Smithology

I’ve been feeling really bored with my record collection lately and part of the problem is that I seem to have accumulated a lot of depressing introspective navel gazing music from the nineties: yeah I’m talking about you Counting Crows, Nirvana and Radiohead. As Ben Folds said “You all don’t know what it’s like being male, middle class and white” (Rocking the Suburbs, 2001)

So I was really happy today to rediscover R.E.M’s Lifes Rich Pageant in which Michael Stipe proves that it’s possible to rock out without the self hatred. In fact Lifes Rich Pageant has an activist feel to it: A hopeful, making a change for the better kind of vibe.

Here’s the track listing with my commentary. The lyrics to the songs don’t make all that much sense as Michael seems to have written from a stream of consciousness but they still tell a story.

Begin the Begin has the killer opening riff for the record which lets you know that you are in for a lot of rocking out. As the feedback dies down, Michael’s lyrics meander on a political theme to do with a need for political reform. He talks about politicians playing follow the leader. He mentions Miles Standish one of the first leaders in America.

Michaels lyrics are full of humour and sometimes self referential:

Answer me a question – I can’t itemise – I can’t think clearly – look to me for answers – it’s not there / I can’t even rhyme! (verse 3)

These Days continues the rocking pace with more opening guitar goodness followed by some weird lyrics about losing a hat. To me this song is about the gift of music, Michael talks about the enthusiasm of singing music and how it can energise us.

Fly to carry each his burden / We are young despite the years we are concern / We are hope despite the times / All of the sudden, these days / Happy throngs, take this joy wherever, wherever you go (R.E.M. These Days via lyricsfreak)

Fall on Me backs off the pace a bit but still punches you in the ribs with the bassline. It is apparently about acid rain but can easily also be about climate change. It talks about the lack of political will to protect the environment.

Theres the progress we have found / A way to talk around the problem / Building towered foresight / Isn’t anything at all. / Buy the sky and sell the sky and bleed the sky and tell the sky / Don’t fall on me (verse 2 via lyricsfreak)

Cuyahoga is a pretty dark track about the Cuyahoga river which famously caught fire due to pollution however to me this song is about the indigenous people displaced by colonisation and the loss of their culture. It has a reconcilliation theme that works with the story of Australia’s Aboriginal people. (lyrics via lyricsfreak)

Lets put our heads together and start a new country up / Our fathers fathers father tried, erased the parts he didnt like (verse 1)

and

This is where we walked, this is where we swam / Take a picture here, take a souvenir (recurring bridge)

and

Rewrite the book and rule the pages, saving face, secured in faith / Bury, burn the waste behind you (variation bridge)

Hyena is just a fun rocking song to pick up the pace again. I think it’s based on African mythology. (lyrics)

Underneath the Bunker is mostly instrumental.

The Flowers of Guatemala seems like a sweet song about flowers with an uplifting guitar solo. Peter Buck’s guitar playing really features on this album. Actually, the flower mentioned is a beautiful but deadly mushroom which is probably a reference to Guatemala’s bloody history. The country had it’s first free election in 1986 when Lifes Rich Pageant was Released. (lyrics)

I Believe seems to be about idealism or a spiritual experience had during a feverish hallucination. He talks about having a mission in life but also how ideals contradict each other and can cause a kind of stalemate.

Trust in your calling, make sure your calling’s true /
Think of others, before the others think of you (lyrics)

What If We Give It Away? Seems to be about doubting what you’re doing and thinking about giving up on trying to change things. (lyrics)

Just a Touch is yet another rocking wild song and I have no idea what it’s about. I can’t even hear the lyrics except for the “Kevin heard it on the radio” line.

Swan Swan Hummingbird WTF? (lyrics)

Superman is an awesome album finisher (complete with a sound byte from a toy Godzilla). Even though I have bonus tracks on the CD I bought, I usually stop listening at this song. I like the way this song plays on Superman’s super powers.

You don’t really love that guy you make it with now do you / I know you don’t love that guy ‘cause I can see right through you (lyrics)

Anyway, I really love this album and I hope that you will give it a listen if you get the chance or if you already have it, tell me your thoughts on it in the comments.

Here’s a great live version of I Believe.

Uncategorized music, rem

I catch up to the bottleneck on the Ipswich Motorway on my way to work, settling in behind the bulk of a white Nissan Pathfinder. Beside me a bright yellow van declares its contents as fresh flowers and behind it, also bright yellow I see a large bill-board: “Want Longer Lasting Sex?”. The bill-board is installed on the corner of a junkyard where the rusting corpses of a thousand cars are stacked four deep. Behind me, a Daihatsu Charade circa 1989 catches up. I can see the driver in the rear view mirror: flanny shirt, matrix style sunglasses and a flowing mullet. He is rocking out to something. I’m listening impassively to Nirvana: Never Mind and I hear Kurt Cobain informing me that he doesn’t have a God. I wonder what music other people are listening to in the cars around me, sometimes I catch fragments of music from other cars that have the same iPod radio adapter that I have: usually mainstream rock/pop, sometimes stock market commentary. Sometimes I can figure out which car I’m jamming with and I wonder if they can hear me too. But we all keep our eyes straight ahead. The traffic starts moving again.

Uncategorized cars, contemplation

I really like the new Mazda3 we bought the other day despite advice that buying a new car is like buying $2k of depreciation as soon as you drive it out the dealership door. Sometimes, however, you realise that you only live once and maybe you just want to experience rolling down the street in your own brand spanking new shining silver rocket with cylon interior. Yeah the car has pulsing cylon lights on the stereo when you turn it on and all red backlighting with a bit of blue so that you feel like you’re in an episode of BSG when driving it.

Of course there is also the fear that you might be driving along Sir Fred Schonell Drive when suddenly out of the blue the back of the car is struck by a large object – say a truck – which causes a bit of fishtailing and crazed braking as you try not to go into the oncoming traffic moments before the the truck slams into the driver side door and rolls you half up on it’s bumper bar. Actually I’m surprised that Steph is driving so well after that really did happen to her (which is why we needed a new car in the first place)

On surveying the accident scene I was pretty amazed (and relieved) that Steph got out of the car without a scratch and actually reports that her neck and back feel looser than they ever have (maybe the accident was chiropractic somehow) and the doctor gave her a clean bill of health too (after a little joy ride in the ambulance).

Having a car accident launches you on a little journey – a bit like a quest where you meet some strange characters and find yourself in unfamiliar surroundings. After telling our story to some slightly disinterested police officers we embarked on our mission to get a new car. Steph trolled some car selling sites on the internetz for a night or two whilst I went to see the dragon, er, I mean bank who were doing their best to put the ‘W’ into banker.

You gotta hand it to our bank. I ring up to ask about a car loan and they tell me my home loan is in the red. So I get through to their debt collection people who tell me I missed a payment. So I get off the phone and go through all my statements looking for the payment. Ring them back and put the challenge to them. Actually it turns out I didn’t miss a payment, they just pressed the wrong button and turned my loan into a different type and then tried to tell me that I didn’t know what my own loan was supposed to be about. A quick consultation with the actual loan contract set things back on track but they still couldn’t give me a car loan because the computer wouldn’t let them. I had another loan approved over the phone in about five minutes flat so I guess it’s their loss.

We were also less than impressed with the lady at the car yard who’s job was to sell us the paint/rust/fabric protection and window tinting etc… She put the hard sell on us and I got confused and accidentally bought something off her. She told us that the paint on our car was going to turn into a pile of crap if we didn’t get this protection put on. I was pretty sceptical but hadn’t come prepared for this kind of assault and I should have just told her that I didn’t want to be pushed into buying anything. Instead we got suckered with the paint protection which is probably not terrible but I truly doubt that new car paint is so cheap and nasty that it needs this special magic coating.

For future reference: the best way to get a pushy salesperson off your back is to critique their sales technique: tell them you feel like they are pushing you into it, or you can also say that you don’t feel you can trust them because you feel manipulated. They are then either forced to defend themselves and deny that they are pushing you into it (thus backing off) or admit that they are being pushy in which case you can tell them that you don’t appreciate it.

Anyway, that’s most of the story of the new car (which is silver and has cylon lights on the stereo). I’ll leave it there as my new version of Wordpress is hassling me with a real-time word count and 760 words is probably a bit long for a blog post.

Uncategorized banks, cars, life, salespeople

Thom Yorke tells me we are all just chemical reactions, hysterical and useless *. We might feel that way sometimes, more keenly when we are sick like I’ve been this week: A background virus, sleep deprivation and a couple of migraines have left me feeling a little sorry for myself. We might also ponder the meaning of our bodies when we face more serious illness like hearing of a friend’s wife receiving a terminal diagnosis, remembering an acquaintance who died from skin cancer or even finding out that a close relative is doing the cancer thing. Why is it that our wonderful minds, our selves in all their glory are housed in fragile physical systems which degrade with time, even systems as marvellous as the human body. When I get a bad migraine I feel especially out of control of my body, and I imagine I can feel it going wrong and out of balance. It alarms me how much my physical well-being can affect the way I think. Othertimes, I notice the little effects of ageing like how I don’t like having to bend down and pick things up off the floor or how I think the staircase in my house is a bit of a chore. A few years back, I wouldn’t have noticed any of those things. I worry about getting old and what it must feel like as your body degrades.

Charles Darwin turned 200 this week. He tells me that we are all descended from apes. But then Jonathan Marks tells me that we are not merely apes:

we are in fact quite different from apes, I mean we’re sitting here talking and Boo-boo and Bam-bam simply aren’t doing that. Not only that but we are cutting our hair, we are pulling our wisdom teeth, we’re dressed, we walk, we cry—these are all things that apes don’t do. And more importantly we threaten one another by brandishing our lawyers rather than our canine teeth. So we are in fact quite different from apes, which is not to say that we are not very closely related to apes, but to ignore the ways in which we are different I think is to ignore the fact of evolution. And if you want to say that we are just apes and not really different, it seems to me that’s the person that’s denying evolution. – Jonathan Marks, The Philosopher’s Zone 14/2/09

To deny that we are different from apes, not only denies that evolution leads to new species but stops us from imagining that we could ever be more than apes. Afterall, evolution didn’t stop back in prehistory, it continues and it continues at a very rapid pace in the human species as the selection pressures of our society shape us.

Just as saying that humans are merely apes denies us our transcendence, I wonder if thinking that we are just chemical reactions in a body made of meat denies us a transcendence as well. Even as our physical selves plunge towards their inevitable limits, instead of dwelling on the meaninglessness of death, some of us find meaning in becoming more than what our nature makes us: in reaching out to God as we understand him/her/it and as we do so, reaching out to each other. Who knows, maybe someday we really will grow wings.

UPDATE: Please forgive this blog post, I really don’t know what I’m trying to say but I’m pretty sure that the last two sentences are not it. Just imagine that I wrote a profound insight about mechanism as reductionism and science vs meaning as experience and imagination and remind me not to listen to Ok Computer and get all depressed.

Uncategorized music, philosophy, religion, youtube

Steph has just finished telling me about her adventures in public transport today (in which BCC actually got a good wrap for once) and how it went travelling with two children.
As it happened, afternoon tea stretched on a bit so that they ended up travelling in peak hour. So here they were packed onto a train where everyone’s avoiding eye contact and looking serious but weary when Sol (turning four next month) breaks into a rousing rendition of You Make me Feel Like Dancing as sung by The Wiggles complete with the “woooh” part at the end of the chorus. Steph said at first she was embarrased but then everyone started smiling and laughing as he ramped up the enthusiasm. It also kept Flossy (aged 8 months) quite amused which is a good thing as travelling with a grumpy baby can be less than entertaining where as travelling with Sol in song can’t fail to brighten your day right?

Uncategorized fatherhood, the wiggles, youtube

I’ve been watching a lot of BSG lately: over the last couple of months I have crammed four seasons of BSG all because I wanted to catch up with the current wrap-up season before it aired so that some scumbag on the net wouldn’t spoil the big reveals at the end to me. I already had bits of it spoiled and it did reduce my enjoyment of the show somewhat as a lot of the drama of the show centres on some big questions: Which characters are really Cylons? Will they find Earth and what will happen when they get there? What’s with all this God stuff? etc…

Anyway, all the BSG exposure has embedded some very important lessons in my pysche:

1. When someone holds a gun to your head, you should always look them in the eye and shout “Do it you coward!”
2. Always check your raptor for bombs before getting on board
3. Stay away from air-locks
4. Never trust the President, she’ll throw you out an airlock every time
5. Never let a Sharon carry a side-arm
6. Never give your security codes to a tall leggy woman with a strong jawline
7. If in doubt, drink a bottle of whisky. If it’s the first two seasons, skull green mouthwash instead
8. If things are looking up, you should be very worried indeed, things never look up in BSG - except maybe when you’re lying on the floor looking up at a centurion.
9. A punch up is a form of foreplay
10. You may as well give up on trying to keep your model sailing ship in one piece. You know you’re going to smash it up every-time you get angry
11. Every weird dream you have is probably somehow real, it is never because you ate too close to bed time
12. The first thing that will fail in any spacecraft is the FTL drive. Fortunately it can usually be fixed with a spanner and mallet in the right place.
13. If you have saved the lives of your crew countless times, proven your valour in battle and are generally looked up to, you are probably a Cylon.

Uncategorized bsg

Life is compressed into a series of moments. There is nothing in between. I move from one place to another like turning a corner. Ninety degrees, instantaneous, like light hitting a mirror. My mind thinks only of what’s next, what’s next, what’s next. There is no future or past, only time. Work, sleep, eat, drive, parent, read, watch, process, click. I can’t stand silence, I’m impatient standing still, I fill all of the gaps with something, anything. Nobody reaches me because I can’t be found, I am nowhere and no-one. I just am. I watch too much BSG. It makes me go all serious. Sleep seems like a good idea right now. Anything is better than this poetry.

Uncategorized bsg, poetry, sleep