Energy Flash

Origin Unknown

Valley Of The Shadows

I Started reading Simon Reynolds Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music & Dance Culture (2012 Edition) today and I'm up to about page 188 at this very moment where the above track is mentioned. If I'd read it back in 98 I wouldn't have been able to just go on youtube to check out the tracks I didn't know. I am in the future. Funny I've read all his books but I've somehow managed to avoid this one for 14 years, better late than never and quite timely too as I'm in some kind of electronic 90s timewarp. After chapter 6 I have a new lease of love for old faves like Autechre, Black Dog, Aphex Twin et al. But there are gaps baby (ie. pg.188) and youtube is a brilliant resource. Somewhere in the book he mentioned Lime Lizard magazine which I had totally forgotten about. It was a magazine as opposed to a paper and was a pretty good alternative to the NME around 91/92. I think it came out bi-monthly. Anyway it had some top writers and was the first place I read about Thomas Koner, Disco Inferno, Ice, Ultramarine and others.

Bay-B-Kane

Hello Darkness

I recall this though.

Retromania

Dad where's Barbara Anne?
Dad surf's not up on this one is it?

I didn't really envisage this blog being so retro when I began it. The first posts, which were about the previous years new releases with only a mention of 4 archival releases, were more along the lines of what I thought it would be. Anyway I'm not gonna get hung up on it. You could write a whole book on the subject, which Simon Reynolds did last year. I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in un/popular culture and where it's going, or should I say where it's been? In fact I think he could turn it into a trilogy at least.

Anyway retro has been with us for a long time and hey it ain't goin anywhere. Apart from my Dad's records: Elvis, Little Richard, Everly Bros, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, The Animals, Buddy Holly, Sam Cooke, The Beatles & The Rolling Stones, I first remember it with '50's revival stuff in the '80's which I didn't care much for. Then I guess it was the increased presence of bands like Creedence, The Beach Boys and The Doors on '80's radio and TV promoted hits packages. I never heard a proper LP from those bands until much later.

Then there was the scene with new wave neo-psych bands like The Church and The Sunnyboys. Those groups had some modernism though. It was the next batch of Australian groups who really were fully retro: The Hoodoo Gurus, The Stems et al. They were bloody good though. Once the '80's had passed, the then current '60's revivalists like Even, The Badloves, You Am I etc. didn't seem so great. In fact they seemed shit..... er.....which is what they were.  I remember writing an email asking whether you could have a revival of an '80's '60's revival in the '00's? This was actually starting to happen in Australia at the time. This is where it started to get weird ie. a revival of a revival. Maybe it will go on forever ad nauseum ..................................aaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhh!



THE STEMS
The best Australian 60s band of the 80s

The '60's was always with us on the TV. Get Smart, I Dream Of Jeanie, Bewitched, Gilligan's Island and Batman were on constant repeat forever. Then there was The Munsters and the Aadams Family; probably not as repeated as much. The Flinstones and The Jetsons were always on too. I don't even know when they were made, '60's I guess. The British TV of the '70's never seemed to go away either. Fawlty Towers, Are You Bing Served?, On the Buses, Benny Hill, Dad's Army, George & Mildred, The Good Life, The Goodies etc. So I guess Australians have always experienced this time warp. Is this what they mean by atemporality or do I need to read Retromania again?



My Favourite book of 2011

Cupcake anyone?

What about a frog in a pond?
You could wash it all down with a Blue Lagoon!

The Wire magazine. What happened?

1993 was the year. Melody Maker and NME had been slowly starting to shit me from like 91 onwards. There was still good stuff happening over at Melody Maker at this time but it was starting to diminish. Maybe my tastes were changing too.......anyway The Wire was good because it was covering interesting (ie not this weeks fashionable pop group) stuff the weeklies were starting to ignore and they didn't have that kneejerk criticism/create a new scene every other week/backlash the next week blah blah... of the weeklies which was incredibly liberating at the time. The Boredoms, West African Tapes, Edgar Froese, Miles Davis, King Tubby, Mouse On Mars, Gamelan, High Rise, Method Man, Casper Brotzmann, AMM, Jungle, Tricky, Eddie Palmieri, Ambient, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, Gunter Muller, Omni Trio, Prog Rock, Nirvana all rubbing shoulders together. This seemed quite rad at the time and perhaps it was. We might be a bit used to it all now in this post everything world. So for many years it was an essential read. All through the 90s it was great, but somewhere in the 00s it became less essential. I guess it didn't matter that much as music criticism on the blogosphere was peaking at this stage. Who needed to buy a magazine made of paper? How archaic!

In the last couple of years it seems to have picked up a bit though and there was always something to make you still at least check every month if there was something good in there. A Simon Reynolds article will get me in every time. Recently they covered Turkish Psych which maybe they usually would have done 10 years earlier when modern Turkish groups like Replikas and BaBa Zulu were making an impact on western audiences. Are they starting to repeat themselves? Scott Walker and Kraut/Kosmiche articles recently which were both covered extensively 15 years earlier. Old school NME narrow mindedness/bitchiness also seems to have kicked in as well as substandard journos who've got no fucking idea.

Nick Cave cops some knee jerk turds criticism for some of the greatest lyrics ever written.

An excerpt from Palaces of Montezuma by Grinderman

Psychedelic invocations of Mata Hari at the station 

A custard coloured dream of Ali McGraw and Steve McQueen

The spinal cord of JFK wrapped in Marilyn Monroe's negligee 

So Nina Power you look like a fool. In the same issue from September 2010 Nina's colleague Sam Davies calls electronic pioneer Bruce Haack dull. Guess what Sam you're fucking dull. Bruce Haack was a brilliant pioneer. Sam what did you pioneer? Being a dull music journalist pretending you've got something to say but really only being a try hard. Guess what Sammy that's been done before too. Tedious slagging was never part of The Wire thing so this is disappointing. Don't get me wrong I love a good slagging when it's smart, funny and justified. Mr Abusing/Agreeable anyone? Then they pulled the ultimate NME move in slagging a genre/movement they invented or at least identified and named ie Hypnogogic Pop. Time to move on I guess.....Simon Reynolds has an article in the bloody new one though.....