Warming up to The Chills

When The Chills last toured Australia I missed them - twice. So the prospect of seeing the Dunedin band live - a mere 18 years later was not to be sniffed at. Since the early 1990s, The Chills fortunes have declined while their reputation has grown. But in their day, the Flying Nun label was as much a rallying flag as the Postcard label was for Glasgow or Factory Records for Manchester.



The Chills play a sort of surf music, if you were to surf the cold, dark green and turbid waters that surround New Zealand's south island. But it is music of surprising depth and beauty, too.

Four songs into the set last night Martin Phillips, the mainstay of the band, had the misfortune to have his amplifier blow up. And so they set about repairing it. Several minutes later Phillips told the audience, " I don't whether it's more professional that we were able to fix it, or more amateur that we didn't have a bunch of roadies up here to do the job for us". The 400 bodies crammed into the East didn't seem to mind.

The set was entirely old stuff. But jesus, what a catalogue. Highlights were Pink Frost, a thunderous Love My Leather Jacket, Rolling Moon, Part Past Part Fiction and Wet Blanket. A two-song encore ended with Phillips pleading the need to save his voice for the gig in Sydney tonight.

Along with the guitars - sometimes driving, sometimes chiming - The Chills run on a precise metronomic rhythm and Phillips' words. He is a master of the simple declarative statement that, delivered in his awkward tenor voice, hits straight at the heart.

You could see these guys were doing it tough. They were pioneers in the days before this internet thing, heading off from the south of New Zealand to conquer England. Were they successful? Taking the two albums Submarine Bells and Soft Bomb as evidence, the answer is an emphatic yes. Neither of these mighty documents are in print today, though there is talk of re-issues and re-masters.

When we were in Christchurch earlier this year a guy in the big secondhand record shop made a good case for the Chills and other Flying Nun bands as a vital but neglected part of the cultural heritage. "The number of times I have been asked for their stuff - it kills me that we have nothing", he said.

A year ago today the Guardian newspaper ran this long feature on Flying Nun and the bands it championed.

I can only imagine that Phillips left the stage last night with a mixture of humility, pride and a burning desire to be back. And not to leave it another 18 years.

Welcome to Angouleme**

Richard Thompson in 1000 Years of Popular Music tells a joke that goes like this.

Imagine heaven as a restaurant. The the welcome is by the Italians; the catering is done by the French; the organisation is by the Germans - and the English provide the entertainment.
In hell, however, it goes like this. The welcome is from the French; the Italians do the organising; the English the cooking. And the Germans provide the entertainment.





I was reminded of this little gag today when I first tried to book accommodation in Angouleme, south-west France. We are heading there in January for the international comics festival. Not wanting to appear over-eager, I thought I would wait until we were within nine months of the event before attempting to secure accommodation. You know, you don't want to fire off too early. You book, you pay, you think it's all good - and then you turn up and they have never heard of you or your booking.

But it seems that every, yes every bed, in every hotel and every bed-and-breakfast of Angouleme, is taken by someone else. Nine months ahead of the ruddy festival.

The tourism office advises to wait until November when the office will release the "chambres chez l'habitant". People who live in Angouleme and nearby rent their rooms or their apartments for the Festival. Am I being just a bit suspicious thinking that "les chambres chez 'habitant" looks like a nice little earner for the locals? Or is it an opportunity for a more authentic experience? 


Halp!


** Update: I rang the Tourist Information Office in Angouleme last night. I asked Nathalie if she could speak English. "A little," she replied. In a way that suggested she wasn't about to try it out on me. So I did what I am trained to do: spoke slowly and carefully and as simply as possible in French.
We agreed that no, the office would not supply me with a list of alternative accommodation. I could, like everyone else, wait until novembre. "Quand en novembre? Une? Quinze? Vignt?"
"En debut."
Okay. The beginning of novembre.
J'attends, j'attends...
Cette sera interresant.

A quiet week

It's been a quiet week in Brunswick and it's about to get quieter. My wife is going to New York at the end of the month.

She lived in Manhattan for about a year in 1980; her father is an academic and was doing post-graduate work there. The recent book Newberry Award winning book When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead, is set in the same time and much the same neighbourhood.

So when my wife's mother mentioned that she was hoping to go to New York a plan was hatched: guide books consulted, Google maps gleaned, novels and histories digested.

My mother-in-law loves music and is probably the world's biggest Leonard Cohen fan. She was in the front row of this concert and we reckon was in Lenny's eyeline when he sang I'm Your Man. So a lot of research is going into scanning the gig guides.

 One of the things she will be doing is dropping in for the Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor's long-running radio show at the Town Hall in New York. It's a uniquely American experience, one that couldn't be replicated.

Back in the days before the internet I went to Edinburgh for the Fringe. Where I discovered, since it wasn't in the brochure that I sent away for and which arrived in the mail, that Garrison Keillor was appearing at the Book Festival. Oh frabjus day! Callum! Callay! / He chortled in his joy! I had read Lake Wobegone Days and listened to the radio show avidly...Norwegian bachelor farmers, tomato growing as a competitive sport, the Side Track Tap, Lutheran Church. What a wonderful place the world was, that one of my favourite writers should fall into my path like this.

And so I arrived on the day at the appointed hour.

Not. A. Chance.

...Ah, the internet.

So enjoy Garrison, dear. And think of me. I will listen to the show, eventually. At home. On the radio.

There won't be too many other distractions.

Save the Cliffe

Everybody knows that Perth, Western Australia is the home of ugly architecture. And the wealthier the place gets, the uglier the buildings. So please, sign the petition and save the Cliffe.

The what? The Cliffe. It's a timber bungalow perched high on a bend in the Swan River. Number 25 Bindaring Place, to be exact. It was also home to the young David and Robert McComb. The nesting place of young Triffids.

Cultural heritage rates pretty low in a place so devoted to making money and right now developers are hovering. Triffid-like, you might say.

But a campaign to preserve the house is firmly afoot. The local council is taking this seriously, but the pressure needs to stay on. And a petition will actually help. The plan is not to turn the place into a shrine to all things McComb, but preservation of the house will help towards some permanent memorial.

The last time my wife and I were in Perth we drove along the river front to see the McComb house. My various gods. What a sea of hideous architectural pomp. But there sits the Cliffe, over a hundred years old. A little care and concern, and your name on a petition, and who knows, in a hundred years more, it may still be there.

David McComb wrote the book for Western Australian rock music. And many of his best songs are rooted in this particular patch of ground. 

Maybe this plays to my Village Green Preservation Society leanings, but even saving one building is worthwhile protest against vile greed.

Four seasons in one day

After I was woken up by the neighbours at 5am by a 30 minute sonata of slamming doors, I picked the newspaper up from the lawn. Tinges of orange sky. By 9am, not a clous in the sky.By midday, I was glas I took a hat. At 3pm, I I was woken by a sound something like a herd of cattle thumping across the roof. The very timbers were a-shivering. Great chunks of hail smashing on the skylight. And then some.

Welcome to Melbourne. Neil Finn knew of what he wrote when he sung Four Seasons in One Day.

No casualties thank Jehovah. Some great pics at The Age.

Missing in action

On Monday night my wife came back after four days in Adelaide. She was ashen faced. Tense. Crest-fallen. Searching for words.

Four days in Adelaide can do that to a person.

What was wrong?

"I left your laptop in a taxi."

Oh.

In a taxi!!!!!!!!??????????

Yes, a taxi. In Melbourne. Small, white Macbook in dowdy but functional carry-bag. After tearing around the Adelaide Festival for days, my wife had fallen asleep on the way into Melbourne. When she was woken and bundled out of the taxi, the laptop and its bag stayed behind. About 90 minutes later, and no doubt several passengers later, the penny dropped.

Twenty four hours of gnawing anxiety followed.

This morning, she had a call from the St Kilda Road police station. The computer had been handed in. Before my wife headed off last Friday morning I had put a business card inside the bag. Just on the off-chance that she and the computer became separated. Just in case.

The taxi driver was a Sikh man. She caught a cab home with another Sikh driver and poured out her story. He promised to put the word around. There are not that many Sikh drivers in Melbourne, he said.

My wife rang him this afternoon and offered him a cash reward. He flatly refused. She is still counting her blessings and thinking of ways to repay the good karma that has come her way. Taxi drivers get a bad press. But this is evidence that there is certainly another side.

Me, I just am happy to be reunited. To be honest, I was glad it was only a lost computer. And glad that my wife is back from Adelaide, too.

(My daughter is also happy. "I am glad you have the computer back. It effects me, too.")

Everybody's learning French these days

Even Iggy Pop.



Thanks to the wonderful Filles Sourires.