Apa Kabar?

There is a song by the, would-have-been-forgotten-like-The-Simple-Image-if-it-wasn’t-for-Nature, NZ pop act from the sixties, The Formyula, called Home. Everyone has the odd killer song that lurks forever in your head, personal songs, and this is one of mine. I like it so much I put it on the Give it a Whirl Soundtrack. Recorded at Abbey Road in the late sixties whilst this lot were stuck in the greasy spoon hell that London can be on no budget, it was on the B side of Nature, which my sister bought. I borrowed it permanently for the flip after she moved on to her next pre-teen 45 and I still have it. The Formyula were also notable for having one of the best lyrics in NZ pop history:

People Turn on in Otaki / I wish you were here

Which of course is absolute nonsense, especially in the late sixties. Anyone who has ever been to Otaki knows that nothing of the sort happens there, although I suspect this refers to a long past music festival of the sort that used to spring up in surprised backwaters back then at a moments notice followed closely by the police and concerned TV crews and National Party politicians. Good lyric though and not a bad song.

The Formyula also had this annoying habit of running out of lyrics half way through a tune and finishing it with loads of la la las….

But, back on track, Home is a more confusing concept than ever for me right now. Ten days in Auckland in October made me feel like a tourist there, and yet, returning to Indonesia, where I am an alien, I felt at home. I was consumed by pangs of homesickness for this stricken paradise from the moment I hit Auckland. The expat scene here is scary…superficial, shallow, ugly and I want no part of it really. But what I am loving is an alternative quirky little scene I’ve discovered where Indonesia and the west meet as equals, where the cynicism I need to survive thrives and sparks. And I’ve got the systems in place to ease me through. Thanks to the good people at Globalxtreme I’m off dial up and on to broadband again…how the hell did the planet exist before fast internet. I have access to music and information and have a wireless network that allows me to sit in a bale by the pool and write this. Thank god….

And those wonderful surprise parcels have started arriving now and again. I opened the mailbox last week to a couple of things I’d not really expected.

The DVD collection of Elvis Costello’s videos is a mixed bag. I remember quite a few of these but not all and they veer between the sublime (Annabel Jankel’s animated Accidents Will Happen which uses the late Barney Bubbles’s graphics and was so profoundly influential; the strangely perverse Good Year for the Roses; I Wanna Be Loved, four minutes of people kissing EC’s head, which, I think, predates Godley & Crème’s Cry; and the simply lovely Veronica) and the plain ugly (Don Letts’ appalling Everyday I write The Book…such a great song, such a terrible video; and the Darryl Hall duet The Only Flame which is neither a great song or a great video). The rest often show their age but I admit to having a soft spot for the white background studio vids from the late seventies of the sort that TVNZ were still making until about 85.

The problem is that Elvis was never a great video performer and often looks forced, uncomfortable and clumsy (check him forced to dress as Satan..doncha love A&R men..) unlike the stage where he comes in to his own. Which is where this disc really works for me. The bonus stuff is a series of live TV performances of which my favourite has to be the slowed down No Dancing, from Tony Wilson’s So It Goes in 1977, where a young Costello plays it as a grinding country funk closer to his demos than the officially released take.

As the Indonesians say, baik.

The New Order singles collection, called, with their usual wit, Singles, is pretty firm evidence that they are and remain the second greatest British singles band ever. Unlike the earlier double, Substance, which may or may not still be available but is essential for that untouchable run of 12 inch singles from 1981 to 1987 (although some on here are not the original 12s), these are the tight 7” mixes and it is way better, and more up to date than the half baked compilations that London put out in the mid nineties when they did their reissues of the Factory material.

I guess New Order have a simple Formyula (sp..sorry puerile but I couldn’t help it) but it works, and works and works and I’d forgotten just how good some of those mid nineties singles were.

I also scammed a copy of the Paul Weller album, As is Now, whilst in New Zealand and I quite like it which is a pleasant surprise as I’ve not really got much from Paul, who used to be a bit of a hero, since Stanley Road and even then it was only a track or two. His best work was pre 86 and its been diminishing returns ever since, with the last few albums being increasingly dull and humourless rockist songs, which kinda saddened me, as it does when a hero falters. The Style Council and The Jam worked when they did when he matched a wry quirkiness, and an unashamed understanding of his place in the British pop masterplan, to counter the increasing self importance. Oh, and a more than a few killer tunes.

As Is Now is not perfect but it’s the closest thing our Paul has done to a consistently great album since Our Favourite Shop back in the early eighties and it’s a fine thing to have him back. Come On Lets Go sounds like an outtake from This is The Modern World, a much derided album at the time but one that has aged gracefully, and From the Floorboards Up likewise could’ve been one of those singles that followed that album. And Pan is simply lovely adult pop, as is The Pebble and the Boy...I like a good epic I do….

I live for new music but its warming to have the odd happy revisit from old buddies like this.

I love Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom’s Days Of Mars (on DFA who really are having a hell of a year with The Juan Maclean and LCD’s albums easily sitting in my most played albums), and I played repeatedly Rise off the DFA Comp #2..a big late night car record. That track opens this album which is fine as ten months on it still doesn’t drag. That said, I suspect this longplayer will sell about a dozen copies worldwide as it’s hardly accessible. Reviewers are and have been utterly confused by these guys which is as much as an indication as to why one should always treat any review with scepticism. Why review something you don’t understand. The words Vangelis and Jarre keep on jumping up as reference points but neither are appropriate. It you need a reference point look at either the first Fripp and Eno album No Pussyfooting, still a masterpiece, or the Eno associated No Wave movement of the early eighties in NYC. This record is more Arthur Russell than Jean Michel. Beautiful punk electronica, almost indefinably sensual.

Which brings me to Lindstrom and Prins Thomas, whose self titled album might take this from a different slant but the overall drift is the same, elegant electronic landscapes, often performed with more traditional instrumentation than DG & GR, by these two Norwegians but both albums are essentially from the same place and owe so much to the work of the aforementioned Eno, but also the hugely influential Western European pioneers of electronica, re-stating it in a contemporary fashion, which makes it sound dull, but its anything but. I guess if house / electronica or whatever tag you feel the need to apply, is going to go anywhere in 2006 then both albums are hopefully a signpost.

If anyone wants any indication of what went wrong with dance, look at the new DJ Magazine Top 100.

Oh dear.

Yep, and then there is Carl Craig’s remake / remodel of the no-longer-beatless Darkness originally on the wonderful Just Another Day EP i…real Paperclip people stuff, albeit without the disco loops. I quite liked the Radio Slave boot of the same track although it came from a different place and upset the bloody purists (which can’t be bad).

Today I had my hair cut by a guy who had a picture of Osama Bin Laden on his wall. He offered to razor me as well…I politely declined. I guess that’s living in Indonesia.

Chaos in my Backyard

I’ve been more than a little slack in blogging and have been admonished by several people for this so…sorry. Excuses? Yep I’ve got a few, not least being the gift of a brand new PSP for my birthday a few days back, from my friends, Wayhu & Krisanti. Sitting up half the night chasing aliens tends to slow the mind a little. But what a machine. I love toys and this one is the most exciting toy I’ve had the chance to play with for quite a spell….

So much for pleasure, now to the pain. The bombs…. I‘ve just got back from a spin around Kuta. I guess it’s vaguely unpleasant of me but since I was out I drove the extra few kilometres from the café we were at in Sanur to see what had happened. There was little to see and I didn’t really want to venture down the blocked streets close to Kuta Square.

It seems pretty much business as usual along Jalan Legian, but of course it’s not at all. The shops are busy, although the Bintang t-shirt wearing Ockers, who were the fairly obvious targets of this horror, are glaringly absent from the streets and there is a gloom and despondency upon the faces of many of the Balinese. I was in Bali a couple of weeks after the 2002 bomb and again in January and February 2003 and I know what this is going to do to this beautiful, peaceful and undeserving island in the years to come.

John Howard was on television telling the world that this was mindless terrorism. Terrorism it was but mindless it was not. These people knew exactly what they were doing and I’m afraid, Mr Howard, that much of the blood of these victims is on your hands. How you, Blair and Bush, can stand in public and express such outrage is beyond me. Have you no shame….

As awful as this is too, such bloodletting occurs daily in Iraq, Palestine and Dafour with little comment from these self righteous people.

I guess like most people I have trouble understanding how a human being can so callously do what was done here. There is no conceivable justification. I can understand what the perceived injustice is and agree with the much of what brings these people to the place where their anger overwhelms them but cannot justify this.

I feel more than a little drained and despondent. I was in a restaurant in Jalan Danau Tamblingan last night when the text from a friend arrived asking if I was ok. We watched a bit of CNN who had fairly pitiful coverage...back to their old tricks…then the BBC which was much more incisive and at least made an attempt to analyse what had happened.

We then tried to sleep but that wasn’t too successful. We woke this morning to the local news channel and very graphic images on the screen, which the cable channels avoid…..they have no qualms about such here…and one of the local boys came around to tell me, in Bahasa, that the terrorists had blown up the airport. I had to assure him the airport was fine, but the level of local stress is evident. These people have suffered bombs, SARS, 9/11, and blatant Corby related media racism in the past four years (the normally excellent ABC Asia-Pacific were insensitive enough to show Schapelle’s god-awful white-trash mother on the morning bulletin as a celebrity commentator).

King hit after king hit and it really isn’t fair. It’s not fair at all and there is little I can do apart from hanging tight and staying here which I intend to do.

My friend Don who was scheduled to arrive tomorrow morning just rang to say he was still coming regardless which really cheered me up but………..

So on a more positive note, I’m going to have to admit that I seriously like about 80% of the new Paul McCartney album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. Actually about 60%, but, fuck me, if I was able put together a record this good at age 63 I’d be a very happy man. There are a couple of seriously not good moments and maybe Nigel Goodrich, who produced this has a bit to do with it but keep in mind he is also responsible for some of the more pretentious drivel produced in recent years (and I used to so rate Tom Yorke). This really is a very good record and the good songs are so good that it may be the best thing the often slightly unpleasant fab (who has been a hidden pleasure of mine for years, and he was a fab so all is forgiven…I was a teen in the late sixties so the glasses are well rose tinted) has done since Ram or McCartney.

Then again maybe I’m just old……

Things That Go Bang in the Night

I’m awash with new records l like a lot right now. I’ve always wanted to use “awash” more. It seems like an odd word which must relate back to sea-faring day past when brave European sailors trekked around the world and discovered peoples who obviously were unaware they existed before they were discovered.

Then they killed them as often as not.

I’ve just been reading about the fine Dutch explorers who took over an island in the Indonesian archipelago, on the prowl for spices and slaves and the like, in the 17^th Century, and met a little resistance from the locals who didn’t really want to be discovered. The Dutch corralled the island’s population into a secure area and then dropped the Japanese executioners into it. They Japanese swordsmen travelled with the brave sailors for just such an occasion. In a few hours several thousand locals were reduced to a dozen or so compliant souls and the Dutch were up to their knees in bits and pieces on humanity…maybe that’s where “awash” comes from. The head explorer was punished by a promotion in Holland, a colonial governship or something. His heirs, of course, formed the National Party in South Africa, another fine bunch of tolerant folk who made racism a state policy in South Africa. Coincidently, a like minded political party in New Zealand shares the name.

An Australian here in Bali yesterday called Don Brash our Pauline Hanson…the difference of course being that Australians marginalised Pauline whereas Don seems to have captured a large part of the electorate who want their $40 a week. Whilst Hanson’s views were largely seen as loopy, Don’s not dissimilar views on race are seen as mainstream by many which is quite a condemnation of New Zealand in 2005.

Don has lots of support too from big business too, who are miffed that that, amongst other things, they are not getting their just recognition as big wheels and want Don to roll back the clock to the days of those Dutch explorers and re-institute feudal titles. Don is glad to do as ordered. You could say Don is grateful at being awash in support and cash from his friends in big business. The fact that he denies such an obvious kowtow to his masters would be humorous if the whole incident didn’t indicate the overwhelming influence that an unelected pressure group would exert over any National government.

I worry too about losing the progress the industry I’ve most been involved with across the years, has made under our standing government. For close to thirty years I’ve been an observer and a participant in the drive to get New Zealand made music on our airwaves. This has been achieved under a voluntary code over the past five years after decades of bashing our heads against the wall. However this voluntary code has only worked with the implicit threat of legislation if a voluntary code failed to achieve a quota. National’s traditional support for New Zealand music, and indeed the arts in general (there are the famous quotes from Muldoon about popular music not being culture followed by a decade of active dis-interest in the 90s) has been appalling and there is nothing to indicate that has improved. Without the threat of legislation to enforce a quota I seriously doubt it will last. And I really can’t see a Brash led government taking any stand against the large corporates that dominate our airwaves. In fact its position on TVNZ’s Charter indicates it would take quite the opposite position on quotas. National’s Arts and Culture policy says absolutely nothing about anything.

So, yeah, music…awash might not be the word to use but there are several that make me smile alot….

I like the I:Cube single Chicago Sur Seine, very early Knuckles with a slightly euro tinge, but I guess that’s what the name is meant to imply; Putsch 79’s own Living For The Arpeggios is very much part two of their Asian Girls from a couple of years back but I liked that so….their mix of The Juan Maclean’s Give Me Every Little Thing is just ok but the Cajmere one with Dajae on vox is a wicked bit of old 95-ish Cajual styled Chi-town noise. Just as good, actually even better, is Anders Trentemoller’s amazing electro hip house mix of Want 2 / Need 2 by Sharon Phillips. I’ve been a fan of this guy since I grabbed a single of his on the usually bland Naked Music a couple of years back. But, it’s the Carl Craig mix of Laurent Garnier’s Bariturik Blues from his Cloud Making Machine album which has absolutely floored me. Industrial soulful techno made for dark rooms late at night seems to sound reasonably perfect here under the afternoon Bali sun, especially when it drops down to this gap at about five minutes them comes back with an incredible post Detroit Experiment flurry before building up again.

I listened again today to his 69 EP from 1991 and, after 14 years it’s still hard to figure out if this Detroit Techno record was maybe better described as a hip-hop record with techno sensibilities. I guess many of the pioneering techno and house producers have firm roots in hip-hop and I think records like Flash on the Wheels of Steel or Al-Naayfish are as much a sign post towards techno as hip hop. The barriers that the practitioners of genres, in particular those of a hip-hop lean I’m afraid to say, put up against other styles of essentially the same music I see as unfortunate and a little sad. Purists scare me a little……

The Caring sort..... via Eschaton NEW YORK Accompanying her husband, former President George H.W.Bush, on a tour of hurricane relief centers in Houston, Barbara Bush said today, referring to the poor who had lost everything back home and evacuated, "This is working very well for them." ... In a segment at the top of the show on the surge of evacuees to the Texas city, Barbara Bush said: "Almost everyone I’ve talked to wants to move to Houston." Then she added: "What I’m hearing is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed with the hospitality. "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this (she chuckled)--this is working very well for them."

Welcome to Camp America

My buddy, Bob Daktari (no, its probably not his real name) has a blog now. Bob has a keen mind and a wicked sense of humour so add it to your must-view list.

As I was in December / January, I’m completely devastated by the events in the Gulf states of the USA. Human suffering on this scale makes most of us feel helpless, fragile, and insignificant. Yes, we can give, we can sympathise but in reality, as with any immeasurable tragedies like this, there is little most of us can do. Sadly, those in a position to help here have, as we all know, dropped the ball well and truly. There is no excuse for what wasn’t done but I’m resigned to the fact that the US public will give Bush and his cronies a pass on this eventually. I guess, like much of the planet, I really don’t have much faith in the United States anymore, as a nation, to do the right thing or make a reasoned judgement based on the evidence available. I saw some idiot saying on CNN that things were gonna be ok because he’d seen the compassion in Bush’s eyes. Maybe he would think a little differently if he knew that the “compassion” was simply a photo op by a President more concerned with saving his political arse, any way you look at it, than thousands of poor people.

This is the same man who, a day earlier said:

"'The good news is - and it's hard for some to see it now - that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house - there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch"

I actually think CNN has performed pretty well on this and from where I’m sitting has somewhat redeemed its complicit performance over recent years with its blazing criticism of the obvious incompetence of the GOP appointees involved. Apart from the weather talking-head who said yesterday that the weather was good for a holiday weekend getaway…or Ralitsa Vassileva, or whatever her name is, on CNN International interviewing the head of the UN relief agency which performed with such distinction during the Asian disaster earlier this year, demanding to know how much cash the United Nations was going to give to the US. I would imagine that anyone hired for a news reader's job on a channel like CNN would, whether they liked the organisation or not, at least understand what it actually is. Best we surmise CNN couldn’t get anyone better for the job and make the obvious assumption that this woman is a moron and move on…

The Tsunami of course was a massive human disaster but the global ramifications of Katrina go far beyond that human tragedy, as it largely hurt the poor and, as far as the west is concerned, uncounted. The US economy has been teetering for so long now that this could push it, if not over the edge, towards it. But as New Orleans shows, the plight of the have-nots is not Bush’s concern, beyond their roles as fodder for his corporate sponsors and military, and never has been. The question concerning him more must be the relationship of this disaster to his family’s dynastic ambitions.

It must be an unwelcome and annoying hiccup….

And based on past performance, I wonder how much of the tens of billions of reconstruction and supply dollars are going to go Halliburton’s way… talking of which, the world is still asking “where is Dick Cheney”?

I’m not sure if it’s the right time to be saying things like this, but when is?