Mike's
engrossed in Jimmy Barnes' #1 selling book wondering
quite a lot of things
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| Mike's
Pith & Wind -
Middle-Class Man |
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I started
reading the Jimmy Barnes’ book Working Class
Man (WCM) that Terry gave me for Christmas on the
plane to Adelaide last week. I had agreed to participate
in an orgy of media interviews for the up-coming 1st BASE
Fringe appearance at the German Club, coincidentally the
venue for our two appearances, and I conspicuously brought
the book with me into all the interviews, conspicuously
because I’d travelled light and the book, being
a hard-cover, is quite enormous and doesn’t fit
into my dandy man-bag. Happily for this squinty old bloke
the font is as generous as the book’s dimensions
and I could honestly tell everyone it was an easy read,
as it is in every sense.
I’ve read more than half of it and neither I nor
my bands get a mention, which comes as no surprise given
Jimmy’s constantly emphasising what he considers
to be rock & roll and how far left of that I and my
bands manifestly are. With the introduction of former
Spectrum drummer Ray Arnott to the Barnesy mix there was
certainly an opportunity for a mention, but at whose discretion
the non-disclosure came about I couldn’t say. Incidentally,
I’ve met Jimmy a couple of times and he seems a
nice enough chap, but he may have walked away from our
conversation and vomited for all I know, because in his
book he affects high disdain for anything that doesn’t
accord with his full-tilt definition of rock & roll.
Bill Putt passed on Don Walker’s book, Shots
for me to read. Bill was disgusted with it and when I
say disgusted I mean actually offended. Shots
is described as an evocation rather than a conventional
autobiography in the publicity blurb and if you’re
familiar with Don’s approach to his lyrics with
Chisel you’d be au fait with the style
he applies to the book. Anyway, WCM is about as straightforward
as Don’s book is oblique and I suspect, in fact
I know for sure that Bill would totally approve.
I think an appraisal of Chisel from my perspective might
be appropriate at this point. The disparity between Don
and Jimmy’s approach is a good place to start. I’ve
always maintained that lyrics matter but they’re
pretty much obliterated by Jimmy in live performance –
and on record for the most part. As a positive sidelight,
Chisel fans might have been unwittingly drawn into a much
more poetic vision than Jimmy’s snarling overlay
might’ve suggested, ironically one which they might’ve
resisted had they been more clearly expressed.
I only became aware of the lyrics
to Flame Trees the other night on The Book Club
when Jimmy (and his daughter Mahalia) sang an allegedly
acoustic version of the song with a grand piano and violin
accompaniment. (I witnessed Jimmy rendering his fold-back
utterly redundant when sound-checking with Ross Wilson
– even without amplification he’s fucking
LOUD!)
I still couldn’t make out the words as Jimmy sang
them mind you, he ground them into a rusty powder and
made the audience’s.. read
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| Dick's
Toolbox - History 2018
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I enjoy
history. This is surprising given that my schooling in
the subject left only an enduring horror in having pretend
to be interested in the Bill of Repeal (Importation Act
1846) aka the Corn Law Repeal Acts or the Irish Church
Disestablishment Act of 1869. Perhaps the only interesting
component of this latter Act’s existence was that
it led to the coining of one the longest non-scientific
words ‘Antidisestablishmentarianism’ . Why
this Act of the English Parliament was of signal importance
to a New Zealand secondary school student in the 1960’s
was never explained. Though when you consider it as part
of the on-going separation of Church and State it could
have been, as might the Corn Laws been see as an equivalent
of the Country Party ensuring a local monopoly.
But we did it because it was in the syllabus, a syllabus
probably set by some faceless grey bureaucratic clinging
tenaciously like a survivor of the ‘Wreck of the
Medusa’ to the last vestiges of the British Empire.
And, like a recurring episode of Bubonic Plague, every
year concluded with a terror filled examination to determine
one’s knowledge, ignorance and rote memory. I excelled
at ignorance if I recall.
Anyway as Henry Ford said, ”History was just one
thing after another”. And that is how it seemed.
Even at art school history was taught in the same programmatic,
sequential way. Just one damn painter, printmaker or sculptor
after another. Just one art movement after another. Learnt
by rote and to be examined at the end of the year.
The lecturers’ general apathy was made apparent
by one Anglo-American import who thrust his head into
the lecture room and cried in a glottal Californian scream
“Think about Cezanne!” and then disappeared
for the remaining hour. We thought about Cezanne as best
we could and then chatted amiably amongst ourselves. We
emerged none the wiser about one of the greatest post-impressionist
painters.
As you can imagine from this standard of instruction,
art in the Antipodes has some very shaky foundations.
Many artists based their ideas of ancient or modern art
on yellowing low resolution photographs in overseas books
or magazines. Jackson Pollock as a 10 by 15cm colour plate
is a bit different from the real thing – and not
just in size.
It was difficult to think about Cezanne when the standard
reference was Jansen’s ‘History of Art’
that had limited space in what was a generally worthy
compendium. We would have been much improved by some genuine
artistic insights from a trained art historian.
It was only some years later when I sat in some university
history lectures by a real Professor of History that I
learnt that the past might actually be important, even
if it only taught you that civilisation has the capacity
to repeat variations of the same basic errors countless
times over the centuries. It did make me aware that the
renaissance was made possible not just by the odd genius
or three but as much by double ledger bookkeeping .. read
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