john howard answers questions

In 1955 a 16 year old John Howard appeared on a radio broadcast of Jack Davey's Give it a Go quiz show. It is mighty revealing. The Prime Minister is exposed as a cocky kid with absolutely no clue about the answers, but a cheeky confidence in going for it, anyway.

All schoolteachers are familiar with this kind of kid - basically ignorant but always open to negotiation when it comes to catching the teacher's eye. It is an old plaint of feminists that the schoolgirl who happens not to know the answer won't put up her hand; the boy with half an answer (or in young John's case, none at all) will still have a crack at it in the hope that something will turn up. In the broadcast, it becomes evident that the audience (which probably doesn't know the answer, either) begins to side with the kid, and the quizmaster, sensing this, encourages him - an early lesson in populism; perhaps a crucial one.

Why does Howard stay on? The naughty-boy thesis would be that he could not help himself - he was just having too much fun! Years ago, everybody wrote him off, but now he's the king of the castle.

The prize was 10 cakes of Velvet soap for every correct answer. Howard didn't answer questions correctly, but it didn't matter, he walked off with 100 cakes.

Listen to Howard on Jack Davey's Give it a Go quiz here. (Unfortunately it's in Real Audio - my least favourite audio program)

Text slightly edited from: Naughty boys rule, OK?, By Alistair Mant, The Age August 2, 2004

costello in shock announcement

NEW YORK Jun 25, 2006 (AP)— Diana Krall and husband Elvis Costello announced Sunday that the jazz singer is pregnant and due in December just in time for their third wedding anniversary.
A spokesman confirmed the pregnancy.

Costello, 51, is touring with Allen Toussaint in support of their album, "The River in Reverse."
The 41-year-old Krall will release a new album this September.

...a glimpse of stocking was something shocking...

A shocked father wrote to THE ARGUS (19 Sept 1925) .." .. a dance is but an excuse for kissing and cuddling, and even worse"

Also in 1925, The South Australian Methodist Conference after discussing "The Lure of the Dance", passed a motion recommending that their halls should not be used for "mixed dancing" as it was an "inexpedient pastime"

Anticipating the current education debate by a few decades, P. F. Rowland, in an article entitled "Five Thoughts on Education" (Australian Quarterly 14 September 1932) wrote: " .. speaking generally, in music do we ask anything more than jazz, in art the jazz equivalents, in literature the latest naughtiness in novel form? Is not this due to the fact that in our age.... the cultural subjects are being crowded out of our curriculum?"

From: Black Roots - White Flowers - a history of jazz in Australia Andrew Bisset ABC, 1979.

kiss kitsch koffee klutch

Yesterday the world's first KISS Coffee House was opened by Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley. You can get a Demon Dark Roast or a French Kiss Vanilla or a Rockuccino. The plans, building and menu.

The tongue tied Gene Simmons says: "Every army needs food and drink and the KISS Army is no exception! Even the non-enlisted will find our treats and java rockin' good!"

The KISS Coffee House, joins the KISS Kasket, a KISS themed coffin and KISS Kondoms (“Rock N' Rubbers” ) in the product line.

Even though I'm a rock snob, I'd go to KISS Coffee for a jolt of java, a pot of hot, a mug of mud. It looks like fun. Somehow a Kiss themed coffee shop seems a lot more authentic than a lame Hard Rock Cafe franchise. For a bit of chat on authenticity in rock you can go to Shaun's Rock'n'Roll Damnation where he notes and points back to Gary Sauer-Thompson's Junk For Code where Gary writes about the authenticity of Cobain and Nirvana

this is what is wrong with australia

I just made myself 15 minutes late for a meeting by waiting in the car listening to ABC radio because they said Les Murray would be on soon.

Turns out there's a soccer guy called Les Murray. Not the real one.

I hope Keith Windshuttle can sort those ABC wankers out.

marvin gaye doco tonight

Living Famously Marvin Gaye
ABC TV 11:05pm Thursday, June 15, 2006
The life and career of one of soul music's true legends, Marvin Gaye, from his unhappy childhood in the ghettos of Washington to global fame as Motown's top solo star, to his drug-addled decline and death at the hands of his own father.

slippery slope

e-commerce doesn't work

As noted in my previous post I had ordered a Bob Book and Scott Walker CD online from Amazon USA. I'm here to report that cross border e-commerce is a fraud, con, shonk and unworkable for honest people like myself.

I ordered online from Amazon using another computer and location from my usual spine killer. I ordered on Friday the other week. On the Tuesday I thought I'd log in and do a bit of supply chain observation and track my order. Nothing recorded. I refreshed and logged in again. Still nothing. I was about to pick up the phone and complain to Amazon. (How I don't know but that's what I was thinking) Checked again. Nothing. No record of order. Mmmh perhaps I should check the email address I used. Oh dear. Three or four emails requesting confirmation of order and one telling me order was lapsed due to non confirmation. Bugger.

Anyway I mooched down to JB in Motor Bike Elizabeth St. Strolled nonchalantly over to the W's under Alternative !! and picked up Scott Walker's The Drift for ~$23. Hitching my frayed overcoat collar up against a sharp CBD alleyway wind I shuffled past the lunchtime civilians in Chinatown, dodged a Big Issue extravert, stumbled into a bookshop and fell upon Jared Henry's Head Shot, a mean streets crime novel set in Melbourne. Bingo.

Think Global. Act Local.

Review of CD coming. Sometime.

globalisation

As Ned Kelly said on the gallows "I guess it had to come to this". Despite my doing a CBD gig for the last little while I haven't been able to "........get what I want"

I have remembered intermittently to check my to do list. I wandered, lonely as a melbourne cloud, down the lanes and alleys of the city centre looking to buy a copy of Scott Walker's The Drift. No luck. Sold out or blank looks. Some had it on computer - "Computer says,.... yes" - but not to be found on shelves. "Should be in the pop section". I only muttered wtf silently.

I had also been, less determinedly, looking for Song & Dance Man 3: The Art of Bob Dylan, by Michael Gray. No luck.

At about 2:18 pm this Friday, whilst tanning in the blue light of a poor definition LCD screen searching for that sentence that wasn't too academic, too rhetoric filled, too poetic, too animated, too idiosyncratic, too dry to make it through the various spending departments' secretaries and ministers and to also satisfy the dry departmentals and their ministers by not being too wet and perchance have it survive almost recognisably intact to cabinet policy and even a news bite, thereby thrusting me into immortality, I decided it was a lost cause. Facing my addictions head on I pondered how to decide between the new collection of all (except The Biplane Houses) Les Murray's poems, or Seamus Heaney's new hardback, or the Neil Young Nation book, or Neil's new CD or....

I logged on the Amazon USA. Scott Walker isn't released until June 6 in USA. The Bob book is available. Tipped them into my online shopping cart, entered Visa details and for $49.00 usa = $65.5203 AUD. I'll have them in my mailbox possibly in 6 - 10 days. Possibly also cheaper and quicker than I'd get them by mooching around Melbourne and hard acquiring them the old way.

Let's see how it pans out.

sarsaparilla

Sarsaparilla is a new group blog devoted to discussing books, writing, film and television, theatre and the performing arts, music, publishing, the humanities, reading, cultural studies, and… other things, from a distinctively Australian perspective.

It's got Alison Croggon, Ampersand Duck , Boynton, David Nichols, Galaxy, and Genevieve Tucker of You Cried for Night and The Weblog Repository, Georg of Stack, Kerryn Goldsworthy of A Fugitive Phenomenon, Laura from Sorrow at Sills Bend, Tim Sterne from Sterne, Wendy James from the old Troppo and possibly many others.

nepotism roolz - ok?

The offspring gigs again. Sons Of Mothers Website The Rob Roy Melbourne Pubs - Wiki Brunswick Street - Wiki

ivor cutler music eccentric

"My way of writing poetry was to go to a jazz concert and just let the music come through me and just write nonsense poems, so that one was listening to the noise of the words rather than the meaning. I wouldn't allow my intellect to get in the way. After six years I found certain sounds more to my taste than others and I gradually began to use actual words".

Ivor Cutler was born in Glasgow on 15th January 1923 to a Jewish middle-class family.

"My parents were orthodox Jews. My father moved from the orthodox to the progressive synagogue. He had been able to read Hebrew but wasn't understanding the traditional service. For me the language was then exposed as boring. I liked the incomprehensible noise of foreign words."

Victimised by anti-Semitic teachers at school for not being a "real Scot" he got the strap 200 times for not being able to write. In his twenties he looked into other religions, visiting various churches on Sundays. He converted to atheism and then, in his early twenties, having explored astronomy, he decided to become an agnostic.

When he was fifteen he thought;
"I'm going to be a composer. I'm going to make simple but strong melodies like Drove or Schubert. I've got a thing which I call my first Piano Concerto and it's only in three lines, because I didn't know what a concerto was. I took it to school and showed it to the music teacher and she was knocked out. It was a load of rubbish. Then I did a serious one called "Funeral Bells", because being a humorist I'm naturally a lugubrious kind of bloke, and suicide always has a big attraction to guys like me."

In 1950-51 he taught at A S Neill's Summerhill. He then moved to the Inner London Education Authority in 1954 for whom he worked until 1980. From 1961 to 1970 he taught music, African drumming, movement, drama and poetry to 7-11 year-olds.

Fame first came in the late Fifties. He was lying on his bed with a primitive tape recorder for company and, as he puts it, a story came out of his brain. Surprised at the ease at which he could bypass his intellect he tried again, and a second story emerged and was also recorded. Then a third. Writing poetry then began to manifest itself.

"One day I went into a place called Box & Cox and the boss man there was a fellow called Boxy. I was dressed up all peculiar, a big bag on my back with paintings in it and a dirty old duffel coat. I put on a deadpan voice and said, "I understand you buy songs here." He said, "Yes", carefully. I said, "Would you like me to sing one of my songs for you?" He said, "Yes", it was five o'clock in the evening, he had a fire going, he was relaxing.

So he got one or two of his chums and pointed to a piano that was against the wall and he sat behind me. I said "I've got different songs. It could be a funny one or it could be a serious one." He said, "Oh, play what you like." So I sat down and played this funny one. After a while I was listening, I heard. I carried on to the end, turned around, and Box was lying on the floor, his face purple. I said, "It's OK, you can laugh." He said, "We get some funny people in here and they would be terribly hurt if we laughed, because they see themselves as being very serious." So he took me on and started me in my music career"

Cutler was invited to read his idiosyncratic poems and stories on the forerunner of BBC Radio 4. Frequently he performed to the accompaniment of a pedal-driven harmonium which could only, as far as listeners could tell, play in a depressive minor key. He broadcast thirty-eight stories on the BBC's Monday Night At Home between 1959 and 1963. Cutler's artistic career started with a gig at the Blue Angel in Islington in 1957, which he reckoned was "an unmitigated failure". In the 60s he became a popular figure on UK radio, and in 1961 released his first record, the "Of Y'Hup" EP. He started writing poetry aged 42 three of his poems appear in Faber's collection of Scottish verse edited by Douglas Dunn.

Cutler found an avid fan in John Lennon, who persuaded him to take the role of Buster Bloodvessel in the Beatles vehicle Magical Mystery Tour (1967). Beatles producer George Martin produced his album Ludo (1967), released as the Ivor Cutler Trio.

Cutler remained active in his later years. He wrote children's books as well as collections of poetry and prose; recorded albums for such influential labels as Virgin, Rough Trade and Creation; and continued to record radio sessions for John Peel and Andy Kershaw. In February 2004 a frail looking Cutler gave a farewell performance of poems, songs and stories at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall. Highlights from the show were later broadcast on BBC Four under the title Cutler's Last Stand as an accompaniment to a documentary, Ivor Cutler: Looking For Truth With A Pin.

He died age 83 on 3 March 2006.

Some examples of Ivor's Music
Jackfish - A Cowboy Song MP3 1.9MB
Women of The World MP3 1.2 MB
I Built A House (around a mouse) MP3 1.2 MB
(I am going to watch my woman walking down the street with a) Bounce Bounce Bounce MP3 2.1 MB
Poem
I Ate A Ladies Bun MP3 0.4 MB

Cobbled together from various BBC sites, Wiki and here, and more downloads here.

kiko and the lavender moon

Los Lobos gig. Melbourne. The Forum. 2006. Tuesday 11 April.

Due to the rural brethren arranging the meet spot I went to Federation Square. The night was surprisingly warm and mild for this time of year enabling me to sit outside with a $6 pot of Stella . By 6:30 pm the country cousins were just entering the Tulla Freeway and I was wishing I had ordered a Guinness and by 7 pm they had parked and were strolling into Transport, (beware arty FLASH web site) which I'm told is trendy and cutting edge.

Cutting edge means sharp on prices and badly tuned doof music on small inadequate but ubiquitous tweeters masquerading as speakers. Not a good start to a night of music. [no points to readers who can detect a theme lately or can see where I might be heading here]

Anyway seeing as the wind was only occasionally strong but still warmish we skulked outside and found a defunct speaker and propped at a table with Stellas and some food. Unfortunately I ordered a huge plate of Tapas $17 which contained some nice bits, olives, grilled capsicum, lettuce , bread but also some items I do not eat, grilled baby octopus and mushrooms. Luckily the rurals are more sophisticated than me and they managed to scoff a few baby octopii and mushies. But really it was more like an anti-pasta than a proper tapas. After a few more beers it didn't matter so much.

After spending a lot of time finding the well hidden toilets in Transport we shuffled over the road to the venue - The Forum. If you haven't been to the Forum click onto a few of the pictures, like this one, or this one, or this, to get an idea of what it is like inside or from the outside.

We were a bit early and were pleasantly surprised to discover that there was booze on sale inside and seats. The usual suspects were gathered to the fray, boomer guys with balding heads, pony tails and earings, the women in either stuck in 70's hippy gear or trying hard with jeans and jackets, with the odd feet on ground person who just arrived from work in a suit and tie. Plenty of room inside, didn't look as if it would be a sellout at 8 pm.

The opening act was some young guy who looked about 16 playing guitar in a fast and flash way. Amongst other competent stuff he knocked out a few versions of some Beatles songs which seemed to go down well with some of the punters. Luckily he seems influenced by Leo Kottke and John Fahey, so when he pulled back the speed a bit it sounded sweet. I didn't catch his name but he said he was off to Byron.

After he went off there seemed to be about a 3/4 full crowd. I'd say break-even crowd. Given that on that same Tuesday night in Melbourne there was a choice of Keb Mo, Hothouse Flowers, Daniel Lanois and Los Lobos, it seemed to me the gigs would appeal to the same markets and that the promoters were segmenting the market and giving punters an impossible choice. So I'm guessing attendance at all those Tuesday gigs were down. My country pals had seen Lanois the previous weekend up at the Palais in Daylesford and pronounced it a good show.

Wandering around during the first act we attempted to find the sweet point for sound. Seemed to be up front, leaning on the stage middle.

Los Lobos arrived. Loud. Tight. Wall of sound. Huge bass thump. Sounded a bit muddled up in the seats, standing down the front was clearer but very loud. The sound tends to wander around in that huge cavern up the front at the Forum. As usual I thought the sound could have done better.

Anyway. Good concert. Not great because of sound muddle. Highlights. Anything where the accordion featured. A very good version of Kiko, vocals clear, accordion clear, atmospherics clear. The real highlight you ask? End. Crowd demands encore. Band comes back to encore and launches into a loud, chord, riffing, rolling version of, guess what, Cinnamon Girl. Crowd, well me at least, go beresque, band plays tribute to Neil at end of song. No La Bamba.

Out dreaming 'bout green shoes

Haircuts and cake

And then he wishes

The world away

And then he kneels

As if to pray

He dreams and dreams

Kiko and the lavender moon

wasted days and wasted nights

Ellen Fanning nearly wasted my night by managing to take an opportunity to talk to the Stones for 30 minutes and with Channel 9 turn it into an hour of ads plus a few truncated live clips plus nonsense from Ellen. What on earth is that woman on about. Bert Newton would have done a better job of interviewing. Stupid questions about their age and nudge nudge wink wink smirks about sex. Then a bit about drugs. Nothing about the music. No context. No comment that in comparing some live footage on a few songs Jagger's voice seems to have improved over the years. Still not up to his admitted hopes of a Howlin' Wolf sound but fuller and more authoritative nonetheless. Pity his lyric writing is still stuck in the teenager stage.

Luckily I had my new DVD of The Mavericks LIVE in Austin TX @ Stubbs BBQ. It is good to see my favourite beer when in USA Dos Equis are only $3.75 at Stubbs. The DVD arrived 10 months after I had ordered it, so long ago I had forgotten all about it. I could have got the bloody thing direct from Amazon delivered to my doorstep in about 7 days for less than half the price it cost me to wait 10 months then have to drive to the shop and wait 20 minutes while they tried to find it. When will retailers learn who they have as competition.

Anyway after I gave the Stones special away as a bad joke I started sampling the DVD. The band is augmented by horns and extra other musos on this concert. They are in great form and deliver the goods. Raul Malo is a chunky sublime singer who manages to sound like all his influences at the right times and to also sound uniquely Raul. He channels the best of Elvis, Roy Orbison, Merle Haggard and a bit of Hank as well as Frank and even croon like Humperdink. And do it all well to a driving country, tex-mex, rockin' ska showband. Or something like that. He also writes great songs and even does Besame Mucho on this concert.

The Extras bit on the DVD is a long "interview" with the 4 core band members, it focuses on the music and is better by a factor of about 100 than the Channel 9 attempt with the Stones. A nice touch in the extra at one stage they break into Van Morrison's Bright Side of the Road in a practice session.

In The Mavericks' arrangements, and they are arrangements, and especially in Raul's voice you can also hear, Bob Wills, Louis Jordan, Patsy Cline, Ray Charles and Buddy Holly, Bing Crosby, Ray Price, BB King, Roger Miller and George Jones, The Beatles, Burt Bacharach, Gram Parsons, Elvis Costello, The Pretenders, Steve Earle.

Trampoline is a landmark album that should be in every serious collection. I'll take a few paras off the web page below:

From the opening salsa swing of Dance The Night Away, the rip roaring rhythm and blues of Tell Me Why, the pop blizzard of I've Got This Feeling, right through to the funky sounds of the exotic/erotic I Hope You Want Me Too and the dance hall jazz of the 20's inspired Dolores. The Mavericks do all this without forsaking any of the fabulous melodies or sparkling musical touches of past efforts. In fact, due to the method of recording the album; the band, singers and orchestra all playing together in one enormous renovated church; they have captured the spirit of The Mavericks in the most powerful and vibrant cool-lection of songs recorded to-date. This is the album which spawned 'The Havana Horns', who would accompany The Mavericks on the road and in additional new recordings, through to 2000.

This vibrancy was well and truly pounced upon by the European audiences throughout 1998 and 1999, especially in the UK, where Dance The Night Away managed to reach No 4 on the 'pop' charts. (It also achieved the status of most played 'live' song of 1999 by the UK Performing Rights Society.) During 1998 the album sold unexpectedly well in Europe, exceeding 850,000 by the end of that year. However, their homeland only showed comparatively scant regard for this joyous triumph; with mainstream radio (both country and pop) unable to cope with this outburst of originality, and promptly threw up the shutters. Consequently, Trampoline in the USA suffered minimal sales.

I just love Raul and the band. Get on the train.

Further info:
Raul runs a well written blog or journal. It is worth reading his most recent entry about his relationship with Buck Owens.
Introduction to the band The Mavericks.
Info about Raul.
New CDs coming out
Review of CDs by BBC
THE MAVERICKS , The Definitive Collection , (MCA Nashville), US release date: 28 June 2004

the last week in lent

Tonight I'm off to the famous Rainbow Hotel (pity about their web site) to hear Rob Luckey and The Lucky Bastards on the recomendation of Amanda F. E. Mule and Denise. [I think you might be able to stream TWANG if you check this arvo]

On Tuesday, yes Tuesday, I'm off to see the only band to be a living history of rock since The Band. Los Lobos.

Next Tuesday must have a certain alignment of the planets, because if I wasn't off to see Los Lobos I would be off to see Daniel Lanois at the Atheneum, or Hothouse Flowers at The Corner Hotel,or Keb Mo at the Prince. I see Lanois is doing something at Readings Carlton @ 6 pm Monday - I might pop along.

Thursday I'll probably be along at the West Papuan Benefit at The Grand Central.

The next week Eddie Reader is doing gigs with Boo Hewerdine.

Phew!

van honoured in nashville

Oldies songster Van Morrison was as excited as a scientologist on Oprah and showed his usual exuberance when graciously accepting his Van Morrison Day plaque from Nashville Mayor - Bill Purcell.

artic monkeys - my arse

I've just upped 2 X MP3s of my offsprings band.

After a sell out gig at Bar Bushka in Smith St, Sons Of Mothers will be playing The Rob Roy and the Barleycorn and others.

very 'eavy, very 'umble but tight and enthusiastic, all originals - motto - "Go Hard Or Go Home"

Web site coming soon.

Grab March 2006 fresh and crusty demos for your pussyPod now : http://rapidshare.de/files/15899160/Track03.mp3.html

Next track here soon: .... http://rapidshare.de/files/15903119/Track01.mp3.html

Following David's advice I've lowered my standards. Here's track 1 done with VBR and lower top rate. http://rapidshare.de/files/15940260/Track01.mp3.html Comes in at 4.5MB rather than 10.5 above. Make your choice. Given that most people listen on crappy PC speakers I'm guessing it doesn't matter much.

David has done a piece on Augie March and MOO and made me want to have a listen.

vale michael dugan

My ex-next door neighbour and friend of 25+ years Michael Dugan died yesterday. Michael had not been well for some time.

When I first met Michael he was in the King Hippo Poetry Band and played at Frank Traynor's Jazz Club although it was more like a "folk" venue. ( I think in Little Lonsdale St).

Extract from Laurie Duggan's (no relation) diary 1971:

"..6th December. I am committed to the poetry reading — SAVE THE PRAM FACTORY — Friday night. An ad. in the Review — Charles Buckmaster, Garrie Hutchinson, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Russell Deeble, King Hippo poetry bank (sic.) & others. I despair that anyone would listen & fear that I will have lost all the courage I had in Canberra and Sydney in May. [The misprint should have read ‘King Hippo poetry band’, an outfit put together by Michael Dugan. I remember them on one occasion playing a folk-rock version of Keats’ ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ before an audience of septuagenarians at a P.E.N. Club gathering.] "

I don't know a lot about Michael's writerly life but he always was proud of the fact that he had never held a "real" job except for a bit of writing for the infamous Institute of Multicultural Affairs when he did There goes the neighbourhood - Australia's migrant experience.

Michael was generous in his help to young and beginning (and experienced) writers and was Vice-President of the Victorian Fellowship of Australian Writers.

He was long associated with Overland magazine and according to John Jenkins (another ex-neighbour from Michael's house if I recall correctly) :

"....after Overland 112, he (Barrie) handed the laurel wand (which could sometimes be a thorny one) on to Michael Dugan. During this time, Barrie also sought occasional input from Shelton Lea, myself and others. Michael continued to select poetry after John McLaren became editor in 1993 (for Overland 131-147) and for the early period of Ian Syson's stewardship, beginning in 1997, up until Overland 149. Pam Brown was formally listed as Poetry Editor in Overland 151, winter 1998. Previously, the role had not been publicly defined and was even sometimes shared between several people, with ad hoc input from Overland's 'extended family' of editorial helpers, although Michael Dugan, tirelessly and always meticulously, did the lion's share of this work. "

Kris Hemensley writes:

"We were thus excited to discover Crosscurrents magazine, edited in Melbourne by Michael Dugan, which appeared two weeks before my own. Both Taylor and I wrote to Dugan immediately, sending him our life work!, inviting him to our next La Mama reading. It is interesting that even in this small city, Dugan hadn’t heard of the La Mama readings, that presumably without co-ordination groups might exist in mutual isolation.
The poets published in the first issues of Our Glass and Crosscurrents make interesteing reading: Beard, Hemensley, Dugan, Taylor, Shelton Lea (who joined with the short-lived rivals of La Mama, Sweeny Reed’s glam-poets at Strines, Carlton, featuring that enigma, Russel Deeble!), Paul Smith (then a Cheshire’s bookseller), Romeril, Rushbrooke, Charles Buckmaster (whose address, Gruyere, was so unlikely that I was sure it was a hoax, but on consulting Mike Dugan, found that the same young poet, experiencing problems at high school, inspired by a single line of William Golding’s Pincher Martin he claimed, and a prolific poet if ever there was one, was real), Mal Morgan, Terry Gillmore (“influences — Pound, W.C. Williams, Olson, et al”: reading that in Crosscurrents made my heart flutter!), Geoffrey Egglestone, Frances Yule, Andy Jach, Norman Campbell Thomson, Maurice Benton. Add to these, Ian Robertson, who was a friend of Buckmaster, whom Buckmaster published in his own type-sheet, The Great Auk, in September, 1968, just prior to the first La Mama Poets Workshop Reading, and you have the nucleus of the poets who gravitated towards La Mama and/ or the little magazines, type-sheets, that sprang out of the place.

I don't know what to say except that as far as I know Michael never held a driving licence and always tipped taxi drivers a bit too generously for me.

no t-shirts - collar and tie please

Inspired by a discussion over at the rock and coffee blog Larff At Us Pros on the talent of Charlie Watts I put together a small set of the elegantly dressed one's wisdom.

"You don't think I take this seriously do you? It's just a fuckin' rock and roll band"

"When I'm at home I listen to classical music most of the time on the radio. If I put CDs on I usually play jazz. But my wife plays ah, what do you call it, rock 'n' roll or soul music, Motown, things like that, so I hear all of it."

"I don't need to hear Bill to go through a song. I need to hear Keith to go through a song. I know Bill will be playing what I'm playing anyway. I need to hear Keith because it's all there: the time, the chord changes, and all the licks you have to follow."

"I never had lessons. Used to try to play to records, which I hated doing. Still can't play to them."

"I've seen Keith fall asleep at business meetings about millions of dollars for him-because of heroin, just nod out and then wake up and answer a question."

"Keith is the start and the finish. I have to hear Mick, but I can follow Mick like lip-synch almost if the mic goes out. It's not as much fun, but I can do that. But if I don't hear Keith, I get completely lost in things."

"My whole block used to listen to Savoy jazz records as kids. I never used to listen to Elvis Presley or anything. It's only through meeting Mick and Keith, really that I got interested in things like that. The only person I suppose I really loved a lot was Fats Domino."

"The world of this is a load of crap. You get all these bloody people, so incredibly sycophantic."

"Usually I can hear the pianos, the saxophone, and usually I can hear Ronnie. But I really need to listen to Keith and Mick. The rest of the band is sort of an embellishment to that."

"When people talk about the '60s I never think that was me there. It was me and I was in it, but I was never enamoured with all that. It's supposed to be sex and drugs and rock and roll and I'm not really like that. I've never really seen the Rolling Stones as anything."

"Another drummer who's quite brilliant is Jerry Allison. He used to play with Buddy Holly and The Crickets. He's probably the best player that I know. He doesn't really play the drums-he plays the songs, and that is really more important within the context of that music."

van pines for crystal set

VAN MORRISON has launched a scathing attack on the internet, insisting it is responsible for the dumbing down of society and modern culture.

The GLORIA hitmaker is convinced the worldwide web has caused more problems than it has solved, and insists Earth would be a better place without it.

"Now, because of the internet, everyone's suddenly a big shot. I'm talking about people who think that because they've looked up a website, they know everything.
"You used to have to study things but now you can just find it on the internet, and everybody feels very important because they have access to this stuff.

"It was a different culture when I was young. Quality, respect - they seem to have vanished."

FXH says: I can only agree.

Oh and Amanda I think he means YOU, you young whippersnapper.

Silly old prick. But I love him.