One of the questions I get asked repeatedly these days is “what exactly are you doing in Bali”. Quite a lot actually. But one of the pleasures of the jump from Auckland is having the time to read more. I read a lot and I find the time to read through long things like this, an excerpt from which is below

Faced with such complexity, and determined to have their war and their democratic revolution, the President and his counselors looked away. Confronted with great difficulties, their answer was to blind themselves to them and put their faith in ideology and hope — in the dream of a welcoming landscape, magically transformed. The evangelical vision may have made the sense of threat after September 11 easier to bear but it did not change the risks and the reality on the ground. The result is that the wave of change the President and his officials were so determined to set in course by unleashing American military power may well turn out to be precisely the wave of Islamic radicalism that they had hoped to prevent.

Written by Mark Danner and due for publication in the December 21 edition of the NY Review of Books, if you have the time this rather lengthy piece is a fascinating analysis of the hubris, deceit and incompetence that is and was the Bush invasion of Iraq.

My good buddy, Roger Perry, has his brand new website up and running. Go and say hello…I wrote the history and am proud to have done so..Roger is one of my favourite people, and I mean that sincerely. Oh, and he’s a great DJ and musician too. Nuf said…

I guess I wanted to dislike it. The concept stinks. I’m happy, and it gives me pleasure, to say that I dislike Cirque De Soleil quite a lot. I was dragged along to it in Auckland some years ago and didn’t enjoy it one little bit. Very clever and all, but the latent Cornishman (even if the whanau moved south 150 years hence) in me thought it utterly pretentious twaddle masquerading as some sort of art for the masses. The rest of The Beatles have admitted that Johnny probably would have too. But then we know that from listening to the song he wrote about the sort of circus he liked. And the preview on their website of the actual show is truly gruesome watching. So with that in mind, well, I didn’t want Love to work.

But sad to say, it does. And as loathe as I am to quote Mojo Magazine, Jim Irvin puts it so well in his album review when he says that The Beatles taught our minds to play. And so they did. Perhaps that is only essentially true for my generation and the one before, but I don’t think so. My twelve year old daughter and others I know of her age have had the same response to this music as I did all those years back. I love so much diverse music (the killer Agoria remix of Big Fun is playing now…now that’s a tune), there are so many records, bits of vinyl, CDs, MP3s, whatever, that I adore beyond any reason. But, despite all that, there is only one Beatles, only one act that has that power, that majesty, that epoch defining magic.

And yet every release (the bi-annual Christmas release that Apple and EMI manage to wrest out of the catalogue without finally releasing the remastered issues of the actual albums that everyone is really craving, but more of that soon) brings out the predicable moans of “The Beatles were shite, overated”, “I’d rather listen to Abba” and the like. So can I be arrogant and say that I feel really sorry for these silly bleaters. Regardless of anything else, and no matter where you come from, The Beatles were most definitely not rubbish. Its not really an arguable point…I’ve already been there…so I won’t bother again, and it’s a point usually made by the bleater under the duress of fashion, perceived self cool, or ignorance, so I’ll dispense with it and say no more.

I’m not going to try to do anything like review this record. There are already dozens of reviews out there, most rather exuberant in their praise. I don’t need to and I don’t ever see myself as a reviewer, more a commentator…you want a review..buy the bloody record because its all about you anyway; I can’t tell you if you’d like a bit of music and neither can anyone else.

However, coming back to my comment earlier about what people really want, there is little doubt that this album is for many, simply a filler, an album to listen to until EMI finally get their act together to issue the original 13 albums in a contemporary form. We are listening to Love, and the critics are getting all frothy, because this sounds, unlike the 1980’s CDs still on offer at full price, so damn good. No other reason. There is a novelty aspect to this album that will soon pass, and indeed for me is already doing so. But I’ll keep on listening simply because I love the way these sound and I love the fact that at last I can hear these tracks like this. They sound incredible. Whether I, or many others would keep on listening to Love if the other albums were released in 5.1 or even mindfuck stereo is a reasonably easily answered question. No, of course not. This would then become what it really is, a beautifully crafted Beatles podcast friendly sampler.

And there is something strangely wrong about the Cirque de Soleil concept too. I don’t want to hear this music in the company of hundreds of others who don’t understand this music. You see, that’s the thing that separates The Beatles from almost everybody else. Almost everyone thinks that they have an exclusive understanding of these guys, an understanding that no-one else can approach…which takes us back to the Jim Irwin line above. You guys might think you like The Beatles, might think you understand but really, I’m the only one who truly does. Really, really, truly. And I’m not going to sit in a theatre with a bunch of charlatans and pretenders.

But I guess it will keep the wolf away from Jacko’s door for a while too.

Oh…can we have the double white album in mono as well, my vinyl copy is totally rooted…..

Actually what truly scares me are those damned floodgates I can now hear creaking open…

Beg steal or borrow…actually no, scrub that…I strongly recommend you buy the Henrik Schwarz DJ Kicks mix on K7!, a label that has its moments but is also unreliably patchy from time to time, as is this mix series. But this is, to turn a phrase, fucking fantastic. I like it a lot. I really am not a huge fan of “mix CDs” I find most of them as dull as the majority of so called underground plodding house. Nicely put together, full of forgettable tracks, like a passing blur and absolutely indicative of why house…the ordinary stuff that calls itself house…got so boring, so fucking passé in recent years. There are only so many formless, vocal snippet looping 4 on the floor nothings I can take, and god knows I heard enough of them on dance radio in Auckland in recent weeks. Relentlessly drab faceless tracks mixed together with ten other similar tracks do not make good listening for anyone and are perhaps a big part of why the clubs are not so full anymore and why the records are not selling as well.

And then you hear something like this. Something that pulls together all the strands, something that realises that the best DJ is little more than an inspired tour guide, taking you on a trip around his or her head. House music (and despite the plethora…I like that word…of slow tracks herein, make no mistake this is ideologically a house album) was, like punk and every musical explosion, about taking risks. And Henrik, flavour of the year he may be, understands that and wanders from James Brown to Drexciya to Pharaoh Sanders effortlessly and it makes (repeated and inspiring) listening sense.

And there is also the Kings of Techno double. Whilst the Carl Craig tribute to the European electronic heritage is a near perfect track listing, he, again marrs it with silly talking over tracks, although its nowhere near as annoying as when he allowed it to wreck his recent-ish Fabric album. I think Carl, sadly has reached a point where no-one is willing to tell him the truth. It’s a shame but this album is more than rescued by the Laurent Garnier paean to Detroit. Just listen to the way he grinds from ADULT’s Don’t Talk into the opening chords of No Fun (yes, The Stooges…this about Detroit and almost every act on here is as punk as it gets), and then slips effortlessly into Jeff Mills. And Alice Coltrane into a majestic live take of Underground Resistance’s Amazon is utterly inspired.

I like Pat Lang’s blog a lot…he has a pretty clear perspective and one that is rare in the myopic stratosphere that is political commentary in the United States, especially amongst those of his experience. The rest of us can rant and fume but the good Colonel was actually there and I suspect knows a little more than we do. His blog is authoritative and I visit it most days and it makes feel, comfortably, that I may not be completely off track.

This post caught my eye today and speaks absolute volumes about the moral vacuum that is the current US administration and, the man the Colonel so neatly refers to as The Decider.

“”Laura and I were talking about — we were talking about how amazing it is we’re here in Vietnam,” Bush said. “And one of the most poignant moments of the drive in was passing the lake where John McCain got pulled out of the lake. And he’s a friend of ours. He suffered a lot as a result of his imprisonment, and yet, we passed the place where he was, literally, saved, in one way, by the people pulling him out.”

[snip]

Now, maybe it is understandable that the inhabitants of Hanoi wanted to kill this enemy pilot who had fallen into their hands. Bad things often happen in the heat of battle, but for Bush to torture this long past event into something with which he can feel good about McCain’s agony and the people of Hanoi is reprehensible.

Read the whole thing…he truly is scum, I can’t think of another word.

Artistic renovation…it’s a funny thing. I really don’t know if that’s the right word for it. The word rehabilitation is probably more appropriate but renovation makes me think more of the way you can patch up a rotting old villa and sell it as something more than it was originally perceived to be. Its the habit, we as listening humans have, to apply the much overused word “classic” to older records or music or recording artists who, whether because of the whims of fashion at the time they recorded; or because they truly are garbage, were roundly dismissed during their time in the sun, but have returned to haunt us. Or, thanks to Classic Hits radio…never left.

What actually bought this to mind now was a two liner, in one of those lists of what’s hot or not that editors use to fill a gap, in one of those glossy magazines that fall out, on to the road, of the New Zealand Herald as you leave the dairy on a Saturday morning….the throwaway twenty pagers the paper uses to try (generally failing rather badly) to give itself a little edge with the self consciously uber hip, referencing the finer things, the tasteful and the expensive for the style conscious or the dinner partying nuvo foodies that swarm over Auckland’s inner suburbs of a weekend. The magazine in question, whatever it’s called, a few weeks ago was touting, with glee, the reformation of Genesis. Genesis…or can I more correctly say..fucking Genesis for gods sake!

The band that includes Phil Collins…..yes that Genesis…(ok…edit..it wasn’t the Herald, it was The Sunday Star Times as Alan points out below…but, still, Genesis?)

Now in this case it’s probably more a case of the paper letting its guard down and the real face of the Herald, a paper that is probably still feeling threatened by Dire Straits, showing through.

However it’s indicative, and it’s everywhere. My problem of course is that I’m an old punk. We hate things. It was a part of our ethos and we are miserable and enjoy hating things. But to be completely fair to myself, I hated, no that’s the wrong word..despised works better, the likes of Genesis way before I heard The Ramones or Wire. There is something inexplicable about bands like that is simply wrong. We hated the right things and I’ll always happily believe that. We had standards that time doesn’t lessen. I’ll trust my instincts. Genesis are crap.

So now I’m surrounded by rehabilitation, by renovation. When I get the notion, quite often actually, I wander around Bill Brewster’s rather special DJ History website and in particular the forum. But inevitably I find myself running scared when someone starts talking in glowing terms about Fleetwood Mac, or asking if there are any other good songs by America apart from The Horse with No Name, or that other one, the name of which happily escapes me. Now I understand well the concept of Balearic but….no, no, no…these things are simply wrong; simply evil; these are bad, bad, bad records…always have been and always, always, always will be. I completely understand the rehabilitation of ABBA, who were definitely not cool in the 70s…they wrote very good pop songs and are incredibly well produced.. but there are some absolutes surely, and Rumors remains absolute shite.

And then, there is (hopefully “was” is more appropriate now) Pink Floyd. When I grew up the common wisdom was that their peak was with Syd and there was, post Barrett, a fairly slow decline, with Dark Side being the creative sign off point. This wasn’t based upon any wistful notion of the tortured genius but simply the use of our ears. I mean, for heavens sake listen. We find The Wall being hailed here and there and everywhere now for its “classic nature”, with its third form social commentary for fucks sake. Has anyone actually listened to the lyrics on that brick song…

No the common wisdom was right and PF’s output was and is increasingly dire after 1974 or so reaching a bloated nadir in the stadium nonsense of The Wall and all those truly awful records that came after it.

Of course I’ve long ago lost this battle. I think back to those Retro nights at Cause Celebre and the Box (that Grant Marshall successfully took to half a dozen clubs afterwards for years). Nobody ever wanted the good records, no it was about the real “classics”, the Eye of the Tigers, or I Rans or The Final Countdowns. And as I imply earlier, I understand the cheese factor and I was happy to smile as the hordes rushed thru the club door placing their five dollar note in my till……but as a graying punk I feel the need to stand up and say something, even if it makes not the slightest bit of difference. Its about the inner self…

At least no-one is talking about Yes…yet

At the hotel down the road from they are about to celebrate the wedding between Fanny and WeWe (as per the photographic evidence). Which one is the boy and which one is the girl is anyone’s guess but I think they’re probably well matched.

It bought to mind the movie we watched last night, a fairly highly touted biopic of the absolutely iconic Bettie Page. I enjoyed it, thought it a little fluffy, but it was pretty watch-able and it had an ending that made some sort of sense. However a quick Google indicated to me that, if the film was not exactly dishonest in its portrayal, it was at best economical with the truth. There was a fair bit of importance missed out during the era the script portrayed, and the ending gave no indication of the pain she had to endure in later years (I love the photo half way down that linked page…even at 80 years of age Bettie has something those two could never hope to aspire to). Quite the opposite was implied…the truth was, not unusually for these things, manipulated for dramatic effect. No big deal, you come to expect such things, which is why I tend to do a wiki or the like after watching a “biopic”.

And you have to wonder that if Bettie had a dollar for every girl out there with a hairstyle inspired by her, or ten cents for every photo of her used anywhere since….one of the true iconic images of the fifties, and, until recent times her life has been a struggle, a total mess actually. The books, the pens, the postcards, the t-shirts……I can’t even begin to imagine what she’s been, to turn a phrase, screwed for.

But it then brought me to the movie we watched the night before, yet another critically hailed dramatisation of recent history, the heroic, and, I’m told, inspiring (or something to that effect if the comments from Arab hating Yanks on it’s IMDB page are anything to go by), United 93.

This, in case anyone missed it, is the cinematic representation of the aircraft that went down over Pennsylvania on the way to The Capitol on September 11, 2001. We all know the gist of the story but this movie dramatises the gist and is, despite everything, a work of fiction based on educated guesswork. Not a lot more, and at times somewhat less. Take for example the German passenger who, without any evidence to support it, or even a hint of such, is portrayed by the filmmakers as a dastardly foreign coward. And will forever, herein be publicly known as such, and his family will have to deal with that. I was absolutely appalled at that, and yet it still got the reviews.

And then there are the cellphone calls. I know some of the calls on the 9/11 planes came from those grossly overpriced phones you get on many aircraft, but some allegedly also came from cellular telephones. Now I don’t think I’m a conspiracy nut. I think that somebody probably flew the planes into the WTC and I think they were probably Al Qaeda operatives…and I think man landed on the moon.

But no-one has successfully explained how, at 30,000 odd feet, cellphone calls were made out of these planes. There is a very good evaluation of this here which intrigued me for an hour last night as I read it and followed the links. And having had this discussion with a friend who is a cellular engineer of some repute, plus having searched the web at some length, it’s a question that has never satisfactorily been answered by anyone anywhere. I wish someone would help me here because everything I’ve been told or read suggests that in 2001 it was more or less impossible. And yet it’s central to the human side of these tragedies as now burnt into the American psyche, and to this movie.

Oh and, one more question. How in gods name did the computers and office paperwork on the edge of the chasm in the Pentagon survive unscathed, a multi thousand degree firestorm and inferno. Just wondering…..

Not that I believe in conspiracy theories, y’know.

So anyway, here’s to Fanny and WeWe.