Sat, 29 June: Weekly Review 17

Had my final listen to Aespa’s Armageddon before retiring it. Of course when I say ‘retiring’ I don’t mean I’ll never listen to it again (as in armageddon tired of it – sorry), it just means I’ve familiarised myself enough to ‘get it’ and it’s time to put the actual album away so I can concentrate on other music. I fully expect to get back to it again soon and will continue playing it over the coming months. My final thoughts on it are it’s a damn fine album. Some people have complained about the lack of cohesion in the varying styles, but I like that about it. The most atypical and ‘out there’ song, the calypso yacht rock flavoured Bahama, is probably my favourite. There’s only one track so far out of the ten, called Set The Tone, that I haven’t warmed to yet, so that’s not a bad strike rate. I’m still thinking of those songs, even now, and I can’t wait to get back to listening to them some more soon.

There’s an element of ritual in buying and listening to music. Besides listening to it and becoming familiar with it, if you’re anything like me, you digitize it, catalogue it, file it on hard drive, and then retire it. I also like to pick out the singles and usually a couple of choice album cuts to put in my Jukebox files. I know it all seems unnecessary in this age of streaming, but hard copy is important, believe me. The only problem with hard copy can be the packaging. This is especially true of Korean packaging when you buy the ‘full version’, like I did with the Aespa album. It will not fit on my cd shelves, so I have to stash it away, as I’ve done with my other Kpop albums, in my unruly Kpop cupboard. Since it’s not practical to keep the cds in there, I always take them out and put them into blank jewel cases, print out a cover, and on the cd shelves they go. It’s not ideal, but it’s all I can do.

I saw a great Youtube clip of this guy making these interesting fluid moves with his camera while he was recording stuff. Then the clip cut to what he had recorded, and the result was amazing. His camera flitted over surfaces, spun around and looped and dived and flashed past people’s faces like a ballet. When I think about it it’s such an obvious application for phone cameras, but I haven’t seen it used in this way before. I love the freedom of it, the poetry. The creative possibilities of this film-making approach could be limitless. I’m already thinking I’ll try to use the approach with a video of my new car, when I get it. Unfortunately, I can’t find the video on Youtube now to link to or give it a name. I’ll keep searching.

Al Jazeera’s news reporting of the Gaza massacre is way different to how they do it on the mainstreams. There’s no beating around the bush about what’s going on there. It’s ‘the Gaza Genocide’. Tellin’ it like it is. But of course Al Jazeera has lost a number of its own journalists, especially Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022, to that conflict. So it’s no surprise that they’re going hard on Israel and Netanyahu. Bring it on!

A new album for Twice Nayeon always means lots of great new content for us Onces, the most recent being the album photo shoot video on Youtube which I watched. Our girl looked comfortable and relaxed, if slightly bored at times, as the two-day photo shoot took her through varying concepts. Besides this, there was also a new Special Live Clip of Nayeon doing a medley of songs from the album, including Butterflies, Heaven and Count It. It was all one flowing segment of Nabong going from one setting to another with each song change. It was all simply done, elegantly staged, and she was utterly mesmerising. The only disappointment for me was she didn’t do the song Magic. Maybe we’ll get Special Live Clip 2 soon?

Today I read an article from Allkpop posted by KatL903 that was titled Netizens react to Twice Nayeon’s stage outfits for ABCD. Clearly, in light of recent current affairs, this is not the most important issue, but as a Once it caught my eye (and provided some much-needed light relief). The outfits were all invariably described as ‘daring’ and they initiated a flurry of comments, mostly positive, from the mysterious ‘netizens’. I mean, it all makes sense – what’s not to love? Most common response seemed to be ‘she ate in all of those’. Ate (as in ‘did very well’) is a very popular word in Kpop at the moment. It’s even featuring in the song titles. Well, some people didn’t think Nayeon ate. One netizen called Bapsahil labelled our girl whore, hag, skanky and cheap and disgusting. Phew! Thankfully, the fans heaped scorn on this person, and I downvoted every one of her posts, as all right-thinking people should. I mean, what’s their deal? Is this conservative backlash from the touching her fanny part in the music video? Anyway, I go for nerdgirl Nayeon in the glasses.

I’m seeing lots of promo pictures for Twice’s new Japan album Dive on Twitter lately. There’s a series of all nine members that I’m trying to collect – coz I get collector’s fever sometimes. I’m missing Tzuyu and Chaeyoung. Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have them, would you? Besides releasing Korean albums, Twice have been releasing specific for Japan albums that are completely different to the Korean ones, and that are sung in Japanese (and some English). The first was BDZ in 2018, then &Twice in 2019, then Perfect World (a particular favourite) in 2021, then Celebrate in 2022. They always feature the most recent official Japanese singles on them, but not the b-sides. Usually there’s three or more such singles, but at the moment they’ve only released one, Hare Hare, plus a promotional thing for Family Mart, a Japanese kombini chain, called Dance Again. I’m hoping that song’s on the album, even though it’s not one of their best, because I have a fond association with it in connection with my trip to Japan. I was staying at a hotel in Asakusabashi in Tokyo and went to my local Family Mart kombini, and what did I spy but the girls’ smiling faces looking out at me from a promotional display in there! Even though it was Korea by way of Japan, it felt like a welcome taste of home. In fact, two days before my trip, I saw Twice in concert at Marvel Stadium, Melbourne. They ate, and then some.

Another Allkpop headline that was complete clickbait for me was North Korea publicly executes a man in his 20s for listening to Kpop. Woah, harsh! The article, by Sophie-Ha, offered very little evidence of the reality of this, and the headline image was a drawing of a man facing a firing squad. But some commentators fell for it, expressing concern for the poor man and revulsion at ‘the dictatorship’. Others correctly, I think, labelled the article as fake news. I liked the comments that Kim Jong Un is a Red Velvet fan. Funny, and a little insane.

The ABC’s 7:30 Report had an interview between host Sarah Ferguson and loony US Republican firebrand, Marjorie Taylor Greene, that was weirdly compelling. Firstly, the presence of Greene on the ABC provoked some outraged comment from some along the lines of Why give such a toxic commentator a platform on the ABC? To me it was no different to the way its Insiders program constantly features that Murdoch half-wit, James Campbell. And as one observer noted on Twitter: ‘it’s amusing to hear so many calling for the ABC not to interview anyone with an opposing opinion’. Greene was ostensibly on the show to talk about the recent trial and release of Julian Assange, and on that topic she almost sounded coherent. But once Ferguson shifted the focus to Trump’s trial and events of January 2021, Greene’s fangs came out. ‘Are you even a serious interviewer?’ she berated, taking her cue from Trump’s bullying approach to hostile interviews. Ferguson looked kind of rattled actually, but carried on patiently trying to get Greene to acknowledge the connection between her support of Assange and her indifference to other whistleblowers. The point, I assume, being that Greene sees the Assange case as a chance to help bring down Biden’s administration in the coming election. It was pretty nasty, and pretty entertaining. What a nasty, grating fishwife is MTG! Despite what some commentators have said (and it not giving me any pleasure), I think Greene somehow got the better of Ferguson. Her body language reeked of nervousness. A Twitter comment from Rush2112 says it all: ‘Ferguson ambushed her. But MTG made her look like a scared little girl.’

Anime Underground had an amusing, though gross, list of 14 Anime Moments That Made Us Feel Like We Needed a Shower by Anna Lindwasser that I couldn’t resist checking out. After I did, I kind of regretted it. The premise was a look at the ‘raunchy scenes’ and ‘questionable moments’ in animes that left you feeling…dirty. I won’t detail them here, just gonna provide the link, but to get a ‘flavour’ of the list, here’s an example: ‘Anna Nishikinomiya Bakes Some Very Special Cookies in Shimoneta’; the character in question is ‘secretly wild with lust’ and adds a secret ingredient to some cookies for a boy she likes – she calls the ingredient her ‘love nectar’. What could that be?

One of my library colleagues, Matt, surprised me when he told me about an event he’s going to next week called ‘Magic Camp’. It’s a week-long event to be held at Wesley College where children will be trained in and learn all about – you guessed it – magic and magic tricks. Put on by Melbourne Magic Academy, Matt will be there helping all the little would-be Hogwarts alumni release their inner wizards. It looks like a terrific program, with a detailed and education-based curriculum, though it’s somewhat pricey. One sales pitches for the camp is, ‘By performing magic kids learn to see things from other people’s perspectives, anticipate reactions, and choose their words with intention, cultivating empathy and imagination’. The site’s worth checking out.

New Car Saga

I finally got my new car! It’s a blue Hyundai Veloster, 2016 turbo model. Very sporty. Had a look at it out in Cranbourne, took it for a spin. It was a dream to drive. There’s a subwoofer built in to the boot, plus a cd player. It’s like it was made just for me. It also comes with a sunroof, standard. I think most of all I like the colour, a speckled blue that all the cars in this model (there were only 200

made for Australia) came with. I think of it as Tachikoma blue – yet another Ghost In the Shell reference for it. Negotiations for the purchase were pretty smooth. Main sticking point was the roadworthy, whether I should get it or the seller. I settled on the seller, for a little extra money. Have to say, it was not cheap: it cost me one of these… 

Can’t wait to bring it home. This officially ends the New Car Saga. Phew!

I had the day off today and took the opportunity to go to the bank to get the money out for my new car purchase (yes, the seller wants cash). I also went to some shops, and in a Cash Converters I found a great little figurine of the blue velociraptor from the recent Chris Pratt Jurassic World films. It was perfect timing, because the figurine will make the perfect mascot for my Veloster car. How can you not think of velociraptors with a name like that? And the fact that it’s blue, like the car, so perfect. It will look good somewhere on the dash. That’s my car: my ‘Raptor’.

Whilst at the Cash Converters I also bought the film Skyline on bluray. I have some affection for this scifi thriller from 2010, because I saw it at a cinema in Santa Monica, California that year. And the film is set in and around the marina district there. It was great watching all that mayhem go down (it’s an alien invasion flick) virtually where I was staying. I later saw the sequel, Beyond Skyline, which was even better and much more bonkers. I’ll be very interested to see how this film shapes up after all those years.

I watched the first ep of a TV series called 1883 that I borrowed from the library. It’s billed as ‘a Yellowstone origin story’, so clearly it’s part of that franchise. I had watched the first episode of the original series starring Kevin Costner, and had issues with it. I hoped this series, which is set in the titular year, long before the original series is set, might avoid some of the issues I had encountered. So far, it has. It’s a pretty absorbing migrant trail ride story with Sam Elliot’s trail-master in the lead. It’s nothing we haven’t really seen before (maybe it overdoes the beautiful orange sunset shots, which remind me of Lonesome Dove) but it’s pretty solid entertainment. I’m liking the spare, pithy dialogue, which is contrasted by Isabel May’s character Elsa’s formal memoir-like recollections told in voice over. This first episode’s done a good job of sucking me in to its gritty, if somewhat glamorized, vision of that year. Let’s see how far it can take me.

I finally got around to listening to one of the albums I bought at the Box Hill Record Fair all those months ago. It was The Outlaws’ Greatest Hits. The Outlaws were a good southern rock band from the seventies and some of the eighties. Very much influenced by the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd, with similar dual guitar players and strong vocals. Actually, their vocals were one of their really strong points. They had the usual gritty southern charm, but they added strong harmonies and real good singing. It was good ol’ boy music. I’d had some of the albums long ago but threw them out in the Great Record Cull of 1990 or thereabouts. Of course, I wish I’d kept ‘em now. But I have this cd, and it’s enough. There are some damn fine songs here, including There Goes Another Love Song and Stick Around For Rock N Roll. Tunes that stick in your head in a good way, capped with some blistering guitar-slinging passages from the boys. None more epic than the nine minute plus track Green Grass and High Tides, a song they often stretched out to twenty minutes in concert (usually dedicating it to Lynyrd Skynyrd after the plane crash). There are a couple of live songs, that to my ears are badly recorded. But I really like the song Holiday. Very melodic and breezy. It reminds me of the Doobie Brothers at their best. Now, if I could just get back those albums…

I suppose one of the reasons I picked up the Outlaws album was because I’m getting into that TV series, 1883. It’s all cowboys and trail bosses and horses and homesteaders. Tonight’s fourth episode, The Crossing, was extraordinary. The German immigrants have to face the hazardous crossing of a river, but first they have to leave behind most of their valuable possessions in order to make the crossing. Isabel May’s character, Elsa, comes to the conclusion about herself, ‘I’m a cowboy’, and then proceeds to kiss the young cowboy she’s been tasked to join looking after the herd. Later, they come across a piano abandoned in a field by the immigrants, and Elsa proceeds to play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on it. As the music plays, we see what transpires with the crossing of the river. Immigrants drown, Elsa’s mom almost drowns, dragged down by one of the Germans desperately grabbing at her, and a price is paid. When Elsa finishes the piece, she weeps. Her young paramour, who witnesses the performance, simply says, ‘Don’t yer know any happy ones?’

I drove my brother’s car in to work this morning for what will be the last time, because I pick up my car tomorrow! On the way I had another listen to The Outlaws’ Greatest Hits cd for some more good ol’ boy good times. Besides Holiday I’m really liking the song Take It Anyway You Want It, a slow grind rock song in the vein of The Rolling Stones (there’s even a cowbell on there!) and Def Leppard. It hits a nice sleazy groove, though I’m not sure if they needed to speed it up near the end. It sounds a bit like my cd’s playing up when I hear that.

I’ve been listening to my Citypop Love cd in the car. It’s one of the albums I brought back from Japan – a sister album to that Shibuya and Citypop album, actually. With this one the emphasis is on the disco side of citypop. It’s always been an element in the genre. I always thought of citypop as slightly slowed down disco with soul and saxophone, but here it sounds like straight ahead disco, for the most part. The album begins with Miki Matsubara’s classic Stay With Me, a song that appears on the other album, but this is a slightly different mix. I’m liking the disco side of citypop here, but I think the other is better for its diversity of styles.

Watched some Youtube and saw the new Red Velvet video for their latest song Cosmic. They’re another Kpop group I like. Just five members, and been around a little longer than Twice. First impressions are it’s good, but the whole midsummer vibe of the video, complete with maypoles and flowers and pagan-looking huts remind me too much of the very creepy film Midsommer. The members look great, though.

Then there was a Twice Nayeon dance practice video showing her going through her paces in various dance studios as she learns the moves for the new song, ABCD. It was very much the non-glamorized version of Nayeon, without makeup, wearing casual gym clothes, sweaty, real – which is always great to see. One of the moves had her jumping out of the arms of some male dancers onto the floor. The first time she tried it she almost fell flat on her face on the hard wooden floor. It was a scary moment, even though Nayeon and the dancers seemed to laugh it off. Why didn’t they think to put some mats down to cushion her fall, just in case? Seemed a bit irresponsible of the studio. The second half of the video showed Nayeon traveling to Las Angeles to practice with the American dancers for the film shoot. The dance moves really came together here, with Nabong gaining in confidence and ability, inspired, as she said, by the presence of the other dancers. One of the dancers, a hunky tall dude who ‘admires’ her in the video, wore a beanie that had I LOVE NY on it. Nice touch.

Twitter/X and other social media is awash with comments about the recent presidential debate between Trump and Biden. It’s pretty much meme heaven. But my favourite response to it was comedian Lee Camp’s Presidential Debate Catastrophe video. ‘It was the corpse versus the clown,’ said Camp. ‘And not even the corporate mainstream media, whose job is to defend the sham democracy that we pretend to have…could run cover for the disaster that America was forced to witness tonight.’ Camp’s truth bombs are so funny and cutting, and when he gets on a roll, free associating and spitting out hilarious invective, he’s a sight to behold. But, funny as all this is, as Camp himself admitted, ‘No matter what happens…not a lot will fundamentally change with the American empire.’ Sad, but true.

The library I worked at today is in a shopping mall, and as I walked in I was greeted by the sound of Boz Scaggs’ jaunty, boppin’ Lowdown on the PA. A good way to start work!

An ad came up on my Twitter feed. It was from the Australian newspaper, one of those Murdoch NewsCorp rags. It said ‘Welcome to the contest of ideas’. Yes, never mind the truth, let’s make ideas a contest to be won and lost and never mind the consequences. Bloody typical Murdoch shit, bloody sophistry. Blocked!