Posts by Ken Double
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Hard News: Music: God Save the Clean, in reply to Jonathan Ganley,
Thank you Jonathan. My long abandoned Billy TK/David Kilgour Venn diagram is now complete.
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Giving The Clean an award seems like giving a great racehorse a box of chocolates. And yet here we are. I think it's safe to say that 35 years ago most then APRA members thought they were an unprofessional joke, the antithesis of how to go about "making it". I hope David, Hamish and Bob enjoy this surreal moral victory in their own fabulously bemused way.
They are the living embodiment of the genius of rock and roll, of what makes it different from jazz or classical or Tuvan throat singing. Richard and I are of one mind on "Getting Older". That song achieves immortality on the riff alone but the way it finally hooks with the black hilarity of "Why don't you do yourself in?", well, that is how the business is done kids. And as Ian points out, their greatest true accolade is probably Pavement's "Slanted and Enchanted". Go listen to "Box Elder" and marvel how musical colonialism suddenly cuts both ways.
They are New Zealand's greatest band. Three unkempt music fans from nowhere who taught each other how to do the hoochie coo. I look forward to the next gig as much as ever.
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We've recently bought a car than runs on electrickery and I've gotta say its near silence makes it a brilliant place for music. Certainly better than my charming but rorty old Prelude. In that respect the future is shade-wearingly bright.
I've always hankered after one of the old school Lexus LS400s - champagne metallic of course - where Toyota went all out on the refinement and installed a fantastic audio system as standard.
I too refuse to bike with buds in. It's attempting suicide.
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Gotta say my impression of "Sheen of Gold" was that it wasn't a normal music doco at all. Mostly because it was about, y'know, music. No soap opera, no sin/redemption bullshit, no manufactured happy reunion gig ending. Just the musical progression of some misfits from Palmy who slowly became a phenomenally powerful rock and roll band. And then fate intervened.
Very much looking forward to the Bill Direen film. Someone had to document him. Every Direen gig I've ever been to starts off with me thinking "Oh God this is a shambles" and ends with me wanting to give him an OBE. God bless him.
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Hard News: Friday Music: a New Zealand story, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
And where's Jay Clarkson?
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I bought my Rega P3 in Christchurch from Vintage Audio World. I'm pretty sure it was them; it was well pre-quake and they had a store just off the Square. I remember because I had to stash it in the hold on the flight back to Wellington and it was the single worst landing I've had in 37 years of living here. Fortunately only the plastic lid broke. Why is all the cool vintage shit in Christchurch? Every time you see something sweet and old school on Trade Me it's in Christchurch. Did it all come out on the first four ships or something?
Should I post a video? Maybe I should. And before you write this off as some helium bubblepunk nonsense I give you Wikipedia:
"The Westermarck effect, or reverse sexual imprinting, is a hypothetical psychological effect through which people who live in close domestic proximity during the first few years of their lives become desensitized to sexual attraction."
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My god that noodle bag video. And 900,000 people have watched it. Or 900 people have watched it a thousand times more like.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Melodrama, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Ha! Hand me the switch Mother!
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Hard News: Friday Music: Melodrama, in reply to Russell Brown,
Being Chris Isaak wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world
Indeed. Or (cough) Neil Finn. Someone once asked Joe Boyd who he thought had the best career in music and he said "Richard Thompson, even though he probably doesn't realise it". Lorde's ambition is Taylor Swift's audience but unless she commits to raising the banger count she might have to settle for Vampire Weekend's. And that would be no bad thing.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Melodrama, in reply to Sacha,
I enjoyed "Royals" but it never quite struck me as a revelation. She was a very clever, self-assured 16 year old but a 16 year old nonetheless. It's waaaay better than Janis Ian but when I listen to Pure Heroine the callowness of the pose spoils it for me. Melodrama is conspicuously more adult which, as an adult, I appreciate. I'm afraid I'm totally the guy that wants to give Holden Caulfield a slapping.