It still hasn’t sunk in. Matilda died this afternoon. Just like that. We were out hiking and nearly at the turn-around point two hours from the car, when there was a repeat of what happened on our Peaceful Bay walk two months ago – on the lead, and next thing she’s gone SPROING and is …
Love in the Time of Homo colossus: Dating for Doomers
This is a spin-off from an online music journal I kept for a few years, in which I mused about life and the universe while exploring the back catalogue of a band I had never liked until discovering belatedly that they had a serious, dark side. The main themes in this anecdotal piece are dating …
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Rare Concert: The Church, Fremantle, June 11, 2023
There are two stories here: The tribulations of off-grid smallholders attending a metropolitan concert for the first time in aeons, and the actual concert review. You can skip straight to the latter subheading if you’re mostly interested in the concert. Well – it took me a while to finally catch live a band whose music …
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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 “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 …
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…
South Coast Wilderness Walks 2022 Volume 5
September 15, 2022 VALLEY OF THE GIANTS TO BOXHALL ROAD Today we did a 14.5km walk on the Bibbulmun trail, from Howe Road to Boxhall Road and back again, and from there to the Valley of the Giants and back again. As we’ve done so many coastal trails recently, we felt like going back in …
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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…
Exploring the Back Catalogue: Self-Titled, Lost, Labyrinth & Identity Crisis
I think this is a terrific album opener – heart on the sleeve, in your face, setting the tone and preparing you for what is to come.