Category: Musings

’90s musical memories: 3/7

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Day three, and I figure it’s time to put a bit of sleaze into the mix. So I’ve chosen one of the best: Kim Salmon & the Surrealists’ ‘Gravity’, from the Sin Factory album. It’s true, it’s not the reason I picked it up – that would be the solid-gold riff of ‘I Fell’ and its accompanying filmclip – but in terms of a statement of what that band’s about, I think you can’t go past the opening seconds, where an opening drum snap kicks off a world of full throated fuck-off wailing,

The song demands you listen to it. The Tony Cohen production is great – the drums are like woodchopping, the guitar a fuzzy knife, the bass slinking about somewhere. And the burr in Kim’s vocal is fantastic, as he basically sings about the inescapable notion that you’re gonna fuckin’ die and there’s nothing you can do but (hello, chorus) scream. It’s pretty great.

(I mean fuck, just listen to that rhythm section in the no-guitar part before the first verse repeats: it’s all slinky, pant-sniffin’ Brian Hooper greatness with some super-Cramps style Tony Pola tom work. It’s like flick-knife greasers dancing.)  Continue reading “’90s musical memories: 3/7” →

’90s musical memories: 2/7

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Today’s choice of music is from a band I’ve liked for a long time, who moved to London and fell apart before regrouping years later to produce further compelling work. They were a band that I dragged most of my friends along to see at various places, and they were the first musicians I ever interviewed (for Honi Soit, the Sydney uni newspaper) after helping them load in to the now defunct Northpoint Tavern in North Sydney. They are the only band I’ve dressed up for – in a three-piece suit, no less, as some kind of impoverished student imitation of their dapper numbers – and yet also are one of the few bands for whom my enthusiasm does not, in hindsight, appear to have been misplaced. It’s time for The Paradise Motel, folks.  Continue reading “’90s musical memories: 2/7” →

’90s musical memories: 1/7

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Over on Facebook I’ve been nominated for one of those chain things where you post a song each day for a week, with the 1990s being a theme. So I’m gonna do it, and I’ll write a bit more at length over here on what I’ve chosen and why.

The first song I’m gonna go with is one from one of the first albums I remember buying as a uni student, from the CD shop that used to be on the Wentworth side of the footbridge over City Road. It was a place I ended up spending a lot of time in, listening to releases on headphones before purchasing, and I remember buying a lot of things from there – probably at the terribly jacked prices we thought were normal in the ’90s -because it was somewhere to fuck off to when I didn’t have lectures, or didn’t have friends waiting at Manning Bar for me to, soberly, relate my latest romantic failure. Continue reading “’90s musical memories: 1/7” →

Waiting for the gift of sound and vision

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Today is the day I learned that David Bowie had died. So I’m writing some thoughts down to try and make sense of it. This probably seems strange, as I am normally averse to displays of grief over public figures. It’s always seemed a little – I don’t know, a bit weird. Almost unnecessary. But now, perhaps for the first time, I feel it.

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And now he’s gone home.

I was at drinks and the news flashed on my phone; could it be a hoax, a hacked status update? Later, as I rode a train to meet friends, it was confirmed: Duncan Jones and the Beeb showed that this wasn’t the perennial internet jape of proclaiming someone dead. This was the real thing. And I felt teary, and weird, and like I didn’t want to be anywhere because this was, as stupid as it sounds, about someone very important to me, who I had never, would never meet. Dear, strong friends were lamenting; I’d not felt the tyranny of distance so keenly as when one suggested that we should all be together tonight, with a case of wine and music. But we’re in Los Angeles, Boston, Sydney, Helsinki, Amsterdam… all over the world.

I know, this probably will read as something rather indulgent – no different from the torrent of thinkpieces and reminiscences the coming weeks will bring – but this is my blog, so this is mine. There’s a bunch of obituaries you can read. The NY Times. The BBC. The Guardian. Vanity Fair. Mine is a bit different. It’s me processing this feeling of loss, which is strange. I know nobody’s ever an arsehole just after they’ve died, but it’s weird – I realise today I’d never really entertained the idea of Bowie dying. Because, like the sun, I felt he’d always be there. He always had been, right? Continue reading “Waiting for the gift of sound and vision” →

2015 Consumption: A Look at Some Stuff I Liked

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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 Collins for facetime.)

Yep.

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Tattoo you (or me)

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I have always been intrigued by tattoos, and perhaps a little afraid.

I think the first time I ever saw one that sticks in my memory is on an episode of Doctor Who: Jon Pertwee’s doctor is pictured, at the very start of the run, with a tattoo on his arm. I think it’s a question mark, a very Who thing to have – but I can’t be sure. At the time – and this was during my prime write-to-actors period – I think I felt it was a Pertwee tattoo: something that belonged to the actor even though I know he was playing a character.

A man’s gotta look after his hair.

(It’s a weird time, that – where you’re old enough to know that the person you think is cool on TV is just a grown-up pretending to be someone, but in fan letters and consumption you switch off that piece of knowledge, so that the person is really just Doctor Who foremost. Cognitive dissonance before I knew what it really was, maybe.)

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Fleeting flute moments

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I am learning the shakuhachi.

That is probably a misrepresentation of the development of my ability to this point, however. Because really, even though I’ve owned a plastic shakuhachi – for there’s no point in owning a bamboo one, worth thousands, until I can play something worth a damn on a PVC, injection-moulded copy – for a couple of years now, only the most basic tones and articulations are within my reach.

A Good Use for Sundays.

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There will be blood (but not in me)

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Orinoco flow.

Today I will catch the train to Chatswood and let a Polish woman stick a big needle into my arm, in order to remove a bunch of my blood. Not enough to leave me deflated on the bed like some kind of Flat Stanley character, but enough to make me feel dizzy, maybe.

I think it’s my tenth? I’m not sure. I’ve donated a bunch of times over the past few years, and by their reckoning (or is it my misremembering?) the lives of three people are saved from each donation. That means if it’s my tenth, I’ve saved the lives of thirty people. I’m a regular fucking Superman, except my superpower is the ability to withstand being used as a human pincushion. For a period. Continue reading “There will be blood (but not in me)” →