And as one final Australia Day tribute before the clock strikes midnight (if I type fast enough), here’s Olivia Newton-John’s Tutta La Vita, the feel-good opening number to her musical tour of Australia called Olivia Newton-John Down Under. Enjoy! The Royal Australian Navy will never be the same.
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Today cartoonist Michael Leunig challenged us to write a new national anthem. His 54-word limit is a bit too limiting. So the Snarky Platypus and I have penned (well, typed) a new National Anthem for Australia.
Won’t you now sing with us? We know you all know the tune…
US research shows that country music fans have the highest suicide rate. “The results of a multiple regression analysis of 49 metropolitan areas show that the greater the airtime devoted to country music, the greater the white suicide rate. The effect is independent of divorce, southernness, poverty, and gun availability.” Hat tip to The Road to Surfdom.
’Pong and I are having dinner at Kelly’s on King, and voilá, there are musicians at our table. It almost makes up for the free Wi-Fi running out at 7pm and having to roll our our Internet connectivity via my phone (which also took the picture).
This is blog post number 801. It’s time for something special. Time for an extended essay encapsulating several trains of thought which I’ve been following for some time.
We are the 801,
We are the central shaft
And thus throughout two years
We’ve crossed the ocean in our little craft (Row! Row! Row!)
Now we’re on the telephone,
Making final arrangements (Ding! Ding!)
We are the 801, we are the central shaft
So sang Brian Eno in the song The True Wheel from his 1974 album Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy).
Eno says he wrote the lyrics while visiting New York:
I went to stay with this girl called Randi and fell asleep after taking some mescaline and had this dream where this group of girls were singing to this group of sailors who had just come into port. And they were singing ‘We are The 801 / We are the Central Shaft’ — and I woke up absolutely jubilant because this was the first bit of lyric I’d written in this new style.
Yes, apparently in the 1970s a musician wrote a song while under the influence of hallucinogens. Who’d have thought.
Society generally frowns upon people who make important decisions while under the influence. (By an odd coincidence, Hugh MacLeod posted some vaguely-related thoughts only yesterday, in dying young is overrated, revisited.) However the more I look, the more I worry that we’re governed as if our societies were hallucinating. And even worse, it’s as if they’ve forgotten how to remember the lessons of the past.
I’m worried that we’re governed by Hallucinating Goldfish.
Hey here’s a challenge! Macquarie Dictionary reckons the word “electronica” is from 2007. I reckon it’s older. So we have to find 3 independent usages in mainstream media.
Here’s what they say:
electronica noun the broad array of music created electronically.
If we want to improve the reference, we have to prove it. Send info!
One of Thailand’s traditional handicrafts is fruit carving. Indeed, it’s impossible to go to any Thai community event without seeing a plethora of intricately-shaped melons and carrots to delight the eye.
In this photograph, ’Pong demonstrates that he’s the worst fruit carver that Thailand has ever seen.
I dunno, maybe his creativity was stifled by the fact that it was early in the morning. And I suppose there’s only so much you can do with a hotel butter knife.
Nonetheless, I do recommend you check out his post about Thai alternative music.
OK, I know that I’m hardly an objective observer of ’Pong’s work — duties of marriage n’all. Nevertheless I’ll say that Bangkok Express is perhaps the best moving-image work he’s done.
Bangkok Express from ApostrophePong on Vimeo.
Urban abstract photography and Thai go-go music. Could there be a more perfect combination?
hugh manatee has posted a different version of Laurie Anderson’s Only an Expert which is much better than the one I wrote about yesterday. I partially withdraw my snarky comment.
OK, I mentioned Laurie Anderson. That got the brain cells working and Brian Eno spat out the other end. That means I get to mention that Eno’s Baby’s On Fire (shown in that link with unrelated Eno graphics) is one of the greatest rock songs in the history of the universe.
The versions by Venus in Furs and Velvet Goldmine and Creepers and Granada (electro-pop!) and Bomb Everything are also more than acceptable.
I just thought you should know this.
Alternatively, you could watch the Tractor Square Dancing from the Pennsylvania Farm Show.
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