday.

Having travelled to Melbourne for the weekend in order not to miss Adrienne's dad's 80th-birthday Yarra River boat ride, we dutifully arrived at Tullamarine at 3pm on Monday for the return leg, leaving at 4.10 and arriving in Canberra at 5.15pm, in time for bath night, dinner, and The Goodies at 8.05 on ABC2.

Or so we thought.

We checked in, made our way through the elaborate and officious security apparatus at Terminal 4, and into the rudimentary departure "lounge" (accurately described by a work colleague as the "departure compound") of Tiger Airways to await our flight. Presently, we were called to the departure gate. Where we waited. And waited. And waited. Until a voice over the intercom said: "Due to operational reasons [sic], flight number whatever has been delayed. The new departure time is 5.15pm, with a boarding time of 4.45."

So we took ourselves and our bags (and Adrienne's sister from London, who was coming to stay with us for a couple of nights) and colonised a few empty seats, breaking the boredom with a cup of coffee and a flick through a few magazines at the newsagents.

It wasn't long before 4.45 arrived. Some time after that, because of "operational reasons" (maybe, or maybe not, the same ones), the departure time was moved to 7.15. At that point one of our boys, perhaps not the one we would have expected, burst into tears. Murmurs went through the crowd, and a curious camaraderie developed. Fleeting but strong friendships were made. The renowned Australian sense of humour came to the fore: "Of course there is nobody from Tiger that you can talk to; you have to pay extra for that." [Explanation for overseas readers: Tiger is a rock-bottom budget airline. It has planes, a bit of terminal space, a few pilots, and not much more. Pretty much everything, except your seat on the plane, that you would expect to get with another airline, you have to pay extra for.]

Jules got friendly with a family from the south coast, who had bought, from the newsagents, a Bakugan toy, and started using it as the ball in an impromptu departure-lounge soccer game. Interestingly, and in a good advertisement for the Bakugan company, the thing survived a jolly good kicking intact.

Meal vouchers were handed out, reducing by roughly one quarter the airline's profit on each ticket. The food, of course, was overpriced crap, but it was the only food we had. (We discovered, too late, that the south coast crew had ordered in pizza.)

In due course we were revisited by Mrs Operational Reasons, who informed us that our flight was delayed until 10pm and we could, if we wanted, get a full refund on our tickets or agree to be moved to the 4.15pm flight the following day and be put up at an airport hotel for the night (thus plunging Tiger's return on the tickets into the red, one would imagine).

At this point, poor Stanley started to get a little bit stressed out, on account of having two non-negotiable full days of work ahead of him, and staring at the possibility of heading back to Geelong until the next available evening or early-morning flight (with another airline, obviously) and meanwhile working from the Melbourne office of his employer (which he could have done but in three-day-old clothes). Poor Stanley doesn't like being thrust out of his comfort zone. In addition, the 12-year-old, who has autism, and who is on considerable quantities of medication (which we had now run out of) and a restricted diet (ditto), also needed to be considered. (We have played the autism card before when travelling, but this time it wasn't going to work, obviously, because there was nobody to play it to.)

Meanwhile the rumour mill was saying that if enough people pulled out they would cancel the flight anyway, assuming there was actually a plane coming, in which case we would all be stuffed.

Our decision was to stick it out. We tried to get blankets and pillows for the boys, but of course there weren't any, even for those prepared to pay extra for them. I ended up reading most of a Philip Pullman book to the boys to help pass the time. Fortunately he is always very readable. Second meal vouchers were handed out. (How much money was Tiger actually going to lose in order to get us home?) This time we sensibly exchanged them for bottles of water, and ice creams all round (to hell with the restricted diet).

Gradually we were able to piece together, in a reasonably believable fashion, that there was a plane for us, it was coming from Brisbane, and when it had flown us to Canberra it would be flying some poor buggers from Canberra back to Melbourne on what was supposed to be a 7.15 pm flight.

Around 10.30 pm, I noticed some people who could conceivably have been disembarking passengers walking past a couple of glass doors some distance from where I was sitting. Fifteen minutes later, we were again called to the boarding gate (at which point cheers went up around the departure lounge), and some time later we were let through into a covered walkway, where we stood, in the chill night air, for some 10 or 15 minutes more. At this point the 12-year-old became convinced that we were never going to get home, and that, even if we did, our suitcase would surely not be coming.

Eventually they let us onto the plane. The pilot helpfully and comprehensively explained the reason behind all this messing about: "We had some issues this morning." Thanks for that.

We arrived in Canberra at 12.35 am. (Our suitcase arrived, too.) There is not much happening at Canberra airport at that time of the day. If we had had trouble getting our car out of the car park I don't know what we would have done. But all was well. (Six days later we are all still recovering, though.)

During the course of the week, and of course we have been relating this story quite a bit, it has emerged that pretty much everybody who has flown Tiger has a similar story to tell. It seems as if the date and time of your flight is, as they say, "indicative only". They will get you where you want to go, but when they will get you there is something you will find out when it happens. The other thing we have discovered is the large number of people who have flown with Tiger once only, and will not be doing so again. I suspect you might be able to include us in that category.

Not YouTube of the day

More of the Brian Eno project I posted a couple of days ago. I have a feeling this one actually comes first. I don't think that it makes a whole lot of difference.

YouTube of the day

Cute animals edition. Awwww.

Not YouTube of the day

Brian Eno and pals: Seven Sessions on a Milk Sea.

I'm thinking this is more interesting than anything on the album. It does sound a bit "busy", though. It will be interesting to see/hear where they take it.

Song of the day

"Silver Rider", by Robert Plant. And speaking of things that remind me of Ed Kuepper, there's this. Again, we are talking here of long, resonant, ringing guitar notes, teasing at a melody without ever quite spelling it out. (I have recently been expanding the Ed Kuepper Shrine at our house, so I may be more sensitive to comparisons than usual. Nevertheless, at moments like this I am inclined to think that Kuepper is as much a part of the guitar pantheon as Fahey, Thompson, Ribot and Page. Or should be.)

The new album, "Band of Joy", is the only Robert Plant I have heard that is not Led Zeppelin. And I have to say it isn't half bad. He even gets in a little of the ol' Zep yelp towards the end. Happy days.