So let's assume I love music, and talking about music. Then let's assume I want to keep tabs on my fave albums this year. So the first three months down, here is the short list thus far:
Plastic Beach - Gorillaz
I know I panned it to start off with, but it's a slow burner and a work of genius.
One Life Stand - Hot Chip
Such a tender album... Yet you can dance to it, there's something genius at work here.
The Family Jewels - Marina and the Diamonds
The newest addition to the quirky songwriter's winning circle proves she has the chops.
The Trials of Others - Midlake
A beautiful record and one to listen to at sunset...
Realism - The Magnetic Fields
Stephen Merrit proves his disdain of the mainstream by layering a beautiful pop record with every other instrument than synthesizers.
Transference - Spoon
So these guys have their formula so down pat that you cannot actually fault them.
Contra - Vampire Weekend
Surprisingly good second album from the whitest boys in America.
Odd Blood - Yeasayer
Odd by name and nature, but I get these guys easier than I get Animal Collective, think MGMT plagiarizing Tears for Fears...
Comments? Discussions? Fire away,
Friday, March 12, 2010
Time To Throw Some Stones...
What the hell is wrong with Australian television?
And no, I’m not talking about the way the programmers treat us like idiots, hiding the good stuff way past our bed time. Or putting off shows until the DVD has been released, both crimes they should pay dearly for. I’m talking about our local content. Crime drama, lifestyle or non-crime drama seem to be the only things we make of note. But only our comedies are for a large part quite brilliant, yet hounded by cretins telling us what comedy is “supposed” to be.
Imagine then my surprise that the killjoys who out and out crucified the Chaser and broke the Glasshouse sitting on their hands for Good News Week on Channel Ten because Ricki-Lee sings ‘Call Me’ or something similar to offset Mikey Robbins and the eternal filth imp Paul McDermott. See the bile rise in my throat when the same network invite Andrew Bolt on to The 7PM Project to present an ‘informed view’, when in fact he is part of what Hunter S. Thompson describes as the Fourth Reich. Can you dig this? I can’t.
I was ten when topical comedy set me aflame. Back in the day, I would watch Good News Week on a Friday night, and spend the next week guessing what stories they’d talk about on the next show (weird yes, but catnip to me). Mind you, 1998 it was revelation time for me. The Simpsons were at their legendary creative peak, The Micallef Program was starting out, and not long from then we discovered South Park and the world became a better place. But topical comedy, not quite satire, was –and still is- my ‘thing’. It was my dream to panel on Good News Week. Be good enough to write jokes for them. I breathed that stuff.
So imagine the heartbreak caused in 2000 when Ten not only axed the show after buying it away from the ABC, but doing so to dwindling numbers. I taped the final show then proceeded to wear the tape thin. It was a troubling time for me, as adolescence was a year away, and I still had nothing to fill that void. Comedy, you see, has been my way of compensating for being uninteresting and so beautiful that people assume I’ll never speak to them (I believe).
For this reason, I love the Glasshouse. It was the perfect continuation of the sort of humour that I found so exhilarating. The three main hosts were (at the time) three of the best up and coming comics in our country with a crack team of writers behind them and a ratio of knowledgeable types to funny types that the 7PM Project owes them for. It was childish at times. It was silly. It was nothing more than five people talking for a half an hour, usually making jokes about the government of the day, which became its undoing. But ultimately, our culture needed it.
Humour is the great leveller. It can transform a monster into a joke, and a joke into a unifying belief. History will speak of the leaders we have had in their factual connotations, but people will listen to the jokes about them before taking any facts into account. And when you laugh at the monsters they become less scary. And heaven only knows we have monsters.
So imagine the heartbreak caused in 2006 when the Howard Government broke it. Complaints to the effect that the show “lacked bipartisanship” in making many jokes about the government of the day rather than focus on the opposition. This leads me to two conclusions about the people who did this with the clarity of hindsight that the same people complained about the Chaser: 1) They were plants for a scared and upset government or 2) These individuals are constantly upset and will in fact die miserable.
That final show proved the pure potential this show had, with Kochie coming out with RELEVANT and INTERESTING discussion as a rare highlight of his career. The subsequent DVD is one I will watch every so often to reminding myself of the good times, but my heart yearns for a resolution…
I say it often. Loudly when I do, and without a trace of guilt or shame: “Dear Auntie, Bring Back The Glasshouse. And Bring It Back RIGHT NOW.” I’m an adult now, and Good News Week, my childhood benchmark of Australia’s premiere topical humour now answers to advertisers. It now plugs things openly on a commercial network so of course there are things it cannot say. It’s still good, don’t get me wrong.
But I came of age with the Glasshouse giving me a platform to care about the world and when it swerved from humour to serious issues, it did so with a humility and compassion you could not put in GNW for the simple fact that it’s divides the conservative thinker against the people who are right.
Now is a great time to bring it back, now is always the best time to bring it back. Maybe not with the same people. But get new folks in. Easy fixed.
And for those of you who say “Well why don’t you go and do it? You love it so much, why not try it yourself?” Okay. I’ll just need about eight staff writers, 2-4 more hosts, some learned guests and the rights to the Mock the Week format over in Britain. Oh and a camera or three and editing equipment. And if the ABC don’t like it, YOUTUBE BABY. See, that’s the thing about loving something so dearly, you’ll want to take it somewhere else. But where I take it may not be the best place.
So to all you news freaks and comedy nerds who loved this show as much as I did, I say: We’re never alone. We’ll always have that fire burning. And to the ABC: DO SOMETHING RIGHT FOR ONCE.
And no, I’m not talking about the way the programmers treat us like idiots, hiding the good stuff way past our bed time. Or putting off shows until the DVD has been released, both crimes they should pay dearly for. I’m talking about our local content. Crime drama, lifestyle or non-crime drama seem to be the only things we make of note. But only our comedies are for a large part quite brilliant, yet hounded by cretins telling us what comedy is “supposed” to be.
Imagine then my surprise that the killjoys who out and out crucified the Chaser and broke the Glasshouse sitting on their hands for Good News Week on Channel Ten because Ricki-Lee sings ‘Call Me’ or something similar to offset Mikey Robbins and the eternal filth imp Paul McDermott. See the bile rise in my throat when the same network invite Andrew Bolt on to The 7PM Project to present an ‘informed view’, when in fact he is part of what Hunter S. Thompson describes as the Fourth Reich. Can you dig this? I can’t.
I was ten when topical comedy set me aflame. Back in the day, I would watch Good News Week on a Friday night, and spend the next week guessing what stories they’d talk about on the next show (weird yes, but catnip to me). Mind you, 1998 it was revelation time for me. The Simpsons were at their legendary creative peak, The Micallef Program was starting out, and not long from then we discovered South Park and the world became a better place. But topical comedy, not quite satire, was –and still is- my ‘thing’. It was my dream to panel on Good News Week. Be good enough to write jokes for them. I breathed that stuff.
So imagine the heartbreak caused in 2000 when Ten not only axed the show after buying it away from the ABC, but doing so to dwindling numbers. I taped the final show then proceeded to wear the tape thin. It was a troubling time for me, as adolescence was a year away, and I still had nothing to fill that void. Comedy, you see, has been my way of compensating for being uninteresting and so beautiful that people assume I’ll never speak to them (I believe).
For this reason, I love the Glasshouse. It was the perfect continuation of the sort of humour that I found so exhilarating. The three main hosts were (at the time) three of the best up and coming comics in our country with a crack team of writers behind them and a ratio of knowledgeable types to funny types that the 7PM Project owes them for. It was childish at times. It was silly. It was nothing more than five people talking for a half an hour, usually making jokes about the government of the day, which became its undoing. But ultimately, our culture needed it.
Humour is the great leveller. It can transform a monster into a joke, and a joke into a unifying belief. History will speak of the leaders we have had in their factual connotations, but people will listen to the jokes about them before taking any facts into account. And when you laugh at the monsters they become less scary. And heaven only knows we have monsters.
So imagine the heartbreak caused in 2006 when the Howard Government broke it. Complaints to the effect that the show “lacked bipartisanship” in making many jokes about the government of the day rather than focus on the opposition. This leads me to two conclusions about the people who did this with the clarity of hindsight that the same people complained about the Chaser: 1) They were plants for a scared and upset government or 2) These individuals are constantly upset and will in fact die miserable.
That final show proved the pure potential this show had, with Kochie coming out with RELEVANT and INTERESTING discussion as a rare highlight of his career. The subsequent DVD is one I will watch every so often to reminding myself of the good times, but my heart yearns for a resolution…
I say it often. Loudly when I do, and without a trace of guilt or shame: “Dear Auntie, Bring Back The Glasshouse. And Bring It Back RIGHT NOW.” I’m an adult now, and Good News Week, my childhood benchmark of Australia’s premiere topical humour now answers to advertisers. It now plugs things openly on a commercial network so of course there are things it cannot say. It’s still good, don’t get me wrong.
But I came of age with the Glasshouse giving me a platform to care about the world and when it swerved from humour to serious issues, it did so with a humility and compassion you could not put in GNW for the simple fact that it’s divides the conservative thinker against the people who are right.
Now is a great time to bring it back, now is always the best time to bring it back. Maybe not with the same people. But get new folks in. Easy fixed.
And for those of you who say “Well why don’t you go and do it? You love it so much, why not try it yourself?” Okay. I’ll just need about eight staff writers, 2-4 more hosts, some learned guests and the rights to the Mock the Week format over in Britain. Oh and a camera or three and editing equipment. And if the ABC don’t like it, YOUTUBE BABY. See, that’s the thing about loving something so dearly, you’ll want to take it somewhere else. But where I take it may not be the best place.
So to all you news freaks and comedy nerds who loved this show as much as I did, I say: We’re never alone. We’ll always have that fire burning. And to the ABC: DO SOMETHING RIGHT FOR ONCE.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Gregory Big: A History
A few years back I started writing about a certain remarkably unremarkable man. As I have been inundated with people begging me to bring him back, I thought I would write this biography as dictated by the man himself. After a 5-year hiatus, folks, I’m bringing back the big. Enjoy.
Gregory Big: A Biography
I was born in a year when mittens were the fashion item of the spring to Jimothy and Ezzzz Big. After doctors asserted I was indeed a boy (plus the three week waiting period) I was named Gregory Arbuthnot Big after Earnst GregoryMcTeal, a man whom my mother once saw in a newspaper shouting at a yam and Alexander Arbuthnot who invented boats.
I was the oldest of two, my younger brother was born two years after me and then a week after that and was named Fritzkreig “El Incubator” Hamish Big after the first few things my Grandmother once said in a fever dream.
My father was a freelance professor of Spoons & Associated Cutlery and my mother exposed magicians. We lived well in luxurious 4 bedroom-3 bathroom hovel in a shanty town situated in a sewer, until the sanitation people moved us on. We lived in a lot of interesting places after that; a tree, a shed, a bunker, a u-boat, pages 45-168 of a first edition of ‘Dude, Where’s My Country’ By Michael Moore and in the basement of a fruit stall, which was the best place to raise a child until the owner wheeled it home for the night. Then it was the worst place to raise a child.
During my 8th year, my father became Walcott University’s resident Professor of Running up the Stairs Two at a Time, Flinging the Door Open & Shouting ‘Aha! Caught You, Mildred!’ which meant we could afford to settle into a quaint little house on Thrif St. However, it was not long after this that my mother contracted Spatchcock’s Disease.
Named after Dr. Glen Spatchcock, this terminal disease, (for those not doctors,) irreversibly damages a person’s stock portfolio by investing large chunks of money in various terrible ideas and leave the patient in the firm belief that they are a miniature Tibetan yak. Since I was eight, I saw this dreaded disease’s effect on my mother whilst laughing like a drain when she would ram people she did not know.
All went along quite uneventfully bar the odd adventure for a while, and then I met a young man who found my life quite eventful. So I recounted to him all my stories and he in turn sang Bjork songs at me. Which I believe was a very unfair deal considering he knew none and was just screeching at me…
So thank you for reading about my uninteresting life. Thank you young sir for chronicling it. And thank you for reading about my uninteresting life.
Gregory Big. New Adventures. Coming Soon in 2010.
Gregory Big: A Biography
I was born in a year when mittens were the fashion item of the spring to Jimothy and Ezzzz Big. After doctors asserted I was indeed a boy (plus the three week waiting period) I was named Gregory Arbuthnot Big after Earnst GregoryMcTeal, a man whom my mother once saw in a newspaper shouting at a yam and Alexander Arbuthnot who invented boats.
I was the oldest of two, my younger brother was born two years after me and then a week after that and was named Fritzkreig “El Incubator” Hamish Big after the first few things my Grandmother once said in a fever dream.
My father was a freelance professor of Spoons & Associated Cutlery and my mother exposed magicians. We lived well in luxurious 4 bedroom-3 bathroom hovel in a shanty town situated in a sewer, until the sanitation people moved us on. We lived in a lot of interesting places after that; a tree, a shed, a bunker, a u-boat, pages 45-168 of a first edition of ‘Dude, Where’s My Country’ By Michael Moore and in the basement of a fruit stall, which was the best place to raise a child until the owner wheeled it home for the night. Then it was the worst place to raise a child.
During my 8th year, my father became Walcott University’s resident Professor of Running up the Stairs Two at a Time, Flinging the Door Open & Shouting ‘Aha! Caught You, Mildred!’ which meant we could afford to settle into a quaint little house on Thrif St. However, it was not long after this that my mother contracted Spatchcock’s Disease.
Named after Dr. Glen Spatchcock, this terminal disease, (for those not doctors,) irreversibly damages a person’s stock portfolio by investing large chunks of money in various terrible ideas and leave the patient in the firm belief that they are a miniature Tibetan yak. Since I was eight, I saw this dreaded disease’s effect on my mother whilst laughing like a drain when she would ram people she did not know.
All went along quite uneventfully bar the odd adventure for a while, and then I met a young man who found my life quite eventful. So I recounted to him all my stories and he in turn sang Bjork songs at me. Which I believe was a very unfair deal considering he knew none and was just screeching at me…
So thank you for reading about my uninteresting life. Thank you young sir for chronicling it. And thank you for reading about my uninteresting life.
Gregory Big. New Adventures. Coming Soon in 2010.
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