RE: Re: Billy TK vs Smiths

...he gets back up for the second set and launches into an excoriating rendition of Midnight Sun which takes the top of your head off and messes wit'your brain a bit [and yes, the band can keep up] and then dedicates it to you when he's done

Yup I'm aware of Mr TK's heritage, and I'd simply add that longwinded guitarcentric 60s psychedelic rock is not quite up my alley either, even if Maori Jimi Hendix is one of the coolest monikers ever for a New Zealand musician [note to Graham Brazier: noone ever called you the Pakeha Mick Jagger so shut up you boring prick].

And when when I was 13 or 14 and doing the paper-round after school back in Tawa, my co-employees [slaves: we got about $2.50 a day] would lend me tapes for my walkman. Matt, the older brother of a friend of my brother, and what we would think of today as an "indie-kid", lent me the Jesus and Mary Chain and The Smiths - it goes to show that the musical subculture of my adolescence was just a shade different to that of Steve's and there was probably more Smiths going around than he thinks.

Totally appreciate the paper-round/Smiths anecdote - I had VERY similar experiences in 3rd/4th form with friends'-older-siblings and older-siblings'-friends which lead me to The Smiths, R.E.M. (pre-Green), Pixies etc etc. Equally, The Clash provided welcome relief from the bogan canon of Doors, Led Zep et al. It sounds like the "musical subcultures" of our adolescences were actually pretty similar? So I guess on reflection, maybe other people were listening to The Smiths at that time, just noone at my high school ever mentioned it. Maybe all the Smiths fans were too busy composing poetry in their bedrooms? The end result was that the dominant (near-universal) musical discourse of my high school years was the aforementioned bogan canon (later broadened to include Dead Kennedys and Nirvana), and a legacy of self-serving bitterness.

I just figured there were lots of young'uns at the Salford Lads Club gig who would have been five when The Smiths broke up - hence the implied reference to 'false' nostalgia - but really, that doesn't mean anything, does it? So maybe I should shut the f**k up. On the other hand, maybe, like me, you occasionally suffer from that irritating music-snob tendency to get uppity when trendy people get excited about something you feel you "went there, did that" with many moons ago. Like the rugger-bugger "discovery" of Flying Nun classics in the wake of the release of the Topless Women talk about their Scarfies soundtracks.

Anyway isn't nostalgia, authentic or not, just the privileged conceit of the bourgeoisie?

Not sure about nostalgia being distinctly bourgeois, or conceited. But I could be wrong.

Actually while we're on the subject of Pak'n'Save, it's cool how they make you pack your groceries in old cardboard boxes. It's such an obvious solution - what were we doing using evil plastic bags all those years? (INSERT HERE: conspiracy theory about war on Iraq, petrochemical industry, industrial world's addiction to plastic).

Pulling out of Pak'n'Slave Kilbirnie at about eleven last night I noticed a guy having a fag while respraying the dotted white line in the middle of the road. It seemed ideal - the job required him to be out late at night, standing in the road, working with some kind of industrial paint. Surely by smoking he wasn't introducing any health risk that wasn't there already? If your job happens outside at unsociable hours and is risky anyway, they should let you smoke.

Re: Steve C's request for a hangover cure, here's the only thing I've ever known to actually work. And, as you will note, it is equally effective for children suffering from diarrhoea. Eternal thanks to Stacey for putting us on to this one.

All you do is mix yourself up a glass and knock it back before you go to bed, and your brain gets dehydrated while you sleep (more effectively than if you were to just drink a whole lot of water).

N.B. Don't drunkenly mix up the ingredients/quantities as I once did - six teaspoons of salt and one of sugar in a glass of warm water not sure a hangover but will burn your throat and induce puking, spitting and cussing.

Oral Rehydration Therapy (ORT) with home made solution

Dehydration on account of diarrhoea in children is widely seen mostly in the developing nations. It is reported that about one in four children die under five due to diarrhoeal diseases, mainly from dehydration in such countries. Such deaths can be prevented by Oral Rehydration Therapy.

A fairly satisfactory solution for oral rehydration can be prepared at home by mixing 6-8 level teaspoon of sugar (40 gm of sucrose), one level teaspoon of common salt with or without a lemon squeezed in one litre of clean water.

Alternatively a pinch of table salt and 2 teaspoon full of sugar are mixed in a glass of water.

The right dosage is about 1/2 a glass after every loose motion for children below the age of one year and one glass for children above one year. However the child with diarrhoea also needs other food. Although it is seen that a child with diarrhoea shows less appetite, it should be pursuaded to eat at least in small quantities as frequently as possible. Such foods given during diarrhoea can be soft, well-mashed mixture of cereals & beans or well-mashed fish/meat. Fruits and yoghurt (curds) are good.

The ORS solution can be used both for diarrhoea and dehydration as well as its prevention. In case the diarrhoea continues the child should be immediately taken to a doctor at the earliest. One must also remember that diarrhoea can be prevented by breast-feeding, keeping the food and water clean, washing hands before having our food and also by vaccinating the children against measles.

Source: Department of Paediatrics, Sevakshetra Hospital

Canara Bank Relief and Welfare Society, 2002

Just wrote this micro review for The package - will go to print next week or something but here it is first...

Jay Farrar and Mark Spencer
with Grand Lodge
Sunday May 16
Bar Bodega

For those of you too young to know, Uncle Tupelo were a massively influential altcountry act from the early/mid nineties, built around the combined songwriting talents of Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar. When they split, Tweedy (the cutesy arty guy) formed Wilco and went on to massive acclaim. The gruffer, rootsier Farrar has kept a lower profile, and we were privileged to see his current stripped-back two-man show at Bodega last Sunday.

As befitting the steadfastly independent traditionalists they are, both men were dressed unpretentiously (I'm being very kind here - Jay Farrar rocked the "mainsteamed mental patient" look with his plaid shirt, bowlcut and slacks, whereas sidekick Mark Spencer had, weirdly, the exact the outsized nose and side-part favoured by the 1940s NZ cricket team).

Farrar has a love-it-or-hate-it southern drawl, not unlike Michael Stipe (but with the advantage of not being a crap sellout whore), and writes very American songs in the timeless ballad vein - reverent, weary, introspective, profound, occasionally despairing and, generally, incredibly beautiful. All of which makes perfect listening for late-night living room floor whisky-drinking sessions, but it could've gotten a little dull after a song or three if it hadn't been for Spencer providing some great harmonies and twangy, fluid accompaniment on tele and lapsteel.

Openers Grand Lodge (aka Head Like a Short Bilge Pony) warmed it up good some slow burnin' big band intense mellowness. Plus they did absolutely the best western Joy Division cover I've heard so far this year. And while we're at it, big up the Rye Grass Staggers at the WWMC.

Q. What self-respecting company could possibly want its name schmeered all over dirty little Paul Holmes' high-rating drivelfest?

A. None! Therefore, we can only conclude that the proprietors of everybody's favourite funky young celebrity juice makers - Charlie's - have no self-respect! How else can they have made the decision to pay good money aligning their brand with El F*cko himself? I mean, it's not enough that Holmes is an arch-conservative, patronising, self-obsessed, goat-blowing wannabe lounge-singer c**t. If that were all there was to it, he'd be no worse than Mikey Havoc. But the fact is, as we all well know, in an unguarded moment of pure ego last year, Holmes laid his racist cards on the table and called the Sec Gen of the UN a cheeky darkie (a comment, let's remember, that was prompted by Kofi Annan having the bravery, good taste and decency to criticise Bush Jnr for invading Iraq), prompting multinational megacorp Mitsubishi to pull their sponsorship of the show. No doubt Messrs Lepionka and Ellis got a good price and made a killing on the deal, but honestly! It's just this kind of unprincipled attention-seeking that gives capitalism a bad name.

Suffice to say that in future, I for one am taking my mandarin-buying ass elsewhere, and I would call upon all right minded persons to do the same.

PS I know I'm way out of date with this, but I don't watch Holmes, I just noticed it during an ad break in the Simpsons the other day...

Thanks to Malcolm for his assistance with my idle food colour chart/Fanta query. Here's a link to a document which gives a comprehensive list of food additives, many of which have cool names (110 in Fanta is "Sunset Yellow" - the same colour, I suspect, that is in most cheesey corn snacks).

It makes for moderately interesting reading, but sadly it's not the Resene DIY colour chart/Pantone swatch-style bizz I was hoping for.

Walked past a Billy TK poster on the way to work. Cool that he's still making a living out of music. He played in Christchurch a year or two ago and it must have been the first time in ages, cos the bar was packed and the audience giving the guy the kind of massive respect that earnest young sensitive liberal white guys feel is due to brown guys playing 'the blues'. I remember feeling the same way when I saw him at old Bodge or Bluenote or somewhere years back, until I remembered how profoundly boring instrumental guitar w*nk blues is. Mind, you his Little Wing beats the hell out of any busker I ever heard.

Wierdly in the same vein, I saw a Stevie Ray Vaughan tribute band called Rude Mood play at the Angus Inn in Lower Hutt last weekend (it's a long story...). SRV so completely sucks arse, although it felt like I was getting the authentic nostalgic experience that Salford Lads Club are supposed to be offering. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but in my late 80s suburban NZ early adolescence, there was very little Smiths going round, and an awful lot of Led Zep, Jimi, SRV, Doors etc. Authentic nostalgia aside, it all reminded me of what an total waste of time Lower Hutt is/was/can be. The only thing that made it okay was the fact that the crowd of bogans (and they were actually bogans) were completely into it.