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.

plumpness leads to broken social scene

j_p_z the mysterioso americano newcomero commento over at country & latte music blog Larva Arse Rodeo said:

I saw you referencing the Lucky Strikes ’so round, so firm, so fully-packed’ as a song lyric. Thought you’d be amused to know the phrase was also used in a (modified) form in the great old polka classic, “Who Stole the Kishka?” I quote the version recorded by the Pennsylvania polka kings, Frankie Yankovic and His Yanks…
“Round and firm and fully-packed,
It was standing on the rack.
Someone stole the kishka
When I turned by back!”

Love them accordions….

FXH further research: Who Stole The Keeshka (Kishka) is the third (3rd) song on the "Frankie Yankovic & Friends - Songs Of The Polka King" album. It is an original song by W. Solek & W. Dana. Both Frankie Yankovic & "Weird Al" Yankovic play accordion throughout the song. Frankie Yankovic & "Weird Al" Yankovic are not related.

There is a post and comments praising currently touring Canadians Broken Social Scene over at LP. j_p_z goes on to ask me what I think of of them. I could pretend I knew all about them but I only vaguely recall mentions of the name. Somehow I found a local blog talking about Broken Social Scene. Dave in Melbourne has a review of them over at his blog Sympathetic Stupid. Here's the intro:

Broken Social Scene. Broken Social Scene. Broken Social Scene. That's all I've got. I'm still buzzing (and my ears are, in fact, still ringing) after seeing these guys yesterday. They played the best festival set I've seen, hands down, bar none. Not that there's a heap of contenders as festivals are regularly disappointing.

But this was objectively great. They're touring with just the bare ten members.......FXH says Go read the rest and leave a comment.

food for thought

Over at Larvatus Prodeo, Shaun Cronin, who also runs the music blog Rock ‘n’ Roll Damnation has written a piece headed Survival of the Thinnest riffing on the themes from the TV show, The Biggest Loser. At the refurbished Club Troppo, Nicholas Gruen, who must eat keyboards for breakfast, is moved by the topic to write about his musings on Discrimination.

Over here we are listening to So Round So Firm So Fully Packed (Thats my gal) 1947, by Merle Travis. Naturally we all know the song is built around advertising slogans of the time. (if not then where the bloody hell were you?).

'So round, so firm, so fully-packed; so free and easy on the draw' was a staple of the Lucky Strike radio advertisments.

'She's got the pause that's so refreshing' is from Coke ads.

'You can bet your boots I'd walk a mile Through the snow' from the Camel ads.

'That's my gal Toasted by the sun' Toasted by the Sun again from Lucky Strike.

In fact the whole bloody song is an amalgam of ad grabs. Yes I know you could do it, but the art is putting it together and making it something else. The song has always been one of my favourites.

You can have a short listen online to Merle singing it here.

Someone better versed in, say, neo-retro-country-pop music- post-modernist-post-feminism might write something on the link between cigarette ads and the objectification of women. Putting on my country rock hat, I'd just observe that both are expensive these days, can make you feel good but also be dangerous for your health and the packaging has changed over the years.

Whilst thinking about all that serious stuff you could just hop on over and either download for your poddy thing or listen online to Big Fat Mama Blues (18 Megs d/l) * a collection of blues singers waxing lyrical about their love for Big Women.


* Song list Big Fat Mama Blues
Big Fat Mama Blues - Charlie Spand
Big Fat Mama Blues - Tommy Johnson
Milk Cow Blues - Kokomo Arnold
Big Leg Woman Gets My Pay - Blind Boy Fuller
Fat Mama Blues - Jabo Williams
Skinny Woman - Sonny Boy Williamson

bound for south australia

A birthday in Adelaide. Great catching up with people who flew in from Finnland, England, Flores and Melbourne.

Driving over and back by wandering routes I was struck by the ubiquitous nature of one of the AWB's ventures Landmark, (no silly, not the shonky make money cult). They sell land, machinery, expertise, livestock and just about anything.

Too busy socially to visit bloggers like Tim Dunlop, Saint and Pavlovs Cat. But even if I had tried to hook up with Gary Sauer-Thompson I would have missed him as he was in Melbourne.

I was puzzled by the very short cappuccino I was served at the market when ordering a long macchiato. Young cool (ish) pony tailed black dressed male waiter seemed to be unimpressed when I said I was used to them different in Melbourne. Like long with a dash (streak / stain) of milk. I tested one out again the next day at a different place. The same. Seems as if thats how they do 'em in Adelaide. Thought I recognised the blue skirt and face walking toward me through the market so I said "Good speech on the RU486 debate " Amanda replied "Thanks" and smiled at me.

Having talked to the organ player I was going to see the band with the Hammond B3 and Gretsch guitar at the Wheatsheaf Hotel Thebarton, (which apparently also has other attractions such as the Cougar Leather Club Leather/ denim/bears night 1st and 3rd Thursday each month from 9:00 PM) on Sunday at 5 pm but it got late and no one else was interested. A while back when I watched the documentary Damn Right I'm Cowboy I vowed to go one night to see The Hillbilly Hoot at Radio Three D and especially after talking to one of the cowgirls of the Hoot and Doco on Sat night at the party. I called in to 3D on Sunday to check out if the Hoot was on. Yes and a radio mate with me met an old radio mate there.We chatted radio and music for a while. Ended up leaving earlier Monday so missed the Hoot. Bugger.

While I was in Adelaide they called an election. I kept being told the daily paper was a rag and it was.

with one hand tied behind my back

Inspired by Tim Dunlop posting Yeah, but can he play Stairway to Heaven? about Preston Reed I remembered I'd meant to link to Bill Clements the famous one armed bassist. There's a video on his site of his amazing technique but you might find it easier on the bandwidth to watch and listen to Bill over at YouTube. I found Youtube by recommendation from Amanda over at Flop Eared Mule.

Talking about bass. Here is a good piece on the physical issues of lugging, or pushing, around a double bass.

Q- How many bass players does it take to change a light bulb?

A- None--they just steal somebody else's light.

catholic riots narrowly averted

No ‘Thriller’ – Michael Jackson said unlikely to sing pope’s prayers By Cindy Wooden, 2/7/2006

ROME -- Father Giuseppe Moscati said he never considered having Michael Jackson record all of the 24 prayers of Pope John Paul II he hopes eventually to set to music.
But, the priest told Catholic News Service, to have the pop star of “Thriller” fame sing one of the songs or to be part of a choir singing a song might have helped sales, reaching greater numbers of people.
However, when a Scottish newspaper published a story Feb. 6 saying there had been "secret discussions between the Roman Catholic Church and Michael Jackson to put the prayers of Pope John Paul II to music," the project began to fall apart.
"It would be very difficult for the Vatican to accept the project," said Father Moscati, director of Edizioni Musicali Terzo Millennio, a sacred music publishing and promotion company.
"Although he has been absolved by the courts" on charges of the sexual abuse of minors, it is clear Jackson's image "cannot be put alongside that of the pope," Father Moscati said.
The priest said he still would not mind the singer being involved on some level, but the furor created by the news reports makes Vatican approval doubtful.
"I did not go looking for him or for anyone else," the priest said.
He mentioned the project to an acquaintance who claimed to know Jackson "and I thought he had contact with other singers as well."
"I never met Michael Jackson or his representatives or his lawyers," the priest said. "And it was very inappropriate of them to tell the press."
Father Moscati said he went through dozens of texts of Pope John Paul's homilies, speeches and remarks for various occasions, paying particular attention to the prayers the pope often used to close his remarks.
"Many of them are prayers for peace, for young people, for the family or prayers to Mary," he said.
The priest obtained permission to use the prayers from the Libreria Vaticana Editrice, which holds the copyright to all papal texts.
However, he said, the final project -- including the music and the singers -- must be approved by the Vatican before publication.
Father Moscati has hired two Italian composers to set a few of the texts to music, although he said that if he finds some well-known singers who want to compose the music themselves that would be fine.
"At this point, I am hoping to find a producer, a serious professional, in the United States who would want to join the project and who has contacts with professional singers," he said.

Copyright (c) 2006 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

two tone shoes NQOCD

During the 1930s shoes made of two tones of leather, one light, one dark, and worn by both men and women, were known as "divorce court" or "co-respondent" shoes. It was well known that Wallis Simpson wore them but it would have been considered extremely daring for a middle class British girl to do the same. Mrs R., an MP's daughter from Gloucestershire, remembers

"two-coloured shoes, you know, they were known as co-respondent shoes, everyone knew that. I mean you wouldn't dream of them. Or if you did, you were not quite our class dear, which was, NQOCD. Isn't that awful? That was said sometimes."

From: Keeping Up Appearances: Fashion and Class Between The Wars by Catherine Horwood.

relaxing new year with family

hunka hunka

From news.com.au:
A WOMAN who allegedly stabbed her partner overnight after he repeatedly played an Elvis Presley song will face a West Australian court today. The woman will appear in a magistrate's court in Northam, 97km north east of Perth, charged with unlawful wounding, WA police said.
Officers will allege the woman stabbed her 35-year-old partner with a pair of scissors during an argument over him playing Burning Love over and over again.
The man was treated at Northam hospital for lacerations to his head, back and legs, police said.

The song, recorded in 1972, reached No 2 on the US charts and contains the lyrics:
"The flames are reaching my body. Please won't you help me. I feel like I'm slipping away. It's hard to breath. And my chest is a-heaving ?"

The song's chorus is:
"I'm burning a hole where I lay.
"Cause your kisses lift me higher.
"Like the sweet song of a choir.
"You light my morning sky.
"With burning love"

see me, hear me, huh? pardon?

One of my fellow bloggers, Pete Townshend, has warned music fans against potential hearing damage caused by headphones as portable players become more popular. Pete has a blogspot blog here, where he is serialising his novella The Boy Who Heard Music. The bit below on hearing is taken from his diary which is on this site.

29 Dec 2005
But today, this very morning, after a night in the studio trying to crack a difficult song demo, I wake up realizing again - reminding myself, and feeling the need to remind the world - that my own particular kind of damage was caused by using earphones in the recording studio, not playing loud on stage. My ears are ringing, loudly. This rarely happens after a live show, unless the Who play a small club. This is a peculiar hazard of the recording studio.The point I'm making is that it is not live sound that causes hearing damage. Earphones do the most damage.

In a studio there are often accidental buzzes, shrieks and poor connections that cause temporary high level sounds. Playing drums with earphones on is probably a form of insanity I think, all those gunshots, so much louder than a real gunshot, but how else can a drummer hear the other musicians? When I work solo now I often avoid using a drummer, simply to keep the overall sound levels lower. Also, one might have to work for several hours to perfect a studio performance. As the work progresses, the ears shut down and one needs a higher volume. If you stop to rest your ears (and you need to do so for at least 36 hours to do any good) you lose the current performance. It is a tough call.

I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal proponents deaf. It takes time, but it happens. This is, I suppose, no worse than being a sports person or dancer who knows they have a limited working span, and their body will suffer. The rewards are great - money, fame, adulation and a real sense of self-worth and achievement. But music is a calling for life. You can write it when you're deaf, but you can't hear it or perform it.

Last night, I was working with a piece of music that depended on me finding a correlation between the harmonic clusters in a piece composed using a computer - rather electronic in nature - and the overtones of a normal acoustic piano. With my hearing rolling off severely now at around three or four kiloherz, I don't have much luck with high harmonics or piano overtones (I can still hear speech OK). Needless to say, I didn't finish what I started. I drift back to the familiar tools of acoustic guitar and piano with my experimental tail between my legs.

If you watch the movie currently playing on TowserTV, the Who performing at Irvine in August 2000, you will see John Entwistle attempt to play his grand bass solo on the song Five Fifteen. You may find yourself wondering why such a fluid, expressive and accomplished player should continually drift out of time with the drummer (Zak Starkey). It happened because John couldn't hear properly. John still gives an astounding display, but he rarely stayed in time in that solo.

Hearing loss is a terrible thing because it cannot be repaired. If you use an iPod or anything like it, or your child uses one, you MAY be OK. It may only be studio earphones that cause bad damage. I only have long experience of the studio side of things (though I've listened to music for pleasure on earphones for years, long before the Walkman was introduced). But my intuition tells me there is terrible trouble ahead. The computer is now central to our world. If downloading has a real downside it may not be the fact that musicians will get their music stolen - in truth, they appear quite ready to give it away for nothing. The downside may be that on our computers - for privacy, for respect to family and co-workers, and for convenience - we use earphones at almost every stage of interaction with sound.

I am forced to continue to take my time in the recording studio. Those 36 hour hearing rests are infuriating now that a tour is announced, frustrating and agonizing, but compulsory.

van morrison tells all

In a rare interview with the NME in 1989, journalist Sean O' Hagan asked Van Morrison the following question:

"Have you ever read anything about yourself or your music that was valid or illuminating?"

The answer he received was a blunt

"No."

the effect of electricity on music

I'm excited and sad.

Excited because one of my interests, "the effect of electricity on music" is the subject, and the title, of an 8 part radio series from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation called The Wire. It's on ABC Radio National, on The Night Air at 8.30pm on Sundays, Part one repeated Friday at 9.35pm, Part Two repeated Saturday at midnight.

I'm sad because although I heard the first episode last week, it was in the car, and the ABC haven't made it available for download. I'm sad because I'll also be away next time it is on and won't be able to record it.

Last week's Episode 1– Hallo, Hallo reflected on how electricity has changed the way we think of the human voice, the way we communicate sound to large groups of people, and the way we now take for granted that sound is something that can be preserved, stored and heard again.

Although the programs themselves are not available The Wire site has the background, playlists and the complete interviews, some over an hour long (unfortunately in Real Player format), on which the programs are based as well as links to resources such as Fessenden and Marconi: Their Differing Technologies.

roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF

A lane, garbage truck, car that needs time to start in lane, Cast Iron Balcony, Barista, AGB, boynton, Gummo, wbb, plus someone claiming to be Nabs. Real bloody characters all.

Talk turns to the good old days, dial up, text, irc, newsgroups.. [I wanted to up the ante and go way back with talk of acoustic couplers, punch cards and an Osborne Luggable but I had a sneaking suspicion Gummo might trump me]

A nice start to xmas.

From the geek love book:

Roses are #FF0000,
Violets are #0000FF
all of my base,
are belong to you

you learn something everyday

When Elektra released Too Fast for Love, it was a disaster. The priority for the label was an Australian band called Cold Chisel, and everybody in the promotions department was intent on making them the next big thing. I happened to be listening in on a conference call when I heard a regional promotions man say to the head of the radio department, "Listen, I've got a station in Denver and another in Colorado Springs that just added Motley Crue. They're not interested in Cold Chisel, but I'll keep working on them"

Tom Zutaut, Manager of Motley Crue, from THE DIRT: Motley Crue. Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band. With Neil Strauss.

zimmy. to the white phone: london's calling for you

Bob has been doing the Clash's "London Calling" at his last London concerts.

Via Dylan Daily

gummo starts festive season catering

me - I reckon it's the hydroponic parsley