Seven Last Words from the Cross

Scottish composer James McMillan's work Seven Last Words from the Cross is a stunning piece of contemporary music. It's a droning, shuddering atonal drift which is performed with strings and voices, but somehow seems to invoke the timbres of electronics and humming machinery as well.. perhaps what you'd get if you crossed Surface of the Earth with Mahler's 8th, or something.

My attempts to buy a recording of this work have always been stymied; I still have the cassette I recorded a copy of it off the radio about 10 years ago, and I listen to it often.

A rare occasion to see and hear the work performed is upon us; the Tudor Consort is collaborating with Gate Seven Orchestra and presenting a performance of Seven Last Words from the Cross on Saturday August 21 at Sacred Heart Catholic Cathedral. You can book at Ticketek.

Extra 44 Quid Exhibition

The Extra 44 Quid collective [myself and three friends] are staging our inaugral exhibition this week. It kicks off on Tuesday night and runs for 10 days or so.



Here is some more information on the show:
Extra 44 Quid #1 is a group-exhibition featuring the work of four artists; three from Wellington and the fourth straight outta Germany. The show features an interesting range of work - drawing, painting, and 3D work - sculpture and assemblage - from the four very different artists in the E44Q collective:
Terence Turner (Tainui) is a celebrated bone-carver who is currently helping to make King Kong for Peter Jackson. He is also reknowned for his paintings of blowflies and intestines. He will be exhibiting paintings and souped-up re-wired and generally deranged toaster ovens.
Kathy Bartlett (Wairarapa) has an ever-growing number of followers, enthralled with her stunning and incisive portraits. She recently exhibited a series of portraits of her friends as saints, portrayed in the Orthodox Christian-style replete with gold leaf and halos. In an inspired move these were shown in an auxiliary building at Wellington Cathedral. Kathy will be showing her new paintings.
Sandra Schmidt (Saxony) hails from Dresden in the Communist heartland of the GDR, but she evaded the Stasi, moved to Wellington to teach art. She is known for her assemblages of found objects, and repetition drawing and painting, the execution of which verges on obsessive-compulsive. Sandra will be showing a number of large objects constructed from many, many small objects.
Stephen Clover (Tawa) leads a double life; by day he is a quiet, shy lad working as a tea-boy for a Government department . At night his shadow looms large over the sleepy vale of Aro as he works long into the night, with only his pet chainsaw for company. Stephen will be showing wooden sculptures and ink drawings.
The show runs from the 3rd to the 11th of August, at Thistle Hall (upper Cuba Street) and is open from 12pm to 6pm daily. The opening celebration is on the 3rd of August at 6pm. Please come... it'll be fun. We've got a keg of beer and some DJs... what more couldya want, huh?

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.........

The week from hell (work) and the rapidly approaching deadlines of three exhibitions have meant no bloggin'-a-me for a wee while.  Sorry.

Can I be the first to recommend a good night's sleep?  You really do feel better after a solid 10+1/2 hours or so.  I was thinking about the various natural methods available for assisting one to get off to Nod of an evening:

> Read a few pages of a book.  Not just any book though, it'll need to be something good, so as to hold your attention.  I particularly recommend the hallucinatory prose of William Burroughs and Paul Bowles, or the complexities of Lawrence Durrell, rampantly riddled as he is with oft-arcane poly-syllabillic adjectives.

> Try talking to your ex-girlfriend for about 1/2-an-hour before you go to bed. As well as putting you to sleep, a possible therapeutic spin-off is you might get over her way fast.

> Music.  Music is good.  Music works, man [or at least, it does for me].  You're going to need something without too much explicit beat.  That means no Gatecrasher techno, Steve.  Try the works of the heroes of the 60's avant-garde minimalist school - Terry Riley, Richard Maxfield, Tony Conrad, Henry Flynt, Harold Budd, La Monte Young et. al. Otherwise more contemporary practitioners - Surface of the Earth, John Clyde-Evans, K-Group, Birchville Cat Motel, RST, Eso Steel, Signer...

> Popular wisdom holds that onanism, the science of self-pleasure, is a sure-fire method of unducing sleepiness.  I couldn't possibly comment, as they say.

Counting sheep is silly. I've never managed to achieve anything other than to end up with a pen full of sheep in my head, and worry about what I was supposed to do with them.

If you can't get a full night's sleep without help [I know I can't always] there are a number of options, of the chemical variety, to assist: 

> See your GP and blag your way to a prescription for sleeping pills.  There are a couple of good-ish ones around which aren't habit-forming and don't interrupt your R.E.M. cycle either, which means everyone wins [translation: they don't just knock you out leaving you groggy when you arise in the morn].  I'm thinking particularly of Imovene [a.k.a. Zopiclone], which I heard first about when reading Douglas Coupland's Shampoo Planet. 
 
> Tranquilizer and anti-anxiety medications - specifically, the benzodiazepine family - will help you achieve a good night's rest.  Which of these you can get your hands on legitimately may depend on how crazy you are. These are generally dangerously addictive.

> An alternative to the benzo's could be to raid your grandmother's medicine cabinet for halcyon and valium.  Take as directed, and then some.
 
> Particular products derived from Cannibus sativa can help remarkably well with sleeping - perhaps a couple of spots of some nice pungent oil - although experiences vary - as do side-effects, which can be long-lasting, and probably addictive too.

Getting really drunk isn't recommended. I appreciate that 1/2 a bottle of vodka will knock you out something wonderful, but you won't feel better for it in the morning.

Finally, one other suggestion for getting enough sleep: quit your bastard of a job. That way you can sleep to 1pm every day, ensuring plenty of rest each and every night.

In the presence of greatness: An evening with Dr. The Sneak

Last evening I was lucky enough to be present as world-renowned research scientist Dr. The Sneak conducted some ground-breaking experiments. The purpose of the research was apparently to find the effective surface tension of a dead mouse. I had the formula explained to me by Dr. The Sneak thusly:

nBite x nToss all over t

where nBite is number of times I bite the mouse, nToss is number of times I throw the mouse in the air, and t is the length of time I spend pretending the mouse is still alive.

I wasn't furnished with the raw data, but apparently when all calculated out the result of the formula turned out to be just slightly more than 1.

When I suggested to the good doctor that this number was somewhat short of being anywhere near something resembling a useful figure, Dr. The Sneak spoke several quick words in a language I could not understand, concealed the research subject somewhere in the laboratory and rather haughtily left the room via a small trapdoor which I had not previously noticed.

Five minutes later, however, it seemed I was forgiven because Dr. The Sneak returned and I was treated to a short demonstration on testing the effective surface tension of one of my dirty socks.

Long time between drinks

Today being the the 12th of July, it's been almost two months since I did anything interesting. Well that's not quite true - a couple of weeks ago I went to a pretty good party on a wet Saturday afternoon. Apart from that, though, and a weekend in the Bay of Plenty, nada. Thoughts of boredom lead me very quickly to thoughts of drinking and at the moment I'm drinking a lot of what is known in the films of Europe as schnaps.

Don't jump to conclusions; we're not talking about some sort of nasty sickly peach flavoured muck here, but rather pure grain alcohol. It's the stuff that looks like vodka. You know, some guy'll walk into a bar and order "schnaps" and it says "schnaps" in the sub-title and the barman drops a small glass onto the counter and reaches for some nondescript bottle filled with a clear liquid and sloshes a measure into the glass and the guy slams it back slams down the glass and says "danke" or "grazie" or "obrigado" or whatever and wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand...

Nelson's South Pacific Distillery make a line of spirits called Roaring Forties and amongst them is their Doppelkorn Schnaps [38% a.b.v.]. It's a very pure-tasting drink and best drunk cold and straight. Unfortunately I haven't yet found a distributor so I'm nursing the last of the bottle I picked up when I was last in Nelson. No you can't have any. It's mine, preciouss...

Even more pure [possibly] is Frog-shine. Y'see about the only other interesting thing to have happened to me lately is to meet a guy, a friend-of-a-friend from Wanganui, who distills his own alcolhol. It comes in two variants - 30% a.b.v. and 55% a.b.v. - and it's very similar in quality to the Doppelkorn.

Both drinks are good drinkin' and will get you well fucked-up [see image, above] but the beautiful, wonderful thing about them is being made in a pure, traditional manner - Roaring Forties "100% cane or grain, no preservatives, chemicals or artificial flavours added" and Frog-shine "pure as fuck, man" - there's no nasty chemical aftertaste, and better still, there's no morning after. No hangover. You can drink away the evening on the stuff - I have - and get up in the morning with just a slighty funny taste in your mouth [and how unusual is that?]. You can even pick up again at 9 a.m. or whenever you get up - again, I have - and carry on with no adverse effects.

They're also real cheap.

Nostalgia

Monday July 5 2:15 pm: I am overcome with a very strong urge to shop for second-hand records in New Plymouth.

Am I Hard Enough?

If you're a Rolling Stones fan, I have a CD you should really hear. It's an album of Stones covers I picked up at The Warehouse the other day [for $9.99]. It's called Songs of Rolling Stones All Blues'd Up!. Here's the track list:

Luther Allison - You Can't Always Get What You Want
Johnny Copeland - Tumbling Dice
Junior Wells - (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
Otis Clay - Wild Horses
Taj Mahal - Honky Tonk Women
Alvin "Youngblood" Hart - Sway
Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown - Ventilator Blues
The Holmes Brothers - Beast Of Burden
Lucky Peterson - Under My Thumb
Bobby Womack - It's All Over Now
Larry McCray - Midnight Rambler
Joe Louis Walker - Heart Of Stone
Alvin "Youngblood" Hart - Moonlight Mile

Most of the versions are great covers [and hours can be spent discussing the merits of a good cover version]; some are even superb. In addition, rather agreeably, the album should really be called Songs of Rolling Stones All Blues'd, Soul'd and Gospel'd Up! because many of the artists totally nail the innate gospel-soul component of the Stones' [approximately] 70's material and bang out fully-powered screamin'-soul versions which generally kick yo' ass.

Other aspects which add greatly to the appeal of this CD:
1] No appearance of Robert Cray, in any form, anywhere
2] For that matter, no Albert King, B.B. King, or Johnny and/or Edgar Winters
3] Much muscular bass, Hammond organ, squelching guitar and ace drumming... and all nicely produced and recorded - no shitty cheap Warehouse CD styles here
4] Charmingly odd graphics on cover [see image]

In the same series there is also a set of Led Zeppelin covers which I picked up - it didn't make such a strong impression initially - and one of Eric Clapton material, which I sniffily passed on; also available, apparently, are discs of Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan tunes.

Smoke and Mirrors: Eternal Sunshine of the Lame Plot

[WARNING: Spoilers]

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the latest film offering from the team that brought you Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, et al. It features Jim Carey, apparently hired for his ability to make cute faces, Kirsten Dunst, apparently hired for her proclivity to jump on beds in her skimpies, and Kate Winslet, possibly hired for her ability to behave badly and speak in a passable Sri Lankan accent while acting in film set in New Jersey. The film sucks, too.

Generally the pathology of relationships are interesting to me; here it is interesting enough - when you're trying for a second time, when you've already had a crack at it and failed, how you deal with knowing all the things that you're going to start feeling at that point when "the honeymoon's over" and the cracks start appearing - the true test of a relationship, right? But I always have the same goddamn problems with the films that these people make. The idea on paper for this one is fine - explore ideas of destiny, predetermination vs. freewill; does history, given every opportunity, really repeat itself? Plus they get to deploy the narrative device of the general public being able to book an appointment for a selective memory erasing procedure about as casually as having a couple of teeth filled.

As per usual this film doesn't go deep enough - ok, it seems Mary [Dunst] can't help throwing herself at Howard again - it's written in the stars or her DNA or something. The assumption is she could keep undergoing the procedure and still find him irresistable - this is one angle on the issue. Joel [Carey] and Clementine [Winslet] both undergo the procedure - on their memories of each other - but meet and hook up again; only a twist lets them discover how much they hated each other the first time around.

So effectively they wind up where any other couple do who are giving it a second try (or third or fourth or whatever) except this time they're missing the links between where they are now (and where they were originally) and where they ended up. This is the other angle - but all of the interesting things about their situation are voided by the storyline. And when you really think about it, there's no resolution to this narrative trap. They could either have been like everyone else and know how it went wrong and have a chance at avoiding it a second time; or be like Mary, have no idea about anything, and start from a clean slate. Either way, there's no film.

No film, just smoke and mirrors to distract you from the fact. Eternal Sunshine... is cinematically interesting, mostly, if quite cliched now - I'm a bit over this shit, I suspect. And because I can't accept their story resolutions I can't suspend my disbelief and as always, I finish the film not really caring about the participants at all. It may be technically sound, but ultimately unmoving and a bit dull.

Unconsequential. And that's the most brutal assessment I can make of a film. So I'm left wondering... why do people really like these films? 'Cos they do - a lot.

Pumice's Raft

The other night at Pumice's Raft CD release gig, while he was setting up for to play, I was talking to someone - an initiate if you will - who asked me what it was that Pumice 'did'. I had to think about it for a moment and then came up with drifting, shuddering gospel-folk-music.

Upon reflection, that kinda nails it perfectly. It's very interactive; you have to engage with it and when you do, you'll have a hard job to disengage again. Pumice hangs out a big analogue carrot which you follow, transfixed, teetering on the edge of something that you have a vague feeling might be going to be really important.. you're transcending.. pay attention; Pumice is goan take your head a-rambling over those hills over there in his little wheezing broke-ass tape-loop and concertina-powered flying machine.

Raft has all the essence of Pumice live, distilled through an 8-track recorder onto a CD-sized listening session. Pumice has worked very hard and very carefully for quite a long time to make some good Pumice here; the good news is he's pulled it off. For the sake of reference: it recalls the absolute glorious best of Alistair Galbraith's psych-dirge but tempered with the kind of occasional instrumental dexterity that you might find on a Sun City Girls record. I'm going to go out on a limb by saying that Raft is easily the best thing I've heard by Pumice; it is highly recommended.

[image of Pumice courtesy of Arc Cafe's possibly-slightly-out-of-date Pumice page]

The Audio Foundation

According to its homepage The Audio Foundation is

a networking and resource database hub for the representation, facilitation, support and promotion of innovative and experimental artistic development in NZ Audio Culture.

It's a pretty neat site, put together by Zoe Drayton, and it has a gig guide outlining up-and-coming events such as Alt.Music.3 at Artspace.

An artist index is also included on the site; it's fairly sparse now as the site is new, but this promises to develop into a valuable resource.

On a related note, two interesting gigs in the next few days here in Wellington:

Friday night/City Gallery/9pm to 12pm/free: Dino Karlis [HDU], Bevan Smith [Signer] and Andrew Thomas.

we'll be playing some live instruments and making our laptops make some noises too.

Saturday night/Adam Art Gallery/7pm/$10,$8 unwaged,$5 Friends and Members: New Voices A collaboration between Rosy Parlane, Richard Francis and Campbell Kneale.

This event brings together three of New Zealand's most exciting and dynamic sound artists. All three have been actively creating phonic works for the past decade and have participated in sound festivals and exhibitions throughout Europe, the U.S.A and Australia. This event represents an ideal opportunity to witness collaboration between three of the most innovative sound artists currently practicing in New Zealand.

Fuck the KKK

Finally, David Clark comes up with the goods. The KKK don't own Marlboro. Or, I suppose, Philip Morris, who does. It's an urban legend. Thanks, Dave. You win a link to your band Dragstrip's site.

           
Boston punks The Unseen have a good song called Fuck the KKK. They really do have quite a line in uncomplicated sentiment and entertaining song titles; another track, which I haven't heard, is called Piss Off, You Worthless Lying Fuck. And maverick American painter Philip Guston painted a number of beautifully satirical works which portrayed hooded figures of the KKK in mundane situations; my favourite is probably City Limits. [Note: this site seems to have disappeared, so I've uploaded a nice image of City Limits while it is offline]

One late-night drunken conversation later and I discover that my love for Philip Guston is shared by several of New Zealand's young contemporary painters. Good. On Saturday Night I was utterly dismayed by the disappointing painting in the Telecom Prospect 2004 exhibition; perhaps sometime soon there'll be some painters receiving this kind of amazing exposure and putting work on the wall that enthralls and exhilarates like I know the good stuff can.

Adding to my grumpiness was the general atmosphere at the extremely-crowded opening ceremony, analogous to my imaginings of the aftermath of a sarin nerve-gas in the Tokyo underground, in slow motion; except that this was more like an attack of dumb-ass wide-eyed art-wank schlop at the Naenae railway station subway just after school gets out on a Thursday afternoon.

POSTSCRIPT: KKK tabs and Body Count

Apparently there's proof in the Marlboro coat-of-arms [see right] and motto "Vene Vidi Vici" [Julius Caeser: I came, I saw, I conquered, in case you didnae ken]. I still don't reckon it. Whatever, the quest for answers continues.

Body Count [the bizarro 90's hard-core rap-metal band with Ice-T on the mic, yeah, that guy from those TV cop shows such as Special Victims Unit] sang a song about the Ku Klux Klan on their eponymous album from 1992. It's called KKK Bitch [it's specifically about the daughter of a KKK Grand Wizard]. I'm not going to reproduce the lyrics in this forum but you can find 'em here.

NP: Mission of Burma Vs.

Bypass 's got me on the run

I'm being evicted by Transit New Zealand. I have to be out of my studio at the end of July. I'm trying to stay outwardly calm whilst quietly panicking that my creative-haven of nigh-on 3 years - hell, my neighbourhood, my spiritual home of nigh-on 10 - is soon to be bulldozed by road-builders, and I'll have to find somewhere new.

In addition, this week is the last week of phase-one of the life of my local, Lie-Low; on Saturday night they're closing and moving on. The building they're in will presently be dust. Frankly I'm petrified at the thought that rather than having to perambulate 100 metres home after downing two Long-Island Iced Teas and a bunch of Headless Mexicans, I'll have to make my way across town.

I'm scared and more than a little angry. Speechless. I expect to have plenty more to say shortly, but for a start I thought I'd republish an article I printed in Looking for a fish-drying plant #1 in 2002, under the title Let's Build a Road.

There's already been a lot said about the proposed "bypass" across Te Aro in central Wellington. (The quotation marks used to indicate the propagandist linguistics of describing the project as a bypass. It's a motorway extension for fack's sake). There's been a lot of noise in favour of the road and a lot against it. All concerned have heard and presented the arguments over and over again and I'm not concerned with regurgitating them here.

So is Te Aro worth saving? "Hell yes", the people say... or do they? Actually a lot of them are probably saying "Hell no - that's where all the artists and junkies and the hookers and students and the bands and hippies live" (a veritable catalogue of the dregs of our polite society) ... "bulldose the lot and we'll be rid of those freaks and leeches once and f'rall and... 'One day a real rain's gonna fall, gonna wash these scum off the street'"...

We've got a real problem with perception. I know someone who's drawn a mental line along Ghuznee Street (the "Buller-Taranaki line") and will not venture any further south on foot, for fear of... something. I know people who still hold on to the opinion they formed of the area in the early 1970's, when Holloway Road was the "red-light district" and full of sailors and maniacs and commie spies; they sniffily avoid the area at all cost. To these people, and to the others out there who think like them, where's the problem? We'll just sweep up all this mess and filth and put up some nice townhouses and apartment complexes instead. And, presumably, fill them with nice respectable people who'll work hard and wear nice clothes.

Predictably, I think Te Aro is worth saving. I live there, as do many of my friends. Bands live and practice there; many local artists, including myself, have studio space there. After dark we go there to drink. For a lot of people who want to, or need to, be located in the hub of the local culture it's the only place they can afford to live. For others it's simply the only place to be. But most of these locations will just disappear, these homes will be destroyed, and those that aren't will have a multi-lane arterial road laid right outside their bedroom windows.

Cyclic arguments ensue when someone points out that it is only due to the proposed motorway extension that the area has been able to exist and thrive in the manner that it has. Transit holds the leases, sets the low rentals, and patiently waits to fire up the heavy machinery.

And so as we meander inexorably on towards a decision of some sort... the only thing I've left to say to those who would uproot a community and replace it with a bandwidth-inducing pipeline ostensibly in order to enable suburbanites to criss-cross us marginally more quickly is.........
f o o l s! d a m n f o o l s! Have you been to Auckland lately?

[Tips for beating and defeating road-mongers? Email me]

~The Stumps~ are Happy!

~The Stumps~ are playing live at Happy on Friday night, May 28.

We're supporting Pumice on his nationwide tour to launch his new CD, Raft. Also appearing will be The Mysterious Tapeman, New Zealand, and Mongol Horde.

~The Stumps~ feature James Kirk on drums and ionosphere-guitar, Antony Milton on guitar and ethnomusicological field-recordings, and moi, Stephen, on bass and vintage synthesizer.

Here's what some people said about ~The Stumps~ earlier:

1] like a miniture Fushitsusha. Kinda pocket-sized, might and swagger. -- Campbell Kneale, Birchville Cat Motel and Celebrate/Psi/Phenomenon czar.
2] what great gtr-ing, yes. i saw them live the other night & they were way more tense & noise rock than on their cd, i can hardly believe this is the same band, on the cd they are so relaxed & groovy. -- clayton no-one, CJA/Armpit and Root Don Lonie rajah.
3] shambling blissed out huge spacey rock swell and sprawl - deep space exploration . -- Antony Milton, PseudoArcana potentate.
4] three new zealanders indulge in some echoing/dark rock improv. reminds me of the more krautrock inspired Savage Republic, & there's a bit of moody drone-y stuff, a Tago Mago type-thing, space synths & more abstracts swirls. great roadtrip music. -- Glenn Donaldson, Jewelled Antler Collective and Pink Skulls label plutocrat.
5] ..."sounds bit like that Japanese band Acid Mothers Temple" -- Mark Williams, local rock legend and musical archivist.

Will you please come along?

Love from ~The Stumps~

KKK

If anyone can provide me with evidence that Marlboro cigarettes are inextricably linked with the business interests of the Ku Klux Klan, I'll stop smoking them. I mean it. Email me with your proofs.

NP: Dizzee Rascal and Bubba Sparxx.

Give me back my guitar

I am an unreserved admirer of Mestar. Their records are sublime and live they never fail to please - they played last weekend at the Cross here in Wellington and I was in heaven. No other band I know can hit ya with those power-pop sucker-punches again and again and again and you get back to your feet grinning and clamouring for another smack. No one else has ever even come close to being able to consistently lay-on such twee little bundles of gift-basket whimsy without provoking any kind of gag reflex. No other band I can think of can time and time again wrap up a song by the bottom of the third minute and you know everything that was ever there to be said has been said and so shut up end-of-discussion. No other band I can think of can play a long set where every song sounds the same but not in any bad sense... in the sense that the band's sound and essence is so refined and assured and the moves they make are so within their own self-defined parameters that they leave you peering with magnifying lens at the songs for the minutae of detail that act as beacons along the way. No other band I know can string together a sequence of tracks on an LP like Mestar has on Porcupine, their most recent album - Distant Star, Jitter, Ovientar and so on - each of which just effortlessly falls into the lap of the next and you're sitting listening with a huge grin on your face wondering at the glorious beauty of it all and you can't sit still 'cos you really want to be singing and pogoing with your head up amongst the light fittings... well to be honest the first side of the Buzzcocks Singles Going Steady is comparable but that's a compilation, dig, a whole diff'rent story...

Actually it's a bit rich claiming to be such a huge fan since I only own Porcupine but this is a situation I am in the process of remedying. I also have the John White (Mestar's enigmatic frontman) solo CD Balloon Adventure. It's definitely the same guy - the same delightfully wide-eyed irony-free fairy-tales and fables - but the production is pared back and there's a big ol' ambient-orchestral-electonics drift track on the end which is just the ticket when you've put the CD on to go to sleep by. Big news is there's a new John White solo CD on the way... watch this space, huh?

The Mestar site is here; click on the big porcupine and you're in.

Nothing Is True, Everything is Permitted

We have to rely on the circumstantial, anecdotal evidence. We have no other choice. Aside from the circumstantial evidence, there's no Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

Iraqi bandits decapitate an American captive live on worldwide satellite. American MP's commit bizarre acts of cruelty designed ostensibly to subjugate Iraqi prisoners-of-war. We know, because we saw the pictures. We have no reason at this point to suspect that we are being lied to by the world's media. In his film on the aftermath of the first Bush vs. Saddam shooting match, Lessons of Darkness, Werner Herzog documents extensive war-crimes committed by Iraqi troops against large numbers of men, women and children in Kuwait. We know, because we saw the pictures. We have no reason to suspect that Werner Herzog and the documentary's producers are deceiving us.

Tit for tat. So we are - if not so much being lied to - being bullshitted; by the accusers, by the accusee's, by the media circus, et al.

American jailors [possibly in the process of publishing the inaugral issue of new Middle-East edition of Bawdy A5-photocopy grub-'zine] humiliate their charges in an astounding display of finely-tuned depravity. Cue eruption of indignant outrage in the West. Cue anguished brow-beating across America.. "This couldn't happen" etc.

Heard the one about the New Zealand forces in the World War II? Conventional colloquy has it that the most brutal captors, the ones responsible for far more deaths of prisoners-of-wars than any other Allied group, often in a variety of brutish and callous means, were the Kiwi boys. Somewhere up next to the Japanese, supposedly, in their cruel and inhumane ways. But devotees of any religion - soldiers - are always steeped in the mythology of the sufferings of their martyrs. I suspect that Mohammed, in the holy wisdom of his writings, offers his disciples many exhortations on ways to counter the slings and arrows, possibly sticks'n'stones, possibly purty lacy knickers, of the infidel.

It's beside the point. Let's not pretend this is new, or that there's not actually a war being fought. This shit always goes on in the wings while two groups of people are rushing around trying to kill each other. The technology has improved a bit - who knows what delightful snaps Ghenghis Khan would have put up on his website if he had been armed with a digital camera.

If they's going to be fighting, let's let both sides get on with it - and if they're going to do it they might as well do it properly. 'To the victors the spoils' and all that, articles of the Geneva Convention relating to treatment of prisoners-of-war or no; mandate to be there in the first place or not. These liberal displays of liberal angst are boring, and a convenient distraction from the more pertinent point of whether the US and it's mates should be there at all.

And so let's also take bets on how long it will take for that little album of 8x10 colour glossies currently doing the rounds in the Washington old-boys clubs to be 'leaked' onto the web somehow.

Never again

Forgeddabout mixing the grape and the grain; on Saturday night I was merrily mixing every goddamn drink known to man in a superlative performance which saw me spend most of Sunday alternating between sleeping, and lying in a pool of sweat vomiting up the lining of my stomach into a beautifully and conveniently transparent Natalia Kucija bag. Eventually I arose and that's when I noticed the little clusters of burst blood vessels ringing my eyes making me look like I'd been in a fist-fight with a midget. I'd actually woken up thinking I was in pretty good form all-things-considered, but as soon as the first drop of morning-after water slid down my esophagus I knew I was in big trouble; I fed my breakfast of porridge to the kitten and went back to bed.

Amongst a variety of material, the Port Silver Arts website FAQ has an interesting suggestion on how to prevent a Projectile Vomit Hangover [see Q: What's the best way to prevent a hangover?] which I shall certainly try the next time I find myself in this particular predicament ["Never again? Hah!"]. However they don't specify a common name for one of the ingredients, iodopropynyl butylcarbamate [IBPC], so I was forced to consult the information-box where the Cosmetics Unmasked Ingredients list identified it as a synthetic preservative and stuck the international chemical hazard symbol next to it [see right]. None of which is going to help me find out which aisle in the supermarket to look in.

Suggestions for finding IBPC? Surefire hangover cures? Email me...

Player-haters

I was going to make a crack about Helen Clark's remark to the effect that the organisers of the Foreshore and Seabed Protest Hikoi were "haters and wreckers" [paraphrased] but Patrick Crewdson from Fighting Talk did it so much better. So whyncha go there and read it ["Clark to hikoi: why you buggin'?"]. I have no theories at this point why these words - straight from contemporary hip-hop parlance - are coming out of her mouth. Perhaps one of her media advisors is setting her up something chronic. *Ahem*.

Flash Poll: What's H-to-da-C's favourite old-skool rap LP? [My bet: Boo Ya Tribe's New Funky Nation 'cos it's mine too. Actually that's not much of a reason, is it.]

Hikoi of serious mana, Billy TK and the Smiths

Yesterday morning by complete coincedence [or perhaps providence] I found myself in lower Willis St. as the Foreshore and Seabed Legislation Protest Hikoi marchers moved down towards Parliament. It was an overwhelming and utterly moving experience to witness this. Hundreds and hundreds of young Maori men in full warrior get-up with long hair flying and tattoos everywhere and, in a lot of cases, no underpants, expertly wielding their patu and taiha in synchronised haka challenges, chanting and spitting and scaring the shit out of me. Tall men tooted on those big shells adding to the atmosphere with their high soft keening wails. Then followed countless thousands of New Zealanders - well, someone did count them, there were more than 15,000 apparently - and there were all-sorts a-walking, not just Maori - whose voices rattled around the streets and soared up amongst the tower-blocks as they sang in unison, shuffling past the Star Mart. Young women lined up along the streets wept as they joined them in song and I felt a crushing mix of ignorance, pride, cultural insignificance, and complete solidarity with their cause [the latter despite my self-admitted limited awareness of the issue at hand].

I am compelled to respond to Steve InlandScenic's comments about Billy TK. I can't answer for the earnest young sensitive liberal white guys givin' the brown guy props for playing 'the blues', but I always go see him when I can because [a] he blew my mind with his guitar contributions to the Human Instinct and Powerhouse bands before I was even born; [b] he can often play it quite safe, but if you go and yarn to him during the break and get your copy of Stoned Guitar signed... and blow his mind that "the young people are still listening to these old albums" [paraphrased] [I didn't have the heart to ask him if he was aware of how many thousand dollars original copies of those albums sell for these days] and request of him very nicely, he gets back up for the second set and launches into an excoriating rendition of Midnight Sun which takes the top of your head off and messes wit'your brain a bit [and yes, the band can keep up] and then dedicates it to you when he's done; and [c] on occasion he lets a drunken Emma Paki get up and do her best [and famous] broke'up Etta James routine on the mic'. Hey, he's the Maori Jimi Hendrix, right? ['Swhat they used to call him circa 1968] So when's the gig, Steve?

And when when I was 13 or 14 and doing the paper-round after school back in Tawa, my co-employees [slaves: we got about $2.50 a day] would lend me tapes for my walkman. Matt, the older brother of a friend of my brother, and what we would think of today as an "indie-kid", lent me the Jesus and Mary Chain and the Smiths [specifically Darklands and Meat is Murder]. Pete, our older-still stoner drop-out hair-to-his-waist mentor, would bring Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath and Led Zep along. Les, the hooligan son of the owners of the dairy at the bottom of the hill where we waited for the paper-lady, stalked around in crimson 14-hole Docs, turned-up jeans and a "ghetto"-blaster playing the Clash and the UK Subs. A motley crew, sure, but it goes to show that the musical subculture of my adolescence was just a shade different to that of Steve's and there was probably more Smiths going around than he thinks.

Anyway isn't nostalgia, authentic or not, just the privileged conceit of the bourgeoisie?