top ten time yet again

That pesky top ten thing again

In my role as “boxing expert” for Aussie mag People over the last couple of months I’ve got to chat to Nader Hamden, Danny Green, Michael Katsidis and Jamie Pittman, all great fighters, all pretty decent blokes. For a tragic like me, even in my mature years, I still get fan boy excited and nervous before I talk to them and I can’t deny the buzz I get interviewing these guys. I love the sport of boxing, follow it pretty religiously, checking results, upcoming bouts, watching al lthe fights I can, hell, there’s been nights where I’ve stayed home to watch Friday night fights rather than going to the pub! So getting paid to talk to these guys is way beyond any expectations I ever had. Tough life this.

Getting two submissions accepted in two days. Brascoe Publishing and Covert Press have both taken some of my words and said yes to them. And I got a story into the next Metal Scratches as well. Slowly slowly catchee monkey. World domination inches closer!

Sitting on a balcony at a holiday house at Tiddy Widdy Beach (no I hadn’t heard of it either) drinking coffee, sucking in fresh air and relaxing. I spend too much time “in house” – I work from home, glued to this damn computer and when I’m not writing, researching, wasting time – I’m doing my house husband duties, you guessed it, at home. So I’m always there, work rest play. I weren’t doing anything different really in the holiday house (though there’s no computer) but it was good not to be at home.

And while I was on that balcony I read JT Leroy’s The Heart Is Deceitful above all things. One sitting, one afternoon and got sunburnt cos I didn’t move but damn it was worth it. Haven’t had time to sit and enjoy a book, soak up some words since… well, probably pre xmas maybe. Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve been slowly working my way thru Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flats when time permits but its taken me three months to find the time to finish it but then it’s a book that should be read that way really, it just fits the theme. But this time it was one session, two or three coffees and I can’t put this book down type of stuff. The story of a boy and his mother and bad parenting and burgeoning sexuality and just how the family sins pass on down the line, religious mania, sexual dysfunction, hard wiring, fear hate and love and madness – shit, I don’t want to give anymore away. Read the damn thing, it’s good damn good.

Having a business lunch with the Publisher about the tenth anniversary anthology. Paroxysm Press is all the Publisher’s own work, thru graft, pain, cancer, near bankruptcy, alcohol abuse, domestic madness and bad hair days he’s kept the damn thing going and now it’s time for a celebration. So the tenth anniversary anthology is being meticulously planned and organized and the bastard even bought lunch for us, me and the dirty girl, as we nutted out deadlines and launch dates and the like. It’s come a long way from that nervous kid who came into my bookshop to ask if I knew any local writers all them years ago. ( and no, I didn’t pitch my own work to him, he came to me for that shit later on) He still talks too many words per second though, that ain’t nerves like I first thought, that’s just him.

Picking up Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys final recording sessions “For The Last Time” on vinyl – two record set with the booklet and boxed and in good nick for a redback. Great western swing with everyone giving their all while Bob sat back and apparently watched with pride. Illness had robbed him of his maneuverability but he threw a coupla hollers in there and guided the ship. He was still the boss man. That night he went home a happy man but had a stroke and sadly never recovered. But it was a hell of way to go. This music swings with pride, good ol’ boys having a time and partyin’ with the man who got em there in the first place. I can think of a lot worse ways to go out than seeing yr music live on like this. Great music and I’ll be lookin’ for more.

I did a zine fair a little while back and it was stinkin’ hot and we were in an old factory and who knew if it would work but damn it did. It was hot and it was sweaty but there was beer, some eyecandy and even a few zines worth a pinch o’ shit. Picked up the new Analog Apocalypse which improves with every issue. The fuckers even mentioned feedtime, possibly Australia’s greatest band. Not bad for a bunch o’ snot nosed kids with a thing for german chicks!

$100 and a t-shirt. I’d heard about this dvd doco about fanzines and lo and behold there it was sitting on a table surrounded by zines that I would never read by kids half my age. Got it cheap and yeah its not too bad. Though I still have trouble with this whole aint we cool attitude that zinesters have. You aint changing the world nerdbuckets you’re putting out a zine. Now I love zines, I been doing it for twenty years or something but I know it aint gonna change things or make me rich or anything. It just helps keep me sane is all. Not a bad doco though and I’ll probably watch it again before it gathers dust in a box in the shed.

Getting the new Sprak! done and sent out finally. I’ve had mail from December sitting here and I aint done shit about it cos I was planning a new issue and it just sorta took awhile but finally it did get done and its out there and no fucker ever drops me a line back anyway the slack shits (ok not technically true – two folk did email me) but hell I can remember with just a hint of nostalgia how I used to have a drawer full of mail everytime I sent out a zine. We’d write letters, trade zines and tapes and shit but now the best I can hope for is a quick email if I’m lucky. Oops this is supposed to be a top ten list not a bottom ten.

My mum left hook lu had a health scare recently but it turned out to be nothing and that’s a good way to finish this list, knowing that she’s healthy and happy and everything is just fine.

wham glam charts too

Top 10 13^th July 1975

1 David Bowie Sorrow

2 Ray Burgess Touch Me

3 Jon English Turn The Page

4 Skyhooks Ego Is Not A Dirty Word

5 Suzi Quatro Savage Silk

6 Skyhooks Horror Movie

7 Status Quo Down Down

8 Pilot January

9 Beatles A Hard Days Night

10 BTO You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet

David still holding on to number one and the obvious influence of the Ripper compilation with Burgess, BTO, Status Quo and English storming the charts. My older and cooler cousins Greg and Kym were influencing me too hence more Skyhooks making the charts. Ego was one of the earliest albums I bought but not till the next year. Suzi Quatro was my first serious fanboy crush (but not the last) Beatles I blame on Carol Lawrence, she always had their tapes in her car. But she was also the person who introduced me to Black Sabbath Volume 4 so I wont hold The Beatles against her.

Top Ten Things that kept me going

Dang, its been awhile but here goes –

GARLAND JEFFREYS – ESCAPE ARTIST album finally being reissued on CD! First came out in 1981 and I was 19 years old and engaged (or close enough to it) and I had to drive a 100k round trip every weekend to see my girl so I was buying a lot of tapes to play in the car (or cars since I managed to go through a few back then, none costing more’n $300) and I knew who Jeffreys was cos of that killer song Wild In The Streets and I musta heard modern lovers or something on the radio though I cant imagine where down there, maybe one of those late nights when I’d tune in the radio to stations all over the fucking country that would be faintly playing and cross hatching on the big old radiogram that mum and dad had… but anyway I bought it on cassette and I flogged that baby to death – like Jeffreys himself it was a mulatto mix of styles and cultures and pop and reggae and bluesy jazz licks and even though I was a dumb country hick I could dig the world he was travelling in (or at least wished I could). Took me years to find a vinyl copy, (with the bonus ep intact) the tape having pretty much given up the ghost and I’d pretty well figured the cd would never turn up but damn here we are, 2008 and I’ve got this baby in my hands and it’s got the bonus tracks from the ep and a coupla more besides and I’ve been playing it daily for the last three/four weeks and its still as good as I remember, even if I’m no longer cruising the backroads with it turned up loud, blueballed and stinky fingered…

PLANET ALI – GLENN W COOPER. Chapbook of pomes by Qld boy Glen W Cooper about the greatest Muhammad Ali. Stumbled on a listing of this while looking at something else altogether (ok ok it was a poetry site, don’t tell anyone ok?) and then I did a quick search and lo and behold, the fucker had a myspace site! This is a great set of pomes about Ali the man and Ali the legend… what he meant to a whole generation of us as a boxer and a man. Forget the saintly image they try and push on us now – he was a fighter, a boxer, he hit people, he hurt them and in the end he got hurt back… great set of words, great writer… check him out.

BIXOBAL #2 – a neat little zine I stumbled across that comes out of Seattle and has an editor who knows the right people. People like Sir Richard Bishop, Climax Golden Twins, Jesse Paul Miller… a great read with reviews of a hunk o’ obscure music I’ll now be searching for, travel stories from Sir Richard, Uncle Jim’s diatribe against lazy ass rekkid reviewers, the thrill of collecting “bad” records… its good to see a print zine again instead of just words on this infernal contraption. That said, the easiest way to track this fucker down is at the website

www.ribexibalba.com Eric also put out a great Sun City Girls Lp last year that I was lucky enough to get hold of (though not the super special edition)… he knows his stuff.

Getting more work at People mag (for you USA folk it aint nothing like yr mag) and becoming the “official” boxing expert though I still prefer boxing tragic. Which means I’m getting to voice my opinion on upcoming blues, interviewing the odd boxer (Nader Hamdan, Michael Katsidis, Jamie Pittman…) and now I don’t feel so guilty spending all my time watching the fights on tv or reading websites or blogs or just being so anal about it all. Hell, its my job!

GEORGE JONES – I LOVE COUNTRY – a cheapy CD I borrowed from my mum left hook last time I was down home and its turned out to be a goody. Featurin’ a lot of his early hits, a good slap o’ honky tonkin’ and none of that “re-recorded by the original artist or someone who was once in the band for a week” guff. Damn straight he’s a good old boy and was a bit of a pisshead to boot!

Adelaide Fringe festival is on and that means the ZINE FAIR is happening again soon. Went to the opening night/welcome the other week. 40 degrees celcius in the shade but there was free beer so myself and Karl the perfect gentleman indulged in some beers and some watermelon and pretended like we really did give a hoot about these kids and their “alternative” culture but come on, I been doing zines for twenty years now… some of these kids were still smearing shit on the walls at that stage (and for some of them nothin’s changed) Still, it was free beer, Karl gave me a lift home and with the zine fair just a coupla weeks away it gives me the push to actually finish something. Then stand around in an old factory with the publisher, the perfect gentleman and harry the grump drinking beer and perving at fine young things. Hell of a way to spend a Saturday arvo!

PAROXYSM PRESS BOOK LAUNCH of Cloak & Grist happened a coupla weeks back and Shane and Hop came over form Melburg to launch it and we had a feed before hand and lots of beer before during and after and some friends came out of their caves and it was sweet. Of course I lost the Melburg boys on the way to the next pub but that’s ok. It was a fine evening, good words, beer, friends – that’s what this whole thing is supposed to be about after all.

Seeing young ANT recently. He’s come along leaps and bounds since his birth and between he and young JONES it’s an interesting time being the old hand at all this stuff and watching Mike, Roosh, Dann & Helen doting on their kiddlings. If only they knew that one day they’d be teenage monsters! Mike is now the stay at home dad too and apparently he’s loving it. Christ, I wish I could get back that joy instead of being the grumpy old fart that seems to be nagging beezlebubby all the time to clean up, shut up or get up! Of course it aint all that bad its just I tend to forget the good bits and just remember the ten minutes of arguing… and that’s always been my problem!

SOUTHERN ROCK REVIEW a great little book by Martin Popoff with reviews on a kegload of Southern Boy Rock and a cd to boot and the guy likes his music and it shows in his reviews and I’m flickin’ thru it makin’ little notes of what I should be searchin’ for when I’m out at the bootsales and secondhand shops. And the fucker has got a thing for ZZ Top and you can’t argue with that now can you?

LEGEND OF CHUPACABRA a dumb ass, slow as fuck mockumentary monster movie that for some reason I really enjoyed. Monster suits and handheld cameras and old school prosthetics and its dumber than a midget superbowl but I really enjoyed it. Its good to occasionally stumble onto these unknown flix and just enjoy them without trying to be smarmy and know it all critic… but I’m betting everyone else will be saying it sucked. Fuck em what do they know anyway?