Miscellany

My mum had this uncle who was a real Jack the Lad, a real cad, he was Tony Soprano before there was ever any Sopranos, we are talking 60s, 70s, early 80s. A nightclub owner in Hastings who was more than that and up for it all. But I only really have one memory of him.

He had cancer, he’d been on the treatment and was out of hospital and had lost weight and most of his voice too and really he had lost his presence – since he had been larger than life. Now he was just barely hanging on. In this weird, high rasp he winced to his wife, “Get the tapes!” And she knew what that meant. We were all sat around – the extended family. And he had the throne and we were just there in service. Read More »

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May 10, 2022 by Simon Sweetman

Short Story: When The Music Phase Is Over Tune Out What’s Right

She had asked when the music phase would be over. And I took offence. But also took a cue. I followed up on it just a few short years too late. But better then – than never. The music remains. But the phase is over.

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May 10, 2022 by Simon Sweetman

Poem: Roll Credits

The film doesn’t have long to go,
put the jug on and make a cup of tea.
Maybe you’ll have time to drink it all.

Maybe you’ll even get a second cup.
But don’t be too greedy now.
Time is nearly up.

There’s no need to return this film to its case,
nor to any store, or any place where you
found it on the internet.

The film is life. And it passed you by,
as you were watching it half-heartedly.
It’s finished.

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May 10, 2022 by Simon Sweetman

My Pink Floyd Tapes

There I was at 12 and 13 and 14, listening to the music of Pink Floyd on cassette tape. Roger Waters’ first two solo albums too. But it was the Floyd stuff that meant the most to me. Had me copying out the lyrics on an old typewriter. Old school: pause/rewind/play and then pause/rewind/play and again, pause/rewind/play.

Syd Barrett’s solo material next. Then David Gilmour. On to Nick Mason and Rick Wright eventually, collecting it all. It was the world to me back then. Live albums, compilations, in fact it started back when I was 10. An hour or so in Christchurch, first south-island trip, just stopping through, and I wanted a Pink Floyd tape for the car. On the way to Timaru and then Oamaru with that amazing keyboard intro – and then the drums kick in! – sheep in the fields wherever we looked, the song Sheep on the stereo, also Shine On You Crazy Diamond. (Those long songs staying strong on that car-trip, making me a fan. Infecting my brain like devils).

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I don’t listen to Pink Floyd all that much these days. But I think about the band often. What it meant to me. How it was the start of so much…

How One Of These Days just blew me away, how the album, A Momentary Lapse of Reason is as good as anything else they ever did. (I really mean that too by the way, neither a rinse nor a roast). Copies of the lyrics all over my wall, and my own poems being typed out to match (albeit kept in folders I didn’t want anyone to see). My folks laughing knowingly, and in a way I only really know now as a parent myself, at the line, “The laddie reckons himself a poet”.

Something so English, so stubborn about the very best of Roger’s words. (“Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way”). So much doggerel though, wrapped up at least in a liquid-tension-piercing guitar tone. Those mellifluous keyboard lines and Nick Mason sending a telegraph ahead of every drum fill: Snare stop tom stop tom stop tom stop Read More »

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May 10, 2022 by Simon Sweetman

Shit That’s Good! Crap Albums I Love # 53 – Iggy Pop, “Brick By Brick”

Iggy Pop, Brick By Brick, 1990

When I was 15 I loved this. And I loved it because of the music on it, sure. But I loved it, first of all, because I had found the poster in a music store, given it from the counter-staff to hang on my wall. I thought it was cool. And I thought I was cool as a result. I’d connect with the album in many ways over the years – not limited to but including the facts that it was a) produced by Don Was, b) featured a few guitar parts by Slash, c) John Hiatt duetted and of course d) the whole B-52s/Candy-thing. Kate Pierson. What a voice. Read More »

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May 9, 2022 by Simon Sweetman

Poem: Sad Remains

When I hear fast rhymes in performance poetry
I only notice the performance, I never hear
the poetry.

A sad refrain,
as fingers click in approval at what
might pass for rap. But collapses over without meaning.

A sad refrain.
The sadness remains.

Sad refrain.
Sadness remains.

(Sad remains of the
saddest refrain…)

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May 9, 2022 by Simon Sweetman

I Wrote and Delivered a Monologue ONCE

I can’t act. Maybe that’s because I can’t lie. It’s also because I can’t – I just know that. I’ve never really tried. But I can only ever be myself, and that’s a hard enough gig some days. But I can stand up and read – poems, stories, that sort of thing. I’ve delivered guest lectures, coached sports teams, given speeches. I can speak. Often far too much. But I can do the public speaking thing. So that, plus the desire to one day write a play got me booked into the Fringe Festival one year. I decided I would write a monologue show. I’d been putting together these stories. No real theme to them – beyond exploring lives, in some cases trying to write miserable or nasty characters. I put a few together for a monologue show and had the crazy idea of even delivering one myself. Read More »

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May 9, 2022 by Simon Sweetman

What A Good Score! – #13: Under The Cherry Moon (aka “Parade”) by Prince

The soundtrack and score for the movie Under The Cherry Moon is actually an album called Parade by star of both the film and the soundtrack, Prince. This threw me when I was a kid. Soundtracks are title after the movie. But Prince got me thinking about how the soundtrack could really live on its own…that’s what he allowed with Cherry Moon, probably just as well given the film is universally mocked/remembered as a dud.

Prince had done the album/movie/soundtrack integration flawlessly with the whole Purple Rain thing; Parade/Cherry Moon was part of his exit-strategy from the impossible expectations of making a Purple Rain 2. Read More »

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May 8, 2022 by Simon Sweetman

Poem: Ghost Written Poetry

A ghost won’t ask for much these days,
just an old familiar haunt. The chance
to walk alone; shake unfinished business

from its bones, rattle the world of inhibitions
from a narrow, supple spine. And how is this
horrific at all, in this day and age? Who cares

for old ghosts going about their business,
unfinished or otherwise (what, you mean
actually finished and so they start again?)

The world burns, and those of us still covered
in flesh are mostly lucky to not get too close
to the flames. The world turns, but only just.

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May 8, 2022 by Simon Sweetman

They Call Him Magic: The Magic Johnson Doco Series

We all have our lists of pandemic viewing, the things we got into because of forced closures and time spent indoors – and one of the big ones was The Last Dance – ostensibly about The Chicago Bulls basketball team, but really about Michael Jordan’s mile-wide competitive streak.

I lapped up The Last Dance, compulsive viewing – and I’m a basketball fan. But it was one of those shows that seemed to be equally addictive for first-timers or blatant non-fans. Read More »

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May 7, 2022 by Simon Sweetman

Photos from Photospace: Dirty Spoons w/ BOX OF HAMMERS and Bachelor of Architecture

Last night, Saturday, May 7, we hosted a gig up at Photospace Gallery in Courtenay Place. The excellent The Show Must Go On exhibition featuring some extraordinary rock’n’roll images captured by Murray Cammick is on until the end of May. And we thought it a nice idea to stage some sort of gig there.

So my band, Dirty Spoons (get your T-shirts now!) played a set bookended by the ambient guitar stylings of BOX OF HAMMERS (John Kingston) and Bachelor of Architecture (Jules Desmond).

What a treat it was to fill that space (and we had a great audience, capacity numbers for the gallery) and to fill it with good vibes and some great music. Here are some photos of the night. Mostly taken by me – although the crowd shot is care of Matthew Couper and the Dirty Spoons band shot was taken by Jules Desmond.

Enjoy.
BOX OF HAMMERS
DIRTY SPOONS, YO!
BACHELOR OF ARCHITECTURE
Band and gig info here
Do go up and see The Show Must Go On before it ends (final weekend of May).

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May 7, 2022 by Simon Sweetman

Danny Elfman’s Soul Music

This week I have gone all in on the music of Danny Elfman – and though I can’t say I’ve been all-in before, not in this way (devouring the scores, finding rarities, searching deep) I can tell you that I’ve been obsessed with Elfman’s music for about 30 years. It was probably the 1989 Batman film that hipped me; I’d have heard his music before but possibly without really knowing the name. After Batman I was all in, because that film was massive for me. Prince’s songs, the cast, the director, the bubblegum cards. It was time and place.

And because in that 1988-1992 period there was so much Elfman stuff for me. Well, for all of us, but I was at the right age – Batman and its sequel, Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, Darkman, Dick Tracy, The Simpsons…

It’s a staggering body of work. And in some ways it’s just the very beginning. Read More »