it was a springtime
poetry session,
time for spring
poems, so
i read the one
about how you
shouldn’t tell your mother
to ever fuck up
or fuck off
or get fucked.
it was based on
a time when she’d
bought my son
an ice-cream
at 9.30 in the morning
and i’d told her
to fuck off or
whatever, and
she’d pulled out the
grandmother card
and sent me to
the sin bin.
i read it
with a spring
in my step.
close enough…
Vai is zen.
Vai was amazing. Beautifully intense with a cool charm; he had the rock-star look and strut but this was no shred-guitar goon.
Let me just break off here and say I had expected to find a live set by Steve Vai in 2012 to be quite ridiculous, possibly painful. Read More
Last week I had my first go on the Pre-Panel on RNZ. Well, actually I had my first three goes…
The Panel runs from 4-5pm but at 3.45pm they have the “Pre-Panel” where Wallace Chapman introduces the guests and the question of the day and they get a producer or a guest (or whatever) to run the story of the day; a little gimmick. A chat about something not so serious but slightly amusing (or whatever).
I really brought the “Whatever” to the table last week when I was asked not once, not twice but thrice to set something up and have a wee rant. Read More
no one ever built a statue
in honour of a critic
but only because they knew
it could never be good enough
Bob Dylan, Under The Red Sky, 1990
You can get hooked on the wrong album at the right time – if you’re new to an artist with back-catalogue you sometimes used to put yourself through the pain of really working hard to appreciate their dud-new-album because it arrived right at the time when you were first hooked. Make sense? Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it when it comes to Bob Dylan’s 27th studio album. Read More
Bruce Springsteen is
a craftsman,
hell of a
writer
but fuck all
that chest-puffing
and that
stupid-ass grin.
Gimme Paul Kelly
with his mortician’s
grimace, his songs
for the ages
and the usual Australian
lack of self-doubt.
It’s not a competition
but Bruce Springsteen is
auditioning for his
own statue,
and Paul Kelly is doing
the work just to keep
his own job.
Back to The Fringe for some poetry. It was about celebrating Spring, though I either didn’t really process that or didn’t really care (and/or don’t have any Spring poems anyway).
So I got up early, second poet this time, and read three short new poems. The first, Stuff, Not Nonsense I wrote late on Friday night, so was up reading it just after 24 hours later…the second – very short – is called It Takes Time To Heal But Time Is Not A Healer (there are nearly as many words in the title as the poem) and I finished with an upbeat recent one, called Why You Should Never Tell Your Mum To Get Fucked or Fuck Up or Fuck Off. So, all poems I’ve written brand new in the last couple of weeks. Read More
Ric Ocasek of The Cars has died suddenly. Sad, sad news. He was 75. The Cars were one of the best and greatest bands of my childhood – and I kept listening to them. Why wouldn’t you? So many pop gems. Such a great singles band. Good albums too. But those hit singles. The original Cars’ Greatest Hits album is one of the all-time greatest Greatest Hits records I reckon. Not much around to beat it. No duds. All killer, as they say. No filler
Ocasek was the frontman – a lead singer and songwriter for the cars and as such he contributed to many of their best songs. Read More
The Velvet Underground, Squeeze, 1973
Traitor albums! My cousin told me that Led Zeppelin’s Coda album was not to be listened to because it was “a traitor album” – he surely meant a posthumous album; they existed before Coda, there have been thousands since. But I liked his attempt at purity. Is the faithful fan the one that stops at the official studio albums? Are we a better/bigger fan if we go through all the bootlegs, digging for the unofficial things too? All that matters is the music. And you get to choose your own stops and starts right? If you only listen to the Greatest Hits but you know that inside and out you might be a bigger fan – on some level of involvement – than the collector that wants multiple copies for pin-up opportunities. Read More
Sunday crooners
sing with my
heart in
their mouth
put their soul
into words
I could only
ever hope
to write
ignite the
world with
a slow-burning
kiss.
I come and go with Eric Clapton – particularly his solo career. I can’t make my mind up. It meant so much as part of the gateway, I got into a lot of stuff through getting into Clapton. But these days I hardly ever feel like listening to him. That said, I still like this one album from the late 70s he did. I reckon I’ll always dig it…
I really like this album he did called Backless. A strange album in his catalogue, it arrived just after the massive payday around those annoying perennials like Lay Down Sally and Wonderful Tonight and Cocaine.
Backless doesn’t have any hits, really. Promises was included on The Cream of Clapton compilation – probably as a polite way of including a selection (any) from the album.
I’ve always liked Backless. It’s Clapton in super laidback mode, but the playing is tasteful and though, these days, I’d rather listen to The Band, and Little Feat and J.J. Cale (the heroes he was always aping on his very best solo material) and though the moments where he aims for the blues are actually the worst bits on Backless it still just has some charm. It feels somehow noticeably different within his catalogue, even though it’s instantly recognisable. Read More
We have no idea how good we are
to ourselves when we’re being good
to other people.
Today I not only met one of my heroes
I told her how good I thought she was.
(The truth, of course).
Her reply was that me and my compliment
had arrived at the end of a day when she’d
had a crisis of confidence.
I laughed at the thought that she could
have such a thing – when all I’d seen and heard
and read was magic; some of the best journalism
this country has ever produced. She thanked me
for showing an interest and taking the time to care
and I couldn’t believe my luck. I left from the
conversation elated. Punch-drunk, almost. On a contact
high. So sure I could touch the sky, so much so that my
own impostor-syndrome was hiding at least one shadow
away. For a day. Or maybe more. It’ll return. And so will
hers. That’s how we’re wired. That’s the way it works.
But for right now I’m pretty happy.
I hope she is too. It must have been good – I told my
family all about it – and they never even asked what
I was getting paid.
That too – in some sense – made my day.
Even though, technically,
it didn’t.