This letter to you all has become somewhat longer than intended, so I have inserted topical music clips to listen to if you’d like a break or for related contemplations anytime. You will need your favourite beverage and a comfortable place to read. Feedback is very welcome; I’m always looking to make things better. In …
Same Old, Same Old
Letter written on behalf of GetUp to various government ministers regarding fracking in the Betaloo. The middle bullet-point section is the standard material suggested by GetUp, the rest is my own. Please write and add your voices. As usual, they will mostly ignore and “know better” – but they don’t deserve to do that without …
Off-Grid Thoughts
This serves as a second instalment for our off-grid article in The Owner Builder 209 (October 2018). I might put the jpgs of this article in here next time I’m at the desktop computer… Glossary of acronyms:FFs = fossil fuelsBAU = business as usual We’re in rural Western Australia and live off-grid on solar panels. …
Songs Of A Lost World – Two Grief Songs for End Times
This week we got a sneak preview of the upcoming Cure album when the band gave two new songs an airing in their first gig back since the pandemic began. This is courtesy of phone footage posted on YouTube – not generally something I watch, but I will make an exception for this occasion (and …
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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.
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…
Your Cow Pats Are On Fire
Ever heard of mansplaining? The most outstanding example I’ve personally experienced in recent years was when I called up our local volunteer fire chief because we had a peat fire, and requested the fire truck to put it out. We both volunteer at the bushfire brigade, but the chief has to sign off on equipment …
Déjà vu
Is anyone else here who lived through the 80s (or earlier relevant epochs) experiencing a sense of history repeating itself, with the invasion of Ukraine and all that entails, and the consciousness that there’s nuclear weapons in the hands of madmen? When I was a teenager, there was a painful awareness of this. Here’s a …
Open Letter To The “Different”
The right-wing Australian federal government and their fundamentalist PM are currently trying to pass legislation which would make it legal for religious people to spout hate speech against LGBTIQ and to discriminate against them, including specifically the expelling of transsexual children from private schools. This has led to impassioned discussion on The Guardian. Amongst the …
Modern Fairytales: Rock’n’Roll & Space Aliens
Some time ago, there was a tedious online carry-on because the bass player of a certain longtime band had apparently announced on social media that he’d had a falling out and was quitting. This was followed by a lot of sound and fury from a subsection of the fan base, and complete silence from the …
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