I’ve been busy setting up my old desktop computer back in the computer room. I’ve found a spot for it next to the new one. Main reason for digging it out again is so I can digitise my LPs. I can’t do that with the new one because the stupid audio interface I bought for it doesn’t do the business. Anyway, I finally got it going and the first album I digitized was the Creedence Mardi Gras album I bought recently. I made a cd disc and will burn it as an mp3 file next. It seemed to work fine, but I’ll have to check the sound quality by playing the disc in my car tomorrow.
Had a look at some of my Nana Mizuki bluray disc, the one that comes with the Museum 2 album. There was a music video for the song Pop Master and an entire concert called Nana Mizuki Sings A Lot 2. The video was a bit silly, with a couple of excited news commentators reporting from a Mizuki concert where the stadium is filled with fans wearing a branded green t-shirt and Nana sings the song backed by her band. One of the commentators gets so excited she forgets to report back. Silly, but fun. I watched the first few songs from the concert. It’s okay. Nana looks cute in a black dress and little idol top hat upon her head. The crowds’ synchronised light stick moves were impressive. Her fans are quite committed.
Did some more LP digitising on the old computer today. This time it was the Dancing For Mental Health album by Will Powers from 1988. I just did side one, and it was a treat. Such an interesting and unusual album. Masterminded by one-time Bruce Springsteen squeeze Lynn Goldsmith, it features a who’s-who of stars who contributed, including Todd Rundgren, Meatloaf, Steve Winwood and Carly Simon. The concept is a kind of community service for self actualisation. Lynn’s slowed-down and processed voice acts as a commentator for various self improvement concepts, such as Opportunity, Kissing With Confidence and the power of a Smile. The song Kissing With Confidence was the single and is probably the highlight. It’s the one that features an uncredited Carly Simon. I guess the album could be seen as new-age self improvement bullshit. That conservative wellness crap that puts the blame on the individual and not the system that usually makes me wanna puke. But there’s a sly humour throughout it, a sense of poking fun at itself that makes me think this album is pushing satire more than seriousness. I like its positive vibes. I’ll bet Oprah Winfrey loves it. Who is the woman doing the ‘bag lady rap’ at the end of Smile? She’s amazing.
Speaking of new-age bullshit…I read up some more on Tarot. This time it was the important Major Arcana card The Hermit. He represents solitude, contemplation and wisdom and holds a staff and a lantern that reflects the inner light. I identify deeply with this archetype. I was a teenage hermit, always wagging school and hanging out alone down the local creek doing nothing but listening to music. I learned my solitude there, developed my ‘resources for solitude’, as Jane Austen would say. I was too young for the wisdom part though. Not sure if I even have it now. I’m the Hermit without much wisdom.
Started listening to Stereolab’s Cobra Versus Phases album in the car. Not sure what prompted it. Famously it got a score of zero in a review on the old NME magazine. It’s certainly challenging and sometimes frustrating, but it’s not a zero! Maybe ungainly might be the right word; like the album title, the full version of which is Cobra Verses Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night. Phew! I really like the songs People Do It All the Time, The Free Design, Infinity Girl, The Spiracles, Caleidoscopic Gaze, Strobo Acceleration and Come and Play in the Milky Night. I’m definitely warming to the gentle and downbeat Velvet Water, but I still struggle with Blue Milk, a long, two-note meditation with a fast bit at the end. The live version is so much better (see below).
Digitised side one of the Marshall Hain album, Free Ride, plus Stevie Wonder’s Lately. The Marshall Hain is one I bought at Dixons about six months ago. They’re known for that one hit they had, Dancing in the City, which is on the album. A good song. The album’s okay. It came out in 1978 and there’s something about the sound of it and the singer’s voice that reminds me of Christine McVie and Fleetwood Mac. I have this alternative timeline fantasy about it wherein I imagine it’s an album the Mac might have made if they’d not gone to the US and hooked up with Stevie and Lindsay and instead remained a three-piece centred around McVie’s vocals and keyboard playing. Dancing In the City and the last track, Back To the Green, particularly have that sound for me. It also reminds me of Judie Tzuke, a solo singer I liked a lot. Remember Stay With Me Till Dawn? I do!
Watched couple of eps of Love Live and the new Misamomusic video of the song New Look. This is apparently a remake of a Namie Amuro song from the noughties. It’s quirky and completely unexpected, and I think I like it. It was so nice to watch Love Live again. I’d forgotten how competely kawaii and moe it is. It’s a cuteness overload. It was interesting to note that all future nine members of Muse show up in the first episode. Can’t wait to see Nico do her Nico Ni routine. Actually, I’ve seen Momo of Misamo do that routine, so obviously the members (all being Japanese) are familiar with it too.
There’s lots of footage of Twice working in a cafe on Twitter at the moment. I’ll have to check that out, but so far it hasn’t shown up on Youtube. I liked one post: Dahyun serving coffee; Mina serving visuals. Though it short-changes Dahyun, who is surely serving both coffee and visuals.
Watched latest Twice Time To Twice, called Tdoong Pocha. This has been advertised as a bit of a booze fest, where most of the members get drunk on alcohol. So far it’s just been a grocery shopping expedition and games session. Sana, Momo, Chaeyoung and Tzuyu elect to do the shopping, and we watch their progress, while the others stay at some venue where they do various game tasks to score enough money to help fund the other members’ shopping trip. It’s a fun idea, especially watching the four shoppers be completely clueless about what to get. I was amazed it looked like they were in an actual supermarket with other shoppers walking around seemingly oblivious of who they were. If I was in a supermarket and encountered four members of Twice I’d be flabbergasted and wouldn’t stop staring. I thought they would at least close off the supermarket and let the girls roam free. The shopping expedition turned out to be a bit of a farce. When the shoppers got back and showed the others what they’d bought there was confusion and disappointment. Jihyo and Jeongyeon were especially vocal in their disappointment. They were wanting cooking ingredients, but the shoppers mostly got snacks. It made me wonder why the shopping group hadn’t taken orders from the others as to what to get before they left. It was kind of funny, but also a bit awkward. At one point Jihyo said, ‘Let’s order takeaway’. I assume the next episode will feature a cookup and mukbang. Bring it on, my silly awkward puppies!
Listened to the Kinks’ first album while downloading some site pages for posterity. It’s still a pretty ordinary album with a shitty production care of that con artist Shel Talmy. Ray’s songwriting is still embyonic. There’s the classic You Really Got Me, and the discovered-later classic (thanks to the Pretenders’ version) Stop Your Sobbing, but not much else. Of the original album I like those two songs plus I Took My Baby Home (the b-side to the very first single, Long Tall Sally) and the great rave up cover of Got Love If You Want. I have amazing stereo versions of that one and Sobbing from the Golden Hour of the Kinks Vol 2 album. I especially love the stereo Sobbing because Ray’s wife Rasa’s backing vocals are much further up in the mix, where they belong. Oh, I guess I like the instrumental called Revenge, which probably comes closest in sound to You Really Got Me. The added credit given to Larry Page, who had nothing to do with it and probably put the credit there himself, always brings a smile. Ray had some fun with it later on the song Moneygoround (‘Robert gave half to Larry, who adored my instrumentals’). The rest is competent but pretty average covers of Chuck Berry songs and second string Ray tunes, plus possibly their nadir, the awful Bald Headed Woman.
The cd has another twelve extra songs that weren’t on the album. They consist mostly of the next single, the first two singles and a couple of EPs. The best of which is, of course, their classic All Day and All of the Night, but there are some other nice ones. I really like It’s Alright (another rave up), I Gotta Move (cool bass line), and the piano-led I’ve Got That Feeling. I’m also warming to I Gotta Go Now, with its sly rhythm. Previously unreleased song I Don’t Need You Anymore needs more listening from me to register. Anyway, this album was the humble start of the journey that was the awesome band The Kinks. It, like them, will always have a place in my heart.
Watched some Youtubes. There was a new Twice series Tdoong Baseball Team about them forming a baseball team that was a bit off the wall. The first episode had them meeting each other for tryouts and assuming various personas. It was ditzy fun, with Momo pretending she’s Korean, and Jeongyeon taking on a shy persona, and Dahyun being the privileged team owner’s daughter and so on. I’m not sure where they’re going with all this, but I’m here for it.
There was also an interesting video by Robert’s Record Corner about The Rise and Fall of the Double Album concept. The guy gives us a brief history of the LP as it originated in the forties and how it stretched out into the double album in the sixties with Bob Dylan’s Blonde On Blonde album. He makes a good case for the idea that most double albums represented the artist’s best work. Of course this isn’t the case for Fleetwood Mac (Tusk) or Yes (Tales of Topographic Oceans) but yeah, there is a case. Then Sony chose Billy Joel’s 52nd Street album to be the very first cd they released, thus signaling the downfall of the LP. The vid ended with the guy giving his list of favourite top 10 double albums. It’s a pretty predictable list except for number one, which is the Minutemen album Nickels on the Dime. My own looks something like this. I’m gonna cheat by adding two compilation albums to the list.
XTC – English Settlement Captain Beefheart – Trout Mask Replica Genesis – Lamb Lies Down On Broadway Smashing Pumpkins – Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (double cd!) Elton John – Goodbye Yellow Brick Road The Beatles – The White Album Bob Dylan – Blonde On Blonde The Clash – London Calling Steely Dan – Greatest Hits The Moody Blues – This is the Moody Blues
On Wednesday I had the day off and did a trip into Melbourne. My report of it is here in a separate blog.
Read some of that Essential Anime Guide I bought at Minotaur on Wednesday. It’s by Patrick Macias and Samuel Sattin. It lists 50 iconic anime films, TV series and cult classics. The usual suspects are front and centre: Astroboy, Gundam, Lupin, Akira, Ghost In the Shell, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Naruto, Death Note, Attack On Titan; there’s even K-On! And a Rumiko Takahashi, namely Ranma ½. It seems they’ve selected one film or series per director. Thus it’s only Ranma for Rumiko, and they’ve gone with Princess Mononoke for Miyazaki, and Millennium Actress for Satashi Kon. Fair enough. The writers clearly didn’t get clearance for any photos or pictures of the animes, as there isn’t any – just some generic, possibly AI generated images that match the general theme of the animes. That’s okay, I’m more interested in the written content anyway. I’ve already read the articles on some of my faves, including Macross, K-On, Ranma and Evangelion. The info is pretty bland, so far. Maybe that’s because I’m familiar with these works. It’s the ones I haven’t seen that I’m most interested in reading about. These include Tekkonkinkreet, Gurren Lagan, Sword of the Stranger and Redline, among others. Catching all the classic anime is a bit of a quest for me, so this book will be handy.
Grabbed a book I have on reserve called Bento Power. I want to use it to help make some tasty bentos to put in my new bento box. Preparing them looks pretty involved, so I’m not sure how far I will take this. I’ll at least give it a go. I want to make something that looks straight out of a Ghibli anime.
After finishing the Cobra album, I put on a Stereolab Live concert I have in the car. This was from a concert in 2001 at Melbourne’s The Forum that I recorded off a live broadcast by radio station 3PBS. I actually went to the concert hoping to get in, but I didn’t have tickets and it was sold out. So it was nice to be able to hear it later on the radio. I remember I also went to Fitzroy that day and bought a copy of their Dots and Loops album as a kind of consolation prize. Sounds like it was a good gig. They featured much of the Cobras album, which was out at the time. I was especially blown away by the new song, Escape Pod, with its frantic vocals and swirling keyboards. But best of all was their live rendition of Blue Milk, a song from the Cobras album that was long and strange and unsatisfying on that album. But the live version is an amazing revelation. The long slow section at the start just makes sense, and when it gets ‘fast’ at the end, vocalist Laetitia lets rip with some howls and yelps (not on the album version) that really give it oomph. Sounds very punky. It’s like they got it right here with a definitive version. I love it when bands and artists do that – rework an unsatisfying studio song to make it a very satisfying live song. After that, Laetitia says, very cool, ‘Now that we’re all relaxed, we can rock.’ A line I always hear as ‘we can le Rock’. It must be her French accent. Then it’s indeed the very rocking Seeming and the Meaning, then an encore of Stars That Play in the Milky Night which is cut short by the radio broadcast.
After coming home from Lui’s I watched a couple of episodes of Love Live. Enter Nico and her Nico ni routine!
Watched a Youtube video on Evangelion titled ‘Explaining Evangelion – The Lore of Japan’s Most Brilliant Sci-Fi’ by Zachargkna. It did indeed explain the often impenetrable lore that is Evangelion and I was duly enlightened. It made me realise Evangelion is not really set in our universe or historical reality. It draws on some of our religious myths, like Adam and Eve, but it takes a very different direction. In the world of Evangelion, Adam and Eve (rebranded as Lilith) were originally visitors from another world, tasked with spreading the seed of their dying race. From Adam came the Angels, from Eve/Lilith came humans. From there it develops in a complicated and sometimes confusing way, but it is coherent, just not our world. That’s the key to understanding it: it has its own rules, its own origins – it’s its own thing, like say Gormenghast. Finished reading issue 4 of Rumiko’s Mao. It’s a much darker series than most of her others with a lot of supernatural elements. It most resembles Inuyasha, but without the laughs. I’m not minding it.
