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Exploring “Join The Dots” – CD-2, 1980s, Smorgasbord, Poetic Debunking & The Only One vs Led Zep

August 17, 2019 CD-2 I’ve really been looking forward to writing this next part – the last section of the previous instalment felt kind of like homework I had to get through – my listening has been ahead of my writing, and there’s some songs I’m falling in love with on CD-2!  The opener, A …

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Exploring “Join The Dots” – Series Intro, CD-3, Light My Bloody Fire & Shakespeare

I’ve long meant to properly curate the accidental prequel that started the whole Exploring the Back Catalogue thing for me.

I was on an alternative music forum when we acquired Join The Dots and was participating in a Currently Listening thread. Suddenly I was mostly currently listening to Join The Dots, which there is rather a lot of – and as usual when I’m listening to music that gets me thinking, I wanted to write about it and, eternal optimist that I am, perhaps even be able to engage in comparing notes with other listeners…

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Exploring the Back Catalogue: Pornography – First Impressions & Associations

I finally got around to listening to this album 40 years after its release. Just saying that gives me the bends. It was the year I arrived in Australia and within 12 months pre-teen me was hearing Boys Don’t Cry, and Let’s Go To Bed on 96fm in its 1980s relatively independent phase before it was sold to a mainstream entertainment company. Those were the days, say I in a mock creaky voice, because 96fm was a unique station staffed by music buffs who actively educated listeners on music history and kept their playlist both broad and deep, playing 60s, 70s and what was then contemporary 80s music, album cuts as well as singles, and regular live concerts – all of which was relevant in a pre-Internet world, where you were at the mercy of radio stations, your friends, and your own puny budget in what you would end up accessing.

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South Coast Wilderness Walks 2022 Volume 4

We talked as we walked along, about how happy we always feel to walk in intact nature as it’s supposed to be, away from the scarring on the earth that has been imposed by broadacre agriculture, industry and urbanisation. The biological riches of these areas are mind-boggling and took millions of years to evolve. This is nature for millions of species, not nature stripped away to serve but one. When we walk along in places like this, the ratio of humans to landscape is about right and there is a pervasive sense of balance.

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Exploring the Back Catalogue: Hiatus Reflection

Welcome back to my open music journal. It’s about to get underway again after a hiatus, and here’s why it’s been a year since I wrote anything new.

Last year I took a break from it to move the material from a forum onto my own space. You’d think that the best place to write this stuff would be a public forum specifically for the audience of the band whose back catalogue I am exploring. After all, my husband has a thing for writing recreational essays on the Cyberman episodes of Dr Who audio dramas, and duly places them on Gallifrey Base…