tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44710135900950649082023-06-20T06:59:29.661-07:00RLMRLMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095503841635913783noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471013590095064908.post-28035879448621345952011-01-21T03:25:00.000-08:002011-01-21T03:43:59.496-08:00Seeing The NecksLooking out the door of the Harbourside Brasserie onto Hickson Road, hearing rain sounds and Chris Abrahams' alien trills intertwined. <br /><br />A night at the Vanguard when one whole piece felt like an extended outro, 50 minutes of ascending to heaven. <br /><br />A night at the Basement when Tony Buck played only his hi-hat. <br /><br />After a different show at the Basement hearing Errol Garner's "Laura" in the taxi on the way home, ecstatically receptive. <br /><br />Swimming pools and apartment blocks at the Metro. Taking home a copy of Aether and listening to it deep into the night. <br /><br />Decrepit dancehall at Clovelly Bowling Club.<br /><br />Tonight, walking across the footbridge from Sydney Uni and having to stop to listen to the cars on Parramatta Road and the wind shaking every leaf on the tree.RLMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095503841635913783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471013590095064908.post-2587325831866244072010-12-23T11:03:00.000-08:002010-12-23T12:14:14.974-08:00Ed Kuepper - Rooms of the Magnificent 1986Having a good time with this record now it's summer. Even in a time before Ed Kuepper's catalogue became the massive sprawling monster that it is today, this LP tended to be a little overshadowed. Nestled unobtrusively between the First Solo Album (Electrical Storm) and the Big Commerical Push record (Everybody's Got To), I think it is probably better than either and in with a decent shout of being his best solo effort. <br /><br />Electrical Storm appears to be a reaction to the death of the Clowns, with stripped-back personnel (Kuepper played almost all the instruments) and featuring vastly simplified song structures. It's a cool record with some great songs but I don't listen to it much. On a side note, one of the pleasures of Kuepper's epic run of shows with Jeffery Wegener over 2005-2008 has been hearing him play Electrical Storm songs with the Clowns drummer, one of those intriguing little snapshots of an alternate history that never was.<br /><br />Anyway, for me Rooms of the Magnificent is THE great post-Clowns solo LP. It features a lot of what made that band great (cool horn lines, smart band, off-kilter song structures) yet sits comfortably within a more classical pop/rock idiom. It is a natural progression from the last two Clowns records, which were pushing towards a "straighter" sound after the awesome cartoon excess of the Uddich-Smuddich period. <br /><br />The Rooms... band is AMAZING! Various Clowns alumni are featured (bassist Paul Smith, horn players Glad Reed and Diane Spence, and dead set hero legend pianist Chris Abrahams). It is also Kuepper's first recorded outing with key drummer Mark Dawson, who turns in a great performance - able to provide a more "technical" rhythmic backbone when required, but here displaying a bit of swing and skitter that is at times reminiscent of Kuepper's jazz-inflected past. Also you have Melanie Oxley on backing vocals, which is a lovely luxury. The playing is warm and intelligent with plenty of space left in the arrangements; somehow this allows bright Sydney sunlight to shine through the gaps and suffuse everything with a lovely summer glow. <br /><br />And yeah, the arrangements are teriffic. If Kuepper gets any popular acclaim these days, it seems to be as a Good Songwriter or a Good Guitarist. Both of these are true enough, but I think his definitive strengths lie in being a FUCKING GREAT ARRANGER. Whether we're talking about the dynamic depth charges hidden within Laughing Clowns songs or the definitive punk soul horn arrangements of Know Your Product, or even the hypnotic extended jams of Honey Steel's Gold, these carefully constructed passages of ensemble playing are where Kuepper truly shines. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygYx_a2bLls">Without Your Mirror</a> is a good example, with a stately 50-second intro that has nothing to do with the slightly twitchy anxiety of the rest of the song. It is these idiosyncracies that make the album, as with the Clowns Kuepper's musical intelligence seems to be working at a frenzied rate and able to weave disparate segments into coherent structures. <br /><br />More straightforward is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QI_d674q5yU">Also Sprach the King of Euro Disco</a>, the perversely named "hit" single from this LP that's one of those songs that people who were around at the time recall with great fondness. Great Morricone-esque twangy guitar, great horns, memorably odd lyric.<br /><br />Anyway, it's all great. It's one of the few Kuepper solo albums that I reckon is entirely without duff songs. Oddly, he doesn't seem to draw much from this album when playing live - I <span style="font-style:italic;">think</span> I remember "Without Your Mirror" being played at a Honey Steel's Gold-era show, and Sea Air features on one of his late-90s solo CDs. It would be an excellent cantidate for a Don't Look Back kinda show, although I can't see this ever happening.RLMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095503841635913783noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471013590095064908.post-59356444961286781232010-12-16T20:08:00.000-08:002010-12-16T23:20:33.840-08:00Gorillaz - Sydney Entertainment CentreGreat gig. Experienced a sort of vertiginous joy for the first couple of songs, monster renditions of awesome jams by superb musicians. It's hard to describe how cool it is to be digging a pumping band onstange, then to be struck by the fact that it's FUCKING MICK JONES AND PAUL SIMENON UP THERE and then they wheel on Bobby Womack and it's a mind-blower. <br /><br />I mean, I don't like getting too idolatory re old rock dudes, but there's still something bullshit cool TO ME about seeing half the Clash posing like mad over a spectacular spirit of '83 groove. <br /><br />I reckon I heard Mick Jones play about six notes all night, and suspect he is there mainly to look awesome and provide VIBE. It is like he is prancing about between big neon quote marks. I dig it. <br /><br />Never liked Damon Albarn (having lived through the bloody Country House/Charmless Man phase of Blur is lifelong-scarring shit) but definitely appreciate that he has taken his measure of fame and influence and used it to do something nuts and wildly over-ambitious. Never really paid any attention to Gorillaz before tonight, we tread different paths, but this was a real triumph of a gig.<br /><br />It struck me that the Gorillaz project is a positive response to the 21st Century, one that glories in the possibilites of a globally-connected and media saturated world. Most of the music I listen to feels like it is in opposition to this world - and much music I dislike is kinda in denial of it. It felt good to walk out of the gig straight onto a concrete flyover, look down at the lights of the monorail terminus and feel in synch with the night, with 2010. It was similar to the feeling I remember after watching certain Michael Mann films, another artist who can make the early 21st Century seem a pretty awesome place to be.RLMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095503841635913783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471013590095064908.post-70574335848304614502010-11-18T10:55:00.000-08:002010-11-18T11:02:50.339-08:00Honey Steel's GoldI wrote this the day after the show and it has been sitting on a hard drive ever since. Some of the wordier bits have been snipped, which gives an idea of how wordy it was in the first place. <br /><br /><br />ED KUEPPER<br />Don't Look Back (Honey Steel's Gold)<br />Enmore Theatre, Sydney – Friday February 8, 2008<br /><br /><br /><br />It was with a blend of suspicion and anticipation that I approached this inaugural Australian Don't Look Back event. Suspicion, because the inherent conservatism and predictability of the format seems to represent the antithesis of interesting art - hard to trust any initiative that would make marketing departments feel so comfortable.<br /><br />On the positive, Ed Kuepper was in a strong position to survive this backward look with credibility intact. If revisiting a seventeen-year-old album verbatim is a potentially unedifying business, the fact that a resurgent Kuepper has just delivered his best solo set in years (2007's “Jean Lee and the Yellow Dog”) helped to quell reservations. The consistent quality of Kuepper’s recent live outings added to the expectation that we might be in for something more challenging and substantial than a palsied grab at the glories of yesteryear. <br /><br />I was particularly interested in seeing how Kuepper's current live aesthetic – overflowing with electric energy, intensely rhythmic yet exhilaratingly loose – would intersect with the mannered, stately arrangements of the Honey Steel's Gold LP.<br /><br />Opener “King of Vice” is fantastic – the choice of classy jazz pianist Alister Spence to substitute for original contributor Chris Abrahams is an inspired call, and as the elegiac keyboard motif begins to drift out over the Enmore crowd it is met with a cheer of recognition. Kuepper allows himself a wry smile as he begins to send out sheets of ringing, complex chording over the steady rolling rhythm patterns produced by legendary drummer Jeffrey Wegener and nearly-as-legendary bassist Peter Oxley. <br /><br />There is an exciting tension created by the band's intense concentration; they are trying hard to stay on top of unfamiliar material and for the most part succeed with honours. The songs are delivered with an edgy electric charge which in many cases elevates them above their recorded counterparts – this is not a plodding, note-perfect recreation. It is louder, less controlled, straining powerfully against the template of the original work, a full-blooded reinvention.<br /><br />Some of the hypnotically repetitive, semi-improvised quality of Kuepper's best live work is brought in to play for “Friday's Blue Cheer / Libertines of Oxley”, another long and intricately-constructed track which gives Wegener in particular a chance to shine. His ability to play rhythmically sophisticated material with violently unpredictable feel and fire is an extraordinary gift, and he deserves to be more widely regarded as one of our very greatest musical treasures. <br /><br />Sort-of-hits “Everything I've Got Belongs To You” and “The Way I Made You Feel” elicit the most enthusiastic crowd response – the former's classical pop construction renders it impervious to even the slightly perfunctory rendition it receives tonight, while the latter's likable groove is augmented by some fine keyboard colouring from Spence. <br /><br />Fittingly, the set peaks with the album's title track – largely comprised of a pulsing meditation on a single chord (lyrical content: 14 impenetrable words), it's a compelling example of Kuepper at his best. Here he is operating in a realm of his own devising, poised somewhere uniquely interesting between the worlds of primal rock and roll, traditional songcraft and adventurous sonic exploration. His band navigate the landscape with assurance, carefully negotiating the subtle dynamic shifts of this deceptively simple piece. It is quite stunning. <br /><br />If the set flags a little towards the end, then this is a fault shared by the original record – perhaps it might have been worth rearranging the sequence for this event? Nonetheless, the meditative instrumental “Summerfield” is a beautiful way to finish, Spence providing an exquisite, minimal piano motif which Kuepper overlays with plangent guitar figures. The mood slowly alternates between tension and resolve, with Wegener and Oxley providing gently shaded support. Eventually they drift to a halt, replicating the album's final fade – after a near-perfect display of vital and intelligent ensemble playing, this thoroughly successful recital ends with a whisper. Sublime.RLMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095503841635913783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471013590095064908.post-2871372892764461092010-11-17T14:41:00.001-08:002010-11-17T16:08:41.929-08:00Reformation EraI've been thinking about a comment on <a href="http://lorrainecrescent.blogspot.com/">Lorraine Crescent</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>Nothing bugs me more than people who think they saw the Buzzcocks because they saw them tour Australia in 1990 or they saw the Laughing Clowns because they saw them in 2008. GET REAL!</blockquote><br /><br />Well, yes. I know where he is coming from, when I was at high school we used to fucking loathe old cool bands reforming. We would curl up in agony while (still compulsively) watching The Who <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgFgHVNRgv0&feature=related">slaughter their reputation</a>. Now it is hard to throw a brick without hitting a bunch of old audience cunce reliving a teenage dream they never probably experienced, or a bunch of young audience cunce pretending they are at Monterey or something. I am still deeply bummed about Joe Strummer having died when he did, but there is one good thing about it.<br /><br />The Who are an interesting one because when I saw them on their tour here a couple of years ago they were still absolutely terrible. That isn't necessarily interesting in and of itself but many bands have, since the 80s nadir of bloated session musos and backing vox, become extremely adept at serving up a convincing replica of their classic sound (ie Stones) whereas the Who murdered all their songs with Pete on a horrible Eric Clapton Strat. I suppose that shows some sort of integrity, although they advertised the tour with the old Marquee Club poster so they lose several thousand points for that.<br /><br />(Often my highlights of these shows are the moments that break the inexorable flow of "classic" narrative a bit - ie one of my favourite bits of the Who show was Pete doing nasty 80s post-Moon single Eminence Front.)<br /><br />It is a thorny one because if you go to far in one direction you encounter that rotten old bore, "authenticity" in rock - and if you go too far in the other then you endorse the sort of pathetic fantasy facsimile of experience that the 21st century seems so good at serving up.<br /><br />Also, Prince was shit for ages and didn't play any of his old songs. When I saw him he was good and played heaps of his good old songs. Technically, had he reformed? Bowie poses similar dilemmas.<br /><br />On a small tangent, I reckon that in the future we will have BAND BRANDS that receive their imprimatur from corporate ownership rather than actually containing any original members or anything. Ie there will be a touring version of The Rolling Stones long after Mick and Keith are dead, and then if you're gonna have one why not have a couple to maximise your ability to exploit multiple markets simultaneously? This is a lot like cover bands, sure, but with audiences who will say "I SAW THE STONES LAST NIGHT" and think that it is what they ACTUALLY DID.<br /><br />ANYWAY. The unfortunate fact is that while these reformation shows are mostly terrible, some are really good.<br /><br />I have been mulling over my personal Band Reformation Acceptability Index for a while now and while I don't have any answers I believe these are all pertinent questions.<br /><br />Are enough significant original members present?<br />Did the band have a sound that was unique to the players involved?<br />Is there new material?<br />Does the new material suck?<br />Are they finding new things to say through the old material? This is a bit mystical but it does happen.<br />Was the band cruelly ignored back in the day and hence possibly genuinely deserving of a moment in the sun?<br />Were they inextricably linked to youthful rebellion?<br />Do they have a point to prove?<br />Can they pull it off without looking stupid?<br />What are they wearing?<br />Are they too fat?<br />Does anybody care?<br /><br />There are very possibly other factors that I have forgotten. The answers to many of these can be nuanced, and the way to an Acceptable Reunion can lie in the alchemical combination of a few of these criteria. <br /><br />The "does anybody care" one is interesting to me, because if they don't it takes away the twitchy suspicions of THE CASH IN (another one of those dumb rock double-standards, as if the whole fucking edifice of 20th century pop/rock wasn't a highly commercial venture). When Tactics played shows to support their discography compilations, there were probably a couple of hundred attendees across all shows - but they were all people for who Tactics would have been really bloody important band, and Studdert etc played in a way (and with an attitude) that honoured that respect. It was like a private celebration and it was intense and awesome because of that. They were really good nights, it would be a drag to have missed them.<br /><br />Anyway, I got an awful lot out of seeing Laughing Clowns. I heard the people who made that music play it live, and that gave me some priceless insight into the songs and their power. This in turn deepened my already substantial love for the band. At their first Basement show in May last year I reckon they were commanding all the fire and darkness that I've heard on the records and bootlegs and it wasn't in a lazy walkthrough or simple nostalgia exercise.<br /><br />I draw a very sharp distinction between this experience and having seen them as a skinny-suited working band back in the day, but I still don't think the more recent experience is invalid. Being cautious of reunions is a sound policy I think, but at times the music (and/or our response to it) can transcend all the social constructions we place around it and I'd always want to experience those moments regardless of their "authenticity".<br /><br />Finally, I often think of the beautiful LP title from the (reformed) New York Dolls - one day it will please us to remember even this.RLMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095503841635913783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471013590095064908.post-37302184927933676682010-11-16T14:43:00.000-08:002010-11-16T15:11:22.586-08:00The Cure - Live x 5<span style="font-style: italic;">Sydney Entertainment Centre 18 Aug 1992<br />Sydney Entertainment Centre 14 Oct 2000<br />Sydney Entertainment Centre 15 Oct 2000<br />Sydney Entertainment Centre 09 Aug 2007<br />Sydney Entertainment Centre 10 Aug 2007 </span><br /><br />The Cure = teenage years, of course of course. I'm pretty fond of my teenage self, I reckon he was a pain in the arse but he still knew a thing or two. Driving through hilly suburbia in an eternal late summer, listening to Ride, obsessed with girls, creating angst and misery from perfectly agreeable circumstances. Robert Smith loomed large in those days, larger than even the giant lipstick-wearing potato of today. I never saw a peak-period Cure show, the closest I came was seeing the Wish tour in 1992. This was almost the same line-up as the legendary Prayer Tour shows of 1989 (disappointingly minus keyboardist Roger O'Donnell). They played well but the intensity wasn't there, and even a Prayer Tour show would have sucked in the Sydney Entertainment Centre. Realistically they probably sucked in most of the massive arenas they played on that tour, the clinically beautiful recording of Entreat creating unrealistic expectations for fautless Cure live experiences.<br /><br />In 2000 I saw two shows on the Dream Tour, a conscious attempt to recapture the intensity and drama of the band's "dark" classics (Disintegration, Faith, Pornography). (I've always loved this duality in the Cure's music, the comfortable juxtapositon of crushing gloom and giddy pop - real life contains these kind of vertiginous shifts in experience). The shows were quite moving, the setlists laden with choice pearls from the back catalogue. The band were a bit lumpen compared to the wonderfully sparky and flexible Gallup/Thompson/Williams core but Smith's singing, playing and strange presence were still compelling. The tour was sponsored by classic rock radio station MMM, and was notable for its lack of classic rock radio tracks. Seeing Smith maltreat his guitar over the fascistic cheering crowd samples of Pornography while the real (capacity) crowd looked on nonplussed was an unexpectedly great punk rock moment.<br /><br />Re the setlists: The Cure always had "special" songs that fans felt lucky to have caught live - Faith is arguably the jewel, also The Same Deep Water As You, Forever, a few more. As a young obsessive I would dream of the moment when the drums to Faith would start up and I would realise that I was part of a privileged audience, bestowed with this rare treat. It was unhealthy really! This notion of preserving the power of certain precious songs seems to be a bit of a lost art, perhaps there are bands that still do it but the internet age has made it a lot easier for bands to fashion fan-pleasing setlists should they so desire. It's an interesting idea, similar in essence to Prince "withholding" Purple Rain from an arena show so he could play it at full power at The Basement later that evening. The Dream Tour was notable for the high rotation of highly-"desirable" deep cuts, with Faith featuring pretty regularly (alongside All Cats Are Grey, The Drowning Man, Siamese Twins, The Figurehead etc). It was great to see all those songs live but it was also slightly disappointing, somehow, to have them served up so readily. At the same time, the tour seems to have been concieved as a sort of "gift to the fans" so I'll take it with good grace.<br /><br />It was certainly a very affecting weekend, kinda built a bridge between the spiky optimism of my teenage years and the slightly tired and jaded figure of my late 20's. It was a time I felt I had lost my way somewhat, and being moved to tears by Plainsong and Like Cockatoos was a fantastic way to get my bearings. A million of these banal little personal stories folded inside big-time rock biographies. My key memory from the show is watching Robert Smith on the second night, standing as close as I probably dared to dream in my "perfect" imaginings. He was playing an impassioned solo in Bloodflowers, it felt like he was desperately trying to inject some fire and passion into a group (and album) that he maybe, somewhere, knew was a bit bloodless and plodding.<br /><br />When I saw the 2007 tour I was about to become a parent for the first time, so the opportunity to temporarily commune with my teenage self was welcome. The band were excellent, with no keyboards and Porl Thompson back on board. There was a sense that Robert Smith knew his band had gotten a little bit lost and was trying to get some life back into proceedings, to force things outside the comfort zone of glacial keyboards and familiar arrangements. He sang clearly and beautifully and the band seemed like more of a living, breathing entity than either of the previous two tours I had seen. The setlists were fun and varied considerably between the two nights - Push, what a great live song! There was <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUKaxTwGMVI">a judderingly intense version of Disintegration</a> (what a fucking weird song! It seems to stand alone in their catalogue, unknowable and monolithic, sui generis), and Shake Dog Shake was a killer. Also enjoyed being as genuinely surprised by a setist inclusion as I've ever been with the performance of How Beautiful You Are from the Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me LP, played for the first time in 20-odd years.<br /><br />I'd still love to see The Cure at a venue other than the Entertainment Centre. Even at that rotten barn they're one of the very few bands that I'd probably always go and watch just for old times' sake. Robert Smith is a peculiar presence in modern music, he is now in the odd position of being both massively influential and deeply irrelevant, and my heart goes out to him as he tries to find a way to reconnect with the power of his earlier art. Many foolishly intense hours spent listening to his music are a significant part of my life experience, associated with happy memories of teenage infatuation and friendship - on one level I can look at their catalogue as daft and indulgent but it represents a fondly-regarded time and one that is great to revisit every couple of years.RLMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095503841635913783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471013590095064908.post-14124617407873600742010-06-19T03:19:00.001-07:002010-06-19T03:21:37.971-07:00Living in the FutureDoes it get more miserable than visiting a website every day and clicking a VOTE button so that Pepsi might give researchers into Rett syndrome a miniscule proportion of their annual marketing spend? It's like being in Max Headroom or something.RLMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095503841635913783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471013590095064908.post-57593324678898921122009-01-26T15:51:00.000-08:002009-01-26T22:44:03.310-08:00Laughing Clowns - Secret LegendsTen wildly subjective reasons why they could be your favourite band.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1) Possessions</span> (from <span style="font-style: italic;">Law of Nature</span> LP, 1984): In the vein of their sort-of-hit "Sometimes", something approaching a soul stomper given the Clowns treatment. A pretty good little song given a touch of greatness via a piano part contributed by Chris Abrahams. His heavily percussive one-note figure in the outro is a fascinating early snapshot of the style he currently deploys to such devastating effect in The Necks.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">2) Peter Milton Walsh</span> (bass player on <span style="font-style: italic;">Law of Nature</span>): When he joined the Clowns, Walsh had already released music as bandleader of The Apartments and Out of Nowhere (an intriguing post-Clowns exploration whose lone single featured Jeffrey Wegener on drums). So why is this notable? Walsh went on to release four LPs with a resurrected Apartments, exquisitely crafted meditations on the transience of glamour and the poignancy of ordinary lives that mark him out as one of the very finest classical songwriters this country has ever produced. Great tunes, too. With depressing inevitability, this means that his body of work has been even more unfathomably overlooked & undervalued than Ed Kuepper's. No mean feat. Anyway, for me this is the equivalent of having Dylan play bass in the Beatles - and it's some pretty great bass-playing, too.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">3) Collapse Board</span> (from <span style="font-style: italic;">Laughing Clowns 3</span> EP, 1980): A live staple, Kuepper recently referred to this as "the most depressing song ever written", and he has a point. A half-speed dirge with lyrics about a condemned man's last hours, it goes on forever and has a number of false endings to trick the unwary listener into thinking that the surging misery has relented. Towards the end, Kuepper compresses the chorus ("then you are standing on the collapse board again") into "board again" - it sounds a lot like "bored again", as though he is taunting any audience members who might be finding this trip a little difficult to endure. Not just an excercise in audience alienation, it is also an incredibly powerful piece of music that features some of the band's most impressive ensemble playing.<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">4) Jeffrey Wegener:</span> The post-punk Gene Krupa? Perhaps you mightn't have thought that sounded a particularly good idea, but watching him play will quickly convince you otherwise. Actually, there's more to Wegener's style than any glib "jazz virtuosity-meets-punk energy" formulation. He is a genuine original, and uniquely expressive behind a kit. Onstage he displays a perfect mix of aggression and intelligence - watching him in full flight is simply incredible. There aren't too many bands where your gaze will be glued to the drummer, only affording an occasional glance at the singer/guitarist. In the olden days they used to set him up down the front of the stage, a practice I hope they resurrect at some point in the near future. It's a funny observation, but I'm not sure there's ever been another band where the drummer made such an irreplaceable contribution to the sound. Back playing again after a long absence from the scene, every chance to hear him perform is a gift.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">5) Lucky Days </span>(from <span style="font-style: italic;">Laughing Clowns</span> 1979 ep): This is one of my favourites - the awesome grinding guitar intro builds to a skronky sax peak before the song veers off somewhere else entirely, all in the first 40 seconds. A Clowns song is often four songs, but not in a nasty prog way - these are masterpieces of compressed narrative and dynamic agility, brilliantly-constructed puzzles that are constantly subverting the listener's expectations about the kind of song they're hearing. It's all held together with a unique mix of audacious structures and inspired musicianship (with a dash of bloody-mindedness). After 4 years with their 3Cd collected works, I am still discovering new ways to listen to the songs - every so often a new one "clicks" and I love the band even more.<br /><br />(While I think this process of "discovering" the songs is partly a question of the listener's commitment and readiness to appreciate unorthodox structures, perhaps it is also worth recalling that many of these songs were built for live performance - and while the often lo-fi recording does bring an appealing sense of murk and gloom, it might sometimes obscure some of their more propulsive and energetic qualities. "Come One, Come All" is a song that suddenly makes perfect sense after recently seeing a spirited live version).<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">6) Bob Farrell:</span> The original Clowns sax player, responsible for some of the most thrillingly evil moments on their early records. Supported their recent GOMA show with a enjoyably bewildering set of meandering poetry and expansively simple piano (with a bit of sax in the middle).<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">7) New Bully In The Town</span> (from <span style="font-style: italic;">Ghosts of an Ideal Wife</span> LP, 1985): 3:53 of extraordinary, high-energy blues. Maybe the most straightforward Clowns track of all from their final and most uncomplicatedly rocking album. It still ventures nowhere near cliche, thanks in particular to a stunning, elegiac piano motif from Louis Tillett (another super-high quality Clowns sideman) and Wegener's tirelessly skittering drums, a masterclass in sustained excitement. Kudos too to Kuepper's droll, literate take on blues braggadocio. Is this the only Clowns song without horns? Made a triumphant return at <a href="http://stripedsunlight.blogspot.com/2009/01/laughing-clowns-brisbane-gallery-of.html">the GOMA show</a> with Louise Elliot playing flute - still extraordinary.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">8) An air of mystery:</span> I dunno, for a long time you really had to <span style="font-style: italic;">want</span> to like this band. Just as there are poor fools out there who think the Sex Pistols were a better group than Public Image Limited, the Clowns' origins in the aftermath of the Saints split has unfavourably influenced their reception by the public at large - I've met a fair few people who saw them back in the day and regarded them as some kind of abomination, a fact that I find both frustrating and kind of cool. Maybe because of this ill-feeling, much of the back catalogue spent a long time out of print - and even when rereleased it hasn't enjoyed excellent distribution. In terms of secondary materials, there are a handful of live recordings, some photographs and that's pretty much it. The histories that do mention the Clowns have alluded to drug-fueled personality clashes and there were certainly a number of line-up changes, but the details are pretty hazy - and I kind of like it that way.<br /><br />When the book comes out I'll read it, but in this era of obsessive documentation there is also something special about the spaces where your imagination is allowed free reign; I also enjoy the way that the lack of a "cult of personality" means that the music is allowed to be the most important thing, the properly enduring legacy.<br /><br />Perhaps these are the final days of the Clowns' spectral existence, with the great reception for their reformation suggesting history might be ready to provide them with their rightful accolades. That's a good thing too. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds did something fantastic in getting the Clowns back together and providing such a magnificent stage for their return - the second-best thing about their comeback has been seeing and hearing about new converts to this remarkable group.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9) Louise Elliot's playing on Eternally Yours</span> (1984 single): A song that continues to bewitch 25 years after it first appeared - I currently have 10 versions of this song on my iPod and they are all worth listening to. There are probably a dozen more floating about on both official releases and bootlegs - Died Pretty did a version, Nick Cave was rumoured to have recorded it for <span style="font-style: italic;">Kicking Against The Pricks</span>, and if there was any justice then it would be a oft-covered standard and we'd all be sick of it.<br /><br />Anyway, this is the one. Ed Kuepper did something pretty remarkable, and managed to rearrange rock music's three basic chords in an interesting new way, creating a hazy circular drone with a guitar that sounds like it is shearing off steel shards of melody. Jeff Wegener provides atypically metronomic drumming, and Peter Walsh sets up a nice relaxed half-groove that's on just the indie side of funky. Then Louise Elliot seals the deal and makes her defining contribution to the band. Possibly the instantly recognisable horn figure at the beginning was originally devised by Kuepper? In any case, the peaks reached in the concluding solo all belong to Elliot, and it's not really worth trying to write about but is most certainly worth hearing yet again.<br /><br /><a style="left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;" title="Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus" class="abp-objtab-08291577184324016 visible ontop" href="http://www.youtube.com/v/8PeGHeF2AHc&hl=en&fs=1"></a><a style="left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;" title="Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus" class="abp-objtab-08291577184324016 visible ontop" href="http://www.youtube.com/v/8PeGHeF2AHc&hl=en&fs=1"></a><a style="left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;" title="Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus" class="abp-objtab-08291577184324016 visible ontop" href="http://www.youtube.com/v/8PeGHeF2AHc&hl=en&fs=1"></a><a style="left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;" title="Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus" class="abp-objtab-08291577184324016 visible ontop" href="http://www.youtube.com/v/8PeGHeF2AHc&hl=en&fs=1"></a><a style="left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;" title="Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus" class="abp-objtab-08291577184324016 visible ontop" href="http://www.youtube.com/v/8PeGHeF2AHc&hl=en&fs=1"></a><a style="left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;" title="Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus" class="abp-objtab-08291577184324016 visible ontop" href="http://www.youtube.com/v/8PeGHeF2AHc&hl=en&fs=1"></a><a style="left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;" title="Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus" class="abp-objtab-08291577184324016 visible ontop" href="http://www.youtube.com/v/8PeGHeF2AHc&hl=en&fs=1"></a><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/8PeGHeF2AHc&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/8PeGHeF2AHc&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />It's a lyrically slippery song, consisting of fragments of dialogue that manage to generate feeling while resisting interpretation. It must all mean something to Kuepper - the song's title was also used for the second Saints LP, and he has constantly revisited the song in his post-Clowns career (the best is probably <span style="font-style: italic;">Today Wonder</span>'s gentle acoustic reflection). The hypnotic simplicity of the chord structure allied to the private mystery of the lyrics is an enduring combination - although Kuepper's subsequent versions of the song are always compelling, they always feel like they are somehow exploriging the absence of Elliot's transcendent saxophone.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10. They are playing together again:</span> I have seen Laughing Clowns play 3 times in the last 10 days. GET FUCKED. Not only that, but they've met & surpassed my high expectations. I could quibble about wonky sound and not-quite-right venues, but the five people making this noise are making it with passion and commitment that shames many bands a third their age. There is an extra joy to be had from the fact that they've been playing to good-sized crowds and receiving rapturous receptions - they must feel absolutely vindicated that the inspired music of their youth has withstood the decades of indifference and neglect. These guys ploughed a tough furrow in unfriendly times, and they deserve to have that work acknowledged.<br /><br />There are more shows on the way, and talk of new material. The latter is cause for cautious optimism - Kuepper's most recent album (also featuring Wegener) is his best for a fair while, and their live work together since 2005 has been frequently stunning. However it goes, this has already been much more than a run-of-the-mill reunion. All things are possible in the future; for now it is still enough to savour these remarkable songs blasted out live by the only people who could ever perform them. These are golden days and giants walk the earth once again.RLMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095503841635913783noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471013590095064908.post-21128416394165609402008-07-14T23:50:00.000-07:002008-07-15T03:40:09.505-07:00Miracle in Marrickville in Erskineville<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Over the last few years I’ve been driven to discover more about </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-US">Australia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="" lang="EN-US">’s indie music heritage. Not quite sure why this should be so – it’s partly something to do with the appetite for diffracted nostalgia that I struggled to express in that Takeaways post. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">There’s also a bit of bloody-mindedness involved – a sense that nobody else particularly cares about this music. Invisible in the media, absent from folklore, unavailable to purchase - the fact that nobody is telling me to look this stuff up seems as good a reason as any to hunt it down.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">(In a media-saturated environment, I’m often conscious of sailing the seas of other people’s enthusiasms; perhaps having found reasonably under-explored territory so close to home I am excited by the obscurity itself, the way I can map my own thoughts and associations onto this stuff.)<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">More than enough tenuous theorising. I know for sure that I have a John Kennedy compilation called “From Woe to Go” – I got it for about five bucks from Red Eye in the late eighties, and used to listen to it sometimes but not quite get it. It had a slightly country thing going on (not least in JFK’s look) at a time when country music appreciation wasn’t a fitted-as-standard part of the indie-kid repertoire, or mine anyway. <span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">My world is full of records that I didn’t quite get when I was younger – many of them I have since revisited with rewarding results. A while ago I downloaded a copy of “From Woe to Go” from the excellent <a href="http://stripedsunlight.blogspot.com/">Striped Sunlight Sound</a> site, and have been enjoying listening to it while I push my crummy Pintara around the inner city. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">I was a little apprehensive about JFK’s gig at the Rose in Erskineville; I’ve seen some pretty terrible shows there - it’s one of those </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-US">Sydney</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="" lang="EN-US"> places that isn’t really meant to have a band and the crowd can be pretty unforgiving. Saturday night was pretty cool, though – after a few songs they turned off the all the fucken televisions (the football was over) and the atmosphere instantly became 100% better -<span style=""> </span>what with the tiled walls and old school bar, I was pleasantly reminded of the lovely <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmdRGQTpoo4">clip for “Ghost Ships”</a> by the Chris Bailey Saints. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Kennedy’s voice is strong, his songs are interesting and the band were excellent. That last factor isn’t an uncomplicated asset for me – there’s a real tentative charm in some of his 1980s recordings that I think comes from uncertain indie types playing country-inflected music. Nonetheless, having a muscular roots band behind him had a lot to do with the success of this evening. Perry Keyes had the crowd cheering his solo on “Your Cheating Heart” – I’m not much of a guitar solo man, but I could definitely see their point. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">It’s a genuine treat to hear someone singing about </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-US">Brisbane</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="" lang="EN-US"> and </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-US">Sydney</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="" lang="EN-US">’s Inner West with all the (mixed) passion and engagement with place that we associate with Other Countries’ Music. There’s a directness to Kennedy’s songs that sometimes verges on the hokey, but this is quickly undercut by a wry smile or a knowing couplet – he’s in on the potential for this to be silly, he got there before you and isn’t going to let himself be stopped by anything as pissant as the cultural cringe . This isn’t novelty music, though – there’s something brave about his “Urban and Western” project, and there’s something cherishable in the slight incongruity of hearing </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-US">Sydney</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="" lang="EN-US"> and Brisbane landmarks referenced against the strains of the harp and dobro. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">The only two songs I really knew (apart from some predictable but well-realised covers) were <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awc9y8-xOc0">“Miracle in Marrickville”</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trmMpKizwmU">“</a></span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trmMpKizwmU"><st1:street><st1:address><span style="" lang="EN-US">King Street</span></st1:address></st1:street></a><span style="" lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trmMpKizwmU">”</a>. The former feels like it has grown in stature since 1984 – maybe it’s just that Marrickville has become Ground Zero for independent music in </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-US">Sydney</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="" lang="EN-US">, as the shifting affordability/close-to-city equations force everyone out of the old haunts. Hence “</span><st1:street><st1:address><span style="" lang="EN-US">King Street</span></st1:address></st1:street><span style="" lang="EN-US">” sounding like a paean to days gone by - its celebration of </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-US">Newtown</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="" lang="EN-US">’s key artery as a place of diversity and inclusion is pretty heartbreaking when contrasted against the expensively bland commercial strip of today. <o:p></o:p></span></p>RLMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095503841635913783noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471013590095064908.post-3627616751512400772008-07-09T19:12:00.000-07:002008-07-10T00:24:50.232-07:00Glam to Wham<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Luna Park during the daytime – some times and places in Sydney, you can squint a bit and summon the ghosts, maybe feel like you’re standing in the same town that was once a disagreeable host to bands like the Laughing Clowns, Triffids, SPK, Voight/465, Tactics… stirring names from Golden Days, when Giants Walked the Earth. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">I listen to this music a lot, and enjoy thinking about those times, the idea that while I was a ten year-old riding my bike around </span><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-US">North Ryde</span></st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-US">, there were superb bands lurking around the city’s edges making some of the most interesting music this country has ever coughed up.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">It’s that odd brand of nostalgia for a time not directly experienced, ethereal and slightly sad – but definitely not unpleasant. It’s a state of mind I actually really enjoy, sometimes even going so far as to deliberately cultivate it. Sometimes. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Helping things along is an odd, half-forgotten cultural artifact – one that created an unusual bridge between pre-teen imaginings of adult life and the (hardly) grown-up world of music and girls. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Sweet and Sour was an Australian television series that aired in 1984. It portrayed the formation, brief career and eventual disbandment of fictional </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-US">Sydney</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="" lang="EN-US"> band The Takeaways. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">It comprised 20 half-hour episodes, and was repeated twice in pretty short succession. Since then it hasn’t been screened anywhere, as far as I’m aware – although there is a clip on youtube that is dubbed with Italian voices. It is excellent regardless, featuring all the great characters – is it from their “last gig”?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"> <span style=""> </span><span style=""><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a style="left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;" title="Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus" class="abp-objtab-042509431389017416 visible ontop" href="http://www.youtube.com/v/vdfB-LrKtsU&hl=en&fs=1"></a><a style="left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;" title="Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus" class="abp-objtab-042509431389017416 visible ontop" href="http://www.youtube.com/v/vdfB-LrKtsU&hl=en&fs=1"></a><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/vdfB-LrKtsU&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/vdfB-LrKtsU&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /><span style="" lang="EN-US"><span style=""></span><o:p></o:p>These days the show is remembered – if it is remembered at all – in a kitchy, nostalgic sort of way. It’s easy to see why – it was an odd blend of “safe” youth-oriented drama with mild aspirations to credibility, and hence full of happy absurdities. To attempt a series about a young band in 80’s </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-US">Sydney</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="" lang="EN-US"> without sex, drugs or bad language was always going to be a whimsical endeavour. In one of the earliest episodes the band are sitting around in their warehouse – one of them starts playing a new song and the others join in, getting the chord changes spot on, first time. Lovely. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Obviously this has never happened to me - yet when I’m playing a new song with friends and it goes right, I often think back to this sequence. Then there was “Shrug” Yates, the washed up jazzman father of sax player/singer Christine Yates – my earliest encounter with the “legendary musician lost in everyday life” trope that I continue to find endlessly compelling. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Bassist George’s “music vs day job” struggles are also pretty resonant in retrospect; I also remember that there were various romantic threads that were played out during the series, although the details escape me. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">It is also stuffed with plum awful 1980s fashion disasters, and each episode tends to contain one or two “video clip” sequences – sometimes these are presented as non-naturalistic interludes, and sometimes they are woven into the narrative in the style of a musical.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">I’m always very happy to have a laugh about this tatty relic of government-funded 1980s youth programming, but beneath the giggles there exists something deeper, less mocking and more genuinely affectionate, even passionate. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">I don’t think I would have started playing music if it hadn’t been for “Sweet and Sour”. I was just the right age to be seduced by its hokey vision of camaraderie in the adventuresome pursuit of creative endeavour - old enough to have aspirations to roll with the cool kids, yet before cynicism really kicked in. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Thinking about this led me to draw utterly fanciful parallels with the far-too-oft-quoted Sex Pistols gig at the Manchester Trade Hall in 1976 – “manufactured” band, everyone who saw it started a group etc. I often wonder how many folks playing music in 1990s </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-US">Australia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="" lang="EN-US"> had a little bit of The Takeaways in their musical DNA – I’ve certainly talked to a fair few.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">The music itself was pretty great, too. There were some pretty substantial songwriting contributors – David McComb, Don Walker – and a lot of great pop from the likes of Mark Callaghan, Sharon O’Neill, Reg Mombassa, Todd Hunter etc. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">My personal favourites are McComb’s “On The Street Where You Live” – an excellent pop song charmingly sung by Deckchairs Overboard’s Cathy McQuade; “Glam to Wham”, an dreamy studio confection that was released as a single; and the high-energy closing theme “Sweet”, with rather strange lyrics by XL Capris singer and show co-creator Johanna Piggott. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">There were two volumes of music from the show, a few singles and even some appearances on Countdown. The first soundtrack sold 70000 copies and went platinum. I remember being pretty sure that they weren’t a proper band, but still enjoyed a certain amount of confusion about the whole thing. Is sort-of-believing in the manufactured mythology of a pretend pop band more enduringly satisfying than buying the manufactured mythology of a “real” pop band?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Of course nowadays the Takeaways have a <a href="http://www.myspace.com/sweetandsourtakeaways">myspace page</a>, and it’s gratifying to see that there are quite a few comments that gel with my own sense of this being an influential piece of work – not influential in the sense of having any ongoing cultural clout, but because it actually affected people’s lives, even in a small way. That’s pretty nice. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Another odd little resonance this show holds for me is part of my gradual awareness that actors were real people. I remember being a little aghast at a friend’s report that (I think) Sandra Lillingston was working behind the perfume counter in David Jones Bondi Junction. Without thinking about it, I’d always assumed that anyone who’d ever appeared on television was made for life, living a charmed existence quite apart from the worries of everyday folk like me. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">I know that Tracey Mann was recently in the very successful play “Minefields and Miniskirts”, and a few years ago I saw Arky Michael in a play called “The Book-keeper”, which is still one of the best theatre productions I have ever seen. It was about the life of the Portugese poet Fernando Pessoa, and it was absolutely beautiful. <o:p></o:p></span></p><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">These days I have some work-related dealings with Ric Herbert, who played the Takeaways’ ever-scheming manager Darrell Winters. Ric is going great guns, acting, doing voiceovers and performing music himself. At a recent gig, someone brought a copy of the Sweet and Sour LP and asked him to sign it. An actor playing a real gig signing a copy of a record by an imaginary band. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">Ric has “Sweet and Sour” on VHS – the old tapes are marked up in biro, I get a sense that they might have been taped by his proud family. He lent them to me about a year ago and I watched the first couple of episodes. Among the riches were cameos from Renee Geyer, Dave Mason and The Johnnys, and scads of heartbreaking footage of “old </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-US">Sydney</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="" lang="EN-US">” – the time before development really kicked in, when there was still underutilized space left in the city, maybe the possibility of stillness. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">I had grand plans to transfer the videos to DVD, but these days it can be a struggle to find the time for things one wants to do. Perhaps I’ll have another go. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US">“Sweet and Sour” had a perfect ending – the band played their last gig and parted ways. Outside in the street was a lone girl with a Walkman who had recorded the show – she flipped over the tape, pressed play and walked into the night with the music in her headphones.<o:p></o:p></span></p>RLMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095503841635913783noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471013590095064908.post-66901831232684649072008-06-30T00:12:00.000-07:002008-06-30T00:35:43.657-07:00Television That Dares Question ItselfLast night watched Dennis Potter’s “Follow the Yellow Brick Road”. It’s been a long while since I have seen any of his material, and I was quickly reminded of the reason for this – the thick, pervasive presence of a particularly rank and troubling relationship with matters sexual. In the play, the breakdown this engenders is portrayed as being an immediate result of the Denholm Elliott character finding his wife in bed with another man, but Jack’s deeper sexual dysfunction (the cause of her estrangement) is not explored beyond a few slabs of “insert psychosis here” dialogue.<br /><br />I remember watching "The Singing Detective" as a child of nine or ten, and in retrospect the dark and unpleasant world of guilty, damaged relations between the sexes had a pretty significant negative effect on my subsequent murky perceptions of the adult world. This is pretty ironic, as one of the other strands of “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” is the media’s colonization of one’s interior space. The main character is disgusted by the permissive filth and Socialist dissent propagated by the beardy TV authors of the day, and seeks solace in the bright clean world of the commercials. This concept also manifests itself in an (early?) appearance of Potter’s trademark use of self-aware dialogue – the character convinced that cameras are watching his every move, and that everyone is speaking from a script. This initially promises to be annoying and hackneyed-in-retrospect, but is actually quite effectively handled.<br /><br />In the penultimate scene of the play, there is a sense that Potter is working us around to some sort of insight – Jack Black’s obviously ludicrous paean to the virginal virtues of his agent’s young and vacuous wife is the play’s clearest statement about the dangers of confusing imagery with reality, of substituting How Things Are Supposed To Be for how they actually are. Perhaps it is a mistake to look for any clearer enunciation of a tidy message in a play that purposefully sets out to denounce the media’s ability to distort perception – there is certainly an almost reckless lack of resolution (excepting a deliberately hollow pat ending) which is hugely refreshing in today’s environment of micromanaged television narrative.<br /><br />The play feels like the confused work of a brilliant yet troubled mind. While its themes are hugely potent, they feel somewhat undermined by a lack of clarity in their deployment – Potter himself has commented on the raw nature of this work, and there is a certain sense of being privy to mental processes that are not under the artist’s control. Yet this savage honesty has its own virtues, and one is left to wonder at a time when this complex and fascinating piece of work would be commissioned by a major broadcaster, filmed with a quality cast (Billie Whitelaw! Richard Vernon! Dennis Waterman!) and served up to an unsuspecting public. In recent times I’ve been having plenty of lively arguments about whether television today is of generally inferior quality to the “golden age” of the 1960s and 1970s. “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” - relatively obscure, spiky and provocative and worthy of a sustained ponder - is definitely a valuable piece of evidence for the prosecution.<br /><br />What else?<br /><br />The stuff about God, and his disappearance - as a deeply irreligious sort I am perhaps too prone to skip over this sort of stuff, and should perhaps try and weave it into my understanding of the piece. Some of this dialogue was reminiscent of Tom Stoppard's Jumpers at times (as is the ultra-modern set where the two seductions occur). A different loss of innocence, feeding into the sexual / commercial material.<br /><br />The title design, both of the Sextet franchise and the play itself, is causally amazing.<br /><br />Our old friend Interiors on VT and Exteriors on Film. So comforting.RLMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095503841635913783noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4471013590095064908.post-9755721283221979892008-06-11T05:40:00.000-07:002008-06-30T00:35:26.535-07:00Thoughtless Young Man<p class="MsoNormal">It's not that I don't have thoughts, but I have to acknowledge that they are disconnected and incoherent. I have recently been listening to the new 6CD set by The Caretaker called "Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia" and it is a beautiful and sad evocation of this sense of dislocation and confusion and loss that seems quite close to home (and home seems quite far away - in time, rather than space).<br /><br />There are a lot of clever people writing blogs who are able to spin this type of stuff out into extremely eloquent posts, to theorise their own lives as a work in progress. I wish I possessed this brand of smarts, but I'm deeply afraid that I'm too much a product of a culture I have come to despise. That sounds a bit self-pitying but there you go.<br /><br />Nonetheless, I feel quite resolved to try and act in a manner contrary to my keenly-honed short attention span, to try and force my brain to work in increments longer than 30 seconds, to see if it might not be capable of constructing a complex framework of hard-won learning and conceptual rigour. Anything would be better than endlessly swinging back and forth on this tiny little set of monkey bars.<br /><br />I suppose one traditionally must quietly delete these faltering, tonally uncertain first forays.<span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p>RLMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11095503841635913783noreply@blogger.com0