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On Pluribus

I’m rewatching the initial episodes of Pluribus while waiting for new ones to come out, specifically to savour the film-making and storytelling now I already know what happens in each episode.

Pluribus is the antithesis of modern American drama. It is film-making with space to breathe and room to think, without rushing through the shots or clobbering you with sound. It’s the epitome of “show, don’t tell” with long stretches where you are invited to observe the characters and scenery in silence and come to your own conclusions…

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

A Perth radio station called 6UVS-FM played alternative music, and had this request show.  People who grew up in the age of music-on-tap won’t be able to fully appreciate the lure of those erstwhile request shows – back then, you were so much at the mercy of what people happened to play on the radio, and what you could afford to buy with your meagre kid budget.  So request shows gave you a chance to hear again what you couldn’t afford.  But 6UVS-FM also had a twist to their request show:  You could call in and request that they destroy a particular record on air.  This was in the dying days of vinyl, which makes such a pleasing, visceral crunch when destroyed.  CDs just can’t compete here!  There were a lot of requests for the destruction of Wham! records…

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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…