Roger Kerr to Deborah Coddington

... Would you like to *hrmpph* come up to my *hrmpph* apartment and *hrmpph*... look at my *hrmpph* bond certificates? *hrmpph* *fst fst fst fst Tweet* I can assure you my uhh *hrmpph* intentions are honourable *fst fst*... I've got a big *fst* round *hrmpph* table, don't you know...

The Untold Stories

Erotic Novella I Haven't Found Time To Write, Yet #2: Me, John Banks and the Giant Sausage Roll from Patel's Superette.

Also, must get around to finishing off #1 How I Lost My Anal Virginity To Pastor Brian Tamaki... I want to work his hair oil into it, somehow.

A funny thing happened on the way here tonight...

Product / Quality Manager
Hutchinsons (NZ) Ltd.
Level 4, ASB Building
136 Broadway
Newmarket
Auckland

Dear Sir / Madam:

RE: Trident Chopped Italian tomatoes with chilli and garlic 400g

Please find enclosed the debris I discovered [it shall henceforth be known as 'It'] in a can of the abovementioned product. I had purchased the can [from Patels Superette in Aro Street, Te Aro, Wellington] in order to cook a lovely romantic Italian meal for the lady I am wooing. Somehow It managed to remain undetected throughout the entire process of cooking the meal. However, you can imagine the hilarity [mine, short-lived] that ensued when, upon serving the meal, It appeared on the top of the food on my date's plate, looking so much like some sort of large weird green spider. She, predictably, shrieked and made for the hinterland [well, the bathroom] from which it took some coaxing to entice her. Sadly and needless to say, dinner was a write-off.

I have an assurance from the lady in question that, after an appropriate period, she will consider returning for another meal. Unfortunately she has suggested that we see other people in the interim. Apparently it's for the best.

I hope this story of woe brings you some light-relief.

Best wishes,

Stephen Clover.

...

Postscript: If you needed to know, It was a not-insubstantial fleshy eight-fingered tomato stalk. My date's reaction was not unreasonable, either; according to the London Mail a green-grocer recently found a black fat-tailed scorpion in a shipment of bananas and mangoes from Pakistan. The man mistook the creature, said to be the third most deadly animal on Earth, to be a tomato stalk before realising what it was. He proceeded promptly to terrorise several passing children with it, before losing it on the No. 7 bus.

If anyone can help with comprehension as to why a pet-store is selling black fat-tailed scorpions on-line and providing breeding, propogation and care instructions for them, please do not hesitate to contact me.

...

UPDATE: reply here.

The Datsuns came to town...

While I'm on a The Datsuns tip, they played here in Wellington last Friday night at Vic Student Union. Here's the review I wrote of the show for The Package:

The Datsuns are touring their new album and in the two years since I seen 'em they've gotten even greater. The new material is more mature - more melodic, more dynamically complex. The old songs sound even somewhat souped-up. Their honed-lean stage show is utterly convincing - in the hour-or-so set they don't miss one carefully orchestrated cue or one visual rock-cliche or one chance at an audience-participation gag. They rocked and we bounced; drunkards violently flailed and wind-milled and teenagers were violently ill and the unruly were violently ejected, dragged off by their lug-'oles by packs of snarling security-thugs.

But what to write about The Datsuns when so much type s'been expended already? Here's what... The Datsuns don't just play rock'n'roll - they ARE rock'n'roll. They's white and they's skinny and they got hair in abundance. They live their rock'n'shuffle and their heroic anthems with all them insanely-inane sing-along catchy choruses. They smack us down with their hard-rock-boogie and we hit the floor and snap back for more and more. Us? We're drunk little girls and air-guitar-wielding bogans and shaggy torn-shirted under-grads gasping for air and water and Dolf plays us like the ho's we are for his sweaty bug-eyed lovin'.

The show climaxes in a chaotic epic finale involving simultaneous crowd-surfing by both guitarists and the still-singing Dolf while, weirdly, a Dolf-doppelganger appears and takes over on bass. That was worth stickin' aroun' for. The Datsuns're the best fucken rock'n'roll band since Bon Scott died. End of story.

[Apologies to The Accelerants and the other support act [erm... who where they again?]; I missed both of 'em. How rock'n'roll is THAT?]

This is one of two reviews I wrote of the show; inspired to a not-insignificant degree by the enthusings of Matt Hunt, who attended the gig with me, I decided to run with the plaudits first. I'll post the other one soon.

Ongoing memoirs of a crate-digger

Or, how the Datsuns saved my life in Hamilton

It's a cool early-November Saturday afternoon, 2001... I'm in the main street of Hamilton waiting to meet a guy called "Spud". I play bass in a Wgtn avant-pop band and we're touring with a psych-post-rock duo from Dunedin. Tonight's the last gig and our manager has organised a live interview on "Hamilton's Rock Alternative!" The Generator FM.

Spud lets us into the studio. It's plain he doesn't want anything to do with this. He's never heard of either band and can't be fucked talking to a bunch of pussies from the city. Partway through I start to wonder if we're even going to get out alive.

The interview is appalling but we battle through and Spud finally winds up, asking us if we like any bands from Hamilton. The guys are looking at each other blankly... you can sense panic as they desperately rack their minds for a name, any name, anything with which to appease Spud and his hordes of slobbering Cro-Magnon listeners... meanwhile I'm wanting to claim "Hitler's Kock" [Bryce Galloway's old art-punk outfit] but play it safe... "I quite like The Datsuns". Spud regards me sceptically. "Cool... what's your favourite song, dude?" [read: "Bullshit, dude"] Me: "Uh, Fink for the Man, on the b-side of the Transistor seven-inch. It's the fucken best rock'n'roll I've heard since Bon Scott died".

It was like just then the sun rose in Spud's eyes. He's a changed man. As he wraps up the interview, he hypes our gig twice, and plays something from our CD which he manages to segue nicely into a track from the latest Korn album.

Of course it was all for nothing; no slobbering Cro-Mags came to the gig and no shouted requests for Slipknot songs were received. [Actually, that makes it sound like it was all worth-while!] It was a really good gig though. You can see pictures by reknowned H-town rock-groupie Petra Jane here.

I am not an animal! I am a human being! I...am...a man!

I've made it my business lately to see The Elephant Men, a new-ish Wgtn rock trio, as often as possible. Predictably my inner-sloth caused me to miss them at their biggest gig, supporting Trinity Roots at the Town Hall last month, but let's not dwell on that...

Of course the Elephant Man was John Merrick, a 19th-century Englishman afflicted with a disfiguring congenital disease - Proteous Syndrome - who with the help of a certain kindly Dr. Frederick Treves, was able to regain the dignity he lost after years spent as a catastrophically deformed side-show freak. David Lynch, that notorious arbiter of the aberrant, made a movie called The Elephant Man in 1980, starring the very great John Hurt as the E-man. The similarly great David Bowie starred as the Elephant Man in the 1980 stage production of the story. A silent movie called Her Elephant Man was also made in 1920 by Scott R. Dunlap but this is actually a love story about a man who looks after elephants. A documentary called Curse of the Elephant Man was made in 2003 in which 'a distinguished cast of experts from three continents try to solve the mystery of his disease and answer two intriguing questions: what was the awful affliction, and could it happen again?'

The band features Chris Palmer on guitar, Craig Taylor on bass and Rick Cranson on drums. None of them are particularly disfigured but it's encouraging to see these poor creatures able to take a much more active part in today's progressive society. All have been seen in other outfits too, demonstrating again the truly eclectic nature of so many of these local talents.

This is a short piece on the band that I wrote for Secret City - a monthly broadsheet put out jointly by Enjoy Public Art Gallery and Happy...

The Elephant Men are no ordinary band. They out there in the hinterland... lurking roun' the fringes of rock and jazz; and they def'nittly gone a bit feral. They're hairy but they're top musicians; they can play the shit outta their axes and they got no shortage of chops. But don't be afraid - this ain't no lame fusion thing. These boys play with all the fire of post-rock's extreme-noise-terror, the angular sonic ebullience of the greatest New-York-1978 No Wave outfits, and the funk of a broke-ass steamroller... and to this melange add the vocals of Chris Palmer, who sings like a fallen angel half the way through a bottle of tequila. But crucially, they's doin' it with the improvising grace of three guys talkin' their very peculiar language. If you gonna start me namecheckin' then I gotta say equal parts Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica and Jeff Buckley or sommat or even Tim Buckley and then some freakish No Wave ensemble like DNA or the first Golden Palominos LP. For my pick this is easily the best live band around at the moment and you don't want to pass up a chance to see them hollerin' live... I did and I'm still cursing my lazy ass about it.

Postscript: The Fingers, another band with Chris Palmer on guitar and ostensibly featuring journeyman percussionist Chris O'Conner on drums, performed on Thursday night at Happy as part of the line-up of Meatwaters'04. Kieren Monaghan filled in on the night for the stranded-in-Christchurch O'Connor. I'm not sure if the band-name is a reference to any films about infamous side-show-freak attractions or not - possibly the Beast with Five Fingers ["It walks like a spider... it stalks like a cobra!"]? They were frenetic, entirely improvised and more abrasive than The Elephant Men and really, really, good as well...