Got to quickly spruik The Pixies Doolittle tour thats going around at the moment - sold out in Sydney anyway so if you have a chance to catch them somwhere: snap it up with no delay! Even if you're not a fan, they are worth seeing. What I hadn't realised was that they were a major influence on Nirvana (and therefore Grunge?) but specifically were the inspiration for "Smells Like Teen Spirit":
Kurt Cobain: "I was trying to write the ultimate pop song. I was basically trying to rip off The Pixies."
It was one of the best-lit gigs I've ever seen I think, not sure why exactly but the stage-production was better than most I can remember. Not sure if thats a tribute to The Horden Pavillion (a venue I'm quite fond of) or the roadies on this particular tour.
Another stand out was the fact that for $30 you could pre-order - or pick up after the show - the live CD recording of the night's performance. The size of the CD burner they were using for this must have been humongus as the speed these things were coming out was impressive. No great delay in picking these things up, and to the extent I heard the disc I bought, it was of a fine quality (although I have been since informed that the recording goes a bit wobbly during "Here Comes Your Man" - so its lucky I've got the above!)
But all that aside, its another case of a re-formed bad on superb musical form and genuinely enjoying themselves. But the fact that this tour is specifically to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the release of their Doolittle album - which they play most of in sequence - gives the night a kind of warm fuzzy feeling. And Kim Deal still sounds just as cute!
But Gordon Brown did annoy me with this standard line about: Saddam Hussein was bad and therefore the Iraq War was good. Absolute rot!
Blair rolled out the same line when he hit the Chilcot Inquiry too, and Bush has used it many times, as has Cheney and the rest of the Neo-con arses.
I think trying to claim success for the Iraq war by pointing to the benefits of removing Saddam Hussein is a bit like the Police raiding and trashing a student flat with about 50 violent officers, failing to find any drugs whatsoever but claiming success by cleaning up the kitchen a bit and saying that it was a haven for germs!
They invaded Iraq because they wanted the oil; because there weren't enough buildings to bomb in Afghanistan after 911 ; because George Bush wanted to avenge his Dad and because - officially - Hussein was this hideously dangerous nuclear threat.
Hundreds of thousands of dead innocent people later and they say that removing the terrible tyrant Saddam Hussein proves it was worth doing.
Well in that case why hasn't the West invaded Zimbabwe? Why hasn't the West liberated Tibet? Why was nothing done about Dafur? Why was something not done about Burma? The list goes on...
The answer of course - we know why. Nothing in it for us. If there was no oil in Iraq and no Bush history, no secret Saudi agenda, is it likely that Britain and the US would have spent umpteen trillion supposedly "liberating" the Iraqi people from their oppressive ruler? The same oppressive ruler they armed and supported at some cost throughout the 80s I hasten to add.
...errrrr no.
Anyway, I appreciate this is a big dose of the "bleedin' obvious", but I felt it needed to be said again.
Its been a quite unbelieveable run of gigs this summer - a sensational summer of sound. But for the most part its been dominated by old-sters or re-formed, formerly broken up bands. There's been the Supergroup of former members of now broken up bands - Them Crooked Vultures; there's been the come-back-from-retirement oldster - John Cale from Velvet Underground; and there's of course been ACDC who I'm not sure if they ever formally broke up, but you have to wonder if maybe they should!
Three other bands I've seen lately also blur those lines. Sometimes a band isn't broken up, they just stop being relevant. While they keep recording, you're oblivious to them and have moved on. Of course, if you've never heard of a band and then you see them - they are as good as a brand new band for you. For some, the experience of playing together again is a thrill and enhances the perofrmance. For others, re-uniting can remind everyone why they broke up in the first place!
Pavement last night at The enmore in Sydney was the greatest of surprises. All I knew about them was that they were Blur's favourite band. Contempories of the Seatle Grunge scene, their sound seems to vary (for me anyway) between The Thrills, The Lemonheads and Nirvana. They broke up in 1999, seemingly in that "we've grown up now and need to get proper jobs" kind of tragedy. It transpires that Guitarist Scott Kannberg is getting married in Melbourne and thought the old "hey, lets get the band back together guys," was a great way to solve the big cost problem. So the wedding in Melbourne is right after the Australian leg of the tour. His fiancee was in the audience and the whole gig had the feel of being part of the wedding celebrations. Whats more the band were having more fuin playing together again than the crowd - and that was quite evident. They played a two hour set, 30 minutes of that an encore. Sensational night which I thoroughly enjoyed. Welcome back Pavement!
Jane's Addiction were a band I went to see as part of a 2-leg gig-swap with a mate (the other being EATBM below). I had no knowledge of a band I was given to believe was somewhere between The Red Hot Chilli Peppers and The Smashing Pumpkins. Discovering the legend that is the playful, the creepy and the extremely eccentric Perry Farrell was a revelation. Jane's Addiction are all LA and you could have been forgiven for thinking you were in The City of Angels as the ornate and baroque performance evolved - which included a huge backdrop naked women and scantily-clad women joining Farrell in suggestive frolics. The animosity between Farrell and Bassist Eric Avery - the cause of the initial split in 1991 - was palpable to those in the know throughout the show apparently and it won't surprise many that after re-uniting the 'classic' lineup nearly 20 years after their first break, Eric Avery announced on Twitter that he was leaving the band after the Australian Tour ended. (I can see Farrell could test the patince of a saint!) In prep for the show I bought their recent album "Strays" - which I loved, but of which they played exactly none on the night! So I enjoyed the night entirely musically blind but had a ball all the same. I now can play very little else! Here's a taste of the show's finale, "Jane Says":
Echo & The Bunnymen was also a tour laced with drama. They too have been through various splits and reformations over the years and only vocalist Ian McCulloch and Will Seargeant remain. That would also have been at The Enmore except that a few days before the gig it obviously became clear to the organisers that they couldn't fill it! The gig was cancelled and rescheduled a week later at the cosier Sydney Metro. EATBM are certainly of that "still recording but you wouldn't know it" ilk but I picked up their most recent album, The Fountain, which was a delight and I thoroughly enjoyed and is just like the "old stuff". When Ian McCulloch took the stage for my first sighting of him in real life, I realised Liam Gallagher's stage presence is a complete impersonation. It was great to see someone smoking on stage like the olden days. As the performance reached its crescendo - via all the old classics including "Lips like Sugar" and "The Killing Moon" together with a splattering of the new stuff like "I think I need it too" - the band came on for the obligatory encore and one track reached a quiet pause, one member of the audience took the opportunity to shout in perfect Ocker nasal tones: "where the fuck were yous last week?"
I've still got The Pixies, Dead Weather and potentially even The Cult to go!
He doesn't control the Senate. He's not even certain to win the next election. He will most probably lose a Referendum I think and furthermore - and perhaps most importantly, even because of - The States will fight tooth and nail. The States would rather fail at the responsibilities they have than see someone else succeed at them. More to the point, even if they were happy to hand over power, they are certainly not going to happily give up $90 billion in GST (like VAT) revenue.
So good luck with that Mr Rudd, but my money's on the other guy!
But there was something in Mr Hartcher's article that goes to the deeper point. He quotes constitutional expert George Williams as saying: "It calls into question exactly what the purpose of the States is."
Eureka! Answer: "stuffing stuff up!"
Ever since I arrived in Australia I've been astounded at the enormous, and fiercely incompetant, extent of State Government for a nation of only 21 million people. Enormous bureaucracies seemingly incapable of organising the proverbial p!ss up in a brewery. Capable only of wasting huge amounts of money and spectacular scandal. I'm not just talking about New South Wales, but of course they do spring immediately to mind.
Not only huge bureaucracies wasting large amounts of money and contributing not much more than cracking material for scurrilous tabloids; but whole alternative governments-in-waiting with equal amounts of wasted cash, incompetence and inappropriate behaviour to their name. We pay for that too! Neither of which - in any state - seem to attract any decent talent whatsoever, but only self-excited egomaniacs with no vocation except for self-aggrandisement.
Mr Rudd: why not propose abolishing State Government altogether?
Split the power/money between Canberra and Local Government. Economies of scale at the top, better local-knowledge and community spirit at the bottom. More done, less waste. It has as much chance of getting up as your Health plan and stands to achieve much, much more benefit.
According to Wikipedia, Angus Young – now 55 - is “is known for his wild, energetic performances, schoolboy-uniform stage outfits and the duck walk,” and is ranked by Rolling Stone as 96th of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. After his performance last night, which included a 15 minute solo performance during which he held the crowd in the palm of his guitar-string-bruised hands, I would say the first is still true but the last shouldn’t be – his guitar playing – while running around the stage or lying on the floor and spinning himself around especially, is “Awesome” in the true sense of the word. He Rocked!
The show overall was a spectacular experience, not just of ACDC’s music but of Australian life generally. The crowd was a superbly wide-ranging cross-section of Australian society – Acca Dacca is the height of Ocker. I even got into some “agro” for the first time in probably 20 years. The short, stocky and perhaps best described as ‘bogan’ gentleman in front of me allowed his enjoyment of the show to impede that of the gentleman next to him. When this chap took umbrage with him, both he and his equally short, stocky bogan friend standing next to me both remonstrated with him to strongly reinforce their right do whatever they wanted. I suggested to the chap next to me that he might want to concentrate on the gig and he rounded on me “I’ll fucken take the pair of yous on “. Fortunately though, after a great deal of beer, both just didn’t have the attention span to maintain the affray and soon just seemed to forgot what they were doing…I chuckled afterwards thinking it more-or-less exactly what I expected from the evening.
As their performance moved on past their dramatic entrance aboard a “Runaway Train”, the huge scale of their stage show started to unfold. There was a 20ft tall inflatable Rock Chick for A Whole Lotta Rosie, canons (For Those About to Rock) and of course the predictable giant Bell, presumably procured from Hell. The crowd played their part as well though, of the 90,000 odd there, about a quarter were wearing small red devil horns which all flashing in open air stadium made for a stunning vista when not absorbed by Angus et al. When the band struck up “The Jack”, female members of the audience made a particularly special contribution to the show responding enthusiastically to lead singer Brian Johnson’s request for them to “get ‘em out if you got ‘em” when sniper-eyed camera men trained their cameras on girls riding their boyfriend’s shoulders. Not to be out done though, Angus also shed clothing, eventually – and somewhat disturbingly – revealing his AC/DC-branded jockeys with which he mooned the audience.
I’m not the world’s greatest Acca Dacca fan I must admit. I laid out the (not inconsiderable) ticket fee on the basis of the Ocker adventure, Wolfmother (who were tres poor), AC/DC’s reputation for enormous shows and the old classics which the band delivered with surprisingly youthful and adept expertise. Back in Black, Hell’s Bells (Audioboo sound clip), TNT, this blog’s title track and of course the great finale with the Canons blasting to For Those About to Rock. Mr Johnson left the stage to “We salute you Sydney” sparking and explosion of fireworks over the stadium.
As the final firework smoke dissipated, a baby-boomer in ear shot of me turned to his friend and said “I can die happy now”. The sheer importance of AC/DC to Australia’s cultural Heritage cannot be overstated – 1 in 35 Australians will see AC/DC on this Black Ice tour – see ‘em if you can, it’s a awesome show, mate…
Easily the most exciting game of Rugby Union I’ve ever watched, with Wales coming from behind to score 17 unanswered points in the last 10 minutes of the match – and turned on the sheer genius of Shane Williams – question is: why was Shane Williams not man of the match?
1. Wales’ first try was all his vision with an incredible sprint out wide to outflank the Scottish defence and institute a 2-on-1 scenario for Lee Byrne, of course offloading at exactly the right moment for the score. 2. Saved the last Scottish try by catching a huge Gary Owen in the Welsh Try zone and winning the mark – another try would have put the game beyond Wales. 3. Sets up the Halfpenny try also with some great support work. 4. Scored the final and crucial try – right between the posts
Scotland “was robbed” and it would have been heart-breaking for them after leading the entire match, often by more than 10 points – they scored as many tries as they have their last six tests apparently, and were on the cusp of their first away win for 4 years! To have two men sin-binned for the last crucial 10 minutes is more than just bad luck.
But you couldn’t have scripted the tension of the match with Welsh Captain Ryan Jones left with the decision on 80 minutes – kick the penalty for the draw or tap it for an attempt to win with a Try that might not come off, knowing you only had 40 seconds of play left. He opted for both and Wales won 31-24 having drawn level on 80 minutes. Apparently he said of that decision: “if I have to make many more decisions like that and I will be as grey as Warren [Gatland] or as bald as Shaun [Edwards]."
Apparently the 90,000+ crowd at the Millennium stadium went crazy with something across between relief and triumph – according to one journalist “it rained beer!”
So where was I going with that in part I? Well as I said, all this reminded me of a line in “Withnail and I” where over a long and obviously boozy lunch, Monty laments: “we are shat on by Tories, shovelled up by Labour”…
People’s patience and sense of reality about how quickly ‘shit shovelling’ can be completed is maddening at me at the moment. While we are “shat on by Tories” we seem to have very little tolerance or patience for those that are required to “shovel” up the mess.
After 12 years of Howard maintaining a criminally negligent line of conservative complacency to protect the vested interest and taking no responsibility for the future whatsoever – no investment in infrastructure, no effort to sensibly deal with the Murray-Darling crisis until it was too late, no investment in education and no action on climate change – we have asked Rudd to come in and clean up the mess. But we expect him and his to attend to all of that in a manner that exacts no pain or sacrifice whatsoever – and in one three year term? Now that a few of the projects have gone awry and either haven’t gotten off the ground at all (Hospitals, Broadband), stumbled (loft insulation stimulus) or have left themselves open to cheap shots from the right (climate change, the economy), the polls are turning south and the timid are heading for the Tory comfort zone that got us here in the first place.
This is perhaps the story of right vs left throughout time immemorial. Conservative forces indulge the powerful at the expense of the weak and disadvantaged until such time as guilt/discomfort gets the better of us and we appeal to the left to save us – until that gets too unpleasant and expensive, or just doesn’t happen fast enough, and we return to those that would indulge us in return for power and popularity. So the cycle goes on…and on...and on.
In the US I am aghast at what is transpiring, slowly but seemingly inevitably. Obama was swept to power on a quite unprecedented wave of hope and optimism not 15 months ago and already American patience has evaporated. He was literally expected to save the world. All he needed was a cape. Climate change, two wars, economic and financial meltdown, healthcare reform – the list is endless. Is 15 months enough time to do any of that, to even figure out where to start? Yet he stopped the rot in the economy, stopped one war, turned the tide of the other and delivered an almost, almost workable deal for Healthcare where so many others had failed. The deal only fell over because Ted Kennedy (ironically the country’s greatest ever advocate of healthcare reform) died and let the Republicans take the balance of power in the Senate by seizing Massachusetts (a hitherto Democrat state since the war) on a wave of nothing but impatience and political restlessness.
Obama inherited an unholy mess. Not least of which was that while Clinton balanced the budget by 2000, Bush in his first term managed to create the largest peace-time debt in America’s history by the end of his first term (mostly through tax cuts for the rich and an illegal war for oil!). Yet the Republicans are already attempting to paint the deficit as Obama’s problem, the war as his failure and the economy as his mistake.
I guess my main point is [stamps foot] rather naïve – political memories are too short. We need more tolerant attitudes to the challenges we hand our leaders when they are clearing up the mess created by short term, self-interested conservative administrations that indulge our gluttony until there’s no more to have. We need to be more intelligent when we listen to them in opposition when they blame the rescue team for the very mistakes they made. We need to recognise political rhetoric when we see it and we need to be more realistic about how long this Tory shit takes to shovel up!
RANT WARNING: I’ve been trying to make sense of where the climate change debate in Australia has suddenly got to.Frankly I’m a but baffled at how we went from “the world’s going to end unless we do something now” to “its all fine, climate change is crap, we can carry on as before as long as we plant a few trees;” which is frankly where we were in the mid-eighties.
In my view, Abbot is being outrageously cynical and is, in the old cliché, “playing politics with our future” just in order to get elected; as his old mentor and Dr-Frankenstein-to-his-monster was always so adept at.
The right the world over have exacted a crime in political reasoning in recent months.They’ve taken a few dodgy email s from the University of East Anglia and a typo from the IPCC – amid the zillions of words in research and mountains of data all pointing to certain doom if mankind doesn’t take drastic action to make our existence on this planet sustainable – and used it to give people exactly what they want: a way out.An excuse to bury their head in the sand.Sure, Copenhagen didn’t help.It was mankind’s chance to save itself and in reality all it really seemed to achieve was produce more carbon and other forms of hot air.All in all, the failure of those agreed on the need for change to reach consensus on what that change should look like (and more importantly on what their respective electorates could wear) has let the right in.Suddenly we have lunatics like Monkton and Fielding feeling quite unreserved and bold about spouting their various forms of reality-denial and conspiracy rubbish and, what’s worse, are getting column inches and air time from the media.
Lyndsay Tanner the other night on Lateline came up with a very useful analogy for what climate change demands of us – its like smoking, he said.You come to the conclusion that the science is proven and that it will kill you and so you have to stop.Its hard, and involves considerable self-sacrifice and avoiding immediate self-gratification in return for a long term reward – but you do it because you want to stay alive.In the role of Tobacco companies, what the right is trying to do the world over suddenly – and Abbot in particular – is to give people that very delusion they crave.To make people believe that if they just smoke “Light” cigarettes, or they only smoke in the evenings, or if they only inhale every other drag then they can carry on regardless and be fine.Go back 12 months and there’s no way anyone in their right mind would have worn that – but right now it’s got political capital and its affecting a polls bounce for The Coalition.And what’s worse, perfectly sane Liberals like Joe Hockey - who 6 months ago lobbied for action on climate change as vehemently as everyone else - is supporting this insanity.I never thought I’d say this but: I think Malcolm Turnbull has proven himself to be one of the most respectable politicians of his generation.
Rudd has failed to communicate an overly complex ETS scheme and has been outflanked by some simplistic messaging and spin around a “great big tax” (which as someone said “debases environmental debate in this country) – but everyone knows unless you put a price or a cap on carbon, our existence will remain unsustainable and self-destructive.
I was in Tel Aviv when he beat Netanyahu - the now PM and Barak's boss - in 1999 to be PM. (Another hiden irony is that Netanyahu - the hawk - was Barak's minion in the 1973 war.) Around that time I met with one of his most famous campaigners - Amoz Oz - and the feeling that it was peace or bust was strong. The appetite and indeed lust for peace was palpable that night among the young and peaceniks - especially around Rabin Square and at Rabin's memorial there - as they celebrated Barak's win.
It was Barak that pulled Israel out of Lebanon and took all the flack for that from the hawks and the Religious right. That same flak precipitated Ariel Sharon's afternoon walk on the Temple Mount that kicked off the Second Intifada in 2000. Sharon ultimately succeeded and Barak was thrown from power. From that moment on, it seems to me, any hope that built from the nineties evapourated and has not returned.
It is my view that Barak has always been Israel's best chance for Peace - I hope he gets a second chance...
I had the rare treat of seeing Them Crooked Vultures play at The Hordern Pavillion in Sydney last night and I have to say that, aside from being a really powerful, spectacular live experience ( and a great album) there’s a lot to learn about creativity in this project. For those that don’t know, the constituent parts are the singer/lead guitarist from Queens of the Stone Age, the drummer from Nirvana and the Bassist from Led Zeppelin. They call it a “Supergroup” and with parts like that, you can guess that the sum is much greater.
But I was reading in Rolling Stone how the project came together and fruition, and it’s a really insightful example of how the creative process works, and should work. Here are some of the observations that I pulled out from what they said that are worth hanging onto:
• Mutual respect. OK, in this circumstance its not hard, but each member of the band is in mutual awe of the others and learns from each of them. Obviously the younger two struggle to believe they on stage with John Paul Jones, the Bass guitar player from Led Zeppelin – arguably the best band in the history of rock and roll. But he too is learning from and admiring his younger team mates. Clearly he thought his playing days were through, and he says at one point that he thought he couldn’t find anyone he wanted to play with. When you played with the best, where do you go I guess? But the way each of them puts them selves behind the other members of the band is palpable. There was a moment on stage when JPJ had finished a solo and Josh Homme of of QOTSA just paused, looking at him and said to the crown, “John Paul Fucking Jones everyone” and the crowd erupted. Equally, the drummer Dave Grohl admitted that he just kept looking up from the drum kit excited by his colleagues playing. They are musicians and each other’s fans at the same time. This kind of mutual respect is essential in getting a great outcome.
• Not being judgemental. All three of them stress the old cliché about ‘no idea is a bad idea’ was key throughout the writing phase. They just started jamming and found they automatically clicked because their thinking was in the right place, They weren’t influenced by their own agenda, what they wanted to get out of the project individually or by how it might look for their career overall. They seem to have always been entirely focussed on the outcome. Coming together to reach the best possible outcome must be about the group and idea, not about the individual – otherwise a project will fail. You can tell as well that on stage, their individual brilliance and professionalism made playing together very easy. While most bands have played together for years before they make it big, these guys just clicked and succeeded in an instant. That’s pretty awesome to observe.
• Creative fidelity. The band was always focussed on the creative outcome, not the financial or professionalism implications of their success. At one point in the interview, JPJ says, “I didn’t need the work, but I needed the play.” Thoughts of what it might sound like to others, whether it would sell, how it would make them appear career-wise seems to have been so far from their minds collectively. Being true to what emerged from their collective ideas and creative construction was what focussed them. As a result, the music they have created is amazing to listen to on your iPod, but live – I don’t think I’ve ever been blown away quite so much as that.
I also think that for JPJ it’s a fascinating lesson in growing old. He doesn’t need the money and he doesn’t need to ‘stay in the public eye’ or ‘maintain his credibility’. He just didn’t need to do it, you have to think at his age after what he’s been part of, he’d done it all. But he;s learning from these much younger professionals and is playing better in some ways he says than ever before. It would be nice for us all to be able to say that at his age.
If you get a chance to see them, its worth it. For these reasons its as much a great humanity experience as a musical one.
