I'll be around....

I'm actually overseas...Just in Paris listening to some speed garge from 10 years ago, when I thought I'd impress my cousin with this BASSLINE stuff I picked up in Nottingham, where I just came from..The older stuff is better :)

So yeah, I will be posting lots of pictures and some narrative one I get settle on my groove over here...

10-4

Sheriff Goldblog

Chuck D - *you're* the VOICE!

Ya know, the guy is probably 'anti-semitic', just like Mel Gibson, but is probably eating his words when his closest ideologue in political 'thought' – Noam Chomsky – is one of those wicked devils he's spouting about (but ya know he's not, get over it). I remember about 8 years ago I went to one of those September11 anti-Globalism Protests at the Clown Casino (I beleive in that politque, even if the people championing it are fucking cockheads), and as I soon as I rocked up, the stoopid motherfuckers were playing fucking Johnny Farnham's 'You're the Voice'...Now I don't gives a stuff that they were trying to 'appropriate' or 'subvert' that song, but as soon as I heard it I RAN away from that awful sonic Balagan! ( Regardless of what their righteous albeit dumb-idiot agendas were, that song makes me VOMIT, not want to bomb a bank, whatever the “””point””” is 'supposed' to be!)

But clearing that shit from the table, of all the black/Afro-American SINGERS that have come out in the last 25 odd years, Chuck D definitely has the best voice. Chuck has perfect lyrical flow, and his lyris are dense, not just the chump change most rappers spit out...But Chuck's got that thing called soul. His 'performance' on By the Time I get to Arizona is just bomb. And except for maybe Method Man, Chuck is one of those rappers that just clears the room of all other bullshit and punches through. His shit is heavy and his voice is heavy too. It's incredible that Chuck D never fronted one of those 80s black-coalition rock bands, something in between Bad Brains and Living Colour(unfortunately his rock 'combos' have all been terrible!). I have no doubt if that happened, well then 'rap' woulda become another strand of the hard-rock virus keeping it alive for another 20 odd year...But it didn't happen, and most turned away from actually listening to the guy. He's still out there, and even if his vocal chords are being stretched like a 'Stretch Armstrong' toy to the point where it's gonna plutz and that thick-sticky glue stuff oozes out. Chuck D is one of the last truly great African-America yellers. You got Henry Rollins kvetching around but Chuck D just does it without effort. Word.

The best thing since .. QUADRAPHONIC 4 !!

For those that don't know and more than likely don't give a shit, I actually made a few drachmas reviewing DVDs for a friends magazine that didn't make them any money so I lost my job..Alas, look where I am now: the shlobersphere or Blogosphere or whatever the poo-shooters call it..Anyway I was lucky to have been given a DVD-audio setup and amplifier which totally reconfigured my ears for the end of days with the 5.1/Dolby Digital/DTS meshigarse. When I was a wee cucker in the middish 70s, my older brother had one of those Quadraphonic4 amps, I remember playing with the funky remote, but never listening to anything on it, but these days I have it back!!

Basically the DVD-audio/Super Audio Cd format is dead in the toilet, so some generous and tech-savvy legend have now compiled a site where you can download the muisc and burn it straight on a CD or DVD as an encoded in DTS-format music disque..which means basically all you need is a simply DVD player surround sound set-up with DTS capability which you can get for about $150 at yr local Yum-Cha-Electronic store/supermarket and listen to some stoner audiophile dreck from the 70s 80s 90s 00s in 4.1 or 5.1...This legend at this site has also managed to digitise some old QD-4 vinyl, such as the pearler in the photo.. SO go forth and E.X.P.A.N.D!!!

Click here shtoompock!

THE FUTURE OF ROCK!!

..and they sound like the Velvets!

MadMax and pussy

THE ENGINE – MAD MAX

“ …She’s the last of the V8’s. She sucks nitro, phase 4 head..”

There are many wonderful ‘shots’ in MadMax, which still stands as one of the most beautifully lensed, edited and composed Australian films of all time. I’ll let other people articulate what those are in more florid words than me, but my own personal favourite is the unveiling of ‘the Engine’: “..she’s the last of the V8’s, she sucks nitro, phase 4 head..’ Now the obvious Freudian/Delleuzian/post-modern/lazy etc..etc..etc response, is that ‘the engine’ – and visually so in this case – is the unconscious representation of the phallus. But this is what is so cool about this shot, it's not what it's 'supposed' to be, on the contrary. The camera zooms in slowly to this dark....slot, Max gently tweaks it for more power…it purrs, he’s seduced, in awe, dumbstruck, and suffers a Petit-Mort all in one shot!

Goose declares: ‘He’s in a coma man, he loves it!’

For a country that invented such wonderful philosophical concepts as ‘ the female eunuch’,a concept it seems would define sexuality in the Australian cinema for way, way too long, here we have a proud one-finger salute in this single shot. Max has just been (mind) blown!

But in this same moment a Faustian pact has been unconsciously made. Max would discover further down the narrative, that ‘the Engine’ would become his new love interest, signalling Mad Max as the first truly ‘Ballardian’ movie. He will be cruelly denied the flesh; this brief mating ritual with this crude, high-powered lube-loving machine will soon define his fate.

I remember vividly the experience of seeing MadMax2 in a packed-out Rosebud Cinema down in the Mornington-Peninsula in the early 80s (I was too young to see the shocking, ‘transgressive’ R-rated MadMax, and had to see it later on video) It blew my mind, the first truly transcendent Australian cinematic experience. The theatre was packed with mix of locals and migrant-Australians who loved their cars more than their mothers (or maybe not). The hyped murmurings after the movie were in regards to Max’s tricked out super-powered ‘Charger’. It was the engine that means the most - ‘what the fuck was than reh?’, ‘Nitro, man’, would be the reply, ‘my cousins, bothers, mate does them mods’..It was a warm communal afterglow that we all must of felt, after being unceremoniously blown by the purring, screaming force of ‘the engine’.

Ed Kuepper mega-mix!

Ed Kuepper (far left) and some schizophrenics on day-release.

Ed 'the Head's' best songs.

Ed Kuepper is one of my all-time Aussie rock heroes. As a teenager I really got into his 'electrical storm' record, and then dug through his Laughing Clowns stuff, and a few of his solo records, including the stuff he did as the Aints. But I have a big problem with Ed. For all his prolificness, the guy really knows how to churn out buckets of shit. Sure it's difficult to deal with his whiney/droney voice, and his guitar playing is always quite excellent, tasteful and rock n' roll, but he puts out so much music/dreck, that ultimately most of it is really unlistenable dreck. More often than not his albums might have one or two killers (which happened more often after 'Honey Steals Gold') with the rest all quirky rubbish.

So I thought I'd sift through the back catalogue of his that I actually own, and pick out what I reckon are the real winners, and see if there's enough to make an Ed Kuepper 'megamix' so the young shnooks can get a grasp on his inconsistent 'genius' without wasting to much time and money.

NOTE : These are not in order of best, but there is some chronological order going on:

1. Eternally Yours – post-punk drone-boogie bliss

2. No words of honour – Velvets type guitar and pp beat

3. New Bully in the Town – killer with a disco beat

4. Crystal Clear – another floor stomper

5. Holy Joe – rumble and weird jazz

6. Mr. Uddich-Schmuddich goes to town

7. The only one that knows – Ed's got something with the E-A-D chords

That's only 7 killers/classics off the 'Laughing Clowns collection of 51 songs, so go figure...

8. Car Headlights – hasn't dated well, be still pretty strong

9. No more sentimental jokes – solid

10. Master of two servants – it that badly recorded mandolin that does it

11. Another story – great outtro guitar solo

12. Electrical Storm – all the re-recorded versions were never as good as this one.

13. Told Myself – not sure if Ed was listening to Junior Kimbrough back in the 80's but this is the best white version of JK I've heard.

14. Palace of Sin – big-beat




7 tracks of 'Electrcial Storm' which has 11 track, so IMHO, his 'masterwork'





15. Without your mirror – nice folky/blues acoustic track, shows Ed's guitar skills

16. Show pony – there's an instrumental break thats really cool

17. Not a soul around – Ed starting to get a bit more 'commercial'

18. Nothing changes in my house – ditto, he was going for the Mellencamp thing.

19. Everything I've got belongs to you – it's cheesy and sentimental but its a good song.

20. Honey Steals Gold – fantastic spag/western/noir instrumental with droney loop

21. The way I made you feel – another killer song

22. Closer (but disguised) – great upbeat number in Ed;s weird way.

23. Blind Girl Stripper – great instrumental, with Spacemen3 type drone

24. Black ticket day – another uplifting Ed number

25. It's still nowhere – The Aints. Flanged-out electric guitar, but it works!

26. What's it like out there – more flange hysteria, the outro is friggen killer, good example of Ed's guitar work when its good.

27. Ascension – noisy guitar, for 11 minutes. I wish Ed did this more often, he's a fucken great rock n' roll guitarist. Maybe Australia's best!

But that's only 27 songs out of 300 or something, that's like 9%!! But that 9% outweighs nearly 98.9% of all recorded Aussie music. So go figure.

Flop flip

Southland Tales

Easily the best science fiction movie this decade. Many tried: the Wachowski's, Aronofsky, Linklater, Assayas, but this is the ONE. Of course the 'confusing, misdirected mess' or whatever most thought the film was, is far from it. Writer/Director Richard Kelly isn't doing anything more radical than Kubrick did with Dr. Strangelove. In fact the first 15 minutes is like a hyper mix of Kubrick, Michael Mann and Buffy! The basic problem 'critics' and even the core 'audience' had with the film was a simple matter of aesthetics. Basically Kelly has taken the last 20-odd years of modern comic/graphic novel story telling, and dumped it steaming and hot onto the lap of Hollywood and cineaste intelligentsia. Kelly's intricate plot takes the airiness of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and slices and dices it with the Ninja blade of anime surrealist hyper-modern story telling. Sheeit, there are healthy doses of the LSD-fried LA sci-fi of Phil K Dick, KW Jeter and Tim Powers, but fuck that shit, the cocksucking film 'critics' wouldn't have read that dope shit (let em read Jonathan Lethem for all I care, and they still won't get it!)!!!! In a nutshell, it was all too fast, and to into it's own rhythms to worry about what the 'others' thought (Jodorowsky comics anyone?) Kelly has a made a subversive modern American satire. No wonder the thing would flop in today's 'market. It's basically Repo Man shotgunned into a PS2, via the weird pulsations of todays 'post-Christian-Corporated-everything' world. Also throw in the Craig Baldwin hyper-linked info-steria, and you've got a modern cinematic version of agit-prop angina(don't have a heart-attack y'all)! I mean I still haven't seen it in 'perfect cinefillic conditions', rather corporate screener 'blech', but alas that shows how far this film has been tooches trennered !!! Let the global warming sun shine down(and out of my arse!)! (I'll get my 36+)

Bastille Day in Detroit

Word.

Road Worriers

Films I've recently watched...

Been sitting on my arse watching stuff on DVD, starting with...

TWO RARE AS SHIT FILMS by ALAN CLARKE (U.K)...The cinema of Alan Clarke has been getting a bit of how you say 'chi-chi' reappraisal in recent years, most notably via Gus Van Sant and every film he's made since ELEPHANT, which was inspired by Alan Clarke's short film of the same name, as well as alumni of Van Sant, Harmony Korine, who lists Clarke as one of his favourite directors. You also get Clarke's' influence in many of the trendy 'grunge' film-makers, most notably the films - at least up to TRAINSPOTTING of Danny Boyle, and other trendies like Lynne Ramsay who made MORVERN CALLAR or even that guy who recently made that Joy Division movie KONTROL, and then let’s not forget Belgian guns the Dardenne Brothers, who's steady-cammed social realism -owes more to Clarke's films than the easy comparison to Bresson made by 95% of Johnny-cum-lately film reviewers or whatever they call themselves these days. For those that want to dive into Clarke's work, well you don't have to look too far. The most-excellent cult-cinema label BLUE UNDERGROUND put out a box-set a few years back that comprised of his most well-known film, the borstal-basher SCUM, as well as the equally excellent MADE IN UK, THE FIRM and the previously mentioned ELEPHANT. The box-set it OOP, but the titles are available as individual film. Clarke's final film (he died too young in 1990), the dirty-comedy RITA & SUE & BOB TOO is also available from the UK... But Clarke's other stuff is extremely rare, made more so by the fact that most of Clarke's output for BBC television as one off 'movies of the week', so if you know someone who taped them when they screened in the 80s yr in luck...

The first of the two films I saw was the most excellent CHRISTINE, which is pretty much the day in the life of a young, working-class female junkie. Living in drab flat, Christine basically spends her days shooting up, and then walking to her friends’ houses to shoot up some more. Dialogue is kept to a minimum as Clarke's steady-cam stalks his main protag with a low-rent Kubrick styled efficiency. There's no drama, just the blunt, dull and monotonous process of the junkie shooting up, nodding off and then repeating. Clarke uses his signature of 'the walker' to great effect here. A running theme in Clarke's films, despite the overall bleakness of Thatcher's England, is the concept of 'the Walker'..Nearly every character in Clarkes' work is walking through a bleak, almost alien environment, as if they are stuck in a prison, in this case working class England. Steadycam is the method to follow his protagonist’s journey and events literally unfold along the way, in real time. CHRISITNE is no different; she walks, shoots up and nods off, all the way until the last fix, where she may have just found an inner peace...

The second Clarke rarity I saw was THE ROAD...Some rate this one quite highly but it didn't do much for me..based on a play, the film had too much talking heads complaining directly to the camera, punctuated by a brief steady-cam shot of each character...The film revolves around the lives of two disenfranchised woman and two guys they meet at a drab disco. Interspersed are the monologues of a sad old divorcee, a sad old man, and a sad young couple. The film sits very much in that Irvine welsh TRAINSPOTTING type mould with people talking in a heavy British vernacular and complaining about the system and whatnot. The film is a lot more stylised that Clarke's other work, with scuzzy settings and characters mugging for the camera in freeze-frame. If you want to know where Danny Boyle got a lot of his original ideas you should try and check out THE ROAD.

Finally I watched the totally off-its-head JE T'AIME MOI NON PLUS directed by French-frog pop hero serge Gainsbourg. Starring Warhol beefsteak Joe Dellasandro and French-fry junkie-chic Jane Birkin, the film tells the story of Krassky (Dellasandro), a gay truck driver who falls for a chick with no tits and look like a boy called Johnny (Birkin)...Poor Krassky, he thinks he's falling for this anorexic, until he has to sleep with her, and then in frustration can only consummate his love for her Greek-style! Yeah well, how do you interpret this film? To me it was like a Fassbinder movie meets one of the those 70's mid-western acid movies like something by Monte Hellman or an early Hal Ashby film..The premise is more ridiculous when you tell people about it, than when you actually watch it, but the whole film works on such a unique don't-give-a-fuck and provocative manner, that you can't help but be entertained, and realise they just don't make shit like this anymore! Oh, and for those who dig Monsieur Gainsbourg, this film is actually an adaptation of his hit song Je T'Aime Se Nous Plus, so suck on that one!

Stealth rock around the cock

THE WEDDING PRESENT - BIZARRO

..don’t ask me what the title means, you can figure it out for yourself coz I know yr that smart. The other day, being the sad-old-cunt that I am within the 35+ ‘demographic’ that-still-buys-music-as-albums--on-physically-tactile-formats, I picked up probably my favourite UK-indie-shmindie band of all-time, the Wedding Present's sorta-kinda-classic album: BIZARRO. Now I actually bought this album back during the great pre-war days of the earliest 1990’s, though I’d initially lost interest in the band after purchasing their hit-album ‘GEORGE BEST’ a neat, though badly produced record, that was still important in that here was one of the first indie-rock bands that proudly championed their love of sports before it became trendy with fuckheads (the hardcore pnuk scene', and also just before mid- 90s via Ameri-undie bands like Pavement & Yo LaTengo and who seemed to have become sports fans over-night in fear of the great gay-takeover or some shit whilst doing their art-farty humanities course at Uni, and realized they aren’t exactly part of the great ‘art’ dominant paradigm.)

NOW the Wedding Present in their day (what? 1986 to about 1990 or 1993) were basically up there in the big two of Brit-pop. It was Wedding Present vs. the Smiths), and while the Smiths are still championed for Morrissey’s exquisite charm and pomp and backbone of ALL British musique since 1972, GLAM, the Weddoes were always seemingly ignored because of their natural hetero boy-meets-girl-boy-has-complexity-with-girl-nobody-really-wins bittersweet paradigm. Which as I have been informed by a ex-pat servant-of-the-Empire buddy, made them quite popular with the chicks. I can vouch to that, though all I had was blue-balls-and-frustration/heartbreak with the only chick I ever went out with who was a Weddoes fan (there mighta been another, but she was into droney jazz records amongst the Stooges, and Nick Cave and PJ Harvey. ) In Australia, the Weddoes had fleeting indie-cult appeal with the sorta dancefloor ‘hit’ ‘My Favourite Dress’, that was the tougher antedote to the Smiths juggernaut in their songs ‘How Soon is Now’, ‘Big mouth’ etc…Another thing that didn't win the the Weddoes a fan base outside the UK was they were another trainspotter specialist type band. This was partly due to the fact that they WERE a 100% indie band pre the onset of 90s indie-rock globalizm fracas, while the Smiths already had major label distro in this country. You could and still to a great extent, only buy Wedding Present produce via ‘specialist’ stores or directly from the maker via the Internerd. Adding to this, still to this day, no skerrick of the Wedding Present ‘empire’ have ever been to Australia in the live-on-stage format. As a result being a fan of the Wedding Present immediately put you into a secret cult that almost immediately helped you identify with other secret agents of the resistance or some such shit.

SO we have BIZARRO. Following up to their indie-smash-hit and genre defining ‘product’ - GEORGE BEST - the band created waves in the UK by wrenching post-punk ideals by the balls, taking full ownership of their own work based on their substantial cult-following and having one of the first, we produce-it-and-you-cunts-distribute-it-better deals with a major (RCA) which would become the norm with grunge-etc..(tho’ wasn’t anything really new, since the Rolling Stones pioneered it).

BIZARRO immediately saw the band taking another step forward, album opener ‘Brassneck’ was pretty much a representation of a UK band absorbing the ‘Blast First’ records American-invasion on the indie-underground, immediately pushing this band into a more ‘rockist’ realm, which would aid them immeasurably in the next dam-busting raid that would occur some 4-5 years later over the pond. ‘Brassneck’ is basically the Wedding Present interpreting Sonic Youth’s ‘Teenage Riot’ without losing their own unique identity, unlike the shoegazers soon thereafter. No doubt setting up the forgotten fact that BIZARRO is pretty-much one of the DEFINING (or seminal) records of the shoegaze cannon. The next three tracks ‘crushed’, ‘no’ and ‘thanks’ still stick the ye-old-school Weddoes ‘sound’ of jingly-jangly Anorak-spangly guitars and ennui lyrics, until the big-one ‘Kennedy’ comes along. Fuck a duck! The first Velvet-Undergound disco-‘floor’ track, with a cha-cha that’s still as limey as Blancmange’s ‘livin’ on the ceiling’, and a track that is more subversively ‘witty’ than anything Herr-Morrissey coulda penned. I crapped on before about the Fall’s BEND SINISTER being one of the first Chmosky-style albums, well ‘Kennedy’ would rate as one of the first Chmosky-stylee bubblegum pop-songs!

One of the great things about BIZARRO is the Wedding Present’s ability to take the ecstatic ‘What goes on’ strum without giving a fuck about the outcome. Critics would write this off as ‘boring indulgence’ since all they are really doing is strumming and not really going anywhere for five odd minutes. The only real flaw in this may not be as much fun for the listener as it is for the artist. But listening with fresh ears in my olde-age, the ecstatic strum-outs sound more like a response to the eccy-trance of the dance music at the time as well as a nod to the Daydream-Nation psych-expanses of the other mob. People forget that the Wedding Present were actually a dance got ‘what have I said now?’ on the rocker behind me now and contrary to the indulgence, just stopped it’s ecstasy-strum a bit too early! band in the post-punk sense. They were still the offshoot of Joy Division (if Ian Curtis lived would the Weddoes have existed???), Wire, the Fall, but were possibly subconsciously taking a more dance stand via say their New Order or even their Gang of Four stylings. In fact, I got ‘what have I said now?’ on the rocker behind me now and contrary to the indulgence, just stopped it’s ecstasy-strum a bit too early!

But the rest of side-2 (or last 6 tracks or however i-dopes ‘schedule’ music these days) is all fucken great soft-psych jam-out noise bliss/fun/release/groove/meshigarse/primitive ritual –whatever!

Gedge’s lyrics were always as interesting and obscure as the sonics. Whereas Morrissey was always on his Oscar-Wildean via Derek Jarman via (showing my ignorance of UK culture here) I dunno Coronation-Street repression-Marxist-position-of-the-homo-‘other’ encoded-shtick, Gedge would stick to hetero boy-meets-girl-boy-has-complexities-with-girl as only he knows how, and alas pick up all the Morrissey ‘fans’ who knew they could never fuck him! Gedge lyrics have a matter-of-fact rawness and honesty/ awkwardness/neuroticness that makes him some sort of John Cassavettes inspired poet, even if he probably never watched any Cassavettes movies. Similarly, they have that quaint-but-potent interplay, humor, potency and bla-bla-ness that you find in most Eric Rohmer films..

Rohmer's bitter sweet summer lovin' re: 'Take me', 'don't talk just kiss'

..or even stuff like Godard’s ‘Contempt’ and plenty of Trauffaut (which probably adds to the Weddoes popularity with indie Franco-philes and American indie film-makers!) I was trying to position Gedge with UK film-makers of his time- in the way that it’s so easy to position Morrissey into the Jarman-Greenaway vanguard that was moving at the time - but it’s proving tricky (which is good). Despite having a sort of ‘kitchen sink’ reality about them, for the majority, Gedge’s lyrics were never as blatantly Marxist-leftist as the Leigh/Loach films of the time. The closest they would have resemble (of which I’m not terribly versed in either, remember, I am not a hardcore Anglophile) would have been the cinema of Alan Clarke, and even then, only ‘Rita & Sue & Bob Too’. (NOTE: If anyone wants to add more films or other culture I would never have seen, that might have been in alignment with Gedge’s lyricism, please fill me in I AM interested!)

So now it’s its time to put my pinhead hat on and do my lame attempt at charting the impact of this band that seem to have been written out of Brit-roque history. From my R&D the Weddoes were definitely the next step from the Joy Division/New Order sonic paradigm, and interestingly used the whole Factory-records ‘indie’ model for their show-business affair before nearly any bands of their generation. This probably set themselves apart from their Marxist (marx brother-ists?) C86 peers. The Weddoes weren’t afraid, to use the capitalist paradigm to their advantage, in fact they were probably more organized and together in the head than their peers, and probably were reviled for having such ‘careerist’ agenda (and tags that were wrong, but fuck the critic wankers)..Despite being emerging from the C86 thang, they were always a bit rougher and ‘rockist’ than their polite passive-aggressive contemporaries. That basically beat their own path. They also pledged allegiance to more ‘rockist’ post-punk groops like Wire, the Fall and the Buzzcocks (but then so did the fucken Fine Young Cannibals - aint pop music strange at the best of times?), not forgetting the Velvets, the birthday Party (apparently Gedge was paranoid there were too many similarities in name, that never ever occurred to me until I Googled it recently!) and elements of American hardcore via the faster-louder paradigm. But BIZARRO would create its own unfairly forgotten cross-the-and -in-pond tremors. The whole shoegaze thing owes a debt with the softer-louder dynamics of BIZARRO’s side-2, the early 90s Amerindie ‘sound’ was shaped as much by the Fall as the pop-accessibility of the Weddoes, from Superchuck, Pavement, whole pockets of the eastern-board US undieground, to fuck I dunno? the Strokes, the strumarella of the Arctic Monkeys?? Many more decorated and possibly more eloquent and better dictioned rock writers bemoan where British rock disappeared and re-emerged in it’s own right, it never ceased to amaze why the Wedding Present were never considered, and there’s probably smarter dudes who could tell me why. (NOTE: The Weddoes drummer ain’t too shabby!)

All I can say is, ain’t rock history a prick?

It's Straaannnnggeee, what looooooooovvveee does!

The Lynch Mob (or 'Bomb' Squad?)

..with INLAND EMPIRE (the DVD), David Lynch gives us a double-album’s worth of film. Prolly better as two 120 minute blocks, it isn’t dissimilar to Tarantino’s KILL BILL 2-fer, but with Lynch you get a real paen to experimental or ‘underground’ American cinema, especially when it comes to the 70-minutes of ‘more things that happened’ DVD extra.

‘More things that happened’ basically works off two story strands. The first features an Eastern European super-model, who contemplates buying a watch off a dodgy Slavic who only wants to hold her hand…The second story features another male-Slavic crossover point, this time Laura Dern improves sad ‘confessional’ memories to what looks like a sloppy PI, goes through a great trippy reality-warp via creepy doorways and staircases and hallways and weird rabbits, only to confess some more, before we find our supermodel as an LA whore - actually a gaggle of whores who all have various states of herpes!

It’s Lynch. It’s experimental, and works more in the favour of yr hardcore American avant-garde set like yr Ken Angers and Brackages and Michael Snows, albeit with a slightly more ‘mersh bent, than anything else. The music is great, verging from yr usual ‘body-w/o-organs-gripping-drone' to some ‘hearing it from another room doof’ trip-hop to some lovely Cage-ian piano plonks, to the final dubby Blues-shuffle, that sounds like Lynch trying to do Horace Andy or Dawn Penn or something….

Yep it’s a double album of Lynch, some of it could be shorter, but when it hits ya, you know yr in safe hands.

(NOTE: The last few shots are very Kubrickian, made even more amazing by the fact it was done on a PD150!)

I'm still here

Meltzer :Here

Dylan : There

And it was on the 14^th Day of Teshrei in the year 5478 of the Holy Calendar that lapsed Hebrew tribal-member and all-round legend -

Richard Meltzer - wrote in his holy tome THE AESTHETICS OF ROCK (which may have been written under the addled influence of mind-expanders, just like those bananas in the Mid-East did once upon a time many moons ago), that Bob Dylan - ‘the voice of the disaffected 60s generation and every generation until Armageddon’ or something like that - rather than give us meaning in his music, actually FREES us from meaning (I will quote the exact page and lines when I get home)…And so I sit in the ‘Common Era’ or A.D (After Death of Hesoos) date of 14^th January 2008, in a $5.50 el-shnorrer session to see ‘the greatest film of the last three months’ as voted by every critic and semiotics student and cult of Humanities students preparing papers to justify their courses, ‘I’M NOT THERE’ take two-odd hours to tell me what Meltzer said nearly 40 years ago in less than one sentence! …So did I like this film?

Well, yes, it’s a kaleidoscope of bio-pic, post-modern hipster mix-mash of hip European directors like Godard and Fellini and Mark Lester and even Tarkofski, and well fill in the rest..The film blunders around a bit as the two ex-Aussies in it overact to buggery, and Christian Bale doesn’t get enough screen time, but it all looks nice and is so intricately pieced together that there’s really not too much to dislike. It makes Dylan an icon on top of an icon, it fiddles with Haynes’ ‘identity’ politics deal, and never once mentions or addresses his Judaism. I dunno, was Mel Gibson a silent investor in this venture? It’s basically SPINAL TAP, but about a ‘real’ person or something like that (am I making sense? It’s all so Deleuzian or something…)

..Then I sit down in front of the Cable-Babel TV and watch another cool film, ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL, directed by Terry Zwigoff, who has now made three really good films, but hasn’t quite made a great one. ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL is basically a loose remake (or re-imaging?) of Fritz Lang’s great SCARLETT STREET. It’s also a semi-autobiographical story about EIGHTBALL legend Dan Clowes (who wrote it), and his struggle to get laid and respected as an artist with TALENT and SKILL in art-school. It’s very funny, very honest, has a bit of thriller/giallo action to boot, and a really sheyner shicksa with a nice toochus.

For a shlepper like me, what more could I need?

(Actually I'm gonna waste more time watching 'The Lab with Leo Laporte which makes things like Blogging seem 'sexy'. NOTE: It still hasn't got ME laid!)

I WILL be back...

Finding peace with Ubuntu

Yes, I have been SLACK...Yes I should do more...Yes I will be back...Geezz I'm starting to sound like a POLITICIAN, and what we do have an erection, I mean ELECTION coming up, so the bullshit is squeezing out...But I have been busy, tired, depressed, excited and just plain lazy (prolly a combo of all the above!)...

In that time I have converted to UBUNTU< style="font-style: italic;">shnorer uber-Nerd operating system, that used Lurvely pictures like the one above as their 'official' wallpaper! How can you NOT like that? And it's all free! SO no more Mac dreck for the Yuppy-fartsys and no more PC cuck for the Johnny-come-lately computer 'genius'..It's hardcore fiddling and wasting time with Ubuntu, and hence the dearth of posts as I learn to use the fershtinkener O/S from scratch! But at the end of it, it works, and at thew end of it, you feel a sense of achievement, like building a model aeroplane or something....

Inland Empire Part.1

Shreik Yerbooti

So I just saw David Lynch's new film INLAND EMPIRE. A 3 hours slog, that rubs the synapses no better nor worse than any of his other meshigarse, on reflection I kinda liked it. I really like the fact that I sat in an un-airconditioned cinema with narrow seats, and an under 30s audience that were so cool they couldn't lower the temperature in the fucken cinema, but I'll stop kvetching as this point. Basically the film is about some actress that gets a warning, enters a dual-identity headfuck, and then it goes on for three hours. The film reminded me in look to Sukhorov's RUSSIAN ARK, with an abundance of baroque interiors and exteriors. It also reminded me of Phillipe Grandrieux's LE NOUVELLE VIE, which I reviewed somewhere on the blog last year, basically coz alot of the film is set in Poland, and there's sex-trade. Nice boobs make an appearance as well. The image above doesn't happen in the film per-se, but something similar does. Lynch has made the best American DV movie so far. I always find it interesting how guys like David Lynch, as they get older, seem to always find a younger audience. I guess that means he's pretty hip. End of Part.1

Richard Thompson, minus the folk

Truth, beauty and great guitar:

Tony Mokbel impersonator, DAVE GROHL, captured!!

"..I'll stick around, I'll stick around...'

Well known Tony Mokbel impersonator DAVE GROHL was captured in Greece today living the high-life with his stripper girlfriend who gave birth to Dave Jr a few months ago. Grohl was found with three mobile phones and a bag of cocaine pellets and a fake passport that said his name was 'Steve Pappas'. The well known rock star had become disenfranchised with being the leader of the worlds biggest Husker-Du cover band, and decided to become a notorious drug-lord with an empire estimated to be worth at least $20million. The fugitive was not repentant. 'Imagine how you would feel screaming stupid lyrics and predictable chord changes to million of fucking stupid bogens who think they are punk and then go on to become middle managers?' Grohl has sold over 20 million album worldwide, but found that selling 'party' drugs was way more interesting and 'rock n roll' than making pedestrian music for pedestrians. 'You know when I was in the Foo Fighters I'd hang out with deadshits like that guy from Queens of the Stones Age and Bjork. I mean people think 'wow' those guys are so zany, but you know they're just 'regular guys' who just happen to fuck hotter people than most other dudes. I mean the drug empire I built opened me up to a lifestyle rock stars can only dream of. You get hot sluts, free entry to heaps of nightclubs, a new penthouse apartment with a plasma TV, surround system and see-thru shower, a new $100,000 car each month and I mean amongst others you get to hang out with rockstars, film producers, actors, politicians, lawyers, doctors, presidents of football clubs - you know REAL HIGH FLYERS, THAT ARE POWERFUL and INFLUENTIAL, unlike those fucken rockstar clowns.'

Grohl will be extradited to Seattle from his idyllic Greek hideaway next week.

Australia's finest no-wave boogie band

I was talking to a mate the other day about how despite all this InterNerd downloading hoo-haa apparently destroying the pope-musique industry, that I've still been buying heaps of music these days, albeit they are all remastered RE-ISSUES..My mate went on about how 'yeah that's because you're getting older and you know there's not much better ahead, so you listen to old shit to remind you of the 'good ole' days' or something.' I told him that's a piece of bullshit, I like 'contemporary' or 'new' bands like the Drones (OK, so they're quickly turning into the new fucking Paul Kelly band or something, but they had their moments as few years back) and James McCann's Dirty Skirt Band and the Eddy Current Suppression Rings and the Hate Rock Trio amongst a handful. Am I'm always checking out young bands to see if they're any good or trying anything different and fucked up. But they reality is the young bands are fucken shit that must be killed. None make music in their own image, they all have an image before they have a sound, and despite the fact that most of the young bands are really fucking adept at playing their instruments, none can actually 'play' and if they do, they sound exactly like the Kinks or Ac/DC or some other fucking shit. I then forced this friend to watch our hip video-clip show on the Telly – RAGE – and all these bands have video clips that are more expensive than the last 5 Werner Herzog movies, they all have that fucking real-drummer-playing-disco-beat sound with a singer that sounds like fucken the guy from fucken Spandau Ballet, and the 'indie' bands are basically just trying to get their stuff endorsed as product by the next season of 'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy', and/or sound like B-grade Matador Records bands from the last I dunno 15 years. So I beat my mate in this particular argument, and basically told him that the cool thing about re-mastered re-issues is they sound better and are good value for money in today's expensive I-borrow-more-than-I-can-afford times...SO I start with my favourite re-issue of the minute...

X – At Home With You...Another totally fine and 'value for money' re-issue by OZ-rock re-issue kings AZTEC MUSIC...X – the AUSSIE ONE – in their day were something like the Australian version of Motorhead...They weren't quite punk (just like Motorhead weren't quite 'metal'), were always on the verge of being 'the next big thing', had a strong live following, and were probably the heaviest band of their time (and place)...I was lucky to see X in the middish 80s sorta twice. The first time I walked into the Seaview Ballroom and X had just finished. There were squashed beer cans, vomit and a well known (and dead)skatepunk junkie on the floor. The second time I saw them was at Melbourne University. X headlined a gig that featured Ed Kuepper, Venom P Stinger, and Nick Cave doing spoken word. Everyone had gone home by the time X took the stage. Ian Rilen kept fucking up all the songs. Cathy Green was in a shit mood. They played maybe 30 seconds of a song properly, but when the it, it all seemed to make sense..In those days Australia had a triumvirate of 'grunge' 3-piece bands well before hippie-rednecks from Seattle made it cool. There was the always rumoured killer 3-some gig featuring the Cosmic Psychos, Feedtime and X to be held at the Prince of Wales in St.Kilda, unfortunately it never happened.....Anyway their 'masterpiece' 'At home with you' has been released in a lurvely digipack with extensive liner notes and a great 'live' bonus CD...The quality here isn't much better than the album, though the songs have aged quite well, expect for throwaways like 'you say that you love me'..Everyone keeps trying to pin what 'X' sounded like. Sure they're as punk as you wanna be, they rock n' roll like the best of them, and they even have that pub-rock slobber with the horns and whatnot. Rilen's bass rolls like an alcoholic porno-star, Cathy Green remains truly under-rated as one of the HEAVIEST DUTY female drummer of all-time, and Steve Lucas had a great voice and primal scratch guitar style with classy chops. Put it all together and Aussie X's 'extremeness' made them one hellava great no-wave-boogie band.

The bonus CD was recorded live at the Prince of Wales Hotel, which in it's day was like Australia's version of Max's Kansas City, a place where junkies, fags, alcoholics, transsexuals, recently freed criminals and rock fans could see live music in a suitable decadent and free-think environment that just DOESN'T exist today, despite the great grunge-indie-liberal revolution of the 90s or whatever... The recording initially sounds flat as it was taken off a mixing desk, but once 'Degenerate Boy' kicks in, you'd check yr ears that it was done of the desk, as the remastered job has somehow transcended the general dullness of desk-recorded jobs. Absolutely killer is 'T.V Glue'. Lucas plays a truly transcendent sonic drone chord, loaded with overtones that has to be heard to be believed...

..and speaking of drones and overtones, some old-cunt called LOU REED has released a new album on some indie new-age/meditation label, designed for people to meditate to! Now what LOU has basically done is make a HARDCORE meditation record that will undoubtedly freak-out the Prozac-addicted yuppies that buy this shit. Titled HUDSON RIVER WIND MEDITATIONS, First track 'Move your heart' pulses like those alien-pods out of Luigi Cozzi's CONTAMINATION for about half an hour, while the second drone 'find your note' is basically an update of all that LaMonte Young/Tony Conrad/early Cluster drone. 'Hudson River Wind' sounds like an out-take from the ERASERHEAD soundtrack and closer 'Wind Coda' is just a lazy mish-mash of track 1 and 3 but for only 5 minutes. HUDSON RIVER WIND MEDITATIONS definitely ain't a new age record, nor is it like a true meditation record like Tony Scott's 'music for zen meditation', but it'll definitely work for people who read THE WIRE or the Forced Exposure catalogue, and that ain't no mean feat for an old cunt.

New Lou

Meditate, don't masturbate (actually masturbating IS meditative!)

Yep, Uncle Lou has put out an ambient album to meditiate to called 'Hudson River Wind Meditations'...Basically electronic ambient music comprised of drones and the like, nothing really new for Lou since he's been doing that shit since Year Zero, but it's pretty nifty for nervous wrecks like myself. You can only buy this from some 'new age' health joint.

Otherwise, you can always chill out to the last Ryhthm & Sound album, or Eno's 'Music for Airports'.

Ar'll be bark

DRECK MIT LEIBER is a Yiddish saying that literally means 'shit with liver', and probably the perfect word that describes the way-over-the-top sadistically violent 'shoot-a-gook' fest that is the trailer of the world's most famous steroid abuser's latest Rambo vehicle. why couldn't the pussy go out and splatter a few Islamofascists instead of some harmless horries? Anyway my life has been a busy mess, hence no verbal spewage and gulchural vomit, but I have the following lined up for Bloggage:

1. The rest of the best non-Bava-Argento giallos
2. Feeling like a coke-addicted pr0n-star listening to the Sisters of Mercy
3. ..and a review of the great new 'Jason Crest' novel 66MindFuck99

I'm sorry for nothing

In one of the most outrageously nutzoid examples of Conservative pressure, Australia's second best Aussie-rules football player, Ben Cousions of the West Coast Eagles, made a pre-recorded 'apology' to his fans, club and most importantly Corporate sponsors for his recent apparent drug problems. In recent times, Cousins has been known to hang out with drug dealers, and besides being a fan of the socially acceptable 'piss' (alcohol), he apparently is a coke head and in recent times an Ice head. Kinda funny considering the fact this guy earns well over a million bucks a year, is probably the most famous person in Western Australia, and he smokes the cheapest and nastiest loser drug ICE! But enough of that. His pre-recorded 'apology' after his much falooted Malibu rehab session would have made Osama Bin Laden proud. Basically Cousins's didn't give a shit because this media joke is a pure example of 'conservative' or neo-Con pressure on this guy to 'get in line'..It seems kinda obvious Cousins was sent to a drug clinic, where the experts there found him to be a recreational user, not an 'addict' as all these clueless conservatives media 'experts' and sport commentators have painted him. Why don't we take on these bozo ALCOHOLICS in the conservative media at their own game? Just coz it's legal, don't mean it's any better, let alone 'moral'. Sure Cousines is a TERRIBLE role model for kids, but everyone likes an outlaw, especially in sports where these days they're all bloody robots. Imagine how I feel, my team Carlton, used to be like say the Dallas Cowboys, and now we're probably as good football players as the guys in Debbie Does Dallas or something!

ANYWAY I just saw the 'hot' new Aussie 'punque' banmd the EDDY CURRENT SUPPRESSION RING. Yeah I like their songs and will buy their album. Their live show was slick, and their rhythm section was tight and pro as the West Coast Eagles midfield that that Cousins guy plays in. This bloke, who is the Molly Meldrum of the indie-internerd-underground has been hyping them as the new messiah of the week. Sure they sound like Wire meets the Modern Lovers meets the Fall with the lead singer on the Victims out front, but part of their popularity is becuase they really sound like the Storkes, I mean Strokes or the Kings of Leon. Good luck to 'em. good night.