Charlie Freak

Few things can beat commercial cynicism, and you won’t find a better example than Steely Dan. Starting with the name meaning dildo in Burroughs’ Naked Lunch and ending with the pointless Grammy for Two Against Nature which they planned to send to Eminem (who really wanted it), they have been walking the fine line between charts and obvious drug and sex references for decades.

For me, Walter Becker is one of those rare people who can get away with slagging off “Yesterday” and being ridiculously arrogant during interviews. And that goes well with polished jazzy grooves and Donald Fagen’s (The Nightfly is seriously overrated though) smoothly playful vocals. They might sound like your granddad’s favourite band and Johnny Rotten must have hated them. But in a way – they were more punk than punk. 

Can’t Buy A Thrill is in the top 10 of my favourite debut albums. Although really – that whole seven album run was terrific (they've been way too sterile this century), and was filled, among other things, with minor classics like “Charlie Freak”.  

Sunday morning

It's for a fleeting moment like that. Early morning chill mixed with quiet delight growing out of each one of your cells. It’s a sleepy dance, and you wish it could go on forever. And then Robert Forster’s “I’ve Been Looking For Somebody” starts playing, and it’s all about a Sunday morning. Your Sunday morning. Music, and yet somehow more than that. Always more than that. 

“Justice” to round it off. 'Lucky I ran into you', from 1986 classic. And the best really is yet to come.

The Wrote and the Writ

The upcoming publication of Morrissey’s novel makes you wonder, almost against your will, just how good songwriters are at writing fiction. They can write, some of them anyway, but coming up with an original, full-blown story is a different matter entirely.

For all the deserved success of Chronicles, Bob Dylan was exasperated. You actually have to make yourself sit down at the desk and work away, for several hours each day. Then edit. And then edit again. It’s a nightmare. It’s not like you can do the whole thing over a flight from New York to Washington DC. Sketchy, disjointed thoughts have to be licked into shape.

Having been suitable impressed/freaked out by Gira’s fiction, I should say that generally I’m too skeptical to bother. Most of it ranges from boring to genuinely awful. Incredibly, some manage both – like John Lennon in the 60s. 

Still, if there’s anyone who could pull it off, it’s Morrissey. With his recent autobiography, with his Penguin deal, what proof do you need? He has the ego and he has the time. If it’s bad – I give up. And if it’s good… well, the man is just an exception.  

Chrissie Hynde said something

As people do. You ask them their opinion, they give it. It used to work like that, but not anymore.

And it may have been a stupid thing, regardless of the fact that she herself was once a rape victim, it may have been completely irresponsible. But the backlash has been so severe, so over-the-top that you might start thinking people actually give a damn about what a pop star says. As in – that’s some thought, let’s write a 5,000 word article about it.

She is a fucking pop star. And what I admire about Chrissie Hynde (who, sadly, hasn’t written too many good songs since that second Pretenders LP) is that she did not back down. 

Really, if you’re so easily offended, then don’t ask any questions. Since it just feels like you ask them to get something to sulk about.

Rembrandt's women

World’s biggest fan of Rembrandt was a man I knew indirectly. And when I say biggest, I mean he had every single book written about the man – however derivative and insignificant. Millions upon millions of reproductions, printed on the same pages and in the same colours, it was an OCD-type situation.

Quite simply, you didn’t have a cat in hell’s chance to not be overpowered by him when discussing Dutch art. The way he talked about Rembrandt was sheer drunken poetry, and even more fascinating was his disdain for 20^th century painters. If you told him you liked Picasso, he would wish you to have women exactly the way Picasso drew them. Abstract, angular, sketchy. 

The man was a character. He was about 70, he played a 7-string guitar. Also, I think he was unmarried. 

Tally Ho!

Even though nothing compares to the dizzying perfection of “Heavenly Pop Hit” (first time you hear it, you think a sweeter melody cannot be written), for me the defining moment of New Zealand music has always been that legendary church organ riff of “Tally Ho!”

I haven’t yet managed to determine whether it is silly or brilliant, but that could be the whole point. The Clean may have had better songs (“Anything Could Happen” defines ‘cool’), but “Tally Ho!” is melodic dementia at its best. Interestingly, it was Martin Phillipps who came up with the riff. 

P.S. This current flag business it total nonsense. 

Sweet Smell Of Success

Nobody makes films like this anymore.

Loud jazz by Elmer Bernstein and the cynical noise of New York, Sweet Smell Of Success has 50s written all over it. Idiomatic language, long dead but still as hard-hitting as it ever was.

‘You’re a cookie full of arsenic’.

‘Not even if you serve me Cleopatra on a plate’.

‘You have more twists than a barrel of pretzels’.

‘The man in jail is always for freedom’.

‘Your dear sounds like dagger’.

Beautiful. 

And oh the days when you couldn’t play a negative character because your name was Tony Curtis. Old-fashioned, insane, larger-than-life stuff.