I don’t think I could pick a favourite Beastie Boys album — I love them all, the hardcore punk EPs, the instrumental compilation, the early rap pastiche nonsense (even with its misogyny of the era) and the later, more evolved stuff, where they showcased playing their instruments, but also just did their white-boy hip-hop gimmick too. The cool thing about their gimmick I guess is that it also wasn’t a gimmick.

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They were a good-time crew who also really meant it.

And I am often deeply nostalgic for their music, because they neither burned out, nor faded away, they ended early with the death of a member. That was it. And since then it’s been memorial mode.

The doc:

The book:

The compilation:

The two remaining members authorising the projects that matter to keep the brand alive, but also just going about their business of growing old fairly gracefully and being human.

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I love this band for the fun of what they were about, and the silliness, and the attitude, and style, and it all meant so much. I love this band because they felt like our band. Me and my mates. Music you listened to with your mates. Long car trips between cities, a disc you could all sing along with, drinks in a garage, this was invariably on a playlist. Ten or so years on this was the first wave of nostalgia music for our generation, but also it had never gone away. We had kept listening.

Now when I listen to it I’m forced to confront fallen soldiers, not just MCA from the band, but people from my own crew:

Ill Communication was released in my final year of high school — it was the album we took to parties, we played whenever we could, we carried it with us into first and second years of university, and then beyond.

For some reason, at the time, I was lukewarm on Check Your Head, or rather a bit late to it. I love it. And that and Ill are a pair, sister volumes, brothers in the hood, a mini era, and either could be anyone’s favourite and it would be the right choice.

I’ve owned all the Beasties albums on many different format combinations. And then for a while I had none of their albums — so finding this in the library book sale at exactly the right time, felt like a life saver. I have to have things like this around for when I need them.

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Mostly because
it made me listen
to Walk of Life
once again;
had to see if I could tell
who came first.

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In the song Freedom by Rage Against the Machine, there’s a whispered line, “Anger is a gift” — and it is punctuated by the band exploding into one of its perfect frenzies.

I don’t think I even noticed that whispered line until I had a version of that glorious debut album that had a bonus disc called “Anger Is A Gift”, an EP’s worth of extra tracks.

I love that line.

Long before that, I was singing along to Public Image’s Rise which has a version of that Irish prayer about the road rising to meet you. When that falls away, like a stretch of street disappearing in the rearview mirror, John Lydon begins the real mantra: “Anger is an energy/Anger is an energy/Anger is an energy…”

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There’s anger in my life. I don’t think we’re being honest if we try to tell anyone there isn’t.

The movies of Martin Scorsese are driven by anger, predominantly. The music of Lou Reed. The writing of Norman Mahler. The stories of Henry Miller. The comedy of Louis CK. The comedy of Lewis Black. The comedy of most of my favourite comedians — and many of the ones I never liked, or no longer like.

Anger is an energy!

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I’m interested in anger as an energy. It cannot be the only one. It has to be anger in service to something, in contrast to something else, in response, in reaction, even in summary of a historical context; anger can be part of the propulsion of back story.

One night I was in a bar and I watched two guys drinking. They were clearly friends. But they were drinking with anger as their energy. They were connected. They were focused. They were (presumably) getting on (I only watched them for a few seconds). It was enough to imagine two people realising too late their connection is a mutual friend. But what if that mutual friend isn’t there?

To balance that anger, I thought of the humour of George and Elaine in Seinfeld who struggled with that exact scenario. They could not find the right things to talk about when socialising together without Jerry and Kramer. Jerry was their glue, the shared friend they each had. When he wasn’t there, they were like bumper boats with no splash. They were matches that had no spark.

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But anger was the main energy for the story I ended up writing as a result of that brief bit of people-watching. I imagined residual anger — in the case of one character it is almost explained; he’s in service to a grandfather’s anger, he’s reacting to a loss — and he’s driven by a towering frustration. The other character’s anger is shown in his actions, in his dialogue, but it’s never (quite) explained.

The whole time I was writing the story — which went through several versions, and tightened, and got better, and is still dark and utterly uncomfortable — I could hear Public Image’s song, Rise. I could hear John Lydon chant-singing, “Anger is an energy/Anger is an energy/Anger is an energy…”

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Eurythmics, Touch (1983)

I always think of the Eurythmics as music our whole family loved. There wasn’t a lot of that. I mean, to begin with, sure, you just listen to what your parents play — we had no say in the car, it was all their choice. And the tapes and records at home were determined by what was on the radio. And the pop songs of the Scottish/English band, Eurythmics, were everywhere. And all of us were happy about that.

We narrowly missed out on seeing them live — a pipe dream.

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Dad had a few Eurythmics cassettes, but they were all unlabelled. This was probably one of them, since it followed Sweet Dreams by less than a year; such was the momentum of the band once they really got going.

I always loved that they existed for the 1980s. I mean, okay there was — eventually a comeback/reunion album — but I don’t count that.

Touch features three towering singles:

My favourite of the three is easily album opener, Here Comes The Rain Again — but Right By Your Side is fun with its calypso happiness, a different sort of vibe from the band really, and obviously Who’s That Girl? is tremendous. Any band would be lucky to ever have three songs this good, but every new Eurythmics album arrived with at least three songs of this calibre, enough for an absolutely chocka and throughly fucking splendid greatest hits album — which I have on CD, and had on vinyl.

And so to the need for the tape? Well, it’s symbolic of the era as much as anything, but I also like the idea of one day collecting up every Eurhythmics album, since I think they’re worthy; having the greatest hits too — to dip in and out of, but the albums to show full fan support. There are some great deep cuts on each record. And strange, wonderful b-sides too.

Seriously though, an album a year, sometimes two from 1983-1989 — incredible work-rate, piles of hits, and every album has its own flavour. Remarkable work from an incredible duo.

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We all moved off to listen to other music in our family. A few crossover tastes, but as the years go by there’s less we agree on. Eurythmics is one thing we’d all still agree.

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They’re one band I like to think of, and listen to, to remind me of that bond.

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Bijan Taghavi

Cactus Sessions

Bijan Taghavi

Solo piano is its own language. Think Fred Hersch, Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell. They all played well with others too, but their solo renditions of their own compositions, and various standards, will transport you to another place entirely.

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About a decade ago, or so, classically trained Bijan Taghavi set about to capture some of the standards he had been influenced by. His background in classical music. He he shows that discipline, but engages with the flow of Horace Silver, Monk, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Hank Jones, and many others. No original compositions. All covers, all standards. All gorgeous, moonlight, or midnight, transportive, transcendent.

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Bookended by Jobim’s gentle boss as Wave and Desafinado, Bijan weaves a tale of solo piano through playful romps (Have You Met Miss Jones) and balladry given a workout (I’ll Remember April) via the wondrous Horace Silver piece, Peace.

If you are lucky to find yourself with an hour to read, or stare out a window, or drive somewhere alone, or go for a walk, and you’re the sort of person that likes a soundtrack for such pursuits, Cactus Sessions would be sublime.

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Recently I reviewed Graham Reynolds’ score for Blue Moon —

— these would work well as companion albums. Though Bijan isn’t playing for the score, he’s playing for the song. And for himself. And you feel that every step of the way, his hands bouncing across the keys, his fingers sliding effortlessly to tell two stories — those within the notes, and the magic he finds in the spaces between.

If you’re a fan of jazz-leaning solo piano, then you’ll want to add this one to your repertoire. Sublime.

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But next week, I’m finally going to get to see Sparks.

I’m flying to Christchurch overnight. And I’m very excited. The last time I saw a big name gig in the South Island was Stevie Wonder, nearly 20 years ago.

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Sparks is one of my favourite bands. I love the Mael brothers — for Russell’s impossibly high freak-falsetto, for Ron’s deadpan look and songs. He’s like someone that took Tin Pan Alley, gave it a shake, and decided it was the perfect way to explore toxic masculinity.

Morrissey chose a Sparks song for his Under The Influence compilation, and around the same time Rolling Stones or Mojo or Q or one of those mags listed Kimono My House in a list of its top albums ever; it was one of the few I had never heard. I always make it my ‘job’ to get to those — and listen through them.

A few years back I took a pencil and ticked off every entry I knew in the 1001 Albums You Must Hear book. I made it my ‘job’ to listen to the 145 of the thousand and one I had not heard:

So, yeah, Kimono My House — it wasn’t quite an overnight new favourite, but also it wasn’t far off it. From there I got into a few more of the 70s albums, and the early 80s ones too. Then I left Sparks alone for a bit. But always admired the writing, the idea of them. And would read about them any time they were covered.

So many connections and segues, the early relationship with Todd Rundgren, being produced by Giorgio Moroder, doing covers of themselves and duetting with Faith No More. Sparks has always been a quiet obsession.

But then the news that they were touring.

My preparation schedule has been…well, in a word, nuts.

I watched the amazing Edgar Wright doco from 2021, The Sparks Brothers — a sublime career summary for fans, by a fan.

YouTube gave me all sorts of live concert footage —

So I watched a heap of Sparks gigs. Bought my ticket and flights. And kept watching Sparks gigs.

Those that follow me on Facebook might have noticed that every day for the last month or so I’ve shared a “Sparks Song Of The Day” — a random YouTube selection of a single track from anywhere across the timeline of their catalogue.

And then I listened to every album in order, some 28 studio releases; a few EPs and compilations too. Even reviewing the most recent record:

At this point, pretty much all I was ever thinking about was Sparks.

Then I found the podcast — All You Ever Think About Is Sparks —

I‘m still working my way through that. But hope to be right up to date when I fly into Christchurch next week.

And I’m reading ’s fantastic book about seeing the band over 21 nights in London when they played their 21 albums (at the time) in order; one per night:

At this point, catalogue complete, and a few of the albums played more than others, I’m now onto the playlist I built on the back of the first show from this current tour:

A friend in Japan sent me immediate footage of the band playing there a couple of weeks ago, a quick debrief, and a photo of the setlist.

All of this is to tell you that I’m feeling fully prepped.

I recognise it is also telling you more about me than the band. But that’s okay. That was in fact the plan.

It’s usually the plan.

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But, yes, I’m the guy that doesn’t need it to run to a plan. I don’t mind if they play an all new setlist, but I want to be prepared. I can’t stand people complaining about a gig because they hadn’t realised an artist no longer does certain material. It is your ‘job’ as a fan to keep up, to do the ‘work’ to stay prepped. I truly believe that. It should be no job at all, no hard work, it should be what you’re doing and who you are anyway.

When an artist with a huge catalogue comes to town, I think it’s the most fun in the world to go all in on the catalogue. The last time I saw Bob Dylan (2018) I listened to an album a day for two months beforehand — he was only going to play about 15 songs, and they were all going to sound completely different to the studio versions anyway, but that didn’t stop me from listening to the full Bootleg Series, the live albums; the works.

The long winter evenings just fly by in this house…

So, next week I get to see Sparks. They have never played in New Zealand. It is their first time here. They brothers are 80 (Ron) and 77 (Russell). They sound different every time and always the same. Every album in their catalogue has a different feel — they’ve been glam, done musicals, created new versions of disco and synth-pop, been the blueprint for the Pet Shop Boys, influenced an entire run of British synth driven pop music, given Freddie Mercury the license to go ‘operatic’ and all while basically writing Brill Building/Tin Pan Alley-styled non-standards. The most European sounding American band ever. But also they are almost The Beach Boys in a way.

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They are certainly the most harmonious of brother bands — no fights, no fallouts, no reunions required. Just 50+ years of fascinating music.

And next week I’ll fly to another city and sit in one of the close-up rows, by myself. And see one of my favourite ever band.

I just wanted to be ready…

So my question — if anyone is still reading — is how ‘Sparks’ are you? Which can mean two things: Firstly, are you a fan of the band? Have you seen them, are you going? What’s your favourite album, song, or era? But secondly, how ‘nuts’ or how ‘Sparks’ do you go in terms of preparation when seeing a favourite act? Or are you far more go with the flow only to sometimes be disappointed immediately after?

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Oh, and yeah, usually after such prep, the show at the end is like the performance for an actor, or the launch of a book. I will pack Sparks up for a while. I might have one or two new favourite songs as a result of the show, but I probably won’t listen to them again for most of this year.

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Okay, all that Sparks talk, here’s the weekly playlist — which has a cameo by the band of the hour. But it’s not technically one of their songs. A rather chill/downbeat selection this week. I hope you find something you like. Thanks, as ever, for reading. And listening.

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This is New Zealand’s Minister
for the Arts, like an elbow thinking
it’s a fist; no hand to shake, no heart

on sleeve. The Humanities need
funding; need us. But we
need them, and far more

than we need a stuffed shirt,
a bumbling fool, parading indifference
and ignorance. Getting everything

muddled. Two ticks: Competency
this November. We should want
much more than just that.

In a nation that publishes twice
as many books as it reads
we should at least have

a minister that knows his arts
from his elbow, that pays to
listen all the way through.

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I loved Snap! as soon as I heard them. And I generally don’t like band with exclamation marks in the title — it’s too much! (Ha!) But I never thought of them as “Snap!” Deciding instead they were SNAP or just Snap. Anyway, the hits from this were everywhere — The Power, Oops Up , Mary Had A Little Boy — and I loved the whole album almost straight away.

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Funny, I thought of it as hip-hop, probably because of the drumbeats, and the samples (James Brown’s Funky Drummer and other oft-sampled acts like The Gap Band). But I also loved the weird tenderness of the Tracy Chapman sample, and A BALLAD!

Actually, they’re more a Eurodance/house band — but we didn’t have that language then. We were kids. And this was on the radio, and the music TV shows, and the ‘slow’ style of rapping wasn’t a million miles from Run DMC and N.W.A. and Public Enemy. It was nowhere near as ‘good’ but it was in the same ballpark, tripping over the same sorts of pant-cuffs too, probably.

I had this on tape, dubbed off my mate who had the real cassette.

But many years later I did buy the CD, and then upgraded to a compilation — which I instantly regretted.

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I mean, yeah, sure, Snap! had the song Rhythm Is A Dancer, which was also everywhere and if you squint sometimes it still is. But I was gone for albums two and three.

Made the same mistake with Frankie Goes To Hollywood, loved the debut Welcome To The Pleasuredome so much I figured I’d get a hits comp to cover anything else. Didn’t need anything else.

Maybe that’s the only time anyone will ever compare Frankie and Snap! But it’s valid on those grounds.

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Recently I found a copy of World Power on CD and I’m so grateful to have it. I briefly had the vinyl LP but that felt like too much of a commitment, too much of a novelty, like my copy of Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers which I can’t play, can’t part with, can’t give away…

The only thing I loved about briefly having World Power on vinyl, is I really do love that cover.

But I’ve straight away played World Power a bunch since owning it again. It’s all at once naff as fuck and cringe and daft, and also utterly fucking cool. Or something in the same ballpark anyway. Tripping over its cuffs and admitting to being a cynical, manufactured bunch of tunes by nerds in glasses wanting hits and nabbing a couple of vocalists to front it.

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Hey, no shame.

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I was asked to write a profile of myself for Victoria University’s IIML pages where they showcase past graduates of the MA. I was in the Writing for the Page stream last year, and I passed — graduated. I’ll attend a ceremony later this month; my first time walking across the stage. I never bothered for my BA, by the time I went back to finish it I felt very alone, and the degree felt inconsequential.

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But this one feels earned and vital and current — and I did it as a full time student and a full-time staff member at the University. That feels kinda interesting, if nothing else.

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Anyway, I’m attaching the story here and a link to it is above. I thought regular readers of the newsletter might like to see this:

those links listed at the end of the article above are:

Sounds Good!

Music, Movies, Books...the good stuff! This is also the home now to Off The Tracks - a full archive of 11,000 posts on pop culture

By Simon Sweetman

https://www.rnz.co.nz/tags/Simon%20Sweetman

https://www.bestnewzealandpoems.org.nz/past-issues/2024-contents/simon-sweetman//

And again, that story above can be found online at the University’s site here:

https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/modernletters/our-students/grad-showcase/simon-sweetman-writing-for-the-page-2025

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Eric Clapton, August (1986)

In the early 1990s, I was almost an Eric Clapton super-fan. It had started in the late 80s, and everyone in my house was into Clapton on some level; the whole fan-damn!-ily. We even went to see him play in 1990 in Auckland. And it was superb.

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Even the second time I saw him, as a jaded-hack reviewer on assignment, and some 20 years on, was still good.

But the music very quickly grew stale.

The eighties albums weren’t great, but I tried to like them. As a fan. And they were a part of my tape collection; in fact I might have had more music by Eric Clapton on tape than any other artist.

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Behind The Sun — which I’ve written about and linked to up above, isn’t very good but I’ve had a bit of a soft spot for it. Even as its aged terribly.

Following that came August, which I didn’t like at the time. It was my least favourite.

But, it had Behind The Mask, which was cool. It would be years before I’d find out it was a Yellow Magic Orchestra cover, and of course I love the original. But the Clapton version was good enough to be one of the more recent selections on The Cream of Eric Clapton album that so captivated our household for a time. So, when August got a spin I pretty much just waited for that.

Also, Tearing Us Apart (a duet with Tina Turner) was slow and sludgy on the album, but a lithe version of it at the Knebworth gig (with backing singer Katie Kissoon covering for Tina) gave me hope to revisit the song. It felt like a hidden gem. And yet every time it came back around on the tape, it still felt like a dud.

Same with It’s In The Way That You Use It, a song used in The Color of Money and co-credited to Robbie Robertson. I tried. But it just wasn’t anything.

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August was named after the month (in 1986) when Clapton’s son Connor was born. The son who tragically only lived to the age of five and was kinda memorialised by Tears In Heaven, even though that song had already been written for a movie.

But yeah, anyway, weirdly, August so suits the format of cassette tape that I’ve given it a few spins and I like it now far more than I did at the time. And I’m almost an anti-fan of Clapton; have no time for him whatsoever.

Funny how things spin and change.

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but the guys round the table
went all Kookaburra
and the girl left

so the lads laughed even more
as the next joint was rolled
and in a fug of damp socks

they all tried their best
to remember, while I just
hoped to forget

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OHYUNG

IOWA

OHYUNG

Lia Ouyang Rusli is an artist and film composer, but under her solo moniker OHYUNG she makes everything from ambient and experimental pop, to distorted noise and Musique concrète.

IOWA is the result of an artist residency in the state, and a reflection of that physical state through ambient music. It is also an overt tribute to the intentions of Bruce Springsteen’s solo album, Nebraska — though not at all referencing its sound, the cover artwork, and single state title makes this clear enough.

There’s also the use of negative space, which is all through Nebraska, different tools to achieve that though, since we live in a different world. And OHYUNG is a different type of musician.

The more obvious touchstones for sound are Malibu’s recent recording, Vanities:

And Lustmord’s album from a dozen years ago or so, The Word As Power:

Both artists, like OHYUNG, use their own voice to make wordless vocals, then stretched and processed and layered, and also incorporate a wide range of samples, found sounds, synthesised textures and various ‘drop ins’ from home-studio filters and live instrumentation.

IOWA begins with purgatory, which stretches her vocals into almost unrecognisable shapes, they feel like caged sounds crying out in the distance of lost melodies. I thought also of the way Lucy Gooch frames ambient music, but Lustmord’s creations were firmly in mind for me. And only in a good way of course.

In all dolls go to heaven we have a negative-space version of something like Moby’s God Moving Over The Face of the Waters. Where that is all busy with its cascading piano, and layer of musical motifs, this is the wash of what’s left when all of that has been removed; music as extraction process, refinement. The choir at the ruins, singing on a loop for the last canary down the final coal mine as humanity eats itself in a race to the finish.

But hey, it’s not all so upbeat! The piece, January, is a short shock of sound design, audio waves crashing, beached, and dancing parakeets feels like Oneohtrix Point Never (aka Daniel Lopatin) assembling a first layer of soundtrack for the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems.

In the longer, more stretched pieces, nevada for instance, OHYUNG plays with the sample-sources, her own voice, and the new synth layers, to create a collage so deep you might never find the end of the sellotape.

The music of feelings you can’t articulate, and there’s a breathlessness to so much of this too, the black angel offers ghostly footsteps that are very nearly percussion but also might not actually even be there.

By the time of closing 12-

minute epic, memorial, it is somehow both close to overwhelming, and the music has permanently slipped into the background to wash over whatever else is happening, while that in turn takes a shape that folds over the music.

IOWA lasts an hour, but feels like it could play forever.

As with Springsteen’s Nebraska, you know something profound has happened; something so small as to be utterly enormous.

I feel like I was always listening to this album, long before I heard it. I am not sure, now that I know it, how I’ll ever be able to stop.

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One thing I knew about the rat: It wasn’t judging me.

It was a poor decision to live alone, and like so many poor decisions, you make it and then you double-down, pretend it wasn’t just the right call, but that you were super smart for recognising it; no one else would have done what you did. And that’s what separates you from them. I mean, that last part is true, but you could ask anyone else for their opinion, and it’d be like one of those maths problems where they had the same answer, but no one could articulate how they arrived at it.

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That was it. Out on my own and away and adrift, and in the first year my room had been party-central, and you think that’s going to make you the desired flatmate, but, actually, people use that spot for connections. First year is a breeze, and you hose on through. I did. I mean, shit, I took four beers to one of my English classes when we were learning about the Beats, sat drinking them, by the fourth — and I’d had a handful before I even got there — I wasn’t even hiding it, the empties clinking in my fucking bag. No shit. And could not care less, because I had a cute line all ready too, about method acting and going the extra mile since the subject was Kerouac — so just getting in character mate, and all that. Didn’t need the line. Didn’t need the compassionate consideration I’d lined up for exams by telling a wee lie that the girl that died was actually my girlfriend. But a back pocket just hangs there unless you have something in it. So I filed that away, and then still flew through. No shame. Or is it actually a heap of shame? I don’t fucking know.

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I just know that first year is easy, it’s second year when the work really kicks in, and everyone chose their flat groups, and I was left standing there. Like the guy that had cooked the BBQ, and suddenly everyone with their sausages and no place for this guy but to stand.

So I moved in with the rat.

I mean, I moved in by myself. Filled a huge duffel bag with clothes, had a bunch of VHS tapes and records. A lava lamp. Tarantino posters. Books by the Beats, and Bukowski, Irvine Welsh, and Bret Easton Ellis. Convinced myself that I could stay up watching Short Cuts for three hours whenever I wanted and with no one to tell me to turn it down, and no one to have to keep explaining that to, yes, the stories were linked, but they were also fragments, it was a fucking interpretation of Carver, alright!

It was all going swimmingly, at least for the first few weeks. I even got a girl to come back with me to the bedsit. Its grotty little bathroom, and tiny ship’s galley kitchen weren’t even the things to put her off. I was able to do that myself. Ha! I put Songs In The Key of Life on the turntable, all smooth. Had the lava lamp glowing pinky-red, and thought as far as first moves go, this was decent-as. Only issue really was there wasn’t even any understanding of what to do. I gave a monologue about Pulp Fiction which I even called ‘The Golden Watch of The Gold Watch Monologue’ — but you know, that was all I had.

I suggested a massage. And she said sure. And when it became apparent that she meant me massage her, I put my top back on and rubbed her shoulders for a bit, over her shirt. And she moved her hair across to hang down over one shoulder, and she turned her head to look at me, and I started squeezing down tighter, and mumbled some shit about sports-medicine and how I was wasted here and should have done physiotherapy, and next thing she asked if it’d be okay for me to drive her home.

That car-ride was silent. And that was that. I mean, that was that in terms of her ever visiting me again. I called past a couple more times, but she was out at the gym apparently. And also she had some part-time job. So whenever I called on the phone that’s where she was. Whenever I drove by, and pretended I was already in the neighbourhood, she was either at the gym or the library. I mean, whatever. I moved on from that after a while. But of course, I did ponder why I’d played Stevie Wonder instead of Al Green or Marvin Gaye.

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A few weeks in, the rat made itself known. It’s entirely possible of course, rats being what they are, that it had been with a previous tenant. But the landlord never mentioned that. Obviously. And yeah, probably it was the landlord that was the real rat. He reckoned he knew my grandfather, said some shit about how if I was half the man he was, and well, fuck I moved out halfway through the year didn’t I. So clearly, I was! He went from the sorts of smiles Bukowski said came from people who cleaned their teeth with piss, to telling me, in a letter — a fucking handwritten letter — that I was “possibly infected by the devil. That demons were in my soul”. And that he prayed for me. I wished I’d known where the cunt lived. Woulda thrown eggs at his fucking front door.

Anyway, the rat had a routine, which made me instantly jealous of it. I craved routine, I realise now. I was lost and lonely and could never admit to either. I was a show-off, but only when the stage lights were up. Backstage I was the clown removing make-up. Still tripping up in the big fucking shoes.

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The rat started in the bathroom, moving swiftly across the gap between the rooms. I’m not going to call it a corridor or hallway, that’s just insulting to dictionary definitions. The rat would move to the kitchen and be gone. That was it. Using my house like a bus-stop. Ha. House. Wasn’t even mine. Wasn’t even a house. There were four older students, or actually a couple of them were out in the world with their first jobs, living above me. I was in this damp fucking shithole that was charitably being called a flat, but there was nothing charitable about the rent. Although the landlord seemed to think he was doing my dead Granddad some kind of cosmic god-bothering favour.

In the early days of the rat, I feared it might arrive at the end of my bed while I was having a wank. So I took to flogging in the shower. The rat wasn’t going to find me there. Plus, easy clean-up. Masturbation isn’t all its cracked up to be, it’s not always easy to, um, pull off. There was this story from the hostel, the year previous, about a guy who fell through the glass door, slipped on the soap was his story, and he had stitches in his hand, and he had to run with a towel half on him, and grab a t-shirt and some trackies before getting to the ambulance and then the hospital. So you know his story, the one written for his return to communal living, is that he was furiously beating it and in a punch-drunk moment he slipped, soap or otherwise, and crashed through the fucking glass door. At least this bedsit shower didn’t have a glass door. A mouldy old shower curtain was probably my one saving grace.

I had always just figured that everyone masturbated, and no one talked about it, since it was kinda literally a person minding their own business. And why would you be fucking noisy or nosy about that anyway. But the rat was a new development in my processes. I don’t want to go calling anything I had a routine.

The rat wasn’t onto me at all. But that didn’t help me from lizard-braining that the rat was totally onto me. In fact, that was the contributing factor to me giving the rat a status of equal importance, possibly higher even than myself. This rat had actual work it was doing. Routine. A family? This rat was a provider. This rat was going places. I mean literally. I was just providing occasional shelter. And since I mostly saw the rat during the day to fix that I just stayed out all day. I couldn’t go to class half the time, owing to a debilitating problem whereby I absolutely Could Not Be Fucked. Ask the suddenly very busy girl from the throwaway massage-night and she’d have said the same, though she might have used a different method of workings before reaching that identical conclusion.

I was downtown a lot, bugging friends in their flat. Which meant I was their rat. Sliding around between rooms, making rustling noises in the kitchen after everyone was in bed, leaving my shit everywhere. I would ‘live’ in this other place for most of the week, eventually. Even waiting until everyone was asleep and making them think I’d left, then sneaking onto their couch to crash. I’d return home for a night or two and end the weekend. That was never an exact science, some weekends started as early as Tuesday night. Mostly Wednesday or Thursday though. By Sunday night, I’d have fresh batteries in the Discman, and I’d be listening to Dire Straits or Natalie Merchant or even Hootie & His Bloody Blowfish — all my calming-down music, my ‘normal’ music, my dressing-down music (“dressing gown music”) — as I mounted that huge assault-climb to my bedsit from down in the middle of town. Crampons and a bag of Scroggin. A litre of water. And then just before hitting the North Face I’d stop and pull into a bus-shelter and change CDs.

It was one Sunday night when I got home about 7pm, winter, dark, I’d been putting off the walk home since about 2.30 that afternoon, just sitting there in full fucking mope, and then finally everyone else in the downtown flat just stopped talking to me, they wanted me gone. And probably had no idea that that’s what I wanted too. But I made it. Without god’s help, and, with only the devils in every detail of whatever it was I thought I was fucking doing, I made it. Key in the door, light on, and the fucking rat tore straight past me, from right by my feet. Was it using the front door too? Was it stuck outside and waiting for me? That cunt. I chased it to the kitchen and took a dive grabbing at its tail. I held it for a second, and it started gnawing back towards me, teeth visible. And though they never cracked the skin, they were at my knuckles, the rat in a half-loop and its tail like not-enough flax when you’re falling down a muddy hill on a bush walk.

I had no idea what I was going to do if I’d got it, but touching it felt even more revolting. I looked at the clothes on the floor, the dishes all over the bench that had civilisations happening within them now; an electric frying pan that I could have submitted as some sort of science experiment — the puddle of sauce on a plate now more like those realistic food sculptures of puddles of sauce on plates than either the sculptures or actual sauce. It was time to turn in for the night.

I smelled my hand where the rat had been. It was woody, a bit of the wetness of mud, but no residue. No real evidence. Fuck it. This time I slipped the Marvin Gaye on, as I turned all the lights out. I made it quick, under the duvet. Tossed a sock on the floor. And that was the closest I ever came to the rat.

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This isn’t the first Anita O’Day album I heard, but it is the first I heard and owned on CD.

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I bought an LP of her with Gene Krupa, and loved it so much that I was instantly on the lookout for anything else with her name attached.

And all of this of course because of that performance from the film, Jazz On A Summer’s Day.

Just wow!

Many years on, I would write a poem about that — such is my love from that film, that performance, Anita O’Day, and her sassy attitude:

It’s one of my favourites from my first book, The Death of Music Journalism.

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Anyway, this album is a masterful set of standards/classics, all enlivened by Anita’s approach, and her killer band. The backing group for this whole record is Oscar Peterson’s quartet of the time. And so you know it’s good! Oscar Peterson is all through my record collection already and always — and you get him on the piano, the amazing Ray Brown on bass, Herb Ellis on guitar and drummers Milt Holland and John Poole taking turns.

One of the things I adore about jazz, and an easy way in for those less sure, is the “Supergroup” aspect of so many recordings. You’re not just getting the singer or the soloist, you’re getting whole discographies and full empires of sound on any one album; enough homework there too — researching the players and their other groups/recordings — to keep you in a lane that suits, or allow you to move all over the map.

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Anita O’Day quickly became my new favourite jazz singer, and I think that holds. I mean I love Billie Holiday still — and maybe the most, but there is no most. No need to reduce it to that.

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Anita sure sings The Most here — as the title tells us. She’s got such a playful, but tender tone across these drop-dead classics.

It’s an actual masterclass. One of so many she offered. That she was a tough act off stage, an addict, a beast, a no-messing-with-her gal is somehow what was required at the time, also a sad indictment on the era, and also seemingly still an anomaly when you look at the presentation on the album covers and performances; when you listen to that amazing voice.

I ditched almost all of my CDs years ago, as anyone reading probably already knows. What a treat it was to find this one again.

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Hanging on
in earnest is the only way —
over troubled waters.

Bridging through.
Dull daze;
ticked off.

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Phoebe Russell, Johannes Fritzsch, Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Paul Dean: Concerto For Double Bass and Orchestra

ABC Classical

Australian clarinettist and composer Paul Dean here adds to the relatively small collection of works composed specifically for the double bass; more than that this piece — premiered in 2022 for live audience and finally captured on a recording now — was written as much for the performer as the instrument. Dean and Russell are friends and collaborators, and mutual admirers, and this is a love letter to one player’s ability from one composer’s set of skills.

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Johannes Fritzsch keeps baton for the Queenstland Symphony Orchestra, and here the almost outsized personality of star double-bassist Phoebe Russell is reflected as much in the titles of the pieces as the actual performance.

Upon meeting Dean’s wife, Russell declared herself “kind of a big deal”, joking somewhat of course. Following the “Arrival of the Queen of Tarragindi” (named after the suburb of Brisbane) there’s a passage called “The Big Deal Waltz”, all within the opening 10-minute sweep of the Concerto’s Prelude.

The piece is adventurous, and not exactly ‘easy’ listening, with a deceptive, tranquil passage of double bass making way for the chaotic busyness of the orchestra all talking atop one another; it’s almost John Zorn like, but will reward the headphone listener. It also allows for Russell to showcase her skill as both soloist and ensemble player, ‘breaking free’ at times, and then returning to the fold. The Big Deal Waltz is a dance of pure delight for the bassist. And the huge swells of orchestral tympani, cymbals and other percussion, to set up strings and woodwind, feels like cinematic swashbuckling fare. And I mean that in only the very best way.

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The Adagio resets to a brooding simmer, maintaining a certain movie-music vibe. Here we have strings in union ahead of Russell’s moment to state both a rhythmic stamp and a piece of the melody. The piece moves toward a surprising elegy with the mournful double bass moving towards its cello setting.

Finally, the Allegro (subtitled “Building A Better Banana” — an in joke with the Symphony) begins with military snare percussion and dancing strings, as well as the huge swell brass, and Russell swoops and dives about between the two with a huge section of bowed bass that is wonderful to take in. The music is playful and engaging, and in this short conclusion we probably have the most easily digestible passage of music — though I prefer to think of this as a short ‘whole’, one 25 minute movement of music that reminds me of Gorecki’s 3rd, at least in terms of structure. But it’s as if the double-bass from Gorecki’s work, absolutely crucial in its place as haunting harbinger has been transposed here to take on the role of the main voice; replacing the vocal essentitally.

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A mesmerising showcase for both soloist and orchestra, and a workout for the conductor, and from the composer. Invigorating listening all around.

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One of the best known and referenced Director/Composer collaborations is Tim Burton with Danny Elfman. But there was a falling out, and a cooling off period; they spent time apart. Elfman is prolific of course outside of the Burton scores he’s known for, and always has been busy on the side. But it’s fair to say much of Burton’s best known, most loved work has an Elfman score.

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Still, what about this! Ed Wood is surely Burton’s great dramatic work. It’s funny, a little bit, of course — had to be given the subject. But it’s a little different from his quirkier works.

Howard Shore’s great Director/Composer relationship is with David Cronenberg, but let’s not forget he did multiple works for Peter Jackson, and has scored six Scorsese films. Shore’s prolific too — even outside those directors. But when called in to make the music for Ed Wood, a blend of movie music for the film Burton was making, and homage to 1950s B-movie sci-fi/horror scores that existed in the era of the filmmaker Edward D. Wood Jr, Shore seemed to somehow make both A Very Danny Elfman Sounding Score, and of course A Beautiful Howard Shore Score.

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Afro-Cuban rhythms, and lounge/tiki-bar exotica is a charming through-thread, but there’s also the Lydia Kavina-driven theremin passages (for sci fi and horror, but also with a whimsical comedic nature at times).

There’s also gorgeous ‘straight’ score:

As with the film, the score has to walk a line around being “bad” and being sincere; being sincere at being bad even.

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And Shore is never less than masterful, even blending in dialogue in a manner consistent with the “TV feature” intros of the time.

Having recently rewatched Plan 9 From Outer Space (an absolute slog!) I am very keen to rewatch Ed Wood, a film I adored when I first saw it, and have rewatched a couple of times over the years.

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It’s a stacked cast, and a great biopic, but the music really is a key feature. With its evocations of other composer (Tchaikovsky, Salter) and its gorgeous themes:

I never think of Howard Shore as one of my favourite composers, but of course he is. His work here might almost be enough. But then his discography is stacked with other amazing efforts. He’s so able to blend in with the director and offer exactly what is needed.

In a catalogue or riches, Ed Wood is one of his pure delights.

But such is the relationship between Elfman and Burton — and it’s back on track now — I could imagine people hearing Ed Wood’s music and simply thinking that Danny had done it again. Which is a back-handed compliment maybe, but proof that Shore so fully understood this assignment.

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It sounds like a Margaret Mahy book I read at school — Caterpillar & The Weed Eaters. But no, it was my weekend movie viewing at the cinema.

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I cannot remember a time I went back to back to Kiwi movies at the cinema, as new releases, and laughed and laughed (and nearly cried).

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The Weed Eaters is a low budget comedy-horror, think Black Sheep, early Peter Jackson, and even a bit of Scarfies.

But it’s also its own thing entirely. Which is why it works. The deadpan Kiwi humour and flat delivery is gorgeously funny, but what impressed me the most, watching it in a fairly full cinema, where people were calling out at the screen in mild panic at some of the scenarios and hooting and hollering with laughter, was just how much can be achieved with vision — The Weed Eaters is a simple premise, and a small cast, and a tiny budget, and yet it never looks like it hasn’t earned its place up there on the big screen.

The cast is the crew — director, writers, director of photography — every actor collaborating to make the film, not just in terms of their performances and story concept, but also technical abilities. Weed Eaters is not the first to do that, nor claiming to be, but it was super impressive. And just such fun. Also some banging-good soundtrack offerings. In particular a call back to James Milne’s group, The Reduction Agents, which was a really nice shot. Perfectly used too.

Very funny film. Go and see it. Always wonderful to see rural New Zealand scenery up on the big screen — looking majestic, beautiful backdrop barely able to hide something sinister.

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Caterpillar is the debut feature by Chelsea Preston Crayford. She’s been a prolific, versatile actor, here she is writer and director, telling a tale taken from her own experience where three generations of women under one roof all have secrets and tensions in their life.

The extraordinary Lisa Harrow plays Huia, a grandmother falling into dementia and afraid to share this with anyone, so instead she falls deep into her obsession with monarch butterflies. She lives in a classic Wellington house up some steps in the early 2000s, with her filmmaker daughter Maxine (played by Marta Dusseldorp) and her teen granddaughter Cassie (Anais Shana).

Maxine is focussed on making a movie, Cassie has dreams of acting, and obviously wants to impress her mother — as a way of connecting too. We follow all three through this slice of life which has gentle humour but is a deep, compelling drama.

Several years ago I interviewed Lisa Harrow when I was running a regular podcast:

Her life and career is filled with incredible stories — she is one of our greatest actors, but most of her work (and life) has happened offshore, so this is a particularly poignant way to be introduced to her work, or to see her in a Kiwi context after some time.

The film, again, uses music brilliantly. Chelsea’s dad, the legendary jazz composer and musician Jonathan Crayford, provides a tender score. But there’s also just a run of terrible/terrific scene-setting Kiwi songs that I absolutely hated at the time doing very good work to establish era and mood (Stella, Zed, Scribe).

All three actors are wonderful, all three characters are very real, and it was a very good Mother’s Day movie for our family to attend. Near the beautiful ending, my son, obsessed with other people’s reactions to movies, was agog at the fact that I was tearing up.

Almost impossible not to, I felt. And this is no caveat, nor justification, but on the rare occasion when I’m moved to tears at a film, it isn’t merely for the story and emotion of the acting, it is my mind racing to compute the full package of the film — the intention, integrity, and execution of the emotional heft of the story by all cast and crew.

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In New Zealand cinema, nothing comes easy. Eight years to get Caterpillar out of its cocoon. Just a few grand available for The Weed Eaters to make its move.

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I was sure glad to pay the ticket price to help keep the respective cinemas of The Roxy and The Lighthouse alive in some small way, and to offer a hope to do the same with New Zealand Cinema as a genre; as (cinema-) going concern…

It’s hard these days to feel like there’s any real truth in the old adage of Kiwis punching above their weight and going above and beyond. Our terrible government makes a mockery of such thought every day. But go to the cinema and you’ll see it. More than that, you will absolutely feel it hurtling through your bones with the full force of absolute passion and conviction. The Weed Eaters and Caterpillar give heart and hope and humour and humanity to this notion.

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In fact, 60% will do —
You will be better than most

and so that’s more than enough.
A lot of people out there

barely even finishing what they

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