I'm really not sure.......

.....how I feel about this. The dim mists of time receeding ever rapidly into the even dimmer mists of time? Thankful she is still alive?

Grace Slick is 70 today

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Taste

In case you hadn't noticed, Michael Jackson is no longer on the planet. This bothers me not at all. I'm sure his immediate family is much saddened by the event but that is their business and certainly none of mine. I thought his music was dreadful (especially those damned squeaks) and his dancing entertained me not at all. I thought he was a talented dancer (certainly a lot, no an awful lot, better than I could ever be) but it did nothing for me. As an aside I also find a vast majority of the MJ jokes doing the rounds on the blogs very amusing. In exceedingly poor taste for the most but, despite (because of) that, very amusing.

I expressed these views on the fishing website I waste far too much time on and from even there I got set upon by those who obviously thought that he was the best thing since lace up shoes. Their opinion and not one I agree with. Doesn't matter to me what they think of anything (including me) and it would be nice if they reciprocated. But no, they would have me fall in line with their view of the world come hell or high water. I find this very strange. Be evangelical, if you must, about about something that matters - Aston Martin, Earl Grey tea - but Michael Jackson? To my mind a talented nut ball who appealed to enough people world wide to sell 750,000,000 albums. That is quite a lot. This is a number that will almost certainly never be surpassed as the music buying habits of the world have changed forever with the advent of the iTunes Store (which I frequent on a weekly basis), other downloading emporiums and, probably more so, the online theft sites. So an awful lot of people thought he was great. Some thought he was a genius. But not me. So what?

He changed the face of popular music? Probably. By himself? Of course not. Most of the change was wrought by the expansion of his ideas by people in the industry who could see an awful lot of money in it. Moonwalking would have stayed behind closed doors if it hadn't been relentlessly pushed by record companies. And that's fine. That is how the world goes around. Has MJ changed the popular music industry for the better? An impossible question to answer as it is all a matter of taste. I think not. You may think otherwise. Justin Marshall changed the way of playing halfback for the All Blacks. For the better? Same, and I think not.

Amongst other things I have been accused of by my piscatorial virtual mates is a complete lack of taste. I was even accused of liking nothing except country music. There are some extraordinary concepts in those statements. I do not think taste is a thing you can lack. You may have what I think is bad taste or good taste but you can't have none. My taste is just that; mine. The arguments as to why it should or, more correctly, should not coincide with anyone else's are too banal to even bother with. So I won't. The concept of country music being only a gnat's whisker above nothing is amazing. It is insulting to anyone who actually does only like country music; but since when did a well placed insult go amiss? Just to demonstrate that I do have eclectic musical tastes it amused me to look at the items I have given a '5 Star' rating to in my iTunes library.

There are songs by the following artists who are arranged in alphabetical order:

Aimee Mann, Al Stewart, Alanis Morissette, Allman Brothers Band, The Animals, Arcade Fire, The Astronauts, The Belairs, Bic Runga, Billy Idol, Blondie, Blur, Bob Dylan, Bonnie Tyler, Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Boz Scaggs, Bryan Ferry & Roxy Music, Carol King, The Cars, The Chantays, Cheap Trick, Chet Atkins, Chris de Burgh, Chris Rea, Coldplay, The Corrs, The Cranberries, Cream. Cyndie Lauper, David Bowie, David Grey, Derek and the Dominoes, Dick Dale, Dire Straits, Dixie Chicks, Don Henly, Don McLean, Doobie Brothers, The Doors, The Duo Tones, Dusty Springfield, The Eagles, Edwyn Collins, Electric Light Orchestra, Elton John, Elvis Costello, Enya, Eric Clapton, Fairport Convention, Fleetwood Mac, Genesis, Georgie Flame & The Blue Flames, Hayseed Dixie, Heart, The Honeycombs, Hot Club of Cowtown, Huey Lewis & The News, INXS, JJ Cale, Jack Johnson, Jackson Browne, Jason Mraz, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Buffett, Joan Armatrading, Joe Cocker, Johnny & The Hurricanes, Karine Polwart, Katy Melua, Keane, Kim Carnes, The Kinks, Kirsty MacColl, KT Tunstall, Led Zeppelin, Leon Russell, Linda Ronstadt, Liza MInelli, Lou Reed, Lynyrd Skynyrd, M People, Madness, The Mavericks, Meat Loaf, Men at Work, Metallica, The Moody Blues, Norah Jones,Paul Simon, Pet Shop Boys, Phil Collins, Pink Floyd, The Pogues, The Pointer Sisters, The Police, Polly Paulusma, The Pretenders, Queen, R.E.M, Rachel Fuller, Robbie Williams, Roberta Flack, The Rolling Stones, Roy Orbison, Sandi Thom, Scissor Sisters, Shania Twain, Sinead O'Connor, Sparks, Split Enz, Steppenwolf, Sting, Supertramp, Then Jericho, U2, Ultravox, Van Halen, Warren Zevon, The Who, Will Sargisson and ZZ Top.

You will see from this that I do like some Country Music but certainly not all and certainly not exclusively. Likewise most other genres. I double checked to to make sure there was no MJ there (wouldn't that be embarrassing?) and there isn't - even when I scan the complete iTunes 'Library'

Surely this is what personal taste is all about. I am very glad that my '5 star' list is so varied. My life would be so dull if I thought along the lines that it should be entirely populated by Kirsty MacColl. I am also glad it is my list and no one can take it from me and make me have theirs.

And I won't do that to you. Promise.

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Kirsty

I was delighted to see that Kirsty MacColl, my favourite artiste of all time (supplanting even the wonderful Grace), has made the news and is thumbing her nose from the grave at those who would bark at the moon.

'Fairytale of New York' is one of her less memorable efforts but it is being dragged out yet again as it is Xmas so that Shane MacGowan does not fall on even harder times. This song was first released for Xmas 1987 and has clogged the airwaves for a fortnight in mid December ever since. Yesterday the BBC decided that the drunken references to 'slut' and 'faggot' were offensive and had to be censored out. The absolutely correct public outcry to this forced them to reverse their decision within hours. As a bycatch this, of course, swells Mr McGowan's recreational pharmacology fund to a greater degree than is normal for this time of year.

What better time then to extoll the virtues of Ms MacColl. She is known for her quirky lyrics a lot of which revolve around men being liars. I find her very amusing and her words are set to very easy to listen to tunes. She has an album called Electric Landlady (Jimi Hendrix - Electric Ladyland - get it?) and songs with titles like 'There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis' and 'In these shoes?'. In the later stages of her career she got bitten by a latin bug and that flavoured a lot of her music. For a starter I would recommend 'England 2 Columbia 0' as a good introduction to certainly the latter part of her career.

If you have been living on Mars and are not familiar with the wonderful and sadly departed Kirsty then you are missing a treat. An opportunity to post my first video on this blog. This is Kirsty MacColl at the peak of her powers. The evocation of late fifties and early sixties suburban Britain in this video is just superb

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J M Hendrix

Jimi would have been sixty five today if he hadn't inhaled his vomit in London thirty five years ago or so. There is a bit of a rash of this stuff at the moment.

As an aside there are swag of videos on YouTube of Grace singing White Rabbit. They range from the great performance at Woodstock (when she was obviously practising what she was preaching) to a really naff one when she was Jefferson Starship. I never liked Starship and Grace is not looking at her gorgeous best in this performance - all eighties power dressing and hair.

And speaking of hair I also found a video of Marsh Hunt - now we are talking serious hair.




How sixties is this photo? - taken by Lord Lichfield, I think

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I'm getting old

Great command of the bleeding obvious as Basil would say. However this was rammed home in a very odd way yesterday. Was ploughing the fields with Hauraki on as muzak as I am won't to do. 'Somebody to love' by Jefferson Airplane was played and with a few minutes to spare I Googled Jefferson Airplane with misty visions of Haight Ashbury, the summer of love, plans to slip LSD into Nixon's tea and White Rabbit.

Grace Slick is 68.

I am shattered. She is 26 - everyone knows that. When all my mates were going all doolally over Susan Maughan, Lulu and were forgetting Helen Shapiro I thought Grace was the most wonderful female creature on the planet. And they want me to believe she is approaching 70, has lost her sigmoid colon to diverticular disease, has had a tracheostomy and is no longer perpetually chemically altered.

It's all lies.

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Government ads & dead rockers

Never any time when you want it. Much that merits mention this morning but the constraints of time dictate that this must be brief.

My loathing of the Headmistress reaches new and unimagined heights day by day. John Palmer has quite rightly given her a shelling for breaking a commercial confidence agreement re the Aussie Troops on Air New Zealand planes. The fact that she ignores commercial probity for the sake of scoring cheap political points is loathsome but not surprising. Why should she let the pragmatic business of making money get in the way of her ideological pursuit of continuing power? She has never done it in the past why should she start now? Worse is her instant recourse to the teflon when people start to criticise her. It was she who made the statements that prompted Downer to say that Ocker troops will never fly Air NZ again (thereby causing a great loss in revenue) but when quizzed about it she flicks the questions off by saying it is a matter between the Aussies and the Shareholding Minister (History Boy) and all queries should be fired at him. She is a truly hideous collection of amino acids.

Domestic violence. I have steered away from this but does anybody really think that pouring $14 million into an advertising campaign is going to do anything except swell the bottom line of advertising companies? I mean is there anyone who doesn't know that there is a spot of domestic violence afoot and that it is a bad thing? This less than surprising intelligence has been promulgated throughout the land courtesy of court reporters over the last few months and the flood information is likely to flow unabated for the foreseeable future thought the same means. And we don't have to pay for it. The government's response to any perceived problem is to run an advertising campaign. These are expensive but it gives the impression they are doing something. It is all mouth and trousers; it looks as if something is happening. In fact of course this money should be directed to low profile places where it will be spent on actually achieving something. But that don't garner votes do it?

This country has campaigns for everything. Drunk driving, smoking, food safety, don't go up ladders, speeding, get ready for a tsunami - the list is endless. I would like to know how much of the nation's advertising budget is spent by the government - I bet it is an awful lot more that Coca Cola, Ford and Fisher & Paykel combined. And it achieves nothing except make the government appear to be doing something about something. People still smoke, drive fast and/or drunk, eat fatty foods and will continue to do so. And next we will be getting traffic light stickers on food. Give me strength.

An article which promised much but under delivered mightily concerns rock stars who die young. Now we are talking but what a fizzer. Dreadfully incomplete list of people who spectacularly left the planet awash in recreational pharmacology and vomit. Heroes of youth who stuffed it up big time - but only just. Hendrix, Joplin and Vicious get a mention but where are Jim Morrison, Keith Moon or Bryan Jones? This should be a long and glorious list not a short and glorious one. Something that I did not know though was that Kurt Cobain played the guitar left handed. He joins Hendrix, McCartney, Iggy Pop, Paul Simon and Dick Dale to mention a few. (Dick Dale is odd amongst those that he not only plays it left handed but upside down - doesn't even bother to restring a right handed axe)

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Bob Dylan & the EFB

The Herald is virtually unreadable on a Monday. Unless Earth has collided with Saturn over the weekend (when, to be fair, producing a third rate newspaper would not be possible) there is usually no news per se to report. Granny has at last realised this and has resorted to all sorts of ploys to compensate. We have the Green Pages which are fortunately advertised by the hue of the paper and the pictures of dolphins - so there's two pages you can avoid right there. Then they have introduced an ersatz 'society' page that would have the Tatler squirming - another page not worth looking at. We must find some news so there is a quarter page on someone returning John Gallagher's World Cup winning jersey to its rightful owner who is not John Gallagher apparently - or Serge Blanco; read the riveting piece to discover the entire fascinating story. Deary me. The bourses around the world are in for a rough day after stuff like this.

What else can we find. A review of the Bob Dylan concert. I actually considered going to this but sent number two daughter to fulfill the Obald family obligatons instead. Her mother was not even a speck on the Obald horizon when The Times They Are a Changin' came out (as I recall Christine Lymer from Wimbledon Girls Grammar was the current pash) but she reported Bob to be all good if a little old. At sixty six he is entitled to look a little old I would think. My daughter's review of Bob is however a lot better than the tosh the Herald reporter comes up with. If Private Eye was still going this review would romp into Pseud's Corner without a worry.

Rudman? Why put oneself in a bad mood so early in the week. Sideswipe? Hugh Laurie (Blackadder) on US$300,000 a week - nice little earner. A comment on the swimming pig in Whangarei harbour that should be on the green paper but not much else.

Try the editorial. At last something of substance that I got briefly agitated about yesterday but which had slipped my mind. The Electoral Finances Bill. This is a ripper. This is the response the Politburo has come up with in the wake of the Exclusive Brethren affair and getting roasted over the pledge card. Remember that? The time they got caught with their hand in the till. We are now to have draconian constraints on any spending in the public domain of pretty much any kind in any year that conatins a general election. As these are usually held in September or October in New Zealand this means an effective nine mionth gag on any publicity for anything that they (i.e. the governmant bureaucracy) see to have any polical over tones. Stand up and advocate a free market and you fall foul of the law as that can be construed as supporting a National policy. Save the whales? In the slammer - Green Party policy. There is sure to be a loophole whereby public infomation campaigns promoting government initiatives are not regarded as Labour policy. Exemption for Forest & Bird is I think rumoured.

Like most things emanating from this government it stinks.

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Eric & Hone

I need a holiday. Last time I had any time off work was for the Houhora One Base and I'm rooted. It was, therefore, with a heavy heart that I scoffed the last Marmite soldier, put down the paper and got into Britain's finest example of automotive engineering for the short drive to the fields. Everything is better now as Hauraki was playing Cream's live version of Robert Johnson's 'Crossroads' off the 1968 'Wheels of Fire' album to fill the journey - I told you it was a short trip. Crank up the Harman Kardon to warp factor 23 and the world's troubles disappear. This track contains the best bit of guitar work ever in the history of the universe bar none. No, no, no I don't want to hear any 'But Hendrix on....' or any of that twaddle. You are all wrong. 'Crossroads' live by Cream is unsurpassable.

Certainly takes the mind off the cess pit that is New Zealand politics. The arrogance of Honewera Whatisface is at the same time staggering and predictable. If you accept a place in the white man's parliament you play by the white man's rules, Sonny Jim. And, while we are on it, they ain't the white man's rules they are everybody's rules. You cannot pick and chose which bits of an evolving society you want to adhere to, do what you like on other bits and say 'It's our way'. An integrated society doesn't work like that. I feel like a rant over Society's rights and obligations versus those of the individual coming on but that would disturb the inner calm that Eric Clapton has just bought me so it can wait for another day. I've no doubt at all another opportunity will present itself before long.

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Moon Unit and friends

Nothing. But then again..............

There is a supplementary Letters section to allow the proles to vent their collective spleen over the 'taxpayers money for political campaign' nonsense - and quite right too. I read a couple of the epistles (or edited extracts from, more like) and there was not a one supporting the way the Headmistress is predictably heading. She appears to want to make any law change surrounding this matter retrospective for God's sake. She will have the house lemmings of all political flavours queueing up to vote for that without any worry. Words like 'arrogance', 'unacceptable' and 'dictator' figured quite prominently in the letters I read. All jolly good, but useless now. It's what you do one Saturday in a couple of years time that counts. As I noted before. Parliament is in recess for a couple of weeks at the moment. Why? They don't sit for more than a couple of weeks before they troop off for a cup of tea and a lie down. No point asking them why this happens as it is just the original patsy question asking for the response about committee work, valuable time in the constituency, supervising the business of their departments etc. etc. Don't expect the truth - going to directors' meetings, having a lie in and going down the boozer. When they eventually return to apply their noses to the trough, oops I mean grindstone, we are sure to have several contentious issues that have to be rushed through under 'urgency'.

A syndicated piece (from Newsweek?) documenting the mainstreaming of environmentalism in big business. Is Tesco (the UK's largest supermarket chain) getting all touchy feely and concerned about the planet? Are they bollocks. They are making a huge financial killing out of doing all sorts of sensible things like burning food waste for energy instead of throwing it away - or more correctly paying someone to take it away. Dress all this up in a dolphin suit, run a special on tofu and you are laughing all the way to your local branch of NatWest.

I now know where all Hollywood 'stars' who wish to have a bisexual union for the purpose of procreation should be forced to live. Malaysia. They have just banned certain names as being registerable handles for babies. You cannot stroll down to the Kuala Lumpur Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages and fill out the forms for little Stalin Hitler Wong. 007 Chan ain't going to make it into the big leather bound tome either. If we forced the Frank Zappas of the world to move to Trengganu we would be spared the following:

Moon Unit - Frank Zappa
Apple - Chris Martin/Gwyneth Paltrow
Misty Kyd - Sharleen Spiteri (who's she?)
Geronimo - Alex James
Heavenly Hirani Tiger Lily - Michael Hutchence/Paula Yates
Dandelion - Keith Richards
Dweezil - Frank Zappa
Elijah Bob Patricius Guggi Q - Bono

Zowie Bowie - David Bowie
Rufus Tiger - Roger Taylor

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Syd and the plumbers

This plumbers, gasfitters and drainlayers thing is a rhum affair. I really don't know enough about it but only one side can be telling the truth.

Councils and their profligate spending habits are getting their deserved amount of newsprint. There is a Q & A type thing on Page 2 this morning. Now this is obviously open to a great deal of filtration and censoring but 'democracy services' crop up twice. Once when a bloke from Waitakere complains about the size of his bill and once when a bloke from the Hauraki Plains winges about being charged for street lights or similar. Both are told that they have to pay for 'democracy services'. These, apparently, are to ensure that edicts of central government are efficiently (sic) passed on to the proletariat and they are also paid to 'organise meetings' and....... Why, oh why, do we let them get away with this?

Poor old Syd. I knew he disappeared from the Pink Floyd line up very early on in the piece but was unaware of the depths to which had reached over the last forty years. Living with his Mum (nothing wrong with that of course) in Cambridgeshire popping down to Sainsbury's on his push bike. All the time raking in quarterly seven figure royalties (pounds sterling here) which Dave Gilmour ensured he recieved until the end. Very sad - many, many years ago I would have loved to have been Syd Barrett.

The comments page often has a piece worth reading as it often has a lot worth not reading. An article by Gareth George (I think) on the great NZ whining culture. All fairly light stuff but with serious undertones. He cites the case of the 'victims' (and there is certainly no shortage of these in this gwate country) of sexual abuse getting uptight about the adverts put up on lamposts advertising the free desexing of cats campaign currently running in Auckland. These fliers run along the line of 'A sex offender has moved in to your neighbourhood' and this, of course, is the moggy awash in reproductive hormones. Our 'victims' naturally find this very offensive and cause for re-traumatisation. Gareth also mentions the Vice President (and Treasurer) of the Featherstone Rugby Club who is going to lay a formal complaint to the Police about incitement to kill if the ABs use the new Haka again. This place is rapidly falling off Planet Commonsense. The point well made is that we, well you, are crying out for people to think for us and not have opinions of our own that might offend people. The Marxist Government of Aoteoroa seems quite happy to fill these shoes.

And finally today, Sideswipe which merits comment purely because I was mentioned in dispatches yesterday. The campaign to rid the world of the influence from Redmond is gaining a little traction with one bloke going to boycott Air New Zealand because of their descriminatory stance towards Macs. I don't have to do this after they yesterday announced that they were no longer going to fly to Singapore which is pretty much the only foreign place I want to fly to.

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