November 2009 – Sunny Breaks

Rust and County Line

A year ago I watched that enviro doco called ‘Earth’ (retitled ‘home’ here because it’s easier to say) and the only thing I had to say to my then desk-sharing co-worker, a chap from perth, was that “Those polar bears are fucked”. And so I was pleased to read in the news recently that Polar Bears inc. have begun the process of a merger with Grizzly Bears Pty Ltd. Sex they, ‘Ladies and Gentleman, we give you _The Grolar Bear_. I love it! If only for sections of the animal kingdom could demonstrate the forward-thinking attitudes of these mamals. I even like the name. So much better than the Pizzly bear.

circus

Further into movies of older music, The Rolling Stones ‘Rock and Roll Circus’ is what I watched a few days back. It has a strange feel, the way the live audience is made to wear smocks in co-ordinated colours. It had a live rock performance meets kids tv show feel.

1. I don’t like The Who. Never have. I feel like it’s hard to fully justify because so many people seem to be gaga about them. I have tried. I d/loaded live at leeds and had it on the ipod for a week. It’s as they play everything in a key that sounds wrong to me. Don’t like Pete Townsend, don’t like the singer guy, and keith moon is not a band himself. Everyone has some kind of thing like this that’s never clicked. Maybe it’s the rock-opera leanings. Queen is the same, don’t like ’em, but can totally appreciate the place that Bohemian Rhapsody has for bogans hanging blocks everywhere.

2. I had an unfortunate situation involving Jethro Tull’s Aqualung album a month ago. I was listening to it doing the dishes, and what with my brain in a long cycle of high rpms because of study, a lot of bits of about the first five songs got stuck in there and would surface constantly. I’d wake up at 3.30am and hear ‘I don’t believe they knew I was a schoolboy’, which is dumb all by itself without it driving you crazy.

Somewhere last year I heard a short interview with ian anderson whay back when and he was saying how they were recording that album in a studio the same time Led Zepp was doing one of theirs, and that at some point, in public, anderson had made some remark re Robert Plant that ‘if only we could put my lyrics with Led Zeppelin’s instrumentation’ the thing being that he thought his lyrics were great, and Plants weren’t and that Plant was offended by this. It wasn’t mentioned but I couldn’t help but wonder how the rest of jethro tull felt about it.

3. The best song on it was the stones doing Jumpin’ Jack Flash. It’s in a slightly lower key, or slowed down a tad, but it makes it good.

Dianne

I was just at the severance hospital near yonsei visiting a guy I know. He was in some kind of accident when on his motorscooter last weekend. He was in a coma for a while but is awake now but still not in a good way at all.

I don’t really know what I was expecting when I went there but was not prepared for the kind of pannicky state he is in. I’m never good in these kind of situations. What are you supposed to say? I said relax and let your body heal itself — you’ll be okay. And I certainly believe that he has a chance to be okay, but I don’t think he’s thinking that.

I don’t know the details of the accident, like who was at fault. It’s not important either. This kind of thing could happen to anyone. There’s a good reason why I don’t have a motorbike. I haven’t even been riding my pushbike much lately, but mostly because the tires keep going soft.

::::::::::::::: On a positive note I finally finished my studies for the year. Happy to have that pressure off. Goodness knows what kind of trouble I’d get onto if I only had the job and nothing else all year round.

swamp

I wanted to take a moment out of my busy schedule of procrastinating from study (I’ve an exam tomorrow morning – yikes!) and mention how I watched this doco on country music a while back and while not all of it’s for me, there were a couple of acts that were catchy — first and foremost, Buck Owens. He’s got a great style of singing. I was looking on yutoob to see if there was much stuff of him and his backup band, the Buckaroos and I came across this:

The song, I’ve got a tiger by the tail is great, but this is a pretty flat version of it. But the thing about this music-video version is that it was live on the set of the original Duke of Hazard tv show. It’s a bizarre experience seeing that cast again. I never realised how cartoonish they were.

I watched that show when I was a small boy. It’s strange to think that there was an era of TV where the climax of the primetime 7:30pm TV show was a car chase.