BL: Why do you only have a part-time job?
DS: I have other jobs but they are sporadic and somtimes I don't get paid.
BL: What are the job titles of these 'other jobs'?
DS: Writer, freelance music journalist, arts reviewer, columnist, magazine editor, portrait model and twitterer.
BL: Do you think you should be doing that? I don't understand how being a twit is a job.
DS: Well you just have to write very short sentences then press publish.
BL: What do you mean writer?
DS: I write things.
BL: Like books?
DS: Yes, I have a manuscript in progress.
BL: Where do you write this 'manuscript'?
DS: In my bedroom but sometimes I need to walk around or sit in a cafe and see if that helps.
BL: I see. What about portrait model? How do you do that?
DS: That's easy, you just have to sit very still and sometimes have knitting needles in your hair.
BL: Why do you do that?
DS: The artist thinks I'm interesting looking and offered to pay me money.
BL: No, I meant the knitting needles.
DS: I'm not sure really, I think she likes painting them.
BL: I see. What about music journalist? What does that entail?
DS: I go see bands and then write about them.
BL: Do you mean rock music? In pubs?
DS: Yes. Rock music. In pubs.
BL: I see. What about magazine edior?
DS: I am the editor of a new independent magzine.
BL: What is your income from editing the magazine?
DS: Nothing yet, it's my magazine and we haven't launched issue #1 yet. It's possible that it may not earn any money.
BL: How many hours a week do you work on the magazine?
DS: About sixty.
BL: Why do you do that?
DS: Well the magazine isn't going to edit itself.
BL: I see. So what you are telling me is that you work one hundred hours a week, get paid for twenty hours a week and sometime for a couple of hours on top of that, sporadically. Your workplaces include your house, pubs, artist studio, the footpath and cafes.
DS: Yes.
BL: I see. Are you married?
DS: No.
BL: We will not be able to process your application at this time. It is more usual in these cases for a person like you to have a husband earning a reliable income.
DS: But..
BL: You might like to think about getting a proper job.
DS: I don't think...
BL: In fact you might like to think about what you are doing in general.
DS: It's not your...
BL: Sometimes a person has to go out and make an effort to fit in and have more normal activities otherwise ....
DS: [hangs up phone, turns on kettle, has a lovely cup of tea and a little sit down]
Dive dive dive
Most of the time I am imagining I am the captain of a submarine on an Antarctic mission. The rest of the time I am being insanely jealous of Geoff Lemon and his unimaginary Antarctic adventures, damn you to hell Geoff Lemon, all the way to hell.
Pass me my safari slippers I'm feeling zoological
There was definitely a looming sense of pressure to feel moved and come up with something profound to say when coming face to face with all the animals of the world but I think I'd rather hit it from a different angle. Visiting Taronga Zoological Park has confirmed my long held suspicion that I would be an excellent person for a jungle safari scientist to marry.
In the day he would go off in a jeep to shoot lions, tigers or gorillas with dart guns. In the morning I would ride my horse across the plains. After lunch I would retire to our library to work on my manuscript. We would wire messages to each in morse code. In the evenings we would listen to jungle noises and drink gin with tonic. Tomorrow I will write to Taronga Zoological Park and ask them to add this information to their guide books.
In the day he would go off in a jeep to shoot lions, tigers or gorillas with dart guns. In the morning I would ride my horse across the plains. After lunch I would retire to our library to work on my manuscript. We would wire messages to each in morse code. In the evenings we would listen to jungle noises and drink gin with tonic. Tomorrow I will write to Taronga Zoological Park and ask them to add this information to their guide books.
I want you, we want you, they want you, so why don't you?
PAN magazine wants your submissions of poetry, short fiction or essays for issue #2.
More information on the PAN website.
More information on the PAN website.
Take me down to testosterone city
If there is a god he was man-shaped and multiple and standing at the bar. The Duke of Edinburgh is a tidal pub towed by the almighty whim of the Enmore Theatre booker. Tonight it was Jane's Addiction, I didn't have a ticket, I wasn't the least interested in that band until I ran smack bang into the wall-to-wall testosterone factory filling every inch of space at The Duke.
The joint was crammed with men, real men. Craggity rock'n'roll semi-drunk testosterone-fueled men. Hallelujah. There was so much testosterone in there I think I got an erection, I certainly had the urge to wee standing up on a fence post before making rough Cowboy punch-love.
My friend, let's call her K2, didn't seem at all impresed, if anything she showed regulation level annoyance at our local once again being disturbed by a one-night-only fan crowd but I think she was just showing her age. K2 is young, young enough to follow an indie boy across a room with one secretly interested eye. I couldn't care less about indie boys, for a start they're boys and all they care about is their hair. I don't know when this Peter Pan fad became de rigueur for all male humans under thirty but I am the fuck sick of it. Grow up, organise your shelves, invest in cologne for occasional use and for goodness sake get a tea pot and learn how to provide for yourself. Growing tomatoes in pots and thinking about what you might cook to take to Christmas lunch could also help.
I still don't like Jane's Addiction but I just might become a fan of their fans because like I said, if there is a god he was man-shaped and multiple and standing at the bar.
The joint was crammed with men, real men. Craggity rock'n'roll semi-drunk testosterone-fueled men. Hallelujah. There was so much testosterone in there I think I got an erection, I certainly had the urge to wee standing up on a fence post before making rough Cowboy punch-love.
My friend, let's call her K2, didn't seem at all impresed, if anything she showed regulation level annoyance at our local once again being disturbed by a one-night-only fan crowd but I think she was just showing her age. K2 is young, young enough to follow an indie boy across a room with one secretly interested eye. I couldn't care less about indie boys, for a start they're boys and all they care about is their hair. I don't know when this Peter Pan fad became de rigueur for all male humans under thirty but I am the fuck sick of it. Grow up, organise your shelves, invest in cologne for occasional use and for goodness sake get a tea pot and learn how to provide for yourself. Growing tomatoes in pots and thinking about what you might cook to take to Christmas lunch could also help.
I still don't like Jane's Addiction but I just might become a fan of their fans because like I said, if there is a god he was man-shaped and multiple and standing at the bar.
Everyone needs a hero
My big wet writers' crush on Mark Mordue continues. I'd like to have a drink with this man. I'd like to pour whiskey down my throat and just listen to him for a while. Mordue's essay 'Towards Love: another vision of The Road' needs to be read, now.
It's on
And so it has begun. David Young and I will both be reviewing The Drones at The Annandale in a grudge match gig review challenge.
Yawntastic
Oh why don't you just bore me until I am dead. The boring thing I am talking about here is a review of The Holy Soul and The Kill Devil Hills. 'Respectful applause', I mean is that really something you want to read in a gig review?
Here's the part where I start making sense. The reviewer, David Young, clearly knows how to put a sentence together. He has a fluid journalistic style but his review is boring to read. Boring. Come on David Young this music is wild, this gig was transcendent in places and raucous in others. I walked around pretending to be a gunslinger for three full days after this gig, surely you can do better than 'respectful applause'.
The reason that music journalism has gone to hell in this country is because music journalists need to lift their game, I'm not excluding myself from this. Consider this a challenge. David Young if you happen upon this post contact me. I've got a proposition for you and it goes a little something like this. Let's coordinate reviewing the same gig. I challenge you to a 'review off'.
Here's the part where I start making sense. The reviewer, David Young, clearly knows how to put a sentence together. He has a fluid journalistic style but his review is boring to read. Boring. Come on David Young this music is wild, this gig was transcendent in places and raucous in others. I walked around pretending to be a gunslinger for three full days after this gig, surely you can do better than 'respectful applause'.
The reason that music journalism has gone to hell in this country is because music journalists need to lift their game, I'm not excluding myself from this. Consider this a challenge. David Young if you happen upon this post contact me. I've got a proposition for you and it goes a little something like this. Let's coordinate reviewing the same gig. I challenge you to a 'review off'.
Sandwich yelling gives way to more generalised slouching or let me explain about Radio Man
Radio Man happened upon Spencer and I sitting in one of our usual cafes drinking our usual coffees. I didn't notice that he was drunk until he had stopped for a quick chat, left and then come back again saying that he wanted to explain. His explanation was that his band went to Japan this morning, for a gig. I was trying to work out if that was possible given that it was still morning. I was developing a theory about the possibility of time travel as a freak occurrence when he said he'd been in the lounge and not heard the boarding announcement. He missed the flight. Tomorrow morning he's headed back to the airport for take two. He will land just in time to make the gig but in the meantime instead of drinking on a plane he's going to be drinking at home and pretending that he's on a plane. Seems like a fine plan to me. Maybe tomorrow I'm going to pretend to be on a plane.
And now for my newest genre - album review revenge
If I have to write album reviews then I am going to use them for revenge. Payback's a bitch. Sure they could say the review is poorly written and critically nonsensical but, you know, that's kind of how I roll.
Saturday - Ocean Colour Scene
Critically, you could say Ocean Colour Scene are not obviously doing anything musically wrong, it’s just that they have no taste or respect for genuine artistic endeavours. I do not like any part of this album. I don’t ever want to hear it again. I will never go and see this band play live, I will never recommend them for anything other than being shot into space and I sincerely wish they would stop stealing melodies.
Continue reading...
End Times - Eels
I used to know a man who wanted to be this album, he turned out to be a jerk. Some albums you have to turn yourself down to listen to. Some albums have an inbuilt pointed device that silences you so the music can take over. This album does not.
Continue reading...
Saturday - Ocean Colour Scene
Critically, you could say Ocean Colour Scene are not obviously doing anything musically wrong, it’s just that they have no taste or respect for genuine artistic endeavours. I do not like any part of this album. I don’t ever want to hear it again. I will never go and see this band play live, I will never recommend them for anything other than being shot into space and I sincerely wish they would stop stealing melodies.
Continue reading...
End Times - Eels
I used to know a man who wanted to be this album, he turned out to be a jerk. Some albums you have to turn yourself down to listen to. Some albums have an inbuilt pointed device that silences you so the music can take over. This album does not.
Continue reading...
I told you, don't make me walk like a gunslinger
It's no secret I've always wanted to be a cowboy. People tell me I'll never be a cowboy wearing floral dresses and drinking cups of tea but I'm pretty sure there's more to it than outfits and refreshments...
Don't make me walk like a gunslinger
It was one of those big old country pubs, two stories high and wrapped in iron lace. Somebody thought to paint the pressed tin ceiling a pearlescent cream and I can't say the effect was unpleasant. It seems like forever since I drove South through the high scrub and all that sedimentary rock until I found the ocean in a new place. I didn't see much of the ocean last night, everything was obscured by fog and the rain that turned itself from high to low then back up again.
Spencer picked me up in his big old car, it was full of friends, with beer. We drank beer (except for Spencer), ate chocolate bars, sang along to the stereo. There's nothing quite like a road trip.
I walked in out of the rain lugging a bass guitar in a hard case. I ran straight into Brendon Humphries, the singer from The Kill Devil Hills. He held out his hand and introduced himself, it was a small conversation but I was struck by something odd. It seemed to me that he was kind and open, unguarded in a genuine sort of way. It might be ten thousand years since I have met a person who will just stand like that on the floor and hold out their hand to greet a stranger. Maybe living in the city does have its downside.
I've seen the Kill Devil Hills before, even reviewed them but this gig was by far the best. The crowd was older, more sedate, satisfied to sit at their tables taking long swallows of beer while the band stood up on the stage. For part of the show I moved outside to the long verandah. I sat on an old leather couch watching the torrential rain pour over the ocean while the sound moved through the windows behind me. I'm thinking that moment might have been ideal.
I've written about The Kill Devil Hills before, I think I said there's something of the horizon in their music and I'm not about to change my mind now. Everybody needs a bit of horizon projected by a band of hillbilly pirates once in a while. If you're in the mountains today head up to Hotel Gearin, buy yourself beer, shake the rain out of your hair and just listen. The band will do everything else.
He says that he's tired of singing this song but I don't think I'm tired of listening to him sing it. It's not fair but if I had my way drummer Steve Gibson will be singing 'Drinking Too Much' as often as possible until the day he dies.
Spencer picked me up in his big old car, it was full of friends, with beer. We drank beer (except for Spencer), ate chocolate bars, sang along to the stereo. There's nothing quite like a road trip.
I walked in out of the rain lugging a bass guitar in a hard case. I ran straight into Brendon Humphries, the singer from The Kill Devil Hills. He held out his hand and introduced himself, it was a small conversation but I was struck by something odd. It seemed to me that he was kind and open, unguarded in a genuine sort of way. It might be ten thousand years since I have met a person who will just stand like that on the floor and hold out their hand to greet a stranger. Maybe living in the city does have its downside.
I've seen the Kill Devil Hills before, even reviewed them but this gig was by far the best. The crowd was older, more sedate, satisfied to sit at their tables taking long swallows of beer while the band stood up on the stage. For part of the show I moved outside to the long verandah. I sat on an old leather couch watching the torrential rain pour over the ocean while the sound moved through the windows behind me. I'm thinking that moment might have been ideal.
I've written about The Kill Devil Hills before, I think I said there's something of the horizon in their music and I'm not about to change my mind now. Everybody needs a bit of horizon projected by a band of hillbilly pirates once in a while. If you're in the mountains today head up to Hotel Gearin, buy yourself beer, shake the rain out of your hair and just listen. The band will do everything else.
He says that he's tired of singing this song but I don't think I'm tired of listening to him sing it. It's not fair but if I had my way drummer Steve Gibson will be singing 'Drinking Too Much' as often as possible until the day he dies.
Oh you know, just walking around a little before undressing in a surprise disco
After we got kicked out of The Duke, well politely told by Victor that the beer garden was shutting and to please move inside, I was all set to walk home but Spencer, Skywalker and The French One had other plans. As we walked past The Enmore I wanted to explain to Spencer that I was tired and drunk and needed to go home but the only thing I could manage to say was 'I am too drunk to have this block of cheese in my handbag. Do you think it will be all right?' Spencer rarely looks baffled but he was approaching something quite like it as he enquired as to why I had a block of cheese in my handbag. I wanted to explain how the aging process of cheese effects lactose levels but all I could think of was that I had bought it at the same time as black shoelaces, a box of matches and a roll-on deodorant and that a very tall man had been in front of me in the queue for the checkout. Once I might have diligently explained all of these things but I have decided to cultivate an air of mystery.
It's been seven hours and sixteen days, since my bedroom light became possessed by a poltergeist. The light works when it wants to, flashes on and off when it wants to and sometimes doesn't work at all. I didn't really mind until I came home drunk with a block of cheese in my handbag and found myself undressing inside a surprise disco.
There were other strange parts to my day, free Grolsch at an art gallery, free review copy of Avatar, free chocolate sorbet in Newtown, spending five hours arranging and rearranging the articles for issue #1 of PAN magazine and of course being interviewed by a journalist for Cleo magazine. It can't all be just swanning around drunk with cheese.
It's been seven hours and sixteen days, since my bedroom light became possessed by a poltergeist. The light works when it wants to, flashes on and off when it wants to and sometimes doesn't work at all. I didn't really mind until I came home drunk with a block of cheese in my handbag and found myself undressing inside a surprise disco.
There were other strange parts to my day, free Grolsch at an art gallery, free review copy of Avatar, free chocolate sorbet in Newtown, spending five hours arranging and rearranging the articles for issue #1 of PAN magazine and of course being interviewed by a journalist for Cleo magazine. It can't all be just swanning around drunk with cheese.
When you go down Dixon don't order a special wife
We ordered the Special Wife Cake because it was called Special Wife Cake. Madam Squeeze tore it carefully in half, pausing mid operation to ensure the halves were even in size. The cake was tiny, flat and round like a raised biscuit made of pastry but in the centre something was lurking. At first glance the cake appeared to be filled with reconstituted apple-flavoured squid or half-dried superglue but it tasted much worse than either of those two things combined.
We tried turning it into a game, animal, mineral or vegetable but my mouth would not decipher the taste. The pastry flaked but tasted short and emitted a malodorous vapour detectable only once mastication had commenced. Madam Squeeze tried dipping her half in jasmine tea but claimed it did not in any way improve the flavour. I tried leaning back in my plastic chair and smoking a cigarette but that also had no effect.
I almost made it through my half of the Special Wife Cake, almost but not quite. Three bites worth of cake lay listless on the white square plate on the table between us. It felt important to me that we finish the cake because of its special and possibly mystical name. Try as I might I could not finish my half. Madam Squeeze, in an act of selfless bravery, attempted to finish my half of the cake but could not in the end stomach it.
I'm not sure that I want to be anyone's special wife but as I walked away that minuscule piece of cake taunted me, saying 'This will be the reason you rattle through the world alone'. Madam Squeeze asked me 'Who do you want to believe, rational thought or the imagined voice of an undelicious cake?' I said 'rational thought' but I was thinking 'cake'.
We tried turning it into a game, animal, mineral or vegetable but my mouth would not decipher the taste. The pastry flaked but tasted short and emitted a malodorous vapour detectable only once mastication had commenced. Madam Squeeze tried dipping her half in jasmine tea but claimed it did not in any way improve the flavour. I tried leaning back in my plastic chair and smoking a cigarette but that also had no effect.
I almost made it through my half of the Special Wife Cake, almost but not quite. Three bites worth of cake lay listless on the white square plate on the table between us. It felt important to me that we finish the cake because of its special and possibly mystical name. Try as I might I could not finish my half. Madam Squeeze, in an act of selfless bravery, attempted to finish my half of the cake but could not in the end stomach it.
I'm not sure that I want to be anyone's special wife but as I walked away that minuscule piece of cake taunted me, saying 'This will be the reason you rattle through the world alone'. Madam Squeeze asked me 'Who do you want to believe, rational thought or the imagined voice of an undelicious cake?' I said 'rational thought' but I was thinking 'cake'.
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.
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
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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 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.
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.
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.
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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....
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.
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.
M Frankenstein I think I understand now
Plunging my head face first into the over salted ocean in pursuit of the mysteries of the deep I felt a keen sense of comradeship with all those who went before me. Captain Nemo, that 70's guy on a boat with that bikini woman, Captain Zissou, Horatio Hornblower, Charles Darwin. There was a strong and undeniable sense of cartographical freedom until I saw a fish up close and magnified by the miracle of my plastic mask. Mr Frankenstein himself could not have recoiled with as much shock and panic from the very creature he gave his health and sanity to create as I did from the very fish I gave three minutes idle flippering to with idea of having a bit of a look at it.
There are two lessons here:
1. Fish are more alarming than you think they are.
2. If you create a monster it might kill everyone you love and cause you to travel across ice floes until you perish in the company of a vain and idiotic Englishman who is clearly in love with his sister.
There are two lessons here:
1. Fish are more alarming than you think they are.
2. If you create a monster it might kill everyone you love and cause you to travel across ice floes until you perish in the company of a vain and idiotic Englishman who is clearly in love with his sister.
I should be more sure about these things
A list of things I think my mother likes:
Tea - Kwazulu and Yorkshire Gold, never green or mint. She will not take Earl Grey but I do not think she is opposed to Lady Grey.
Custard
Lamb chops
Christmas pudding
Sausages from Bathurst
Blueberries
Chopping wood - with a small axe
Knitting - but not sewing together the finished pieces
Remembering her mother - without revealing how she feels about the memory
Reading novels - never poetry
Knowing how long it takes her to walk up the big hill
Hanging clean washing on the line - I am unsure but it seems to me as though there is a satisfaction in this chore more than in the others
Tea - Kwazulu and Yorkshire Gold, never green or mint. She will not take Earl Grey but I do not think she is opposed to Lady Grey.
Custard
Lamb chops
Christmas pudding
Sausages from Bathurst
Blueberries
Chopping wood - with a small axe
Knitting - but not sewing together the finished pieces
Remembering her mother - without revealing how she feels about the memory
Reading novels - never poetry
Knowing how long it takes her to walk up the big hill
Hanging clean washing on the line - I am unsure but it seems to me as though there is a satisfaction in this chore more than in the others
It is not a daydream if it happens at night
I had my back against the garden wall but was slipping downwards with gravity and the knowledge of useless feet. Three times I had raised the pistol and shot myself in the heart only my heart kept jumping out of the way so I now had all these holes in my chest for no good reason at all. I telephoned for an ambulance thinking these people will know where the heart is. These people can help me.
Terra Nullius
I have a strong desire to set fire to my house just so I can see which single one of my stupid objects will be found unburned and intact, lying face down in the ashes.
Excuse my poor photography
Artist Alice Amsel floats my boat. I suppose that's why we'll be running a profile on her in issue #1 of PAN magazine this year. Don't worry, a real photographer was on hand to take photos for PAN.
Come on Mister, sure I can write a short story and do all of that other stuff all at once, just let me finish this paragraph then I'll come and talk to you about it
You know those days when you wake up with a head full of sentences but the day, the whole day, has been indentured to a person that pays you to do something other than write? Those days are not ideal days.
So much better now that some of the lame has been deleted
I have found a new pleasure in deleting albums from my itunes. Gone, gone, gone are the boring, the lame, the unamusingly stupid and poor old Ginsberg who these days does nothing but tire me.
A partial list of the deliberately departed:
Belle & Sebastian
Tunng
Wilco
Ginsberg
Joe Frank
Christian Fennesz
Tim Hecker
Triosk
Jose Gonzalez
Micah P Hinson
Mogwai
Jens Lekman
Death Cab For Cutie
Dragonforce
Mountain Goat
Mazarin
A partial list of those who were almost deleted:
Throbbing Gristle
Super Numeri
Art Brut
The Triffids
Cat Power
Ray LaMontagne
Seu George
A partial list of the deliberately departed:
Belle & Sebastian
Tunng
Wilco
Ginsberg
Joe Frank
Christian Fennesz
Tim Hecker
Triosk
Jose Gonzalez
Micah P Hinson
Mogwai
Jens Lekman
Death Cab For Cutie
Dragonforce
Mountain Goat
Mazarin
A partial list of those who were almost deleted:
Throbbing Gristle
Super Numeri
Art Brut
The Triffids
Cat Power
Ray LaMontagne
Seu George
This will be my year of deliberate misrepresentation, where there is livestock there is dead stock
There is an overwhelming desire to express without being understood. Every night as I lay cursing the dark for not being dark enough the same thought enters my head. I want to yell at people in French, or Latin or Estonian. I do not want my words to be understood, I want only the fact that I am speaking them with force and conviction to be conveyed.
I have not been saying what I mean. I have said 'yes' when I meant no, 'no' when I meant yes and 'that is fine' when I meant you are a bloody drongo and I think you just cracked the marble-filled jam jar I've been using for a heart. I haven't been lying on purpose, for most of last year I was remarkably honest until I hit November and performed an involuntary retreat into polite responses and expected conversation and then of course I picked up my own jam jar and smashed it into whatever I could find and the marbles got loose and rolled into my eye sockets and lodged under my tongue.
I spent the first hour of the new year lying drunk in a gutter in Chippendale listening to all the happy chatter happen around me. It wasn't a bad place to be, almost everyone was there, sitting, standing or lying in the road. I could have sat up and joined in the conversation but I found that I was comfortable with my hip on the road, my head on my handbag on the curb, content with my thoughts distinctly my own.
I have been philosophical about my insides. Last year I developed a grudging respect for the vast team of doctors assigned to examine my brain. I even formed a fondness for the young neurologist who delighted in hitting various parts of me with his tiny and delicate hammer. I grew used to the robotic hum of scanners and lying very still in that mechanical tube while nurses counted down the remaining seconds. I made good use of all my limbs, making long lists of things I wanted to do before my gross motor skills took an irreversible turn for the worse and investing in ramps became a priority. I started drumming, moved a piano into the library and impersonated Little Richard, I painted scores of terrible paintings and sketched every small object I could see. I walked everywhere, took up running until a tendon gave out and put a stop to the whole idea and I danced in houses, on streets, in bars, on my bed and I climbed no less than seven separate trees. When the official results came in and I was in fact given the mostly all clear I wasn't really surprised, despite the lists and the activities I had been unable to properly imagine a world where I couldn't walk or wave my arms about on a whim.
This year I have been reexamining my notes on bioethics from law school but they have been unable to explain how I could be so happy to swallow pills to play god but so distressed at the idea of the small life snuffing its own self out for no reason at all.
This year will be my year of deliberate interpersonal misrepresentation. If I meet you on the street I am going to tell you I like tomato juice and I am happy to be here. I am going to be impersonal and polite and offer vague and general descriptions of streetscapes and landscapes and a flat pack idea of being pleased to meet someone like you. I am not going to tell you how I feel. There will of course be exceptions, the people who already know what I'm about, people like Spencer and Gemma and the cast of usual suspects and the hard black letters of written words. I suppose I'm talking about acquaintances and strangers and the inevitable people at parties and gigs, I suppose this a broader affair.
Dear World,
Due to the behaviour of your chosen representatives I find I have no inclination to further our friendship. There is no room for new friends in here. My replacement marble-filled-jam-jar heart has shattered and that was the final object I had saved for installing in the ticking part that should beat. These rattling disconsolate marbles now control my in-flight interaction system and they only steady into a gentle rolling flicker in the presence of genuine friends. I am neither hopeless nor depressed. I am simply drawing a line in your stupid sand. This will be your year of leaving me alone.
Regards
Dale R Slamma
I have not been saying what I mean. I have said 'yes' when I meant no, 'no' when I meant yes and 'that is fine' when I meant you are a bloody drongo and I think you just cracked the marble-filled jam jar I've been using for a heart. I haven't been lying on purpose, for most of last year I was remarkably honest until I hit November and performed an involuntary retreat into polite responses and expected conversation and then of course I picked up my own jam jar and smashed it into whatever I could find and the marbles got loose and rolled into my eye sockets and lodged under my tongue.
I spent the first hour of the new year lying drunk in a gutter in Chippendale listening to all the happy chatter happen around me. It wasn't a bad place to be, almost everyone was there, sitting, standing or lying in the road. I could have sat up and joined in the conversation but I found that I was comfortable with my hip on the road, my head on my handbag on the curb, content with my thoughts distinctly my own.
I have been philosophical about my insides. Last year I developed a grudging respect for the vast team of doctors assigned to examine my brain. I even formed a fondness for the young neurologist who delighted in hitting various parts of me with his tiny and delicate hammer. I grew used to the robotic hum of scanners and lying very still in that mechanical tube while nurses counted down the remaining seconds. I made good use of all my limbs, making long lists of things I wanted to do before my gross motor skills took an irreversible turn for the worse and investing in ramps became a priority. I started drumming, moved a piano into the library and impersonated Little Richard, I painted scores of terrible paintings and sketched every small object I could see. I walked everywhere, took up running until a tendon gave out and put a stop to the whole idea and I danced in houses, on streets, in bars, on my bed and I climbed no less than seven separate trees. When the official results came in and I was in fact given the mostly all clear I wasn't really surprised, despite the lists and the activities I had been unable to properly imagine a world where I couldn't walk or wave my arms about on a whim.
This year I have been reexamining my notes on bioethics from law school but they have been unable to explain how I could be so happy to swallow pills to play god but so distressed at the idea of the small life snuffing its own self out for no reason at all.
This year will be my year of deliberate interpersonal misrepresentation. If I meet you on the street I am going to tell you I like tomato juice and I am happy to be here. I am going to be impersonal and polite and offer vague and general descriptions of streetscapes and landscapes and a flat pack idea of being pleased to meet someone like you. I am not going to tell you how I feel. There will of course be exceptions, the people who already know what I'm about, people like Spencer and Gemma and the cast of usual suspects and the hard black letters of written words. I suppose I'm talking about acquaintances and strangers and the inevitable people at parties and gigs, I suppose this a broader affair.
Dear World,
Due to the behaviour of your chosen representatives I find I have no inclination to further our friendship. There is no room for new friends in here. My replacement marble-filled-jam-jar heart has shattered and that was the final object I had saved for installing in the ticking part that should beat. These rattling disconsolate marbles now control my in-flight interaction system and they only steady into a gentle rolling flicker in the presence of genuine friends. I am neither hopeless nor depressed. I am simply drawing a line in your stupid sand. This will be your year of leaving me alone.
Regards
Dale R Slamma
One porter, one cider and one beer or Christmas Eve in the graveyard
I don't know what he was singing but everything stopped, the bells, the chatter, the wind in the grass. Everything except the backlit clouds stopped a moment to hear his song. We were sitting in the graveyard drinking, we had about twelve people, two guitars and one tambourine, we had beer bottles in brown paper bags and a thirst for howling out songs. It wasn't until I decided I had better go home, after Madam Squeeze and I picked out our careful moonlit way through trees, over fallen grave stones and down a path towards the gate that I remembered there was such a thing as churches.
The big church near the graveyard gates was busting at the seams with the bespectacled and the solemn. We snuck into the vestibule as the congregation rose as one and began singing a slow and ancient song. I had grass stuck on my dress and tinsel sticking out of my hair. I was holding three empty bottles, one porter, one cider and one beer. The stench of cigarette butts coming out of the empty beer bottle would have knocked out a lesser mortal than me but I felt quite sure that while I was happy to sit an old grave and drink beer and sing I wasn't happy to leave the empty bottles there. The song was slow and ancient and though they must have numbered in the hundreds I could hear above their voices that good old racket coming from the back of the graveyard where Spencer was perched on a headstone leading his own small congregation in song.
I sat at the edge of the circle in the graveyard tonight, lying on the grass to sip cider and puff smoke at the impossibly fast clouds moving across skies, trees and moon. Spencer and Madam Squeeze were there, Madam sitting comfortably beside me, Spencer perching up high strumming out songs. The rest of them howled, sang and rattled with their accustomed abandon, some of them waltzing like the possessed in a clearing. I'm not sure what I was doing, you can tell just by looking at me that I'm more careful with my heart, mind and songs. Some us of talked about ritual and the good urge for joining together in grief, joy, love and song. I wasn't quite ready to howl at the moon as the others do but I can tell you one thing, I'd rather be drinking on a gravestone than don my spectacles and stand in a congregation miming the art of music to what should have been a moving and ancient hymn but had instead the eerie effect of guilt, obligation, ironed trousers and isolation.
The big church near the graveyard gates was busting at the seams with the bespectacled and the solemn. We snuck into the vestibule as the congregation rose as one and began singing a slow and ancient song. I had grass stuck on my dress and tinsel sticking out of my hair. I was holding three empty bottles, one porter, one cider and one beer. The stench of cigarette butts coming out of the empty beer bottle would have knocked out a lesser mortal than me but I felt quite sure that while I was happy to sit an old grave and drink beer and sing I wasn't happy to leave the empty bottles there. The song was slow and ancient and though they must have numbered in the hundreds I could hear above their voices that good old racket coming from the back of the graveyard where Spencer was perched on a headstone leading his own small congregation in song.
I sat at the edge of the circle in the graveyard tonight, lying on the grass to sip cider and puff smoke at the impossibly fast clouds moving across skies, trees and moon. Spencer and Madam Squeeze were there, Madam sitting comfortably beside me, Spencer perching up high strumming out songs. The rest of them howled, sang and rattled with their accustomed abandon, some of them waltzing like the possessed in a clearing. I'm not sure what I was doing, you can tell just by looking at me that I'm more careful with my heart, mind and songs. Some us of talked about ritual and the good urge for joining together in grief, joy, love and song. I wasn't quite ready to howl at the moon as the others do but I can tell you one thing, I'd rather be drinking on a gravestone than don my spectacles and stand in a congregation miming the art of music to what should have been a moving and ancient hymn but had instead the eerie effect of guilt, obligation, ironed trousers and isolation.
Some ideas are stupider than others
You can traipse all over this city wearing dark glasses and a green dress and still not find what you are looking for. I suppose it was hormonal but all the people on the bus made me want to weep, this was not listed as a possible side effect.
Yet another author
I was talking to this author at the bar, he was saying "people think who you are when you talk to people and eat food and clean your house, how you behave is who you are but it's not. Who you are is on the page."
I nodded politely until he wandered off. I felt like saying 'buddy you got no idea, I'm not even standing here, this thing you're looking at and talking to and is a fucking mirage, the only place I am at all is on the page, especially right now, in this moment, listening to you.'
I nodded politely until he wandered off. I felt like saying 'buddy you got no idea, I'm not even standing here, this thing you're looking at and talking to and is a fucking mirage, the only place I am at all is on the page, especially right now, in this moment, listening to you.'
Apple Tragedy in a game of I suppose you know who wrote this
So on the seventh day
The serpent rested,
God came up to him.
"I've invented a new game," he said.
The serpent stared in surprise
At this interloper.
But God said: "You see this apple?"
I squeeze it and look-cider."
The serpent had a good drink
And curled up into a question mark.
Adam drank and said: "Be my god."
Eve drank and opened her legs
And called to the cockeyed serpent
And gave him a wild time.
God ran and told Adam
Who in drunken rage tried to hang himself in the orchard.
The serpent tried to explain, crying "Stop"
But drink was splitting his syllable.
And Eve started screeching: "Rape! Rape!"
And stamping on his head.
Now whenever the snake appears she screeches
"Here it comes again! Help! O Help!"
Then Adam smashes a chair on his head,
And God says: "I am well pleased"
And everything goes to hell.
The serpent rested,
God came up to him.
"I've invented a new game," he said.
The serpent stared in surprise
At this interloper.
But God said: "You see this apple?"
I squeeze it and look-cider."
The serpent had a good drink
And curled up into a question mark.
Adam drank and said: "Be my god."
Eve drank and opened her legs
And called to the cockeyed serpent
And gave him a wild time.
God ran and told Adam
Who in drunken rage tried to hang himself in the orchard.
The serpent tried to explain, crying "Stop"
But drink was splitting his syllable.
And Eve started screeching: "Rape! Rape!"
And stamping on his head.
Now whenever the snake appears she screeches
"Here it comes again! Help! O Help!"
Then Adam smashes a chair on his head,
And God says: "I am well pleased"
And everything goes to hell.
It's not a final solution but it is nonetheless a solution
Sometimes there's only one solution and that's to hit the old man jazz scene at The Hero of Waterloo where I'm guaranteed to find Boli, a large group of old men in hats and some of that wandering jazz you only get to hear when the people playing it have been doing it for at least forty years.
Additional note - make that sixty years.
Additional note - make that sixty years.
Typewriter vs submarine
There's a very good reason for my radio silence, I think. Lord knows I've pissed off approximately most people I know at one point or another by writing about them. I sometimes do it without a second thought for their good opinion of me because words have always been more important. Everybody knows words are how I make maps of myself. There has been the odd exception where I care a great deal and go to lengths to unruffle, apologise or explain but ordinarily the words will win every internal battle and come out some way or another which is why right now I'm feeling kind of strange.
I have an almost unstoppable urge to turn typewriter and clatter this thing out one black letter at a time only the thing that is stopping me is powerful. This is alien territory like a mountain range without ridges or satellite pictures of the wrong planet beamed straight into my GPS. Gemma tells me the thing is called respect and this disturbs me not a little because always in the back of my head is the idea that I have a great deal of respect for the people in my life but Gemma is usually right when it comes to matters of my brain.
It seems this automatic decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. I'm going to dust off my imaginary submarine and take an ordinary plunge. I will navigate this situation, whatever it turns out to be, with my onboard human tools with no recourse to the atom splitting power of typing. There will be a calm echo bouncing off the shells of privacy and respect but don't misunderstand me, everything else I'm doing will be, as usual, subjected to my incessant reworking with pens.
I have an almost unstoppable urge to turn typewriter and clatter this thing out one black letter at a time only the thing that is stopping me is powerful. This is alien territory like a mountain range without ridges or satellite pictures of the wrong planet beamed straight into my GPS. Gemma tells me the thing is called respect and this disturbs me not a little because always in the back of my head is the idea that I have a great deal of respect for the people in my life but Gemma is usually right when it comes to matters of my brain.
It seems this automatic decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. I'm going to dust off my imaginary submarine and take an ordinary plunge. I will navigate this situation, whatever it turns out to be, with my onboard human tools with no recourse to the atom splitting power of typing. There will be a calm echo bouncing off the shells of privacy and respect but don't misunderstand me, everything else I'm doing will be, as usual, subjected to my incessant reworking with pens.
Let's think about this
It seems obvious to me. We should all be carrying this fact in our heads, solid as lead, to nod at once in a while if we stop suddenly in the kitchen clutching an unnecessary plate in our hands. There was a time in this city when grief welled greater than reason and there were masses gathering in halls to contact the dead.
I don't know how they carried the burden of uncertainty in tandem with the washing. I don't know how they swept floors and darned socks while all the men were missing and everywhere seemed empty. Growing sons should not be a source of fear but as they came of age they left on boats by the thousand. It was easier to feed a mouth than a memory until spiritualism came to Sydney.
I'm not saying I want to start contacting the departed but let's think about this and maybe try a little experiment. I'll keep you posted.
I don't know how they carried the burden of uncertainty in tandem with the washing. I don't know how they swept floors and darned socks while all the men were missing and everywhere seemed empty. Growing sons should not be a source of fear but as they came of age they left on boats by the thousand. It was easier to feed a mouth than a memory until spiritualism came to Sydney.
I'm not saying I want to start contacting the departed but let's think about this and maybe try a little experiment. I'll keep you posted.
Just like a house but in a shoebox
He was leaning back in his chair holding his arms out to the describe the length of a shoebox while I sipped solemnly at my snake bite. He said "the way to a man's heart is through a diorama" and then he nodded as if to close the matter but I wouldn't let it drop. If this is in fact true why are there not millions of people all over the world sitting bent over tables busy with scissors, paint and glue? I suppose there is the possibility that he is right and all this time I had no idea which would of course explain quite a few things. I have never once made a man a diorama.
An absence of disaster and other further doings of Dale R Slamma
So all this time you thought it couldn't be done. You were convinced that one could not shampoo one's hair whilst jumping up and down and dancing in the shower without some terrible crashing consequence occurring. You were wrong.
Hello happiness my old friend
It is possible to be diffused with happiness in a plain and simple way. Essential and humble as a small and favourite teapot taken down from a high shelf and held between two cupped palms.
I think I need a brain wash
I have decided to give my brain this one chance to explain to me why it woke up at 7:45am this morning, a Sunday morning, after we (my brain and I) went to bed after 3am. I'm wide awake, ready to throw on shoes and run out into the world but I'm not going to. Rational thought tells me I need to rest and drink approximately seven thousand litres of water.
It was never my intention to drink about a bottle of champagne before going to the Excelsior last night but the waitstaff just kept cruising past. There were round and shining silver trays seamlessly floating past my elbow approximately every three minutes with free drinks. I was starving and the food was much slower to circulate than the wine. I was crammed into The Argyle with five million people dressed in sailor suits, formation shark unitards or Hawaiian shirts. The Argyle is one of those divine buildings where the floorboards seem like they're constantly being crossed by the ghosts of convicts but of course they've turned it into a hideous bar for shiny people. It was one of those work Christmas parties that have a budget so large it's frightening. I'm more used to the annual staff lunch where all five staff at a non-profit arts organisation go across the road to a pub and choose the cheapest things off the menu and share one bottle of wine, then go back to work in the afternoon. I wasn't ready for the shock of five million gyrating people in full fancy dress throwing back as much booze as is humanly possible.
I left after an hour and discovered, as I walked along the quay that it wasn't the green harbour swaying in waltz time but me. I made it up three flights of stairs, onto a train and then up the hill to The Excelsior. I arrived with a lilt, a pocket full of miniature plastic sea creatures and a plan. Each miniature plastic sea creature was assigned to a specific person based on strict criteria that made a hell of a lot of sense at the time. One seahorse for Daisy, one shark for Spencer, another shark for Madam Squeeze and the sparkly lilac seahorse for Halogen. Spencer, Madam Squeeze and Daisy hadn't arrived yet so I presented a bemused Halogen with his seahorse then sat down and proceeded to talk such nonsense that several people offered to go and fetch me a glass of water. Three hours and seven glasses of water later I was decidedly more sober and beginning to regret my decision to present Halogen with a lilac sparkly plastic seahorse, Spencer, Madam Squeeze and Daisy are of course more used to my ways and present no problems in the area of miniature plastic sea creature presentation regret.
After I had achieved an ideal state of kind of sobered up I found myself having a real good time. Spencer's band was magnificent, as always (seriously people if you don't own a copy of Damn You, Ra yet then I don't know what you are doing) I had one of those nights where conversation is easy, interesting and free. The music did it's job of providing a reason to breathe. I keep rediscovering how live music builds my bones, kind of courses through me like temporary architecture holding up my ceiling.
It was never my intention to drink about a bottle of champagne before going to the Excelsior last night but the waitstaff just kept cruising past. There were round and shining silver trays seamlessly floating past my elbow approximately every three minutes with free drinks. I was starving and the food was much slower to circulate than the wine. I was crammed into The Argyle with five million people dressed in sailor suits, formation shark unitards or Hawaiian shirts. The Argyle is one of those divine buildings where the floorboards seem like they're constantly being crossed by the ghosts of convicts but of course they've turned it into a hideous bar for shiny people. It was one of those work Christmas parties that have a budget so large it's frightening. I'm more used to the annual staff lunch where all five staff at a non-profit arts organisation go across the road to a pub and choose the cheapest things off the menu and share one bottle of wine, then go back to work in the afternoon. I wasn't ready for the shock of five million gyrating people in full fancy dress throwing back as much booze as is humanly possible.
I left after an hour and discovered, as I walked along the quay that it wasn't the green harbour swaying in waltz time but me. I made it up three flights of stairs, onto a train and then up the hill to The Excelsior. I arrived with a lilt, a pocket full of miniature plastic sea creatures and a plan. Each miniature plastic sea creature was assigned to a specific person based on strict criteria that made a hell of a lot of sense at the time. One seahorse for Daisy, one shark for Spencer, another shark for Madam Squeeze and the sparkly lilac seahorse for Halogen. Spencer, Madam Squeeze and Daisy hadn't arrived yet so I presented a bemused Halogen with his seahorse then sat down and proceeded to talk such nonsense that several people offered to go and fetch me a glass of water. Three hours and seven glasses of water later I was decidedly more sober and beginning to regret my decision to present Halogen with a lilac sparkly plastic seahorse, Spencer, Madam Squeeze and Daisy are of course more used to my ways and present no problems in the area of miniature plastic sea creature presentation regret.
After I had achieved an ideal state of kind of sobered up I found myself having a real good time. Spencer's band was magnificent, as always (seriously people if you don't own a copy of Damn You, Ra yet then I don't know what you are doing) I had one of those nights where conversation is easy, interesting and free. The music did it's job of providing a reason to breathe. I keep rediscovering how live music builds my bones, kind of courses through me like temporary architecture holding up my ceiling.
Sometimes a drummer just wants to play guitar
Well it's close to 3am. I drank a bottle of champagne in a place where everyone except me was dressed like a sailor. I went across town to see some bands, the bands were grand but what sticks out in my mind is when a small and hideously drunk man calling himself Stanley crawled into my lap and said I shouldn't waste any time then pointed at his friend and winked at me. Now is the time to feel stupid, when I am home and still wearing red lipstick and everybody knows about the crush I have on Stanley's friend. Yep, time to feel stupid.
I wish him well and hope that everything he's worked for comes true
Somebody's paying me to check references for them so I'm sitting in a cubicle two days a week telephoning strangers and talking about other strangers but I'm not saying I don't like it. I like the top down snapshots I'm getting of these people. I like a life rated out of ten for punctuality, reliability, overall performance and their ability to meet sales targets augmented with strange and rambling personal anecdotes. Most of the applicants are young so I end up talking to the owner of the petrol station where they worked in uni holidays, or the president of the sports association where they volunteer as a junior coach. The people I'm telephoning can't wait to have their say, can't wait to rattle off the ten versions of how they're holding hope cupped in their hands for the smart young person they paid to wash cars or set up a straight line of orange cones. I feel like I'm getting a bird's eye view of something here, something I haven't seen before.
The Walk On By
The Walk On By appeared from nowhere. One day I’d never heard of them, and then suddenly they were everywhere. After only months on the Sydney scene they have lined up three international shows. I’ve seen them once before, appearing at in-store at Repressed Records with The Holy Soul. It was early afternoon and the sheer noise of them pushed me out of the record shop and into the street where I watched like a child with my face pressed against the window.
Descending into the depths of Club 77, armed with earplugs, I was determined to sit through any level of noise and see for myself what everyone is talking about. The Walk On By throw out an enormous sound. I snuck around the side of the stage to make sure that I had counted correctly. There are indeed only three of them. Leah Keramea is spectacular on drums. Her head hangs forwards leaving visible a short curtain of hair, the tied waist of a black trench coat and her elbows moving casually as though of their own accord. It is tempting to be jealous of the casual way she smacks out rhythm as though it was easy.
Dave Bourke is almost disturbingly energetic on bass. He seems to have mastered a precise climbing sort of bass line that walks up your bones. If I had any criticism it would be that he somehow sounds too precise, too clean and assured in the middle of such a crashing wall of sound. There was a brief pause while the band switched instruments, Keramea walking to the front swapping her drums for a guitar. She has the kind of presence that makes a crowd lean forward. I have to admit it was the highlight of the set when she started screaming ‘glass you fucking cunt’ into the microphone.
An angry American began walking around holding up a sign “Start a mosh?” There were no takers so in between songs she started yelling at the crowd to stop just standing there watching the band and nodding their heads. The crowd yelled back ‘fuck off’. I guess nobody told her about Sydney and standing around nodding your head. She then borrowed red lipstick and a mirror from some poor woman in the crowd. The American smeared her mouth red until she resembled nothing but a clown.
Frontman Soloman Barbar certainly looks the part all dressed in black with his wild and miraculously vertical hair, pointed moustache and one of those white neck-ties that you tie like a ribbon into a bow. Barbar has a tough job standing in the front with the aim of pulling focus amidst the kind of sound that crashes. It would be easy to forget that in terms of gigs this is a baby band taking its first steps. The Walk On By sound interesting enough to get away with breaking oceans of sound over my earplugged head. They would benefit from a more confident and assured vocal delivery but like I said, this is a new band beginning the hard task of earning their stripes playing in dives and late night bars. I’m all for watching them work their way up to playing in better venues, I think its going to be an interesting ride.
First published on LiveGuide
Descending into the depths of Club 77, armed with earplugs, I was determined to sit through any level of noise and see for myself what everyone is talking about. The Walk On By throw out an enormous sound. I snuck around the side of the stage to make sure that I had counted correctly. There are indeed only three of them. Leah Keramea is spectacular on drums. Her head hangs forwards leaving visible a short curtain of hair, the tied waist of a black trench coat and her elbows moving casually as though of their own accord. It is tempting to be jealous of the casual way she smacks out rhythm as though it was easy.
Dave Bourke is almost disturbingly energetic on bass. He seems to have mastered a precise climbing sort of bass line that walks up your bones. If I had any criticism it would be that he somehow sounds too precise, too clean and assured in the middle of such a crashing wall of sound. There was a brief pause while the band switched instruments, Keramea walking to the front swapping her drums for a guitar. She has the kind of presence that makes a crowd lean forward. I have to admit it was the highlight of the set when she started screaming ‘glass you fucking cunt’ into the microphone.
An angry American began walking around holding up a sign “Start a mosh?” There were no takers so in between songs she started yelling at the crowd to stop just standing there watching the band and nodding their heads. The crowd yelled back ‘fuck off’. I guess nobody told her about Sydney and standing around nodding your head. She then borrowed red lipstick and a mirror from some poor woman in the crowd. The American smeared her mouth red until she resembled nothing but a clown.
Frontman Soloman Barbar certainly looks the part all dressed in black with his wild and miraculously vertical hair, pointed moustache and one of those white neck-ties that you tie like a ribbon into a bow. Barbar has a tough job standing in the front with the aim of pulling focus amidst the kind of sound that crashes. It would be easy to forget that in terms of gigs this is a baby band taking its first steps. The Walk On By sound interesting enough to get away with breaking oceans of sound over my earplugged head. They would benefit from a more confident and assured vocal delivery but like I said, this is a new band beginning the hard task of earning their stripes playing in dives and late night bars. I’m all for watching them work their way up to playing in better venues, I think its going to be an interesting ride.
First published on LiveGuide
Pump the brakes bitch
Waking up with a mouth full of half-chewed liquorice pieces at 3 in the morning was not my finest moment. I was still wearing my dress but I had mercifully kicked off my shoes before laying down on top of the covers. I think I undertook one of those weaving walks home where I was throwing one foot out in front of the other with a casual disregard for boundaries such as straight lines or footpaths. It was just me and the cockroaches on Enmore Rd. I used to cringe at the sight of the fat black things scuttling audibly everywhere I went but like the aeroplanes and the out of town visitors it's now just one of those Newtown facts sliding through my brain like GPS.
Turn your snare off
If it's a clay shape then I don't want it, not even if you pushed it into being with aching fingers. Hold out your hands for the cold and moist lump, fold your fingers around the heavy weight and walk silently away.
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