Those Friendly Browns

I've been listening a bit to my old band The Browns since Steve Brown managed to get a CD mastered and burnt for me. I expected it to be cringeworthy, but it actually turned out be surprisingly OK. Anybody who's interested can have a listen here to some selected tracks from the missing classic The Browns... Lay Rubber.

The song Crown is actually the story of the pivotal part that Crown Lager played in preventing the Apocalypse, and not surprisingly Foster's was somewhat uninterested when we tried to shop it to them as a new ad campaign for the beer. Something about being not quite the image they were trying to portray (although they did think it was funny). So it's a little bit sacrilegious - the image of God and the Devil sitting around drinking Crownies and trying to pick up chicks has to sell a lot of beers, surely ?

This was always the last song we played, and generated this exchange between Ian Brown and the decidedly unimpressed audience at the Hallam Hotel when we played with James Reyne:

Ian: And this is our last song
Crowd: Yay !
Ian: Unfortunately it's also our longest
Crowd: Boo !

They were somewhat more won over by the end of it (everybody loves songs about beer), but it's fair to say we didn't go over terribly well in deepest darkest suburbia.

Cover versions that are better than the originals

Hallelujah - Jeff Buckley

The simplicity of his treatment of this one puts Leonard Cohen's synthesizer laden version to shame, and really brings Cohen's brilliant song writing to the fore. Buckley keeps his warbling to a minimum (which usually pretty much shits me) and just lets the song and his guitar do the talking without any need for histrionics

Bizarre Love Triangle - Frente

I read an article in the Age listing this as one of the worst five cover versions ever, which I thought was an extremely harsh call. I heard New Order themselves name this as their favourite cover version ever in a radio interview once and I'd say they're pretty much spot on. As a much younger man I pretty much fell in love with Angie Hart every time I heard this one.

Hurt - Johnny Cash

I have to admit that I've never heard the original of this, but it's pretty hard to imagine that Trent Reznor could ever deliver the power and gravity that Johnny brings to this. There's also a brilliant film clip to this that contrasts pictures and clips of the younger Cash with his dying older self (and I believe that he died just months after this was recorded). I first watched it on YouTube at work and had tears in my eyes at the end, which was more than a little embarrassing.

Nothing Compares 2 U - Sinead O'Connor

All these are following a similar theme with the stripped back versions, but she really makes this largely a capella version of the Prince song fuckin' hurt. Again, a great film clip consisting solely of a single shot of her shaven headed face with tears running slowly from her eyes says pretty much all that needs to be said.

Anything by the Detroit Cobras

OK, it might be going a bit far to say that everyone of their versions is better than the original, particularly when I don't think I've even heard any of them, but geez I love this band.

Best.Cover.Band.Ever.

How does YouTube know so much about me ?

I'm not saying it isn't true, but I just wondered how YouTube found out about it.

Oh, The Age, you've done it again !

Premature evacuation as Club X burns

Those subbies at The Age ! They crack me up !

Absolutely the last post about RockWiz, promise

If you want to see some of my moments of glory you can have a look at this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFE2x2XfxNU

This has been up for a month or so, and I reckon I've told perhaps half a dozen people about it, but it has received 71 views so far. Who's watching this stuff ? Are people just browsing randomly through YouTube watching arbitrary videos ? Who could possibly be interested in this if they don't know me ?

My two favourite news stories

I very much enjoyed the following two news stories:

Fire whips through bondage parlour

An MFB spokesman said 18 firefighters "were tied up for some time but disciplined and controlled firefighting contained the blaze to one room on the second floor".

Oh, how those cheeky wags at the Metropolitan Fire Brigade must have amused themselves with this one.

Straight-out ban at gay venues sparks uproar

WHEN Collingwood hotelier Tom McFeely decided to fight for the right to refuse entry to heterosexuals, he braced himself for a backlash.

The proprietor of the Robert Peel is named Tom McFeely ? Come ON, that's just one stop short of calling yourself Phillip McCrevice or Ben Dover !

Further RockWiz observations

• Unfortunately I discovered that being good at music trivia does not put you in an attractive demographic. A large proportion of the audience looks to be balding, 50-ish men, and standing at the urinal at the men's toilets during a break in proceedings I did notice that a proctologist could probably drum up a fair amount of business - there were not a lot of vigorous streams in evidence. As a side effect of this I also noticed that any female contestants in the preliminary rounds with even a rudimentary proficiency in the subject tend to get some amount of preference when selecting the final contestants, particularly if they happen to also be under 40.

• One other piece of trivia that amused me (if this is trivia about a trivia program does that make it meta-trivia ?) is that the person in charge of celebrity wrangling is Eve von Bibra. She was apparently in the Chantoozies many moons ago, but she's probably best known now as Jacqui, the flight attendant love interest in the film Kenny. I saw her backstage and had one of those "Where do I know you from ?" moments and only realised it later when I read an article about the guys who made Kenny and saw her name.

• Julia Zemiro seems to be pining for love at the moment, even to the point of giving out her phone number on stage - well, somebody's seems phone number anyway - which doesn't seem to be the greatest idea in front of an audience made up of people with freakish memories for arcane facts. She does, however, appear to be kind of over being the 'it' girl for 50 year old balding nerdy guys who like trivia. Picky, picky, picky.
  

My life as a freak

So, I finally got to get my shot. Last night we went to a taping of RockWiz as part of the Comedy Festival, and I managed to be one of the 4 people out of 800 in the audience to actually take part. Here's how it played out:

• We had gone along to the previous night's show and not gotten anywhere near it. Because of the increased number of people in the audience they couldn't get one person from each table into the initial group that they select the real contestants from so they implemented a WillyWonka-style system where randomly selected seats in the audience had lucky tickets under them, and the people with those tickets got to either go up or choose someone else who would. Unfortunately no one on our table had one and even though Claudette had a red hot go at trying to convince someone from another table to let me go up it wasn't to be. Luckily Kerrie met some people she knew who had tickets to the next night's show that they couldn't use, so they gave them to her.
  
  
• The next night we went along and sat down and Darren found the golden ticket under his seat. As per previous instructions from Kerrie he gave it straight to me, which made the other people on our table look a bit peeved but Kerrie was not to be denied in her determination to get me up there.
  
  
• So up I went with the other 17 people (which somehow became 18 when we all got up there). I had to wait until the last round of qualifiers, which was pretty nerve wracking but finally I got my chance and acquitted myself pretty well, if I can be allowed a small pat on my own back. I was particularly proud of my singing efforts, busting out 'Rocket Man' (even though I did mistakenly say that it was sung by David Bowie instead of Elton John) and 'The Gambler' (although to be honest if I was going to do a Kenny Rogers number I would have preferred 'Ruby' to get the chance to sing the classic line "It's hard to love a man whose legs are bent and paralysed"). Brian Nankervis told me not to go too far away which made me fairly confident that I was going to get a guernsey in the real show.
  
  
• When the names were announced I was one of the lucky four (hooray !), and we made our way backstage to get fitted for Madonna/Janet Jackson style headphone microphones, sign waiver forms and meet Brian and Julia. Julia was very friendly and touchy (Julia Zemiro touched me !) and ran us through what we were meant to do, making sure that we had our answers to the contestants' questions worked out, telling us not to jump in too quickly on the Who Can it Be Now questions and generally making with the friendly and the putting us at ease.
  

• After waiting backstage for what seemed like ages we finally made it on. Everyone was extremely nervous and the girl on my team (Anita) gave my hand a little squeeze before things got started, which I thought was quite cute. Julia asked us all the traditional questions, and then we were into it.
  
  
• I knew the first Who Can it Be Now before anybody else but decided to hang back as per instructions, so I was pissed off when the girl on the other team jumped in with Katie Noonan. Katie came out and did a very nice version of Cold Chisel's Choir Girl but unfortunately she went to the other team. When the second Who Can it Be Now came I was determined not to get caught again and jumped straight in as soon as Julia said that the person was in the Twilights. She looked a little irritated but I blurted out Glen Shorrock and on he came.
  
  
• Glen Shorrock turned out to be a little like the pervy old uncle at the family functions who tells all the inappropriate dirty jokes. When he sat down on our side he immediately started to jokily come on to Anita, which she didn't actually look that pleased about. The pearler though was later on when he said that The Nips Are Getting Bigger was actually a triple entendre - going on to explain that Nips could be nips of spirits, girls' nipples or, wait for it, Asian people, inspiring a "moving right along" moment from our hostess.
  
  
• At one stage I did get the ultimate accolade - being called a freak by Julia Zemiro. Be still my beating heart ! (Although I can't remember what I actually did to deserve it.)
  
  
• Unfortunately my team wasn't actually able to make the night perfect by coming up with a win. The other team was too consistent, with three members of mostly equal trivia skill, and too fast on the buzzers (although I was hampered by a dodgy buzzer that didn't seem to go off half the time I pressed it). I believe the final scores were 165 to 195 so it wasn't even close, which was a bit disappointing.
  
  
• At the end of the night we were herded back out into the audience, while the celebrities were escorted to another backstage area for drinks and nibbles - so much for hanging out and chilling with our new friends, although even if we had have gotten to mingle with them I would most likely have gotten stuck talking to Glen Shorrock the whole time.

And that was pretty much that. Not as exciting as the night that Chrissie Amphlett pretended to fellate one of the contestants, but my moment in the sun nonetheless. My main worry when going up there was not making a fool of myself, and although I will no doubt be cringing when I actually watch the show on TV, I don't think there were any really embarassing moments (with the exception of some perhaps excessive gushing to Brian and Julia backstage after the event). At this stage the episode is due to go to air on May 5th, so we'll probably have a few people around and relive the moments of glory.

Small things amuse small minds

It's amazing what pathetic things provide me with amusement

1. The other night I happened to find myself watching the lawn bowls at some ungodly hour (what a scintillating life I lead). In some misguided attempt to spice up the proceedings the organisers had decided to play rock music between each end, which really seemed to go down well with the half dozen or so pensioners in attendance. The song selection particularly amused me


• Rocking All Over the World
• Most People I Know Think That I'm Crazy
• What I Like About You
• Black Betty (the Ram Jam version, not the Spiderbait one)
  

The house, as they say, was rockin'.


2. I noticed the other day that the cast of Boston Legal, a show which I'm inexplicably quite fond of includes the following:
   
   
   • A Lake and a Valley
   • A Potter, a Spader, and disturbingly, a Shatner

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Huh ?

A while ago, Liam got a joke chewing gum packet in a show bag that had a stick of gum with a cockroach attached that sprang out at you when you pulled it out of the pack. Ha, ha, very funny, but on the back of the supposed stick of gum were the following warnings:



Sickman and cowardiness just don't get the respect they deserve in this country.

Top ten songs about death

For years the EG ran it's "Top 10 songs about.." series and for some reason I was building a list in my head of the top 10 songs about death. I am aware how lame the whole High Fidelity style lists thing is, but bugger it, it amuses me, and that's pretty much what this blog type thing is for, innit ?

Anyway, to the list. The cheesier the song the better, the absolute pinnacle of the genre being where the chorus turns out to have some ironic or prophetic connection with the death, particularly where it actually turns out to be the dead person's last words.

To wit:

Hello, This is Joanie (The Telephone Answering Machine Song) - Paul Evans

An absolute classic of the genre, where Joanie's answering machine message provides a tragic reminder of the voice of the singer's dead lover. In the last verse he even calls the answering machine again after he finds out that she's dead because "still there was a way to hear her voice". Cree-py ! Enjoy the full lyrics here

Billy Don't Be a Hero - Paper Lace

This has everything - prophetic chorus, whistling solo, marching drums, what else could you want. I was all over this one on the karaoke machine at Kay's 40th, and I must say I think I gave it a pretty good shake. Paper Lace followed this one up with The Night Chicago died, another song involving death, which is probably too much of a good thing, even for me.

Tell Laura I Love Her - Ray Peterson

This one really cranks the cheese factor up to 11, largely as a result of his over the top vocal delivery. It's amazing how many of these death songs are about automotive accidents - let that be a warning to you, kids.

Leader of the Pack - The Shangri Las

"Betty, is that Jimmy's ring you're wearing?". The tragic tale of forbidden love between a bad boy biker and an innocent schoolgirl whose parents are always putting him down (down, down). Look out ! Look out ! Things don't end well.

I Did What I Did for Maria - Tony Christie

This song gives you three deaths for the price of one as Tony looks back unrepentantly on the tragic events leading up to his imminent execution. For some reason I always get Tony Christie mixed up with Tony Orlando, perhaps because of their similar cheesy vocal style.

Delilah - Tom Jones

"I felt the knife in my hand - she laughed no more". Tom Jones' tale of a crime of passion seems just a little politically incorrect today, as I'm reasonably sure it's now frowned upon to respond to being humiliated by your partner by stabbing her with a kitchen knife. Ah, the old days !

Dead Man's Curve - Jan and Dean

The first - and to my knowledge only - instance of the surf/death song hybrid genre. Co-written by Brian Wilson, this song is supposedly written about a real life accident that left Jan in a coma, although snopes.com says this is an urban legend. Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) apparently did have an accident on the real life version of this bend on Sunset Boulevard.

I Want My Baby Back - Jimmy Cross

Since this is actually a spoof on songs about death it probably doesn't count, but it's still funny. I had this on a Dr Demento album at one stage which seems to have disappeared somewhere, and I particularly like the final chorus with the digging and scratching sound effects.

Teen Angel - Mark Dinning

Again with the car crash. As far as I can tell, the moral of this story seems to be "Running back into a car which is stalled across the railway tracks could be bad for your health". So don't do that, mmmkay ?

Seasons in the Sun - Terry Jacks

OK, I'm really scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one, certainly the sappiest and most mawkish of the songs on this list. Am I the only one thinking "Just die already" by the end ?



When searching through the internet for lyrics and references to these song I'm devastated to have found that this is not as original an idea as I once thought it was, but it does still amuse me.

I coulda been a contender....

So I'm shattered to learn that there's (literally) a waiting list big enough to fill the MCG twice over to get a table at a taping of RockWiz. I'm supremely confident that I could have kicked some serious music trivia arse if only I coulda got my shot, and the only thing stopping me is the inconvenient fact that it appears that at least half of Melbourne's 3.7 million people seem to think the same thing.

I have all of my answers to the contestants questions well prepared:

• What was the first concert you ever went to - Billy Joel in 1975, with my parents
• What was the first album you ever bought - I believe that the first album I ever owned was Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits, although I think that technically this was given to me and my sister and hence doesn't really count, so I think the first one I ever bought was Fleetwood Mac - the one with Rhiannon on it.

I'm more than ready, but it seems I'm doomed to be forever disappointed

Compounding my disappointment is the loss of the chance to get close to Julia Zemiro, who in my opinion is one hot tamale. She's smart and funny, she speaks French (Oh, Tish !) impressively well, and although she's not quite Megan Gale, the sight of her in PVC pants during the Eurobeat musical certainly revived my previously flagging interest in the proceedings.

And don't even get me started on the Rockwiz Orchestra.....

Where everybody knows your name

I am now recognised on sight and by name by the proprietors of two local pizza parlors, the fish and chip shop and the Chinese and Indian restaurants in Heidelberg Road. I'm not sure what this says about me, or about our eating habits, but I'm pretty sure it's not a good thing.....

Vale Axle Whitehead

And just like that, he was gone. I'm quite disappointed, not because I didn't think he was a complete knob - 'cos he was - but because I was working up a theory that he was becoming the new Molly Meldrum.

The case for, m'lord:

• Fawning interviews with overseas artists who clearly had met him for the first time 30 seconds before going to air, and who are nevertheless referred to constantly as "my old mate" etc, etc
• Inane and senseless questions to said artists. The usual response is somewhere between bewilderment and slight panic as they visibly attempt to work out what the fuck he was talking about while still staying on message and not looking like an idiot themselves.
• The disturbing knowledge that he is to some extent representing Australia and the Australian music industry in the eyes of these people, and that we're being found sadly wanting.
  

To be fair, Axle is slightly more articulate than Molly, but he adds his own special squirm factor with his far too frequent references to his own musical prowess, largely in an I-know-where-you're-coming-from-being-a-muso-myself attempt to ingratiate himself with the interviewees.

John Mayer, whose music is generally about as appealing as changing nappies but who is otherwise reasonably articulate and amusing, had the good sense to basically just ignore him during an OB interview at Federation Square, which I thought was probably as good an approach as any.

After Axle's unfortunate Aria's accident, it fell to his cohort Jabba to spread oil over the troubled waters of TV-land:

"My understanding is that he wasn't wearing any undies, his fly was open and some of the lunch meat fell out of the sandwich,'' Jabba told Confidential.

Jabs, a career in international diplomacy awaits you.

A positive side effect of the whole affair (for me anyway, because I somehow managed to miss it at the time it happened) was to find out what happened to his similarly talent-challenged erstwhile co-host on Video Hits, Kelly Cavuoto. At the time she just seemed to vanish off the face of the earth, but now it appears that she was 'boned' - to use Eddie McGuire's charming yet inappropriate phrase - due to a drunken outburst at a children's television event.

Cavuoto raised more than a few eyebrows at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards at Luna Park on Tuesday with a display of alcohol-fuelled foul language and abuse at television screens whenever singer Guy Sebastian appeared on them.

She clearly has better taste than was evident during her time on Idol, but I'm not sure her apparent attempt to become Australia's answer to Courtney Love was ever really going to go down that well with the producers of a Saturday morning music program.

Thanks to The Spin Starts Here, where I stole these quotes from

How good is Freddy ?

I saw the picture of Andrew Flintoff consoling Brett Lee at the end of the Edgbaston Test in 2005 again in the Age this morning, and it never fails to bring a bit of a lump to my throat.



It's hard to imagine any Australian cricketer having the class and style to do something like that in those circumstances if the tables had been turned, and even though I hope the Australians open up a great big can of whupass on the Poms in the current Ashes series, it's hard to not want Freddie to do well.

Top 10 Aussie songs

I know the EG recently did this, and a lot of the songs that were on their list appear on my list, but stiff, I was making this list before they published theirs, and can I help it if they've got good taste ?

My rules for what makes it on this list are two-fold. The song has to be a classic (duh !), for whatever definition you have of a classic. Ideally it will have been a genuine hit at the time, but it may be a song which wasn't necessarily an immediate commercial success but has subsequently proven to be important and/or influential in some way. Secondly it should also have some sort of defining Australian nature (whatever that is). I also reserve the right to bend or ignore these rules where I feel like it.

That said, in no particular order here's my list.

Under the Milky Way - The Church

This is a bit of a cliche, because it's comes top of a lot of lists (top of the EG list as well), but shit it's a good song. I also was an enormous Church fan when I was younger and I pretty much obsessively figured out the chords to every song off Of Skins and Heart, The Blurred Crusade and Seance before their work started to get crap and I started to lose interest. Some of that old stuff is a bit dodgy now (Chrome Injury anyone ?), but I recently bought an American best-of that reminded me that they really did have a lot of good, sometimes bordering on great, songs.

Friday on My Mind - The Easybeats

This song meets all the criteria listed above - it sold over a million copies at a time that that really meant something, got to number 6 in the UK charts, top 20 in the US, has been covered by a massive number of people including David Bowie and yet still has something Australian about it. The song's structure is amazingly complex for its time, and yet Vanda and Young manage to pull it together in seemingly effortless fashion.

Leaps and Bounds - Paul Kelly

It was a real wrench to have to choose between this, To Her Door and my personal favourite How to Make Gravy, but this won out because it was a genuine hit, and because its a great example of his ability to evoke a time and place with a few simple phrases. The reference to the 'clock on the silo looking over the hill to the MCG' is as Melbourne as a W class tram, and for years I had a superstition, based on this song, that if the Nylex clock said 11 degrees when I drove past it then I was in for good luck that day. I can't think of too many other writers who can say so much with so little in the way that he can, and it's good to see that he seems to have grown out of his habit of tossing off references to Rimbaud and Baudelaire when he's being interviewed.

Long Way to the Top - AC/DC

Again, another toss up between some fantastic songs and I could have equally gone with Highway to Hell or Let There Be Rock, but ultimately it's the fantastic film clip of the band going down Swanston Street on the back of a flat bed truck with Bon Scott playing the bagpipes that makes this the one (that and the fact that it FUCKEN ROCKS harder than any song which features a bagpipe solo has a right to). I was watching Rage this morning and they played Long Way to the Top and Let There Be Rock (with Bon dressed in a priest's cassock) back to back. Best.Film Clips.Ever.

Cattle and Cane - The Go Betweens

I remember seeing this song on Countdown and being amazed at how different the song and the band was from anything else that I'd seen to that point. I love the simple bass and guitar riff (always a sucker for the bass riffs) , the wistful feeling of recollection of youth and the way it puts you there with him in Northern Queensland in a rain of falling cinders. RIP Grant McLellan (always liked his stuff way more than Robert Forster's).

Wide Open Road - The Triffids

Have to really bend the rules to get this one in here since it wasn't really a particular hit or massively influential in any real sense, but it really does have a quintessential Australian feel without having to make any overt references to meat pies, kangaroos or Holden cars. I always feel I'm in a car driving across the Nullarbor every time I hear it (not that I've ever been there, but you know what I mean).

Throw Your Arms Around Me - Hunters and Collectors

Another case when I tossed up between a couple of great songs - Betty's Worry (The Slab), Say Goodbye and this, but this wins because it was a genuine hit and a true Aussie classic sung at the end of parties by drunk blokes with the arms around each other. I do like the idea of getting drunken yobs to sing "You don't make me feel like a woman anymore" or "Oh, yeah, better get your head down there", but I like this song's passionate and romantic feel, even though it seems to be hinting at short term rather than long term things. As an aside, can you believe that the same guy who wrote Talking to a Stranger also wrote Holy Grail ? (although I guess it's not his fault that Channel Ten flogged it to death over the football).

I'm Stranded - The Saints

This was one that I really only came to appreciate long after it was released. I remember when a punk girl came to Mitcham High School in Form 5 we followed her around shouting "Ramones !" at her like it was some kind of insult - ah, the wonderful memories of my youth. Saw Chris Bailey on RockWiz a little while ago and he clearly is one of the great tossbags of our time, but he did write some great songs.

Flame Trees - Cold Chisel

Cold Chisel really did put out a lot of dross in their time and it's easy to dismiss them as a yob's band, but they also put out a lot of great stuff before Ian Moss started to take over too much of the song writing from Don Walker. Songs like Khe Sanh, No Sense, and most of the East album (Ita, Cheap Wine, Rising Sun etc) really were good (and given my stated criteria Khe Sanh probably belongs here more than this, but I prefer this one and this is my list, so there). Great lyrics from Don Walker really establish an emotional tone in this song without smashing you over the head with it and the music from Steve Prestwich isn't too bad either. They even manage to (almost) bury Ian Moss in the mix, and although he does manage to get in a few trademake whammy bar wanks the song still triumphs despite him.

The Hard Road - Hilltop Hoods

OK, so I admit that the main reason for including this is to have something in here that was recorded inside the last 10 years, but this album and this song really brought Aussie hip-hop into the mainstream, so I guess it can qualify in the classic category. I think that I'm really probably a bit too old to be liking hip-hop and in general I'm not a massive fan but this really is good enough to transcend those genre boundaries.


There are some glaring omissions here - Midnight Oil, INXS, the Hoodoo Gurus and You Am I, but I just didn't think that I could find a single song from those bands that fit the criteria for me that I liked enough.

I rant and I vote

** Start rant **

Nothing speaks more to me about the Australian political psyche and decision making process than the proliferation of 'I xxxxx and I vote' bumper stickers. That someone's world view can be so tiny and so self centred that a government's policy on fishing or dogs or horses or any of the other stupid things that get substituted into the above phrase will be the most important issue in deciding their vote fills me with despair about our country and the people who live in it.

This truly represents John Howard's Australia, where everybody's petty concerns about their own overly comfortable lives completely override any ideas about other, larger issues. To be fair, these people and their attitudes existed well before he came to power, but more than anyone before him he has created an environment which validates and approves of their insularity. In this world it's not necessary or even desirable to care about anyone other than yourself, to have compassion or concern about others less fortunate than ourselves and anyone who thinks otherwise is held to be either politically suspect or naive (I've always been mystified at the use of the term 'do-gooder' as an insult - yeah, doing good, that's definitely a bad thing.)

** End rant **

This is my first post and I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with this blog. It probably won't be overly political despite the name and the above rant. The name amused me, and hopefully some of the other stuff here might be amusing as well, to me at least.