Redux

Thank you to those who seemed concerned about me (and this ever more indulgent blog) after my last post. I guess I lied - I'm back. I have far too much time on my hands at the moment (I'm having a bit of time off work), and we all know how things start to look a bit skewed when that happens. Let us say no more about my last couple of histrionic posts, now redacted. They remind me why I should stick to politics and music and not delve into the mire that is personal relationships on this here blog. I love my friends as they were, and as they are, but I am nostalgic and immature and a little soft in the head, and I expect people to grow and atrophy in the same ways I have, and not in their myriad different ways. Which isn't really fair.

Ray Davies says it best (if a little pithily in that last verse) in Do you remember Walter:

Walter, remember when the world was young
And all the girls knew Walter's name?
Walter, isn't it a shame the way our little world has changed?
Do you remember, Walter, playing cricket in the thunder and the rain?
Do you remember, Walter, smoking cigarettes behind your garden gate?
Yes, Walter was my mate,
But Walter, my old friend, where are you now?
Walter's name.
Walter, isn't it a shame the way our little world has changed?
Do you remember, Walter, how we said we'd fight the world so we'd be free.
We'd save up all our money and we'd buy a boat and sail away to sea.
But it was not to be.
I knew you then but do I know you now?
Walter, you are just an echo of a world I knew so long ago
If you saw me now you wouldn't even know my name.
I bet you're fat and married and you're always home in bed by half-past eight.
And if I talked about the old times you'd get bored and you'll have nothing more to say.
Yes people often change, but memories of people can remain.

Speaking of Ray, as we now are, he is one of my all time musical heroes. My adoration of The Kinks has been more constant than a hell of a lot of other things in my life – taste in clothes, housing circumstances, country of residence and occupation. My relationship with his music has even transcended friendships, and, I have to admit, it’s more tangible than that shared with most of my relatives. I even chose to write about The Village Green Preservation Society as part of my Arts degree, knowing that it was one of the few subjects I could be bothered researching*. Around that time two good friends and I were chatting about our favourite bands. Theirs were the more contemporary Primal Scream and The Smiths respectively (still more contemporary than the Kinks – a band whose best-known work was completed before any of us were born). When I was pressed to give my response I had to settle on The Kinks, because it was the truth, though it felt woefully daggy to admit it. But there it is, The Kinks still shit on not only their peers (The Stones, The Who, and yes, even the Beatles), but also on most of the melodic guitar-based music that has come out of the UK since, and especially on their horrid snivelling little Britpop imitators. Indeed, in recent times that once fertile pop territory has become a wasteland, with all the most innovative music coming out of the States (as a former anglophile I never thought I’d say it) and elsewhere (here, Sweden, Cambodia). But I digress.

One night while living in London in the mid-nineties (unfortunately this was at the height of Blur’s rather irritating appropriation of Ray’s postcard-from-Blackpool Englishness – see ‘snivelling little Britpop imitators’ above), I even took the bus up to Muswell Hill to have a look at the house the Davies brothers grew up in. This sort of obsessive behaviour is rare for me. I love music, but I rarely lurk around stage doors or any of that stuff. It’s not my bag – I don’t need mementos or validation (a la Pamela Des Barres) from those I admire. At least, I haven’t for a long time…I suppose that’s part of growing up. But in the lead up to seeing Ray at the Palais on Friday night I had been having dreams about meeting the benevolent, dimpled, twinkly-eyed genius.

So we arrived at the Palais, quaking with excitement amidst young Dave Davies lookalike coolsies and their Penelope Tree girlfriends and (the majority) paunchy silver-haired collector types. And of course Ray was brilliant – as if you didn’t know I was going to say that. Wiry and energetic, and pulling off the obligatory final-chord-scissor-kick (à la Pete Townshend) at the end of every song, he certainly doesn’t look his 63 years from a distance. His voice was pitch perfect, and the winks, gestures and wry asides suggested he is still very much on the ball. He was, as expected, utterly charming. When he launched solo into the first gentle bars of 'Days', I felt the tears well up.

My only complaint was that the set list was a little disappointing – he asked us to indulge him for a bit while he played his (very good) recent material, which we were more than happy to do, but when the old stuff came it was the safe, chart-topping, boomer-pleasing stuff like ‘All Day and All of the Night’ and, of course ‘Lola’. To be fair, all the hits had to be played, and everyone (including me) was expecting them. He left the stage after the encore without having played 'Waterloo Sunset', but then strolled back on and did it brilliantly, saying ‘Oh, I can’t believe I forgot to play this’. It might have been part of the schtick, but it was pretty convincing, and we were alarmed that he might have forgotten to play the song that 'changed his life'. Of course, we were hoarse from shouting it by the end of the night. But if only he could have thrown in ‘No Return’ from Something Else by the Kinks, ‘Big Sky’ from Village Green (or anything from that album actually), or ‘Shangri La’ from Arthur or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire, it would have been perfect. Ray bears the mark of a true artist (as opposed to simply a multi-million-selling megastar) - one whose genius can be discerned in the space between the hits, in the many memorable, diverse, off-beat album tracks. He sold that remarkable ability short by playing to the cheesy Gold 104 crowd.

Anyway, there was an interval – Ray announced he’d join us again in 15 minutes. During this interval I went and bought a bottle of water from the kiosk and absentmindedly shoved it back in my bag – without its lid. Everything in my bag was soaked and had to be laid out on the dark, dusty Palais floor to dry while Ray did his second set. After the show we were about halfway back to the car when Chris realised I’d left my ipod earphones on the floor near our seats. Big deal, I thought, but we walked back to the venue, carefully retracing our steps. We were let back inside to scout around for them with the help of an usher and a torch, but we couldn’t find them. Chris seemed to care more about it than I did. Anyway, as we left the venue for a second time, we spotted a little crowd waiting by the Palais side exit – its composition 70% pure spock, 30% haircutted coolsie. The coolsies had a ukelele and were (rather cringingly) singing Dedicated Follower of Fashion. We decided to lurk for a while, ending up talking to a Glenn Robbins-looking collector bloke and his tubby, bearded friend who was sporting a Kinks Official Fan Club t-shirt in XXL, replete with soup stains, tucked into his (rather too) low slung jeans – bless. A Japanese fan (who, we eavesdropped, had been at the soundcheck) and a guy with a thick Euro accent who’d seen the Kinks in 1972 (and, it sounded like, every time they’d toured since then) rounded out the group. They were absolutely lovely guys. I don’t get the Nick Hornby stereotype of the record geek who doesn’t know how to include women in conversation. I think he’s a bit of a straw man. In my experience, these guys are so blinded by the music that they’re happy to chat to anyone, no matter what their age or gender or ethnicity, who shares their passion. I’ve always found that sort of guy fascinating – they’re kindred spirits.

Anyway, we thought about splitting a couple of times, but just as we were about to, Ray emerged. I reached through the pack and took his hand and said something inane (“Ray, take care” or something silly) and he clasped my hand and said “Thanks sweetheart.” Ray Davies called me sweetheart. Ridiculously, that means more to me than so many other things, and will probably keep me warm through lots of life’s other disappointments.

Chris got an autograph (oh, the cheesiness of it all - but I don't care) and we set off for the car again. Chris was just saying what a strange night it had been when he looked down and found my earphones lying on a St Kilda footpath. Bizarre! I couldn’t have given a stuff about them – but if we hadn’t doubled back for them, I would never have squeezed Ray’s hand. And as Chris said, if we hadn’t gone back to the venue and met Ray, we would probably never have found the earphones either. So in the end, all unfolded as it should.

Thank you for the days,
Those endless days, those sacred days you gave me.
I'm thinking of the days,
I won't forget a single day, believe me.

I bless the light,
I bless the light that lights on you believe me.
And though you're gone,
You're with me every single day, believe me.

Days I'll remember all my life,
Days when you can't see wrong from right.
You took my life,
But then I knew that very soon you'd leave me,
But it's all right,
Now I'm not frightened of this world, believe me.

I wish today could be tomorrow,
The night is dark,
It just brings sorrow anyway.

Thank you for the days,
Those endless days, those sacred days you gave me.
I'm thinking of the days,
I won't forget a single day, believe me.

Days I'll remember all my life,
Days when you can't see wrong from right.
You took my life,
But then I knew that very soon you'd leave me,
But it's all right,
Now I'm not frightened of this world, believe me.
Days.

Thank you for the days,
Those endless days, those sacred days you gave me.
I'm thinking of the days,
I won't forget a single day, believe me.

I bless the light,
I bless the light that shines on you believe me.
And though you're gone,
You're with me every single day, believe me.
Days.

*I'm considering posting my essay here, with all its gauche 19 year old wordiness. But I will spare you. You've had enough of mental behaviour caused by too much thinking and too many late nights.

**Is anyone else in love with Ned Collette, or is it only me?

A Neo-Comm rant

OK, I've got a bit of anger to unleash today.

Check out this stupid article:

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2187213.htm

A summary of his argument for those who can't be bothered reading this tosh:

Spending is good, it's a matter of choice and because Australia is a thriving economy, we deserve our luxury goods. People should buy their plasma telly if they want it - it's good for them and they're keeping other people in jobs with their purchases. Environmentalists only hate spending on these sorts of items because they're inherently anti-capital, not because they are concerned about the impact of these products on the environment.

Some quotes from his article:

"But buying more does not make you a bad person. Sure, excessive consumption can cause the overall economy to overheat, but individuals choose to consume more because of myriad reasons."

(No reasons are given. We all know the reason though. It starts with G and it ends with D, and I don't mean him upstairs, either.)

He goes on to quote some US economist called Deidre McCloskey:

"'Countries are rich or poor, have a great deal to consume or very little, mainly because they work well or badly, not because some outsider is adding to or gobbling up a God-given endowment,' she says. Goods are not god-given, so consuming them is not immoral.

Australians have mostly been consuming more because they're wealthier (house prices, shares and profits have all been rising) and earning more."

Where to start?

Firstly - what is wrong with being anti-capital? Capitalism and environmentalism don't exactly go hand in hand. Of course environmentalists are concerned about the end game of first world greed! Shouldn't we all be, or don't we live on the same planet? I am by no means carbon neutral, but I'm not the idiot expounding the tired old 'greed is good' line.

This guy makes it sound like we in the West deserve our greedy lifestyle because we've earned it by virtue of our thriving economy. By extrapolation, the folk in the third world, who labour away to make most of the crap we buy, deserve their lives of privation (not that any mention is made of them, short of the insulting claim that we work harder - really? I know I don't!).

So, if your economy is going to the dogs, suck it up! Trouble with his argument, even on his own terms, is that the third world economies aren't the ones going to the dogs. In fact, his hubris is astounding given that the mothership already lies shredded ahead on the subprime rocks.

Now I probably have to get this disclaimer out the way, because I know people who own plasmas and I don't have any beef with them - some people save up and buy a plasma TV and enjoy it and they don't pollute the planet in other ways (like one commenter who said his trip to work produced zero carbon which offsets his plasma). I suppose it's all about balance.

For the purposes of this rant the plasma is just code for any big ticket, mass produced item that fat westerners enjoy, without considering the energy it consumes and the human and environmental costs of its production and eventual disposal. This guy thinks consumption of these items is fine, so long as we recognise a small caveat, and don't let the economy 'overheat'. But the economy, jobs, capitalism - all these terms are meaningless when the planet finally implodes.

He makes a weak concession to smarter consumption, a wan nod to environmentalism, but doesn't get that whether we consume 'better' or 'green' until we're blue in the face, everything on this planet is a finite resource (yes, even the raw materials that go into a plasma telly, and definitely the power required to make it work) and one day, one day quite soon, these resources will run out. Diddums if it hurts the corporations who are trying to flog us stuff all the time - the simple truth is that we have to consume LESS.

Add-on sales, use-by dates and built-in obsolescence are so often used to keeping people buying, and the nuff-nuffs that just keep trying to keep up with the neighbours are sucked in time and time again, whether it be the tech-head early adopters who go through two 'next-generation' mobile phones per year, or the McMansion/plasma/SUV craving couples with the brats who demand a better toy than little Harry.

Unfortunately the same principle applies to fuel production, which the consumer has to keep coming back for. Renewable technologies have been sidelined not because they are too expensive, but for the simple reason that it is not profitable for companies to sell a product only once (ie. a solar panel) and then let people get on with making their own energy.

For similar reasons everyone should regard the march of patented gene technology with alarm. Thanks to our myopic State Government, farmers will probably soon have to pay for the IP rights to sow certain seeds. Corporations have run out of things to flog us, so they're after the free stuff - air, water, grass, seeds. We don't need patents on our ecology. Anti-GM activism is not just about middle class mummies worrying about their children ingesting GM 'food' (though this a legitimate concern and there should be full product disclosure on all labelling), it is an environmental and political problem. Environmentally it is about fucking with the food chain. Politically it's about someone thinking they own the food chain! I am sure I have eaten GM products by accident, but that's not what I'm worried about (I've got a cast-iron constitution anyway). The monster is far scarier than that. As usual, caring about these things means thinking beyond what we, as individuals with our short, fat lives, want (or think we need) right now.

True sustainability can only occur when we free ourselves from the shackles of the purchasing merry-go-round. It is possible to achieve if we can stop getting dazzled and duped by all the glittering things out there that we 'must have', and all the accessories and add-ons that go with them.

This whole post is a collection of my edited-together rants from the comments section of that guy's article, with some extra babbling thrown in. Cos I'm lazy like that.

Golden Plains

We've scrubbed the dirt and grime from our top weekend at Golden Plains away, but the memories remain. What a brilliant festival - a big friendly love in. There's just the one stage with a great view no matter where you set down (and you can move smoothly to the front if you've got business with the band that's on), you can take your own booze in, the food places don't rip you off and use recyclable containers (though there were plastic forks), there's good access to drinking water and the composting toilets are brilliant - there's never a queue, and, possibly because of their green innovation, the masses are respectful of them and I never found one that was soiled or sans papier (quite an achievement for a festival dunny). It's not as hyped and hard to access as Meredith, and it pisses all over the Big Day Out for all the reasons outlined above and more. A pictorial for your edification:

















The first day was slow and relaxed, after a bit of a red-faced slog to put up the tent and sort ourselves out. The enigmatic Iron and Wine was the first act we had any inclination to see, having half-watched the Triple J fodder of British India from a safe distance on a log.


















The utterly captivating Jens Lekman and band. At times Jens looked like he was tearing up from the sheer beauty of his music. And who can blame him. I accidentally messed with the settings on my camera at this point (yeah, great timing Sue) and all my pics from this point on were a different size. Spewing, because they were some of the best images I took. The Jens crowd was mellow and friendly, and his set was a delight.
































I just had to photo-stalk Jens's drummer - she was strikingly beautiful. She reminded me of the late French actress Marie Trintignant, who had similarly strong, yet fine, features, only she was brunette. Just look at her! Of course, she got an enormous cheer when Jens introduced the band. We correctly picked her as one of Jens's Swedish contingent (tough call), though there were Aussies in the band too, and he has toured with locals before. It's good to know he will soon be local himself and be able to make himself available for gigs regularly.


















Ahhhhh.... the preternaturally talented Zach Condon/Beirut and his band of brothers (and a sister on the violin). His set was a big party and he drew screams from the young girls in the crowd every time he did his little mock-flamenco/Jagger two step between stints on the trumpet and the ukelele, to our surprise - Balkan folk music goes global!

















Even the bogans were getting into it. It's understandable - I was drawn to his music long before I knew what he looked like, but his cute-as-a-button look - the chocolate mop falling into powder blue eyes - is an undeniable draw card for those fans who might need visual cues. When I saw the huge crowd gathered for him I couldn't help but feel, though only momentarily, that familiar teenage pang of loss that he's become so huge. Silly really. He deserves it - he and Jens are a welcome augmentation to the trad band archetype typified by acts like The Panics (solid as they were) and The Vines.

Unfortunately the soundcheck was a bit of a shmozzle (it's hard when there's an eight piece band sporting instruments not usually found at a rock festival) and they had a lot of technical difficulties. Which makes me wish I'd grabbed some tickets to the side show at the Corner on Tuesday, which is now sold out. If anyone wants to offload some (and you'd be crazy to), please let me know!


















Our campsite. I don't know the people in the photo, but I heard the guy say 'Maybe The Vines will make up for Beirut' after Beirut's performance and wondered if we were at the same gig. I mean, The Vines? Make up for Beirut? Bah... obviously not ALL the bogans got it...




We also sat in on Ween and Buffalo Tom for old times' sake. But (refreshingly, for someone who has been recycling the heroes of her youth for a very long time) the young maestros had the day.

A book and a record

1. I am finally reading 'I'm With the Band' by Groupie Extraordinaire Pamela Des Barres, thanks to a reissue and good old Polyester Books. Ah, boy crazy Pamela - stumbling headily through the sixties in garlands and see-through dresses, allowing us to piece her story together through her string of flings; whispering about boys behind her hand to us and giggling as she reclines in her pink negligee. I like her a lot - but I don't envy her, even if she did, astoundingly, rebound from Jimmy Page with Mick Jagger, and have Keith Moon as an FB. (I can hear the snorts of 'yeah right' from here).

There just seems to be an achingly long time between trysts for her. In real time, probably only two or three days; in headspace time, an eternity of agonised declarations of love (expressed with the same naive fervour for each new conquest) to her trusty diary; of aching, of yearning, of flouncing around the house feeling empty and pointless. She belongs to a time when many a woman's self image was forever indexed to her rising (and consequentially falling) stocks with the men she ran with... oh wait, we're still there. There's no doubting she enjoyed all her sexual encounters with gusto and that her subsequent nostalgia for them is real, but her heart is just as open as her mind, and the reader is forced to watch as it gets broken repeatedly. Which is not nearly as much fun as hearing the anecdotes, told with schoolgirlish glee, that precede each inevitable fall. Still, Keith Moon as a 'spare' - it wasn't a bad life!

2. I have been listening to Kate Bush's first album, The Kick Inside, over and over and over. I have always been very fond of her, and I've been listening to Hounds of Love (her later, 80s, slickly produced offering) for many years - but it is that first album, released in dim, distant 1978, that currently has me in its shamanistic spell. I can't get enough of that wild eyed, angel-voiced 19 year old channelling Emily Bronte and... well, something approaching a Chinese opera. I imagine her padding translucently through a Georgian manor to her piano, or (probably thanks to the enduring image of her limb-flailing interpretive dancing out on the moors in the 'Wuthering Heights' clip) whispering to trees in a paddock somewhere in Dorset, filled with the burgeoning desires that found expression in startlingly frank songs like 'Feel It' and 'L'amour looks something like you'. Some of the songs were written when she was only 13. She's nothing short of a musical genius and a living treasure. AND she was and still is an unutterable fox.














What does the above say about me - especially following my Bragg review? That I am culturally irrelevant? Possibly. Hopefully a trip to Golden Plains (to see, in particular, Jens Lekman, Beirut and Iron and Wine, among others) will give me the slap in the face with a wet fish I obviously need to bring my pop touchstones into the 21st century.