SLAMMATOWN - What Jack? Quaoub Part Two

'It’s a cheap art. It doesn’t have to be the stage for profound mutterings. It can just be grunting and moaning, for dancing. It has room for that. I like trying to get something special out of something that doesn’t need it.'

I convinced Quaoub, less formally known as Jack Elias, to let me interview him in his home. This proved to be a giant mistake. Jack lives in an actual warehouse in the heart of the Inner West, he’s managed to make himself one of those homes that are both stylish and unkempt. The kind of home that sends me insane with instant jealousy. He even has one of those vintage record players that close up and turn into a tiny suitcase.

Jack has a coffee machine unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. To make coffee he has to pull down a long lever and stand there sort of hanging off it while the coffee drips out. While he was making me my first coffee his talk turned backwards and slightly bitter, he insisted this tainted the coffee saying, ‘this was made with hate and not love’. He threw the coffee down the sink and made me a new one, with love.

I asked him why he made music. He put down his coffee cup and stared straight at me, blowing cigarette smoke across the wide table in plumes as he answered.

“It’s a cheap art. It doesn’t have to be the stage for profound mutterings. It can just be grunting and moaning, for dancing. It has room for that. I like trying to get something special out of something that doesn’t need it.”

I wasn’t expecting an answer like that so I tried moving on to another question, hoping he’d do what most people do and look at the table or into their cup, maybe stare at their hands a little but I was hoping in vain. Jack answered his questions directly, straight at my face, without hesitation, until all the coffee and his directness had me feeling uneasy.

Jack insists that he has a poor memory but I think he’s lying, again he spoke without hesitation as he described the first moment music became his.

“I remember listening to an Auburn radio station at a bus stop, Auburn closes early, it is desolate at night. I grew up in Auburn and Bankstown, radio was the only access to cultures outside of mine. I was utterly shocked when I heard Nick Cave for the first time and I don’t say shocked lightly. It was quite an uncomfortable thing because it showed me what I didn’t know. It showed me I was culturally inadequate. I remember thinking I’ve not heard anything like this before. I remember thinking how scary this is, how scared I was, but I loved it.”

If you have a quick look at the photo of Jack on Quaoub’s Myspace page you’ll be looking at something that is Jack but doesn’t resemble him at all. Jack squirmed a little when I asked why he chose that photo of himself to plaster on his Myspace and Facebook pages.

“I am quite at odds with my own self-image. I deliberately pick images which I don’t immediately relate to. My self-awareness and my vanity chose to make sure I don’t look too good. My way of dealing with it is denying it, denying self-image.

I stayed for hours, longer than I thought was polite, I couldn’t help it. Talking with Jack is one of the good rewards for going to all that trouble of keeping yourself alive, day after day after day.

First published on RHUM...

Oy you lot! Get some Emily Dickinson up ya

Sure everybody is amazing posting all your 'song of the day's on Fspazbook. Songs are great, obviously, but why in the hell is no one doing Poem of The Day?  I will start you off, here is an old and out of copyright one, still good though.

Ample make this bed. Make this bed with awe; In it wait till judgment break Excellent and fair. Be its mattress straight, Be its pillow round; Let no sunrise' yellow noise Interrupt this ground.
Emily Dickinson

Arse about

First of all this. I'm tired, I'm drunk, but I did not fuck my shit up. For this may we be truly thankful. Secondly, there was talk at a party tonight, between musicians, of the reviews I have written about them. Some of them seemed mildly pleased, one of them was sort of quite pleased, Spencer bless his stupid heart, doesn't give a crap one way or the other which is good considering the amount of times I've typed his name but there was one man talking about the bad review I gave him two years ago.

He was sitting by the fire and shaking his head a little from side to side like a fast forward ship in the wind, telling a small circle how he'd been playing in bands for fifteen years and I am the only person who ever singled him out for some bad news. He said it with a fond sort of pride and patted me on the shoulder in an absent-minded manner.

I didn't know him when I wrote that review, not that it would have changed my words in any way. It was one sentence.

'The not-Simon guitarist has a habit of muddying up the sound, someone give that man a slide, some pedals and the instructions to not play the same thing as Simon at the same time.'

It would be stupid to say I have never thought about something I wrote being remembered by the person I wrote it about, because I have thought about it. I suppose I just didn't think that one sentence would make such an impact as to have become a story to tell at parties, which is a little stupid when I think about the number of sentences I remember that have been about me.

The most obvious sentences to remember are the ones uttered by men as they beat their retreat or run screaming into the night but there are none so memorable as this.


'You're just like Sarah Blasko, the only thing you are good for is fucking.'

There are several problems with that sentence as far I'm concerned. The man in question has never met Sarah Blasko, I have and I can assure you we are not at all similar. Now that that is out of the way, let's talk about the fucking. The man in question fucked like it was the 80's. I can assure you there are better decades to fuck like. The last and most crucial point might be the part where fucking is the only thing I am good for. As might be expected I have a tendency to disagree with the man on that matter.

But let's get back to the party. For a moment they were doing everything but thanking me for writing about them, that is just fucking stupid because it is the wrong way around. I mean that's really arse about. I'm the one silent in the corner with a notebook and a pen, I'm the one sitting still and solitary making no more noise than the good clacking of keys while they are standing bodily on broad pedestals taking thought out of language and turning it into sound. They're using their arms and legs and lungs to make something so indefinable that already, before I hit the middle, I know I'm going to need a lifetime to write about this.

This all might be making more sense if I wasn't drunk but at this point you'd need an army and seven helicopters with coffee-filled water canons to do anything about that problem. I'm trying to think of one moment to describe. One sentence to illuminate the meaning of music, but this is where Science wins with the battle with Art. Contrary to popular belief most writers are completely fucking useless when they are drunk. You need brain to be working on the same team as fingers to write anything in the same solar system as good. There's not going to be one sentence here that illuminates the meaning of music for me, not tonight. I'll be satisfied if I say this - we have words because we wanted to tell each other what was happening over there or when someone wasn't looking, to steer clear of tigers and say 'that snake over there bites'. We don't have a reason for music the same way we don't have a real reason for air.

Wait, no, that's a big stupid lie. I'm not at all satisfied with saying that. I'll probably think of something better but first  I'm either going brush my teeth, eat a licorice allsort or vomit.

Spencer lodges complaint number 42367262868275083270 but this time he might have a point

Spencer once said to me 'never trust a writer, they know how to make things sound just how you want to hear them'. I paused my milkshake drinking just long enough to stick my tongue out at him but then on Sunday he lodged a complaint and this time I think he might have a point.

Sunday afternoon, walking down Enmore Rd on the way to the Changing Lanes Festival, I told Spencer all about my Saturday night. Later that afternoon I relayed the same story to Abdullah and some of the Psychonannies over coffee. Spencer protested at the telling of the story, saying 'it's all in the telling, you wouldn't sound so good if you gave them the same version you gave me'.


Saturday night as told to Spencer:
DS: I had to go to my brother's girlfriend's birthday party at her parents' house. I didn't want to go because I was dead tired but I went, cause I like her.
S: How was it?
DS: Brother had some of that lemon stuff my crazy old relative makes then I got a lift home from a friend of the girlfriend's brother, which was nice.
S: Told you would end up having a good time.
DS: I hate Western Sydney but food was nice. I was starving. Free food is good but I hate trains. They are stupid. Do you think my hair looks stupid? [pauses to look at hair in reflection of shop window]
S: Not more stupid than normal. [rolls eyes] I had a $2.50 stick thing on a roll.
DS: Those are good. How was your gig last night?
S: All right I spose. What's this festival going to be like.
DS: Dunno. Don't want to go but the editor is kind of making me.


Saturday night as told to Abdullah and some of the Psychonannies:
DS: Last night I traveled West to a convict settlement and drank moonshine Limoncello at a party where most people were speaking French and sometimes Cajun.
PN's: You're always doing stuff like that.
DS: The food was amazing and I got a ride home from a 6'2'' racing car driver.
PN's:  Racing car driver!
DS: She was awesome and kind of beautiful. She's about six foot two and has long red hair that hangs to her waist. I got home in record time.
PN's: Is she single?
DS: Doubt it.
PN's: Are you going to Changing Lanes?
DS: Sure am, just picked up my media pass.

Changing Lanes In Newtown

Photograph by Ben Campbell

Got your hair slicked back or pushed forward? Got your tortoiseshell Ray Bans on? Good, now roll up the cuffs of your trousers cause it’s time to change lanes.

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Now I'm fucked

Somebody put a mountain range inside my head. I should have fallen over when the geography moved underneath me but as usual I sat on the edge of the bed and pondered.

SOOFyahn

You might think Sufjan Stevens is getting his Radiohead and Bjork on in The Age of Adz but you’d be wrong about that. The Age of Adz sounds precisely like Stevens is standing on a tall pile of everything he has already recorded. The strong melody and phrasing, struck through with symphonic arrangements and joyful cacophony of horns, from albums like Sufjan Stevens Invites You To: Come On Feel the Illinoise and Michigan are still here, they are just wrapped in a layer of beats, bleeps and squelches.


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SLAMMATOWN - What Jack? Quaoub Part One

The song sounded like a lilting heart, a real one disgusting with blood and necessary rhythm but there was an unidentifiable lightness to it as well. The melody came in slow and agonisingly low. I couldn’t follow the rhythms, they were organic and structured like the invisible inside of yourself no one else can see.

I don't know what he was singing but everything stopped, the bells, the chatter, wind in the grass. Everything except the backlit clouds stopped a moment to hear his song. It was dark and I couldn’t even make out his silhouette. I know it sounds like I’m always sitting out in a park or a graveyard at night but if you’re a Newtown local you’ll know it’s one of the best places to be.

It was six months before I figured out who was singing in the dark that night. His name is Jack Elias but he performs under the name Quaoub. I’ve got more than one problem with this man but we’ll talk about that later. He conducts himself with a disturbing kind of grace but I don’t think that’s one of the problems. There is grace in his words, movements and most prominently in his songs.

It’s rare that I’m struck so profoundly by a song the first time I hear it. I like to listen to things on repeat until the slow soak of sound unravels inside my head and begins to make sense. This song didn’t need making sense of. This song, for all its lilt and rhythm, had the force of a hammer.

He came and lay down in the grass near where I was sitting. We talked about ritual and meaning and ancestral sorrow. This is where my first problem began. I dislike meeting people that I wish to talk with again, it leaves me feeling hollow, meaningless and dead as the buried we were resting six feet above.

Now that I know who Jack is I am shameless in my quest to hear him play as often as possible. On another night, in another park, I was planning to drunkenly demand to hear him play. Spencer, my good and sage friend, advised me against this. To my delight Jack graciously confiscated a guitar from a nearby man and played songs he hoped I might like. No demanding was necessary.

A girl, some admirer of Spencer’s, rattled a tambourine to accompany Jack and his guitar. Her failure to make any sense of his rhythm whatsoever was more endearing than annoying but it was testament to the complexities of the music. At the conclusion of his small performance Jack smiled at the tambourine girl and told her she done well. He was laughing but we all melted a little because he meant it. Jack’s easy warmth makes it easy for all of us, even me, to feel at home with our own awkwardness and inadequacies.

First published on RHUM...

SLAMMATOWN - Girl Singers are no good

My friend Spencer is not so keen on what he calls 'girl singers'. I’ve been wondering about this for a while now, been wondering just what exactly is his problem? Now here's a little warning, this is all wild speculation.

I’ve got a theory that Spencer is less keen on 'girl singers' than 'boy singers' because he likes music to be yelling versions of his life back at him. He wants to be inside the song instead of just listening to it from the outside. But first here's a small amount of boring information.

Don't forget to read the rest of this by clicking on the link to RHUM!
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Better to befriend a Lemon than get bitter about his talent

Go read this post by Geoff Lemon because its so much better than what was in my head this evening. For those that are interested, this evening the contents of my head included wondering how to make a cake in the shape of myself, the amount of apples that Paul Simon might buy in one go and what is the most polite way to firmly refuse a man who has expressed a desire to wee either onto or inside of you.

Storage solutions will solve only the problem of storage

I have become confused by furniture. All of these years I have simply pushed around cupboards and drawers with all-day Tetris intent. It has never failed, not until three days after my most recent attempt. This time I have bruised all of my fingers and quite a high proportion of my toes, my record player described a perfect arc before landing upside down and in pieces. The very end of my bed has demonstrated why knots in wood become vulnerable points for anything and my typewriter will not come out of its case. There is one thing I have not moved but only because other people wear pajamas, this will make more sense in less than a minute.

It is quite difficult, I think, to enter into a whiskey-fueled state of rage and typing when I live somewhere called The Peach and when The Peach is populated by people who come home from working, cook food in the kitchen and wear pajamas in the most normal of ways. This is why the bottle of whiskey has not moved from where I placed it three weeks ago. I suspect most people would not like to enter into a whiskey-fueled state of rage and typing but by my calculations I make up only one 6,830,586,985th of most people, this is a startling figure, I should commence cloning operations at once. Statistics have never been my strong point but I feel certain if there was more than one of me it would be easier to throw pajamas to the wind and rage with whiskey and typewriters all through the night.

SLAMMATOWN: Don't worry he's not dead yet

I’ve been writing myself notes with a pen that plays the French National Anthem. This pen features flashing lights and has a miniature Eiffel Tower floating in glitter water. Ordinarily this is not the kind of pen I prefer but I’m making an exception because my Dad bought it for me in Paris. He also gave me pyjamas, a sleep mask and a miniature tube of toothpaste he got for free on the plane. My Dad is not very good with souvenirs but he does have his good points.


One of those good points is the element of surprise...

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I shot the cat with a water pistol because the sandwich was mine

You should have seen the sandwich I just ate. Magnificent! You could even say that this makes me científico sensacional, oh yes, I'm so good at spreading mustard science has fallen to its knees. It might not ever be able to stand again, I'm very sorry about that. I know some people like science or even use it for work, like rocket scientists, or cat scientists, or just plain old boring scientists with no rockets or cats.

SLAMMATOWN - This might be just a little familiar, sorry about that

 First I should tell you my house is named The Peach, it is moderate in size and temperature. I was stealing my fellow Peachette Grizelda's sample packet of Weet-Bix, terrible but true, with a crazed and starved look on my face and a jar of honey in my left hand when the horror first revealed itself. The Weet-Bix was alive! Hiding in the heart of each bick was a wriggling mass of tiny worms*. I've seen the tiny worms before but this is the first time I considered eating them.

You see I've reached a depraved place called 'shall I buy groceries or pay the rent?’.

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Lyndal Irons will sneak up on you

Photo of Madam Squeeze by Lyndal Irons

When I die I hope Lyndal takes photos at the funeral, they'll be awesome, like all her photos are, except for the one she sent me where I'm staring like a crazy lady, but I don't suppose that is her fault. I've sorted out someone to impersonate me at my funeral, next I'll make a mixtape. Maybe I'll wait a few years and see if any more good songs come out.

Click here to visit Lyndal's website.

A day in the life of Dale Slamma at her thankfully part-time job of corporate doom and oppression

I work.

I suffer.

SLAMMATOWN - No Guns For You

Four years ago two things happened, I moved to Sydney and my friend Spencer banned me from owning a gun. Spencer's announcement came out of the blue. We'd been sitting in his lounge room, which was on the front lawn at the time, drinking bad red wine and talking about nothing at all when he announced, 'out of all the people I know you are the one person who should never own a gun'.

Spencer's announcement puzzled me exceedingly. I have never wanted to buy a gun. I don't even know how to get a gun, apart obviously from joining Team Zissou on the Belafonte where all team members are supplied with uniforms, wetsuits and glocks.

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I always thought it would be time to move on when I stop wondering about something. I've stopped wondering about people before, cast them off as solved and useless puzzles but I'm beginning to suspect I might never stop wondering about some places. This afternoon when I was walking home from the thankfully part-time job of corporate doom and oppression I noticed an artist's interpretation of a planned upgrade at the Devonshire St entrance to the tunnel at Central. The artist signed his work and this started me wondering. Who is this man? I know his name is Robert Stewartson or Stewart Robertson or something like that but what kind of artist proudly signs their name to a painting of a planned staircase upgrade? I was going to find out and then I remembered the time I wrote a letter to an architect and the whole thing backfired. This time I'm going to hold back my wonderings, just a little.

I remember standing in the architecture section in the second hand part of Berkelouw Books, in Newtown, some time last year. I saw the same name written in at least fifty books,  I had an idea, did some research and sent the following letter. In an ideal world such letters would not be considered harassment but something else entirely.

Dear Robert Tuckwell,

I first imagined the idea of you upstairs in Berkelouw’s, Newtown. There were so many of your books that I thought you must be dead. You wrote your name in capital letters, deliberate marks more prominent on the downstroke, you did this in every single volume. I sat in a wooden chair and imagined your grey-haired children packing your books into boxes. One of them occasionally ran a finger down a familiar spine, the others repressed their conflicting emotions and pretended it was 3d tetris and thought of mostly of defrosting the freezers in their own crowded houses. One of them decided to stop trying IVF and leaked a single tear on to the front cover of an architectural magazine.

I piled as many volumes into my arms as I could before the weight of them toppled me into an elderly woman in search of engineering books on the subject of home-poured concrete. There are three known reasons for shedding so many beautiful books, death, late onset minimalism or the removal of oneself to a tiny flat in New York with nothing but a double bass, and the burning desire to become a backing bassist for a coffeehouse beat poet. Dear Robert Tuckwell that form of poetry has never captured my heart and this is why I have hoped, for three hours, that you were dead.

I bought one book, consigning the others to an uncertain fate. The engineer peered over the top of her book on music concrète as I returned the last volume to the top shelf without needing to stand on my toes.  My deceased and imagined Robert Tuckwell ghosted me down the warehouse stairs and the length of old King St. Do not suspect that I was not growing fond of him. He crooked his elbow and bid me hold steady his ancient arm as I stepped around the banjo busker who was masquerading today as an elderly homeless man. He raised his arm in greeting before remembering that he was in disguise.

 
Dear Robert Tuckwell I have inadvertently made a dent in the pristine cover of one of your former books and for this I am sorry. I suppose it would be more accurate to say that I have inadvertently made a dent in a book that was formerly yours. The endpages are elephant grey, inside there are pictures of white grand pianos in Uruguay, hammocks hung from trees in the British West Indies, and a bookcase on Providenciales Island. It is possible that you live on a street named after toothpaste or a formerly more popular word for noble wolf but I have not sent this letter to alarm you. It seems that you are alive. I hope that you are well and do not spend your afternoons as I do gazing at pictures of grand pianos and googling the imaginary dead.

It is best if I tell you immediately that Baudrillard has nothing to do with anything.

There seemed to be hundreds of books in the bookshop bearing the forthright blue felt-tip marks of your name. The man behind the cash register says that your books filled the entire back room of the bookshop when they first came in. I told him my theory that you had died or moved to New York but he was more in favour of a retirement story, I think that he forgot to tell me that he imagined you making room in your shelves for books about landmines and sailing. I am not quite sure what retired men do.

I found your work on the Internet. It would be better if I used words for this part.

An art museum made out of pink, white and yellow paper run through with shadows cast by a miniature artificial sun. I walked the walls and ceilings until I understood the gravity of the imagined. If I mapped and reduced the trails I leave as I cross and cross this city their bleached and condensed shape might resemble the museum as seen from above. I have maps that will answer your questions. I am not known for my ability to imagine architects or the possibility of confining and redefining matter into space. You have forced mastery over things such as bricks, sand and sunlight. I understand this is something they teach in universities. My desk lies in artificial shadow, light blocked by a drawing and the direction to lay bricks, uproot trees and lock panes of glass in channels made of wood. I might once have thought the word homemaker was something of an insult or a self-remedy for failure. This has revealed more than it should.

Dear Robert Tuckwell I am sorry if a report of your imagined death has disturbed you. It was my intention to convey more joy at the discovery of your life and to compliment your skills in wielding pens and folding paper. Such things should be more than ephemera. I imagine that your hands are steady as a surgeon’s and that you have one room dedicated to thinking only about light.

Yours sincerely,

DS

No call no show or dawn raising revolution without the need for a change of clothes

I'm taking this day prisoner, without consent. So much bound in the idea of asking, lunging only after a tipping downwards of the chin before raising it up again. I have grown weary with always waiting, harvesting courage with stupid intent for the asking. I will sit here in these pants and do as I will without wonder at the turning of courage into invasion. In the same way I'll take all the new kinds of acquired wisdom about toothpaste and the stupid kind of love being nonetheless a kind of love and run with them and three of my best pairs of scissors.

SLAMMATOWN - Tex Perkins and the unwashed floor

A sticky floor gives you something to hold on to, with your feet, when five drunk men knock you sideways as they muscle past carrying six beers each. It holds you, like a subterranean lover, enabling you to bend, wobble, flex and lean. Stuck fast you can hang on to your hard-won position, not too far from the bar, with a good view of the band. Everything will be beautiful but nothing lasts forever, when floors become too sticky two separate yet equally horrible disasters may occur.

Disaster One; feet stay put when the rest of you moves, embarrassingly bruising consequences ensue. Disaster Two; feet slip out of shoes, bare soles touch the raw horror of foul floor and convulsive shivers invade all modes of thought, forever. Here now is a sorry tale of how Disaster One defeated the universe and Tex Perkins was lost to me forever.

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Sometimes instant means the same as miracle

I have a coffee machine in my house, it has spider webs on it. I have a jar of instant coffee in my cupboard, it is almost empty. This information will become both more and less relevant once you read Vanessa Berry's most recent post on Vanessa Berry World.

More stupid than you can poke three simultaneous sticks at or Spencer pulls off the most ridiculous birthday idea ever or Spencervision Part I

Spencervision* saw us all reaching spectacular new heights on the peaks of Mt Stupid, but it was also kind of miraculous. I never had any doubt that the idea would work, just about everybody Spencer knows was already itching to write and perform a song about him, which is kind of odd when you think about it. What I didn't know was just how far some people would go, like me for instance.

Thinking it might be best to collaborate with someone I coerced The Walk On By into coming over and working on a song with me. Obviously The Rolling Stones were my first choice but they were all in hospital being reconstructed by German engineers so I settled on The Walk On By who are lovely, despite having an alarming fondness for yelling rude words loudly on stages all over Australia and Europe.

When it came time to actually perform the song I was starting to have a few second thoughts. The other contestants included members of The Holy Soul, The Laurels, Psychonanny and The Babyshakers, Quaoub, Madam Squeeze and about twelve times a crazy amount more. Adalita from Magic Dirt showed up and by that time things were getting a bit wild. Spike performed something he was calling a Mexican Rap entitled Gusolino Got Punched in the Eye-o and the non-Spencer members of The Holy Soul performed something akin to the Wu-Tang Clan, disguised as diamond pandas. Photographer Lyndal Irons installed an astonishing exhibition in the Spencer's lounge room title Spencervision: A photographic exhibition.

The Walk On By and I bravely took our places on the small stage, well I bravely took my place, the others are kind of used to it. The bass player kept pushing the microphone closer to my face which made me unhappy because I was hoping to become not only invisible to the eye but inaudible to the ear. We managed what turned out be an award-winning performance, thanks to Solomon, Leah and Dave being actual musicians despite having me as a temporary imposter in their band.

Spencer drunkenly donned a sombrero for the award ceremony which was just about as shambolic and raucous as an award ceremony can be. I proudly accepted a ballet trophy for coming second, Sol, Leah and Dave were decorated with lovely silver-coloured plastic medals. The overall winner was announced, Madam Squeeze, no surprises there, and then Spencer raised a fist in the air and screamed 'let's get fucked up'. I was deafened by the roar of the crowd, who most diligently and immediately began to follow Spencer's instructions.

The party pressed on into the night with an almost terrifying joyful abandon. Just after midnight there were three of us perched at the top of the stairs, we ventured up to go to the toilet but found ourselves unequal to the task of navigating back down the narrow stairway. Soon enough there were about twelve of us all in the same predicament. It is the first time I have ever waited in an 'after the toilet' line.

Spencer's huge and rambling house was filled to overflowing. Darkness didn't stand a chance against that kind of energetic light. They told themselves they came for all sorts of reasons, to witness the stupid songs, to take a chance to make fun of Spencer in song-form, to drink, dance or just stand in a joyful crowd of friends but I knew why they were there. They came because they love him, in whatever form that takes. Some of us have shared years in his good company, others meet him on King St for coffee every once in a while, some first saw him hollering into a microphone and thought 'who in the hell is that?', but all of us were united by the kind of love usually reserved for funerals. If Spencer ever has any doubts about his place in the world, if he ever catches himself in a moment of unexpected worry about falling into isolation, he can sit down, cross those long legs of his, and remember this night when all of those fears were silenced forever.


*Spencervision: A song for Spencer, you can see already how this might work, just imagine Eurovision on King St Newtown. Spencer decided to celebrate his birthday by judging songs written and performed in his honour. The rules were simple, the song had to be about either Spencer's awesomeness or an awesome Spencer-related topic.

A band made out of horses!

If Frankie magazine was a band it would sound like Band of Horses. I’ve never seen or heard anything so indie in my entire life. They were uplifting but ill-defined. Individual songs fell victim to an overriding feel and a wide sound that oscillated between being spacious and hideously overcrowded, with three guitars. They made a big hopeful golden noise that any hopeful melody didn’t stand a chance to hook up over the top of it, in the way that melodies do.

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Obviously am far too tired and important for writing stupid blog posts this weekend

Obviously.

Is it just me or does PJ Harvey look like an exaggerated Sandra Bullock?

Wonderfully ill

When the doctor said I was in fact ill and I would feel better in three weeks I nearly fainted with joy. There is nothing better than finding out that you are not crap at operating as a human and failing at the task of approaching each day with energy but are just a bit sick. Am wonderfully ill.

SLAMMATOWN - Any type of happiness will do

Any type of happiness will do, even the synthetic kind caused by Mexican stairwells and an old white car. The drum kit was a surprise. I'll admit it was the last thing I was expecting to see as the door opened and the light switched on but there it sat tom upon tom like it had always been purple and covered in polka dots. I declare drums to be the very best surprise present ever. My housemates have declared my drum kit to be the very worst thing ever but what would they know, they have no idea how it feels to crawl inside the spine of music.

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The burden of resting

I want to throw myself early each day into a fury of productivity but in the back of my mind, hoarded and loud as a stolen treasure, is this, 'I must rest, I am tired, I must rest'. This is not an unfamiliar thought, I've come to this place before where every small action is paid for in triplicate with exhaustion.

The question is how to navigate out of these waters. I need someone to physically haul me from bed each morning, point to my clean clothes then push me dressed, brushed and breakfasted into my day. I suppose a butler is out of the question?

Part of this exhaustion is left over virus but the remainder comes from being my own anchor. There is only so far I can submerge in my geomorphometry before losing sight of the surface and the always refrain,'I must rest, I am tired, I must rest'. I think I'm going to need a new submarine.

In a trap there were three things, me, my regret and my poverty or Newtown, the gossamer trap, cuts both ways just like a knife

This morning I find myself sitting square in the centre of a Newtown Trap. I should have gone to bed early to make rising at 6am less painful, but I didn't. I stayed up late performing a series of stupid tasks, reading a short story, watching the last hour of a film, piling jumpers onto an armchair, designing a hovering cat basket, deciding which pantone represented my favourite kind of winter sky. When I turned towards bed something small flipped in my stomach and I became determined to rebel.


Here's how it went this morning; my alarm sounded, I woke and lay there wondering which clothes to wear now, and then nothing. Nothing until Grizelda poked her head in the door at 8am because on a suspicion that I was still asleep instead of at work. She was right. First I got up out of bed and then I got angry, with myself, if there's one place I don't want to be it's here, right now, with a whole day off. This day right here is a beginning symptom of The Newtown Trap.

Yesterday I was talking to a friend about a mutual friend. He said 'we're thinking about extricating him from the Newtown Trap'. I knew exactly what he meant, ever since this guy moved to Newtown he's gone from being witty and slyly rebellious to full-out slacker with little to show for all his 'hard work'.

This is how it begins. Unintentional late nights, accidental sleep-ins, next week's wages are reduced because of the day missed, resentment increases, rebellion intensifies until suddenly all discipline falls out of life and art and all that is left is the talking about or the buried but silent delusion that they are working hard to earn money and working productively on their art when it is obvious to everyone else that they are not. They are free-ranging but broke, full of talk and wonder and anecdote but this is all they consist of. This is the commonest form of the Newtown trap, lack of self-discipline and a failure to manage the basic aspects of life, earning vs spending, sleep/wake cycle and eating vegetables, masquerades as true freedom. It's a bit shit really.

I bounce in and out of my own personal Newtown Trap, the odd late late one, the odd set of unexpected days off. It's more than a person should but less than your standard permanent Newtown-Trap-dwelling citizen does. Tomorrow is my scheduled day off but come Thursday morning I'll be leaving The Peach at an ungodly hour with combed hair, clean clothes on and lunch in my handbag. Not because I want to, not because I like going to work but to stay well clear of The Newtown Trap where all is not what it seems.

The Boring Group

The Beautiful Girls make music for tanned people. I say take it to the beach and leave it there. Some things need to be shat on by seagulls.

Never before have I felt the urge to scream the name of a record label but I have tell you, ‘Die!Boredom’ was definitely on my mind. When frontman Mat McHugh started singing My Mind is an Echo Chamber, I thought what a coincidence, so is mine, this is the effect you are having on me. The complete absence of engaging music provided me with ample opportunity to focus on other things, like the large number of pork pie hats perched on audience members and how DJ Dizzy D has lovely bouncing hair that ripples like a field of barley when he dances.

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Not really anything at all due to a genuine sensation of tiredness

The very best state in which to receive a fierce and well thought out critique of your magazine is hungover and sleep deprived to the point of a new kind of clarity. You'll probably just have to take my word for it.

Bindings

Finally violence has made a comeback in the Inner West! I was beginning to think we had all been gentrified into a state of polite distaste. There have been three acts of violence in Slammatown this week. One friend was bopped in the head during a poker match for making a thoughtless remark, another attacked inside a kebab shop for no reason whatsoever and one stranger was thumped in the head quite forcefully by a passing homeless woman outside of The Duke. I welcome these acts of violence. Hang on a minute while I try and qualify that remark.

Turns out I don't welcome those acts of violence after all, particularly not the random attacking of my friend who was nothing more than drunk and hungry and waiting for a kebab. The thoughtless remark in a tense situation and the disordered mind of the homeless woman are at least a way into determining, not excusing, possible causes for the physical acts that followed.

What I do welcome is violence of thought. We need a bit more of that around this joint which is why I am developing my own miniature, contemporary and hypothetical Baader-Meinhof complex. I will escalate and bind my thoughts as grenades.

SLAMMATOWN - now an actual thing outside of my head and on someone else's website or hello RHUM

I have a column. I am allowing myself exactly half an hour to be excited by this followed by precisely two hours of fervent hoping that Sonia Zadro will never read it.

SLAMMATOWN: Sink a belle down a mineshaft and see what she sounds like; an excerpt with link

Sonia was crouched on a milk crate and howling through a detached gramophone horn outside Newtown station. She looked like the opposite of a bombshell, like something beautiful exploded and she walked out of the cloud of dust. Her voice sounds like a bell sunk down a mineshaft.
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Dolly bomb

His name was Tom, still is I suppose but that's beside the point. I told him straight up I wanted a cross between Dolly Parton circa 1968 and Joan Jett anytime. He kept running his fingers through my hair and staring at me intently in the mirror. He said 'It might be useful if you offered a little bit more of an explanation'. I told him it was more about the vibe than anything else, vibe and volume, no way anyone could say there was a Dolly Parton influence without some height on the hair.

An hour later I walked out of there a whole lot happier. It is impossible to be morose when your hair is a cross between Dolly Parton circa 1968 and Joan Jett anytime which is handy because I've been morose for about a fortnight now. I got to the point where I either had to do a Brian Wilson and take to my bed properly for a number of years while house becomes overrun with bastards or I had to get the fuck out of my bedroom and go kick some stuff on the street, like garbage bins, small children and seed pods.

I was struck down by some kind virus and I was already on holidays with the specific intent of laying around and doing fuck all but still, I found continuous complete inaction was a path not to bliss but to morosetown. Fortunately I am clever enough to have made the following astonishing discovery. The only cure for virus/holiday continuous and complete inaction is a Dolly Parton/Joan Jett haircut. This is a discovery science will not soon forget.

I

It is much easier to be a columnist than I had initially suspected

My editor asked me to send her six columns. I hope these will do...
Doric
Tuscan
Ionic
Corinthian
Composite
Solomonic

Sham civilian drinks free beer with the band then writes a boring post about it or Gareth Liddiard might be something more than an ordinary man but I'm not quite sure about that yet

 Image by Chris Familton

 The other night I was sitting as a civilian at The Annandale watching bands and rubbing at the stamp on my wrist. It's been a while since I bothered to go to a gig I had to pay for. I pulled out my notebook out of habit, taking down the sentences music pushes through my head when I realised the whole rock'n'roll civilian feeling was a sham. Sure I paid like everyone else to get in to the venue but that's where the similarities ended.

I'm pretty sure most people don't make notes at gigs. I made a lap of the venue and spotted exactly no other notebooks so I gave up the sham and walked over to Gareth Liddiard to say hello. He said, "Come on Dale let's go upstairs for a durry". We were talking about taxes, new songs he's writing for his solo album and knock knock jokes when Spencer walked through the band room and out to the balcony where we were all sitting. He threw himself across a lounge. I kept hitting at the side of my head hoping to shake whatever was plaguing my ears out of my head. There was meandering and pointless conversation, free beer, I solved the mystery of The Faz* and of course there's always a photographer trying to get photos of Gareth sitting out on the balcony. Spencer is the only man I know who'll walk towards whoever is trying to take a shot to make it easier for them.

There was a formal party happening upstairs so we pushed our way down the hallway to get downstairs to watch Gareth do his solo set. I wanted to be standing right there, side of stage so I could watch to see if I could spot the moment this time. I've been trying to work out what happens when someone walks on stage and settles in front of the microphone. In between the time they turn their back on me and place one foot at the bottom of the stairs to go onstage and when they open their mouth to let the first sung syllable out something happens.  I've seen it happen to Spencer hundreds, possibly thousands of times. I used to wonder if he'd come back, if it would be my friend that descended the stairs back down to ordinary floor space or if he'd remain transformed.

I've never seen anyone more transformed than Gareth Liddiard but it's not as simple as it sounds. He'll talk, tell stories, make jokes and then drop suddenly into song as though the devil got hold of him and  every person standing in the room knows they're witnessing something more than music. I saw the moment again and again as he switched between banter and song. He was dropping in and out of his ordinary being without any hint of effort. I tried making notes, watching closer then closing my eyes but I came no closer to solving the riddle.

After the gig I was sitting over a cheeseburger with Spencer across the road from The Annandale. I could see the others still up on the balcony talking and drinking beer like nothing just happened. On reflection I suppose it's just the state of reverie made visible. This is the advantage that musicians, real ones and not just people who play music, have over the rest of us writers. It's just not very interesting to watch somebody type.

 * All night Spencer and Worrad had been talking about 'The Faz' as though he was a mystical being but they refused to tell me who he was. When Luke from The Laurels came into the room I asked him if he was The Faz and he said yes. Not very interesting to read about but still I am pleased that I managed to solve the riddle so easily.

Click here to read one of my reviews of The Drones, if you can be bothered...

Well, you know, sometimes a splash of colour is not unhelpful. The large pot of water I am boiling for pasta has most likely boiled dry by now but I'm concerned about it. I suppose the worst thing would be if The Peach burned down but I'm fairly sure that won't happen, not straight away, not without me noticing some smoke and telephoning the fire brigade first. I assume the cat would have enough sense to leave the building if it were on fire.

I'm hiding in my bedroom. I have been here all day, with the exception of short missions to forage for food in the kitchen or stand gratefully under hot jets of water in the shower. I've been trying to have a day like this all week. I kept getting sidetracked by things that needed doing or phone calls to return or yet another dreaded trip to the post office carting a box full of magazines to post but not today. Today I stayed determinedly in my Eyeore pyjamas reading a second-hand copy of The English Patient. It took six hours but I have fallen firmly in love with Michael Ondaatje. Three more days of this I might just be ready to reemerge into the world.

I love BATS

Yeah you heard. I love BATS...

The stupid stink of impending success and a distinct absence of actual reasons

Oh man I've got the stupid stink of impending success fouling up my nostril hair. Like Spencer said, 'welcome to the small time', or maybe I said that, don't suppose it matters really. The point is I'm doing a crapload more press stuff than I thought I'd have to. Interviews, radio stuff live on air, email interviews, questions, meetings, blah blah puke sick blather. I even had to interview myself. It's good really, I mean I couldn't be more pleased that people seem to like the mag. I'm excessively excited about it, to the detriment of my friends, who may wish to kill me just a little but there is one big problem.

It seems that everybody wants to know what was the driving idea behind making a new magazine. I keep saying things that are not untrue but aren't the whole truth either. The real story is I drank too much beer at The Annandale one night, stood in three inches of beer swill in a state akin to awe while The Kill Devil Hills* played and suddenly thought, 'I'm going to make my own magazine'. So I did. I just did each step as it needed doing until suddenly it's welcome to the small time and hello massively large financial risk.

I don't really know what I was thinking or why I was doing it, it felt like I needed to, in the same way I'll get up in the middle of the night and write about something I only newly imagined, or sometimes just to do a wee. I'd pay about $5 for a can of instant articulate right now.

Oh and about the radio thing. Holy shit. They said I'll be talking to them for twenty minutes. That is way too long, bound to say at least twelve hundred stupid and embarrassing things in twenty minutes.

* I think it was during the song 'Drinkin Too Much'.

For sure

I've just spent the last two hours trying to interview myself. I found myself to be uncooperative. Not only did I not think of any questions I was unable to come up with any answers. If this is an elaborate hoax now would be the time to jump out from my cupboard and yell surprise. When the excellent editor of RHUM suggested that I pretend to be interviewed by someone else I very stupidly announced that I would in fact just interview myself. She liked the idea, we said goodbye and hung up our telephones. I spent the next two hours drinking tea and scribbling 'feck' on pieces of paper then rubbing it out again. I love erasable pens.

I took a short break to collect my trousers from the trouser repair lady (an unfortunate incident with a fork, a bottle of wine and gravestone resulted in the need for major repair work) and to buy frozen yoghurt. I am sad to report there is not frozen yoghurt in Slammatown. None. Not even the apricot kind which we all know is the inferior time warp stuck in the 80's froghurt and is therefore no good.

In my quest for the answer to how to interview myself I turned to the most likely source of wisdom, Oprah. Turns out Oprah mostly interviews other people but she does seem to ask everybody to answer a 'what I know for sure' question, so here goes.

What I Know For Sure - in list form:
I do not like dog poo
There is no frozen yoghurt within two kilometres of my house
Oprah has a very big website


It has now been another hour, The Peachettes have blown the fusebox twice by having two heaters on at once and I have pretty much given up on interviewing myself. I phoned Spencer and he offered to interview me for me. That ought to simplify things.

Launch it + fund it

Come on down! I might be drunk or wearing a tie or doing a dance or all three at once.

RSVP to the Fspazbook event here.




For media and publicity enquiries, please contact:
Rebecca Lee Williams, Publicist, PAN magazine | e: rebecca@panmagazine.com

Dead reckoning

Lately I've been feeling a lot like an optimistic but failing meringue. The kind of meringue where the sugar goes in before peaks form., this is probably why I've been experimenting with navigation.

Determining longitude by comparing local apparent noon to noon GMT is more tricky than it sounds when you feel like an optimistic but failing meringue. I've never tried to make a magazine before and its left me feeling the useful kind of lost. Not lost like 'oh what shall become of me I need a brand new hobby', more like, 'I have a backpack full of important war documents that will save the Allies. I've parachuted into this foreign forest now all I need to do is get out my compass and tiny pencil* and make my way to the hidden Special Captain of War Things and everyone will be saved'. That kind of lost.

Yesterday I tied a stick to a piece of string and cast it over The Peach Deck to determine how far I'd traveled since I last fixed my position on a map. Today I will be staring at the sun using a stick. I am quite sure this is going to help.



*Always use tiny pencils in  an on-foot navigation situation.

Hey look it's Spencer! Sometimes more than one of him at once...

It's The Holy Soul, in case you didn't know. They're playing at the Pan Launch Party + Fundraiser, should be a wild night, I'd get out my diary and pencil it in if I were you...

Recommended viewing snacks for the above music video include licorice allsorts and a nice cup of tea.

Allsorts

Yesterday I was lounging attractively in my club. I was working out a new scheme to ensure my success as sheriff of Area 5 while the clientele ogled me appreciatively, but not without fear, when suddenly. Wait that wasn't me, that was Vampire Eric. Yesterday I was sitting on a bus eating licorice allsorts, the big ones you can pull apart with your teeth when suddenly, well nothing actually. Suddenly nothing. I was sitting on the bus in the pouring rain eating licorice allsorts on my way to the bookshop when nothing happened.

This has been yet another interesting update from Slammatown.

PAN magazine wants YOU. Actually, that’s not quite true. What we’re after is your submissions.

PAN Magazine is a cultural biannual with a literary bent which includes the work of emerging and established writers. Each issue, we’ll place a small selection of poetry and prose alongside our articles, essays and photography - well der, everyone already knows that  by now...
 

Space is, as always, at a premium. We’ll consider stories up to two thousand words and poetry to fifty lines, although nothing curls our toes like some snappy mini and microfiction. Themes are open. Contemporary short story writers we love include Paddy O’Reilly, Nam Le, Cate Kennedy, Wells Tower, Anthony Doerr and Tom Cho. We admire inventiveness, uncertainty and tension; conversely, we’re wary of didacticism, deus ex machinas and melodrama.

Click here for submission guidelines...

I'm not really sure what an albumarathon is

Sometimes the best way to find out about something is to just close your eyes and do it so here it is, my very first ever albumarathon.

65 Days of Static – We Were Exploding AnywayListening to the nine tracks on this album is like having nine glass splinters and being locked in a tweazerless house.
1/5

Audio Bullys – Higher than the Eiffel
I love this album ten years ago, I want to go back in time. Perfect pop schlock with beats, it is possible I might bring this one back to the future with me.
3/5

Black Gold – Rush
Haven’t heard anything this boring since my neighbour’s grandmother lectured me on the correct method of pegging out socks on the clothesline. This one is for the mainstream people who wash their cars once a week in their driveways.
1/5

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This includes no Venn diagrams

I couldn't pin it down. I tried analysing the air, the temperature, the slant of the sun, my rate of footsteps per minute, none of this data helped. The problem was I was too happy, too happy by far.  I was walking down a long hill in the afternoon sunlight crammed-full of contentedness. Everything seemed in order and I was almost enjoying myself when I noticed one big thing - the absence of all problems.

The air was full of bushfire smoke but this reminded me of my youth when a bushfire suspended all ordinary business, the adults all stayed inside (once they had finished plugging up the roof gutters and filling them with water) glued to the television and radio, at the same time. I would wander about the streets marvelling at the dense and luminous orange air.

I was slightly too warm but I was cheered by wearing an electric blue cardigan and knowing if I became any warmer I could take it off and be perfectly comfortable even at a brisk walking pace. I was carrying a bag but it was light and swung contentedly in a perfect arc. I was sure that a random wave of sorrow, anxiety or misfortune would hit at any moment and return the world to order, but it didn't.

Five minutes after arriving at The Peach I was installed on The Peach Deck with tea and toast on a tray, a cat on my lap and a book in my hand but I was still far too happy. I found my book kept lowering itself to allow me to stare dreamily at the sky in a contented way. This is when I became seriously alarmed. 

It didn't seem possible for such a heady mix of cheer, goodwill and contentedness to descend on me without some serious repercussions. The extreme sense of wellbeing faded gently into ordinary after sunset but I'm still waiting to hear who died, or blew up or accidentally killed their lover whilst sleepwalking with machete. Come to think of it I had better telephone my mother and make sure she is still alive. Who knows who I could have harmed by holding a whole afternoon of happiness in my hands.

Confession of a horrified cupboard thief and the unexpected cost of barcodes or Empire of The Peach

I was stealing Grizelda's sample packet of Weet-Bix, terrible but true, with a crazed and starved look on my face and a jar of honey in my left  hand when the horror first revealed itself. The Weet-Bix was alive! Hiding in the heart of each bick was a wriggling mass of tiny worms*. I've seen the tiny worms before but this is the first time I considered eating them.

You see I've reached a depraved place called 'shall I buy groceries or get a barcode for PAN magazine?'. There are some excellent arguments for both options. If PAN magazine has a barcode then it can be sold properly in shops, just like a real magazine. If I buy groceries then I don't steal worm-ridden Weet-Bix sample packs and consider eating the worms**.

I've seen people eat worms before, in Empire of The Sun, a nifty movie about my paternal grandparents.*** In this movie people are taken from a party to a POW camp and served worm food. They eat the worms because the doctor says there is protein in cupboard worms. If my ancestors could eat cupboard worms then so can I.

And that is the story about how the unexpected cost of barcodes increased the usual amount of protein found in stolen Weet-Bix sample packets in the Empire of The Peach. Now all I have to do is confess my crime to Grizelda.



* The pupal stage of the Evil Cupboard Moth.
** Yes, I know 'worms' is not the correct word but I don't really care. You can blame science if you like.
*** Is actually true.

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The bastards were all wearing trousers

And now from the interesting world of marching bands comes a Dale Slamma exclusive.

Don’t bother sending me flowers, I am always going to love marching bands more than I love you and I don’t care who knows about it. If there’s one day of the year it is good to be a fan of marching bands it is ANZAC Day. The city goes mad with them, traffic is stopped, old men rock up in suits and nannas drink beer in the gutter. I declare it to be the best day of the year.

Syncopated drumbeats echo off the skyscrapers and everybody is drunk from sunrise. All ordinary business is suspended and the city points itself at the parade like furniture around a television. If there’s something better than rock it’s got to be marching bands. If you ever wondered why music was harnessed as a weapon of war then you’ve never seen a band on parade.

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