Sun, 9 Feb: Weekly Review 48

Watched the Beach Boys Lost Concert video. It was just the Boys, including Brian, doing a straight run of nine songs in under thirty minutes. This was part of a concert that included The Beatles and Lesley Gore. All in crisp black and white, it’s a great document of the Beach Boys as they were in 1964. Songs included are Fun, Fun, Fun, Surfin’ USA, Papa Oom Mow Mow, Long Tall Texan, In My Room, Surfer Girl, Shut Down and Little Deuce Coupe. Denny really impresses with some of those crackin’ drum fills. He may not be considered that good, but he was at least a dynamic drummer. Brian is clearly the musical star though with those amazing falsetto vocals. Everyone’s having fun, especially the girls in the audience, whose shrill shouts punctuate each performance (at least half of them are for Dennis!). This was a great little grab. I’m glad someone finally found the ‘lost concert’.

I watched the second episode of the anime Pluto on Netflix. This one introduces a new version of Astroboy, who helps Inspector Gesicht with his investigation. There’s a nice scene where, having experienced Gesicht’s memory chip, he cries in private over what he learns of Gesicht’s private life. But the story centres mostly around a robot character called Brando, a famous robot wrestler, who is next in line to be killed by the mysterious entity that is killing super robots like him. The usual pathos follows as he’s got a wife and kids he leaves behind. Another inspector, Tawashi, displays signs of outright robot racism towards Atom and robots like him. And old big nose, Professor Ochanomizu, from the original Astroboy story, whose nose is much smaller here, makes a cameo in this ep. Despite some racism from characters like Tawashi, robots seem to be pretty well integrated into society in this iteration of the story. I’ll keep with it.

Watched the End of Evangelion movie on Netflix. It was perplexing. Stupidly, I thought Director and Writer Hideaki Anno had set out with this iteration to give some coherence to the muddled last two episodes of the original story. Instead, the bastard has doubled down on the craziness from the original ending. There’s even a live action sequence of a group of people sitting in a theatre (presumably at a showing of Evangelion) and applauding what they see, much like the notorious scene in the original series where all the other characters applaud Shinji’s efforts towards self-insight. But this time they’re applauding Anno. I think he’s a having a joke on us, and especially the critics who hated the old version but raved about this version of the story. I think I much prefer the film reboots.

I read another section of Complicated Game. This time it was the song Real By Reel from Drums and Wires. It was a song they often used to start their shows, and Andy revealed that he would often get sleepy just before a gig, which is hard to believe. But apparently it’s true. He also mentioned his vocal on the song was sped up because he was having trouble singing in the right key. Then it was mentioned that even Paul McCartney, on When I’m Sixty Four, had his voice ‘raised’ to fit the song’s key. Hilariously, Andy remarked, ‘McCartney sounds about nine inches high on that song’.

Read the chapter on Travels In Nihilon in Andy Partridge’s book Complicated Game. This was never one of my favourite XTC songs. The regular drum pattern, though well played by Terry Chambers, was boring to me, and the song’s a weak attempt at something like Tomorrow Never Knows, by the Beatles. I must say I’m a bit disappointed with this section of the book and this album, Black Sea. I wanted Andy to talk about my favourite song here, Paper and Iron. I wanted to know where he got the unusual main rhythm for the song from. It sounds uncannily similar to the rhythm on Kate Bush’s single Sat In Your Lap, which came out about a year later. Did he ever hear it, and did he have some thoughts? Has Kate ever made a statement about it? I wanna know!

Read more of Andy’s Complicated Game. This time he was talking about his classic single Sense Working Overtime. I was interested to read that the single version was edited slightly. I had a listen to it on my copy of The Compact XTC and, yep, there’s a small edit during the middle section. The buses are no longer skidding on black ice. The interviewer suggested this was cut out because the record company were scared of bus crashes. Andy just figured they wanted to shorten the song for the usual reason with a single – to make it shorter and more playable to DJs. But it’s a short edit – must be only about thirty seconds shaved off it. The single version is still well over four minutes long. It’s not a bad edit. Doesn’t ruin the song. I don’t know the Manfred Mann song that inspired it. But it was nice to get the insight into those ‘England’s glory’ and ‘a striking beauty’ asides – they were advertising copy for a match company, and Andy loves matchbox art.

I watched the first episode of GITS: 2045 the anime series. I’m not sure if I’ll watch the rest of the first season, having just watched the movie edit, but I think I’ll stay around for season two. It is interesting picking up on what the film left out, like the scene in Palm Springs when Batou pats the Tachikoma on the head and basically calls it a ‘good boy’. I liked that (love them Tachikomas). Disappointingly, they’ve changed the end credit sequence, which used to feature some dynamic shots of the cast looking very spiffy, especially Togusa and Batou. Oh well.

I watched the second ep of GITS 2045. This featured the long and exciting sequence where Motoko and the gang try to stop a weaponized drone from destroying the house of a ‘one-percenter’ it has targeted. For all her heroics, Motoko fails to stop the drone through the ludicrous detail of not neutralizing its weapon system, which she seems to have forgotten about. It’s a rare clunky detail in an otherwise tight show. I’m going to skip over the rest of this season, which I saw in the edited film version recently, and dig into season two.

I returned to my Urusei Yatsura collection and watched episode number 61, called The Mendo Family Masked Ball. This isn’t one of the top 50 episodes in the list I’m going through, but I wanted to watch something from disc number 7, which doesn’t contain a top 50 ep, because I needed to check it for playability. For a random episode it was even more nutty and over the top than usual, and I loved it. The masked ball of the title is a martial arts battle designed to inflict maximum pain upon one Ataru Moroboshi, whom Mendo has decided must be eliminated to stop him from making romantic overtures to his sister, Ryoko. The invitation is conveyed via a puppet show put on by Ryoko’s masked minions. The episode ends with Lum knocking out Ataru with a very large mallet. Poor guy cannot take a trick.

Watched first Media Watch for the year with new host, Linton Besser, who was magnificently hirsute. He did a segment on that dodgy immigration visa numbers story that was inflated by ten times. Boy, didn’t the mainstream media jump on that figure of over 21,000 visas granted to immigrants, when it turned out the correct number was closer to 2,100. Never mind the facts, if it fits the narrative of maximising outrage, go with it. Most surprising, the one who reported it correctly was Peta Credlin on Sky News. He also did a segment attacking Chas Licciardello from Planet America for violating ABC rules on advertising. It was good start to his hosting of the show.

Read another story from Gael Baudino’s book. The story was A Touch of Distant Hands, another one set in the same old-time fantasy village as the other two stories I read in this collection. It was about a witch called Roxanne who is called upon by the elf Varden to help cure the girl Charity of her nightmares. This is the girl who was once the Leatherwoman of the earlier story, Charity. It seems her old identity, which she knows nothing about, is pushing itself into her subconscious giving her bad dreams. And it is up to Roxanne, with her witchy cures, to help her – aided by Varden. There’s a strong element of paganism about Roxanne that clashes with the Christian beliefs generally held by the townsfolk (and, I presume, Baudino). And there’s some psychology in Charity’s nightmares and their origins. It all makes for a tasty combination.

I read another Gael Baudino short story, this one called Elvenhome. This is the first of the stories from the second half of the book that are set in contemporary times. Joan lives in Denver, Colorado, and is the boss at an employment agency. But she’s been having ‘odd’ days where she’s been feeling super-sensitive about nature, a sense of oneness and contentment about the world. It’s affecting her normally cutthroat attitude at work. Turns out, she’s turning into an elf. I’m beginning to develop a theory about all this that’s based on the ideas in that book I read recently called Capitalism: A Horror Story. My theory is that, where horror makes a good explanation for the evils of Capitalism, fantasy works well to offer a type of antidote or alternative to that evil. The classic example of course is Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, but it’s also here in Baudino’s work too.

Read another story in Gael Baudino’s book Spires of Spirit. This one was called Please Come To Denver (in the Spring). It was about Lauri, a woman moving to Denver and having trouble letting go of her former girlfriend, Carrie, who she has left back in LA. And, like Ash in the previous story, she is also becoming an elf. It is this development that seems to help her come to terms with the separation. Elves, as Baudino draws them, are wise and completely in touch, not only with nature and animals, but with their own emotions. They are a better, more mature people. They are the people we need to be if we are to escape from or get rid of the Trumps from our world.

Lots of news items today about the new Chinese AI Deepseek. MSM reporting it all as a security issue not the competition issue that it really is. Even 3RRR did it. And then there’s Trump’s meeting with Netanyahu and his crazy pronouncements about taking over Gaza, all reported blandly as though it’s business as usual. I fucking hate the mainstream media! What was worse was the question was put to Anthony Albanese if he agreed with Trump’s ‘plans’ (it was really just a brain fart). Albo prevaricated, as if not wanting to offend the Orange Guy. The correct answer is a very firm No, Albo, you spineless twerp.

Had a session listening to my Sweet album, the Action Definitive Story collection. This was the second disc and I listened to the tunes I wasn’t that familiar with. There were a lot of them! They all sounded great, especially one called Sixties Man and Do It All Over Again, both from the post-Brian era. The song Cockroach starts with the line, ‘You crawled into my bed like a cockroach’. What an opening line! It’s amazing to me that, after all these years, this band – whose hits are part of my DNA – can still surprise me.

I also had a listen to my Blackfeather album, At the Mountains of Madness. This is the one that has that amazing song, Seasons of Change. I’m really liking the extended workouts of Mango’s Theme and Long Legged Lovely. Instrumental Mango’s Theme is sounding a bit like an uptempo version of Bolero. Some really nice strings and stunning guitar work. The rhythm section’s not bad, either. The Rat Suite is kinda cool with a story about a rotten rat eating all the cheese. I think it’s a pity the title song is the only one that seems to feed into the HP Lovecraft story. It’s not a concept album. I think old Australian rock music is the only thing I actually feel patriotic about.

I saw on Youtube that Twice will be coming out with a new Time To Twice series next week. Yay! Details are scant, but it looks like it might be a return to the concept of the very first TTT. Whatever it is, I know it’ll be fun.

I watched the James Bond film Quantum of Solace today. It was much better than I remembered it – at least what I remembered of it, which was very little. It helped that I was watching with subtitles and was able to catch the rapid exposition that clued me in that this was a continuation of the first film, Casino Royale. This was a bold move on the part of the Bond people. One reviewer, Matt, on Letterboxd suggested it was ‘a fever dream On Her Majesty’s Secret Service sequel we never got’. Rather than gold, this time out we get a woman covered in oil. Jack White and Alicia Keys supply the theme song that I believe was offered first to Amy Winehouse, who was too incapacitated to participate. Director Marc Foster likes to cross-cut the action in one scene with the action from somewhere else, as in the scene where Bond chases an M16 mole whilst a chaotic horse race is going on nearby. A little rushed and convoluted in its story telling (some might say efficient) but a solid outing. Bond’s revenge upon those who drove Vesper to her suicide in Casino Royale seems well-earned. I gave it three and a half stars on Letterboxd. My review also included the observation, ‘Best film franchise ever’, and I stand by that.