I will fight you on the beaches

In 2007 I performed a Home Hitler Self-Test by attempting to grow a moustache and burn books in the fireplace in the library. Tomorrow I will perform a Home Churchill Self-Test by eating breakfast in bed, running the nation's war efforts from the bathtub, taking a nice walk, drinking cocktails before, during and after dinner before retiring to bed chamber by 11pm. Wish me luck.

Some days are like houses

Some projects are long term, the kind that unfold as you age and become as essential as breathing. This project, my Safe As Houses project is like that. It us unhurried but permanent. Two days ago I remembered a house I once tried to forget, except for the part where Elliot and I got a horse truck stuck on the front lawn. We climbed things holding six-foot crowbars, we were sure this would help.

Two days ago Ben Rumble had a story about this house published in THE GROUP online magazine and I remembered that it is not easy to forget.

And now back to the studio

Well I don't suppose it's everyday you get to run off into studio 2 at Albert's and play Harry Vanda's guitar whilst drinking one of Daniel Johnston's mountain dews. Words about this, to come later, for now please enjoy my terrible photography.

Above is Daniel Johnston and Old Man River doing live recording thinger in next studio. Think was being filmed by JJJ.

Above is Spence recording guitar for Belle Phoenix. Didn't want to turn on the flash and distract him.

Above is Daniel Johnston and Belle Phoenix with Spencer in background.

 Above is me playing Harry Vanda's guitar with Madam Squeeze having a nice cup of tea. Harry Vanda, from The Easy Beats, donated the guitar to the studio.

 

 

Spencer recording some more.

Let's get drunk and drive or The Holy Soul's narrow escape from a suicide ride

There’s no turning back on a suicide ride. David Thomas is an arsehole and a genius. Sydney band The Holy Soul already knew this. Bassist Sam Worrad has been hassling the Sydney Festival for years to invite David Thomas to perform, this year it finally happened. The Holy Soul saw their chance and offered to be Thomas’s backing band in a side show.

The Holy Soul are either monumentally brave or recklessly suicidal.

 Thomas has been terrifying audiences, musicians and readers since with his band Pere Ubu since 1975. Last night he terrified me, petrified me to the point of unbearable tension. I wanted to flee but I was pinned like a butterfly in a point of light. Thomas berated The Holy Soul, stopped the song ‘Vacuum In My Head’ three times before abandoning it, made them play ‘Clouds Of You’ all the way through, twice and stared so menacingly at Worrad during ‘Perfume’ that I thought he might cry, or spontaneously combust. Thomas was so fierce that even I, sitting in the upstairs gallery, was coursing with unwanted adrenalin.

Control, in the hands of a genius, yields magnificent results. The Holy Soul were electric, all molecules in their beings irreversibly honed on Thomas’s every sound, look and gesture. I have never witnessed four people focus with such intensity. Thomas picked up his miniature accordion for ‘Bus Called Happiness’, sound pulsed through the air as though the universe hung, note for note, suspended on this song and the will of one man. This performance was memorable not only for the terror but the beauty.

Pere Ubu, Thomas’s band, have been described as avant garage and the ‘world’s only expressionist Rock’n’Roll band’, but that was by Thomas himself.  Sure it sounds like Rock’n’Roll but there is more to it than that. Calling Pere Ubu Rock’n’Roll is like calling the sun a bit warm.

Last year The Holy Soul’s second album Damn You, Ra was released to critical acclaim. Dropping their whole sound and repertoire to work with Thomas is one of the things that makes this band great, and brave, but it wasn’t the first time. As well as working with David Thomas they have previously shed their songs to improvise with the legendary Damo Suzuki. Thomas understood the power and genius of his backing band. He released their full might in ‘30 Seconds Over Tokyo’, he stepped away from the mic as The Holy Soul let fly. He stood there motionless, with his head bowed and his right arm paused half way through lifting a glass to his lips, just this once relinquishing control as the noise unfolded around him.

Intense was the word of the night, after it was done the audience staggered out onto Enmore Rd. They looked like newly released hostages. They shuffled in silence forming small circles for safety and then it began. It was the kind of debriefing I’d expect after the apocalypse or the funeral of a person on the cusp of adulthood. One woman, with her hand on her heart said, ‘It was gruesome and beautiful but it was also so human. He spoke some kind of truth up there but I don’t think I could have taken any more.’ And we all agreed that it was magnificent but we were glad it was over.

Photo by Lyndal Irons © 2010

Review also appears in RHUM.

Turn it down, turn it off or here is my press kit

I am listening to 'End Times' by Eels and I don't want to be. My great desire for silence has resurfaced, when I need to listen more than ever.

A wave of stupidity must have been awash in my brain when I agreed to review albums as well as gigs. I can roll out a gig review as good as any hack but my terrible secret is I never write about the music. Being able to write about music is a crucial part of reviewing an album, or so it seems from where I sit, in my bedroom with a blank piece of paper and a half chewed-to-hell ballpoint pen I stole from a man with terrible underpants. The other problem is the editor at RHUM telling me I'm brilliant. It's just like the time Spencer's thesis supervisor told him he was a genius so he hung up his thinking hat and found his laurels real comfortable, at least for a little while. Nobody should ever tell me I'm brilliant, it's guaranteed to ruin everything I attempt for three weeks.

In addition to reviewing 'End Times' I also have to review 'Saturday' by Ocean Colour Scene and David Thomas with The Holy Soul but what I desire is silence. It should be one of those days when I focus on nothing except the movement of light across the floor and the rhythmic breathing of the sleeping cat.

The press kit for 'End Times' says:

The eighth EELS studio album, END TIMES, is the sound of an artist growing older in uncertain times. An artist who has lost his great love while struggling with his faith in an increasingly hostile world teetering on self-destruction.

Yawn. I call that waking up in the morning. I call that making the decision to put on clean underpants and hurtle myself out into the day. I call that the everyday of everyday. Maybe I should make a press kit:


Dale Slamma is the sound of an artist growing older in uncertain times. An artist who has lost her great love. An artist who is without faith in an increasingly hostile world teetering on self-destruction. Dale Slamma continues to put on clean underpants and hurtle out into the world despite her conviction that it is probably a mistake to do so. She has contributed to one studio album and has an urgent rising desire for silence.
fun fun fun
Slamma is a mono Beach Boys record
her heart breaks

like surf.

We don't really like what you do. We don't think anyone ever will.

 Everywhere tarmac and concrete, not one flower in sight. I don't know why they call it Darlinghurst, doesn't look like anyone's darling to me. I was standing on a hillside looking down on a crowd of two hundred people so that put an end my theory about the world going flat again. There were so many people he sang in the street like a busker.

People around were smiling or crying or turning to each other and saying 'I didn't think it would be this moving', as he made it to the corner with his little green plastic folder tucked under his left arm. He shuffles more than walks, awkward body awkwardly controlled. *He sang two songs, made a hundred people cry then walked off around the corner and was gone.

It was one of those stupid Sydney moments where the heat lifts moment to moment as the storm starts breaking into a sunset. Nobody does a sunset storm at a gutter party like Sydney but I didn't really care. A friend was sharing her big old bottle of beer with me, I had just met Everett True but I could have been listening to white noise on my ipod for all it mattered to me. I suppose I was moved in that whatever is inhabiting me today took off its hat and bowed its head when it first saw Daniel Johnston shuffle up there in front everyone Newtown, Surry Hills and Chippendale could spare tonight. I suppose that was me sitting in The Falconer eating dinner and drinking wine and writing in a notebook but I could have been watching a movie of me on my ipod for all I care. I suppose it is good that in the movie of me eating dinner I chose to eat somewhere that looks atmospheric.  I would apologise for not making sense and for not being poetic about it if I cared, but I don't. Go borrow a book from the library.

*Daniel Johnston.

The teaches of Peaches

The skill of Peaches is transcending personal musical taste so that what you thought you liked no longer matters. In the face of a Peaches show there’s only room in your head for her, only her and whatever she is doing right in front of you, which could be almost anything. 

Continue reading...

He might just be a rascal but he sure can run on the spot

I love having seven jobs either that or I'm just overtired due to Big (stupid) Day Out and Peaches. I'm now writing for RHUM as well as Liveguide, PAN etc.


My Big (stupid) Day Out

I felt like an egg in an outdoor paint commercial, if I stood in the sun for one more second I was going to drop to the ground and fry like somebody’s breakfast. The heat made the whole day feel mediated and distant, even standing in the moshpit at The Mars Volta I felt like I was watching a band on television from the inside of an oven.

Continue reading....

They even flush

Today is my birthday. Today I received a letter from the organisers of the Big Day Out informing me that I am a guest of the festival and if I go the guest booth and get a special wrist band I will be able to access the guests of the festival bar where there are 'real toilets'.

Real toilets! My what a special birthday present that was. I can safely say I have never before in my life received a letter telling me I am allowed to access real toilets but wait there was another first. I was also the proud recipient of a special birthday cake made entirely out of chocolate mousse. A whole cake made out of dairy products that I can not digest. Another first but to be fair The Spatula was not aware of the contents of the cake, she thought it was a cake cake and not a mousse pretending to be a cake.

Today was supposed to be my unbirthday. I was determined to spend the day in solitary reflection. For the most part I managed. I trawled bookshops, saw a movie, walked up and down King St admiring the blue cloudlessness and general brightness of the upper atmosphere. One small coffee stop with Spencer where I announced my contentedness with my decision to spend a day moving from moment to moment with no reference points except my own desire for a cup of tea or to look at a flower or think about the concept of zero or the Australian Antarctic Division.

The Peachettes rather ignored my instructions and cooked a roast dinner, proffered presents and presented a cake, it was a small and unadorned affair on the Peach Deck. It was kind of them to do so but it did rather put a stop to the whole unbirthday project.