step up to the mike...

"Impartiality is not neutrality. It is partiality for justice." - Stanisław Jerzy Lec (1909-1966)

 

Warren Zevon

I thought that theidea of a release of Warren Zevon "love songs" was a crass commercial gimmick.

It's not exactly what you think about when you think of him!

"Reconsider Me" turns out to be a heart breakingly beautiful album.

Putting those tracks in that order is exquisetly beautiful!

posted by: Oborski at 18:24 | link | comments |

Chemo Chronicles...

Finished "chemo" ten days ago. Still tired but mercy, mercy, mercy that which has been "loose" since last September is now solid. Oh Glory!

posted by: Oborski at 18:14 | link | comments |

Rockworld review...

People fear things they can't understand. Anything puzzling or out of the norm poses big problems for certain people, and the good old boy establishment that now rules Nashville with a pair of iron boots represent the epitome of "certain people". Hank Williams III represents just that sort of problem-causing enigma. With a family tree like that of Hank Williams III, expectations are bound to be in place for the kind of music one would be expected to make. Hank III has spent his young career spitting in the face of those expectations while at the same time upholding the legacy of his grandfather and the country outlaws that came after him. On his new 2 CD set, Straight to Hell, Hank III makes his stand firmly on the side of Waylon Jennings and David Allen Coe and makes it known that the pop-with-a-fiddle churned out by Nashville is not his country music and shouldn't be anyone's. With a sound that owes as much to rock and punk as traditional country, Hank III truly arrives with this album, having harnessed his own unique musical vision and freed himself of the reins holding him back on previous efforts.

posted by: Oborski at 18:10 | link | comments |

Soundsxp Review...

“We’re the last people to shoot a DVD” says Robert Forster to the crowd in the Tivoli, Brisbane on 6 August last year. Apart from a video collection of six singles released in 1990, the Go Betweens aren’t much of a multi-media band. Though they were into “art and pop”, as Robert recalls on the DVD, it wasn’t in a Franz Ferdinand sense; Grant McLennan is closer to the truth when he remarks “we were unmarketable”. That disconnect from the prevailing pop trends, the fact that they were unfashionable, uncompromising and wilful, is what made us love them all the more (their fanbase might have been small but the band was massively influential: I give you Belle and Sebastian, Grandaddy and 95% of the Swedish indie sound as proof).

The Go Betweens separated in 1989 and Robert and Grant reformed the band in 2000. In the wake of the critical success of their ninth album ‘Oceans Apart’, they recorded their first gig for DVD. I don’t usually enjoy concert videos but there’s something unusual about this DVD; maybe it’s the youthful crowd of Queenslanders at a home town gig; perhaps it’s the difference between the ungainly, formal and slightly camp presence of the tree-tall Forster and the softness of the small McLennan that represents the tension that there’s always been in the Go Betweens between intellectualism and romanticism. Or maybe it’s just the songs; plenty from the post-reformation albums, of course but a few of the classic 80s sound: when you hear ‘Spring Rain’ and ‘Streets of Your Town’, you’ll wonder how they eluded chart success (though Amanda Brown and Robert Vickers apart, they were never exactly an MTV-glamorous band). Watching them live, you suddenly grasp the significance of Forster’s eyebrows in conveying emotion in a song; no-one since Roger Moore has had so much power in one hairy caterpillar of a brow.

posted by: Oborski at 18:09 | link | comments |

Telegraph Editor on Cameron's new "Tory principles"...

Simon Heffer, associate editor of the Daily Telegraph is quoted in The Independent as saying...

I do not think it is significant enough to have a view on, I think it's complete drivel. I am amazed that he hasn't said: "We wish people were more kind to domestic pets, and would like the sun to shine every day."

The only thing that was missing in his reforms was: "We want people to love their mums."

I do not find these reforms worthy of my intellectual engagement, he needs to wake up and smell the coffee - or the lapsang souchong.

posted by: Oborski at 08:37 | link | comments |