the horses

Like most of the rest of the world, I was entranced to see that the spawn of the Dear Leader had got hisself a squeeze.  A singer and whatnot, you know, as leaders are wont to do.

And I thought that the news that the biggest hit of the squeeze singer was Excellent Horse-like Lady would set the electro-sphere alight.  But not it seems, everyone is taking it very calmly.  After all, if America gave us Horse with No Name and the Beatles  could give us Everybody's got something to hide except me and my monkey, then a musical juxtaposition of ladies and equines is a mere trifle, yes?  While go0gle gave me umpteen trillion hits in a part of a nanosecond, they seemed to be all straight news stories. 

One can listen about the horse-like lady here. (******)

Except this one: not taking the p*ss such as I have failed to do, but just commenting quite...yes, just quite.

Actually, it looks like a fascinating blog to check out.

(******)  Oh dear god, I've just listened to it.  If we moved North Korea to some obscure corner of Europe, I reckon we'd have a new Eurovision masterpiece on our hands.  But I'd really love to know the words...

pigs on the wing

How's this for a line from a gig review: 

"Then there comes a sound I can't quite place, like bacon frying, but amplified. It's applause."

"the wavelengths and the resonance align"....writing and playing I like.

Sometime in the last few years - by which I mean a decade or so, they fly past so quickly - I started noticing and thinking about changes in popular music.  I've been keen on popular music, of various genres I suppose, for some time but don't pretend to be an expert (until I've got a skinful, then I'm absolutely like every other expert).

But I started thinking that somehow songs were getting more realistic, more reflective of a broader take on life.  The pop of the 1950s seemed so "white-bread" I guess (yes, this post will be littered with unsubstantiated, vast generalisations).  The 60s were love love love and surfin', but even the evolution of pop/rock etc into the last 60s and early 70s, ie hard rock or whatever, didn't seem to change the subject matter (maybe exempt the Hair/JC Superstar kind of thing).

Hard rock bands had to slow down occasionally, hence Bad Company's Feel Like Makin' Love.  A ballad, you see. Here, if you feel the need.

Then disco. Then punk, but somehow with the rosy tinted glasses of hindsight punk never really plumbed the depths of human emotion.

Sometime around this period someone will no doubt reference Joy Division but as I never heard them then, I can make another outrageous generalisation and move right along.

After returning to Australia in the late 80s I had a lot of catching up to do, as I'd been in parts of the world where contemporary music just wasn't available. 

Slowly getting to my point, I think when I first heard Betterman I started thinking that popular music was reaching into the types of lives that many people were living where the world wasn't all roses and kittens.  And I guess then I started thinking  about the changes in society that I'd been privileged to have witnessed for some 50 years.  But that's for another time.

Then this.  That's my point.  Spine-tingling on so many levels.

More later.      

feats don't fail me now

There's not a hell of lot of space between my ears for things to go round and round in, but go round and round they do.

I was particularly taken with this commentary about the new TV ads for Woolies, which features an unbearably twee voice singing about love and unbearably twee visuals of people who evidently love working for Woolies and because it's all new and whatevs.

Except it's actually just a colour-by-numbers rebranding of a rapacious duopolist as we all know and actually, you know, you can't suspend belief indefinitely.  I really wonder whether they think people get sucked in by this.  There's that old saying about advertising, that the advertiser knows that 50% of the ad works, they just don't know which 50%.

I reckon  that saying must date from the 1960s or so and I wonder whether today's figure shouldn't be closer to 10% or even 5%.  Surely people...I mean, really?

So when you've got such evidently deep and complex stuff revolving between yer ears, it's wonderful to come upon an article like this one.   Because it, like, simplifies and stuff?  The notion of a warehouse of failed products is a wonderful concept in itself, but for those of us for whom the glass never passes halfway, some justification for feeling somewhat better about it all is quite reassuring.  You know there are others out there of similar ilk, but finding a space to share is far from easy.

On the other hand, writing 'ilk' brings about a quite naughty feeling and on that note, we retire.

public image ltd

"For all the talk of aspirations, voters do not seem to connect reform with progress. xxxx’s liberalisers over the past two decades, including xx xxxx himself, have reformed by stealth. That now looks like a liability. No popular consensus exists in favour of change or tough decisions."

"Its best xxxxxxx, xxxxx xxxx...is divisive and authoritarian."

Where in the world?  Sounds a bit like home, eh?

Not so.

If I could bring myself to sit down at the computer for half an hour and write something, that would be a start.

It seems we are witnessing a substantial shift in attitudes to, and usage of, the net.  I guess it's largely down to social media?  As I'm not on facebook or twitter I can only surmise that people have moved to these two platforms en masse, as even the old blogs that I regularly visited are either gone or in permanent mortal decline: Larvatus Prodeo; Things Bogans Like; Speak you're Branes, GG Sedgwick.  At the same time, the platform has moved from the desk or laptop at home to phones and tablets.

Two of the best and most prolific of more recent vintage, Greg Jericho at Grog's Gamut and Jim Parker (Mr Denmore) at Failed Estate now write under their own names, with Greg having been outed by the country's foremost journal of record, the Australian.  Which organ, not coincidentally, is often the target of well constructed criticism by Mr Denmore.   Greg gets some more public exposure at ABC online.

I've got a few other more obscure places I visit like The Rising Storm for interesting music, but as the regular haunts drop off so does the interest.

I can only imagine that people spend extraordinary amounts of time on social media: certainly if the numbers you see walking around looking at their phones is any indication, not to mention in workplaces all over.  Does this get factored into national productivity figures?

I do enjoy, as a sociological experiment, looking at newspaper articles online, where you get comments threads.  Actually, it's quite depressing.  Particularly the local rag.  Thank goodness for anonymity.

Although, not necessarily. Today's print edition carried a letter to the editor in which the writer suggested, in all seriousness, that one public official responsible for environmental issues, in this case bat colonies, should be executed for every person who dies of Hendra virus (transmitted from bats).  Or if the person simply gets very ill, the public official should merely be harmed permanently in some way.

I really thought a paper couldn't print stuff like that.  I'll be fascinated to see if there's anything in tomorrow's edition. 

More than depressing, really.

bat out of hell

Evidently no-one at the ABC has ever read Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas.  Otherwise there surely would have been a reference in this story. 

If you don't know the reference...try this.

Coming soon...yet another episode about how I was about to close Chateau VVB and then some bod pops up from out of the ether saying "don't do it."

Coming some time soon, ie not within a hold your breath timescale.

money makes the world go round

But increasingly money is not making the world go round except for an increasingly privileged few.  Read a bit about how right here.

I love the author's preamble to the comments section.

I've been writing, on an occasional basis, for quite some years now on the unsustainability of the contemporary model of international finance.  Every time I reckon it couldn't get any worse, I read somewhere about some arcane way in which it has.   The fact that Goldman Sachs (or someone in some other firm) once described the clients as "muppets" now gives free reign for this term's incorporation into everyday usage.  I wonder how muppets recognise themselves when they get documentation from their super fund, bank, advisor and so on.

I got one the other day, full of factual inaccuracies and such a lazy piece of work I felt like framing it.  What I will be doing is writing back to tell them they've lost my business.

I hope it  makes them feel muppet-like as that will be my intention.