On the road

Last weekend I hopped over to Perth, my old hometown. And indeed to Collie, my late father's old hometown. Nowadays my uncle and cousin live in Collie, two hours south of Perth.

It was great to see Greg and Zoe again. Zoe I haven't seen since she about 13. She's now in her 20s and a theatre nurse. Seems she's not at all put off by the sight of strangers' innards. Zoe told me a very funny story about our grandfather, who arrived in Collie around the mid-1950s. Being a town built on, surprise, surprise - coal mining - Collie was a strong union town. And it seems my grandfather hated unions and wasted no time in letting his feelings be known.

No surprise then that his time in the south-west was not profitable. Indeed, it was something of a financial disaster. Though perhaps this had as much to do with his interest in the gee-gees and associated punting as with the politics of Karl Marx. And perhaps explains my father's politics, which were resolutely anti-Labor. I had always found this strange since he was hardly born to the manor (the stable more likely).

The main reason for going was to see some friends and family and to pick up my vinyl albums.I drove down with Jim, who I used to do a lot of radio programming with. So there's another bit of history, right there. We had a great time rolling past the green, sodden paddocks and through the small towns along the South West Highway. And avoiding the delights of Mandurah.

My uncle Greg had 40 kilos worth of vintage vinyl stored away. That equates to about 150 lps and the odd single. All up I reckon the trip cost around $1000, which works out at about $7 per disc. Wouldn't it have been easier to download them? Yes, I suppose. Sort of. Maybe. Not really. Can you download the first James single, Folklore? No, it seems not. Is worth $1,000? Umm.

Can you download Steve McQueen by Prefab Sprout? Of course. $16.99 and it's mine all over again. But there it was, the record that cost me my job when I told the boss I took a day off work to stay home and review it (with Peter Bonner). D'uh. Or Howlin' Wolf's double anthology for Chess. No, can't get that either.

Anyway, there are all sorts of things in there, some good, some so-so. Some, like Culture Club's 12 of Karma Chameleon with picture sleeve of course, puzzling to say to the least. A 2008 re-issue of The Smiths This Charming Man is currently asking US$10, so I'm in front right there.

Bringing it all back home

This weekend I am heading back to Perth. Collie, in fact, about two hours south, I think. I have never knowingly been to Collie although my father was born and grew up there.

Why am I going to Collie? It's to get my record collection. I have lived in Melbourne for nearly 14 years and when I moved here I left my collection of vinyl behind. So long has it been that I can hardly remember what is among them. I think there is probably 100 albums. And maybe a few 12 inch singles. Sure to be as many, most, were bought during the early to mid 1980s.

There might be a copy of The Smiths Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now. There was in the 1980s. I know there was a copy of Dylan's Blood on the Tracks and maybe some other Dylan stuff. And there is a double Sonny Boy Williamson record. Get Happy by Elvis Costello and the Attractions. Hopefully London Calling. Maybe a Gram Parsons disc or two.

I know that there are records that I once owned and may never see again. Some I gave away; some I loaned. I'm thinking of the Motown double Marvin Gaye anthology. And yes, Andrew Sproat, I'm looking at you.

But there are sure to be a few blushes among the Proustian moments. Let's hope it's worth the cost of freight back to Melbourne.

Keith Floyd

I cooked our dinner tonight in a cast-iron frying pan that I bought in 1988. The frying pan is a Floyd, and it will probably outlive its owner. It has already outlived its begetter. Keith Floyd, television presenter and cook, died this week after a heart attack, aged 65. Like my father, though far less entertaining, he was married four times. (My father was a dreadful cook, but like Floyd, also handy around a bottle.)

Keith Floyd's kind of cooking program was a long way from Master Chef. A very, very long way from that sanctimonious nonsense. Oh my god, you could not even see Master Chef's porch light from where Floyd stood.

For starters, the theme music was Peaches by The Stranglers. Eh? I got hooked on Floyd on Fish, hooked by his mad enthusiasm for cooking and enjoying food. By his alright on the night style. He did not have a face for television, but he had a great way with the language and real curiosity about food, where it comes from and how it gets to the table. Floyd on Fish was a sort of mad drunken dash around the harbours of England and France, stopping to stew up lunch and uncork a bottle or three. It was food with guilt and pleasure without judgement.

Meeting Ron Brooks

Some days I really love my job. Yesterday was one those days.

Two days a week I work on an exhibition of picture book art for the State Library of Victoria. At the moment I am in the pretty lovely position of going about to people whose work I know and admire and asking if I can (a) look through their files and (b) ask to borrow the best of it for a couple of years. The exhibition will open in Melbourne in November 2011 and all being well, tour to other venues in 2012.

So at a pretty sharp-ish hour, a taxi is pulling up outside my house. Already on board is an Allen & Unwin editor who is working with illustrator Ron Brooks on his memoir. Ron Brooks is one of Australia's best illustrators, whose work is published internationally. This one, John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat, (written by Jenny Wagner) has been in print since it was minted in 1977.

It's a haunting little tale of an old lady and the dog, John Brown, who shares her life. All is peaceful until one night a mysterious black cat arrives, insisting it be let in. John Brown is having none of it, not trusting this intruder. It's a book full of unforgettable images, tenderness and haunting questions.

Ron grew up in rural Victoria, then lived in swinging Warrandyte in the 1970's. But these days he calls Tasmania home. He is virtually unknown to the locals. The education authorities seem unaware of the treasure that they have on their doorstep.

Most artists would be happy to have one classic against their name. to my mind and eye, Ron Brooks has at least four books that deserve that title. One is 'John Brown'. He also illustrated The Bunyips of Berkely Creek, published in 1973. Hobart Airport didn't have a copy for sale (as I said, the locals seem oblivious), but I did see one on the spinner in Sydney Airport recently. 'The Bunyips' is a haunting, melancholy and highly original imagining of the mythical creatures' secret life. It's also a suitably surreal, moonlit world that Ron has created.

Not to be done with that, Brooks produced two more in the mid-1990s. The first of these is Old Pig, (with Margaret Wild) in 1995. It's the story of a grandmother and grandchild, and the realisation that these are Old Pig's last days. A more gently heartbreaking book you will never read. When I mention this title to adults who have read Old Pig, they often involuntarily clutch at their heart. Going to Brooks's house and seeing the landscape where he lives, you can see how fully and how richly the light, the trees and the sense of space is absorbed into his work. It's simply one of the most beautiful books you can find.

The fourth book in the canon is another written by Margaret Wild: Fox. Again, it's a celebration of landscape, of outsiders, of friendship under pressure. The images are dramatic, primal, unforgettable. Seeing the original images, some of which will go into the exhibition, really got the heart beating! I can't wait to see the selection up on the wall of the gallery. Because that's where Ron's work belongs.

At the moment, Brooks is working on two books, one a Margaret Wild text with a distinctly Tasmanian flavour. There will be a book by Julia Hunt first, a humorous, musical romance with Chagall overtones.

His approach to illustrating is a fine balance of the craftsman and the artist. He is both fox and badger. Before he even picks up a pencil, he is thinking about the text and how to make every word on the page resonate in the images. He can be highly critical of his own performances, even years later wishing he had done things differently. Rueful, but not bitter. Thinking about how to make the book he is working on the best it can possibly be.

The memoir for Allen & Unwin, which promises to reveal a lot more about this singular artist, will be out next year. Just before the exhibition.

Remembering David McComb

Vagabond Holes, a book reflecting on and remembering David McComb, has just been released. My connection to McComb is the same as many people: I loved his band The Triffids. 

The collection of essays, memoirs, photographs and the odd poem by McComb (and others including John Kinsella), is edited by Chris Coughlan and Niall Lucy. Of Niall, I should say a great big thank you. He was a DJ on 6UVS-FM in the post-punk period: for awkward 17 year-old brought up on commercial radio his programs were pretty powerful stuff. They were surprising, challenging, exciting.

David McComb, like me,  grew up in Western Australia. There the similarity ends. He in the lap of upper-middle class comfort, me not. As student, I saw The Triffids an awful lot. They were the main game in Perth from 1982 to, um, the early '90s. The only fun in town, you might say. David McComb wrote with such eloquence and intensity that "coming from Perth" became a much, much more interesting experience than it otherwise could have been. He gave us the words and the emotions to explore the world with.

David McComb died in 1999 in Melbourne, just before his 37th birthday. 

Anyway, the book throws up all sorts of memories. There are photos of gigs I was at (like the Shaftsbury Hotel, where I hitch-hiked a couple of hundred kilometres to be there). But Vagabond Holes provides more than just a beanbag of memories to flop down in to. It is a generous tribute to a brilliant songwriter. The editors try to tease out some of the themes and achievements that myth has overgrown or obscured. There are some wonderful personal touches, too, like Gavin Martin (a journalist who arrived in Perth from the UK) finding David "gracious, attentive, always wanting to be sure I had amusement and company during my stay". David had that kindness about him. Later, Martin sees McComb at The Triffids London headquarters, at "the sort of convivial get-together they did so well". Megan Heyward records David's "exceptional kindness...it's the kindness and generosity I remember most". He showed the same generosity to me, when I was at a loose end in London. Kindness we can't repay.

I like James Paterson's piece. It's an unfinished argument with David about songwriting. Paterson not only writes clean, unfussy prose, but has stories to tell of working with McComb on songs. Paterson notes how McComb became enthralled to the Birthday Party, steering away from the more ironic, playful pop of the early tapes and singles. (When I saw Nick Cave at the Brixton Academy in 1990 Frances Walker came up at the end and said to me: "That was the Triffids".) As for me, well, I could get with McComb's fondness for Gram Parsons, but found the Rolling Stones covers hard to understand. Like, jesus, they are the enemy. 

That the book embraces both a vernacular and an academic world view says something about the world in which David McComb moved. There is still more to explore and consider.

Not all the questions are answered. The one that I don't get is how McComb got so low so young. Yes, he and the band travelled constantly and probably lived in less than genteel poverty a lot of the time. So did a lot of people. But nobody wants to talk about the alcohol with any candour. What part did that play in his life and in his death? I lack the imagination to understand why someone as gifted could be so apparently self-destructive. His death was sad, is sad. But so were, it seems to me, the later years of his life.

But still that needs to be weighed with what David McComb and The Triffids did, and what they aspired to do. And that was, at times, heroic: to create this enduring sonic template of a young man at the edge of the world at the end of the 20th century.

Cricket is rarely this funny

Amid the angst, the recriminations and the accusations of the "thrilling draw" in the first Ashes Test overnight, comes this dee-lightful homage to Victorian-born quickie Peter Siddle. Guardian columnist Barney Ronay explains why he would like to be friends with Siddle.

I love his ripplingly muscular head and the way, after he'd got Andrew Flintoff out, he didn't really know how to rearrange his features into a "pleased" expression and settled instead for looking pained. I also love the quietly guttural "UUNNCCHH!" sound he makes as he bowls, a deeply male noise, the noise of a man who has just dislodged a particularly stubborn wingnut on a vintage motorbike.

He also says some very, very funny things about Glenn McGrath. Much more like this from Ronay and he will have a cult following of his own, never mind Siddle. One Test match down, four to go.

La crise...cinema?

My friend, a film reviewer, despairs of French movies. 

John, let's call him, is chugging back a minimum of four films each week. Some of them are from the Hexagon. Recently he slung me a fistful, including Welcome to the Sticks (Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis) and The Grocer's Son (Le Fils de l'epicier). And for good measure the 1968 Gainsbourg-Birkin premier collaboration, Slogan. 

Slogan is the story of an advertising man's midlife crisis (la crise du moyen age?), which is, I admit, a pretty banal plot. Seriously wealthy and successful guy gets bored flying to Venice to pick up advertising kudos. Meets beautiful, much younger woman, throws over wife. Fellini's 8 1/2 it is not. 

Jane Birkin is 22, wears improbably short frocks and speaks with an appalling accent. Until she auditioned for the film, Birkin had never spoken French. (She admits to all of this in an accompanying 30 minute documentary.) So, a middle-aged man fascinated by a woman far too young to be seen with who quickly becomes an obsession. My friend John might suggest here that this pretty much the French film industry's calling card...but back to Slogan.

This is a curious film. Made in 1968, it's oblivious to the Paris riots, even though when the couple do eventally (inevitably?) move in together it's in the shadow of the Pantheon. Don't look to cinema for history, I guess. Serge Gainsbourg's idea of revolution was something else altogether I suspect. The film is clunky in the script and the production. The pacing is uncertain and even the music written by Gainsbourg fails to establish a clear motif or mood. Laboured might best describe the enterprise. But the film established them as the "it couple" of the time and changed Birkin's life. 

Neither Birkin nor Gainsbourg seem comfortable in front of the camera. There is often a self-consciousness that makes viewing the film uncomfortable. And yet...and yet. What starts as the lament of a middle-aged man turns into something much more interesting. Because as Evelyne, Birkin's ingenue becomes the rebel. There is one darkly funny, slightly cringe-making scene in which Serge introduces Evelyne to a score of friends and colleagues: "Please meet my little home-breaker" he says to a gallery of disapproving faces. Clearly infidelity is okay as long as it stays out of sight. Everything about their relationship put two fingers up to the ruling standards of the day. And their affair does catch a certain joy.

But the beautiful Evelyne quickly finds herself in the role of haus-frau. Her status as mistress is deeply uncertain. She demands that they have a baby, and that they marry. Both options seem rather quaint nowadays, but likely perhaps then. Not even frequent trips Venice can quell the resistance, her apparent freedom now another prison. In Venice Evelyne meets a muscular Italian whose only qualifications for her heart seem to be driving a speedboat dangerously fast through the crowded canals and clambering onto historic bridges. Bogans it seems are international.

Serge meanwhile seems impervious to what goes on about him. He never seems to really solicit our sympathy, continuing in his lugubrious way. Until Evelyne and the Italian elope. And then he turns very nasty indeed. But freedom won't be denied. What is most striking is the extent to which Slogan unwittingly provides the template for Birkin and Gainsbourg's own relationship, which lasted twelve years. Birkin sets out the influence of Serge Gainsbourg on her life with lasting affection and respect.

In the DVD's accompanying documentary, Birkin talks of their separation as like an adolescent revolt, kicking over the boundaries set up by a tyrannical parent. She also talks about Serge's peculiar attractiveness and charm. It's a fascinating relationship that began with Slogan. Birkin has made over 60 films: this one launched her career and changed her life. Even my friend the film critic must concede that you have to start somewhere.

Clearly Gainsbourg would have been a man that was difficult to live with. This little reflection by UK music writer Nick Kent on Gainsbourg's later years spells out just what a mess he became. (Oh that Kent could write with the same candour about, say, Keith Richard.) Serge Gainsbourg's life will get a more detailed examination when the biopic appears next year.