Wilco, Sky Blue Sky

Unless your idea of fun is a Hootie and the Blowfish dress-up party, I strongly suggest flushing two Sky Blue Sky tracks ('I Hate it Here' and 'Walken') down the toilet. It’s rare for me to have such an astringent reaction to two numbers, but seriously these songs make me violently ill and threaten to disrupt what is otherwise a fine collection of pearls, ten in total, perhaps Wilco’s prettiest set to date.

Since bringing outlaw country to late-80s suburbia (via Uncle Tupelo, a Wilco pre-cursor), Wilco has mastered many styles rooted in Americana: country, rock, pop, light stuff, dark stuff, classic jams, futuristic jams, and so on. They started out simple, but by their last effort, 2004’s A Ghost is Born, they were turning feral and goddamn if it wasn’t totally exciting. Sky Blue Sky is a stark contrast; its antithesis. They sound tamed and sober. They’ve gone from loud back to quiet, serving up a downbeat sound well-suited to bar closing time. Nice and smooth 70’s soft rock with the occasional dippy lyric. “You feel like singing a song you want other people to sing along/ then just sing what you feel and don’t let anyone say it’s wrong,” sings Tweedy, soporifically summing up the modus operandi. There’s only been a handful of Wilco lyrics that have meant something to me beyond the song and it was mainly stuff off Being There — a good manual for being back in your old neighbourhood and taking up smoking. Subsequent Jeff Tweedy-penned numbers I could appreciate for their cool imagery, but mostly I liked Jeff’s flow (the band has always been good). But when the lyrics lose their ambiguity, you start to notice it, and when it becomes too obvious, or lame (e.g. 'Hate it Here' and 'Walken'), you feel like you’ve been sodomised by one of the Blowfish at a backyard barbecue over a round of Rolling Rock.

The rest of Sky Blue Sky may require a few dates before she loosens up. Guitarist Nels Cline, expected to break all kinds of masturbation records here, shows admirable Tantric restraint. His guitar playing is wonderful and the anonymous sidemen apply pleasant piano, organ and lap steel effects to the cosy surrounds. Cut the crap and it’s a pretty sweet album. Sky Blue Sky has its moment, and it's mostly a mellow one, but a moment it is nevertheless and what else do we have these days, but moments.

The Flywheel of Dads

What I got up to yesterday was kind of interesting. Though it began with a very uninteresting (yet significant) headache. Reporting ahead of schedule to a three o’ clock meeting at an Elwood cafe with a minor celebrity, I quickly scarfed down a vodka tonic to relieve swelling. She meanwhile turned up totally frazzled. We did the interview but she kept worrying about the mobile phone she had just lost on the beach (it was her only way of contacting a former Australian Idol contestant and apparently she needed to be in contact with this person constantly). Also her dog was outside tied to a pole and she kept fearing it would be kidnapped. Nevertheless she provided good value, was terribly cooperative and hardly the brassy tyrant I expected.

Italian restaurants with classic European post-war style are enjoyable eateries. I ordered four plates of fresh seafood for a satisfied party of twelve. My boss said one more plate would have been nice. Did you not have a tiger prawn? I asked. “No, he replied stoically. "I didn’t.”

We quaffed from a 2005 Cabernet Merlot called Annie’s Lane. It was good. I keep wanting to call it Annie’s Lennox (the actual winery might be called Lennox Farm, or I could be imaging the whole thing, I don’t know), seriously buy it if you can find it under $15. I pounded a long black, hailed a cab and caught Flywheel into their second song at The Tote. They have a new drummer now and his name is Greg. Greg has great taste in timepieces and his cool is boundless. The bassist’s wife was sweating his wool jacket hard after the show. He was feeling the love and I was giving it too. Flywheel seriously rocked like Guided by Voices. The whole time I was thinking how great it is to be friends with these guys. They put on one of my favourite shows of the year. There were actually girls screaming.

My Dad got a hole in one today, my Mother tells me. He was inches from a second hole in one on the next hole too. I am so proud of that guy. He’s the Flywheel of Dads.

All a bit creepy

Not a lot going on here, murder in the streets, bullets of rain, harsh winds, foul moods. Not that I mind the weather, in fact I like it, it’s murder I don’t like and the sounds of my colleagues rattling their spoons inside empty yogurt containers, scraping for an agreeable finish to their ridiculous health snack or the smug, smacking sounds they make with their faces afterwards. I am unable to appreciate my new casual knitwear under circumstances such as these.

Braindead, or not

The trouble with finishing a book after a rager is that the brain cells you need to comprehend what you’re reading, many of which are shaky at the best of times, either have died or are waiting at the station to be transferred to the junkyard of after-party detritus. But you persist because you like to read. The novel (I was attempting to read) was Nabokov’s Transparent Things.

It’s a fairly straightforward effort by him, but nevertheless, brain matter does help. What I can recall is that an uncoordinated publishing assistant under mysterious circumstances beds a glamorous, impulsive, frigid femme fatale, and even though she likes him only for his brilliant mind, she subjects him to a series of physical tests accompanied by two beefcake Nordic twins and before you know it the odd couple marry and flit between NY (where they live) and Switzerland, where he applies pressure on an enigmatic novelist named R to finish his damn opus.

Brain dead or not, every sentence is like devouring emphatically fine foody prose replete with marvelous expressions and hilarious adjectives. Just don’t ask me to explain the title because I’ll make something up about pencil shavings and atoms.

Party the night before was rightly bitchin. I was showered with “unexpected” attention and unexpected gifts (two bike bells, OZ mix CDs, tablecloth, countless other goodies), felt very overwhelmed, ate kangaroo shish kebabs, De Campo burned a hole in Catherine’s tights, Matt made a bloody great Pavlova, I fumbled my way through an impromptu speech and tossed vegetables in the air, the shattered capsicum of which Matt used as a dummy to sing The Birthday Party’s Release the Bats (there really is no other way to tackle this).

Woke up, tad bleary, finished TT and contemplated my next choice. I had wanted to read Snugglepot and Cuddlepie next, but then I started on Philip Roth’s Anatomy Lesson (excellent, by the way; much better than The Ghostwriter and Zuckerman Unbound), so I may have to do S&C after this.

Snug and Cud is a beautifully illustrated childrens’ book (wicked banksia man pictured above) written by May Gibbs about a hundred years ago in Western Australia), a gift from Michael & Fiona (also from Western Australia) for becoming citizen of their country. Funnily enough M's mother H — who performed a supremely intoxicating piano recital on Sunday that we were present at — knew May Gibbs' niece and spoke to her on the phone on at least one occasion. She talked like “THI-I-I-S-S-S”. Apparently she had a very deep voice, not sure if Helen was talking about May or the niece. Anyway back to the recital — De Bussy was the subject and it reminded me a little of Gershwin and when I told H this, she busted out a few bars of Rhapsody in Blue. Just divine. Later an angel named Rodrick laid down some Fats Waller voodoo and it was GOOOD (deep mean voice). But then the coffee table shattered, luckily no one was hurt, we barbequed homemade sausage rolls, finished the champagne listening to Thin Lizzy and then scooted home (wasn’t far, we live on the same street as the hosts).

The Australian Possum

A possum dropped by our house the other night, used our premises as a latrine, then beat it, presumably to a groovier happening. It was our first marsupial encounter at home and it reminded me how a visit with Greg Valentine might transpire in this day and age.

Initially tipped off by a small brown pellet which lay on the table where we normally put our drinks. Upon closer examination I found the shape and colour not dissimilar to possum shit. After that we discovered an isolated wet patch on the paved part of the courtyard. This was rather chilling data and De Campo and I both voiced our concern.

Just then we heard a loud crack and tumbling from a high branch in our plum tree the rude article made herself known. Flashing a devilish scowl, she climbed back up, reached a height of roughly three metres and proceeded to relieve herself in a torrential fashion, forcing me to jump back in horror, while De Campo ran inside visibly shaken. The big, brushtail equipped with the biggest ass I’ve ever seen, used the tall branch as a bridge to edge onto the roof. It disappeared over the roofline and even though I didn't see the creature again, I did hear a loud crash but was far too fearful to investigate.

In other news I have been an Australian citizen since last Thursday. More on this later. The blog is a fair bit behind at the moment. The possum encounter happened last Sunday fer goodness sakes.

X, At Home With You

I love the fact that they were on the couch watching The Cosby Show.

The Biter

Biting my nails, some say it’s bad (it is) they be very sore at the moment, I really need to stop (I can’t), they are concealed on the tram because of the embarrassment of having wee nubs.

The funny thing is I'm rather keen on the loveliness of hands, slender fingers, a classy constellation of veins, prominent knuckles though I must say beyond natural aesthetics, I am not interested in other people’s hands and don’t have the urge to bite them.

I started biting my nails way back when and never stopped. Now they're just these unsightly nubs that de Campo smacks all the time when they're near my mouth. I quit for awhile once back at university dating this Christian, or rather she was dating someone else I was just seeing her. At least I think she was a Christian. She took me to Church one Sunday and the preacher asked everybody to hold the hand of the person next to you and tell them that you loved them. I held out my nubs that time, but I never went back.

My mother once said if you don't stop chewing them we're going to get some toxic jelly you can get it from K-Mart and then every time you put them in your mouth you will become very ill. She used to yell at me from her seat during soccer matches while I was down in the goal not getting any action, all the action was up field and I was all alone at the other end just nibbling away. I think I picked up ringworm once from chewing them. Not that I ever swallowed them per say. To paraphrase Nico, I always make sure my hands are clean…these days.

Is it real CD launch (or please don't tell me Mother how I've been behaving)

The New Estate show was anything but thirst-quenching. How else to explain the vast quantity of beer that went into my gullet. The band were sweet as honey and raunchier than an indie Dad at a bucolic crab feast. I was ogre-riffically mauling everyone in sight, so consider yourself chronically relieved if you happened to not be there getting mauled ogre-style by me.

Lindsey Lowhand were the raddest thing. To say I am enamoured is to soft sell a band that sounds nothing like Soft Cell. I’m thinking Superchunk circa Cool, The Jicks’ circa Dynamic Calories, Archers’ circa Scenic Pastures and something special that sounded like Close to Me by The Cure. Panel didn’t throttle me, which is so perverse I wish it to never occur again in this lifetime, but seriously that’s OK a breather between LL and the NE juggernaut was probably critical, even though what kind or to what extent the breather was I am not sure because I totally didn’t show it and felt like hurling as I sat in the booth spilling a big water down my frontage. What an amazing bill. I had my belt buckled the whole time too, unlike Monday’s show (New Estate, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah at the Hi-Fi Bar) where I looked down, New Estate were just getting into it, and there’s my belt completely unlooped and dangling before my innocent, well-intentioned eyes.

Anticipate the unthinkable, expect the unimaginable

TONITE!

Willie

Williamstown: a cute, little oldie along the lines of a model for aged care brochures (basically the suburban equivalent of De Campo in her mid-80s). Its past is very well-preserved and probably hasn’t changed much in a hundred and fifty years. If I was loaded and a bit lame I might consider buying in and being an active local holding weekly TV Parties for McLeod’s Daughters.

D and I stayed at a giant, mock-period B&B three k’s out of town on Sat night. What can I say I was seduced by Doug and Lottie’s somewhat deceptive website.

Our room was on the top floor of a very confusedly designed home. Thankfully D&L gave us an upgrade because the room we had originally requested — pointed out to us as we were walking up the stairs —was no larger than a powder room. Our room was actually very nice. We had a spa, the spa had sea views, we watched a sunset, ate cheese, and there were pelicans hanging out on the rocks in the morning.

It was a lot like staying at my parent’s house, had I never met them or had any partial feelings toward them. Doug, our Dad for the night, drove us to dinner down on the dock of the bay where we partook in steak and every sea species imaginable, including one weird scaly orange creature, didn’t know what that was, while drinking NZ white. I ordered a takeaway Irish Coffee to be enjoyed decadently in bed while finishing The Adventures of Augie March which was just unbelievable. I hope that one day I write a sentence as equally as brilliant as one of Saul Bellow’s paragraphs.

We woke up refreshed, walked into town and perused the market, before catching the 12.30pm ferry and moseying back to Melbourne.

Misogynist, Genius, Dog-Hater?

So I win a Cassavetes box set off eBay then get a message from the seller telling me his dog Russell pissed on it. I don’t care what your dog’s name is, dude, just get it together. Cripes.

The Decampo Show

"they are foxy to me, are they foxy to you, I will agree..."











The Corey Harts of the rap game: Outward Obtooce and Coinflow $







Handhell did a karaoke-style set because Kirsty had recently undergone a throat op (she communicated through a guitar and whiteboard). Ex-Batrider Toby filled Kirsty shoes along with Mia, shown here caterwauling The Bites' classic 'Adelaide'. I don't know what I was doing, getting in their way mostly. I tripped on a lead and did a faceplant on the corner of the amp, and yelled "I'm OK, I'm OK!" Of course no one was paying attention. I then bumped into Rene's guitar a few minutes later. He gave me a great big whack.

De Campo ventured out and blew everybody's mind, I mean who knew she could sing like Martha Davis







A spectator rather pleased with himself













Above: a scene from the afterparty. No pictures of headliners The Bad Luck Charms, who were over from Tasmania. That's sad because they put on a real cold-blooded old time.

Yoga tonight in preparation for this

I feel positively well-informed

Wasn’t really expecting the Michael Mann retrospective to do to me what it did, but it did and what can I say, but oh mann!

Caught two of the three sessions at Cinemateque, saw four excellent films, basically nine and a half hours of Mr Mann, I feel positively well-informed, first week it was Manhunter and The Insider, the second week was Crime Story and Heat (which we missed on account of an ANZAC day hangover) and then last night it was Thief and Collateral. Three of them I had never seen before and those were Manhunter, Insider and Thief. All very kick-ass.

Manhunter (1986) was the first of the Lector movies, and it’s hip as shit, serial killer bonkers. The detective wears a metallic blue tie over a maroon shirt and the killer has great taste in pumping hard rock. You won’t forget the wicked finale set to In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida so tremendously entertaining. Demme’s ending now looks unoriginal to Mann’s, as he basically pinched the mood, music and colours from under Mann’s nose. Postscript: Joan Allen is unforgettable as an undersexed blind, lab assistant.

Like Demme, Mann invests as much into the small supports as he does the big leads, as all directors should, but few actually do because it takes big brains and compassion for little people. I think it’s my favourite aspect of his work.

Next was the three-hour long Insider (1999) which was thoroughly engrossing from start to finish, even though it’s one of those journalist as hero studies like All the President’s Men, which I seem to be a huge sucker for. Pacino was fab, looking strangely like my Aunt Sally, and Crowe, acts like his heart could explode from suppressed rage any second. His family bails on him and he resorts to a suicidal bender in a luxurious Louisville hotel. I must say, one of the greatest joys of cinema is watching Russell Crowe getting tormented.

Thief (1981) has the music of Tangerine Dream and James Caan doing straight-up nihilism – with a limp! He’s done big jobs, spent his twenties in the slammer, wants to do one more big job and then sit around and watch daytime TV the rest of his life (he says this jokingly, but he’ll do it). The threat of sodomy was so severe in prison, he’s no longer scared of death. He drives a Cadillac, romances Tuesday Weld with the finesse of a wrecking ball and somehow gets entangled with kingpin Grandpa Munster who displays a very nice avuncular menace and how about them strawberry blonde sideburns! Grandpa buys Caan and Weld a house in the Chicago suburbs that I swear was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright that they can live comfortably in with the adopted Sudanese baby that Grandpa arranged for them also. The last job recalls Riffifi and James Belushi, Caan’s partner, dies a slo-mo shotgun to the chest in Grand Guignol-fashion, it’s arguably his finest moment (I believe a surplus of magenta DuLox was involved).

Collateral (2004) is the bomb. My favourite of all Mann’s movies. To say it’s about guys and their dicks, a comment I had read before I saw the movie, and a comment I admired at the time, but honestly, after seeing it, I find the description so witless and lazy. I mean sure there’s gunfights, but Jamie Foxx is basically playing a timid girl, afraid of the world and Tom Cruise is cyborg du jour, modelling himself on Schwarzenegger’s Terminator and executing it with indestructible playboy creepiness.

I guess the reason I have never gotten into Mann before is that his movies demand to be seen on the biggest screen you’ve ever seen with Dolby sound that deliriously pumps your gnads (wrong word, I think...)

Spitting Wicked Randomness

I’m super amped about going to West Coast U.S.A. Tickets are purchased, car hire sorted (Mustang convertible – GET OUT!), vague plan, kinda, sort of mapped out. All happening real soon. To think, in less than five months I’ll be eating fried clams with Moms and Pops is simply too ace!

Saturday I was at the desk like Dash Hammett scribbling a criminally short short story about Sir, an only slightly sleazy Melbourne synth act, who are extreme professionals, pure class, depressing and a hell of a lot of fun. Imagine a man in the mind frame of the dude in The Last Tango in Paris making a record about using pleasure as a tool to tweak his grief. Sounds dreadful, I know, but I love that kind of shit and find Sir’s sardonic craft so very winning. Oh yeah, album’s called The Brando Room. Buy two copies for your neighbour Jimmy.

Saturday night, De Campo, Outward Obtooce and I danced so hard at the Old Bar the DJ awarded us a beer each — thus making our night a bit specialer. She spun fifty years of obscure musical flavour and at one point, leap-frogged from some weird soul city like Cleveland in 1966 to Melbourne in 1973, for a fistful of Balls, Coloured ones at that, and in its own way the night served as a glowing tribute to the fallen colossus, ah Mista Loyde, who died last week just before I saw him on Rage midnight Friday in black and white doing a version of Guitar Overdose (G.O.D.) with an earlier outfit, The Wild Cherries, Lobby with scraggly Magwitch hair and a greasy moustache, it was one of the best things I had ever seen. I love the man and the DJ at the Old Bar, did too, she’s like the best DJ in town and when she saw my jubilation during ‘Flash’ she followed it with ‘Human Being’, her personal favourite, and explained how she was up front at the Corner at the Coloured Balls reunion and Lobby almost bopped her in the head with his guitar neck. Whole Lotta Shakin’.

Guested at a Whisky Club on Sunday night, and an enchanted evening it was, sitting around consuming whisky, listening to Goblin.

Got a copy of Steve Miller Band’s first album with my haircut today. How cool is that? Well I didn’t get the album for free exactly I had to pay for it, but the shop sits above Dr. Follicles, so in some way, I left the shop with it, get it? Volume 3 is there too, hope to pick it up next time I need a snip, but it could be awhile because a solidly bearded Craig, cut it quite fine.

Sydney, it's you

Luved Sydney majorly as it was totally tops and cool as in sweet and nuts as in funny, and hot, especially Saturday when we took the ferry to Manly and came back a bit pink after a long walk on the corso and a school of fish and chips.

Bel was the host with the most and the toast.

We hit gigs both nights and De Campi and I noticed how decent the crowds were. In Melbourne the pretentiousness can at times be positively gag-worthy. Not in Sydney, good people, a polite and rather swell bunch. De Campo thought they were dorky.

'Pretty destroyed' are the first words uttered on Richard Buckner’s newest album Meadow and it kind of summed up his feelings also. When the three of us arrived at The Basement on Friday night, this absolute rustic wonder of a place, we spotted RB in the smoking section, mood ebullient, burning cigarettes down to his fingers, telling anecdotes with a stoned vigour.

Sadly his chatter was spent when he took the stage treating the audience like we weren’t even there and that’s not very nice, retreating into himself like a freaking terrapin. The way he played his songs, as one elongated growling organism, deluded the set, for Richard he be no Fiery Furnace. Olivia later said Bucky was lameo but tears we’re gushing from her ducts when he played certain songs, so what the heck. I probably enjoyed Buck’s set more than my companions (“If Lurch were a minstrel,” zinged the Mistress) but I doubt I’ll put on another one of his records for a little while and that’s no good plus I must say the slow-roasted mushrooms in the meal were the best part and I don’t even consider myself a friend of the fungi.

Met support act Edith Frost, the gel who made Bel reach for her imaginary revolver, in the smoking section afterwards. Edith lives outside Frisco in Hitchcock territory, but she didn’t know that.

The site of a steely-eyed Stan Grant (CNN anchor) front and centre was a bit unnerving at first. The mistress and D made a big deal about how loud he uttered the word trout, which is pretty funny when you think about it. “He really is very handsome,” the mistress said the next morning over coffee and the two of us nearly choked on our seeded toast.

Before Wilco and after Manly, we had a Thai meal next to the open window next to the sidewalk opposite the Enmore Theatre and a nice bottle of Sav with it and life never seemed so good. Wilco were really patchy, I think they may have misplaced their edge, or singer Jeff left it at the rehab clinic, the venue was superb however and they played ‘Spiders (Kidsmoke)’, so I left feeling pretty damn happy.

David Kilgour, The Far Now

When Constable Clean and his smiling heavies swept through Melbourne last month me and the entire cast of Russell Coight’s All Aussie Adventures, started getting down! The hot chicks, hell, they probably dug that shit the most!

I was detained at the box office, but I could hear what was going on from around the curtain and it was beginning to make my toes tremble. By the time I got in I told everyone “hi!” and began slowly devouring a vast quantity of snags Russell was barbequing. Now if I had showed the same modest appetite around the cooker as Mr. Kilgour had brought to the Corner that eve I probably wouldn’t have been sitting down for so long afterwards. Nevertheless, a night of indescribable pleasure was had, but geez Russell, next time go a bit easy on the mosquito coils, it’s a non-smoking venue.

Now Mr. K. he played virtually every song off his latest entitled 'Far Now', a collectionof pleasant psych rock with small stakes set to classy grooves that together add up to a handsome addition to the K canon and as breezy as a slight autumn wind up your rear entry. Opener Sun of God, this weird meditative guitar thing using like 39 guitars or so, including, but not limited to, serene burbles of feedback, stoned drones, a Brian Jones-slide thing that’s a treat and a half among heaps more. BBC World is windows-down action in the order of Kilgour’s charming ’92 effort Here Come The Cars. “I got drunk on the Yenesei,” sings Kilgour on Yenesei before a well-muted Luna-esque jam closes proceedings, guitars howling faintly like a wolfpack across the canyon looking at some dag-nasty animal carcass. But prettier. Like say our own Popolice. Closer ’Out of the Moment’ so rustic and woodsy is like a visit to a logging camp without actually going there and getting hit in the head by an axe handle by your Dad.

The music suffers when Tane Takoma ain’t working the beat like a crime scene reporter, his fedora tilted and his slacks pressed like my man Joe Mitchell. The Dylan influenced stuff kind of stinks too, as Lorraine mentioned that night and that I’m onjly picking up on now, plus the few delicate pieces that don’t seem to go anywhere, they may have been tossed off on the porch or something, they came alive a bit better live and man, Russell cannot get enough of Mr. K. You know he picked up The Clean Anthology and when he’s out in the dust winding up the dingoes, he kicks it to Tally-Ho!

Hey, Glovebox Rox

Sure it took place a few days ago but I don’t care dude I’m a busy man I have a lot of things going on in my life and before I can process what happened you know I’m in the middle of something else and so it goes…

Caught Dylan Moran live at the Arts Centre on Friday night. Best thirty-nine bucks I ever spent. We were up in the balcony and it’s a steep one, folks, seriously, it’s like we were carved into the face of a sharp rock and down below, under the spotlight, is this little speck and he’s Irish and he’s pulling his hair exasperated-like and barking out gut-busting indignities at the world, throwing jaffas at the crowd, etc. and it’s so delightful, his misery, so gigantically riveting, this escapism (more the remarkable given that I had just survived an unusually demanding day at work that depended wholly on my leadership, something I do not know how to do or like to do, preferring short bursts of activity and long, slow mental drifts) and so grotesquely endearing I wanted to tuck him into my sock and bend over and watch him rant on my leg.

Post-coital Dylan Moran, De Campi, Tobe and Suze left the city for Brunswick in a tram that became very crowded very fast we were relieved to get off at the Brunswick Green, one of the best pubs in town (and there are many), who happened to be playing some Pixies’ rip-off by Ryan Adams called Nuclear, one of his better songs actually, it's real good, we ate a plate of wildly great chips, gorged hard, this is after De campo complained vehemenently at the price of two longnecks ($18) but hey the chips weren’t even ours, they were Kirsty Stegwazi’s, who we ran into serendipitously, it was her birthday, what a fine lady, we munched her chips and she didn't even seem to mind, nor make any effort to stop us, got to love her. De Campo was noticeably chuffed. Lucky Kirsty luvs her sum De Campo.

We sneakily stormed Cloud City with a slab strapped to our undershirts, still the owners, these young kids, who have had noise complaints and threats from the police and who despite our indiscreetness, tried to stop us from entering, presumably because of our propensity for zaniness (plus the the whole cops thing of course) and it wasn’t until Prince Nania came to the rescue that the chumps cooled their jets and let us in and we extracted the lagers from our undershirts. On stage Barrage (who seemed subdued and not giving a shit), Panel of Judges (rock me Amadeus, I mean c'mon, that new Sister Ray/Krautrock number is the best) and The Renderers, who were country in the places they weren’t Velvety.

We then moseyed up to the Railway Tavern, this three-storey monstrosity because I heard some weird disco rubbish that sounded kind of fun coming from the inside, it was a smart move because eventually we caught Glovebox in their alarming flesh. Good grief, the lead singer looked like a middle-aged aerobics instructor at a Florida retirement condo circa ’86 crossed with a jack o’ lantern, Jackie Stallone and one of Mike Myers' Jewish ladies singing horrific, X-rated lyrics. It was a little hard to take, but still...I danced.

Fairweather Accent

I scrapped my Aussie accent for the one I used to have, the one that’s been long dormant like a volatile volcano, so I’m using that and treating the other like ash. When I first came to this country, I picked up the Aussie accent straightaway. I was a type of Zelig person, a human chameleon.

After almost eight years, my original accent, if that’s what you even call it, it’s from a different country, surely it must be something, is now sounding really exotic to me, so I’m reverting back to that, whatever ‘that’ is. Sadly, my Aussie verbal jangle doesn’t captivate me like it used to. I’ve even started pronouncing the ‘r’ in Melbourne again. For any listeners out there, I still put a ‘tree’ at the end of cemetery, but I’ve officially dropped “to-mah-toe” for “to-may-toe”.

It’s kind of odd because I go for my immigration interview on Saturday afternoon. Some of the things I’ll appreciate about being an Australian citizen if they allow me to be is firstly being one; then voting the prime minister out of office, the odious little lap dog, the utterly spineless micro-manager who's guaranteed a legacy of pure rotten to-may-toe-ness; having a second passport and just voting in general.

Easter was fun. I went and saw lots of bands. Saw Deerhoof. They were tops. De Campo got a black, Bonds-t-shirt and a CD by LCD Soundsystem called Sound of Silver. It’s a modern dance record with punk cred and it’s monstrously good. Decampo gave me a book of essays by David Foster Wallace called Consider the Lobster. Read some of that, yeah. It’s freaking great but his intelligence is so bracing the prose comes off as mechanical sometimes and there’s so much information it occasionally reads like it’s computer-generated brilliance, but eventually you realise it’s impossible to fault it and you end up loving it, but become a bit numb with envy because he’s so far ahead of the pack with the brain of a scientist, the sensibility of a hipster and the dazzle of a magician. Disconcertingly great. I’m currently in the middle of an entertaining essay he wrote about the adult entertainment industry. After opening gifts, we rode our bikes to Pascoe Vale and ate prawns with De Campo’s family in the backyard of her sister's place over looking the city. It was our first trip out of Fitzroy (excl. city) and it was excellent.

Otherwise, I spent too much money and partied loads (hi Mom!). Gregarious Melbourne, I spoke in a Romanian accent the entire time. I bought the Velvet Underground in Print at the remainders shop. It’s Loaded and I'm penniless.

The Lives of Others

Left the house twice over the weekend. The first was to buy a juice, taco mix and some clearance shorts, the second time was to witness movie mastery. The film was The Lives of Others. De Campo and I loved the hell out of it. More than Le Grand Illusion, for moi. She dug it harder than Chinatown.

Initially tipped off by The New Yorker, after reading a stunning rave review by Anthony Lane, who’s basically your average cinephile trapped in the body of one of the most lissom and stylish prose writers around.

Written and directed by a 33 year-old stallion named Florian Henckel vons Dommersmark, in his debut, the movie is set in frigging, mid-80s Berlin, and it’s about the goddamn government placing a dashing playwright under surveillance (wiretaps, cameras, stake-outs, etc) for possible subversion. Stupendously great drama ensues.

The Lives of Others has something profound to say about all kinds of interesting things: big-city loneliness, lovelessness, paranoia (is it still paranoia if it’s warranted, or is that simply fear?), creating art in a torturous society governed by absolute power-trippers (creative compromise), not to mention comradeship, good will and straight-up, huge-hearted humanity.

Here’s a link to an amazing article about von Dommersmarck, giving excellent insight into his impressive outsized ambitions. I mean just look at the guy, his head is the size of a watermelon. He looks like Vincent D’Onofrio as a young Orson Welles.