22 Dreams

Cracking

2012-02-05T22:40:00.000+11:00

Part 3:

While 1985 may have been the year of ‘Choose life’, 1986seemed altogether more subdued. Itwas an auspicious year for me as I, at 16 and in year 11, found myself seeking,discovering, and then assimilating more enduring, character-shapinginfluences. I’d made a decisionduring the previous year to give up on the sciences. I kept on with maths but my study load otherwise delvedaround the humanities. Ineeded the succor of the arts to nourish a being thirsty for muse, forinspiration, for love.

My favourite subjects were Ancient History and English. I topped Ancient History at my school and believed that itwas teacher bias as to why I didn’t get the Ancient History prize. I loved Ancient Greece in particular andtook great pleasure in dissecting Cicero’s speeches and writing essays aboutthem.

English was another bombshell. Having not been much of a reader as a child I came to lovereading and exploring all this new literature handed to us in class. It was an inspiring, imagination-expandingtime. I loved ‘1984’,‘Wuthering Heights’ and even ‘Pride & Prejudice’. We studied ‘Emma’ for our final year and I recall groaningwhen I got to chapter 35 knowing there were 20 more chapters of the book togo. I wouldn’t read JaneAusten now, but when I was 16 it was very much an eye-opening excursion intothis amazing world of English literature.

My musical explorations similarly traversed a deeper, moreintellectual-emotional route. Thenext big thing for me after the Beatles was to discover the songwriting of PaulWeller with the Jam. I liked theStyle Council so I was happy enough to take a taped copy of the Jam’scompilation album ‘Snap’ off a friend, once I found out that the StyleCouncil’s Paul Weller was previously in a band called ‘The Jam’. I really knew nothing of the Jam otherthan the song ‘A Town called Malice’, so that was the tune I listened to overand over on that cassette. But Islowly began to discover and listen to all of the other songs on the tape.

The Jam was probably every bit as impactful as the Beatleswere for me. But whereas theBeatles had opened up for me the possibilities of what music can do in thefullest sense, the Jam honed in on my personal proclivities and attitudes thatwere maturing during this period. Here was this smart guy writing songs with a sharp, poetic lyrical bentbut with a cutting, dry, ‘fuck-you’ attitude. That his dad was a brickie and his mum a cleaner, like myfolks, appealed to me no end. Ibegan to love words, lyrics, verbal expressions that allowed me to project whoI was, and what I felt. I may havegrown up dumb but that was a changing fast, as even my school results testified.

My sister bought me a copy of Paolo Hewitt’s biography ofthe Jam (‘A Beat Concerto’) and I grew to love the bio as much as themusic. Hewitt’s colourfullydescriptive yet incisive style of writing appealed to me. If I was ever going to be a writer, Ithought, this book would be my template.

During this time I continued to play the trombone in theorchestra. I enjoyed it enough,and it kept me out of trouble. Icontinued to study music as a subject all the way through to year 12. Music was simply a period of releasefor me, away from the ordinariness of my other classes and peers. I ended up scraping a narrow pass inMusic to which I was grateful for given that it was my designated class for puttingmy feet up. Yet I was interestedenough in the subject to listen to and absorb into my psyche some of the pieceswe were studying in class, enough to say that I enjoyed those pieces by Bachand Stravinsky in that they made me feel good. It was all very creative and dreamy. They touched subtle pulses I feltexisted in me for forever, even though I was only 16.

Similarly, while I loved the mod-rock sounds of the Jam, I couldn’thelp but gravitate to softer, more reflecting music. Suzanne Vega’s debut albumwas one of the first “gentle” albums I ever got into. It had an immense influence on me, both musically andpersonally. It had to do with thosecool textures and icy-sharp lyrics; stories sung with a sharp-minded precisionyet coated in evocative textures and tones that personified New York City. At 16, I was fairly captivated. I loved ‘Cracking’ and those lines “…through the park in the afternoon” and“…dizzy golden dancing green”. The album widened my musical perspectives and my musicalvocabulary. I studied the albumand attempted to the best of my ability to work out the songs on myguitar. Upon reflection, I couldgauge the album’s influence in future years when I took more to songwriting,hearing how much Vega’s textures and tones shaped and influenced my own. And like any of those classic WoodyAllen films, the album holds a very dear space in my heart and mind.

Suzanne Vega first toured Australia in 1987. She played the Sydney Town Hall inSeptember of that year. I didn’tattend that concert, but on that very night before Vega’s gig, at the TownHall, I played in a combined orchestra concert. I scrawled a note on the wooden floorboards of the stage,something like “I love you Suzanne”. I don’t think she would have seen it and I was disappointed not to haveattended Vega’s concert the following night, after my trombone soiree. I did go to see her at the State Theatre fiveyears later, with Mitchell Froom backing her on keyboards.

And that September 1987 concert at the Town Hall – I canbarely remember it – was my last trombone gig. The world remains a better place for that.

Leaving school is one of those obvious rites of passage toimpending adulthood. It was at thispoint, soon after my last exam and finally free of the interminable shackles ofschool, a song came onto MTV that lifted me way above anything I’d heard before,up from the ground and into a hitherto uncharted universe. It was fresh and inspired and very muchof the time. This was TheChurch’s ‘Under the milky way’. I saw the Church play it probably fortheir very first time, at the Tivoli that December. I recall the rapturous, quite exalted applause after they performedthis brand new song, with the band looking quite pleased onstage. The song has travelled well since then,since 1987.

And as I reminisce and think of Suzanne Vega’s debutalbum, and ‘Under the Milky Way’, and their impact on me back in the day, I realise for me these were magic times, magic times. I can’t traverse the universe withmusic the way I did back in the 1980s. Now, to traverse the universe, I need to gowithin. You go so far out you inevitably come back intoyourself. This is what meditationor the universe-within state is. This is death, this is life.

Hey jude

2012-01-07T11:51:00.001+11:00

Part 2:

I laboured with viola lessons throughout 1983, guiltily awarethat my parents were forking out their precious work-for-a-crumb (beer: dad) income for an instrument Ifound onerous to play. Alternately,as an antidote to this tedium, and being terribly bad and bored by viola, Idiscovered pop music with all of its refreshing charms. Simple, contemporarypop, straight from my little transistor radio I kept at my bedside table. I’d taken scant notice of pop music inearlier years. I did recall thevideo to ABBA’s ‘Fernando’ closing Countdown for about upteen weeks in a rowduring 1976. There were othersongs that may have come through my brother’s radio that I’d taken some noticeof – the one that went “…January, sick and tired you’ve been raining on me…”but that was it really. No realinterest in pop, and no demonstrable facility either.

I enjoyed the Top 40. Luckily, in late 1983 into 1984, Top 40 music was plentiful and – for a13 or 14 year old kid - enjoyable. It was probably consistently betterthan 60’s pop. The best of theSixties stuff may have scaled the heights, but much of the remainder was alittle on the embarrassing side, maybe. Eighties pop was probably the second great era of chart music, after thesixties, in its own way.

Anyway, my interest in the Top 40 didn’t last too long. This was rapidly supplanted by anoverwhelming love for a newly discovered group, The Beatles. Late in 1983 I borrowed bysister’s early-80s style ‘KTel’ 8-album LP compilation Beatles set and tapedthese LPs onto cassettes. The compilation worked out to be about 65-75% of the entire Beatlescatalogue. It didn’t matter thatevery Beatle track wasn’t included; as a Beatle novice, it was more than enoughto whet my appetite for each distinct era of Beatle music.

The discovery of the Beatles was the most singularlyimpactful event of my life. Itwasn’t unlike ‘The Wizard of Oz’ film where the scene changes suddenly fromblack and white into technicolour. I instantly loved the Beatles and soaked their music in like alove-thirsty sponge. And I wasinto all of it too, not just the middle or late-period Beatles. The vigour and energy of the earlyBeatles music just totally dazzled me. Never in my life had I experienced such intoxicating bursts of joy, and delight. Having this music, too, pulsing throughmy psyche for the remainder of my life served as a huge confidence andego-booster for me. It wasthe one tsunami of all the external life-long influences coming my way. Suddenly I had something to live for,an inner-code, that by its genius anduniversality also encouraged individuality, the joy of being one-self howeverunconventional or counter-culture this may appear to be to others. My psyche fast-tracked into a thinking,sharp-minded adolescent.

I recall one evening around early 1984 where I was lying onmy bed and ‘Hey Jude’ came on the radio. At this stage I knew of the song but only really knew the opening lineand the long sing-along coda; I hadn’t yet encountered the song on my Beatlescompilation cassette-tapes. So,for the first time, I had an opportunity to listen to ‘Hey Jude’ in itsentirety from my tiny little transistor radio sitting by the bedside. And, as the song twisted its way through those labyrinths ofdelightful modulations and bridge-sections, I distinctly remember the physicalsensation of feeling my brain twitchwith these new sounds, this new musical knowledge that amazed me and stilled meto the point where even my brain felt that it was physically restructuringitself. I was stunned,captivated. The Beatles were mynew master and I was the loving, devoted student. And something in my musical brain chemistry altered irrevocablywith that inaugural experience of hearing ‘Hey Jude’ that night, neurons werefired up and connected in a way they hadn’t been before or since.

I started reading up about the Beatles in earnest. A new book came out by Brian Epstein’sassistant, Peter Brown, ‘The Love you make’. I bought that and devoured it in three days. I became particularly interested in JohnLennon who became, and remains to this day, my favourite Beatle. I bought up books about John Lennon andrued and mourned his passing like the rest of the world had. Even within the Beatles, as much as Ilove McCartney’s work, it’s Lennon’s songs that continue to have the mostimpact for me.

Another group I came to love alongside the Beatles back in1984 were the Hoodoo Gurus. Iloved their debut album ‘Stoneage Romeos’ and still enjoy a play of the albumevery now and then. Dave Faulkner wasa very clever songwriter. ‘Stoneage Romeos’ was one of the best examples of updated 60s garagepunk, with all the attendant comic-book themes, mixed with classic songwritingsensibilities. The album’s carefree Australian 80s innocence still appeals tome. It reminds me of how Sydneywas back then, particularly places like Rozelle and Balmain: creaky sun-mottedverandahs, grunge, beer, musos. Ilost interest in the Gurus sometime after their second album when aggressivesurfer crew suddenly took to them, and it was difficult to be at a gig to seethem when surfers would be threatening to ‘bash your head in’. It’s a pity that, given that they wereso quintessentially underground just a few years previously; the sort of band thatsurfers would want to mug and bash.

For someone who hadn’t encountered music as a child, I didremarkably well to soak in so much in such a short time. So much so, that the natural, logicalcourse of action to take was to learn guitar. It was 1985, there was live aid, there were mullets (mineincluded), there was Madonna, and there were the oversized ‘Choose Life’T-shirts. It was a good time to be15, and I enjoyed the commercial pop scene for what it was. Finally, on one weekend back inSeptember 1985, I asked the music department if I could borrow a guitar. It was a cheap nylon string. I had a page of chord shapes to workwith; these were taken from my year 7 ‘Introduction to Music’ book, the samebook where all those hip recorder tunes that first inspired me were to be found;and that was it. After a weekendof around the clock practice I’d learned the chords. And aside from learning up some fingerpicking from a booksome 11 years down the track, influenced at this point by Nick Drake, I remainself-taught. I don’t think Iimproved too much since that weekend back in 1985, just learned new ways toplay lots of different chordal shapes and fingerpicking styles, too. Probably got a bit jazzier with it over theyears. I had to return my inaugural nylon stringguitar to the music department as it belonged to a violin student in the year below me, but I ended up nicking other guitars from the department. Cheap, nasty nylon strings. And I’d smash them up. I wouldn’t do that now. But I was 15, 16 then. I was kooky, and strangely aggressive.

The problem with playing guitar in the 1980s was that thescene was overwhelmingly electro, pedal-centric. I only found mynatural home with the guitar a good 12 or so plus years later when the acousticmovement came back into popularity. I’m an acoustic player, not an electric player. I felt vulnerable, a little naked even,when playing just the electric guitar, unless I was playing mod-style guitar. But this was already a done thing, theJam, the Who, etc. I just wasn’tcomfortable with the whole show, so I turned to bass. Part of me resented this move at the time because I feltthat some of my talents were being quashed, but I also discovered that I had avery particular ear for the bass. The instrument’s understatedly coolintellectual appeal also attracted me to the instrument. So I became the bass player. I would slowly grow to love theinstrument over the years, and I play it on-and-off to this day. And so it remains that the onlyelectric guitar I play live is the bass, and not the six-string.

The Recorder

2012-01-02T22:13:00.003+11:00

Part 1:

Music for some is a means to making money. For others, it attracts fame, or a steadyjob. In many ways music has been asaviour to me. Sometimes, a stressand a strain. But mostly, musichas been a joy, and my life’s journey has been a series of ever contrasting andchanging musical scenes of different varieties and colours.

As a child I demonstrated zilch aptitude for music. I didn’t particularly demonstrate anaptitude for anything in fact, and nothing was encouraged of me in any wayeither. I recall lovinggeography books and maps, and I still enjoy maps to this day, but in hindsightI see that my childhood interest in maps stemmed out of intense boredom – asidefrom my summer trips to my cousin’s farm in the country, my parents weren’tthat interested in going anywhere, so maps were a lonesome substitute for mytravelling imagination. Any outinghowever small was always a major event for me. My natural childhood curiosity mostly remained perpetuallysnuffed in the household I grew up in.

I did receive a toy kiddie piano for Christmas, I think itwas either 1977 or 1978. I banged around on it haphazardly for a bit, as kidsdo; I can remember my cousin wincing at the cacophony I made that Christmasday. I smashed the piano soonafterward in the back garden using a hammer that was lying around. I was bored and needed to release somepent-up energy. I used to smash mytoys for pleasure, partly because I never really liked toys, and also because Iwas bored. I don’t do that kind ofthing anymore, smash stuff.

We had this music teacher in year 6 called KL. He carried himself with atelevision-exec air of importance with his suit-jacket and a ‘bog-brush’ hairstyleto match; a style so redolent amongst men of the late 70’s, like Billy Joel’shair on those album covers with the puffed up bouffant and the hair growing downpast the ears and over the collar. Mr L was a renowned sound designer and technician I seem to recall, andI wonder why he taught music part-time at our school, and to juniors no less. He probably liked the money, and themoney was probably good; he wouldn’t have taught little-uns for altruisticpurposes, he wasn’t that type of guy. I do remember that he gave us a lesson in synthesisers, with all of ustaking a turn at playing the synths. I remember moving and twisting all sorts or knobs and levers randomlyand then pressing a key. The notewobbled and wavered like a movie ghost and everybody laughed.

He made me write out a thousand times lines or something,that took me all weekend to do, just because I didn’t do some shittyhomework. I’ll never forgive himfor that, the highfalutin twit that he was. And I don’t recall he ever checked up on the lines anyway. So if I ever run into him again I willthrow those lines in his face.

But Mr L was the first person to ever mention the ‘recorder’. He told us we all needed to go out andbuy a recorder. My immediateunderstanding of a ‘recorder’ was a taping device, and I wondered why K wantedus to go out and purchase little tape-recorders. It took me some time to realise that a “recorder” was aplastic flute-like instrument and not some kind of miniature tape-deck.

By year 7 KL was in the past and I faced a new swag of musicteachers who travelled with me throughout my high school years. I was 12, music class was a joke, aperiod where we could relax, muck around, and let off some steam from therigours of the more demanding subjects. I was no more interested in the subject than most of my peers. But something curious happened in my 7^thyear, in 1982. I started to reallyenjoy playing the recorder. Somuch so that I learned all the songs from our song book and even took totransposing Greensleeves in different keys. The head of music, Hanka Zavodnik, told my mum atstudent-teacher nights in that sharp Polish accent of hers, that the boy hastalent and should study music. ToHanka I remain grateful – she was the first teacher who saw something of valuein me. For all her faults – volatile,calculating, domineering - she was sharply insightful, and that she took thetime to begin to nurture my talents is something I’ll never forget.

Hanka had a tendency to persuade and manipulate people intodoing what she wanted them to do. She convinced me that I should learn the viola. So I spent most of year 8 studying theviola at which I was fucking woeful at the best of times. It wasn’t my thing. My parents couldn’t afford thelessons, anyway. So to the rescuecame Chris Blenkinsopp, one of my favourite teachers at the school. He gave me free lessons on the trombonewhich I carried on with through to the end of high school. I wasn’t very good at the trombonealthough I did demonstrate scant degree of promise. I was good with my intonation, or so he told me. And I enjoyed playing in the orchestraand big band. But my heart wasnever in the trombone, so after my final exam, which I bombed (and had stoppedcaring by that stage), I gave up the instrument, never to return.

One lasting legacy from my teenage trombone playing remains– I often find I play the bass guitar like a horn instrument, such that Iphrase bass patterns in the way trombone passages are phrased. I’m glad these aspects of myhorn-playing have stuck with me. Iwasn’t much of a horn player.

A sadder legacy stems from a discussion I had with a workcolleague a year ago. We’djust discovered that we attended the same school. After much bitching and groaning in general about the almamater, I discovered that he also studied music and he played violin in the orchestra, butbecause he was three years older than me, we don’t remember each other fromschool at all. We reminisced aboutthe music teachers and I remember feeling pensive when discussing HankaZavodnic. I pondered herwhereabouts with my colleague as I’d sensed she’d passed away. My suspicions proved correct when, afew weeks ago, an old school friend returned from Germany with the definitenews that she passed away sometime over the past couple of years. My intuition also tells me that it wasan unhappy passing, and that there was much loneliness in her life.

Whatever may have been, may she - like all of us - travelwell.

digital rocks

2011-12-18T23:01:00.001+11:00

Finally it's happening. I've been waiting for the opportunity to lay down some word-threads for quite some time now, but work and work-related projects have taken over my life. Even now I find I'm too tired to write. I've had many plans for my writing - to which I instigated this blog in the first place as something of a launching pad - and I now have a fair idea of where to take things: critiquing, creative non-fiction, passionate mumbo-jumbo and the like, but the lack of free time proves to be the ongoing stumbling-block to satisfactory writing. Anyway, as it's often said, if I want it enough I'll make the time.

Writing - narrative writing - is a secondary talent for me, and not a primary one. Music is primary for me. I pick up an instrument, play it, record with it, and if sounds good to me then I'm happy. With writing I find I need constant reassurance and constructive criticism from others. I find it much harder to qualify writing compared to music. At least with music, you can hear it and make a definable albeit subjective decision as to what you think of it. With writing, you may think you've done a good job but I always find it difficult to come to some definite conclusion about the quality. After all, writing is about affecting a series of words separated with punctuation to create a definable, overall quality of 'good writing', but I can only grasp this concept instinctually. Bottom line: I want to work on my writing and improve on it and hopefully take it further. I've two articles submitted with suite101.com, and that's a hopeful start.

I've been involved with an ARC-funded project at work to digitise our production archives. I've been using state of the art digitising machines that create two distribution files (windows & mac), one edit file (mac), and one archival standard lossless JPEG2000 file - which I call 'digital rocks' - with each passing of the original tape. These JPEG2K files absorb a tremendous amount of data, about 30 gigabytes per hour of footage. I found it a moving experience to set the tape to record and watch productions dating back some 23 or so years with many of the faces seen on-screen having since moved on to fabulous careers. I like to watch and gauge the energy of the time. The times seemed a lot more innocent way back when, even as recent 17-18 years ago. Hairstyles were bigger, and slicker. There was more of a feeling of buoyancy in the productions, as if the actors could sense a future ahead for their industry and themselves. It's been an honour to have taken part in this innovative project despite it having taken up so much of my time and energy. I've learned so much, including setting up network drives, and all of these new skills will snowflake into my CV eventually when the time is right.

I took a work-related trip to Melbourne just prior to taking delivery of these digitising machines. This was my 4th or 5th visit to Melbourne, and for the first time in all these trips I felt 'yep', would love to live here. For the first time, I clicked. It's an appropriate city to have a fulfilling working life; it's industrious yet coolly chic at the same time. Not so heady and distracting as Sydney. With the wide streets, the trams, the architecture, the chic lanes veining the city streets, the cold weather, those awesome little cafes and eateries everywhere, I found Melbourne to be wholly enticing. I could live there given half a chance, and I can understand how many people prefer Melbourne over scatty, temperamental, and sometimes bloody horrible Sydney. In some ways it felt to me like the Toronto of the southern hemisphere.

I'm still playing ukulele. I'm going to the ukulele club in Balmain on Monday night for their Christmas party. Getting involved in the ukulele scene has been a good thing for me, partly for the music, but also that it coerces me to be social, to get talking to people in a complimentary setting. I dislike certain aspects of my personality and I find I can't quite eradicate these traits no matter how much I try to change. I often project a diffident, aloof persona, alternately abrupt and awkward, who finds it uncomfortable doing the small-talk dance with people. Though once I get to know people, and they me, I become a lot friendlier. My sweet nature starts to surface. And even then, my friendliness seems somewhat contrived to me. Almost like the friendliness I effuse is an equivalent to a diet soft-drink. Not always, but often enough. I'm only rueful for having blown away some potentially good friendships because of this taciturn, intense manner that I can't help but project and find difficult to turn around. Sometimes I just scare people away with my eagerness and passion; I overdo it. I feel like I'm in a Woody Allen film. But bugger it, I do love to communicate, and I can't do it any other way but my own.

The weekend was one of musical diversity. I did some busking at The Rocks on the Friday night with members of my ukulele club. And on Saturday night I saw The Church at the Enmore Theatre, performing three of their albums in their entirety from three different decades. It's a bit like reading an illustrated children's book followed by the Lord of the Rings trilogy, over two consecutive nights. The best part about the busking was in simply soaking up the atmosphere of the Rocks. It's lovely on a summer's twilight evening, and the 'moonlight markets' are fantastic. All types of people were out and about, mainly nice family people. Everyone was out to have a nice time out and one could feel it in the delicate, bouncy carnival atmosphere of a cool summer's evening.

My horizons are looking beyond Christmas, beyond some family project work, onto some rest and out-time from work. New ideas, peace, walks, beach, reading, trees, and hopefully some new inspiration(s). The new working year lies beyond that, but I won't set my mind there until my feet do, when it's time.

Ukes not EM radiation

2011-09-25T21:59:00.003+10:00

I've posted an article about ukulele in Suite 101.

I've returned to learning-up, playing and performing with the ukulele with a view to making this my 'main' instrument. The quest for me is divine the instrument's complexity, its magic, contrasting as it does with its face-value simplicity.

Ukulele's a great way to meet new people. Carrying your ukulele around is a bit like walking your dog. If you meet someone else holding a ukulele there's no barrier to striking up some conversation. It's real, it's vital; the ukulele represents that sensitive area in the solar-plexus or the human psyche that is innocent and luminous. Barriers are gladly overcome with ukuleles in hands. And like dogs, we often want to know and chat about which breed of uke the other is holding.

You can't really have any of that guitar-attitude bullshit with the ukulele which is one reason I find playing it so refreshing. The ukulele disarms all sense of competition or swagger - one would hope.

I have or have had this feeling that if I stick to playing uke it's going to change my life. And in a way I can say that it already has. I purchased a fine, fledgling ukulele magazine from its editor at a ukulele club last month and read it from cover to cover. I was struck by the article on songstress Shelley O'Brien and was particularly intrigued as to how she'd been a pianist and singer before coming to the ukulele. I had this firm sense I'd like her music, and 'like' I have. She has one song in particular called 'Clay' that has totally inspired me and stirred all my senses; I haven't felt this way about a new song in a long, long time.

The positives of life surround the ukulele's auric field. Rather than spreading more friggin' electro-magnetic radiation, we spread the love, the connection, the radiance, the light, with the ukulele.

I suspect this new quest of mine to divine the ukulele's complexity or magic is a symbolic reflection of my deep inner desire to divine more purity within myself, to overcome the psychic beast, the dragon of negativities and impurities.

Wishing you well, U-R!

joni

2011-08-14T15:27:00.003+10:00

To me, the magic of songwriting isn't so much about writing a great song or being able to just write songs. I think the magic lies in witnessing talented writers who've been granted the opportunity and freedom to write a string of great albums that are touched by that certain 'spark' or spirit; zeitgeist. All styles of music apply, as do all art-forms. Channeling the zeitgeist never lasts for any artist; all who've been blessed with the opportunities and freedoms to create great work must one day forgo it, either by the times that have moved on, by death, by change, by life.

Where we can all think of numerous artists whose work is charged by the comet of genius within a certain trajectory of time and space, my favourite example of this is Joni Mitchell. I love how Joni's first two albums of the late '60s: folky, sensitive, albeit startlingly & piercingly deep given her uber-creativity and free use of open-tunings, are nonetheless akin to compilation albums. These are songs she'd written that had been made into fine folk-albums. Her third album, 'Ladies of the Canyon' brought out keener melodies, wider arrangements and more vivid stories that somehow epitomised late-60s California better than any other artist did at the time. If she'd stopped there, or kept at that level, no-one would have questioned her undoubtable talent.

From 'Canyon' onward, Mitchell's albums became artistic, musical 'statements' rather than merely series of songs stuck on two sides of vinyl, and with that, she channeled the very heights of expressive songwriting, moving further and way above where she'd been with 'Canyon'. There's her best-known and loved album, 'Blue', followed by 'For the Roses' which was a quieter, more somnambulistic piece, reflecting the wilds and coolness of Canada where she'd moved to for a while. This leads to another hit, 'Court and Spark'. 'Hissing of Summer lawns' was a thematic departure to the intense introspection that fuelled the previous few albums, and this in turn led to the masterful 'Hejira'.

I love how each album from 'Blue' to 'Hejira' link seamlessly with a sonic and thematic continuity. 'For the Roses' and 'The Hissing of Summer Lawns' tend to act like conduits for the albums that precede and come after them. These are great records in their own right although they're not as immediately captivating as are 'Blue', 'Court and Spark', or 'Hejira'. 'Hejira' is magnificent. Joni was at the very height of her poetic, expressive powers with 'Hejira', infused as it is with a hypnotic magic that was likely aided by Jaco Pastorius' bass for many of its tracks.

And Joni continued to make great music. But it's for these 70's albums she's most remembered for. These records were charged with greatness, and pure, unfettered artistry.

a cure for writer's block (ahem..)

2011-06-21T23:25:00.000+10:00

Shit - I have in mind to "formally" review the Cure at the Sydney Opera House for the Vivid Festival concert for "sweet one oh one" but I'm stuck in this quagmire of trying to make every sentence right, every word right, every passive phrase reversed so that the active is thrust out in front (always), and it's tiring me out like writer's quicksand.

So this is it, the looser-uperer blog. After this I'm hoping that I'll be able to draft that thing properly so that a formal review is written and that it gets posted and I can start earning big bucks for my efforts. Why, my Neil Finn article has been sitting in the "sweet 1 oh one" for over six months now and already I've accumulated 40c.

Ok. Cure. Best concert ever. They performed their first three albums with two intervals in between each album, coming back afterward for three encores. It was...sensational. I couldn't believe it was happening, but there it was. I'd seen the Cure a few times before but this was special. It was special for the auspiciousness of the occasion and for those classic, iconic albums they performed live. It was also special because, for perhaps the first time in my life, I felt I was somewhere at a specific time and place where many people the world over wanted to be that very moment. And I was there. I'm not much of a patriot but that night I felt very wonderful to be in Sydney.

The bizarre thing about all this is that the night before finding out that the Cure were coming to perform at the Vivid festival, I decided to go into the Cure's facebook page for no reason other than I just had a feeling or hunch to read about what they were doing. I read Robert's most recent update carefully, scrutinising it word for word; it read something along the lines of the Cure will play this x concert this year (not Vivid) and will not play absolutely any other concerts unless they are posted here (on Facebook)...and he went to elaborate to make the point very clear. Why did I go into that page to which I've never actually done, and read and scrutinise and ponder that message? The Vivid concerts were announced the very next day. Well, I do have a sixth sense about things so I'll put it down to that.

I wasn't planning on going along. A mate of mine insisted we try for tickets and by some miraculous fortune got hold of some. I was very glad he did. The Church played at the Opera House a couple of months beforehand and my inertia stopped me from ticket buying and going, to my regret. But I did see the Cure instead, and it was utterly lovely.

Three Imaginary Boys: you have to realise that live music in 2011 is much different in sound quality to post-punk recordings of 1978/79. You got to hear the music in all its lushness and flavour, particularly Smith's angular, often unusual chording. The feel to this music was cold-climate, almost Nordic, with tangible, emotional mood and flavour. The big difference was Simon Gallup's live bass-playing in contrast to the flamboyant, almost funky playing of original bassist Michael Dempsey who had originally recorded on the album. Gallup, to his credit, maintained his weighty, leaden sound that is so integral to the Cure sound while gamely replicating all of the intricate runs of Dempsey's, minus perhaps a few of those funky octave flicks. And he managed to maintain his low-slung bass poses and movements around the stage without compromising his style.

You just had to be there for the intro, the first song, '10:15 Saturday night', the audience went nuts.

Seventeen Seconds and Faith: this is where the Cure really settled in a style that was uniquely their own. Seventeen Seconds is often regarded as the Cure's finest album. Here we had Roger O'Donnell augment the previous trio with his piano. He played those instrumentals passionately; these stood out in this live setting in contrast to their muted presence on record. "Three" featured an improvised 'happy birthday Simon' from Robert. The songs were alive, dense sounding, magnificent. The crowd loved in particular 'A Forest', 'Play for today', 'At night'. How the audience swooned when the opening notes on keyboard and then guitar were played on 'A Forest'!

The fervour carried into Faith with the crowd dancing away to 'Primary' and gaping at the sonic beauty of 'Other voices', 'All cats are grey', and the title-track 'Faith'. For Faith the Cure were joined by co-founding member Laurence "Lol" Tolhurst, becoming now the Cure quintet. He bashed away fervently at percussion and some keyboard, adding to the mix intensity, nostalgia and celebration.

And they came back for three encores, as a trio, quartet, and finally quintet. They played the songs that made it onto the Boys Don't Cry album that weren't on Three Imaginary Boys such as the celebrated title track, the debut single 'Killing an Arab', 'Plastic Passion' and 'World War'. They played all those early b-sides that Robert suggested "...you might know better than us" and one track off their fourth album, 'Hanging Garden'.

For their last encore Robert announced that "something funny happened after that last song" referring to the link that broke and then spawned the poppy/funky 'Let's go to Bed' after the severe Pornography album of a few months earlier. 'The Walk', 'Lovecats', and that was it. A tremendous, magnificent concert.

They were special, he was special, still looking good from a distance with that handsome wide face, flat nose, large eyes and copious hair. Most of all there is his gift for music-making that has found world-wide appeal.

During the intermissions I couldn't help but notice that people looked a little glum as they were standing in those crowded lines for their over-priced drinks (i bet Smithy didn't have to buy his drinks and he, if anyone, can afford them...). People looked sad, distracted, the subtle nose out of joint look in the drink queues, a stark contrast to the concert hall mood. I suppose people were glum that they weren't Robert Smith, that they didn't look like him, didn't have his hair, his money, his gift, and had to go to work the very next day in jobs they'd rather not be doing. Oh well, nothing on the surface lasts. Enjoy it while it's here.

It was a very special occasion. I was very fortunate to go. I look forward to it coming out on DVD at some point.

the end of the X

2011-05-07T11:39:00.001+10:00

All these photos taken in July 2008

Perhaps the most iconic of Sydney's many singer-songwriter nights had its final gig last Monday night. We're talking about a place everyone called "the X". Sadly, the pub has been sold to a pub-entrepreneur who is infamous for ripping out the p/a systems and destroying any vestiges of the live music that in the past had served each venue so well and the people and performers who had involved themselves with it.

Monday nights at the X were a great deal more than just a singer-songwriter night. There are many of these all over Sydney, and many fine ones too. With the X there was the location, the room and the buzz all combined; making it a creative and social hub with few comparisons.

The X is situated on Foveaux Street, Surry Hills, just at the base of the steep hill with the one-way traffic running towards Elizabeth Street and Central Railway Station down towards the southern end of the city. It's one of those places that captures a spirit and buzz of generations past, and with it, a charged sense of the present moment. You feel the clammy though enticing sense of the working-class eras in all of the furtive terraces adjoined to each other in those side-streets, so well-portrayed in novels such as Ruth Park's 'The Harp in the South'. You sense a great deal of bohemianism in the air, or sense of a 'charge', or city 'rush'. It is a perfect example of the upside to city living, where you take on a creative buzz or aliveness from the feel of the time and place. I feel a buzz in and around the X - albums like Chisel's 'Breakfast at Sweethearts' or the Church's 'Of Skins and Hearts' needle in my brain as I walk around Foveaux Street at any hours of the day or night. (Studio 301 where the Church recorded their early albums is only a 10-15 minute walk away). Needless to say there'll be less bohemianism in the air in Foveaux Street now that the X's live music scene is destroyed.

An elegant bar with a warm, inviting atmosphere is (was) attached to the cavernous music area where people would play, meet and mingle.

Below is former Kanuk John Chesher who ran the night for seven years. He really did a great thing in building this night up. He is a very stylish player and singer.

Admittedly I only attended the X on Monday nights semi-occasionally and when I did it was mostly to watch and say hello to a few people. It's the sort of place that was just great to visit as well as to play at.

There's always been an astounding range of talent presented to pub-goers and other players at the X on a Monday night. It was the perfect place for beginners, for established singer-songwriters to try out new songs and perhaps promote their other gigs. There were novices, instrumental geniuses, singers with incredible operatic voices. I've always been amazed at how, as one example, one person with their acoustic guitar (or piano) can be so individuated as a performer or writer; that everyone carries with them their own unique style and sound despite sharing the minimal tools as performers, their customary guitar and voice. I've always loved and been inspired by that, thereby respecting everyone's talents and uniqueness as artists in the process.

I've met many crucial people at the X, before and during the Monday night Chesher era. I've met Gav from Velvet Road, ZaraMeow, and Pennie Lennon and other great people at the X. It's that sort of place. In what is a vast and often stand-offish city, the X is one of the few places where like-minded people could join together and mingle and be free to socialise and to immerse themselves in a creative and charged atmosphere. For this reason, and personally in that I've met so many people there, its closing is a sad event. I know too that many other musical partnerships and relationships were formed at the X.

Tuesday night jazz-jams weren't bad either. They're now gone, too.

John Chesher below advising on the mixing desk.

The last Monday night at the X on 2 May went on until 12:45 in the morning! Ironically I had a headache and only came for a short while before going home. It was a packed out night. Funnily enough I'm not rueful or upset about the discarding of music at the X. Needless to say I won't be returning to the X. Life changes, life moves on. Surry Hills will be all that more poorer because of this venue disappearing from the live music-map but the zietgeist is bound to spring its multi-thronged head someplace else. That's the cycle of life. It moves on.

Goodbye, X.

the pigmy

2011-04-26T21:57:00.000+10:00

There are no problems in my life. No tangible, real problems. I've no problems with circumstances, no problems with people, no problems with family, no problems with friends and loved ones, no problems with work. Any foreseen problems in any of these areas are summarily dealt with; life goes on clearly.

There may have been problems in the past, but there are no problems now. No real problems. Sure I'm depend on my job for my livelihood, but doesn't everyone? And for those that don't, are they any happier?

In fact, from a moment to moment basis, excluding past circumstance and future speculation, some aspects of my life may be considered to be 'perfect', or near perfect. If "perfection" is about 80-90% good and 10-20% then I'm definitely in this category of doing well for my self and situation within the context of coping and living in a large city.

But there seems to be one problem, one massive almost insurmountable problem.

This problem, if it could be called that, is an energetic problem though no less substantive. It is the problem of dealing with an unwanted guest, in my own body - a residual ball of emotional pain that seems to be permanently lodged within my stomach region.

Life now seems to be a battle between the forces of good - my body, my being - versus this dark ball of energetic discomfort that sits right there under my solar plexus and that I seem to be aware of all hours of the day. Sometimes it vanishes but invariably it makes its return. The more that maintain my awareness of this energetic sod inside of me, as I seem to be these days, the more this thing is staking its claim as the aggressive squatter who has no intention of vacating its premises whatsoever.

I've read and listened to much about this energetic ball of pain that is ensconced in almost everyone in this existence to varying degrees. I know how to be rid of it. However, being rid of this ball of psychic muck involves invoking the classic paradox of a technique that is fundamentally very simple, yet unreachingly difficult. It involves focussing or meditating on the ball of pain using the pure sensation of the body without allowing the ball of pain to move, to go into the brain and make one think about the painful past which only adds to the ball of pain, to eventually dissolve it. It does this because the accumulated ball of muck can not withstand the purer life energies that come into and animate each body. This is so damn difficult. But that's where I'm at, I can't turn back. My pure sensation is the lance to defeat this thing in the stomach that wants to come up and think about the past, make me jealous, make me resentful, draining my well-being in process.

Well, half of the battle is in knowing what's going on. But it is so hard to dissolve this alien thing, this psychic ball of unhappiness. And even by discussing it in these terms, by giving the thing credence by acknowledging it, only adds to it.

Don't think about the past. Don't look to see what others have. If something needs to be done, take action. Be true to the situation. Act and look but don't dwell on the past or compare what others have. Oh how easier said than done. It's easy now in the confines of my cosy room but one must be vigilant in those vulnerable moments, when you're out in the world during a busy day and you're walking down the street, rushing about. A thought comes up into the awareness - bang! You get emotional, think about the past, and it's wash, spin, and rinse with the ball of pain that takes over the body and its thought processes.

Geez I'm fucking sick of this thing - just wish it would vanish. It doesn't seem to want to just fuck off though. It's precisely like the squatters that keep put in their premises holding a gun out to any copper or law enforcement agent threatening to step in and remove them from their digs. This thing is not welcome in me, but it won't leave without a god-awful fight.

I haven't been playing as much music, nor have I been writing much - two of the activities I love and need in my life. I feel that the conquest of energetic unhappiness is that which needs most, if not all, of my devotion and attention. My frequent walks into the wondrous hinterland or along the sea are only a temporary panacea really. After a while the dark, pungent cloud reasserts itself, gets into my brain to make me think so as to generate emotional negativities, and I'm off again.

But as I write this I'm aware of the energetic good in my body, which is in all bodies. But the sensation of the good is far more subtle, less tangible, than the emotional pain body. It is there nonetheless - take a few deep breaths and focus on the energy in the hands, arms, legs, feet - it's a good sensation. I'm aware of gratitude and being grateful for all I have, which is much indeed. I have much to give and to serve with.

No matter how much good I perceive or how grateful I am, there's no doubt about it, this life is a battle with the dirty rotten spoiler, the alien, the psychic ball of past, of emotional pain, that has gathered in my body and seems to have taken its lodged itself most comfortably (uncomfortably for me) at the feet of my solar plexus. There's no choice left for me other than to face it and deal with it rightly. I can't run from it - I'm too self-aware for that. But it's a battle alright, for to die to this alien thing in the body is a darn difficult process. Because when you sense you're making progress, the thing will distract you one way or another, and often quicker than your consciousness can perceive with. It is dark mercury.

And yet it has to be done, it just has to be done. And I won't be turning back.

Yass, Wee Jasper, Berrima

2011-04-22T11:27:00.000+10:00

Prior to Easter I took off on a two-day road trip down to Yass, situated at the westbound edge of the Great Dividing Range. Yass is just over three hours drive from Sydney. No-one goes to Yass for the sake of it. Yass is a pretty, though pleasantly downbeat town of about 5,000 people and it's very much a passerby, truck-stop sort of town. It's generally a wool centre, but for me I was attracted to rolling hills, space, sheep, cows, and I happily encountered all of these. I also wanted to be far enough from Sydney to avoid vestiges of cosmopolitanism that tend to creep in up in satellite villages surrounding the city, without having to drive too far. Here, in Yass, the cafes and shopfronts were delightfully ordinary, and I reveled in the peaceful feeling you find in a small town away from the big city.

Monday Morning in Yass is slow and sanguine. The big city, even in its quietest moments, can in no way compare. Below is a photo of a local park with the big trees set behind the playground swings.

Yass is about 600-700 metres above sea level. This moderate elevation enhances seasonal contrasts and attracts lovely, fresh air all year around.

Venturing out to where I needed to be...

Here's a rock with an animated face that looks something like a prehistoric lizard.

Wee Jasper is a tiny settlement about an hour's drive south of Yass. It was only 52 kilometres south but the drive was often windy and even treacherous so it took me longer than an hour to reach this destination. I wasn't about to risk anything in my old beaten-up Hyundai!

Here's a cobblestone church set amidst Wee Jasper Australiana fauna. Wee Jasper is in a valley and is settled on a lake.

I came to Wee Jasper as it's a focal point of the long Hume-Hovell walk that takes days to do. The Hume-Hovell walk commences at Yass and travels all the way down to Albury on the Victorian border. I only did a small stretch of it in the one day I had, but it was a most marvelous walk, probably the loveliest bushwalk I've ever done!

This was my final stop before turning back. I stayed close to an hour at this spot. It was all up about a 300 metre climb to reach.

It was utterly glorious. The air was so delicate and so fresh, full of subtle fragrance and purity, untainted by nought. I was the only person hiking. It felt timeless to be where I was. It could have been Woodstock 1969 or California - the sense of time and place disintegrated into something altogether more joyous and timeless. I was elated, so happy!!! My pledge, when I finally turned away, was to keep as much of this energy in my body as I could, particularly when I was to be back in the city with its grinding, oppressive ways.

Purity, love, bliss.

Saw quite a few cows and sheep. Loved them!!

Loved driving through all these moo-cows! Loved the sounds they made, "moo" "moo" "moo". They were very sweet and gentle even though some of them were quite huge. I couldn't help but notice, being a city boy, that these cows didn't use toilet paper. Each cow had a shiny amber rear-region. At least it was grass they'd been eating. Cow-pat don't smell so bad..

Murrumbidgee river on the way back to Yass. Sublime countryside.

It's no accident that in my blog profile I list "tiny towns and abandoned railway stations" as one of my likes. It's tiny towns and abandoned railway stations where I find my inner bliss and peace, a sense that all things pass but remain, in some joyous and spirited way, eternal.

Autumn leaves.

Prettiness by the Hume river, Yass. This was my second day. No city hustle-and-bustle here.

By now, on my way back to Sydney, I passed by Berrima which is situated in the Southern Highlands. It's an exceedingly pretty town and is about 650 metres above sea level.

And here am I in a winery near Yass. I'm not really into wine at all but I visited a couple of wineries so I could imitate Paul Giamatti in Sideways which is one of my very favourite films. I told the winery guy that I was doing a Sideways caricature. He was a very nice man, probably thought I was a bit kooky though, but it's fun playing out your favourite role for a visit to a cellar door!

There it is. Something is calling me deep inside. That purity I discovered on the rolling hills of Wee Jasper is a reflection of a purity within. I wish to keep that channel of awareness open, particularly as I tend to get bogged down by city living and its stresses and negativities. It takes an enormous amount of power, or lift-off, to contain the energy needed to be free of negativities when surrounded by noise and distraction. But, at least, I had glimpsed externally the most pure reflection of the natural internal state that is possible. The summit of the walk in Wee Jasper was probably the most glorious place I've ever encountered.

Carmen, Crabs, and the dead end drive-in

2011-02-27T19:14:00.012+11:00

After many years of wondering and waiting I finally got to see this 80s "Ozploitation" film I'd been wishing to see for ages. Dead End Drive-In, directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith, was released originally in 1986. (I bought the DVD for work - such is the advantage of running a library. And besides, the new Head of Film and TV requested that I source as many Australian films as I can, so...) My interest in this film is not necessarily because it's Aussie, or because it drips and and reeks with every 80s cliche, but because it's based on a short story that I love, that being Peter Carey's "Crabs".

I'd never read a Peter Carey novel. I've only read most of the short stories that make up the volume called "The Fat Man in History" of which the first story, 'Crabs', is the best. With some writers you find yourself wanting more after reading one novel or story that you love; you're hungry to read the rest of their oeuvre. This is usually the case with me. But with Peter Carey I find I have no desire to read his later great works such as 'Oscar and Lucinda', or 'Bliss', or 'The History of the Kelly Gang'. And although I may get around to reading these someday, the 15-page short story titled 'Crabs' is seemingly enough for me. It's a story I love and have obsessed over, a story that throttled my imagination and threw me down into the deep throes of my inner subconscious.

This subconscious pull must have something to do with the persistent symbol of the car that runs through this story. In my conscious, waking life I find myself indifferent to cars. I own one indeed, but I seldom use it. And I don't wash it or look after it cosmetically, only mechanically. It's ten-years old and very much a nondescript piece of machinery, hardly flash I could suggest with wry, extreme understatement. But I like it that way. And I find now that I could easily live without it, just walk away from it.

It's in my dreams that the image or symbol of the car has been a constant throughout my entire life. Not so much these days, but definitely in my childhood up to early adulthood I would find myself dreaming of car travel, mostly as a passenger, and would riding over bridges, in tunnels, crossroads, straight country roads, urban streets that I'd never visited consciously. I'd be with others or on my own, as a passenger it seems but somehow alone. The constant feeling I encountered with these dreams was the subtle sense of anxiety and perhaps loneliness, trepidation, fear. I'm reminded, too, that a couple of very pertinent dreams I've had of my late father involved cars. I've been confronted too, with images of my former white car in relation to episodes in my life that confronted me in strangely palpable way, recalling one particular tense argument in my former band about driving responsibilities and being suddenly hit with an image of my little white car and its open boot. I was overcome with an overwhelming sense of fragility and loneliness and I almost broke down. So I know that cars or the symbol of the car is something that stakes a significant hold in my subconscious.

'Crabs' is all about cars. 'Dead End Drive-in' takes the original Peter Carey story - first published in 1972 - and seemingly recreates it word-for-word or image-for-image but for the derivation of post-punk to mid-80s kitsch you find portrayed throughout the film in its many characters' costumes and hairstyles. But the film diverges at the point where Carey's short story becomes that bit too surreal. In fact the original story became fantastically, scarily surreal and it's the story's final few paragraphs that blew my mind when I first read it and continues to excite me and leaves me pondering its significance. This is because all of my car-related dreams seem to echo, either faintly or intensely, that which is relayed in Carey's short story, in terms of the story's feeling aspects and its magnificent, overwhelming ending.

The gist of the story is this: we're in the future, a bit like Mad-Max where there is economic decay and people are scrambling and fighting for resources. Now, the film makes this implicit where the short story only alludes to this. Crabs (his nickname) is a teenage lad of about 16 or so who is aspiring to be a tow-truck business owner, wishing to be like his mentor, Frank. Frank has lent Crabs his 1956 Dodge for the evening. Crabs takes his girlfriend Carmen to a drive-in. Crabs knows to be careful because 'Karboys' are rife; ie, gangs who wantonly steal parts from cars to sell on the black market. This is why, in the backdrop of the story, tow-truck drivers are highly esteemed.

Crabs and Carmen are having sex when the Dodge tips over with a thud - two of the car's wheels were stolen. Crabs and Carmen can't drive home that evening. Instead they visit the manager's office and are issued with meal tickets for the drive-in's cafeteria and the option of blankets. They are advised to make themselves at home as, along with 73 other cars in the same predicament, there is no way out.

They eat the hamburgers and drink the sundaes with their meal tickets. Carmen seems to enjoy herself and falls into the swing of things at the drive-in compound: sunbathing on the roof of the Dodge, eating hamburgers and sundaes, watching the movies at night, hanging out and gossiping with other girls in the ladies' toilets. I suppose that's part of the allegory; Carmen's name is so close to that of "Karboys". Indeed, Carmen seems to be a passive, open vessel for whatever is going on in this compound, contenting herself with this new, unlikely situation with little question. Unlike Crabs, who obsesses over Frank's likely volatile reaction to his car's disappearance, and is always looking for or brooding about a way out of the compound. In our world, "crabs" move sideways whereas cars only move backward and forward. But crabs also move together and Crabs is stuck in a drive-in where seemingly each days brings in more cars, more families, more varieties of people, more smells of different cooking, and more tenements and more ball-game, time-passing activity. Carmen is also Carey's vessel in his story of the depiction of racial ignorance and racial fear. There are more detailed depictions in the film of Crabs' fractured relations with the other guys in the compound where the original story had only inferred these.

It is at the crucial point in the short-story where the film-adaptation takes a totally different slant, veering for the more conventional cops-and-robbers shoot out and escape scene. The film ends after Crabs has shot the manager after a vicious argument - the manager being cited to co-conspire with the government to keep the drive-in as a lock-in compound - to shoot another load of coppers before driving out and escaping onto the free streets in the break of dawn.

The story has Crabs noticing that, amongst the uncountable amount of cars being towed in, there is another 1956 Dodge. Crabs industriously steals the wheels and sets these up on this own car. He checks the dip to find all the inside parts to his car have vanished. He walks back to the newly arrived Dodge, opens the door and avoids and ignores the people inside trying to latch onto him. He opens the bonnet. All he sees is a group of small chickens drinking from a bowl of water placed upon a makeshift floor of old planks - there are no car parts.

Here's where it gets all sci-fi and, for me in relation to all those car dreams I've been having all my life, quite amazing. Crabs decides that the only way to escape, or to be free, is to be a "motor car or vehicle in good health". He repeats this to himself. He tells Carmen. Carmen cries and says you're going mad. Crabs is insistent. He "becomes" a car in good health, metamorphosing himself into a tow-truck of which he escapes, driving out of the drive-in. It takes Crabs a long time to drive through and around all the cars and people since the number of inhabitants in the drive-in had risen exponentially since he was first incarcerated.

Crabs drives down the highway at high speed, free. It is cold and Crabs realises there are no lights anywhere. The towns he passes are completely in the dark. (I've had "dark" car dreams myself, too). There are no other cars, no people, just emptiness. He drives for three hours, slowing down and feeling the pain sharply when jolting and turning corners. Finally he finds another highway and sees lights. He is heartened. He drives towards these lights, the only lights in the world. He comes to a compound and looks in through the gate to see people laughing, talking and dancing. He drives around the perimeter of the fence over rough unmade roads and paddocks until he comes to the main gate.

The gate belongs the drive-in, and it is chained-up and locked with reinforced steel.

There are a few points of allegory that can be taken from the story and its chilling ending. For one thing, the concept of finding freedom by becoming a "motor car or vehicle in good health" is an absurd one on the surface, but when one examines this closely it can be seen that this votive parallels the meditative, spiritual idea of "lift-off"; that when you purify your body and mind and focus your pure energy, or pure intellect, on the purity or power that is contained within the body rather than on the surface mind and emotions, you transform yourself into a vessel of 'higher power'. Crabs, in effect, is purifying himself to rise beyond worldly circumstance. He is the being of concentrated consciousness. It is this "consciousness" that permits him to be the "vehicle in good health" and to escape the compound and its moribund, worldly ways; his body being his "vehicle" to do so, just as our own bodies are vehicles of the consciousness or life contained within.

Ultimately, however, Crabs doesn't or can't really escape. His attempt at escape is cold and utterly isolating, devoid of life and light, and is something of a dream anyway. Is it because of some worldly paradox that one can't find freedom until all find freedom? Because interestingly, Crabs notices from the outside that the people within the locked compounded are singing and talking, and even dancing; they are having a good time. Did Carmen take the right idea to relax into her new circumstance without giving it extra thought? Or is it all it a bit like Ken Kesey's Combine, where those who try to forcibly escape the system get done in (McMurphy)? That ultimately, there's no escape unless you're deaf and dumb, so you might as well get played and be content with your own lot? That the authorities, or "illuminati", or, in this instance, the Karboys, will rule and lord over the minions, and there is nothing that anyone can effectively do about it? (Notice that the 'Karboys' are invisible, just like the world's privileged rulers are..?)

I notice the film was filmed around Foreshore Road near Botany Bay, (just down the road from where I'm living now). It seems ironic to me that a film about a degenerate shitty compound that grows and grows was filmed on location around Botany Bay (at least the street scenes were) as this is where discoverer Captain Cook first made the decision to colonise the now newly-named 'Botany Bay', in 1770. 241 year on and Sydney is now a grand, oversized and perhaps over-populated melting pot that precisely matches the character of Peter Carey's drive-in cinema during the course of the short story. The drive-in is simply a microcosm of modern Western society.

The ultimate accolade has to go to Peter Carey. It's not often, to my knowledge, that a film gets made based on a short story; a novel, yes, but adapting a short-story for a film is far less common. (Two of Peter Carey's best known novels have also since been adapted into feature films: 'Bliss' and 'Oscar and Lucinda'). And yet it's not surprising in the least that 'Crabs' was made into a feature film, for like myself, there are others out there whose imaginations have been fired by this fifteen-page short story. 'Crabs' is quite simply a genius piece of short-story fiction, one that maintains and captures a universal appeal.

*********************************************************

I was two years old when 'Crabs' was first published, in 1972. I was an imaginative child who used to make up words. I had a word for petrol station, "bugudubba". To this day I can look back and see where my head was at with making up a word for a place that excited this here infant. I loved the open, expansive feelings of (some) petrol stations, you drive in, you drive out, and they can take you places inside and out. I may be indifferent to vehicles in my conscious waking life, but the car and its symbols have always been an integral part of my subconscious, dreaming life.

cc

2011-01-16T22:49:00.000+11:00

It's easy for us to cast judgements based upon that which we read or see on the news broadcasts. Climate change, or 'global warming' as it is often known, is the bulls-eye topic as far as markedly dividing the populace with the for-or-against arguments is concerned. We see debates on television, read articles in the papers about melting poles and glaciers and devastating flash-floods that are happening in major cities 1000km up the coast. We then walk outside and ascertain the validity of these 'global-warming' findings depending on if it's a hotter-than-usual day, a colder-than-usual day, and just plain too-nice a day to bother about it.

What if we never read anything about global warming/climate change? What if we never saw a news broadcast or television debate on the issue? What if were totally uninformed in any way to do with anything on this matter? What if we used our senses only to guide us? What would we see, and what would we find?

To me, it's impossible to believe that the way of the civilised world has little or no effect on the atmosphere and the planet. Imagine the unfettered, untouched paradise that is a garden of Eden. Imagine there is one motor car running through it. Now that one motor car, in a small way, will effect the life around it; "life" meaning the fauna, foliage, creatures, air etc. When you have one billion of these motor cars, each of which devour the stupendously miraculous resource that is crude oil that in turn exfoliates this liquid-power into the atmosphere in a kaleidoscope of various gasses, some of which are benign, most are damaging in some way, then it's hard to maintain that the effect on our planet and atmosphere of this occurrence is a negligible one.

And this is only what we can see, can ascertain for ourselves. Immense scales of mass-meat production, industry, and construction on a global level, all contribute to altering the biosphere's gas quotient.

Matter cannot be destroyed, in its pure sense, it only changes form. What then is the effect the mechanisms of western civilisation on our planet? Surely, these mechanisms can't be benign. Some mighty law of cause-and-effect is going to come into play - perhaps this has already started - and I believe this to be the crux of the argument.

Many people glance upward at the weather and then watch the news to learn that the current summer/winter is the coldest on record. These people find it easy to debunk 'global warming' as a hoax, as a nonsense. Unfortunately, these issues run deeper than merely cooler or warmer weather. Cold Northern winters - particularly those centered around the usually mild (for latitude) British Isles and North-Western Europe - are becoming the norm. This is because: 1. rapidly melting ice in the Arctic sea is diluting the Gulf Stream that provides Northern Europe with a warm sea/air current and therefore cushions winter temperatures, and 2. this rapidly melting ice is affecting air and therefore pressure systems. This heavier than usual air-pressure finds its way coming down from the Arctic as a freezing large mass of polar air, wreaking winter havoc on Northern land-masses.

And warmer than usual water off the Australian tropical Eastern coastlines is causing the mass-precipitation events that have devastated much of Queensland since last week.

These flooding events, freezing events, heatwave events (remember Moscow during summer 2010?? Shocking heat, unbelievable...) seem to be becoming way to common for our comfort, but isn't that what climate-change scientists have been predicting for quite some years now?

And climate-change skeptics are absolutely correct in saying that climate can be altered by numerous causes and instances in and around our planet and our solar system. But for the moment, we humans here on Earth are doing a pretty hard and fast job of it, plumbing away ruthlessly at the planet's biosphere without much of a true, vital, idea of what we're really doing to a sacred, cosmic source.

If all of us were mindful of our way of life and how it contributes to the whole, perhaps we would change. We wouldn't be so willing to get into our cars on every occasion when we could otherwise walk or catch a bus. We would cease consuming plastic bags at every visit to the supermarket. Be mindful of our usage of utilities such as water, gas and electricity. Stop eating so much animal product. Each of us being mindful, and acting upon it in some small way, will go a long way not only to mitigate climate change effects (if it isn't already too late) but will help to ease ourselves into a more relaxed and friendly way of living.

But it's probably too late now.

It was said in 1983:

"like a child getting its experience in a playpen, we have made an awful mess

but it's nothing that won't be cleaned up..."

we're a weird mob

2011-01-01T12:14:00.007+11:00

I've been watching another iconically curious little Australian film recently, They're a Weird Mob, which dates back to 1966 and was filmed on location in Sydney during the summer of 1965/66. As that date-dial wenched into 1966 my brother was about to turn 8 and my sister was 11 years old. I was nowhere in the picture, in this physical body. I was merely a potential at this stage, and being a potential, I could have landed anywhere. Instead I landed in Sydney in 1970 where, 40+ years on, I still find myself living.

The film itself is not wonderful. It's hokey and dated and the plot itself is stilted, a little too make-believe, being much like the plot of a musical without the film actually being a musical. It's a pithily enjoyable film to watch nevertheless, both as a period-piece and for the sense of innocence conveyed in the film, particularly for its comic innocence. The romantic plot is quite conservatively portrayed, particularly when compared to that which we see in films of our current era. And yet, the romance is achingly real, heroic, true. It makes me yearn for the good ol' days, it makes me yearn to turn back the clock to 1965.

They're a Weird Mob is ostensibly about an Italian sports writer who comes to Australia by boat to work for his cousin's magazine. Unfortunately his cousin had left the country leaving Nino to find work on his own. He calls for a builders labourer's job and is taken in by a most affable bunch of fellas (the contemporary cream of Australian male TV/film talent) and almost too readily so to be deemed realistic. Notably, the film's depiction of racism as a constant undercurrent in burgeoning sixties society is filtered through comedy and, for the most part, a sense of good-natured tolerance. The terms being used back then were "new Australians" and the yucky "dago". (I know in the fifties my dad belted someone up for calling him a dago).

On the whole I feel moved by the sense of promise this film depicts. There is almost this thread of charmed fascination running through the film, of how lucky the people are to be living in such a beautiful place with such a magnificent harbour and abundance of sunshine. There seems to be an equally indolent detachment to the history and achievements of Western civilisation that were in a rapid phase of ascendance in the Northern Hemisphere during that time. As They're a Weird Mob was being filmed, Bob Dylan was about to record Blonde on Blonde, the Beatles had just finished making Rubber Soul and Brian Wilson was about to start writing Pet Sounds; The Sound of Music had been filmed and released. Compared to the rampant creativity of her northern, western counterparts during 1965, there's no sense at all of a 'swinging' Sydney in this film, other than that it is the location itself that "swings" with the city's residents partaking eagerly in the swing of a landmass that's somehow bestowed upon them: a day at Bondi Beach, or a harbourside party, locales that seem larger than life, particularly when viewed through the lens of this film circa 1965. What you can glimpse through watching this film is a possibility, a potential, of what is to come. And what's become since 1965 is the city having doubled in size with close to half of the population now decking the foreshores for the 2011 NYE party. Many more buildings came up in the CBD and the Opera House was finished (it's halfway there in the film). An Olympics came and flew by in 2000, and residential property prices have soared to levels unbelievable to anyone in 1965.

What a weird mob..

All of the main cast of male leads have passed on since this film's production, including Italian actor Walter Chiari who died of heart failure in Milan, age 67, in 1991. The local cast of men, granted, would or may have lived great Australian lives and left the joint when their time was up. I was not there, just as these men are not here now. They left their imprimatur, their psychic imprint, over their city and country, just as I do now. The female leads have survived and live on, including knockout Italian actress, Alida Chelli.

As I watched this film I felt a rumbling in my chest and stomach region, I felt myself as I may have been in 1965, drawn to this place by forces we cannot comprehend and understand, to be finally made physical by March 1970.

It's the sense of innocence that I'm drawn to in this film and the feeling of timeless Australiana that comes with that, and it's a sensation that part of me wishes we could go back to. But there's no turning back the clock, is there? One has to find this in oneself, within one's own being.

the plumber (silence is golden)

2010-12-26T11:59:00.003+11:00

Life often has this mysterious way of imitating art.

allow me to explain..

Some six weeks ago I came across an Australian television film called The Plumber. I encountered this TV play at work when I was asked to purchase a DVD copy of Peter Weir's 1974 cult-classic The Cars that ate Paris for our collection. This DVD doubled with another of Weir's films, The Plumber, from 1978. And being a major enthusiast of 70s Australiana I took home this double-feature almost immediately upon accessioning.

I didn't get to watch all of The Cars that ate Paris. Although intriguing, I just wasn't in the mood for it although I plan to get back to this film in due course. I skipped instead to the DVD's second feature, The Plumber, featuring Judy Morris as the stay-at-home academic and Ivar Kants as the plumber.

This rather odd drama almost defies classification, sitting somewhere as it does between psychological horror and wry, black comedy. What is for certain is that I loved the film and took to it instantly, watching it twice-over in quick succession. I gather from reading over the internet about The Plumber that it has attained a minor cult-status amongst film buffs internationally. It's one of those films that tends to raise more questions than it answers, leaving the viewer to ponder the visuals, the script, to find the essence of what really was the plumber's game. The answers remain an open verdict.

The plumber, Max (Ivar Kants), knocks on the door of anthropologist Jill Cowper (Judy Morris) who shares a top-floor apartment with her academic husband within a university campus. The plumber invites himself in, insisting that the plumbing in the building is in bad condition and needs attention. And so, the plumber comes in every day for the next fives days, subtly teasing and tormenting the anthropologist, and in the process destroying her bathroom. Her husband, Brian (Robert Coleby), having invited important international dignitaries to showcase some of his pioneering work, is unable to connect to his wife's distress. The same for her friend, Meg (Candy Raymond), who too lives in the block.

Enough evidence is gathered throughout the course of this short film to satisfy the viewer that Max is employed by the University as a plumber. And we discover via an offhand comment by Brian that he's been the source of many complaints. These facts do not determine Max's true qualifications or capabilities. That he is a shyster of sorts is an open question, as is his background. We figure that he is very class-conscious and come to the conclusion that he is picking on Jill Cowper in particular because she is a soft touch, very well-education, conservative by nature. He intimidates Jill by telling her about his prison exploits, and further intimidates her the next day by menacing refuting her prison references to the previous day, seething at her for mentioning the word "prison" and that he's never been. Jill's problem is further exacerbated by Meg or Brian's inability to gauge any strangeness in the plumber, even though he's gone so far as to destroy the bathroom.

You come to feel a background comic aspect to this film, very wry, very dry. The bleak humour serves to engage the viewer as there are moments within this film that are indeed quite funny. There's the scene where one of the visiting dignitaries wishing to use the bathroom and encounters strange glances from his hosts, to his own puzzled indignation, only to end up having the scaffolding fall on him in the bathroom. There's the scene where the plumber writes a song in the bathroom and performs it sitting on the toilet seat, adorned with his acoustic guitar, harmonica, and a hefty Dylan attitude. The plumber himself is vaguely comical presence throughout this film. One tends to concede he's most probably a harmless shyster with an angry side that he demonstrates by using subtle torment on the privileged, cautious and conservative, academic Jill.

At the end of the film, as the bathroom is hastily repaired, only to explode terribly once more with water and sewerage gushing quickly through all holes, does Jill come up with a solution. Faced with the prospect of having the plumber torment her for another week or ten days, she ruthlessly beats him at his own game, setting him up as a thief of her expensive watch that had been given to her by her husband. The Papua New Guinean rituals of vibing the opponent into ceding that Jill had been studying were expertly, coldly, almost cruelly put into place by her.

The Plumber is a film that's stayed with me since. And only after a few days after my second watching of the film, at the beginning of the December, reality mysteriously set in.

My own bathroom started to hiss. Somewhere behind the shower wall. On the other side of this wall is my kitchen. The strata held its AGM only a few days prior to me noticing the hiss, so that was strange timing for me as well, I thought. I emailed the committee members and strata manager, I emailed and asked friends and handy people. As I didn't receive any definite prognosis I thought I'd leave it. After all, it was likely to be some kind of air pressure or something, and all my systems seemed to be working fine. As we approached last weekend, some two to three weeks into the hiss, I suspected that the sound became almost imperceptibly louder, but then I felt that I may have been imagining this.

Last Sunday, 19th Dec, I almost got caught in a sudden downpour on my way home. Thankfully, my bus ride saw out the worst of it and by the time I alighted from my bus the rainstorm's intensity had abated, allowing me to stroll back to my apartment and remain reasonably dry. Unfortunately my west-facing bedroom window had remained wide-open and much water had rained in through the fly-screen, but this was nothing that a few swipes and soaks of a rag couldn't clean up.

I noticed too that my bathroom had water collecting around the drain and my passing thought was that the rain must have come in through the bathroom window. I left it at that and turned the other way.

Early next morning I awoke at 2:30am to visit the bathroom. The water around the drain was still noticeable. Suddenly I had this awful, fulsome intuition that the water in the bathroom was not rain water, but leak water. I could not return to sleep for my mind was to-ing and fro-ing in a wager between the possibility of a leak and natural causes. I got myself out of bed very early on the Monday and cleaned up the bathroom floor. Water continued to gather. When I'd wiped the floor through enough times to the point of certainty that all extraneous sources of leakage were accounted for, I put down my rags and went into work early.

That night another puddle had gathered around the bathroom drain, hmm.

Tuesday, 21 December. Approaching the summer solstice or Northern winter solstice. I'm out of bed early. The puddle in the bathroom hadn't diminished. I sensed a flush of warm water in the toilet but dismissed that for the moment. My small kitchen, which is on the other side of the bathroom, was warm and a little damp on the ground. At which, that moment, I spied the evidence: my washing-machine that is positioned directly under a bench in the kitchen had formed warm condensation on its rim. I noticed that the hot water tank was making the 'on' noise, and would click as such every few minutes. Alarm bells rang. I called a plumber. I switched off the hot water. I walked up to my nearest shop that happens to be a hot-water service specialist. They told me what I'd already just suspected, that I have a leaking hot water pipe within my walls. I called my strata agent. They got the plumbers in by midday. They drilled away inside my walls and repaired the pipey leak. The drilling was awful. It took them four hours of solid work to find the fault and then replace that section of pipe. I've kept that piece of pipe that caused the problem - the fracture in it is only a hairline one. I was lucky that the hot water worked afterward as I was in danger of having burnt the element by having the hot water turned off without having turned off the electricity. The tilers will be coming in to repair the patch soon after the new year. And the strata picks up the bill. It appears the hissing noise I'd been living with for three weeks was a precursor to the actual leak that likely started to occur less than 48 hours of the plumbers arriving.

There are no more leaks or puddles and no more hissing inside my walls. The silence is truly golden.

And at that night, at the supermarket in Maroubra, I ran into my cousin who I hadn't seen in years. He's a plumber.

Sometime during the 3rd grade, in 1978 when I was eight years old, and quite possibly during the very moment that the The Plumber was being filmed, we were all asked what we wanted to be when we grew up. I said plum-ber, pronouncing the 'b' prominently. All my little school-chums in that classroom broke into a big laugh and I had no idea what they were laughing about (my home education was always nil). And now, 32 years later, I can look back over that time and think to myself, yeah, I fuckin' should've been...

I think over this. The plumber film and my mini-obsession, the AGM, then the reality of a burst water pipe inside my walls (I've never known anyone who's had a burst water-pipe inside their apartment..) and then, the night of the big repair, bumping into my cousin who's a plumber. What does it all mean??? ....

**********************************************************************************

(from www.dreamsmeaning.org):

PLUMBING

Spiritual Meaning:
We are beginning to become aware of the flow of spiritual energy within our lives, though this may be in the background.

Psychological / Emotional Perspective:
Emotional security is important to almost everybody, and mostly such feelings are hidden from view. When we are looking at plumbing we are actually looking into our subconscious to where we have stored information and emotion. We need to be able to access the subconscious in order to create clarity within our lives.

Everyday Material Aspects:
Dreaming about plumbing looks at the way we direct our emotions. It indicates how we make use of our emotions to bypass obstacles in order to create security for ourselves and to control the flow of emotions within. Another interpretation is that of the internal plumbing. Often, to dream of plumbing in this sense alerts us to something that is perhaps out of kilter with ourselves, with our bodies. A leaking steam pipe might suggest, for instance, a problem with hypertension. A pump might symbolize the heart. Obviously, such images should not be used as diagnostic tools in any way.

Neil Finn solo concert review...

2010-11-30T22:05:00.001+11:00

Sweet news: I had my first article published in suite 101 yesterday. Over time I hope to build up a revenue stream with it; supply more articles, make more money. If it comes to making about a coffee's worth of coin per year I'll be happy enough.

Here is my article for suite 101, a review of Neil Finn's solo concert at the Seymour Centre in Sydney from a couple of weeks ago: click here

I'm not entirely happy with this article. I feel it's too self-conscious, wooden even, constrained. I'm hoping in time I'll learn to relax just like I do on this blog and be able to write a bit more casually.

I blew Neil an Italian-style opera-arrivederci kiss during the standing ovation. Neil caught this and beamed in a flash as his eyes met mine momentarily. I couldn't help but chuckle at this, to think that a year ago I wrote a decidedly salt'n'pepper article all to do with my mixed feelings about the man, why I loved him, why I hate him. (link) I haven't re-visited that article since, but I plan to re-read it after I finish this entry. I do receive occasional comments for that entry, the last two of which were attempts to put the controversial bits back on me. I've nothing to hide. It was just an article. What primarily interests me is how I've evolved so that I seem to love all his work unconditionally now, whereby up to relatively recently I happened to find much of his work intensely annoying.

Take 'Love you till the day I die', for instance. I used to detest that song; I found it to be a 3-minute quasi-funk vomit. Well, I love it now. And Neil being Neil, there's almost always a touch of genius in every song he creates. The middle-eight section of 'Love you till the day I day' is a wonderfully inspired piece of music, great music. Mozart would have given his praise to this. Besides, this music dates very well, extremely well.

Needless to say I am a fan and have great respect for Neil Finn; the music and the man. The solo concert was sublime, one of the most rewarding concerts I've ever attended. And I'm glad I've evolved and grown enough to see the overriding good in the music and the man, and to have cast aside the negatives.

Songwriting Society: personal top 10 (2002)

2010-11-20T20:58:00.000+11:00

Here's something I wrote eight years ago for the magazine. It's a nice piece of writing so I'm uploading it here while I chisel my icy writersblock with a picksaw; on the brain is a Neil Finn concert review...but for now, a piece of, um, history!

This report is based on my idea of a 'Top 10' song list for all those songs I've encountered in the Society over the past 4 years. Since I'm going to pull back a little next year I thought it appropriate to draft my idea of a 'Top 10' song list covering my time in the Society up till now. The sort of thing 'Q' magazine publishes every 3 months.

The list is subjective of course, and my opinion doesn't count for anything at all anyway. What I will say though is that these songs represent excellent, and sometimes classic, examples of their respective genres, and as such, would be up there with any of the internationally renowned great albums. While anyone who's been involved with the Society for a few years would be able to draft their own list, I'm sure the excellence of songwriting is unanimously agreed upon. There are a lot of 'classic' songs out there.

These 10 songs I all love and represent pretty much their impact on me as a listener, in order from 1-10 (it was quite difficult to decide on an order), rather than "likeability" as such. The styles vary accordingly, 4 artists are male, 6 are female. These songs may not necessarily be the artist's "best" song, but they do convey something universal and special to me. I suppose it's a bit of a plug for those who made the list but really this exercise is meant to promote the Society and our Songwriting as a whole. I could have easily have forged a Top 20 list and included 10 more artists but time and space disallow that.

(Note: none of these songs are part of the current 2002 Top 10 Song Contest).

10. Christine

Writer: Vesna Malnar; performed by Ana Key and the Minority Group

'Christine' is a propulsive rock song that takes on the style of classic New Wave rock such as Siouxie and the Banshees and the very early Church. The build up to each chorus is dramatic and powerful, yet subtle, and all is enhanced by the powerful drumming at just the right places. The brilliant storyline and lyrics give the song an added depth and power. The lyric "It's a movie show.." which ends each chorus becomes the rawly exciting fade out coda, lending to the song a sense of classic New Wave rock, which it is at its finest.

9. Never Run Away

Writer: Ben Ackerman; performed by BeNNeTT, & Shadow

This is one of those rare, special love songs that truly convinces the listener that the singer (writer) is really in love. The sheer commanding beauty of the melody, the fantastic chorus, and the unashamed lyrics are kept in balance by Ben's fervent - yet thoroughly natural - sense of nobility and an almost steely resolve. Therefore, the song does nothing but convince the listener of the power of the singer's love, captured within the confine of a most commanding, striking and beautiful love song. And one that all of us can relate to in our own experience.

8. Control

Writer: Wendy Ford; performed by Wendy Ford & Whisker

A huge pop song with tremendous impact and power, 'Control' starts off with a relaxed groove reminiscent of Lou Reed's 'Walk on the Wild Side' and builds up step by step with delightful musical and lyrical turns. The evocative lyrics of "Glebe markets Saturday afternoon.." take a surreal turn of phrase that bursts forth into the magnificent chorus, in a minor key. Structurally & lyrically excellent with one of the best choruses you'll hear anywhere, 'Control' radiates a life of its own with a commanding sense of the sheer arresting power of great pop music.

7. I Know

Writer: Gavin Fitzgerald; performed by Velvet Road

A fusion of the musical style of Creedence Clearwater Revival and the sandshoe rock'n'roll grit of early Cold Chisel, 'I Know' stands up as a Classic blues-rock corker. The hint of soul-influence in the music lends to the song a heady magnificence with just the right elements of power, verve and heart-driven passion. You can virtually smell the leaded petrol emanating off this track, and hear the skidmarks of the Holden Sandman spinning off dusty roads. No doubt this is a track a band like Cold Chisel would have taken savage delight in "pounding to the boards" during their formative years at the Largs Pier Hotel, Adelaide, in the mid 70's.

6. Stay With Me

Writer & performer: Daya'mayii

This beauteous gem vaguely carries with it the sound and feel of Carole King's Tapestry album, yet 'Stay With Me' eclipses King's influence in that it possesses a sensitivity and poignancy that is matched by only very few. An intimate song of reachingness, Daya'mayii wears her soul on her sleeve ("Stay with me / I'm kind of troubled...I'm a lost soul / but I find my path if you stay with me...") and matches her words with a gentle, beautiful and piercingly sensitive musical backdrop. As sensitive and beautiful a song quite likely, as Nick Drake's 'Saturday Sun'.

5. Love Sweet Love

Writer & performer: Christian Laki

A searing song that celebrates the joy of love, it happily reflects an overt Beatles influence from say, their Magical Mystery period of late '67. It almost seems like a cross between 'All you need is love' and 'I am the Walrus', albeit with a clearer perspective and production. Lyrically clever and warm, the song really takes off in the middle eight where it reaches stellar heights. One of the best middle eights you'll ever hear, and the dramatic move from the middle eight into the baritone guitar solo is just brilliant. With all respect to the rich and famous, Noel Gallagher still has a long way to go before he reaches this level.

4. The Donut Shop

Writer & performer: Sarah Binnie

One of the most original songs you'll ever hear, and one of the most arresting too. This was based on a simple guitar turn that is most akin to a slightly warped blues but the story and vocal melodies that ebbed and flowed were spellboundingly amazing, the heart on the sleeve thing captured in a song that resonated immediately with a vulnerable, yet true emotional sincerity. Sarah hasn't been in the Society for a while and I only recall this song vaguely but Christ it had an impact, on a lot of people.

3. Talk Quietly

Writers: Megan Albany, Marc Mittag; performed by Skinful

This is scintillating, delicious pop that mirrors early 80's Brit Soul-pop most epitomised by artists such as Tracey Thorn, Everything but the Girl, and the early Style Council. Superbly produced, arranged and crafted, 'Talk Quietly' lauds the value of a quiet, special friend. This definitely gives the song its subtle emotive power, and housed with its warm, vibrant melodies and lyrics and standout chorus, make it a truly wonderful and special pop song. A song that arouses the best that music can bring out, sheer bubbly happiness and joy!

2. By the Holy Water

Writer: Pennie Lennon; performed by My Hearts Dezire

An extraordinary song. Pennie's piano and yearning chorus take on so much feel it's incredible. Pennie is a true tone poet and the musical modulations, twists and turns throughout the song emphasise and evoke feels, moods and colours of all dimensions, to me, I hear a purple Hermann Hessian existentiality wafting through. A real trip, in other words. And it all comes together into a most dramatic five minute song that quite easily matches the genius of all the classical masters bar none. The striking melodies, an incredible harmonic structure which works powerfully and so emotively mixed with an equally incredible lyric make this song a definitive piece of Genius. No wonder the Church's Steve Kilbey was keen to produce Pennie's album Journeys. 'By the Holy Water' appears on My Hearts Dezire's Live at Karmic Hit Ep which although relatively unproduced (compared to her other albums) is nonetheless arguably her finest album.

1. Begin

Writers: Chris Carrapetta, Simon Laham; performed by Chris Carrapetta, Dreaming Tree

Pennie gets pipped at the post by a lad's song. Well, I'm a lad, and Chris Carrapetta & Simon Laham have penned what is probably the most classic urban-country 20-something love song ever written. Not so much a love song as one of anticipation of love ("...don't you know it's with you that I wanna Begin..."). Fusing the styles of Neil Young with the more contemporary Ryan Adams and solo Tim Rogers (U am I) to create that urban-country sound, Chris & Simon have quite possibly eclipsed the lot of them (well, let's not get hysterical, maybe leave Neil Young out of this one...). It's very contemporary, vibrant, very inner-west Sydney sounding, and seems to mirror or champion a lower middle-class perspective. It fuses classic simplicity with yearning yet upbeat melodies and universal sentiments, and, a totally effable singalong chorus. The opening lyrics reflect longing, ("...there is no greater joy in this world / than the touch of my sweet lowdown tattooed girl..."). The girl is vividly portrayed throughout the verses, ("...tattooed ballerina girl...lives her life in a perfect ballerina's twirl...burns her hair and she don't care...paints her face like a mime in a circus fair...her painted face her burnt brown hair / brings me back to her from anywhere.") The choruses are absolutely classic sing-a-long material that will get every punter singing along in pubs all over the nation and which is why it will be in Triple J's Top 100 when Chris bothers promoting it! The chorus simply reflects the tug of angst where the relationship is just beginning, or just sort of, ("Spent all night on your living room floor / thought I saw it in you but I wasn't quite sure / we did a lot of laughing and we almost cried / and I looked in your face and in your eyes I died...). The crunch and musical/lyrical majesty of youthful boyish heroism closes the chorus ("...oh baby I just want you to let me i-i-in / don't you know it's with you that I wanna Begin.."). The song; where performed, always generates a tremendous audience response - and calls for repeat performances!

'Begin' is not necessarily Chris Carrapetta's finest song per se ("I'm over it" says Chris about 'Begin') but it is one of those "classic" songs that will go a long way if pushed and promoted, sort of like what 'Khe Sahn' did for Cold Chisel. I'd suggest to Chris to re-record the song in his singing key and to find a good, suitable producer. The rest will be Australian Indie Rock history! This is one of those special songs that could easily make Triple J's Top 100 and be Number One with it.

In short, here's the order:

1. Begin

2. By the Holy Water

3. Talk Quietly

4. The Donut Shop

5. Love Sweet Love

6. Stay With Me

7. I Know

8. Control

9. Never Run Away

10. Christine

Paul Weller @ the Enmore Theatre & Metro

2010-10-25T23:53:00.007+11:00

Paul Weller, live at the Metro, Sydney, Oct 2010

1986 was the year my love of a certain songwriter-musician flew into high gear. I was 16 years old in May 1986 when my sister bought me Paolo Hewitt's The Jam: a beat concerto. I was immediately captivated with this biography: the photos, the story, the easy-to-read though poetic and incisive style of writing, and ultimately, Paul Weller. I became a huge Jam fan, totally obsessed, and in varying degrees I remain so to this day. Here was a man who seemed to grow up with similar experiences to I and who looked so good and wrote such magnificent songs, who had such power and force of expression, and an acutely good musical ear. Paul Weller, along with John Lennon, was my man.

I never dreamt I would see Paul Weller perform live. By 1986 the Jam were dead and the Style Council were moving into making album statements away from live performance; it had been the Council's tour of Australia in 1985 that awakened me to Weller's previous incarnation, the Jam, although I never regretted not seeing the Council live at the Hordern Pavilion in August of that year. In 1986 it would have been inconceivable to think that Paul Weller, many years henceforth, would come full-circle and create music that was "Jam-like" during the latter part of the 90s, to move onto the world tour-circuit to perform songs from each and every era of his 33 year career. But there he was, five metres in front of me at the Metro, the man from Woking whose music I've listened to and whose person I've read about so much throughout these past 25 years.

I saw Paul Weller for the first time at the Enmore Theatre in 2008 where he and his band were touring the masterful 22 Dreams album. I was in such a euphoria that night. I waited by the back lane that was flanked by bodyguards, just hoping for a chat with mister Woking-class hero, but gave up on that when reality set in and instead just walked up King Street in a euphoric daze. Last Friday's gig at the Enmore wasn't quite as good; it was still brilliant, it's just that the overall mood wasn't quite as intimate as that first gig two years ago. Some things like 'mood' you just can't really pinpoint; Weller played some sublime songs last Friday: 'You do something to me', 'Broken stones', and the finale 'A town called Malice' that blow the roof off the theatre. Musical, songwriting, magnificence.

The gig at the Metro on Sunday night was much better. Because of the mosh-pit we were able to get in quite close. In fact, we were able to get in close by just strolling in ten minutes prior to the band coming on. There's no way this would have been possible at a Weller gig of the early eighties, or even the mid-nineties for that matter. But being 2010, in Sydney, and the on third night in a row for Weller in this particular strange town, it was just a matter of walking in casually. Most of the audience were happy to stand up on the elevated areas. We had to be near the front, and we were.

I was hardly in the mood for stepping out the door that day. It was a dreary, cold Sunday. There'd been a cold snap and it was wintery and blustery and the rain came down all day. I noticed that band all looked at each other with knowing grins when Weller sang the line "...pissing down with rain on a boring old Sunday...". Poor fellas. They were likely expecting good old-fashioned Aussie warmth, the type you hear about in the mother country. Wasn't happening I'm afraid. Still, they had a "splendid" time according to Paul and the band appeared to enjoy themselves, throwing themselves totally into this great music.

The songs off 'Wake up the nation' encapsulate some of that 1966/67 Beatles/Pink Floyd energy within some short, tight songs, almost rekindling the ethos or energy of punk. And yet the album sounds startlingly modern, like what 2010 is supposed to sound like. 2008's '22 Dreams' is loosier, folksier, and takes on a wider range of influences including mid-period Beach Boys and British 70s folk like Ronnie Lane. Weller performed only one 'Style Council' song on both nights, 'Shout to the top'. When you think about that canon of songs that belonged to the Style Council you just can't help but think of the colossal talent that is Paul Weller. There is a style and flavour to Council songs that are all their own, and it's almost hard to believe that the man on stage flailing away unfaultingly on his guitar is the same man responsible for this eclectic, mostly lovely body of great music and songs that epitomised some of the best of 1980s popular music.

The biggest cheers on the nights were characteristically drawn from the performance of old Jam numbers. 'Strange Town' was loud, symphonic, and magnificent, the most. 'Pretty Green' and 'Start' from the Sound Affects album highlighted Weller's Beatles influences, keenly matched with his equally acute sense of lyric, structure, and craft. 'That's Entertainment' really gets the crowd going. And surprise surprise, 'Art School' from 1977 flew down gloriously well with one of Weller's band taking the main vocal. The song doesn't date live as one might think it would, and it still seems credible with an old geezer taking the lead vocal, albeit intermittently. Then, 'A town called malice'. A song that's most perfect in it's passion and delivery, it's great melody and sheer lyric brilliance. This was the final song of Friday night's gig and it blew the roof off. We all shared it. Even Weller who wrote it can still feel it. It's the universal song of the overt and underlying pressures of living in the modern world, the human condition. In its poetic brilliance, powerful music, melody and drive, 'A Town called malice' probably stands as Weller's ultimate masterpiece and remains a classic example of great popular music. Certainly one of the greatest songs ever written.

Swimming

2010-10-04T21:34:00.007+11:00

I’ve gotten back into swimming. I haven’t been out swimming for a long time; suffice to say that I took it up semi-seriously in 1989/90. I was never a particularly good swimmer, I’m still not, and I came late to learn to swim for my childhood fear of the water. This in itself is unusual given that I grew up in the Eastern Suburbs where the swimming culture runs ramp in the collective blood of its residents. Besides, I'm a Pisces. I finally got the hang of swimming by age 11, albeit tentatively. At then, at 19, I decided to get fit and do laps at UNSW pool.

Twenty unbelievably quick years on and here I am, back in the Uni pool with a seeming vengeance to swim like a warrior with a mission, and as often as I can. I’ve been back to the pool sporadically during the intervening years but never to any pervading purpose or plan. There was an awkward period of a few years when the acquatic centre was being totally refurbished, where everything except the pool itself underwent the renovators’ knives. I kept instinctively away during this period, and for the most part, have avoided the pool up until a few weeks ago.

I was a student at UNSW in 1989 and 1990. I’m no longer a student at UNSW but instead work across the road at the Dramatic Art Institution, and have been plying my trade there for three months shy of fifteen years! And yet, even working across the road from the aquatic centre wasn’t enough to draw me back into swimming. My decision to return to swimming was activated by my now-close living proximity to the pool, a leisurely twenty-minute stroll each way, and more one-pointedly, to further improve my diabetes control and general fitness. I do believe my diabetes control and fitness is improving, and I’ll definitely know by the end of the month when I go for my next blood test.

Indoor-pool swimming has its drawbacks. I have been out to Bondi and Bronte pools over the years but, like indoor swimming, have never made it a definite habit. I’ve eschewed swimming because it’s generally a pain in the ass to have to bother with change rooms, showers, drying off, dressing up, the scent of chlorine wafting from your skin no matter how much soap you smother over yourself. But the benefits of swimming are immense, no more so than the all-round good feeling that stays with you for the remainder of the day after you leave the pool. Swimming is on a par with clothes-washing. You do your laps (wash), after which you retire to the sauna (dry) and you leave feeling clean and crisp all over.

I swim at least 1000 metres (1 kilometre) in the pool. The pool is 50 metres long with a divide at 25 metres to separate the shallow end with the deep end. So I invariably do at least 40 laps of freestyle at which I follow through with a few breaststroke and fast freestyle to finish up, partly also to make up for any laps I think I may have miscounted.

I don’t particularly enjoy swimming. Indoor swimming is not exactly ‘fun’, but one doesn’t jump into the chlorine soup to have themselves a great time, or to necessarily enjoy it. My reasons for swimming go beyond mere fitness. One can have a much more rewarding time going for a lovely walk on a nice day amidst the sunlight and the trees and breathing in flowers’ scents, although swimming has the advantage of being an all-body workout that doesn’t pressurise the joints as walking can do. And yet there’s more to it than that. Swimming is a discipline. A discipline that requires some degree of fortitude and personal objective to stick to the required laps in freestyle, to round off with a few breaststroke, to earn the prize which is a good 15-20 minutes in the sauna. The sauna leaves the body feeling so sublimely good afterwards that I find I don’t sleep any better than those times I find myself immersed in an evening swim and sauna.

My swimming is an exercise in discipline and endurance. At about 300 metres I’m usually puffed out and I’d prefer to just walk away from it all. Besides, it can get very boring too. I persist, however, at which I find myself getting my second wind at about 600 metres, to power through toward my goal of one kilometre, feeling those muscles in my arms and legs charging up, and my lung capacity seemingly doubled.

It’s that almost Eastern sense of discipline that draws me into a round of swimming. Swimming is very much a mind-body-spirit sport, and it aligns the physical, mental, and spiritual better than anything I know of, including meditation. And there’s always the reward of a post-swim sauna to look forward to, which is why I swim my zen-kilometre to begin with. Nothing feels better to the body than a long swim and sauna. I plan to make this a long-term habit, and a consistent one at that, hoping to make it to the pool at least twice a week. I’d love to go daily if I could, but time is unfortunately constrained.

Nevertheless, I found something again that’s altering my life and for the better, it seems. I have this longing to be clearer and healthier and swimming is the best way to stay clear, focused and healthy. I feel cleaner in mind and body and my mind feels sharper, more focused. I do hope that after all the effort I’m putting into this that my blood-sugar average drops for my late-October test.

north south east & west (aka south of south)

2010-09-25T12:26:00.001+10:00

South of South, Bare Island, La Perouse

Up until recently I hadn't taken notice of directional aspects, or positions. I mean, I always knew about directions and their significance to heat and light; that north-facing equals premium sun, south-facing means no direct sunlight, east-facing welcomes the morning sun up to the midday hours, whilst west takes in the afternoon rays. It's only because I've purchased my first bit of real-estate that I've come to obsess about directions and their significance to me.

My unit faces south-west. Most of it faces south with a slight easterly slant, whilst one room - the bedroom - faces west with a slight southerly slant. I must say, I like it, and am very glad I bought into a west-facer. In my instance I find that the southerly aspect works well because I'm facing a white building that reflects its light into my apartment. So for the most part I tend to take in a lot of light even though most of my windows are shielded from the sun. In the summer months there'll be the duo bonus of staying cool while taking in a good degree of light.

I like south. South is honest, cool, equable, and icily dispassionate as it casts a spell over its Antarctic, south-pole, purview. South is like Saturn in the Southern Hemisphere, as North is the Northern Hemisphere's Saturn. Saturn is a task-master, you have to earn your sunlight within. There's no easy light cast on you. You have to allow the light come to you, from within, because in the external world there's always the intimation that the sun is nearby, over your shoulder almost, yet never actually touching you directly the way that the northern sun will.

East is my least favourite direction. I find that East provides much promise with its lashings of morning sun, but then leaves the afternoon dark and barren, with a feeling of closed-inness. There's even less sun in the afternoon if you face east than if you face south as the south tends to be closer to the west's rays in the afternoon, even if these rays aren't directly facing. If you're overlooking the sea, then fair enough, having a 24-hour sea-view is worth not having afternoon sunlight. And if you prefer morning sun to afternoon sun then east-facing vistas are the answer.

I prefer afternoon sun. I prefer west-facing. I don't care how dark the place is in the morning, my preference is to see that sun set in the afternoon. The feeling of facing west is one of end-of-day expanse. The place feels bigger with a greater sense of space or dimension. Easterly facing afternoons where the place gets all dark, I don't like.

Nevertheless I'd have to say the optimal aspect is north-east, with a slight westerly slant on the north-facing side. North-east will take in morning sun and the afternoon westerly sun without the disadvantage of heating up the place too markedly.

South-west, my place's aspect, comes in second. With south-west you take in the afternoon sun but the place is left feeling temperate, without the what could be relentless 'overdose' of sun you could take in if you take up a north-west aspect.

South-east is my least favourite aspect. These places are more susceptible to mould and mildew than all other aspects. If you're a morning person and like to be up to raise all the curtains at 6am then you could get the place dry by midday if it's a warm sunny day. But the problem with south-east is that it will be dark after midday, and stay that way until the sun goes down, so it's quite depressing in my view.

East is the master of promise, of the dawning of the light before its final departure halfway through the day. The lesson of East is to keep the purity and promise of dawning light in those periods of darkness and interminability. Carry the flame of light within always for the sun will always dawn again to bring its glorious reassurance.

North is the giver, the heaven, the ideal. You face the sun all day. But you can have too much of a good thing. There are times when you need to find the "cool" of yourself, the south of yourself. When you face north you are like the camel trying to go through the eye of the needle, life can be too easy. Practically, too, there are times where you just wish to escape the presence of the sun, the instinctive natural impulse to find the "cool" of yourself, the south of yourself.

South is the constant purveyor of the purity of truth within. At its ideal, south is icy, cold, white, and represents infinitesimal purity. (Just as north does in the Northern Hemisphere). South open us up to the dimensions within our being that are more true and real, beyond our daily surface projections. We need to hold to the "south" of ourselves as we're craving the reassuring surface consciousness of north. South is a wonderful teacher for us.

West is the frontier, giving us promise of further worlds and possibilities that linger in the air as the sun sinks over the horizon. West is reassuring and revivifying in its late afternoon blossoms of sunlight, but can provoke greed and distraction in those who crave permanent "west" in their being. I love facing the west.

Of course, all aspects merge into the one complete whole, for all directions take us back to point of where we started. All is circular. That's the miracle of life, again, representing oneness and connectedness in the universe.

the bearded one

2010-08-26T22:18:00.002+10:00

La Perouse, Sydney, August 2010

I grew a beard during the winter months. I tend to allow my facial-fur grow out during those cooler, grayer months of the year. I figure it's too much of a drag to run cold shaving gel over my face every morning when I'd much rather be asleep in bed. It's not that I necessarily have to get up early every morning, it's more that the winter vibe is not really all that conducive to daily rituals of cold blades and water and gel. Besides, the fuzzy beard keeps me warm.

The most interesting aspect of growing a beard is in witnessing other people's perceptions of me, of which I'm equally amazed, and appalled. All of a sudden, as my beard becomes decisively furry and the whites become prominently pointed from my chin, I start to receive strange looks from people on the street. As if my beard is a signal for some strange sort of attention. There are a lot of sharp glances cast my way. Sometimes there are subtle, though awful, leers that will stay in my memory a lifetime. A leer that suggests something along the lines of "I'm greater than you, you are lesser than me..". Worst of all are the old curmudgeon pricks who cackle, shake their heads, and look at me like I'm some kind of scum, or asswipe. (I'm holding up a mirror to you, mate..)

There I was in Coles supermarket one Saturday morning dressed in grey jeans and a light-blue pullover, and wearing the beard that was, by now, nicely settled in. Some tall, 60-year-old-plus turtle-headed, Yugoslav or East European-looking man, shakes his head at me as he walks past, cackling to himself hatefully whilst muttering curses and other such indeciperables, fixing me with an ugly stare all the while. I held my gaze firmly at this creature, finally bringing up finger toward him, sideways. The 'sideways' action mediates the affrontedness of an erect finger-salute; it's a way of telling someone to get the fuck away without the overt rudeness. He turned away and his cackling subsided, though his face remained contorted like a bad crusty smell, and a psychic dark shadow flung over his hairless crown like a burka.

This incident prompted me to have a shave. I was going to anyway, now that the days were getting longer and the feeling of spring was in the air. I kept my sideburns. Now I look like a Neil Young fan, or a Clash fan, or a Marxist, or some funky-filmy 70s dude. No one's giving me strange sharp looks anymore, no-one's leering at me, and no-one is looking at me like I'm the scum of the Earth.

I should have been an actor. I have a most adaptable face. In turns I can look Italian, Irish or English, like a 60s dude, like a 70s dude, and even like an 80s dude (or used to, with my mullet). And with my emerging beard I begin to look perhaps Jewish, or Islamic. The white tufts of beard that point out from my chin begin to depict the looks of a certain anti-hero accused of inciting major terrorist acts on NYC in 2001. Is this why people leer and sharp-stare and growl at me when I'm wearing a beard? I'll never really know until I grow a beard again, next winter, and ask the silly prick on the spot why the fuck they're staring at me. It'll be like Robert De Niro and Taxi Driver and a Black Beard all rolled into one.

People are fucked. People are stupid. I shall speak for myself here from a seemingly higher plateau of sanctity that I never judge people for their looks or their manner of dress, or facial hair. Think about this: the nature of terrorism is such for its element of surprise. As soon as you depict a certain creed or group of people as being "all terrorists", then you've lost the plot. Because as sure as the fire in Hades some next-door neighbour you always deemed as harmless is going to do something extremely distressing to the community, and communities at large. That's how it works. But no, we seem to have a cultural enemy now. This subtle and sometimes not-so subtle new-enemy vibe has permeated into our culture, ie, our westernised "way-of-life" since the beginning of this millennium. And as I've discovered, it comes out in spades. With my beard as my psychology-hypothesis attache, I am, inadvertently, a test guinea-pig for these stupid pricks who envelop themselves in hateful, cultural prejudices and project these seeming and randomly onto innocent people.

I was singled out at the airport when I returned from Cairns last year. I was body-scanned for metals for a procedure I was assured was "random". I told the lady waving this beam all over me to notice the ukulele I was carrying. Ukuleles are the most peaceful things on Earth, I assured her. She seemed pleasantly perplexed, but unmoved.

John Howard Griffin's Black like me is a great book. Excerpts were read to us in high school by a very good English teacher (one of the very few good English teachers we had; one of two, actually).

And to all the leerers and cacklers and sharp-starers, here's the finger - Fuck you! No I'm not planning to bomb your house you supremo el-fuckwit. But someone else might be, and it may be the person or group of people you least expect to...

room (suite) 101

2010-08-24T21:14:00.000+10:00

Oh dear. I've signed myself off to the other side. Perhaps this is why I've maintained a blog, to come to this very moment where I can say I'll be batting for the other team...

What's happened is that I saw a Facebook advert for suite101.com. It's an open site for writers of non-fiction articles, with revenue-making possibilities. You need to submit samples of your own work to qualify when applying to become part of their team. I decided to give it a go, mainly to see if, indeed, I'd pass the test and be accepted as a writer. Well, they accepted me. And after deliberating through the terms and conditions I've decided to join up. So that's it. I'm now a writer for suite101.com.

I won't be able to post articles submitted to suite101 anywhere else until 12 months from the date of submission passes, at which the stipulation is that suite101 must be recognised as the original publishers of the work wherever the article appears.

So that's it then. I gotta think of something to write about!!! Probably music stuff and music reviews. Etc. I'll keep this blog as my own warped, surrealistic, episodical diary. And anything that gets published on the suite I'll post here purely as a link back to the suite.

Don Walker's 'Catfish' Unlimited Address (1989): retrospective album review

2010-07-17T22:18:00.010+10:00

(This review is to be published in a local magazine, the Songsmith. I hope it attracts attention to the album. Cheers, r.)

When Cold Chisel disbanded in 1983, most of its members fashioned either solo careers or stints with other bands. It was only the band’s principal songwriter, keyboardist Don Walker, who retired from the scene completely. Walker was to spend those four or five years after Chisel’s demise travelling throughout Australia and Europe and taking care of other personal matters, in his own words, “detoxing” from the music industry. He finally came to back to music in 1988 to record a new album under the moniker Catfish. Chisel guitarist Ian Moss, producer/guitarist Peter Walker, harmonica player David Blight, and drummer Ricky Fataar were some of the album’s guest musicians. The album was titled Unlimited Address and was released in 1989.

It seems an absurdity that one of Australia’s most gifted songwriters, responsible for penning those anthems such as ‘Khe Sahn’ and ‘Cheap wine’ that are perpetually juke-boxed and drunk-sung throughout beer-barns nationwide, should write and record a solo masterpiece that remains seemingly overlooked to this very day. In Chisel it was Jimmy Barnes, and to a lesser though no less prominent extent Ian Moss, who gave voice to Walker’s songs. And it was Barnes who rode the wave of popularity throughout the eighties with a solo career and a string of albums that in no way came close to matching the brilliance and synergy of Cold Chisel. Although Walker was the principal songwriter in Cold Chisel and something of the bandleader, he himself kept a low profile within the band, sitting with his piano to the left of drummer Steve Prestwich in the backline. He sang backing vocals but was nowhere the singer in the way that Barnes or Moss were. And all of a sudden, in 1989, Don Walker appears with a new album and his customary intense, eagle-eyed portrait on its front cover. With his Bob Dylan 60s-style polka-dot shirt, black jacket and cigar, he looked every bit – to paraphrase the name of his current band – a suave fuck.

21 years on, Unlimited Address stands as an enduring masterpiece within the Australian popular music canon, sounding every bit as vital and contemporary as it did back in 1989. Incredibly, very few people seem to know of it. Contemporary reviews of Unlimited Address were universally laudatory and yet despite this, the album has not enjoyed the retrospective accolade (or sales) that other albums of the time have had bestowed to them. One such album that comes to mind is the Go-Betweens’ 16 Lovers Lane that shares a somewhat similar sound and flavour to Unlimited Address. Recorded in 1988, 16 Lovers Lane has since been proffered the full-retrospective treatment: the remastering, repackaging, extra tracks and a sunny synopsis. Unlimited Address on the other hand, the more powerful record of the two, is a comparative unknown.

Unlimited Address was produced by Peter Walker (no relation to Don Walker) who had previously produced Cold Chisel’s eponymously titled debut album in 1978. Theirs is a special chemistry where Peter Walker as producer intuitively understood Don Walker’s writing and its brilliance and durability. Peter Walker’s idea when embarking on the first Cold Chisel record was to showcase the range of Don Walker’s songwriting; he was to do similarly ten years later with Unlimited Address. Peter’s producing seems to galvanise Don’s songs in a way that makes them sound of a piece, and relevant to the times that they’re recorded. He is a perfect conduit to Don’s vision. There is a lovely purity or uniformity to both the debut Cold Chisel record and Unlimited Address that is not quite present on any other Chisel or Chisel-related album. Therefore, when listening to Cold Chisel and Unlimited Address, you hear not only Don Walker’s extraordinary songs, but you can’t help but be inadvertently taken back to the time and place at which they were captured. Both albums have remained durable and timeless, as all great art is. Whereas Cold Chisel’s debut album is firmly rooted in the Australia of the 1970s, Unlimited Address parallels the crazy, carnival atmosphere that was Sydney of the mid-to-late 1980s. Playwright David Williamson’s Don’s Party is to Cold Chisel’s debut album what Emerald City is to Unlimited Address.

Unlimited Address shares with 16 Lovers Lane that big, echoey, wall-of-sound production that’s most indicative of late-eighties rock, particularised most prominently by the drums in a very radio-friendly mix. Both albums, too, share in their sound and respective cohesiveness, a discernable sense of optimism and radiance that was felt in Sydney right up toward the latter end of the 1980s. Both albums are charged with inspiration and energy, remaining fresh-sounding and alive to this very day: the poppier 16 Lovers Lane deals alternatively with love and loss whilst the bluesier Unlimited Address showcases some of Walker’s finest, most emphatic writing. All of Walker’s familiar themes (and more) from the Chisel days are revisited in Unlimited Address; the injustices and absurdities of city life in all its warped and wild colours, refracted and filtered through the lens of an early hours night-owl that was Walker himself.

It’s those first three songs of Unlimited Address, ‘When you dance’, ‘Hiwire Girl’, and ‘The Early Hours’ that seem to capture the flavour, fervour and energy of times most readily. Kicking off with David Blight’s harmonica, ‘When you dance’ settles into a tight groove interspersed with the bluesy, almost modal, verses and Walker’s darkly wry observations of local nightlife. We, too, are introduced to Don Walker as lead vocalist on record for the first time, to which one’s first instinct is to compare Don’s voice to Barnes and Moss. Don’s voice appears weaker, even raspier, as he strains for some of the higher notes. Though for what Walker lacks in technique he makes up for with passion and the conviction of singing his own words, not unlike how Dylan sang during the mid-sixties. In fact, he sings great. Walker would eventually settle into a more of a country-style drawl as his career progressed that technically suited his range much better.

‘Hiwire Girl’ was the album’s first single. It starts off with a conga intro and a shady, almost atonal and somewhat chromatic chordal pattern that’s livened up by Blight’s harmonica and those eighties drums and punchy double bass-lines, resolving as they do into one of the most delightful songs that Don Walker has ever written. The song’s many musical twists, tonality changes and dynamic shifts are expertly crafted into an essentially hummable, memorable, inspired tune. On Unlimited Address, ‘Hiwire Girl’ is the song that probably comes closest to capturing the spirit of “Emerald City” of the late 1980s.

‘The Early Hours’ continues in the spirit of the opening two songs. An emphatic, howling blues with more than faint echoes of the Doors, ‘The Early Hours’ eschews much of Walker’s usual lyrical prolixity and is driven instead by its sheer musical joy and immediacy. The track’s overriding optimism and power shine through in Walker’s singing, in both the main phrases and in the delightful changes to the chorus/bridge sections.

The middle three songs of Unlimited Address are all quite extraordinary, equating to some of Don Walker’s very best work. ‘Subway’ commences with slashing D minor chords with the bass carrying the melody. Don’s melody in the verse mirrors that of ‘My Funny Valentine’ although the subject matter is vastly different. Writing about the homeless, Walker’s writing is at its very best: observant, sharp, bristling powerfully with imagination and poetic inspiration. These attributes are mirrored in the soundtrack of ‘Subway’ where Walker modulates up a key with almost every consecutive verse, climaxing with the powerful last verse that’s augmented with electric guitar to emphasise the chord-changes, and with Walker’s dry, cutting observations of the “majority”: “We learn to raise a little smoke then disappear, leaving subtle lies to hang below the ear like a pearl, these masquerades could never burn your powdered hands, now it ain’t so easy here in the subway of the world”.

‘One night in Soviet Russia’ is a slower, quieter track in waltz time that’s guided gently along by percussive brushes. The song swings along hauntingly, almost sinisterly, with a melody and harmonic progression redolent of East European folk music. A fine story that’s based on Walker’s travels throughout the Soviet Union in the mid-eighties, the song swells with a passion and intoxicating melody that take the listener to a freezing Siberian night-time scenario. The East European musical influence, on reflection, can be heard subtly in some of the other songs, like ‘Hiwire Girl’. ‘One night in Soviet Russia’ is a compelling, evocative narrative that matched with the song’s dramatic, inspired melody and harmonic progression, is one of Don Walker’s quietly assured masterpieces.

‘My Backyard’ is something of an equivalent to Bob Dylan’s ‘Desolation Row’ and is perhaps the centrepiece track off the album. According to Walker, the song took a long time to finish. It had to be pared down and stripped back lyrically to fit into its final six minutes. Much of the song was written in Eastern Europe during the mid-eighties, and the song’s bracketed subtitle is “the moon over Manilla”. Despite this, ‘My Backyard’ takes on a discernable ‘Sydney’ feel about it. Many of the lyrics paint the picture of late nights in Kings Cross, a subject that Chisel fans know all too well via the many fine songs that Walker had written about the district. There is something too of an inner-west feel about the song; when you think of places like Annandale and Chippendale in the late eighties you can’t help but be reminded of bohemianism, a touch of the decrepit, all mixed in with a great feeling of creativity and vibrancy.

As with ‘Subway’, ‘My Backyard’ is one of Don Walker’s finest sets of lyrics. The lyrics, when read as a whole, read as a contemporary urban poem where the alarming chaos and emptiness of city life and its herd-like citizens is reflected back to the writer and his woman-friend who are engaged in an uncomfortable, fractured interaction, both of whom are standing on the balcony looking out over “my backyard”. The woman, herself, remains elusive and fascinating, the sort of character you’d visit in an anxiety-dream. Walker’s writing is vivid and exceptional; setting his words to punchy music that’s reflective of the tone and flavour of the story. The chordal/musical changes hit at just the right moments to create and build quite sensational musical tensions that mirror and reinforce the power of Walker’s lyric. ‘My Backyard’ is possibly Walker’s finest exposition of street-life, blending sharp poetic realism with an inspired and powerful narrative that makes this song one of the very best of its genre.

‘Pre-war blues’ cools the mood instantly with its jazzy, elegant sway. This is a jazz-blues based piece about the immediate post-war period and the return-home of the American soldiers, written with Walker’s characteristic poetic narrative and deft touch. The middle section of the song bursts through into a beautiful bout of melody with the words, “…high in the old Roman town the children of old American fortunes drown their luck, choosing their favourite Broadway tunes, and pre-war blues…”.

‘Station’ is a punchy Doors-influenced blues, indicative of the direction Walker would take with the second Catfish album, Ruby. Walker had pointed out in an interview that the line “…a man with velocity’s a man alive…” was inspired by his Physics/Mathematics past; Don Walker did an honours degree in Physics before embarking on the road with Cold Chisel in the mid-70s.

The album’s closing title-track is the album’s one song that explicitly spreads it subject matter beyond urban confines. In that, it vaguely reflects Cold Chisel’s early bluesy style and those early Chisel songs such as ‘On the Road’. ‘Unlimited Address’ was written during Walker’s sojourn around Australia after Chisel’s break-up in 1983 and features both the great music and the sharp lyricism that’s a constant throughout the entire album: “…down by the docks the casino plays the Asians and everybody else, they’re waking up to how they’re take-home pay is gonna leave them hanging off the shelf…”. The song ends succinctly with the lyric “…yes I dream, dream, dream each day of my wide unlimited address…” as the final harmonica wail swells down. It’s a fine ending that offers up a feeling of openness and opportunity amidst the sense of closure that befits the song’s status as the album’s closing track.

Don Walker was to record an excellent second album with Catfish in 1991, Ruby, which honed into more of a roots-y country-blues direction. His solo albums since have become even drier, more roots-based, like a drought-stricken, red-earthed Nick Cave. His narratives and stories remain as compelling as ever. In 2009 he released a fine book (his first), Shots, that is an evocatively composed, stream-of-consciousness autobiography. He now tours occasionally with his band the Suave Fucks and somehow fits the time in for sporadic Chisel reunions. But it’s this, his first solo album, which contains some of Don Walker’s best work in a career that’s spanned over three decades. Unlimited Address has everything going for it; it depicts wholeheartedly the exuberance of the era and is brimming with Walker’s masterful musicality, lyricism, craftsmanship, melody, and songwriting. The only pity is that with the passing of time, the album remains relatively unknown. Don, however, to his credit, remains every bit the suave fuck he’s always been, making music and writing books in his own low-key, inimitable fashion.

spirit theory ponderings

2010-07-16T22:20:00.006+10:00

Reincarnation theories seem to be widely accepted amongst the general populace these days, as far as I'm aware. The other day I read somewhere - I think it was in one of those pick-up freebies you find in health food shops (or was it on the net??) - the idea of the purpose of existence as it is now with six-billion plus people roaming the planet is so that all souls can have this one chance of "cracking it", ie, self-discovery and all that it entails. The article made the interesting point that the world today resembles a train-station at rush-hour; this I believe is true (and self-evident).

I found myself disagreeing with the first statement, that all these souls are here now to have the chance to crack the code and go off to Nirvana. (The Earth is bleeding, corroding, dying, but never mind...). I started to ponder the idea that perhaps there are no souls, that there is really only one soul, that of life, or God, that resembles a gooey amoeba of sorts that glugs out into an interminable amount of beings and life-forms at all varying levels of consciousness, and all to return to its gooey source when the life-form passes away. And that perhaps it doesn't matter if the universe consists of a village of ten citizens or a few billion galaxies of hundred squillion planets of life-forms each to to the power of a zillion squillions. No matter the number, all are projected out from the one 'source', to return to that source upon physical death.

Again, this is actually a self-evident proposition. Life-forms on our planet started with a few microbes that manifested outward from the sea and onto land that over millions of years have led to this moment where I'm typing on my computer and I hear thuds next door and the cars are skimming up and down the road at 60kph outside my window. It's been expansion, expansion, expansion, with a few extinctions along the way it appears. For what goes up comes down, that which expands, finally contracts.

It's occurred to me this idea of my own soul being everyone's soul. That there is really no such thing as reincarnation in the way that people generally accept notions and ideals of reincarnation. If I, for example, am my 'being', the one being that is shared by all beings, then there is nothing to reincarnate for this being, this 'I', always is, always was, and always will be, at which the notion of reincarnation becomes pointless, null and void.

Moreover, this I may always be, may always "was", and may always "is", but my projected person is not. This again is self-evident as it's only a matter of time before my body and every body will die. The question is, then, when we die, what happens to our 'I'-ness, our conscious life-awareness that comes behind our conditioned, mortal person. And when we're born, where have we come from and how did we come to fall into our lives like a piece that's flown down from the sky and landed on a board during a chess-game in full-flurry?

Life is so full and real in these bodies so that unless we think about the past and use calculation and reason, we've never actually known a time when we are dead, although we do now that we sleep for a third of our lives and yet can't remember our sleep. Similarly, we don't remember our past lives. Some people have been known to step back in time and can remember their past lives, and if they do, it's a miracle of the psychic realm, not the spiritual realm. Remembering past lives is like learning to see auras or ghosts or to bend silver spoons with mind-power; it's a psychic phenomenom and doesn't bend the fact the fact that life as we see it and sense it and live it is always now.

Perhaps our lives aren't really personal in the way we like to make them personal. Maybe is the fact that we personalise or ego-sensate our lives that cause all sense of separation and unhappiness. Maybe the value of our lives is, within the course of one living life, to negate the psychic past in us that we all pick up to various degrees when we're born, and to do the best we can with it. We can become more pure, more real, more alive within, by becoming more aware of the present moment and not giving in to our conditioned selves, our doubts, fears, moods, depressions etc, as best we can. I've felt that purity myself at sporadic moments. "I" as the conditioned self didn't exist and instead I was energy, light, creative, like sun, like a baby. Trying to get to that place only ever takes you further away. Sometimes it just creeps up on you like the first rays of dawn.

I heard it said somewhere that man and woman, or the male and the female, are the two principals of god, or life, in existence. Well, they're certainly the two principles or manifestations of life-forms that allow each species to procreate. Male and female interaction is creative because, quite obviously, it creates life, or life-forms. And this is where the notions of tantra kick in, that sexual union at its most pure form creates a oneness that is physically manifested by the male and female principle, the woman and man of the species. That 'God', or 'love', is made.

These are all thoughts...I'll get back to them someday. I'm tired now and will be off to bed to experience that third of our lives that we all share, is beyond memory and is demonstrable of our wonderful oneness!

digging the new digs

2010-06-20T21:10:00.007+10:00

Here I am, at the computer that is seated on its little desk by the bedroom window, a window that looks out level onto a busy though pleasant road in the south-eastern suburbs of Sydney.

I was lucky. This has been a good buy. It came to me serendipitously. There I was, on my birthday (the 40th one, mind you), a little bummed out over how things were transpiring for me. Two days later, when I'd all but given up hunting for property, I happen to find myself on Gmail whereby an automated property alert via email came up on the screen. And because the property was located in one of my designated areas and at an attractive price, I called the real estate guy immediately. He regretted to tell me that the listed property had actually sold prior to the alert going through, however, the neighbours were making noises about selling up. And as I was the first person to call I was the first on his list. To his credit, my agent gauged me as a suitable buyer for this particular property.

It's turned out to be a smooth ride. I'm very lucky in that I liked my agent, and I liked the vendor as well. My agent had given me her number with her permission, at which she showed me around the apartment (not that it's exactly stadium-sized) so that the communication lines were made open. It seems as though I got a pretty fair deal in an iron-hot market. It's expensive though - everything is expensive around here. So be it. I can afford it, and most of all, I really like it. It felt like home to me as soon as I first entered. A small apartment it may be, but what it lacks in physical square metres it certainly makes up for in character.

My block is most definitely a pre-war built block. The ceilings are high and, most wonderfully, the various areas such as bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and living areas are all compartmentalised, giving the unit(s) a homely rather than 'pokey' feel. For example, there's a tiny hallway outside the bathroom door that separates the living/kitchen area with the bedoom. In those units that are two-bedroom (mine is a one-bedder) that hall-area contains an extra doorway to the second bedroom, and since I don't have that door, I use that area to store a bookcase and broom cupboard.

No, I'm very happy here, very lucky, and, provided I can continue to meet mortgage repayments over a long period of time, very secure. I do feel very grateful, and grateful for the serendipitous circumstances more than anything else. Like I was meant to be here.

There's no parking space on title for me however. Those are alloted to the two-bedders. Story of my life really, but I don't mind. A car's a car and I could easy just walk away from it. I just had the alarm removed the other day to have it replaced with an immobiliser. Part of the reason I got rid of the alarm was because one of my actuaters (clicker-things) broke and the other one was starting to fail. But my decision was set into hurried activity after my first night at this apartment, whereby, around midnight during my first night as I was settling down with a book, my car alarm suddenly went off. It's not a chirpy little thing either, my alarm makes ambulance sirens sound mousey in comparison. I ran outside to turn it off. Came back in. 4:50am I awake to the sound of a car alarm, my alarm. I remain frozen though alarmed, wishing this whole scenario was a dream and it would just pass as I buried my head in the covers. It didn't. I got up to deactivate the siren once more, believing myself to have blown it with my new neighbours and the entire street for that matter. Almost surprisingly I had no slashed tyres, no nasty letters in the mailbox and nor were there verbal recriminations or stand-offs. I suppose it's because that car had never been seen parked on this street before and no-one knew who the hell I was or who that car belonged to anyway. Thankfully.

I realised next day that one of the back doors wasn't locked properly. So much moving and opening and closing of doors that day had rendered that tiny error that still has me feeling murky and paranoid everytime I think back to that awful Saturday morning alarm call, and the sound of a baby screaming in a nearby apartment after I'd inconspicuously clicked off the alarm remotely from my bedroom window in the dark of a cold, sleep-thirsty morning.

And I'm still scared my car's suddenly gong to go off again, needing to remind myself that that alarm has been removed and is destroyed, never to be seen or heard again, and that the immobiliser is utterly and non-negotiably silent!

There's a pleasant, almost-country town vibe on this section of my street. The grassy patch on the footpath is wide. There's a lovely park across the road. And the area's very much a mixture of different energies. I'm at an area where four suburbs meet and I'm at the corner of my particular suburb. Behind and south to me is Maroubra with its boxy streets and houses that zig-zag to Maroubra junction which reminds me of the south coast towns in some respects. South-west of me is Pagewood with its lots of large blocks in spiral streets that had seemed to be estabished quite cheaply during the 50's and 60's. It's surely a quite expensive area now. And across the road from me is that aforementioned park at which beyond are further parks and a huge golf course. But the most interesting suburb is at the northern end of the park across the road, Daceyville. Daceyville is a deliberate garden suburb that was established in the 1910s with planned, manicured streets which houses lovely cottages with no picket fences. All amenities and utilities are spread out very nicely in Daceyville, it's almost like Canberra with palm trees. Daceyville has always been so close to me geographically and I'd never known of it, for as soon as it starts, it stops, surrounded by my wayward turf on one side, Gardeners Road on the northern end and Eastlakes on the other.

It goes to show that there's a lot of diversity in my area. There appears to be a lot of medium-newish money that is balanced with housing commission units and 'battler' types. I see obese men walking their dogs, not unlike the character in Camus' The Outsider who greets the narrator by the doors of their respective units.

The Eastern Suburbs of Sydney is often branded for its supposed exclusivity and prestige etc, but there are pockets of it, like where I am, that could be considered to be arse-end areas in some ways. My area is not as nice as the North Shore, and it certainly lacks the character of much of the inner-west. And some of those really expensive areas of the East, such as Bondi Beach, were actually quite cheap some 20 years ago. Things move and change and it's fun to observe, but the most important thing is, am I happy here?

The answer, is yes.

diss organised

2010-05-08T22:28:00.004+10:00

A change is coming over me. A change is coming over the world. The world is always changing, in flux. I definitely am. I'm in the cross exchange-settlement phase of my apartment purchase, and look forward to moving in during the second week of June. It'll be coming into winter. The apartment, with its ground level position and floorboards, will be cold. I'll make sure to bring my slippers with me.

I've lost interest in going out and playing music. I'm not even that driven to write anymore. Jesus, a year ago I was seriously into the idea of writing a book. Now I feel there's nothing to prove, and with that, why bother? I'm sure this is merely a phase, as it were, and I look forward to carrying on with narrative, prose, creative non-fiction, music reviews, and the rest of it over time. For the moment however, my mojo is entirely fixated on settling into my illustrious 42 square metres of good ol' ozzie Eden, and with that, paying off the mortgage that looms over me like King Kong. I am aware that I'm not the only one with a bank debt that looms over its mortgagee like King Kong. Apparently, I'm "not borrowing much", according to the bank manager. And it's true, most borrowing amounts now amount to the 500K to 1000K figure. That's an astounding amount of money. I grew up with the attitude that what you've got in your pocket is pretty much what you've got full-stop. The whole system of finance and money and its corporate swirl of economic lingo and six (seven) figure sums that swarm around like mosquitos in a tropical storm just totally eludes me. And in a way, I'm thankful for that.

I'm becoming fuzzy-headed with my friends too. I've been tired during weekdays and formulating vague plans with friends in the process. So when the weekend comes and I find I'm suddenly double-booked. I feel detached, weary, alone, but definitely not lonely. But I realise the importance of realigning my friendships and re-establishing some old connections that have drifted off, almost imperceptibly, over these past few years.

But I have the feeling that, as I move into my cold little apartment, I'll be spending a lot of time alone over these few coming months.

...I kind of like it that way.

Radio Skidrow, KOMPACTION, 88.9FM

2010-04-13T22:49:00.007+10:00

Frank Sultana hosting behind the desk of Radio Skidrow in Marrickville, 88.9FM, KOMPACTION show.

A few weeks ago I was asked by Frank Sultana to come along and guest on live community radio. KOMPACTION is a program that features singer-songwriters. Frank - a brilliant songwriter and musician (he has an awesome feel for blues) and who plays both guitar and piano - booked me in for April 13. We played tracks from my album, and other tracks from more recent recordings.

We kicked off with 'Ride' from the Sea in June album (I wish I called the album something else...), and then 'End of a Civilisationist' from my new batch of recordings. I then sang 'Alexandria' and 'Every Girl just wants to be my friend' live to air, after which we mistakingly played the newest version of 'Sea in June' featuring Brigette on lead vocal as we couldn't find the song I wanted, 'Secrets', on this recently mastered CD of relatively newly recorded tracks.

I talked about each song prior to or after performing them. Frank and I discussed songwriting, live performance, and playing and working with other musicians. I told him about Brigette and the Eva Cassidy duo we've worked on, Velvet Road who I currently play live with, and ZaraMeow who I collaborated with. Frank remembered Zara and remarked on what a great voice she had, at which I proceeded to sing my newest song, 'Mercy of your moods', live.

Frank played tracks from Lincoln Davies new CD. It was a beautifully sonorous track with Lincoln's rich nylon-string guitar being complimented by djembe and chocolatey cello.

Finally, we spun 'Diamicron Baby' from my album (I wish I called my album 'Diamicron Baby'), and I sang 'Secrets' live as the tail-out.

Frank was surrounded by CDs. Much of this music is very good. Frank marvelled at how much talent there is out there, that it's a scene about to burst through and happen. We can certainly hope so. But in the meantime it was fun to go live on radio and spurt forth verbally and musically...

we can go for the Ride, HEY!!!!!!!!!

walkabout

2010-04-04T19:33:00.006+10:00

Carillon Avenue, Camperdown

I visited my nephew at his apartment in Newtown this afternoon. I wanted to get an idea of the apartment specs as I'm buying (or hoping to buy) an apartment that's only marginally bigger than his is - on the inside; Charlie's unit has a balcony, mine doesn't. At this stage I still don't know if I've landed the unit as my loan application is pending approval. It's not the deposit amount, or my income, that's posing the problem; it's the size of the unit they're concerned about. Technically my unit is above specifications to safely procure a loan for the amount that I require. Nevertheless, the ball is in the court of head office in Melbourne. There's not much I can do but wait until they make their decision, and hopefully soon. I can't really see what the problem is though. Being so close to UNSW, parklands, a major shopping centre down the road, Maroubra Beach, the unit is an investor's dream. Funnily, it seems the bank would be that more comfortable in lending me 100K extra for a bigger apartment - even though this poses much greater risk for them - than to lend me a reasonable amount to buy a small apartment. Nevertheless, a chill runs up my spine when I realise that I could buy a grand house in a country town for the money I'm coughing up for a small one-bedroom unit. It feels right to me, though, so I will buy if the bank accepts my application and hands me over the dough. I can always rent it out and go live in the hinterlands of NSW north coast anyway.

Terraces in Camperdown

Later I took off for a walk around Newtown and Camperdown. I got lost - twice! I ended up on Parramatta Road the first time after wandering around having lost my sense of direction, enjoying the brisk autumnal air of the late afternoon. Later I decided to walk through Sydney Uni via the Parramatta Road entrance and found myself getting lost inside the RPA hospital to find my way back onto Missenden Road. I walked around King Street and meandered in and out of bookshops, and helped myself to a vegetarian buddhist cafe meal.

Sunday afternoon of a long Easter weekend. Hazy-headed, impervious to direction, yet basking in the sweet suppleness of gentle amber sundown where streets turn and spin in all sorts of refracted directions. I haven't been sleeping well. Apart from a cold I've taken on for the long-weekend, I find myself being kept awake at night obsessing on how to arrange my wee apartment. I'm spending too much time on the net looking at budget and 2nd hand furniture shops for storage and shelving solutions. It's silly, really. All I need to do is wait until I move in - if I move in - and take it from there. One thing's for certain and that is that a lot of physical and mental gymnastics will be involved to fit everything that I want to fit into that unit and have it all looking effortless and reasonably spacious.

Sydney Uni, or RPA?

I was in Bondi Junction yesterday morning. The shopping precinct was teeming with people. I went into the newsagent to purchase Mojo magazine. Syd Barrett is the current issue's cover story and included with the magazine is a CD of multiple artists covering every song off Syd's disturbing 1970 solo release, 'The Madcap laughs', of which I love. I decided not to wait in line because too many people were lining up in the lotteries queue. I walked over to the other newsagent. Same thing. Long, long, lotteries queue, with the line of people wearing that exact same expression they always do when standing in a lottery queue, the kind of nose-askew look like someone farted. Maybe they did. But it wasn't me, this time.

It's kind of tough out there and unless you're reasonably wealthy it's hard, no matter how you look at it. That's when you delve into your being to coax out all your spiritual tools, just like you would a steady spray of Exit Mould, to help deal with being in this rather tough existence. Looking back at my ancestors of this land (by 'my' I'm being universal rather than personal) I can't help but feel that urge, or wish, to live off the land again.

I just want to go walkabout.

Parramatta Road

Bobbin Head

2010-03-21T16:21:00.012+11:00

Yesterday I stole myself out to Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, situated at the upper-north shore of Sydney, for a bushwalk. I'd been looking forward to some serious tree action all week, to immerse myself in primal, living 'real' estate. The only problem was that, despite the closing down of summer and the arrival of autumnal equinox, it turned out to be one of the steamiest and hottest days of the year. By the time I finished my walk after some three or so hours I was ready to combust, hyperventilating and sweating as I was almost dangerously. And looking ahead at the weather forecast that's projected onto the coming week, I can see no sign of an evening come-down in temperatures. It's usually by late-March that morning minimum temperatures begin their healing descent into cooler, sleep-easy realms.

I stopped off at Turramurra on the way to the national park. Turramurra, like all of the upper-north shore, is a leafy village that's bisected by the Pacific Highway. There remains an air of hazy, supernal nonchalance about Turramurra, as if old-standing values remain sacrosanct in the many leaves that breathe their living lives there. If I were to suddenly be transported back to 1967, I would be sure to find that the suburb would feel no different. Turramurra, in its lofty leafiness, seems to transcend both time and place, and with it, the prevailing attitudes of those who dwell in somewhat 'lesser' locales.

I turned into Bobbin Head Road and drove right to the end. My great-uncle - I call him the "main man" - lives with his wife in a retirement village right up at the end of Bobbin Head Road where one of the many entrances to the national park is situated. I didn't visit him but I would like to sometime.

My first port of call on my hike took me to the 'Sphinx'. It was kind of like a mini-Egypt with gum trees in the background.

Here is the Bobbin Head in. I love Art Deco architecture and fonts.

A view from Bobbin Head Trail when descending into Bobbin Head.

Classic Australian bush. Ku-ring-gai National Park was the locale for the filming of the 'Skippy the bush kangaroo' series c. late sixties.

Down at the Bobbin Head picnic grounds.
Ubiquitous (and happy) ducks.

This tree will be glowing amber within the next few weeks.

I love interesting rock formations. You can see a face in this one. You can see faces in most rock formations if you look hard enough.

Gorgeous Gecko!!

This lizard was huge! And beautiful. It stuck its tongue out. It wasn't blue.
Twisty tai-chi roots.

It amazes me how Ku-ring-gai National Park, situated at the northern end of Sydney, differs markedly in vibe from the Royal National Park that's situated at the southern-most end of Sydney. Whilst the fauna, for the most part, remains the same, you'll find that Ku-ring-gai has a vibrant, mercurial, even "warring" energy about it. The Royal National park, on the other hand, is more sedate, damp, more ancient in its emanation, as if she will not release her secrets easily, if at all. In Ku-ring-gai, if you gaze at an interesting flower or herb, you can feel the spirit of the land bursting to tell you of its properties and powers. I love the Royal National Park, but I think I'll come to open myself up to Ku-ring-gai more.

school daze (aka ancient history)

2010-03-13T22:00:00.016+11:00

I've been thinking a lot about my old school subjects recently. School, I finished 23 years ago. I've taken to discussing school subjects with friends, such as discussing which subjects we excelled in and those we bombed, and so forth. I've no clear idea as to why I'm harking back to an era that passed over in October 1987. I suppose I'm merely manifesting my incorrigible quirkiness and way of mentalising everything, the present, the future and the past. Maybe it's all because of Facebook. I've been making facebook-friends with people I went to school with and hadn't thought about for 23 years since leaving school. I suspect my nostalgia buttons are reignited as I wonder about all those old faces (or older faces) on Facebook of those I went to school with 23-plus years ago. Maybe I'm nostalgic because I'm hitting 40 and I'm wondering what the hell have I done with my life?? Other than learn piano. Or acquire a small(-ish) collection of acoustic guitars & basses. Which is worthwhile in itself. Kind of.

Relating to this, another of my current obsessions is 'brain power'. To this end I've enrolled in Lumosity courses that provide a series of games designed to increase brain power, in those facets such as speed, memory, flexibility, focus, information processing, visual perception, etc. So far so good, but some of these games are positively nightmarish!! I love the birdwatching game, and the word game, but 'memory match' and 'monster garden' are positively freakish, relying of vast quantity of memory to achieve great results. Nevertheless, I'm doing well with it and will continue on with the course. I do a session almost daily and each session takes about 15-20 minutes to complete. At present I'm in the top 77% of users in my age group 5 years younger and older.

School. I was a very average primary school student. It wasn't until I hit about year 5, in a new school, that I began to demonstrate some degree of academic prowess. By the time I was in year 7 I found myself streamed in the higher maths level. I got good results in maths, physics and chemistry. English started to fire up for me too, racing into the advanced stream by years 9 & 10. I failed Biology in year 10. And in year 11 and 12 I was failing economics until I decided to pull my socks up, to which I did very well with the subject in my final exam in 1987.

I was always good at history. I found myself to be particularly good at Ancient History, especially Ancient Greece. I should have taken the Ancient History prize. Really, that prize was mine. It occured to me just last week of the distinct possibility of a small conspiracy against me at that school in my final year. I received a very 'lukewarm' school reference. A few years later I returned to the school and quietly demanded to the headmaster to issue me with a much more positive reference, to which he did. I sensed an almost open hostility in my final year from a group of teachers that weren't even teaching year 12. These were the brat-packers, surfer, lay-about teachers who appeared macho and racist in their manner and outlook. I was musical and a thinker and was known, back then, to have an intense glare. Outwardly I was well-behaved, but my whole being emanated belligerence and non-conformity toward the established mode of things. Thankfully I'm a lot more laid back now, and comfortable in just being myself.

They weren't very good teachers, on the whole, at that school. There were a couple, or 3, very good English teachers but the others were woeful. The head of English - he was terrific - died of AIDS. The other guy, Mr Davis, went to teach at another school. And the other good English teacher was a cadet-master with strange proclivities, but he was a good English teacher. Regrettably I tended to have the poor teachers for most of my stream. I don't recall being taught grammar except fleetingly. Still, I flew into advanced English in high school and took the full three units of it. I'd do especially well with English if I liked the book we were studying at the time. And back then my brain was spongey and young enough to handle a wide oeuvre of literature, including two of Jane Austen's books. I wouldn't read Jane Austen now, the reason being that my brain as it is now wouldn't absorb this material, but I enjoyed it at the time. I thoroughly enjoyed 'Pride and Prejudice' but found 'Emma' something of an endurance test. I vividly recall coming up to Chapter 35 and thinking out aloud that there were another 20 chapters to go after that!

But if I could go back I would've taken 3-units of Ancient History instead.

I would've taken higher levels of Maths too, and kept on with Physics & Chemistry in the senior years, all of which came naturally to me. But you can't do everything. I was taken by music and the written word back then, still am, so the maths had to give. I still did the advanced stream of maths, but only 2 units of it.

The subject I did best at for my HSC was the 1-unit subject of 'General Studies'. I must have come in the very top stream in the state for this subject, scoring 47 out of 50. It helped that I subscribed to Time magazine throughout 1987. Notwithstanding, my best attribute academically is a keen sense of perception and understanding, and General Studies allowed me to convey these skills in the wider context of current events.

And funnily enough, my worst subject at school was Music. Music didn't matter so much. I was doing 12 units of study and only the top 10 were counted. Music was my relief period, my sanity check, to get away from the awful, drab, normal subjects and enjoy a bit of r&r with a few peers. I was playing trombone. I played very well in the trials but I bombed the HSC performance. I didn't care. Trombone was never my passion although I enjoyed playing in the school orchestra. And I recall showing the examiners a notated copy of a song of mine. I vaguely remember all those innocent notes written by a 17-year old hand. Must've been cute. Anyway, I did much better with Music when I took it up at tertiary level.

I'll say it again; I can't believe how fast time's flown since 1987. The dates themselves don't matter, the bottom line is that time goes by fast. I feel better now I've written this down. I feel I can leave it behind me. For life is about to 'begin'. Life begins at 40.

Unless you're John Lennon.

the hunt is on

2010-03-06T13:16:00.006+11:00

The hunt is on. I inspected a couple of lovely, small art deco apartments in Kingsford this morning, two blocks away from UNSW. My nephew and I met up for some breakfast at one of the numerous cafes on Coogee Bay Road, accompanying me later to the inspections for some guidance and moral support, of which there was plenty, and of which I'm grateful.

My problem is that I just don't have a bloodlust for property, meaning that I'm just not going to jump over hoops to be the highest bidder. Property prices are exorbitant, but if these are the prices people are willing to pay, or to be more precise, borrow from the bank, then so be it. I think it's best to proceed carefully and inspect as many properties as possible before making the decision to jump through the hoop like an innocent dolphin at a friggin' playpark.

The apartments I inspected were within two attractive dark-red brick art deco blocks standing right next to each other. One was a two-bedder with no balcony and no garage but a car-space instead. It was renovated and presented tastefully. There were no laundry facilities within the apartment. The second apartment was a one-bedder that had a small balcony and lock-up garage, but the kitchen was rather shonky and in need of some tasteful renovation, with a washing machine dangling around in one of the corners. All up though, I felt pleased to be inspecting these properties. Art Deco apartments tend to have very homely room differentiation, and with high ceilings, are actually very cosy and livable. They're architecturally very well designed and built.

Both apartments were like thoroughfares for the royal easter show, or new years eve in the city. There are loads of people sniffing around for property right now. They all tend to wear the same, rather circumspect, facial expressions at these inspections, like they've sniffed bad egg, or been caught with their dirty laundry. It's pretty much the same expression you see in people who are standing in queues to buy lottery tickets. Eye contact is avoided. And that's a shame really. We should all see this caper for what it is and rejoice that we're alive and well enough to walk up the stairs to view the apartment in the first place!!!

Unless I become more motivated I'll never buy anything. I don't enjoy dealing with solicitors and building inspections etc. But this is the plan: I'll inspect a lot, see a lot, and then I'll decide on what I really want. And when I think about it, what I want is a permaculture garden somewhere out of the city. But the city is where the work and art is. We're back at the bottom of the circle now.

And if you're bidding soon, good luck to you! ;)

avatars

2010-02-27T21:01:00.006+11:00

The question that's most asked of me about my place of work is, 'do you meet heaps of famous actors there??'. Well, the answer to this is, no, not really. No one at work is on the lookout for famous people. And when they do turn up, as they invariably do from time to time, there's never anything to be overawed about. Mel Gibson came in once, surrounded by his minders, looking like the local plumber dressed in a nice shirt and tatty jeans. Many of our graduates who are now stalwarts, even celebrities, in the local or international scene are often seen strolling around. Sometimes they're doing workshops or are teaching a course, or giving a guest lecture. It's always nice to say hi to these celebrities and to anyone else for that matter. They're usually really cool people. I enjoy the people in the building, no matter who they are. This is what makes it a special job, and why I've lasted into my 15th year at the institution.

I even see Cold Chisel's Don Walker come into the building on Wednesday afternoons with his coffee and newspaper, sitting himself in the foyer cafe, probably waiting to pick up his daughter who may be involved in some work experience activity or open program course. And come to think of it, every time I've casually seen Don Walker he's always having a coffee or reading a newspaper! Now Don is someone with whom I'm truly awed with, one of my musical heroes, yet he's now familiar to the point that I ignore him as I walk past him in that open foyer. There's no need to talk to him. I've met him a couple of times previously; he's a nice man. (He even signed his book for me! :)

Though when in comes to fame, a handful of our graduates do become major international stars. The most recent one is Sam Worthington. He started his acting degree in the same year I started the job, in 1996. I didn't see him for a few years after he graduated and I wondered what became of him. I saw him in Tandy in the Broadway Shopping Centre in January 2003, where I was choosing a printer for myself. He's since come into work a couple of times, and chatted with him there, although I haven't seen him since he hit the big time.

I'm very glad for Sam. I always liked him. He seemed roguish and abrasive, but he was a good guy, straight-up and honest in his interactions. He had dreadlocks when he started the course, so that he cut more of a "rougher" Byron Bay character, than say, the more affected gentilities of a John Butler. I liked his acting too, it was honest and straight-up, and it appealed to me. Apparently he was a brickie before he tried his hand at acting. I can relate to that as my dad was a brickie when I was growing up, so I can understand that particular sensibility. Sam hated paying his library fines though, miniscule as they were back then (5c per day per book). He probably had no money. Now he's rolling in it.

I suppose the only aspect of encountering fame that I find awkward is the money side of things. Money, of course, the subject of it, being a major bugbear of mine. But, anyway, I'd like to ask Sam what's it like to be sitting on 10 million bucks?? To me, and most people quite frankly, that is a dream that will remain unrealised.

So good luck to Sam, he deserves it. He's a good bloke. And like everything, money and fame are temporary, fleeting. We're only avatars, after all, who land into this dimension of swooping bodies that inevitably fade and pass into countless circles of awarenesses, and existences.

groovus RSLius

2010-02-21T17:51:00.005+11:00

from the balcony of the Newtown RSL, a few hours ago

For someone who's mostly perceived as gentle and calm ('sweet', even), I'm not one who's known to 'lose it', to 'blow my gasket' as it were. Happens very rarely at work (although they've been very few occasions). It's usually when I'm out gigging that I curiously metamorphose into a somewhat different creature, becoming like a lioness defending her cubs and territory.

This afternoon the band were specifically asked to do a set at the Newtown RSL in Enmore. They really wanted us there, to headline for an awards giving ceremony for a song competition. Now I usually have no input or involvement with song comps at all, but because we were asked to perform, and because a lot of mates were there, I said yes to it. The timing wasn't terrific as it's a warm sunny day. And being a Sunday afternoon, I would much rather have spent the time relaxing at home.

There were free beers on offer, which was nice. I had three light beers as these provide only mild buzz and low blood-alcohol readings. I arrived at 2:45. The dank, burgundy interior contrasted vividly with the summer whiteshine outside. We were meant to go on by about 3:30. By the way of things - and it was no-one's fault (other than an overall feeling of casualness amongst the participants and organisers) - we weren't on by 4pm at which we had to forfeit our set. I blew my top. I stormed over, picked up my bass, and made a rush out, grumbling my displeasure all the way. But Pete the percussionist held me back to say that there could be a chance to play, and as it turned out, the trivia man who was scheduled to start his show at 4pm generously allowed us to do a 10 minute set. He only just got there in time anyway, and he had a hangover (like Gav our guitarist) and told us it was all "easygoing".

So we got up and did three storming songs and it went very well, and I was much more settled afterward. It's not the playing or "not playing" that bothers me so much as having been specifically asked to come and play and then being told "we've run out of time". I can't stand that sort of disorganisation. I'm a little peculiar that way. I've been told I have a "soothing personality" and a "lovely energy" and how kind I am, and all that. But really, I'm not a laid-back type. In many ways, yes, I am laid-back, but I'm also forward-thinking and acting and very much into precision and organisation. I'm antsy and quirky and becoming more like Woody Allen's character in 'Annie Hall' with each passing day. I'm not really a groovy social-type. I'm intense yet very personable and prefer one-on-one relations.

Across the road from the Newtown RSL is Notes where I saw the Church last Thursday. It was a fabulous gig, and a fine venue, although I think it's a former wedding reception hall given the layout, stage, and room dimensions. I had a great time enjoying the band and the music and meeting some other sk bloggers. The band were in fine form, always are, and continue to weave musical magic together.

Two weeks ago the band headlined at the Basement, on a Monday night granted. Turned out to be a fun gig. Juggling a full-time job and lots of gigging is hard. I do love my downtime, relaxing and just re-energising. I'll talk more about this band in further detail in another blog, but to say I wrote up a stream-of-consciousness bio (the concept is not mine) that can be found here.

Often, almost always, I love nothing better than a walk in the park with the birds singing and the late-afternoon sun glistening through the trees; heck, that's what I'll do right now!

And later on tonight I may skip up to Bondi Junction to see Avatar. More on that, and Sam W, later. My dear friend drove up from Sydney for the Northern Rivers (and Southern Cross University) on Friday so I'll likely be doing more things on my own from now on. But coming into autumn, that will be the perfect time to recharge and reflect, and stay cool and calm. And gentle.

The 80s are back! Powerhouse Museum exhibition

2010-02-08T18:37:00.017+11:00

Last Sunday, on what was a fitfully sultry, cloudy, murky, steamy day, we ventured into the Powerhouse Museum to see the 80s exhibition. We also walked through most of the museum afterward as well. We even got to see an extraordinary piano made out of glorious Tasmanian Huon pine (see below). Most of the photos that follow are taken from my cellphone.

Needless to say it was a thrilling and exciting exhibition. The 80s are firmly entrenched in my psyche, for I was aged 10-20 throughout the span of the decade. The 90s and beyond seem more like a spin-off of the 80s to me. I guess it was the time that I was absorbing a super amount of influence, and it's stayed with me since.

Ah, the album wall! Memories abound! Notice that the "best" is tucked away in that bottom right corner of the photo there...

Sade's Diamond Life still holds a very special resonance for me.

Here I am, posing with my "lover(s)", as Sarah likes to call them (or him, sk!)

What can I say, Heyday is class!! My good friend David picked up on the album as a masterpiece as soon it became released, late in 1985. It took me a while longer to discover the album's genius, oh well! I was too much into the Beatles, Hoodoo Gurus & the Jam to really notice Heyday at the time.

Thriller & Crowded House, yeah, big albums at the time.
I quite like the first Crowded House album now, like, 23 years later!
Memories!!! Spy vs Spy! Billy Idol. Tears for fears & the curly mullets! Gawd I looked like those fellas then!
Emerald haunt in overdrive...

I bought this album as soon as it was released, along with the single 'Bittersweet', mid-1985. This album was quite good but didn't compare to 'Stoneage Romeos', the Hoodoo Gurus' debut album. I remain very fond of 'Romeos' to this day. The Gurus really broke with 'Mars needs guitars' but unfortunately attracted a rough surfy element to their gigs in the process. Before that it was strictly garage, post-punk, sixties trendwarts of the early 80s that followed 'Le Hoodoo Gurus'. They're still gigging and reforming intermittently to this day, but I'm not interested.

A typical 80s poster. They were everywhere. The 80s in Sydney were a flurry of music and activity. With the recession and the advent of poker machines in the 90s, the music scene bummed out to a large extent, and has never fully recovered to the levels enjoyed in the 70s & 80s.
This photo was taken off a random slide-show. Many photos of funky, hairdo partygoers. It was such a vibrant scene. I noticed there were a lot of posters promoting "rat parties". I paused to remember; I hadn't heard the saying 'rat party' since, omg, 1986?? They were all the rage back in the mid-eighties, but a shy schoolboy like me wasn't to be made privy to these parties, alas. Really, rat parties were something of a precursor to the more modern dance/house party. They were more eclectic, featuring a wider range of people and types, with a vaster array of music. They were very "80s".
Stay alive in 85, yep. I wondered why a Choose Life t-shirt wasn't exhibited as there were a proliferation of these in 1985. Perhaps people were too embarrassed to 'fess up to them. ;)
Oh, the Dukes of Hazard, yes...
The Boss, and Boy George & Culture Club. The Boss did a tremendous run at the Entertainment Centre in 1985. I didn't go but my brother & sister went and had a ball. They were into him more than I was, but I do enjoy a taste of the Boss occasionally. Culture Club did a 4-gig run at the Ent Cent in 1985 - amazing - but I didn't go. In 1984 all I wanted to listen to were my Beatles records, and Stoneage Romeos.
The era of AIDS-awareness and safe-sex. I like this caption, it says it all with a bit of a humorous bent to it, particularly as it stands as an exhibition piece.

There was almost an innocence to these cartoons. Humour and levity is a way of relating the seriousness of the message.

The AIDS-quilt, a memorium to many lives and talent lost, a human tragedy beyond measure.

The games we played. They were simpler then, a lot more fun too.

The giant rubiks cube. We all owned one in '84. They were a cyclone that swept over us in one crazy fix. Within three months of constant dreams of twisting this coloured square around - and having every school kid around you doing likewise - the craze ended, and the cubes were never seen again. Until today.
I was never much into games. I did like nintendo and I owned 'parachute' and the infamous 'donkey kong' which was a foldout game, like a minituare laptop. Amber/orange in colour too.

I had the book of solving the rubiks cube and could solve the thing in about 30 seconds. I wish I still had my cube and book. I've no idea how they just disappeared, and when. I suspect that, after the initial rubiks boom, aliens came down and confiscated all rubiks cubes, and we'd long forgotten about them anyway. But a quarter of a century on, they materialise as artifacts to be viewed in a contemporary museum.The lyric sheets of the late Michael Hutchence. We noticed in one of these sheets he had a list of numbered goals. Conquering the world was one of them!

I wasn't a huge fan of INXS and to this day I'm not especially interested, although I do remain fond of 'Shabooh Shoobah' & 'The Swing', the two albums that I think represented the band at their peak. I recall all those videos too, and those mullets!

The Korg, stand-up rock-guitar keyboard. Made famous by Pseudo Echo and the video of their cover of 'Funkytown'! That keyboard, and the Steinberger bass guitar (black, rectangle, with no headstock), are musical instrument eyesore nadirs of the modern era.
The films we saw and TV we watched. There were booths with TV commercials from the decade where you could watch and listen in with headphones.

A chisel t-shirt from 1982. Since splitting up in 1983, and despite the occasional reunion, Chisel have remained great Australian icons whose stature seems to magnify with the passing of time.

Colourful apparel.
Students at my work love the 80s; most of them were born in the late part of the decade and don't remember them at all. That's inconceivable to my mind, but that's the cycle of life in operation. I wasn't around for the 60s and the Beatles and the Stones and Bobby Dylan. Life is a massive circle of oneness, really, spinning unceasingly like some galacial tumble-dryer.
Brit-pop stuff. Notice the Jam's 'The Gift' album up top. I became a massive Paul Weller fan from 1985 and remain so to this day.
Bicentennial bilge.
An apple from 1984. The i-mac I'm typing on now is a vastly slicker instrument.

Compare cellphones!

Yuppie paraphernalia.And so were the 80s. Some musical memories of the decade include: adam ant & the new romantic movement -- all those hairstyles! -- discovering the beatles and becoming totally obsessed -- culture club televised live from the ent cent -- purple rain released -- the boss rocks sydney -- live aid concert televised live -- amadeus the movie released -- the shire [sic] council tour australia and my interest in paul weller is aroused -- the cure's in between days -- mtv and truckloads of music videos! -- madonna and like a virgin -- desperately seeking susan film -- choose life 1985 t-shirts -- sade diamond life -- U2 and the joshua tree -- finishing school and listening to 'under the milky way' for the first time -- seeing the church for the first time at the tivoli in december 1987 -- the modern house music era begins 1988 -- catfish 'unlimited address' & crowded house 'temple of low men' released, two great albums -- the lullaby single and the 1989 year of disintegration and the cure.

I think, when you look back, Sydney enjoyed one long party from about the mid-70s to the end of the 80s. There was a lot more creativity, artistry, egalitarianism and 'get up & go' generated by people of many varied facets of creative & social life. There was a lot of crap, too. But living in the city was easier back then, and more probably more exhilarating too.

Yet it's two American productions of the 80s, the Purple Rain film and Diamond Life album, that somehow remain etched in my psyche and heart to a greater extent than anything else from that decade.

And me, in 1985, in the photo above. I recall growing that mullet for a few months longer. It was a mullet that put tears for fears to shame!

Oh, and twenty years ago today was 1990. The 80s are gone, finished. And time marches on. The question is, to what...?

Taboos of city life

2010-02-06T17:55:00.009+11:00

It's been a strange month of lone evaluation, mind heatwaves, comparisons and self-inflicted shortfalls, all of which were doing me harm. So I've ceased the death by a thousand cuts and have aligned by body and mind into some reasonable evaluation of my fundamentally good situation.

Work has been a significant backburner for this particular mood. Many times, as I gazed over the capital works and my team of student labourers knocking books and boxes and heavy shelves about, I felt that leaden, guttered feeling as you do when you're looking right up a 300 metre cliff, knowing you have no choice but to climb it, but resisting and wishing to take a swim in the stream behind instead. I had to also deal with new staff and orientation of new students, all of which has gone swimmingly well. And now, there are database reports due for the security system people, and submissions for new equipment & furniture too.

But hey, that's Monday's problem. Or Tuesday's...

It's interesting to have just come across Alain de Botton's 'The consolations of philosophy'. In it, he talks about Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates, and how Socrates would wander amongst the cityfolk of Athens and speak to strangers at random. Socrates wanted his subjects to question the status-quo and their own motivations in maintaining it, and indeed, to examine whether the status-quo had any real validitity or true value when looked at through rational perspective. Much remains timeless in the ways and values of the West.

It's coincidental that I've recently had the idea to conduct some sort of study, to ask a lot of questions of people, to open up a taboo subject that is all-pervasive in our cities yet is rarely discussed other than in a 'blanket' kind of way. That is, inheritance, money, property-possession. You see, I can sit around a lounge bar with a bunch of friends, having a drink, a pleasant time, enjoying the day and the company. Yet each of us will be of varying financial status. We'll talk about our jobs and what we like and what we don't like about them. We're a little coy about discussing our properties and where the money came from, which is fair enough. But it's interesting to me that one person owns 5 houses including a heritage-listed guest house, the other's been able to buy a free-standing house in a leafy part of the north shore, the other can buy a unit through family money, and another who's never worked a day in his life is handed with an apartment with a balcony and city views.

Over the last month I tended to be living via the 'half-empty' mentality. Maybe the heat fried my wires a bit. I felt insecure and a little fucking pissed off that I've worked for 15 years full-time, and while I have enough deposit to secure a 1-bedroom city box (and live very tightly for many years hence), it seems like people all around me have their pockets showered with moolah and are spending up on some fabulous cave-kit without the financial strains of high-equity mortgages.

During the hot month I felt this sense of being short-changed somewhat; looking back over the past - which is really fucking boring and stupid I know - and hurting that my dad made a virtue of pissing his money up against the damn wall and making the publican (and brickyard owner) rich in the process. I think this train of thought was sparked off during my uncle's death & funeral period. My cousin, 14 years my senior, was telling me that he used to drink with my dad in the pub and how great my dad was and all that. Well, that's very nice for you, dear cousin. But what about us, my dad's children. Very easy for my cousin to talk as he and his siblings got an apartment each at illustrious Bondi Beach. I'm cool with my cousin, but next time we meet up I want to discuss this with him, that he got the best bits of my dad saved for him.

But by demeaning my dear late father, and even worse, myself, with thoughts and emotions of lack serves only to debase myself, my being, and my character. I don't need to suffer self-esteem issues because I don't own a fucking home. Why should I suffer status anxiety just because a numerous load of individuals living in very close proximity to me drive Very Expensive cars. Fuck it. And fuck them. I would never buy a Very Expensive car if I had the money, nor a Very Expensive house. I like my material possessions in moderation.

I want to know if money, inheritance, and property ownership makes people happy. I want to know if people are more satisfied when they have a house they can call their own to come home to. In my observation, no level of external riches or acquisitions seems to make people more happy or fulfilled. They often add to burden in life. It's possible that property ownership and material wealth can remove to some degree an impediment to happiness (ie, poverty, housing-stress), but these things in no way have the power to remove unhappiness as a substantive psychic entity that lives in most human bodies on the planet.

There is the whole life. There is our love life, work life, social life, active/sport life, creative life, travel life, as well as home life. Just because we own a home it doesn't mean we're happier. Everything needs to be balanced, and balancing life requires looking at what we do have. We have our bodies, we have our level of health, we have loved ones, and we have so much. We have our parents who did so much for us, even if we think they didn't. The 'good' (or "now" as Ekhardt Tolle would say), is every moment. As long as we have food, clothing and shelter we are doing fine. We can make the time to divine gratitude for all that we have. In any moment that we are aware, we find we do not need what the other person has. Every moment has brought 'me' to his point.

I would not wish to swap or give up any quality, attribute, capability, gift or talent that I have for money and possession. You got it? You can have it.

I went to the wedding a year ago of the one with the 5 houses including the heritage-listed guest-house. To his credit, he doesn't drive a Very Expensive car. But I do find it sad and a little dismaying that he wasn't very happy when I ran into him at the supermarket a month before he got married. He was stressed and his face showed it. He was chronically busy and the impending marriage was causing him some degree of strain. How easy would it be to scale back and enjoy the fruits of what's been handed to you? (And have since cultivated and nurtured, admittedly). Well, that's easy for me to say. When you have that level of acquisition, to scale down must feel like a form of death. But in holding onto millionaire lego-land comes all the responsibility and burden of material ownership.

I walk around looking at big houses and wonder where I'd put the studio. I bet most houses don't have a music studio within them. I'd make it primarily a rehearsal space, with only minimal gear. I don't like too many trinkets - but I do like space to make noise.

The key is to enjoy your life, and to enjoy it by enjoying the sensation of your body beyond mind and emotions, and to be grateful for what we've got. I'm pleased to say I'm back on this track after a month of faltering, and I don't think I'll falter no more. In short, Christmas through to late-January had me in a funk, but I'm climbing out of it.

Besides, I may consider buying a shoe-box; I cast my eye to Marrickville!

***************************************

I've taken an interest in the case of a missing 52 year-old Melbourne man with a famously "illuminati" surname. He was a multi-millionaire businessman who made his money through property investment. He was found hacked to death and burned up in a downbeat suburb of Melbourne some two weeks after his disappearance. Two people have been found and charged with his murder. Apparently, the businessman led a double life; he had his loving family and dream home, and he was also actively involved with underground swingers' circuits.

On the day of his death, the illuminati-surnamed businessman parted from his brother at the airport after a day doing business in NSW. He was to drive home to his lovely wife and house and family to celebrate his daughter's entrance into medical school. So why on earth did he decide to stop off at a suburb very different to the one he lived in, for an illicit, frenzied fuck?? It's a horribly sad way to live. He forsook his family, his home, and his children each and every time he partook in a swingers' session, and this time it cost him his life.

What interests me is the motivation for murder. The couple that the businessman visited, in their housing-estate home in the working-class suburb of Hadfield, had expected that the businessman bring his "wife" as per the arrangement. A fight ensued and the businessman was killed and sawn off with an electric saw that had been purchased that day at Bunnings.

Now, why go so far? Why murder? The working-class man, selling used cars off a house-yard for a living, likely had low self-esteem and a fundamentally low opinion of himself. He wouldn't have liked to have been duped by a guy pretending to be in his thirties and lying about the wife he didn't bring. The wealthy businessman wanted 'action' and that would have caused great ire in the used-car seller who saw himself being duped in the bargain.

Is this enough to aggravate a murder? No. If the businessman had been some average joe, a heated argument may have ensued but some degree of understanding may have leveled things off. What I think happened was, at the heat of the argument, the used car guy somehow became aware that the man in front of him was some rich prat trying to take advantage of his partner. The businessman may have shot off a covert insult that unleashed the stark contrast between the two men. If so, it was a fatal mistake. The lowly used car guy, trying hard in life but never making do with the limitations imposed on him, in having some rich cock in his house demanding to fuck his wife, would have had all his emo buttons detonated. In a moment of insanity the pair killed the businessman. In a harrowing moment the two men were made equals by sexual depravity, two men who would not have crossed paths in any other way. It's awful to think what went through the businessman's mind in his moment of death, that he gave up a lovely house, a lovely garden, a lovely family, and lovely children, for this.

Be true, be grateful for what you've got, and be responsible for those you love, and that which you love. Yeah, love is the key isn't it, above money, above property, above what other people appear to have or own.

Kate McGarrigle (1946-2010)

2010-01-26T11:47:00.007+11:00

(for submission to the 'Songsmith')

"...life is short, life is sweet, this much I know..." - kate

It was with much sadness to have discovered this week that one of my musical heroes had just passed away, Canadian singer-songwriter Kate McGarrigle, aged 63. Kate was half of esteemed folk-duo Kate & Anna McGarrigle, forged with her older sibling, Anna. From the early seventies, the duo were plugging hit songs to artists such as Maria Muldaur and Linda Ronstadt. In 1975, Kate & Anna McGarrigle released their eponymously-titled, Grammy award-winning, debut LP to much critical and commercial acclaim. Since that year, the McGarrigles have released a stream of albums that have won consistent critical favour and devotion from music-lovers worldwide.

I discovered the McGarrigles in 1998. My sister showed me a glowing review in the Sydney Morning Herald of the remastered sisters’ first album, by Bruce Elder. I was impressed enough by my own sister’s enthusiasm – she grew up in that era and came to love the McGarrigles – and Bruce Elder’s recommendations, to go out and buy the album. That the sisters were born and bred in Montreal, Canada, too, piqued my interest somewhat.

I came to love the album greatly, and before long I collected what I could of the duo’s back-catalogue. The duo were a massive influence on me musically. I quickly realised that the brand-missive “folk” did this duo scant justice. The McGarrigles music assimilated all that is great about American music. Their songs cite the 19^th century parlour style indicative of artists such as Stephen Foster, as well as more modern American jazz/blues & trad. folk styles and the American seventies folk/singer-songwriter genre. And then, from their vantage point in Montreal, their influences assimilate a healthy blend of traditional English and French folk balladry. So all together, the music of the McGarrigles takes in an extraordinary vibrant blend of North American, English and French styles and genres, channelled into wonderful songwriting from both Anna and Kate McGarrigle. The sisters are multi-instrumentalists, and their albums are fused with pianos, guitars, piano-accordians, banjos, and all sorts of instruments performed by either themselves or guest-artists. Listening to the McGarrigles makes me wish I grew up in Montreal, Canada, rather than Sydney.

I treasure that I actually met Anna and Kate. I waited for them backstage at the Enmore Theatre in February 2006, after their concert with Rufus Wainwright. I told the sisters how much I loved their music and what it meant to me. Like bright moons in the fallow, humid night, they beamed simultaneously. They were lovely, warm and natural, and I wished I’d talked to them for longer. And I couldn’t help but notice Kate’s eyes, eyes of piercing light, radiant, sharp.

Anna & Kate McGarrigle are ‘real’ musicians in the full sense of the word. Great music-making is really about heart, soul, experience, sharing, family, emotion, love; along with those other usual attributes such as aptitude and talent. Anna & Kate McGarrigle are each responsible for creating wonderful, inspired music that touches the soul and warms the heart.

As I came to know the McGarrigles’ music and began to differentiate the songs of Anna and Kate, I discovered that I preferred the songs of Kate’s to Anna’s. And in some ways, that’s an unfair assessment. The pair’s chemistry as dual songwriters allowed them to produce a string of consistently excellent albums since 1975. Anna’s more rootsier, elementally emotional approach to her songwriting paired nicely with Kate’s own work. And Anna did write the superb ‘My Town’ from the first album, a Kate & Anna McGarrigle classic to be sure, amongst many other great songs that are staple for the duo. And yes I love Anna’s songs too; her material is insightful, sensitive, and full of fine musicality and flavour.

And what of Kate’s ex-husband, Loudon Wainwright III? He’s written some brilliant songs (including ‘Swimming Song’ that was covered most effectively by Kate on the duo’s debut record). Their children, Rufus & Martha Wainwright, are highly gifted and talented artists too, and each family member is as diverse and distinctive as they are talented and gifted. So what sets Kate apart from the rest of her family?

It’s that unmistakable, undeniable presence of Genius.

There’s this unerring quality of perfection in the songs of Kate McGarrigle. Like unfettered gems, Kate’s songs shine and illuminate as if they’d existed forever, as if they’d never needed drafting, or to be written from the ground up. The adjectives that would best describe the music of Kate McGarrigle are radiant, majestic, luminescent. Kate’s songs contain all the elements that make for great songwriting; those bright, beautiful melodies that “swell upwards to God”, a sophisticated yet most pleasing harmonic palette, and lyrics that compliment heart, emotions and intellect in equally high measure. Like a modern-day Mozart, each of these facets are stamped by Kate’s own eye-twinkling, life-affirming presence in each and every song. Kate’s gem-like touch as a songwriter/composer fused into her performance too; her voice was a golden soprano, her pearl-like touch on the piano and guitar were perfect, faultless. So with all of this combined, you have perfect songs, perfect music. And Kate’s songs were perfect. The songs of Kate McGarrigle are incomparably warm and heartfelt, utterly human in the finest sense. Hers was a special, extraordinary gift.

Her songs are also revealing of a humorous, sassy streak, indicative of lines such as “…I wanna kiss you ‘till my mouth gets numb…” off ‘Kiss and say goodbye’, “…then it’s off to the porch for a moonlight swing with me your Northern girl…” from ‘Southern boys’, and the tongue-in-cheek “…why don’t we make a little hay…” from ‘Hommage a Grungie’. ‘Blues in D’ successfully fuses English music-hall and Gershwin-esque blues within a style that’s distinctly Franco-Canadian. Kate’s piano solo in ‘Kiss and say goodbye’ and ‘Blues in D’ as two examples, the latter a duet with a clarinet, just go to show what a truly inspired, lively musician she was.

Kate’s spark and humour are made quite apparent in the song ‘NaCl (Sodium Chloride)’ that appeared originally on Pronto Monto and later The McGarrigle Hour. Kate studied chemistry at university and this jaunty song, carried by jazz-styled brushes, cleverly matches romantic concepts within a metaphorical chemistry framework. That Kate carries it off brilliantly is, again, indicative of her great originality and talent.

Then there are her piano/vocal ballads. Two of these in particular, ‘I cried for us’ and ‘I don’t know’, are at the very summit of piano/vocal composition; both songs possessing a majesty and compositional prowess that is Beethovenian in their scope, equally matched by astounding beauty, and heart. Kate McGarrigle is one of those artists – like Nick Drake, of whom the same thing has been said – who’ll “tear your soul out” with their songs.

‘Go leave’ is representative of the more generic 70s singer-songwriter, featuring Kate alone on acoustic guitar and vocal. Her pearl-like piano touch is equally transferred to guitar. The subtlety of the song and playing, lyricism (“….she’ll make it last longer, that’s nice for you…”) and again, the compositional prowess, demonstrates how Kate allows a song to swell and reach its climax before landing into the final verse. ‘Go Leave’ is one of the finest performances by a guitarist singer-songwriter of the 1970s.

Perhaps Kate is best known for her signature song, ‘Talk to me of Mendocino’ that appears on the debut Kate & Anna McGarrigle album, and later on The McGarrigle Hour. The latter re-recorded “campfire” version features picked guitar as the main backing rather than the piano that appeared on the 1975 version. ‘Talk to me of Mendocino’ encapsulates all that is miraculous about Kate’s music, the beautiful melody that swells onwards and upwards, the lovely harmonic progression, the way song builds both structurally and emotively (“…watch the sunrise over the redwoods, I’ll rise with them ‘till I rise no more…”), leading to the final chorus and coda. The latter recorded version features Kate’s family joining in at turns, and the power of this gorgeous piece is made all the more palpable when Rufus makes his vocal entrance (“…let the sun set over the ocean…”). ‘Talk to me of Mendocino’ is a miraculous piece of songwriting.

The full-motion of melody, and its swell and flow within a rich harmonic backdrop, is pretty much symptomatic of the majority of Kate’s songs. Off Matapedia of 1996 there is ‘Jacques et Gilles’ which again, is astounding for its melody, harmony, and heroic tales of triumph against adversity. With its final verse of “…we’re coming home to Canada, to La Beauce, our beautiful country…” ‘Jacque et Gilles’ naturally qualifies for the anthem of Quebec. The music to this song is so impossibly gorgeous that it’s difficult to imagine that music could be any lovelier.

The aforementioned Matapedia is the most recent of the sisters’ original albums. In the light of Kate’s passing, the themes of Matapedia seem to ring more prominently. The album has a most autumnal feel to it, with songs about the sisters’ mother’s passing (‘Song for Gaby’ by Anna is an astounding piece of work), and songs about the passing of youth and time in general. It’s a satisfying album to listen to, the natural vitality of Kate & Anna McGarrigle tempered by the passing of the years and the realisation that nothing lasts forever.

It’s often interesting to hear the primary influences that make up a songwriter. The McGarrigle Hour of 1998 is primarily an album of covers performed by the McGarrigle sisters and their extended family and friends (including their older sister, Jane). Kate performed and sang a Stephen Foster song, ‘Gentle Annie’, with Anna singing some glorious back-up vocals. You hear much of Kate’s signature sound in ‘Gentle Annie’; the beautiful melodies are tempered with an equally beautiful ‘old-world’ piano backdrop, the overwhelming sense of “heart” in the song, the way the song swells and moves back to its sweetly supple verses.

The power of Kate McGarrigle’s music lies in its humanity, its warmth and its radiance; a radiance that’s perfectly poised with natural sophistication and intelligence, and matched with a spellbinding lyrical, melodic and harmonic gift. If you separate any of Kate’s songs and blend it with those of another songwriter (Anna aside), the radiance, heart and humanity of her unexpected presence shines through like a thousand suns. In this instance I’m referring to Loudon Wainwright III who covered one of Kate’s songs, ‘Come a long way’, for his fine 1973 album Attempted Moustache. It was a brilliant cover, full of acoustic-guitars, and every bit as adept a cover as the version of the Loudon song ‘Swimming song’ that Kate herself covered. As soon as you come to Track 9, ‘Come a long way’ of Attempted Moustache, you’re hit with a musical smile, a song that communicates immense radiance and emotional punch. The writer behind this piece of musical sunshine? Kate McGarrigle.

The late Kate McGarrigle is, without question, one of the most supremely gifted song-composers ever to have graced the planet. More refined than Carole King, more regal than Joni Mitchell, Kate McGarrigle is queen of all she surveys. Her music lives on.