Reasons To Be Cheerful part Nein Nein Nein

Radio Birdman – Hand Of Law

That introduction, the bass kicks off, the drum comes in and then the guitar riff… fuck me, it’s just about perfect really.   And here I am 40 years later still hearing that song and finding it fresh and exciting and it hits me right in the heart and brain and makes me smile still… all these years and still I can’t help but feel the power and energy and the moment. 

I still own the original cassette copy of Radios Appear that I bought back in the day when I was like 15 and discovered this band and a whole new world opened up.  1978/79 and my mate Mike and I would trek out to the caves with the Radio Birdman tape and my “newest” cassette player, the third one I’d owned by then. Another beat up second hand Sony I think, but unlike my second player, this one didn’t have dual decks but did have a working battery pack and didn’t need electrical tape to hold it together. (Always a bonus) The tape deck would rest on my shoulder and we’d listen to the rumble, the power as we trekked the couple of miles out of town through the pine forest to our hideaway one of many we’d had over the years, forts we’d built from fallen pine trees and branches, dug outs in the soil, old sheds lost in the forest, this time we had a pothole/cave we had made into a fort, a secret space, even putting posters on the wall down there and bringing candles and dirty magazines and food.  Radio Birdman would echo off the damp walls, the sound crashing and swooping all around us and it all made perfect sense.  It would be in the high 30s outside, so hot you could barely think but down here in our cave, accessible only by climbing down a tree branch, surrounded by rock posters and teen goddesses, with the music blaring, it was a cool low 20s and we would lay back smoking and laughing and listening intently to Rob Younger’s scream, Deniz Tek’s guitar, trying to decipher words and meaning, not caring about the heat or the flies or what the future held for us.  There were no thoughts of sawmills or log trucks, no petrol pump jockeys or supermarket shelves down here just cool air and loud guitar, rock and roll escapism and the sounds of birds up above in the trees, flies buzzing lazily waiting for us to surface, the world lazily waiting for us to come up for air.

And we’d always have to come back up, if just to piss but while we were down there, no one could find us or tell us what to do, there were no teachers asking for answers, no parents questioning our intentions, no girls laughing at us, no pressure, no purpose, just the blistering Detroit influenced rock and roll that promised a different world, that signaled the change that was coming, the possibilities… we just had to find it.  

Play It Loud!!

Reasons To Be Cheerful Part Ate

Motley Crue – Shout At The Devil.

 Motley Crue’s Shout At The Devil was another of those ‘chance’ teenage discoveries. I recall seeing a film clip on late night tv of them covered in fake blood and looking satanic and evil.  Well at least evil to a 17 year old kid living in a country town. And come on I was a Kiss fan already, I loved Skyhooks and Sweet and glam so I was already predisposed to the flash and arrogance and dressing up – the escape.  And at 16/17 it was metal and punk that were really providing that route so the Crue fitted in perfectly. Especially the early days/daze before they sobered up and really became platinum hit makers.  This was a different beast, a sloppy, drunk, drug fucked beast that wandered around in leather and sweat and smeared makeup looking for all money like they just needed another beer or snort to feel better, to perform better.  It was like a Saturday night cabaret band had suddenly found fame and didn’t know what the fuck to do with it. When I saw the cassette at the local whitegoods store cum record shop I had to have it.  My cousin Pete and I fell for ‘em hard.  We loved that album for awhile there, played it constantly, sang it, mimed it, played air guitar along with it.

On weekends we’d throw that tape in the car cassette deck, pop the sunroof, sip from the badly hidden hip flasks and beercans and just cruise the mainstreet of Millicent with Vince squealing over that raucous rhythm section and us playing air guitar and shouting at the devil, hoping one of the girls might find our rebellion cute.  They never did.

I still own that very copy of the cassette, the one that we flogged to death in the car as we drove up and down the mainstreet drunk every Friday and Saturday night trying to find girls, visions, anything that would help us get to the next stop on the way.  Hard to believe now I know but back then, much like Kiss, they were a band that alienated people and separated yr friends from yr foes.  They weren’t punk but this was country South Australia, they were alienating enough to be just what we needed. Ugly and discordant enough to be a dividing line between the cool kids and us fuck ups. What else could you want?  cheese with the devil

Reasons to be cheerful - pleading the fifth

FLASH COONEY AND THE DEANS OF DISCIPLINE –LITTLE DEBBY

You know I really hate those old guys who say, “back in my day…” or “kids today have got it easy” but you know what?  I’ve become one of those old guys and let me tell you, “kids today HAVE got it easy!” This blog itself is proof of that.  We’re giving them the knowledge, we’re sharing the music, the meaning, we’re helping the ungrateful little buggers out and they don’t even have to leave their chair!  It’s all at their fingertips now, the music, the words, they can download songs, albums, movies, books, without even having to get off their arses. 

But it’s not just online either, the whole culture of “underground” is disappearing, long usurped by marketing managers, advertising and the quick buck chase of corporate shysters.  I mean John Waters does speaking tours now, people line up for their photo opportunity and his movies are mainstream. Burroughs and Ginsberg and Kerouac are t-shirt idols and bumper stickers, punk rock is just another genre now, marketed to the kids along with tattoos, body piercing and coloured hair, no longer for outsiders or outlaws, every 20 something schmuck has a full sleeve tattoo, bluebirds on their neck and mama across their back.  How do you rebel now?  There are no more discoveries for the kids, no more moments of “wow, who the hell are they?” it’s all marketed to them now, by demographic and location, the full back catalogue available online.  They are fooled into thinking they are individuals just like the other 1000 “friends” they have online who “liked” the same page. They think they are making great discoveries without realising they’re being manipulated, marketed to and pushed into the right boxes.  Anarchy until lunchtime when they use that voucher they got with the download to buy lunch at that cool new “underground” café in the mall.  So yeah, they have got it easy but it’s kind of sad as well.

 In a world where garage sale bargains rarely exist anymore because people think e-bay counts as a legitimate price guide, the thrill of making their own discoveries, of finding some obscure album that looks kind of cool just because of the cover or finding old paperbacks for a buck at a junk shop or uncovering old Crawdaddy mags in a box of crap, taking a chance on a 45 ‘cos the label looks interesting, those joys, that fun is fast disappearing for today’s kids.   

 They just go online, check to see if it’s ‘hip’ to like this band or author, make sure the cool points add up for owning a copy of the album or the book and walk away from the chance to develop their own taste, the chance to make their own discoveries, their own mistakes.  

 I grew up in a town of 500 or so people, depending on how the football team was going, two tv channels, am radio, no computers, no internet, (hell computers were a mythical machine that were bigger than your bedroom and only seen on science programs) – I found out about music by sticking one ear to the radio, by pouring through the few rock mags I could get my hands on, by going through my parents’ record collection  and their friends and my friends’ older brother’s and sister’s collections, by hanging around the edges at parties and listening to conversation, by scouring liner notes, finding things by pure luck and good fortune, by taking chances, stumbling onto songs, writers, ideas, searching for touchstones and gateways that would lead to other places, other songs and sure that leaves gaps in your musical education but sooner or later you find the things YOU need, the songs that mean something to YOU, the riff that sends a shiver down yr spine, the tune that takes you somewhere else, away from the shitty little box bedroom and out there somewhere else and when that happens you don’t care who their guitar teacher was or when the lead singer was first potty trained, you just care that the song means something to YOU and you alone. I didn’t wait for the t-shirt, I bought the records, I bluffed my way through, gradually building up knowledge, trusting my own instincts, enjoying the trash amongst the treasure.  I wasn’t worried about ‘cool’ – hell I was never gonna be cool, I was a skinny, redheaded mongrel kid who couldn’t play sports or fight, who lived in a dream world of comics and music and books, cool was never an option but I didn’t care cos I had songs, records, music pounding out of the shitty little cassette player in my room, the plastic record player on the bookshelf, I found my own way out.   

Sadly the kids today ain’t ever gonna find their own way… unless of course we help them.   I’m still not sure if I’m doing the right thing or the wrong thing here, it does seem a little hypocritical since they’re still in their bloody chairs looking at a screen but hell, if they find the Deans Of Discipline on line they’re doing good anyway!  I found my copy in a record shop in New Zealand over a dozen years ago and I ain’t ever seen another!  Get out of the house kids, go searching at your local op shop,  take a chance on a beat up record with a name you don’t recognise, buy a book, ask your parents if they still have their records out in the shed, do something but don’t get complacent.  We ain’t gonna always be here to tell you what’s what. 

AIN'T NO PARTY LIKE A DEANS O' DISCIPLINE PARTY

whatever happened to the revolution?

HAVE YOU HUGGED AN ANARCHIST TODAY?

so I’m sitting here in a house barely four years old, at this flash new computer, flat screen xp windows (pirated of course) listening to the toe cutter cd I bought in Melbourne on the weekend, just started work on an article for a glossy mag, pile of books next to me (again purchased on the weekend trip to Melbourne) cds teetering on the shelf on the right (all country or alt country – my latest “thing”) feeling all anarchic and revolutionary and wondering whether I’ve got time for a coffee before I pick up my daughter from school. (One more stamp and I’m eligible for a free cuppa!) I’ve been checking my email spasmodically as I await word on whether an interview I did on the weekend will get into another glossy (thus paying for my spending frenzy in melb) and I’m just thinking… wow man, you are so alternative in yr sun ra t-shirt, with yr gacy paintings and yr chomsky diatribes and yr oh so witty angry old man routine… I tell you some days I’m so cool I freeze myself out! But the question is… what do I do instead? I’m too fucking comfortable to give this up, especially since I don’t actually pay for a lot of it. I work sort of as a freelance writer in between writing Bukowski knock offs and vacuuming the floors, but I’m really a housewife when it gets down to it. I do the dishes, cooking, cleaning, nose wiping etc… the wife has the corporate job, the car, the perks… I walk or ride the bike, do the shopping, get my daughter ready for school… yep, I abhor the “system” yet I make my daughter go to school each day and then try and undo the damage done later… I’m not a leftie as such cos I hate the hippies but I sure as shit aint right wing either…I’d like to save the world but I’m only prepared to put in a token effort, nothing too taxing, expensive or that will take me out of my comfort zone, you understand. I get totally fucked off at the way the arts scene takes the piss out of bogans and westies and country hicks but I’m no longer a bogan anyway and they scare me too sometimes. I hate the glass teat but we have a motherfucking bigscreen hd tv in the lounge and I’ll suckle on it with the best of them…even though I believe nothing they tell me. I don’t trust either side’s opinions anymore. Religion scares me yet I find myself every now and then offering a silent prayer to god or heysuez or the devil to get me out of some fix I’ve got myself into. I have no alternatives to offer yet I’m constantly bagging the current status quo. I think today’s muzak sucks but I hate nostalgia for its own sake and I have no taste/too much taste/bad filtering anyhoo. I haven’t read the “greats” but I pretend I have.

I hate other people’s opinions but I constantly seek them out to confirm my own. I think myspace/ blogs/ facespace whatever the hell it is a waste of time and money and just an advertising tool but fuck it, I still have a site and I check it constantly. (hell I’ll probably post this there)

I’d like to think I was a sociopath but unfortunately I’m too much of a softie. I’m not a misogynist but I am unashamedly heterosexual, which let’s face it, is just an excuse anyway.

But then hell I’m the housewife so how does that work anyway? I’ve discovered over the years that just being comfortably white makes me racist. I don’t mean to be, its just there sort of underneath. Like the fear those arty types have of bogans I guess, that’s the fear I have of other cultures, other races, hell anyone else who isn’t on the same page as me. I understand things need fixing but I’m too lazy, too tired, too old, too comfortable, too scared, too… something… to do anything much about it. Lets face it, I’m just a bad tempered, ill advised, poorly educated boofheaded bum. If I was an American I’d probably be a serial killer. Instead I’m a sort of pseudo-bogan/pissant intellectual house dad. Just who the hell am I trying to please? Whoever it is, they ain’t coming forward and I’m going backwards.

Christ on a crutch, I might just break out that new Suckdog dvd I picked up, watch it while I finish my protein drink and pretend I’ve achieved something for the day before I start on tea. That’s probably the best I can do right now anyway.