2010: The Year We Make Contact

Sunn 0))) - Arrrggghhh!!

And so it is, my first blog for the year after a longish hiatus since I didn't really have much to write about since I wasted a hell of a lot of time cucking around on that Facebook thing trying to improve my popularity and fame and contribution to the world of aesthetics and other ephermamamia.

So in the past few days of this new year, I have been filling my void with much music of a droney/satanic/spacious variety, mainly due to the fact that I have been driving around in my car listening to long passages of noise and drone to fill the blanks. Starting off with SUNN 0))). Now this curiosity in this psychedelic metal stuff was piqued earlier in 2009 after witnessing the legendary Seattle grungers the MELVINS - a glorious cacophony of expertly wielded and intensely heavy, PUNK informed metal, as most of the best metal is. I never really got into the Melvins, I found them too bogan and one-dimensional for my sensitive tastes, but then I essentially go for the psychedelic/subtle movements in music, often revelations in art come to me unexpectedly rather than furiously mining for the new and fresh. So I downloaded some of the Melvins records and realised why I never got into them in the first place, the records all sound pretty one-dimensional and obvious, much like 98.999999789% of heavy-metal-grunge-punk stuff. Earlier this year, and as reported on this blog, I was blown away by Jim Jarmusch's latest Zen mind-bender movie THE LIMITS OF CONTROL. In that film, as in most of Jarmusch's work, his cinematic experience is informed by left-filed and experimental musics. Jarmusch often mines a classic hipster 70s stylee music field, concentrating on exotic and transcendental rock stylings, from 50s rock n roll to Neil Young psychedelics. Early in the 00s he collaborated with the WuTang's GZA for the soundtrack to his cool GHOST DOG fillum a seamless collaboration as GZA's droney triphop stylings met comfortably with Jarmusch's offbeat visions. Anyway, in LOC Jarmusch's has mined the psych-metal drone scene with music from the likes of Sunn0))), Boris and Texan shoegazers the Black Angels. I imagined these drone-metal groups to be kinda like Black Sabbath, and alas that is what they are, albeit with a more updated flavour that borrows heavily from New York art-minimalist composers like early John Cale, Tony Conrad and the intense trance drone of LaMonte Young (I was fortunate enough to sit in Young's 'dreamhouse' for about 40 minutes last year, imagine the sounds of a 50s sci-fi UFO blasted full bore through 4x4 rock speakers in a yoga practice/techno raveparty chillout room!)..Another band featured in LOC is OM, who I saw last year in Brooklyn, and whilst at the time wasn't totally blown away by their bass/drums harmonia, I was compelled enough to purchase their album Pilgramage, which has grown on me via my 'in car' listening ventures. The thing I'm finding interesting in these drone-doom bands is their investment into ancient Gnostic Middle Eastern /European religious thought and poetry. OM are Greek-Americans, and are probably the most rocking Greeks on the planet this side of J.Mascis, Vangelis and Jimmy Sfetsos. So the OM crew like to mumble about 'godheads', 'Lazarus', and blokes with crazy beards that wear black and still look Old Testament-like. Sunn 0))) I dunno what their religious/satanic affiliations are besides probably shooting heroin with fat hillbillies from Seattle. Their MONOLITHS&DIMENSIONS record come packaged in this nice slipcase. I was also interested to find that Aussie noise-legend Oren Ambarchi is a member of their nebulous collective. Opening bulldozer 'Aghartha' kicks off proceedings with a deliciously thick sound of an over-distorted guitar, so perfectly overdriven that it's almost like they are reminding you what was so exciting and terrifying about the sounds of an over-distorted electric guitar in the first place! These guys revel in the sound of an over-distorted guitar chord, and apparently their live concerts are the things of modern psychedelic-rock legend. It seems quite clear why Jarmusch used these guys, their sound isn't that far removed from Neil Young's 'live rust' and more pertinently WELD explorations. But that's where things stop. Sunn 0))) as I mentioned previously are informed by experimental sound-scapes, and I'd also throw in the crazy-junky hoity-toity New York art expermenta of Diamanda Galas and even the Swans. But where I hated the inbuilt nihilism of those 80s artists, these guys keep things kinda 'warm'. The grand-canyon guitars segue into some Eastern-European Vlad-the-Impaler lunatic grepsing in the lowest most evil sounding growl this side of Darth Vader. The lyrics are strange and expansive, singing about exploding universes and apocalyptic battles for chaotic reform ??? Yeah maybe I'm losing it! They sound like a death-metal band on 33. But then they throw in these Biblical choirs and MetalMachineMusic layers of textured noise so next thing you feel like you may have suddenly tuned in to a 3MBSfm classical music hour. Horns then crash in like some Biblical epic, but they don't remodel that shit into the lousy limp American-Judeo-Christian mainstream of 'niceness and lies that help you become rich materially if you follow our dogmatic rules'. They model it into the harsh, trugeoning, dirge across the Exodus that the Old Testament is. I mean if you don't believe, open your nearest copy of 'the Book'. But it don't stop there, the Eastern-Euro growler in Sun 0))) seems to be conjuring demons in some sort of middle-ages battle between pagan Earth Gods and the man made hell of the Crusade, its like the best soundtrack to a wonderfully satanic Lucio Fulci masterpiece like THE BEYOND or CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD!!!!!! AAAAAARRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

So taking a break from all this pleasant synapse-feeding meshigarse I picked up this re-issue of Aussie-Adelaide noise-punk psychos GRONG GRONG. I used to read a lot about these guys in the pages of legendary Aussie underground-rock journal B-side, but like B-side bands, the artists involved were helpless drug-casualties and being under-aged it was difficult to sneak into gigs to experience these godhead punk compostors. GRONG GRONG are the sound the Birthday Party left behind. In Adelaide. Feral as all fuck their music makes me want to shave my bumfluff with a broken VB stubbie! The interesting thing about GRONG GRONg is their uber-hardcore trash-slash style. They inject amphetamine psychosis into the Birthday Party sound, and Charlie Tolnay's incredible slash-wash of noise and riff is the first to acknowledge the genius of Rowland S Howard's similar, yet more stylistic pioneering sound. Henry Rollins compared RSH's style to Antonin Artaud if he had an electric guitar, but it's probably wiser to give that title to Charlie Tolnay. His guitar kills, slashes, burns, cuts and absolutely fucken flies through the murk of most of the lo-fi noise on this CD, but it becomes clearer in the murky live footage of GRONG GRONG, that appears on the complimentary DVD. First and foremost, GRONG GRONG were a HARDCORE PUNK band, albiet of a more expansive and seminal kind.

Which brings me to contemporary Melbourne noise-punk heroes ZOND. I saw them earlier this year and they were a blast. The have this drug fucked girl on guitar who seems to be the Melbourne un-glammed version of New York's Julia Cafritz(pussy galore) and three nerdy blokes on other guitar and rhythm section. The other guitar bloke has a rack of around 20 shit noise boxes, basically switches them all on, until it's a bleeding surround-sound wash of white noise, as the rhythm section blasts away in motoritik precision. It was like watching My Bloody Valentine do their 'noise' section of 'you made me realise' cut up into discrete, Sex Pistols-like punk 'tunes'. And it was awesome. Happy New Year to you all.

.....It's the end of a decade so I'm trying to throw in my 'best of' list for this decade, and whilst I was listening to a lot of 'reissues' of glorious old shit like Bob Dylan and the La's and the Coloured Balls amongst many others, there was still time for new pleasures, books, films, comics, movies, books...

• VocalCity- Luomo (album) - Northern European luxurious techno house. Still holds up. Great neo-80s sequencing and set the tone of techno pop for the decade.
  
• Rhythm and Sound – album of totally awesome dubbed out neuvo krautrock that cracks, pops, hisses, depth charges and sends you into a very strange and sedate place..
• The White Stripes – Elephant – took me a while to take to these punks, but after seeing them live and do an incredible mash-up almost techno type gig, I understood why they were and may still well be 'the future of rock'
• The Drones live at the Tote – as part of this Spooky Records thing, at which my friends the Double Agents were playing. I heard the Drones do their scree by accident live on PBS fm and seeing them live, play the 'cockeyed lowlife of the badlands' was a totally modern Oz-rock experience. I felt like I was back in the POW circa late80s!
• Mullholland Drive – Lynch
• Paria – French movie shot on digital. about a young guy trying to get home.
  
• YiYi – Korean film
• Punch Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood (films)
• Discovering the cinema of Bresson, Chabrol, Rohmer, Antonioni, Giallo and euro cult cinema, Nicholas Ray, Tarkovsky, Larry Cohen, Sergio Leone, Robbe Grillet, Jodorowsky, Zulawski, anime and STAN BRAKHAGE.
• Collateral and Miami Vice – I grew up on Miami Vice in the mid-80s and rediscovered Mann's cinema work once again. HEAT is possibly the greatest American crime movie of the last 20 year. With Collateral and Miami Vice, Mann started using DV and Hdv in order to get better clarity on his tecture of skies, namely sunsets and clouds. The result whilst not totally mesmerising dramatically, is a gas for the other senses.
  
• A.I, Minority Report and War of the Worlds – Spielberg get back to his sci-fi roots, and whilst the films still had his daggy 'happy endings' were still state of the art.
• Discovering William S Burroughs – oh yeah. Esp. 'the ticket that exploded'
• Discovering Boris Vian – oh yeah oh yeah. Esp 'the dead all have the same skin' and the even just as totally nuts and wild 'I spit of your graves'!!!
• 100 Bullets comic – unbelievable comic artistry. Opaque, hardboiled and terrific saga about a war between ultra-crime gangs.
• MPD Psycho - an absolute mind bender. A cop has multiple personalities, tries to solve some bizarre murders, then finds he is part of a larger mind control conspiracy that includes cult-like rockstars, programmed assassins and some bizarre Government experiment that has become an all-out war between some sort of psychic freaks and something else. Includes some of the most amazing mindblowing action pieces I've ever seen in printed form. A hijacked 747 crashing into the bow of a massive cargo ship/drug laboratory anyone?
  

• Jodorowsky's THE INCAL, Technopriests and Metabarons intergalatic sci-fi epics. Totally and unremittingly mind-blowing and brilliant. Fuck Freud and Jung, and take Jodorowsky's intergalactic, brutal and beautiful sagas.
  

• Curb Your Enthusiasm – I can't understand how brilliant this story of my fantasised life is! And funny too!
• The Pianist (Polanski) – the greatest Holocaust story ever told. The triumph of art over adversity has never quite been demonstrated in narrative form like this movie.
• Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch) – meditative and fantastic.
• The Savage Detectives and 2666 – Roberto Bolano. Hmmm, it's like literature is dead right? All pomo-homos and diary-keeping fucksticks that become rich and global. I didn't like Savage Detectives. Bolano just seems like a Kerouac for this era. But I persisted and getting to the end of his long psyhotropic road-epic it all seemed to make a totally unclear sense. Are aesthetics dead? I've only just started 2666, and whilst he seems to be mining similar fields, this time something weirder and stranger is going on. Is reality cracking at the seams? Is this James Joyce meets Philp K Dick. The attack on the simulacra of modern life begins!
• The Road (Cormac McCarthy) – it was devastatingly awesome. And now there's a film. Whatever.
• Platform (Michel Houllbecq) – French grump who was also devastatingly awesome, but funny too!
• Lou Reed live – well when he came out for 'Ecstasy'. The first 15 minutes were worth every cent. Shame it became dull whiny shit after that!
• Marilyn Manson – best American corporate American hard-rock show razzle dazzle. I find his music cheesy and lame, though I don't mind his single, but live his fantastic bands and wild stage show was probably like what glam rock was like back in the 70s.
  
• Synecdoche NY (Charlie Kaufman) – one of the great American art-films of the last decade.
• The WIRE – TV series. What can I say. Masterpieces never stop. So why complain?
• Sin City (Rodreguez) – the sexiest and best comic book adaptation of all-time. Easy.
  
• Children of Men – best sci-fi film of the decade. Best film as comic book too!
• Missy Elliot – live techno, hyper-media-multi-mix show, like a KISS concert but now. And I guess that's why it was only 45 minutes long!
  
• Finally seeing Spritualized live – the were fucken awesome, an ecstatic arsed-kicked shot of space rock.
• Seeing GEORGE CLINTON/Parliament live – unbelievable that a guy who is 60+ years old can play for like, what? 3 hours? Amazing.
• Seeing NEIL YOUNG live – Greendale which while being a bit hippy/Canadian and ODD, was fantastic. Sitting only 7 rows from the front was better. As was the spliff I had during the encore! And the sound was beautiful. A perfect night!
• Seeing the PIXIES live. My brother saw them in the late 80s and described them as 'thrashy' back then. I'd purged them from memory and was half-arsed about going but it was a worthy punt. They were more 'cow punk' and intense than I expected which was a surprised. But once is enough.
  
• Gym and yoga – I love it. Not that I want to get massive. An Iggy Pop physique will do me nicely! Yoga, chill me out, and I get to perv on MILFs at the same time. Can't lose!
• Brendan Fevola, Eddie Betts, Marc Murphy, Bryce Gibbs, Jarrod Waite, Matthew Kreuzer, Mark Jamieson, Nick Stevens, Michael Jamison – all gave me hope for my footy team Carlton who experience the apocalypse this decade! Two wooden spoons, cheating, drunk bum president, going bankrupt and ..redemption! As much as other people hate them, a good, strong Carlton is still 'good for footy'!!
  

• Playstation 3 – I think this is the greatest 'toy' ever. Blu Ray, games, internet connectivity, can watch downloaded .avis, and umm CALL Of DUTY MODERN WARFARE etc...
• Oh shit where is the addiction/mental well-being therapist?

ROWLAND S. HOWARD R.I.P I was a bit of a fan back in the 80s and did some volunteer work on his never (or soon?) to be released documentary that I will no doubt be written out of. Fuck it, I can be bitter it was a great story squandered - as a friend said, kinda like Wim Wenders 'lightning over water'. Unfortunately this story belongs to another person who probably has more talent and ability to do it justice, que sera, sera..... Rowland had a 'world class' style and attitude. He was one of the all-time great guitar stylist/heroes of Aussie rock, he made an intellectual, rebellious sound that was totally unique, totally memorable. Art. See ya later Rowland, thanks for the great guitar solos in 'guilt parade' and 'hey sinkiller'.

The Limits of Jarmusch

The Limits of Control - Jim Jarmusch

The latest Jarmusch film starts off like a visual treatise grafted off the pages of Gene Youngblood's cult cinema tome THE EXPANDED CINEMA. All natural coloured psychedelic pulses and swiping flashes, before we are introduced to Isaach De Baankole as 'the Lone Man'. Who is this man and what is his mission? A mysterious African killer agent, ripped straight out of Burroughs, 'the Lone Man' is sent on a mission to reboot reality and hunt and kill 'the American'. And off we go. Through the luminous, modern city-to-landscape spaces of Spain - exotic skyscrapers, labyrinthine city streets and the empty desert shrines of rural wastelands. On his mission he meets a new-wave temptresses, trippy old men, a female Albino cowgirl and a lost cowboy rockstar. They all have a message as the 'lone man' finally finds his way. While Tarantino Jacks off with his comic-book marsers, Jarmusch re-feeds us more acid from the early 70s. A 'head' movie for the Internet generation - well, not quite - they more than likely won't see this. Jarmusch avoids the sharp-cutting hyper mania of modern film. His scenes roll, the droning acid rock soundtrack from Japanese psych band Boris rock, as 'the Lone Man' cruises to his destination with strange shades of darkness seeming to claw at the edges of his (or our) reality. Black helicopters, black sedans, men in black - all refracting back to our 'black' protagonist. 'Limits of Control' is a simple 'fuck you', a message from the counter-culture against the forces that try to crush the dream.

stranger than paradise

written and directed by jim jarmusch, 1985

'Stranger than Paradise' is one of my favourite films of all-time. It was probably the first modern film (of the time, 1985) I ever saw that was filmed in black and white, since when you're 15, black and white films were the sort of stuff your parents would watch. Watching this film was a total punt at the time, and I think the only reason I went to set it was because there was a review of it in the 'Jewish News' when the Jewish News was readable, and also because I read somewhere that it was made for less than $100,000 and it was funny. It took me a while to figure out what this film was about, but I found the whole style of it completely compelling and watchable. For one the whole film was in black and white. Then each scene was filmed in one single shot, and separated by a 2 second 'black out'. Then there was the really wild music by Screaming Jay Hawkins, the song 'I put a spell on you', this music was completely foreign to me at the time, since all I knew was British 80's New wave and Talking Head. I thought Screaming Jay was a fucking legend. The story was pretty dead beat - some bludger of a guy has to look after his cousin who arrives from Hungary. He's such an arsehole to her than she runs off to Cleveland. After a few months, the guy and his best buddy decide to visit his cousin in Cleveland, and then they decide to go to Florida for a holiday, but when they get there the weather is shit and the lose their money. Basically this film is about things fucking up in a Zen sort of way, which is very funny coz, well thing fuck up, you get angry, and then you don't give a shit. My favourite scenes are when the two bums visit their old Hungarian aunt who speaks not English and whips their asses playing cards. Me and Itchy found this scene extremely poignant, since it reminded us of both our mothers, who were old European ladies who played cards all the time. 'Stranger than Paradise' is a fucking legendary film, that has not dated, and is better than 90% of the indie cuck that gets made these day and is term 'cool'. Watch this film and you can see where blokes like Kevin Smith and Robert Rodriguez got their chops.

J.G. Ballard R.I.P

See ya later old fella. Thanks for the HighRise Super Cannes Drought

Jandek joins Black-Rock Coalition!!

In Texas!


Sonny Sharrock live via Jandek!

ROn Ashton RIP

Ron Ashton , the one leaning over to grab Niagara.

Well you all know the news, Ron Asheton, Stooges guitar L.E.G.E.N.D cucked it. Despite having my mind blown by his incendiary, raw guitar playing, I was fortunate to have a few of my fillings dislodged when I saw him play in Melbourne almost 20 years ago with DARK CARNIVAL. Ron was a bit of a grobber, he played the same ULTRA-LOUD solo, but it was brilliantly hilarious and 'punk' to see the guy play a little club with a small clutch of 'high energy' rock slobovnics, and they still sounded better than EVERY Seattle and Melbourne grunge band that were doing the rounds back then (and my, how dated and shitty 'grunge' sounds today!)..I went to the Stooges reunion a few years back at the Big Day Out rock concert, thinking I might get lucky to squeeze up front, but unfortunately the tattooed, back flipping cockroaches up the front were too plentiful.

It's shit when a music/art legend you respected and inspired you dies.

Life to go....

DIED PRETTY - FREE DIRT (Aztec Records) - SO literally out of nowhere, or 'out of the unknown' as their song goes, comes the reissue of DIED PRETTY's (Aztec Records, 2-cd digipack, liner notes, extra songs special edition) master work, and one of my all-time favourite albums – FREE DIRT. I remember clearly hearing this album getting hyped by 'the ghost' Stephen Walker on 3RRR fm, and my brother buying it for me as a get well gift, since I had a bad flu at the time. I listened to it once, but a few weeks later had a stoner session and literally, at that point, my mind split open! From the glorious panoramic blare of opener 'Life to go (landsakes) to the violent and transcendent lead break of 'Just Skin' to the awesome drone-out of 'Next to nothing' that includes that FUCKEN AWESOME KEY CHANGE (around the 4:34 mark), that to this day still causes me to get Goosebumps. But the record doesn't stop there....Side 2 takes a more country-pop kinda weird hillbilly direction with feedback in tracks like 'Blue sky day', 'round and round' and wig out'...there pretty much isn't a dud track on the whole album. The disc also include the sublime 'Next to nothing' ep featuring the killer narco-ballads 'ambergris' and 'plaining days'. If anything, FREE DIRT was the first Aussie indie album to really attack and challenge the hegemony of the whole Nick Cave fucken post-punk pretentiousness that is still the 'benchmark' for worthwhile left-field Aussie-rock to the rest of the world to this day (Cave still is Australia's biggest global cultural export and rock star)..FREE DIRT holds it's own as a purely original record, with a truly unique sound and artistic vision that set it apart from it's contemporaries at the time who, despite being all great, had more 'obvious' sonic lineages, ie : the MC5/Dictator/Ramones rifferama axis..Sure there's a Velvet Underground/Suicide thing sort of going on, but you don't 'hear it' as obviously as most undie-rock bands post 1988 did. I love FREE DIRT and NEXT TO NOTHING and all the singles of that Frank Brunetti period DP, and to be honest they were never the same band after got sacked, I lost total interest in them, but they definitely became popular with a shitload of inner-city nebbishers and crummy Aussie film directors.

If anything though, despite all the obvious accolades Peno and Myers and Brunetti still get from this era of the band, the sound proves one important fact abouit rock music that despite their obvious 'atiste/auteur' kudos A GREAT BAND ARE ONLY AS GOOD AS THEIR RHYTHM SECTION!!!@#! Died Pretty at that stage had possibly one of the greatest and most under-rated Aussie rhythm sections ever. Front and centre is Chris Welsh's absolutely swinging psychedelic jazz drumming. Welsh films every single blank with his cascading and flowing jazz fused rolls and fills, and he absolutely eclipses the over-rated jazzpunk cucking of the Dirty 3's (read: rock n roll fraud) Jim White. It's one of those great cosmic injustices that Jim White gets to live in New York and play with indie sweethearts like Chat Power and Palace, and Welsh is struggling in NSW somewhere. One listen to FREE DIRT and Welsh's rhythmic GENIUS is apparent. Likewise Mark Lock's noodling psych basslines add a complexity and sophistication that allows the 3 amigos out-front to really outdo their own limitations, but more importantly transcend their influences and thus create something truly original and inspired and PURE. FREE DIRT/NEXT TO NOTHING sill shines bright to this day...

But the paradox of time and re-appraisal can be cruel, and within the awesomeness of this re-issue, you can also 'hear' the demise of Died Pretty happen in real-time. For me personally, Died Pretty were all over once they released that lousy 'everybody moves' song, and the subsequent LOST album was not much chop either (and don't start me with their friggen REM-stage when they did that dull EVERY BRILLIANT EYE & DOUGHBOY HOLLOW abortion and HARNESS UP ECH!..!) You can hear the energy drop like when a bipolar takes their meds on the flatulence that is 'everybody moves' and 'tower of strength'. The songs meander around, the lead breaks start to become a 'formula', and unfortunately that's what DIED PRETTY became - a dull meandering formula that fit snuggly into the dull 'middleness' of suburban 'lucky cunthead' Australia (and more succinctly 'alternative' Australia). A dull middleness that exists to this day starting with dogshit like the Meanies and Even, Steve Pav and his Sydney Pavlovavites, the Fauves, the bloke from the Corner Hotel, lefties in the Northern suburbs, Christo Tsiolcackas, people that buy Nick Cave records, Australian cinema, OZ hiphop, Powderfinger, JJJ, 'the glasshouse'. 'rock wiz' ..I mean look at today's hotshit alt-Aussie bands like the Drones..They start off incredible and become...PAUL KELLY.

I blame him. The fuck.

Fucken OATH!!

Sonic's Rendezvous Band - Live, Masonic Hall, 14/1/1978

My opinion/review:

"...F***EN OATH!!!!..."

Hooked on classiques

Since George Bush and his bunch of fuckheads have stuffed it up for most of us, purchasing exotique imported musique off the Internerd is becoming something that only the truly elite can afford to do. SO in my struggling state and via ANY MEANS NECESSARY via mutual bartering amongst other nerds who haven't got their lives together pushing 40, I stumbled upon this latest 'opus' by techno heavyweights MORITZ VON OSWALD and CARL CRAIG (who I'd only rank as a bantam weight)...SO the two tweakers have sifted through the Germanic tradition of classical music and remixed some of it into a very nice Phillip Glass pre-1980 type drone build-up infused with the shuffla offa Manuel Gottisching's E2-E4 - a track Craig already fucked with some years ago..Startin' off with the waltz from Bolero the track fanfares and wanders up until the 20 odd-minute mark when the drugs start to kick in, and then those Afro-Jamaican type kettle drums start to wobble in and the Pine-Needle poke of techno tweakiness and brain-abstract- layer reconstruct slithers in...it's still pimping away now, but it seems that the 'nu style' for the technosepickers is upon us...

And for any other persona out there that bother to read this Blug, I am back in Melbourne, Australia, knowledgeable that my town is actually more 'interesting' and 'happening' than the New York City I was just at!

Getting stronger!

Roky Erickson, live Granada Theatre, Dallas, October 4, 2008

At the Crossroads...

At the 'Crossroads'. Clarksdale Mississippi, October 1, 2008

In drones begin responsibilities...

The Dream House beckons..

HARMONIA, live NYC September 23, 2008

Sarah Palin, meet Pauline Hanson!

Classy chicks, both of them!

But, me, I'll take "..Jackie Onassis in my pants..."

Gimme Liberty! Gimme Gastro!

New York Shitty??

I used to love this place. In fact I wanted to live here, but didn't have the balls or skills to get a job/sponsorship...Yeah I'm a coward! Second time here, and I'm not so sure..Maybe it's the global Internerd that has made everything available in Real Time

so YOU KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON NOW! Geographically there isn't much chop about New York. It's Hong Kong with everyone speaking English.

Sure there is alot of entertainment here, but not all of it is good. Restriction, lack of choice, isolation brings out more me thinks. The only things of any real architectural beauty is the Empire State,

Chrysler Building and Statue of Liberty, compared to nearly any European City, New York is chopped liver, there's just more people in the one place is all.

This trip seems to have taught me one thing. The English speaking Empires are finished. I felt like a real fucken idiot in France and Spain, two sophisticated, cultured countries, groping

with my lame French and retarded Spanish. I didn't feel in any way culturally superior or sophisticated. I felt like a vulgar English speaking git.

England is a fucking shithole. If Mick Jagger felt Australia was the 'arsehole of the universe' why did he kick off his pathetic solo career there, or did he realise then that he was a piece of shit? Maybe he was addicted to the smell or arseholes. Stupid Limey fuck-knuckle.

Besides the castles and chirpy people England is the dullest country on the planet. A living festering cold turd. The weather is constantly shit. They get sun for 15 minutes, then it's cloudy. England lives in a constant state of overcast humdrum. No wonder they went out and created an empire. The Poms are obsessed with supermarkets, something they do well in the modern age. Supermarkets and Airport terminals! Hail Britannia!

France is maybe 20% more interesting/cooler, but at least the climate changes as you go down south. For a sophisticated country, everything seems invariably simple. And I'm not sure about 'beautiful French women', maybe it's my gay side coming out, but I found the bulk of French women to be invariably ugly, and at least the English scrubs had bigger tits! But if you like movies and books and can speak French you will be in nirvana. Books on heavy deep shit everywhere, small press, big press, English, French, Chinese, Cambodian, Iranian, Eastern Euro - whatever, they got books on it. And the films are also from all over the world. Retarded ex-convict settlements like Australia have to have film festivals to pump up the jams, but in Paris it's a film festival all year. The Gaulic architecture of efficient compacted suburbs is nice as well; the 'chalet' style houses give everything communal, village type feel.

Spain kicks arse. Well I was in Catalunya, which is half of my ancestry, so I might be only speaking of a portion. I always had this impression of Spain being full of hot bloody, Spico morons. Blame fucking John Cleese and Fawlty Towers (and my crazy mother for that!) These English should make more fun of their own lack of culture than everyone else’s. Maybe I should do it, as it’s funnier than them making fun of everyone. Barcelona is probably the coolest city in Europe. You have the Mediterranean and its climate (though I think I may have got a rash from the dirty (???) water), an ancient, middle ages based city, mashed right up against the crux of modernism. Slightly similar to Israel (other distant half of my ancestry, Poland may make me want to suicide), w/o the warlord obsessed Arabs and the moronic-vulgar Israelis. The labyrinthine streets literally teem with stores, bars, apartments, people hanging out, music and hot women wearing not much clothes. Especially at the beaches. Boobs. Unfortunately I couldn't touch any. Their art scene is right out there, their politics currently totally progressive, interesting as I thought they were a Catholic banana republic mafia-racket like Italy....Maybe Catalonia is the exception not the norm......

So now I am in America, New York City to be exact. It still has that dense population, big-city-I-always-see- in-the-movies-but-now-it's-real-feel when I arrive here. But it's changed. Everywhere you go they try to sell you shit, like EVERYWHERE. I go to the Empire state where temporary ropes force you to line up a particular way so they can offer you tours you don't want, gifts you don't need and when they made us take photos - which I though were for security/terrorist profiling(you now have airport security on all the tourist sites, thanks terrorists - it was for shitty ChromaKeys tourist photos! I coulda vomited. And the food here isn't as good as I thought it was. Matzo ball soup is sloppy and soft, but the chopped liver is good. And the haute culture food is over-rated. The pizza isn’t much better. Overall American food doesn't taste as 'fresh' as in Australia. And they don't have decent beer.

The 'hipster' scene here is execrable. Everyone fucken looks the same and talks the same shit! It's incredible! Talk about fucken GROUPTHINK!! Where are people that you can have a conversation with like an ordinary mentsch?? I've tried to talk to women, and while I can engage in small talk, most are too busy sending SMS's to their other boyfriend or whatever. So I don't really expect to make any really meaningful relationships while I'm here.

But New York’s funky/fashionable/artistic ‘cutting edginess’ is based on dogshit. Fashion magazines, wannabes, fucking status seekers, poseurs, rubbish. Though they have lots of book, almost as many as France and Spain, and way more than England. And people here read more, unlike Australia, where people can't actually read... The most interesting thing in New York are the migrants, and black people definitely not the WHITE PEOPLE getting paid big money in fucking fashion/lifestyle ‘image creating’ magazines. They sell so many fucking shmattas here is insane. I can’t even buy a pair of durable sandals around here!! New Yorkers just wish they were European.

Me and my ex-pat Aussie mate I'm staying with went and saw ESG at this place called Santos Music House, which is owned by that Andrew WK guy who seems to have taken his money from his record advance and started a hip and trendy club, it's like Revolver in Melbourne. ESG were good, I also saw Vernon Reid & Masque at a 'free' show, where I ultimately dropped 50bucks on drinks and they pass around a 'band donation' hat, so it wasn't really free. New York stuff. But the gig was great, small; club with about 40 'hipsters' shame they started at 1am on a Monday night, I was nodding off around the 2 mark. I need sleep ya know I'm not 25!!!

That's probably the kicker, I'm getting old. I'm single. I have a kid. I still want to go out and boogie, but 25 year old preppies and hipsters won't talk to a 38 y.o curmudgeon (well I’m more that way on paper, or HTML). I don't look like fucking Heath Ledger and I'm not rich! Then the 'older set' are all uber rich and have dinner parties on the upper west side, so what the fuck am I supposed to do? Sit on the Internet? Watch CNN all day? I’m just another ‘tourist’ I suppose… (Actually I went to the Statue of Liberty yesterday and queued up with these Germans that had peculiar moustaches)

Anyway I bought some culture:

CD's : Mars CD, Sonics Rendezvous Band, Reigning Sound, RVNG presents Justine D - all good

BOOKS : Night of the Living Dead BFI, Chomsky on Anarchism, The Urban Homestead and Evil Paradises

MAGS : Ugly Things, Wax Poetics (black rock issue), Cinemascope, Neural.it

and too many pairs of shoes!!

So I been watching the Presidential Race, it's very similar to what was gong on in Australia, except John Howard didn't stand down and his party got thumped. The Repubs were smart to lock Dubya in the cupboard (Closet??) but McCain, oh is he a first class shmendrick! And then they put in that Palin shickser (I mean she empitomises the word for those have that no idea what I'm talking about.) McCain quite literally talks about nothing, he's a cypher. Palin YACKS LOUDLY, she reminds me of a more sophisticated Pauline Hanson. I figure that when the Republican's lose, she will quickly appear on a really camp and gay reality TV show like Hanson does in Australia (‘dancing with the stars’ or some diarrhea)..I love how Americans throw up all these pseudo ideas like 'feminism' etc to give her gravitas. She's a nothing. Now Obama has alot of integrity on the surface, he speaks well, thing is, I don't see anyone running with him, its just OBAMA, OBAMA, OBAMA, where is his fucken posse? (OK I only been here two weeks!) Really the way I see it, is that if all the people (esp. black, hispanic, Indians, biafrans etc) get off their arses and vote, Obama should win this election. The economy is getting trennered in the shitter every second. But I don't feel threatened. If the Americans can't see the potzes in power have fucked things up so bigtime, they have sent America back 30 years, they have made the USA a laughing stock outside it's own protective cyber-bubble or whatever, well you Americans can accept more shithouse rock bands, you can accept more fucking Paris Hiltons, and you can accept more Mel Gibson and Ridley Scott movies, coz that’s what you fucking well want! But don’t expect a silver bullet, if Obama and the Invisibles win, things will be *slightly* different if THEY DON’T HAVE A VISIONARY PLAN AND STICK TO IT! Then in 4 years time, and if Palin doesn’t get her lucrative reality TV show, you might have your FIRST FEMALE PRESIDENT!!!! Now where are those 'American thighs' that that not-actually-born-in-Australia band once sang about?

..and also time to get off the Internerd…………OFF!

May the Ballard be with me...

I'm currently tramping around Europe, and while I'm indirectly complicit - like the typical Ballrdian situation - in this age of global warming and mass blind, idiotic consumption, one of the disturbing things I noticed about Europe is it's paradox with travel, mobility, and it's affect on global warming. The first thing I noticed in arriving in the Uk is the constast, muted thunder of passenger aeroplanes. Like CONSTANT. In France it was worse, I mean it's a modern day blitzkreig with no less that 3 passenger planes darting the skies at one time, it's a wonder they don't collide..

Anyway, my cousin took me to the Cartier Institute where we saw an exhibition by modernist sculptor Cesar, immediately bringing to mind my top-3 novelist J.G.Ballard..

In Barcelona my mind is getting blown every second! Hot women, great weather, extremely sophisticated culutre. England seems like a horribly repressed memory of ugly architecture, bad weather, bushpigs and horrible food - but the people are nice and often funny.. But Spain, well, it's no wonder the artists here live until 100!!

But the body\planet scarification of cheap airfares continues, amidst the complex, labyrinthine architecture and blue skies I see..

..and this right next to that other polluter - a Cathedral - more planet scarring {but alas the architecture of God is finer than commerce, the paradox!}

..so stumbling around Barcelona, obviously some VALIS led me totally blind to here {I shit you not!}

..anyway thats enough geeking for now, the weather is too fine, life is good, off to La Plaja to be cleansed and purified!

[sorry about layout, I am using a spanish keyboard and everything is different, i am also staying with relatives who speak no english, so I feel like I'm in a Jim Jarmusch movie! LOL!]

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.