SECRET LIFE OF CREEPS -
The Hitler Diaries, continued.
+!+
(continued from here).
SAT. 1st SEPTEMBER 2001 - hey LD50 are playing 2nite! yay LD50. Yeah so it means I have to go out! oh boy 'cause you know how I feel about that. Yeah but LD50 - oh I can handle it I'm sure. Also, check out who they are playing with, it's a group I used to be in myself, yeah it is THEE HI-TONE DESTROYERS. Yeah & these guys are GREAT too! Well as far as I know they're great, I haven't seen em for a real long time tho. (Last time, I think, was @ a party at the house I used to live in in Madras St., it was when Nick Hodgson played drums for them & they played a made-up-on-the-spot song that went on for maybe 10 maybe 20 min's, it was kick ass.)
SUN. 2nd SEPTEMBER 2001 - I'll tell you some stuff about the bands I saw last night. The 1st one was called THE PALACE AT 4 A.M. & the best thing about 'em is Gregg Cairns plays drums...I mean the other 2 people in the group do good stuff too but Gregg was the element that sustained my interest...It was very inspiring to watch him play, they were playing this kind of non-foreground, non-personality-driven drone rock which can sometimes achieve the right suspension of time vibe, can sometimes just meander limply, but is perfect maximum-freedom music for the Rock drummer. I could listen to it thinking the whole time, Yeah what would I do in this situation?, & with G. Cairns - man that guy speaks my language, drum wise - I always related to his decisions. It made me wanna play drums in a band again, but I dunno, you have to go out & stay out late at night & deal w/ lots of people & stuff, I am so unenthused about that idea. Hey but me & Di made Jane & Rich leave the house & come down to check shit out, that was quite a coup, those guys hate going out even more than I do. The other bands were real good too even though LD50 got sabotaged in the mix for several songs...What's to tell you about the Hi-Tone Destroyers? don't know but they're still good. Better than when I was in the band? well they no longer have the unpredictable rawness of back in them days but I think the guy who plays drums now drives things along with far more authority than I ever could...I'm kind of wobbly at hi speeds. You lose some but you win some. ROCK is still feasible!
MON.3rd SEPTEMBER 2001 - last night at Di's house I fell asleep in her room at about 9 p.m & got woke up about 10 by the meaningless noise of loud human voices...as conciousness returned I pieced together the situation...her flatmates, 2 of them apoplectically angry, 1 trying to cool them out (but also getting pretty hot himself)...see one guy had left a "fucking anonymous note" complaining that the other had not been washing the dishes as their roster system demanded...the hysterical screaming went on for an unbelievably long time & I kept expecting the sounds of physical violence. In fact I have to admit I kind of hoped that would happen, stuff like that is better than TV! Of course the horror of the situation would've been more real to me had I lived there myself...They are these guys aged about 30 who are all stereotypical science-fiction fan-nerds who spend lots of time on the Internet & don't seem to know any girls - the hallway is decorated w/ "fantasy art" posters - see she lives with people she didn't know before moving in & who she has nothing in common with & hardly ever even seems to speak to (rationale - it's sort of like living on yr own except cheaper)...I don't, never hardly have (I fear people I don't know), & boy I'm glad I don't. Me & my flatmates are cool! we have stuff we do together! You know!
TUES. 4th SEPT. '01 - TOO COOL TO BE COOL - I was listening yesterday to "White Blood Cells" by the White Stripes, who when I 1st heard 'em, early last year I guess, I thought were just GREAT...but now they bug me. But it's not just them that bug me, I bug me too. See, the only obvious thing that's changed is that they've gotten "hip". Except I don't mean "hip" with people that're y'know "HIP" hip, I mean like they're on the cover of things like the NME & shit. I.e. they've been glommed on to by people who aren't really into the garage scene or into rock'n'roll in general...y'know, squares. So do I seem like a disgusting snob or what, I just don't like 'em any more 'cause they're sorta mainstream-popular? That's terrible! I can't be one those kind of people does stuff like that! But yeah it makes sense that if there's something about 'em that appeals to people that don't like that kind of music, they must sort of suck. I saw 'em last year when they played in Auckland & was already feeling like that about them then (I was actually trying pretty hard to like 'em at that time...they played for way too long & I was definitely getting bored)(I hadn't felt like going out that night at all tho, I remember that much)...that mighta not been authentically all about the music even back then tho', I gotta admit, I knew that for inst the (anti-rock'n'roll) Flying Nun clique was all on their jock...walking out I passed Chris Knox & he said something like, "They really ROCKED, eh?" & I just grunted rudely at him...Hey I wasn't trying to be rude! I could've stopped & talked to him & explained that, oh you know, I guess they did kind of 'rock' but somehow I felt it had lacked this essential "rock" quality that the hardcore Rock user insists upon. Also that their covers of Dolly Parton & Blind Willie McTell songs were really fake sounding (in a *bad* way). But I just wasn't in a very good mood & didn't feel like talking to anyone. Same as usual. But I know I would've just come across as, Oh I'm too COOL to want to talk to someone COOL like C. Knox. Man what can you do!
WEDES. 5th SEPT. '01 - yeah I got a email from Dan Brady today & he's just been up in AK doing CM Ensemble stuff & he said everybody on the AK scene's talking this White Stripes shit, everyone's either saying they're great or saying they can't listen to 'em anymore 'cause blah-de-blah. So I'm sorry I turn out to have the same trivial concerns as every other idiot. OK we're gonna listen to Budgie!
THURS. 6th SEPT. '01 - Ideas don't make you a good person. Maybe even actions don't make you a good person.
SAT. 8th SEPT. '01 - When I thought the Space Dust shows were this month, & realised, Good grief that'd be in just a few days, I have to make it to Auckland & do all this stuff...my 1st reaction was : I don't even want to, I'd rather stay at home & do nothing. Live quietly & see as few people as possible, like an old person. Have I hung on to the idea that I am still in a band for way too long or what? Maybe I should just make it official - I have retired. Do you want to buy my drum kit?
TUES. 11th SEPT. '01 - Hey Sean O'Reilly's back in NZ, yay cool! So here's who's gonna be in Space Dust this time round, I think - the Brother on gtr #1, Matt Alien & Sean on alternating gtr #2/bass, Matt Middleton on whatever he feels like (clarinet? sax? gtr #3? who knows!), Violet on singing, me on the drum kit! We will we will rock you! )later : actually I found that bk. in my rm later. So they didn't get JACK, dumm punX0r, ha ha I hope they had a nice day carrying that stuf round trying to sell it to all the 2nd hand shops).
WEDES. 12th SEPT. '01 - Hey so there's a war going on or something, or at least, there's bombing attacks on New York, yeah & do you know how I found out? from going on ILE this morning. No I don't watch the news.
THURS. 13th SEPT. '01 - It's billed as "AMERICA UNDER ATTACK, day 2", but of course the actual attack was over by the time I got up yesterday. I didn't watch any of the TV footage until late that evening, but the same few pieces of footage are already familiar - they show ordinary Americans on the street, ordinary old people, ordinary stupid people, they get to say their bit - why not, they're as good as the President - I've seen the same old man a couple times, he's saying "...just like Pearl Harbour...there shall not be any compromise...this shall never happen again"...approx paraphrase but he definitely was saying "shall" where he normally would say "will", what did that mean?
FRI. 14th SEPT. - Last night LD50 played at the Gresham with the Aesthetics & they were good but the Aesthetics seemed sullen & unhappy to be on the same stage as each other so I did not stay to watch them. I was in kind of too much of a introspective mood for going out.
SAT. 15th SEPT. - it really is Spring! swell! ("swell" = word actually used w/ frequent muchness by Jane Quail. She's showing me a coprosma in flower. We're doing a whole bunch of stuff in the garden, I'm clearing the area where the bogans dumped a big pile of chopped down trees in the weeds & garbage. Our "barbecue area".
SAT. SEPT. 15th 2001 - I haven't seen Maryann much this week. It kind of sucks. I asked her to move out. I suck. I feel so shitty about it but I hated having them here. I tried to act like it didn't matter to me. But then I tried to talk to her about it a couple weeks ago & we ended up shouting at each other, it made her cry. OK (I decide) so I'm gonna try & deal w/ it, I last maybe another week before I'm feeling the same & it is urgent that I tell her so. This time I make her cry too & I back down & say OK you should stay. But within an hour my resentment burst out again. I would move out myself, I was saying...Yeah so now she's going to move out, & she stays at Pat's place nearly all the time, & when we do see each other I feel sad.
Dene & Merrin were heckling them, best heckle of the evening - request for an AIR SUPPLY song, damn that was funny. Well maybe you woulda had to've been there.
Moral - use drugs & everything will be "cool".
(NB Maryann - I only left you out of this thing for "effect"...you understand I'm sure).
POSTMODERNISM DISCREDITED, revisited - I'm listening to Cornelius's "Fantasma" as I type this slowly with 2 fingers pointing on my keyboard - right now it seems entrancing & beautiful, who cares if it doesn't mean anything? Stop worrying & love the bomb!
(Yeah well maybe calling this record "postmodern" & attaching such prejudices to it just because it is all "knowingly" "eclectic" & "kitschy" & whatever is rather facile...perhaps it's merely MODERN. Oh yeah that's right "modern" is one of my HATE WORDS too.)(yeah actually so's JAPANESE!)
(was that racist? if so I'm sorry)
(I don't hate the Japaneses as a "race" tho, I hate them 'cause they're imperialists! Seriously, don't you think their culture is just as horrifically inhumane as that of the USA but doesn't get as much of a bad rap 'cause it's exotic & cute? No you think I'm a racist now...oh what-the-hell-ever...)
But it's real now, whether its original basis was authentic or no - I can't get with the White Stripes at all anymore, they sound glib & slick. He's a "talented" dude but he ain't no Mick Collins.
So c'mon punters, c'mon & tell me I'm a pathetic snob or whatever, I want yr opinions!
(BTW - thanx to the people that do write to me, I want you to know even if I don't always bother to reply & stuff, I really value yr comunication..)
I'm writing a letter to Brendon & I'm trying to argue against all his "I hate my life" shit...I'm telling him, Hey I used to feel like that all the time but not now. No special reason why either - I'm 38 years old, I don't play in a band any more or keep in touch with what's hap in the world of music or any of the shit that used to be such big shit to me, I have no particular interest in anything...I don't feel like I have anything to contribute to society & culture & shit, I resent when people try to talk to me & wish they would just go away...etc etc...really, I'm a completely useless & meaningless human being! But hey I'm pretty happy. Dunno why!
Did you see BACK OF THE Y MASTERPIECE THEATRE last night? The show I'd been anticipating so much & telling other people how great it is & kicking up about how it's being suppressed, OK here it is at last & y'know what? it wasn't actually that hot. I used to watch it on Triangle (AK public access channel) & it seemed to me it was really great & really funny then...I dunno. I guess it's sort of a diminishing-returns type of formula. Hey good music, but.
This morning, seething with irrational hatred, I shot dope! & read someone else's mail!...Do I look like a motherfucking role model?
SPACE DUST DATES! - word from the Brother, these are official - Auckland on the 11th Oct., Wellington on the 12th. Venues - I dunno yet. Stay tuned. (sorry if you read this before I corrected it, yeah OCTOBER not Sept., that would be mental, that would be next week, I probably wouldn't've made it to the shows myself).
Grr some gripper broke into my car the other night, here's what they stole - (1) car radio, or removable front part thereof (stupid thing doesn't work anyway); (2) the tape deck I bought off Jon Bywater which also did not work, I'd been meaning to take it to some place to get it fixed but I'd just left it in the back o' the car for I dunno how long; (3) head rests off back seats (very valuable items); (4) I think they also got the Celine biography that Jane (my sister Jane, not Jane Quail my flatmate) gave me for xmas a couple years ago...that seems weird they would've took that but yeah I'm pretty sure it was in this box of otherwise pretty worthless bks that was sitting in the back seat, I can't find it anywhere else anyway. Yeah well that's the only thing that's any big loss. Anyway yeah it's time I got round to fixing the car, I'll do it tomorrow.
You know what sucked the most, going on the Anarchy board & it was full of gung-ho Amerikan baboon-howling for "revenge" against the "sand-niggers", the "rag-heads"...this kind of talk coming from guys like Dick Tator (19 yr old white-trash autodidact who has won my respect for his frequent trouncing of the skinhead Wendell, the genius behind "@killthejews.com" - the greatest email address ever or what?), I thought he was better than that...But : "Turn on the TV! REMEMBER THE TOWERS! KILL SAND NIGGERS! America will survive! The Eagle will fly free! Remeber (sic) the Towers! "...uh DUH Dick, remeber the Reichstag...still I s'pose when yr close in to this kind of stuff (not that he was, he's in Virginia or somewhere) it's different, I should be more compassionate...I'm not tho', I don't live in a country that condones Zionist atrocities...I didn't cry when Baghdad got bombed either. Yeah well people you don't know die every day, & c'mon people THE PENTAGON WAS ON FIRE! The fucking PENTAGON! Can't we just put the human tragedy angle aside for a few minutes, THE FUCKING PENTAGON WAS ON FIRE!
Later after I'd seen some of the horrific events on TV (I stayed away from TVs for pretty much the whole day) I felt pretty ashamed of my initial reaction...but it's still the most awesome thing that's happened this century - all that phoney presentation of it as THE WHOLE WORLD being under attack is sort of true, 'cause a lot of people's whole idea of the world is.
There's nothing else on TV. (...) said "Oh it's going to be just like when the Olympics were on. Dreadful."
The news coverage of the NY/DC attacks is more interesting to pay attn. to now that it's not just showing the same footage & saying the same things over & over any more. So I'm gonna go catch up on some of it instead of doing this. OK I will be back.
I also gotta try & write somethin about Folina's record...yeah I'll try anyway...I hate writing about music! But Pat wants to write something he can quote in order to sell it to other people, & I feel this is a worthy task. I'm gonna go do stuff in the garden now tho'.