Random Play by Graham Reid

One of the many amusing things I am discovering as I get older, is the sense of deja-vu I often get: I laughed out loud at the suggestion the other day that student union fees be made voluntary.

That was deja-vu all over again.

Time also allows you a longer view and maybe even some sense of perspective. You get to pace your outrage and have other reference points for it.

I can recall when Nga Tamatoa first emerged on the cusp of the Sixties/Seventies and they started bandying around incendiary phrases like, “honour the Treaty”. Many people thought the next step would be seeing their baches fire-bombed by Maori radicals who were demanding their beach back.
Time moves slowly.

And then the Polynesian Panthers emerged and accused some aspects of New Zealand society of being racist.

Again, as with what Nga Tamatoa said, that now seems a given. Some people and institutions clearly were, and some regrettably still are.

Nothing wrong with accepting that uncomfortable truth. We need to keep working on it, though.

Then there was the rise of those banshee feminists who demanded equal pay for equal work and many right-thinking people -- women among them -- thought that that was not only outrageous but would destroy the family unit and bankrupt the country.

And so it goes.

Like that old debate in music -- “can a white man sing the blues?” -- there was once serious discussion about whether a minority people (Maori and Polynesian in our case) could actually be racist. Because, the argument went, racism was about power so the only people who could be racist were the power-holders.

Well, we know the answer to that -- but now it has been given a new spin because institutionalised racism has reared its head again in this fine country, and it’s a weird one.

The largely anonymous, mild-mannered NZ Geographic Board?

Who would have picked that?

In truth, their recommendation that the ’h’ should be put back in “Wanganui” (where it actually is in much signage anyway) isn’t “racist” but “ray-schist” according to the town’s mayor Michael Laws.

The irony of him tossing an “h” into a perfectly serviceable, easily pronounced and oh-so familiar word won’t be lost on anyone.

But watching the man on television last night I thought he was . . . well frankly, I think he’s nuts to the point of being ready for the white coat.

This is a man whose default position is that of a talkback host/provocateur but of course now he’s on the backfoot he has nowhere else to go. He has painted himself into a corner and so is obliged to come out swinging -- and other such cliches.

Rational discussion is clearly now beyond him on this issue, stamping his angry foot and using buzz-words is more to his liking.

He goes for that last refuge of all scoundrels and appeals to patriotism, in this case in the guise of “democracy”.

To personalise this debate -- which of course could be held intelligently and without the mad staring eyes and hysterical waving of the arms -- and suggest it is Tariana Turia against the good people of the town is just absurd.
And that by extension anyone who goes along with the measured recommendation the NZGB came up with -- without grandstanding, wild eyes and flappy hands -- is now pandering to Maori interests (or specifically Turia) is just plain bonkers.

But then just about everything about this discussion coming from the mayor has been.

Righting historical grievances is what grown-up societies do.

No one is actually going to be hurt by the name correction, although Laws would have us believe there will be rioting in the streets when the good folks get really riled up.

I doubt that.

Although those who have lived even longer than me might say otherwise: they might see mass rallies and flag waving, the demonising of a minority group and the cult of personality building around Laws.

Yes, certainly the good people of W(h)anganui did vote to retain the original spelling -- but . . .

Hmm. That reminds me. Adolf Hitler was voted in democratically and enjoyed majority support.
Didn’t always make him right though.

In fact, wasn’t he just a wee bit ray-schist?

Footnote: As always, lots of new music, articles, reviews and so on posted at Elsewhere.</a.

At the front of his very funny memoir Adolf Hitler, My Part in His Downfall, Spike Milligan wrote, if my memory is correct, “After Puckoon I swore I’d never write another book. This is it.”

I have written another book.

My first travel book Postcards From Elsewhere was favourably received by many generous reviewers, enjoyed by my friends who said as much when they returned the copy they had borrowed, and won the Whitcoulls Travel Book of the Year in 2006.

After that I was expecting I might wander down Queen St and be visibly embarrassed -- but secretly hoping everyone would notice me -- by a huge window display in Whitcoulls (it was their award after all) -- or at least find it easily in their travel section.

But nothing, except a snippy comment from a Sunday newspaper columnist when I blogged about it. (This from someone shameless about their own self-promotion?)

I envied previous winners whose publishers had put a gold “award winner” sticker on their books and got them big in-store displays, and those who somehow managed to get their own travel show on television which in turn shoved sales along. And of course, vice-versa.

On publication I was interviewed on Breakfast, by the very lovely Chris Laidlaw at some length, on 95bFM and in various other places. I don’t think it helped sell a single copy. But I don’t help myself.

Aside from being alphabetically marginalised -- “Bryson” is at eye-level, “Reid” bottom left near the carpet -- I did a book launch to which I invited many friends, family and people who had been helpful to me. It cost a wee bit for the booze, but we had a great night. However me, not wanting to taint the celebration with any crass commercial imperative, didn’t have any copies of the book there to flog off.

People had brought money and I refused to let them part with it. They drank even more, on my tab, and said what a fine but foolish fellow I was.

There was no “book tour”.

Mine was, according to the judges and people who sent me complimentary e-mails and cheques, a pretty good book of travels in various unusual places and encounters with odd people. And thus encouraged, I have written another book.

It isn’t a music book as many have expected given my long history of writing about music. But Elsewhere takes care of that part of my passion, in places like My Back Pages, the Absolute Elsewhere section, and obviously when I post new albums every week at Music From Elsewhere.

Nope, I have written another travel collection, The Idiot Boy Who Flew.
The title is sort of novelistic I think and I believe reasonably memorable. I am not the idiot boy who flew economy, but I have certainly set myself up for any headline on an unkind review: The Idiot Boy Who Wrote.

I figure if I get in with that now I can laugh harder about someone’s lack of originality when I see it in print.

I think The Idiot Boy Who Flew is a better book than Postcards From Elsewhere, the title story is an ambitious piece of writing which moves through space (southern Italy where I went in search of the story about a saint who flew) and also in time (recollections of the wonderful Dalvanius Prime) as much as weaving in some thoughts about writers, saints and the last Pope. (Nope, not Catholic, not even lapsed, so I‘m not getting priests and nuns out of my system).

There are of course funny pieces, a fight, bad and beautiful food, odd people and places and . . .

Well, you can read it for yourself (or if you are a friend borrow a copy I guess).

It has come out through Public Address Books which has been set up by David Haywood and Russell Brown -- and I want to put on record here my gratitude to them both, especially to David for his saint-like patience, extra level of proof reading, and his willingness to spend very many unpaid hours talking to me about systems I don‘t understand, and then to my beautiful wife Megan who is quite clearly the brains in our household.

Even behind every indifferent man there stands a great woman.

Both of my books are now available at Public Address Books and so I now begin the ruthless self-promotion that must inevitably accompany such a project. Frankly I don’t mind, I think it’s fun and I’m not some closeted writer who shuns the light of publicity or is nervous around fellow human animals.

Tomorrow I am to be a guest on Kim Hill’s Saturday Morning show from 10am when I am in the Playing Favourites section of the show. I get to play some songs and talk about my brilliant career maybe, which has seen us back at the bank extending the mortgage (again).

There will also be some kind of proper book launch (damn right I’ll have the book there, I’ll be signing and selling like a man possessed -- possessed by the bank actually). At that time I’ll figure out a way to get a few PA readers along because without you also . . .

So there is my shameless, first salvo of publicity for The Idiot Boy Who Flew. Because David is extremely clever he has set up a way you can read the introduction and the first few pages here: the intro is important to me because I say what the book is not . . .

I am, of course, available as a witty after-dinner speaker, for writers groups, radio and television appearances, pithy quotes for you to Twitter . . .

I am the idiot boy who wrote . . . again.

I’d only been back from Europe three days when I encountered that deadening, debilitating negativism that infects Aucklanders when we talk about our city.

I’d been enthusiastic about the innovative and exciting architecture I had seen in Glasgow, around Leith and in Liverpool when my friend said, “Well, nothing like that’s going to happen around here.”

The way he said it, so flat and certain, was just depressing.

But in the past few weeks as I have realigned my compass with what is happening -- and not -- with this “Super City” scheme I’m starting to adopt that dull default position myself.

Auckland’s people deserve better, and a better city. But they have been conditioned to expect second best (if anything at all) and have to make do with platitudes about “a world class city”.
Next time I hear that old shibboleth offered up unquestioned I might reach for a handgun.

Could we please ask people who say such blather to define their terms. Or maybe answer these questions: Is Venice a world class city (it smells in summer). Is Buenos Aires (you mean you didn’t see the poverty-blighted areas when you went over for a week of tango lessons?). Is Los Angeles (ever ridden a bus there?).

We were just leaving for Europe when that idea for something on Princes Wharf was mooted, by John Key if I remember correctly (a man who seems driven to be involved in everything from a schoolboy rugby fight, some uncalled-for trans-Tasman cabinet meeting and now standing in as a “celebrity” columnist in the Herald on Sunday).

Key’s idea was something to do with the Rugby World Cup as I recall and just having a venue where people could congregate and . .. Well, drink and watch the games on a big screen I guess.

As if you can’t, and won’t be able to, do that in a lot of places by that time.
I dunno, it just seemed so trite and knee-jerk.

My idea for Princes Wharf is very simple and enormously expensive. It goes like this.
Let’s forget the cruise ship terminal.

Yes, we definitely need one there but why not be realistic: cruise ship people spend no time at all in a terminal (about as much time as you do in an airport check-in) so their needs are actually quite minimal: give over space in a new building that is clean, functional, sells whatever tourists might need (stuffed kiwi bears made from possum, All Black badges etc) but think big and lateral.

Why not a gallery of contemporary art right there on maybe one whole massive floor? Or two?

Here’s my thinking: cultural tourism is a money spinner. People don’t go to Edinburgh to see Murrayfield, they go to the Castle and so on. People go to London, Paris, New York etc for the culture, the galleries, the whole exciting experience. They rarely go there just for a sporting encounter -- and even if they do they engage with the other part.

So let’s seriously take sport/stadia etc out of the picture and think along more inventive, long-term lines.

A gallery of contemporary art from around the Pacific rim, with special spaces for Maori, Pacific and New Zealand artists of whatever cultural background, would be a real earner. And because there are no winners or losers unlike the Rugby World Cup et al then it has a longer natural, self-generating life.

And frankly I wouldn’t care if an Australian designed this eye-catching, innovative, multi-purpose building which also includes cinemas, smaller galleries and museums and with restaurants and bars along the harbour side.

If we have an international competition (and we should) and someone of the foreign persuasion comes up with the best design, isn’t that just fine? Their eyes may see us as we can never do. It would seem more likely an international architectural team would serve us best.

And who is going to pay for this? Well, we are aren’t we? Just as we are going to be paying for the 2011 Rugby World Cup long after the event. (Anybody yet heard how Eden Park will be filled and pay its way when the tumult and the shouts of “awww ref” have died?)

And can we forget a Commonwealth or Olympic Games bid for a wee while until we get this harbourside thing sorted?

This of course would just be Phase One.

But culture pulls crowds every day, sport just when it is happening. Remember how few of the Barmy Army actually turned up as opposed to how many we were promised would come?

Anyone done the maths on how many returned as we were told they would?

My Auckland of the future would have vibrant and exciting architecture that complemented the old and enhanced the available space.
My city would have a long-running, multi-culti, Pacific rim arts festival where musicians and artists from Okinawa and the Solomons would be exhibiting and working alongside our own people and those from South America, Hawaii, Oregon and Alaska.

Hundreds then thousands would come to an arts festival like that, just as they flock to the Venice Biennale and the like. And that would be just part of a whole lot of other integrated arts/sports/cultural events.

My city would have electric trains, a good bus service, and road works that were done during the night and finished in weeks rather than months. It would have a mayor who is visionary and not held captive to the forces already pulling at his or her coattail.

And I would expect to pay for this. It seems I’m paying for a lot of things now that I’m not getting or am likely to get.

But you know what? “Nothing like that is going to happen around here.“ Is it?

And for that I think we have only ourselves to blame. We set such low expectations we can’t imagine there to be any higher.
Shame, it’s a nice city and I was glad to be back. For three days anyway.

But in more cheerful news. Some of you may know that the complete Beatles catalogue has been remastered and is being released on 09/090/09.

Based on being in Abbey Road and hearing some of this music (and what of it I have heard subsequently) I have written a piece for this week’s Listener -- but also these other articles here and here which add some other dimensions to the remastering/reissue. Thrilling music which sounds even better.

Also at the ever expanding Music From Elsewhere this week are about a dozen new albums reviewed, among them the trippy new one from The Clean, the Verlaines and Jordan Reyne -- as well as terrific stuff that is wide-screen pop, New Orleans jazz, alt.country and so much more.

Have a look and a listen. I am also reviewing every major Paul McCartney solo album in his four decade-long career. Why? Well, I have no inside running that he’s ill or anything, but he is the most successful composer of our time so that’s got to be worth our attention.

And even if you dislike the guy he actually cracked some interesting but ignored albums. I’ve only covered McCartney in the Seventies and the Eighties so far, the Nineties come next week.

And I farewelled the late Willy DeVille with an Essential Elsewhere album too.

Lots to read/hear and look at. Enjoy

(By the way, the reason for my only occasional appearances here lately has to do with my new travel book The Idiot Boy Who Flew -- through Public Address Books -- which is due "to drop" [as the kids say] any day now. More on that when it happens.)

So how did it go again, that blur which has just ended? Six weeks travelling; seven or eight countries;18 different beds; planes and trains and automobiles; interesting people, great music, petroglyphs and pop art, good food and never once a Pret a Manger . . .

And so after such rich experiences in foreign parts what thought-provoking observations can I make?

First just this: airport bars are like casinos, they are stateless and unchanging places of transit for their temporary inhabitants.

Unlike casinos of course, airports have constant reminders of the outside world; the times of arrivals and departures to and from exotic places such as Burkmenistan and Shen-feng Fuji.

Airport bars also bow down before that greatest of all gods: sport.

Bars themed around the exploits of long or largely forgotten sportspeople — most of whom mean nothing to those for whom the bar is just another foreign place between here and there — or have screens constantly tuned to a sports channel seem a curiously global phenomena.

Flat screen televisions show sports matches endlessly, games necessarily reduced to Lilliputian dimensions and stripped of the roar of the crowd. And so these interchangeable clashes of anonymous rivals are played out to people who have little or less interest in them . . . and often to the mundane soundtrack of threadbare pop hits by Eric Clapton, Phi Collins and the Doobie Brothers.

For me these airport sports bars have a melancholy quality.

The epic 90 minute struggle during which these great gods of the game clashed are rarely able to be watched in their entirety so any possible drama — a reversal of fortune, a lucky break, the match-winning deed in the final minute — are seldom enjoyed by people who would rather be somewhere else.
And who, soon enough, will be.

So, why sports bars in airports?
I have no idea, and after studying quite a few I am none the wiser.

Travel can do that to you, huh? It broadens the mind and make you no wiser.

Footnote: Yes, I have returned from fascinating travels and will be making more interesting observations than this I hope . . . But before then Elsewhere is up and running again (although I did post about 30 articles remotely while I was away, you might want to check the backpages).

Anyway, this week I have posted new music (and clips) by artists as varied as The Kronos Quartet and Son Volt, Dimmer and a dub album of Police songs (the Police without Sting? Result!).

There are also some re-issues considered at Music From Elsewhere, a new
Essential Elsewhere album which is rowdy nugget from the past, book reviews and interviews, something cool by way a DVD/CD set at Cultural Elsewhere, and much more for your enjoyment.
Feel free to comment, Twitter or whatever . . .

Nice to be back.
The 19th bed is still the best.

Okay, this is a piece of naked self-publicity but I thought Public Address readers may be interested to read the very big review of the new Neil Young Archives 1 (1963-1972) box set posted at Elsewhere.

This is the first of the box sets to come from Neil’s trawl through his vaults which he’s been promising for decades. But you may want to read about it before you start abusing your credit card to the tune of around $180. (And that’s just for the cheapest version.)

That necessarily lengthy consideration (it's eight CDs, count 'em!) is posted at Elsewhere right now -- and there is also what I guess is the first New Zealand review of the new Sonic Youth album The Eternal (it was posted yesterday which may have made among the first in the world) as well as lots of other reviews (the new Costello, Fat Freddys, St Vincent, the Checks etc) at Music From Elsewhere.

There is more stuff too like just about every Rolling Stones studio album assessed, and maybe a few new Essential Elsewhere albums you need in your collection which have been added since you last looked also.

Oh, and they come with sample tracks and videos.

But I’ll let you discover that for yourself.

And I won’t even mention the Recipes from Elsewhere or all the other reviews, articles etc etc.

Okay, you can un-mute now, the ads have finished. Enjoy the programme!