So as I did last year, I’m going to take a look at what sort of non-food things I consumed throughout the previous year. That is, books, music, films, games and stuff. As before, I’m also uncertain whether this will be of any interest to anyone other than nerdy ole me, but I hope you will enjoy, particularly if data recording is a bit of a thing for you. Because, as you certainly should have gleaned from sticking around here, it is for me.
(I have been told this is all a bit Patrick Bateman. I disagree: I save my discussions of the work of Phil CollinsĀ for facetime.)
I don’t normally write throwaway reviews, but in this case I’m kind of compelled to as I feel reading this has left me with a mindset similar to that of a drained-battery talking toy: all slurred nonsense and encroaching entropy.
That’s not what you want from something that, on the face of it, should be a ball-tearing recitation of forgery, counterfeit and outright literary bullshittery. Continue reading “Book review: The Forger’s Shadow”→
So it’s a bit of a while between posts. There’s posts coming, but in the meantime enjoy the motivational stylings of Mr Henry Rollins and his 1992-version Band. Especially the first song.
In 2011, Robert Dessaix spent two weeks in a Darlinghurst hospital after a severe cardiac episode. Rescued by an angel in a profane t-shirt, and vouchsafed by a cautious receptionist, he was shipped off to hospital and saved, though not without a certain amount of bleeding and partner-summoning concern.
The War on Drugs has been in existence for decades. Thousands of people – if not millions – have died as a result of the prosecution of this war. But we’re never allowed, really, to question the success or the basic justice of such an event: drugs are bad, right?
OK, so thanks to the Facebook chain post doing the rounds, I’m doing that song-a-day-for-a-week thing where I post a song I like and write a bit about it. You should do it too, eh? (Seriously, if you like the post, go write your own, and tell me in the comments, as I’d like to read your picks.)
This is day seven. Again, there’s been a break in the continuity, but life continues to get in the way, I suppose. The song I have chosen for the seventh day is Pulp’s ‘Babies’.
‘Babies’ is a song I didn’t really like when I first heard it. I don’t know what it was – I sort of pegged myself as an INDIE ROCK guy, and this clip (from the song’s 1994 remixed version, which charted) irritated me at the time. I think it’s great now, but then – it seemed like an entirely manufactured, almost boy-band presentation. Which, Young Luke, was probably the fucking point. Continue reading “A week of songs: day seven”→
So, here we have two of Murakami’s earliest books placed back in print after thirty years. This reprint helps those outside Japan compare the gnomic author’s beginnings to his current work, without resorting to organ-sale prices for the original Kodansha English Library printing.
I was excited to read these, I must admit, largely because what’s presented are until-now missing parts of the author’s series of Rat novels. The problem is that they seem to offer not much more than a basic introduction to the characters, and a collection of random observations. There’s a lack of focus that’s frustrating (even by Murakami standards) and I assume this is why the books were out of English circulation for so long – apparently the author felt them unworthy of translation after the initial in-Japan run. Continue reading “Book review: Wind/Pinball: Two Novels”→
OK, so thanks to the Facebook chain post doing the rounds, I’m doing that song-a-day-for-a-week thing where I post a song I like and write a bit about it. You should do it too, eh? (Seriously, if you like the post, go write your own, and tell me in the comments, as I’d like to read your picks.)
This is day six. Again, there’s been some gaps between the posts due to, well, life, but today is a day, and it’s the sixth that I’ve written about a song, so deal with it, continuity sticklers. The song I’ve chosen today is You Am I‘s ‘Purple Sneakers’.
It’s important to note that this band was the one which probably meant the most to me as I went through university. I liked a bunch of music, but these guys were the first to really make me look at local music as something good in its own right, not just a pale shadow of overseas artists’ work. I discovered them as I was working in Year 12 holidays, from a now-defunct store in Pitt St Mall, where I hogged a listening post for the duration of Sound As Ever. It was kind of Seattle-sounding, but had more hooks – as the almost inescapable presence of songs such as ‘Berlin Chair’, ‘Adam’s Ribs’ or ‘Jaimme’s Got A Gal’ would prove that year. But more than that, this was an album by a bunch of dudes who sounded local. Continue reading “A week of songs: day six”→
OK, so thanks to the Facebook chain post doing the rounds, I’m doing that song-a-day-for-a-week thing where I post a song I like and write a bit about it. You should do it too, eh? (Seriously, if you like the post, go write your own, and tell me in the comments, as I’d like to read your picks.)
This is day five. It’s a fair whack after day four, but it’s sequentially day four. You know, life gets in the way sometimes. Anyway, the song I’ve chosen is “A Forest” by The Cure.
I was not a Cure fan from an early age. I grew up in country New South Wales and then, for some years, in Auckland, New Zealand, and found that I hadn’t really been exposed to them in the same grinding way I’d been exposed to Bruce Hornsby & The Range. (Yes, I guess that just is the way it is.) So when a friend of mine from school – Andrew Malone, who I can’t seem to find these days – loaned me his tape of Disintegration, the 13-year-old me was ecstatic. Of course, the single “Lullaby” got a thrashing, but the self-involved weirdness of the album seemed to burrow into me. Continue reading “A week of songs: day five”→
OK, so thanks to the Facebook chain post doing the rounds, I’m doing that song-a-day-for-a-week thing where I post a song I like and write a bit about it. You should do it too, eh? (Seriously, if you like the post, go write your own, and tell me in the comments, as I’d like to read your picks.)
This is day four. My pick for day four is a song that I have for years kind of thought was a personal anthem: Tom Waits’ “Goin’ Out West”.
This is, as with many others, a song I’d heard on Rage one late evening. This wasn’t the first Tom Waits song I’d heard. I had some of his earlier stuff, I think perhaps the twoEarly Yearsalbums which were very acoustic, and much more singer-songwriter. But this. This. Look at the filmclip – a guy who looks kind of like a monkey plays a midget guitar with a brakeman’s glove, in a world where everything is on fire. He high-kicks, singing about some kind of pornographic Big Rock Candy Mountain life that’s better out west, in the land of suntans. He’s not a bit player, baby – he’s a leading man, a lover man, a ruler and a fighter. Power chords fade in and out beneath tremolo guitar, while the percussion sounds like (and probably was)Ā someone beating the shit out of furniture.
Yeah nah. 