midnight cowboy

31may2013
if any movie deserves a blogging from me, it can be midnight cowboy, why ?, it will soon be apparent. released in n.s.w. australia before the  r category things, which is just as confusing as the shitfull of crap movies today. then, it was only the big AO (adults only) rating, x was something somewhere else. R was just a letter after q, i think the first R rated was percy, which seems a bit,some word. i think they had to start somewhere, just like this, blog.

1june2013
being unsure about the percy movie, i had to do a search, it was the first r rated in australia, 1971. i got one of them, the great rock discography (5th edition) with forward notes by john peel, it has come in real handy at times. i checked the kinks, they done the soundtrack for percy, the book only gives it a 4/10 rating, i 've only heard the lola, probably not the coca cola version thats on vs, cherry cola. the old percy's getting a write up here, no pun intended. i seen it on a late night movie, maybe the 80's or 90's. with the midnight cowboy movie, i would have been in 5th or 6th class, either 69 or 70. i thought it was a modern day western, something like billy jack or something. so i got a few class mates to travel into town, about 4 miles, big day out at the pictures.

3june2013
for me it wasn't no big deal, my mum was always a keen movie goer, for a long time. so saturday at the flicks was not an uncommon practice. them early days everybody stood up for a photo of the queen and anthem, i think that had just fizzled out, with my generation. them other guys were all dolled up  for the occasion all from the happy family or so called. me, by this time, i knew the streets, i knew trouble, and how to avoid it. probably the only difference here, when we went with mum, she'd go up the top level. cinemas them days had the 2 levels, downstairs the cheap seats, riff raff, up top bourgeois, so called. i don't remember too much about this time, but some things are clear. them days you got the ads, usually cig ads, the cartoon and 2 movies. i can't remember the other movie.

6june2013
that other movie kept playing on me, i thought it was a movie called, the confederate. i did a search it came up with some later thing. the movie i was looking for, was about a soldier who was killed by eating poison mushrooms. luckily, after typing the confederates, there was a movie called the beguiled , staring clint eastwood, never knew that was him, never knew him then anyway. that was the movie about the mushrooms, but it wasn't the other one for midnight cowboy. it must of been later. midnight cowboy came out may 1969, you know how long it took to came out here? i went to the library yesterday and did the  microfilm search. each roll has a month of papers. starting from may 69, i did a quick search of rolls . i knew it wouldn't be may 69, or dec 69 or jan 70 cause of school holidays . it was 29 oct 1970, some 18 months after it's release, i was not long 12. i seen it 31 oct 1970. the other movie was the mosquito squadron . strange match.

7june2013
i thought there was only 3 of us that went that day, there could have been 4. a few class mates didn't turn up that week, but after hearing our reviews went the next week. the 4th kid could have been a john mc , i'm not one for name dropping, but i can see some relevance, and seeing i was a great fan of the man from uncle a few years earlier. when i heard that david mc callum song on those john peel tapes, i thought of john mc, whose last name isn't mc callum , but claimed to be a relative of david mc callum, he reckon his mother had letters and things, david mc callum was in mosquito squadron, so maybe john mc was there, doesn't matter anyway, just a thought. we all have some degrees, distant and removed. so there we were.

11june2013

the first movie came and went, no worries. intermission. now for the modern day western, don't really remember too much about the movie then, what i do remember is one of the other guys freaking out at the sight of tits and bum. there we were three young guys  with stiffys and a fucking nutter, what a sight. when it got to the little dog scene, he was in hysterics. the usherette came down with a torch to see what was going on, we tried to calm him down, with threats and such. told him to put his hands over his eyes when them scenes were on, so much for the western. i don't think we knew that much then, we knew fucking made babies, but all that other adult stuff was above us. i remember looking at the faces of the other guys, big smiles and one cry baby with his hands over his eyes. i used to play a  trick on my sister at the creepy parts on movies when she had her hands over her eyes saying is it over yet, then just as the creepiest bits on say it's over now , she'd take her hands off right on that part, sick. you guess it, the movie was getting boring, down comes the usherette, we seen the movie though.

bought this on ebay, i think that means i own it

16june2013
if it means anything, after the movie we all went to a pinball shop, i can see some relevance. there was no space invaders then, the big thing, were them car on a stick indy 500, a bit like screen projection once you got the hang of it you can get replay after replay, but at 20 cents a pop, bit out of my league. john mc played that, we just played the 5 cent pinnies. you can do a lot more with 20cents then, than you can do with a dollar now days.  i think that movie stayed around for many weeks. i never seen it again for many years, i seen it on telly. you couldn't tell if it was cut though, before the rating system, even after, they just cut out bits.

18june2013
i'd spent half of my life with them two guys, john mc had only been at our school, 2 years. i could write a blog on the other nutter, who went on to the Catholic education system, we others went to public high school. so it bon voyage over the next few weeks. i seen midnight cowboy about 30 or so times, i had/have the video and dvd. i relate more to the little big man.
 

lynore

24april2013

like the clash, i seemed to have worked my way into a corner, where to go next? start something i'm not real confident about writing or fill in past blogs. i have bits here and there, many in fact, but being true to the clag eartha style there's flow and relevance and a link between the lot. so begins the blog of lynore, a person of person i do not know, but once considered a myspace friend. after accepting my friendship, really enjoyed my little richard blog, that can be found here in an older blog . what i've done here is paste that whole myspace text for all the snoops, snoops ??? scorn flakes to wollongong snoops
 .....

it's not aztec, it's not native, it's not african
maybe it's all, but one things for sure and more
 it's lynore galore!!

what is that beauty in yonder mirror breaks?
is it some kind of tinnka¿

with this piece in 1592, you could have brought manhattan isle,
 with maybe n.j. thrown in as a bonus.

yes lynore of some galore, this is i your new + friend, robert. wanting
to thank thee, for thou wise choice. thank you. if you haven't noticed
i put up some comment. i always wanted a friend from new york. why
you? it must be them beady  little eyes, again i jest. in my browsing
i noticed you, you remind me, (in that particular picture) of a
minnie ripperton, joan armatrading or one of those skipping  girls,
you see on the telly. so i had a look, and wallah, you not only
look pretty, you actually do something, very impressive. only one
thing, maybe you should number your photos, so that way people
and you know what piece interests them, go girl.

your friend,
robert may 2008.


Now everybody knows that solium is the wonderful sunlight ingredient contained in one soap, and only one soap, new rinso. But i guess that you want to know what that means to you. Well, here's the story, the United States testing company, an independent laboratory, has tested new rinso with solium, thoroughly, and this is what all of their tests prove.
New rinso with solium will wash clothes, whiter than brand new, make washable colours look brighter than brand new. There you have the scientific facts. No other soap in the world can produce these results, because no other soap contains solium. Now, if i've convinced you to buy just one package of new rinso with solium, then that's enough, your wash day results, will do the rest.


Dear Lynore, I'm somewhat puzzled by your asking about an old newspaper.
Which old newspaper do you mean? Could it be the extree extree? I think not.
Could it be the Little Richard article? I don't know, I'm confused. If it's the Little
Richard, there is a story behind that. It goes something like this. One day,
around 1997, I had to go up town for some reason.
 Now, down here we have a roadside garbage collection, every so often. Stuff
like old pipes, bits of wood, old wares and the like. Well on this particular
day, as I walked up town, I noticed this old greek bloke (man) putting
some stuff out on the curb. As I walked pass I noticed a old 50s  record
player, me being a collector of old record players, thought I'll grab that
later, if it's still there. Not really caring if it was there or not, being a busy
street. Anyways I went up town to do my business, it took awhile, I
walked home a different way. I completely forgot about the record
player, then after awhile I remembered, I thought, I wonder if that bloody
record player is still there, there's only one way to find out, go and have
a look. So off I went up the road again, I was thinking it'll be lucky if it's still
there. Now as I got closer a young dude, a real office type, dressed in a
suit, what I call suits. He was looking at the pile, me thinking he's spotted
the player. As I got closer not knowing if it was still there or not. I could not
believe what happened next, the young suits dude picked up some old bits
of copper pipe and trotted off. To this day I am amazed by this, the
guy obviously had a descent job, there was about 75 cents in scrap, the dry
cleaning bill would have been bigger. Guess what, that's right it was still there,
so I grab the handle and carried it home, a brief description it was them old
box type you see, that open up. As I walked home I noticed it was a bit heavy
and had some other goodies in there. I went to the garage, where I keep other junk.
I opened the box, and there was all these old 50s rock 'n roll records about 30 to 40
in all. I took the records up stairs to check them out. There was Little Richard,
Eddie Cochran, Freddy Cannon and a heap of others, I fell in love with them. For
some unknown reason I became possessed by them. I wanted to know about
them. Now for some unknown reason, I went to the library to check out old newpapers
on the microfilm, I think maybe it was to see my birthdate in the personals of the local rag.
I got the lady to show me how to operate the apparatus, and I was off flying through the news.
It was a speedy machine, zooming and stopping every once and awhile to see what
page and date you were up to. I am not sure whether  my birthdate was on the same reel.
I don't know maybe I was looking for the sputnik, I don't know, but I stopped on a particular
page, now I remember, it was more my conception day what was happening around the time
I was conceived, I am a nutcase, just interested in dumb things, anyway getting back.
I stopped and there was the ad for rock 'n roll show. I went far out, I didn't
know Little Richard played in Wollongong. I didn't know much at that stage.
I'd seen Little Richard on the American Today show, where Bryant Gumble, asked him about
throwing the ring into Sydney Harbour, and that's about all. With the microfilm
machine, you can photocopy the page for 50 cents. so i copied the ad and the next
weeks ad and the next day write up, which is part of my blog on the subject.
I decided to look in the Sydney papers microfilm, to see what they said,
not a mention. That's when I noticed the atomic bomb blast picture, I thought
it's like a figure with wings, like an angel. Another view looks like a face. This
picture can be viewed on my photo's the one behind jimi hendrix, webcam infinity.
A few days forward and it's sputnik. I was amazed. I became more
interested in that time and Little Richard. I read Charles White's book about him.
All them punk years through the eighties, I knew nothing, it was amazing. We
actually had a little concert on that block of land in 1982. I suppose that'll have
to do for now. I hope that's the old newspaper you were talking about. any
questions?.

robert
may 2008

26april2013
you see this isn't about a person at all, it's about a text on a usb called lynore. when i first started going on the internet, say 2007, i joined myspace, didn't know much about it really. i used to go to the library and net cafes things, time was short, so i put things on the usb at home and drop them off . i thought i'd carried baggage around too long , things like the little richard story , peel and such. then came the friends bit, their always prompting you look here blah, i wasn't interested in friends locally or even australia , i know this place better than any of them and it's boring egos. i was interested in other places without going anywhere. you know things look better in pictures, but there are magicial times that pictures can't capture. i went all round the place just looking at their prompt, the one thing that stood out at that time, was the infamous mirror pictures , hence the poem, i still think it funny.

1may2013
the time could not have been stranger for finding that record player. around 97, a bit after the peel tapes. i always believed there  would be the big movement 20 years on from the last , as well as the revival. didn't happen really , or was it windows 98, strange. i see the internet as more of a retreat, tool and a hindrance somewhat to true face to face stuff. it has it's pluses , but is not the big movement that rock 'n roll was, the generation gapper . the internet is more the fragmentaler. the bands i seen at that time, around here anyways, were strum and pedal and the same fucking racket that sends you deaf, there was the occasional treat. i seen a few bands mix and match, some got hot from playing , but couldn't hold it together, others stay together for what reason ??  you tell me.  i think what has been before is still here just the people ain't, maybe that's abundance.

4 october 1957 maralinga

i was in 2 minds on whether to add this, s'pose  it's part of it

the clash

5feb2013
it all comes back to 1980 really, and a few other factors. in town looking for something new to buy, i frustratingly went through all available new or different albums, i nearly bought comes a time, neil young, but it offered nothing new, i had enough of that stuff. arming and aring, i went through the new releases, i notice london calling, i'd seen the single on telly , it wasn't bad. still arming and aring , i notice it was only $11.95, only $4 dearer than an album, only for that reason did i make the plung , i probably wouldn't have bought it otherwise. thinking well it's got one song there with all them others , might get one or two.

8feb2013
s'pose  it's that time again, racking the brain, i often think why bother. i think this maybe interesting in a few more years or so, that's probably all that keeps this going. i was really after that, johnny rotten, neil young song, i didn't know the album or song title. i had harvest and deja vu csny. this time was early 80 or even dec 79. london calling was pretty much hot off press. on playing it , there was the punk thing but more, at that time there was defiantly not much sitting on the fence with the music, it was for or against. i was working hard , i'd put a record on when i got home , and probably crash half the time, side 1 got played a bit, that i got into it, then side 2, by the time i got to 3 and 4, i had made a tape of the songs i liked and just played that.

11feb2013
after playing london calling a bit, it made all that laid back stuff, yesterday. the trendies bypassed it , i think with some mod and ska thing and plenty of other, they didn't need a punk album. or some other excuse. being a double album, as with the white album, there's plenty of stuff and gems get over looked. after about 10 or so years i finally got, i'm not down, funny that. it's one of them tracks that just didn't make the tape and being hidden away on side 4, same with the cover. couldn't tell if that was paul or mick. didn't realise the cover was the same as the first elvis album. wasn't really an elvis fan then, that was my aunties generation. i think his main fan base was born around the mid forties. the elvis records i seen had different covers anyways. i seen a k.d. lang cd the other day using the some artwork, i thought what the fuck is that. and a lot of people think the leonard cohen song is hers, he doesn't mind anyways.... there is a point lenny.

26feb2013
it's was all a bit surreal , whatever that means, what i mean is london calling had songs you could really relate too. never mind the punk hype, there was some really good songs there, songs that where in your head at that time. i remember my grandmother saving all the boxtops from packets of tea, i always wondered why, i think they saved them and sent them away and got some cutlery set or some other prize they'd never use , or on occasions. to this day, i'm not real keen on the politics thing. i've got my views they don't change much, it's the times that do. i think the main thing is to make people think, politics is just a game, that gives me the shits. and you can't get away from it. i think old joe got lost on it, it's a game you don't win cause it never ends.

1march2013
london calling even though it's mainly english it has more of a wide appeal than the first lot.i would call songs like the card cheat , epic rather than punk. i loved that song pretty much after buying it. a bit of a cecil b. demill production there. i could go on about london calling. i'm not sure if i got the first or second albums next, i did buy clampdown b/w guns of brixton 45 . at that time there was nothing like guns of brixton, the closest would have been peter gabriels', games without frontiers, had a similar musical thing there. after about six months the london calling was starting to gain recognition , here anyway. slowly.

3march2013
like i said before, not sure if i got the 1st or 2nd next. i would have got either some time later. the first was hard to get into at first, couldn't really get the lyrics, very brit. i'd heard police & thieves somewhere before, i thought the police done it, funny. it even remind me of the motels, total control, i don't know why. the first album has some really good songs, eventually, i got the first song book, some years later. the second album had some good stuff also, the trouble here was , too much too soon . with getting london calling before the first two, then sandinista , the 2nd was overlooked somewhat, i liked tommy gun though.

6march2013
sandinista, i don't know why, most hated it. me, personally liked the album(s) , and i thought the card cheat was epic, it was the label anyways. the title didn't really do much, a word in one song, hey joe, their been doing that stuff since columbus. the title should have been all aboard or something, here's our friends they do stuff too. the single here was the call up. i actually thought what a good song for woodstock, a little too late though, i liked the clip. you know it was the 3rd song i taped on the old betacord. it was on a afternoon show called simon townsends wonder world. me, at that time not knowing much about simon,who introduced the song, and said it was about what was termed conscientious objector . he himself being a infamous one during the vietnam days. to this day i'm kicking myself that i cut the intro out, apparently all the video from that show was destroyed, it went for years.

10march2013
i could go on about what i thinks good and not on sandinista, but it don't matter. we all have regrets about getting pissed, pissed being well intoxicated not that term i call pissed off , there is a slight difference. time came to see the clash , getting pissed on the train wasn't a good thing. 50 miles to see the band they wouldn't let me in cause i was pissed, they said came back tomorrow night, that wasn't gonna happen. the cops were called blah blah blah. at that time i was pretty powerful both physical and spiritually, being pissed didn't help, i don't know why we do it, i personally loathe drunks breathing and talking shit on me. sitting in the cop car handcuffed behind my back , felt like a fucking mad man. we do push things sometimes with me alot, maybe that felt trouble with me, too fucking right. thinking in the car it's bullshit, like i always thought. i gave the punk a go back in 1980. but it proved to be bullshit. that point was the end. strings were pulled , the cops let me go, they let me in, so fucking what, it was over, anything after was token. probably the saddest thing is, all these other fuckers who came later, even now, still don't get it.  never went back no other night they played. i was an idiot, but i wasn't an idiot that came back them other nights. i knew now just the small things were better, i had heaps better times at small gigs. not to say the clash or any of them ain't good. i just don't go much on the big bollocks out things.

11march2013
not sure if i bought the radio clash single before or after that. i bought know your rights single, wasn't much at that time. that's the thing with me, i think it's a bit hereditary , i'm a bit bent. not bent in a bad nasty way, like i say fuck it no more like that, and things bend and i end up forgiving or something similar, but most times their fucking dickheads anyway. probably one of my biggest battles that. i think it's the devil. should just say fuck it and move on, it's hard when your young though. they released combat rock, i didn't give two monkeys, never bought it straight up, i bought rock the casbah, and straight to hell singles for the collection. the album done pretty good here, all them old rodriguez people where playing it. i remember hearing it coming from a few houses where you heard cold fact 5 or so years earlier. blokes at work would come up and say they really like that band i'm into, i didn't know what the fuck they were on about. i'd go what band? they go the clash, one guy bought the tape combat rock. i didn't think it was that crash hot. maybe i'm missing something here. ended up buying it.

15march2013
you know these stories are already written in my head, whether letting them loose is a good thing or not. i only type when i feel like it, and thinking, can i do a paragraph in a sitting, when you start it flows you know. combat rock was an informative little package, many cameos . at that time i hadn't seen taxi driver, allen ginsberg  was part of another world mainly pencil squeezers. jane fonda? i think liked some movies, had everything and wasn't happy, or something. i think marlon brando said more with the award or without it. i might be making assumptions here, wasn't that her on the chlorine crystals ad. the album was a bit like a simpsons episode with something  new popping up with every view. during the nineties combat rock was played more by this fellow than any other clash album. should i stay... was the, i wonder of this album, maybe the riff is okay, but that's about it.

23march2013
i got, this is england  45, waiting for the film clip , to check out the band. there wasn't no film clip, no nothing voidoole . i was at paddington market , some trendy hippy shitty thing mid 80's. that's where i first seen cut the crap album, thought it was a bootleg, being a market . no it was a release, i didn't get it for a bit when i did, i thought they'd worked themselves into a corner with no direction. i thought time would change the album , but it hasn't
  
6april2013
of course the clash story doesn't end there, i swiped someones twitter page i found, i didn't follow though. using some sav clag and a bit of tech knoware, and walla...

.....the end of the chapter is the beginning

   

alice cooper

11dec2012
thinking for a couple of days on where to head next??.. probably more than any other artist in the seventies to effect me was alice cooper. i first heard the band around 1972. the first was either schools out or alma mater. i heard schools out in our 2nd form music class. not many people in our form took music as an elective , it was all woodwork, metalwork and tech drawing, follow the crowd type of thing. i don't even think there was enough for a class. same went for social studies, i don't think that's even relevant any more, shame really. there was the non elective , 1 period a week music. we done a bit of theory , quavers & crotchets , but most of the time we'd just play records. the teacher encouraged us to bring in records. the year before, 1971, i brought in some 45s, i had 4 , no one else bought nothing that year, it was sort of embarrassing really. i actually learnt a good lesson, that proved right time and time again, thank you rick nelson. them records i brought in , i don't know how they went down, it don't matter what you like , someone dont. those records, the beatles -hey jude/revolution, the jacksons- abc, ray stevens - gitarzan, mungo jerry - in the summertime, were my beloved treasures, something a 12 yr old thinks are great . when someone says there rubbish, it dont feel so good, and then you dont like them as much for a bit. when rick nelson release garden party it was right on.

14dec2012
probably heard alma mater first. i used to listen to the radio at my grandmothers' place. i heard it when i was having a bath on 2sm radio, also i remember hearing, t.rex - children of the revolution at that same time, that was a single and you could play it on the jukebox, 10cents a song or 3 for 20. when you think about it now , that's sort of expensive by todays 99cent downloads, you could by the single for $1.10. it was pay or no music, or try your luck listening to the radio. alma mater was only on schools out . i never got to hear it in class. the girl borrowed the record from someone, she only played school's out, and said the rest was crap, i had no say. i really wanted to hear that alma mater song, i thought it was great, after hearing it on the radio. every christmas was record buying time, between me and my sister, i wanted schools out and she wanted the slider.

17dec2012
so i got school's out, the first issue here had them disposable paper knickers , that were around at that time. you couldn't wear these though, they were around the record  and the cover opened like a desk. the desk cover continue over the next few reissues, then just an normal cover. i couldn't work out who was who from the cover, there was just a photo. i remember a piss up party a few of the olds' friends , they got me to show them the knickers and play the album. i thought they cant relate to that. i think it lasted about 2or 3 songs , then the old man put his beethoven shit on, i hate that shit, i really do. i like a few classical pieces , but i know the rest is fucking shithouse.

27dec2012
i liked most of schools out, the two end songs on both sides weren't much. i'd play the album before going to school. it seemed like nobody like that album much, they were mostly into bowie, creedence and the stones. in 1973, a guy in my class was carrying around the billion dollar babies album , reading and singing the lyrics off the album cover. i asked him if he heard schools out, he never . i brought it in and lent it to him, he liked the first track, but said billion dollar babies was better. anything you can do .. you know. i never got billion dollar babies until some years later second hand, it still had everything thing in tacked. it had a few good songs , but shit too. i had the first greatest hits album which had most on it. i actually thought at the time that guy had the album , it was before schools out. probably that greatest hits was my next cooper album, then school days the first two albums on a double, didn't go much on it as i remember, i can't really remember the songs, i think there was some spiders something or rather.

1jan2013
i got school days from the record club, sold it not long after, too much. the next would have been the greatest hits album , also from the record club. you'd think by reading this that i wasn't much of a fan, i just knew what i liked , like most teenagers,  until they snap out of it. i was happy with the greatest hits album , it served as a good template for the earlier albums. this time would have been late 74, i joined that club then. after that i remember getting muscle of love in the post. records you got from the club came with cardboard packaging . muscle of love had it's own cardboard  pack, i thought it must be a good album if they print that stuff on the box(dummy). it had 1 or2 on it , but wasn't played much. welcome to my nightmare , i never bought that until a year or two after it's release.

2jan2013
the next things were tapes. i made this move after the record debt was paid off, i decide to join their tape section and get them first half dozen cheap. that's where i got love it to death. i really got into that album, black ju ju was a bit much, but the rest was so so. when you look back at the band stuff, i reckon, love it to death is probably their best album. i'd known sun arise from rolf harris and his shows in the 60's before he done the big move. i was surprised that harry butler co wrote it, i didn't realize that until the 80's. alice coopers version starts off good , but then turns into sameness , which in my opinion makes it fill. i always thought they should have spent a bit more time on adding a verse, rather than sameness. i get that same thing with the stranglers golden brown, but that's another story. i think love it to death is the alice cooper blue print. next, probably goes to hell , again tape. i liked this album some what, it was a bit showbizy though, even compared to welcome to my nightmare. eventually i swapped it for jj cale naturally. i took it on a bike trip down the coast, a mate had a truck, we all loaded up the truck and headed south. a guy really liked it and swapped. by this time it had become just another album.

8jan2013
you and me on countdown, somewhat thrilling? compared to the other stuff they played ,yes. the thing with alice cooper, he does those soppy  ballads, that get you in. stuff like alma mater, only women bleed, i never cry , etc, there always there , it's the mix. even new yorks dolls had that with lonely planet boy. the album lace and whiskey was very hard to get into, i think it had 2 or 3, but struggled. i had the tape , which made it hard to jump tracks, the thing with the love it to death tape , i think, just before black ju ju , you turn the tape over and it starts right on the ballad of dwight fry, i done that lots. i liked ubangi stomp on lace and whiskey, didn't know it was a cover at that time, i like all them versions too, warren smith, jerry lee etc.

10jan2013
from the inside, i got this on vinyl, the cover reminded me of brain salad surgery by e.l.p   not that i had that album. the single wasn't much , but i can understand the sentiment . it's been that long since i heard the album, i liked most or it. i liked serious, it had a good pace about it, a bit like, a song on goes to hell, something about pedal to the medal in the lyrics. i checked the songs on goes to hell, can't remember half of them. there's been lot's of different things since . but i know the alice cooper album formula for them 70's one's. flush the fashion , again vinyl, again single a bit weak, i liked this album, a bit , what was term new wave. i remember asprin damage. there was some kind of direction here, but the formula had worn thin, welcome to the 80's. i gave special forces a go, but it was moving on time.

1979

13oct2012
i have lots of things i would like to blog about, but 1979 came up in my mind, and it could be some kind of refresh for the mind. a lot of changes happened this particular year. as i remember , it's sometimes hard to remember exactly, but January  involved girlfriend , motorbikes, pinball shops and going to the pub and hanging with them young dudes like steve.

20oct2012
as i remember january  had some girlfriend trouble that was, probably what you would call , heartbreaking. what a terrible feeling that is, sort of like when someones gone and you want them there, a bit of a break, you get over it. i just hung out with the guys , you know. by february we were back together, so we hit the town every friday night, we decided to drop a trip, at that time it was blotter paper, they were around for a couple of years in that form, before that around 75 they were pills and micro dots. i'm not quite sure if i had half or one, but it was a scary spooky one, spiders at first, welcome to my nightmare. we got home about 11.45 peaking , had the psychedelic sex , mind fuck. the morning got home , just watched this jigsaw i done of a cartoon of all these little flying saucers with little green critters flying about , amasing. watched tv music program  the news was sid vicious dead. i never knew that guy but i felt really shit about it and hated rock n roll. there was this song , i dont know , dear anyone. they played . i wanted that song but it eluded me. some time later hot chocolate release a  very similar thing  called i'll put you together again. when i heard that , i thought , that's that dear anyone song.

28oct 2012
 i probably could of said more about that episode back then, than i can now, but some years later when i got into early rock 'n roll, i noticed buddy holly died twenty years earlier, nearly to the day. just a thought. after, we sort of came down, we meet up , i remember saying i feel shit about rock 'n roll cause of the news. we walked to a nearby quarry , which we use as a bike track , done the old in outski, that was pretty much it really. i done a google search of that hot chocolate song , some say 78, others 79. that song was not exactly the same, as the one on the telly, similar.

30oct2012
after that , i thought about giving up everything and trying a clean lifestyle. i had quieten down some since the teens. had some kind of Jesus thing a few years earlier, but couldn't quit the cigs. the sex and cigs won out again really, what else was a 20 year old to do, maybe get a job, that was on the cards. my mum got me a job helping this bloke, sand blasting, another disaster. firstly, i had go and see the bloke, 20 miles away. i caught the bus out , saturday bus out ok, bus back ???. i meet the guy, he just told me about the job, i said ok, no worries, that was it. rather than wait hours for the next bus,  i  decided to walk hitch, more like just walk, hot , miserable. came the day of work, he was a subby, sub contracted by this mob to sand blast their new factory's framework. he wasn't there, but left me to tell them who i was, i filled the papers, they had me working like a dog in their factory , i'm thinking i'm not suppose to be working for these people, nearly left then. next day , the bloke turned up, i thought this should be better. the framework and sand blaster where up the road , on a block of land, no water, no shithouse, the hottest day of the year, while the bloke was dressed up like ironman, i had to shovel this grit in the machine, lovely. he sent me to get some water from the factory, they weren't interested . when i got home, i had a shower all this bloody graphite grit in me hair. took about 3 or 4 washes, never got it out proper, i had long hair then. next day, still no water , no toilet, another hot day, i started to shovel this grit in the machine, after a while i thought, fuck this, don't worry i tried. i told the bloke i had enough, he said see the factory mob. i walked up there, the woman said, she had to do the paper work and it would be ready in the arvy . i lived not far a mile or so , i said i'd come back later, i walked home, got my bike, rode back, seen the grit flying from afar . i think i got 50 something bucks. i'll tell you now that was the worst job i have had to this day , and i had some dandys. took me a week to get that shit out of my hair. funny thing, i was down the pub playing pool and low and behold in comes that old sharpie bloke, not old but my age, the one with the sharp tatt, all grit blacken. he got the job after me. he said they got water now, i said good on them , we got beer here.

4nov2012
you know that could have january  or feb, doesn't matter really, it was hot and 1979 , so it was either. i had a casual furniture removal thing a couple of times during the year. $4 an hour of hard yakka. the routine was get petrol and ride the tracks most days. i remember i got a flat tyre , had no money to fix it , i rode that bike for some weeks with a flat tyre. when i think about it now , i think i was sort of skilled, you get like that. you could ride with a flat , with them motocross bikes cause the tyres are bolted to the rim. it was dodgy on the road, but on like grass it was ok a bit dodgy but you handle it. i remember it felt unreal when i fixed it.

9nov2012
it's a bit blurred around this time, i think i was waiting for the end of the decade retro from the media. the one in the sixties was good , a lot happened mostly black and white, the seventies one was more colour but was more centered on the coming decade rather than the seventies. on the record front , i'd buy second hand, i remember buying elvis costello , armed forces . what did i think .. i'd seen olivers army on telly, the one i remember now most is mood for moderns, i don't have that album now and haven't for years. do yourself a favour was raving on  about rickie lee jones and joe jackson as beening the best albums of the year. i bought look sharp new, thinking it was punk, it sort had a feel in that direction. i dont know where you'd put costello , but look sharp was probably my first post punk thing. meaning is had that feel but came later.

11nov2012
on reflection, i don't wanna keep saying that, but moods for moderns probably was my least fave on that album, i think i liked sundays best the most. i couldn't handle songs that were forever saying that same line, i think thats why i remembered moods. i prefered the story not the chrous. i was in a club in town, one check day, i had heard you could get a schnitzel meal for a dollar on a particular day. i checked it out after signing the book, welcome to the adult world, i wouldn't call it a meal, but it was ok compered to todays. they had pokies there, i decided to play 5 dollars, there was the grandmother of this woman , who lived across the road from my grandmother, who i hung around with a couple of years earlier, there  at the club. so here i was playing the pokies, amongst all these old fogeys, maybe it was beginners luck , but i got 4 witches on broomsticks , 100 smackaroonis. that's how i bought the joe jackson.

13nov2012
the money don't last, it don't matter how you spend it, spend it and it soon departs. among getting a proper job , i had a few get rich quick schemes in my head, just to keep the dream alive. the trouble with get rich quick things , unless you win the lottery, there basically long term hard work that win out. the cops were on to my motor bike follies and word was sent that they were getting 14 calls an hour about the noise, it was only a matter of time. as long as i stayed in the bush it was okay, one day me and a mate were riding , i had to go home a get something, we parked out front on the road . when i came out, radar milton of the highway patrol was there checking out the bikes  and asking questions. we got done for unlicenced, unregistered , uninsured. went to court got 50  on each i think, so i was broke for awhile again.

18nov2012
when in town, i'd check out the record bars in department stores and such. they'd usually played some current new release or some other thing. while i was checking out whatever, they played that neil young my my hey hey, i thought neil young , not bad, i'd had harvest years ago, when i lived a my grand mothers,  when he sang this is story of johnny rotten, i thought why is he singing about them dickheads. at that point they were dead and buried . it made me curious, i checked out the s section , there was one, some product. i got the woman to play it in a booth, i spend 50 weeks in a factory i want some holidays in the sun, it sounded ok, then there was all this talk , like ads, that meant nothing to me. it just sounded like cunts taking the piss really, not really about music, but then it was, strange. to tell you the truth i had actually heard part of the bollocks sometime earlier, not long after its release. i thought it was a live album, that was holidays, and then i heard the swearing in bodies, i thought country joe had done that years ago, they weren't nothing new, and dismissed it. never really gave it, a proper listen. you couldn't get bollocks at that time anyway. meaning 1979.

19nov2012
all that post punk amby pamby, was made just  that one thursday shopping night in town at a record bar when they played anarchy or pretty vacant through their sound system. it sounded like nothing else, it fitted in that time period. i thought it was a gradual thing, like joe jackson thru to the pistols, if you can make sense of that. on a visit to the second hand book, i  got a novel on bob dylan , a rare find at that time, here. strange i can't remember much on the writings now, but had him with his face in his fist on the cover, and them few photos in the middle , that those type of books have. i searched the net for it, one has the cover picture but that's not the one. i think it's the one by the girl in the sixties. it was old even then and covers are constantly changing with reprints.

27nov2012
in town one day around this time, in a department store record bar, i noticed dylan had a new album out , slow train coming. you know i actually bought street legal, i didn't go much on it, 2 or 3 tracks. so, thinking of that last burn, i did the ol 5 finger discount and looking at the power line cross on the back, on the bus home, convinceded. i had been thinking of Jesus for some time, just the life path i was taking. my grandfather had retired , and had some do. there was one of my old man old work mates there, who had work his way to super of traffic. grandad suggested the old man contact the bloke and get me a job, he was very reluctant, never really help me much, that's how is was. he did come round . i got and interview with the bloke, i didn't actually have a good record at that place, the steel works, we called it the shitworks. at first, there was no way they would have me, cause the doctors said i shouldn't be near dust and that, cause of my asthma , which i had the occasional attack. then a few strings were pulled , definitely not nepotism, but after heaps of hassle in got the job, on strict 3 months no days off. i started 2 days before my 21st birthday, which i worked.

29nov2012
some weeks before them events, i got the old locks cut. i'd been thinking about it for some time actually, also clinging, a bit like the samson thing. the olds thought i should have it cut for the job thing, i think , but i thought 21 suppose to be the big grown up. so off it came, i remember this girl said i look like sid vicious after the hair cut, i didn't like that much. you know i could of stuck to my ways , in that last paragraph cause it ended like it began. 

3dec2012
it was a bit unbelievable with the names in that job. after seeing the super, i had to see the main foreman who name was johnny walker. then i meet my foreman pat o'brien, then one of the blokes in the gang was named john henry, he taught me how to swing the hammer. i knew nothing of the other john henry til i bought a woody guthrie cd in 89, that blew me out. then i found that john henry was a common song in america. sometime later that super retired , and the new blokes name was roy rogers, looked nothing like him. i was in the mountain gang, i had a connection to the area more than them guys, but they knew the line. it was hard work , i got strong real quick. i thought with all this hard  work i should get good money. probably the lowest paid job in the whole shitworks. i was reading that dylan book and listening to slow train coming, at that time. the album cover was that work.

6dec2012
having a bit of dosh put me in the spending on records. the bike wasn't getting rid as much, just in the arvy. i was pretty worn out from the yakka. morning, tools on truck, tools off truck, signs out, unspike with hammer an pigsfoot. morning tea ..la la pick & thongs & shovel you get the picture. i'd just buy  stuff i knew or stuff that was cheap, things i can remember country joe paris sessions was real el cheapo at that time, as was pink floyd relics, i'm talking $2.99, where as the others new were $7. i got the country joe. you knew it was hippy , but it was cheap. turned out to have some okay things, like zombies in the house of madness, movieola. colarado town he got busted, now it's legal. never got relics, now it's worth something. i did get a budget kinks double on pye, i had a few 45's around 1970 apeman. the kinks double got played alot around this time, i was on a kinks trip, i think i bought about 5 albums over the coming months. i also got pink floyd the wall , the first week out, not like me at all. i thought it was like punk really. they say animals is the punk album, i'm not so sure. i know it's not really talking 1979, but i really liked animals. it was paned at the time no one liked it. as for the wall , i gave it a few listens but wasn't really my cup of tea. of them albums of only got paris sessions now.

rodriguez

27august2012
i see rodriguez has a film out about him. me and the rodriguez music go back some 30 odd years. firstly, thanks to letterman for putting him on his show,  i quite enjoy some of lettermans stuff, but of late i haven't been into it, it becames the same, but i wonder if grinder girl is still grinding away. anyways, i first heard of rodriguez, around 1973, off a girl, i used to talk to after school, about music and stuff, she was into iggy and that, then, i was more into sabbath and cooper. anyways, she mentioned rodriguez cold fact, the tape, that was getting around, thanks to pirate taping in those days, if you had a tape deck in those days. most of us youth , just had radio really, and the odd album or singles. i talked to a few whose sister or someone had the infamous tape. don't worry them rumours where around even then, they just grew. i haven't seen the movie yet, but i read a few reviews, probably the thing with me was , this big search? here, he was found in 1979, so that ended the rumors.

28august2012
strange with some artists, it's like you've heard them before, maybe unconsciously you have , on the radio or somewhere. too this day i'm still , no i've given up really, but years ago , i'm talking 1965/6 something, i heard this song on a jukebox at the embassy cafe. it had the lyric, down the highway , in it. that's stuck in my head, the music , everything, for many years. later in life i chased that song, man. from alro guthrie to bob dylan to any fucking folk singer, i've given up. i've forgotten the song, and it don't matter no more. i think it was like a rolling stone, it sounds very much like it and time period, but no down the highway lyric.

1sept2012
rodriguez done that to me, deja vu, i'd heard that stuff , especially i wonder. probably now one of my least favorite. it's one of those songs you really like at first, then tier of, then like, etc. i love that bass though. at the time i had a semi legit tape must of been 1977, it goes like this, i was trail bike riding up the mountain, as you did. i stopped at the waterfall . a couple of mates were drinking and pissed, there. one had a new secondhand car, they decide to drive down the pool, i said i'll follow. they sped off pissed as. i only had a 175cc bike , up ahead i saw this cloud of dust. when i got up ahead, i saw skid marks on the road , but no car, the when i got there i noticed the car over the fence , upside down on the railway track, thinking the worst. they crawled out of the broken window with blackened dusty faces saying, did you get the number plate. i didnt know what he was on about. apparently, he reckoned some bloke sideswiped him off the road, from where i was i saw dust that's all, he was just holding his head and cursing words. i rode down the road and hid my bike in the bushes and ran back. when i got back some others were there. i said i'd hang and wait for the cops, it's a long time now, i think the others drove him home, and rang about the car on the line, cause trains could be on there way. while waiting i noticed a couple of tapes on the track, no blood though bob, maybe. one was elo new world record and the other rodriguez at his best, i went, rodriguez, what the fuck. never thought i'd ever see a proper rodriguez tape. i hung until they got the car off the tracks, the cops turned up, gave me the 3rd degree . wanted to know where the driver was, i said the others who rang up drove him home, they were shitty about him leaving , then his old man and the others turned up, they talked to the cops, me and these other young guys walked down to the bushes where i hid the bike, then i realised the tapes , i gave the elo to the young guys , i keeped the rodriguez, i didn't feel good about anything. i told him sometime later , he was thankful that i just hung there anyways.

4sept2012
you know i didn't know what to expect with that rodriguez tape, the look reminded me of a time in music, 1970 elvis, glen campbell , lee hazelwood etc. which was a far cry to what i was mostly listening to at that time , maybe dylan or van morrison, i had moondance and a few dylan, desire and blood and greatest hits. the sound was like that time , but had a few more things. sugarman was first on his best, i always thought a sugarman was the lsd peddler, you use to get lsd in a sugar cube, maybe i'm wrong. sugarman is a song you can get sick of lyrically, but i has this other that keeps it alive. crucify your mind is a classic , establishment blues is rap and subterranean homesick blues, street boy was me, i wonder great bass, a hook , one of my least faves.

10sept2012
that tape was played until it became just another. no car at that time just in the room, no walkman even. then around 78/79 came the big cold fact release, the tv ads on late night music shows like night moves. the stories where around about his death and such, then he was alive going to university, running for office etc. i remember seeing a current affairs show ,late60s/early 70s about the car industry in detroit and life after. it was a sad program , i always remember an small clippit interview of an unemployed car industry worker, when asked how he survived without work , and no real prospects , and want he ate. he said he made soup from water and ketchup. it only got worse. hearing that rodriguez was from detroit, that story always came to mind, a bit like jon voight in midnight cowboy, the sauce scene. anyways , it took me a few weeks and months to buy cold fact . i'm a bit like that, wait til the hypes over, you know i still haven't seen stars wars, maybe i have, all the little bits i'd seen on telly, put together. i thought cold fact was unreal , a great album, only one regret no street boy, then that was a good thing, cause all the trendies missed that one. they went for, i wonder, anyway . i wonder was release as a single, on blue goose, i regret not having bought that, singles are like that, i think they'll be real collectors items, maybe not. blue goose , i often wonder, i wonder, if that's the crumb blue goose?

  18sept2012
been thinking about , maybe i bought coming from reality before i got cold fact, doesn't matter really. coming from reality had some good songs, but you could feel it had this decline, 2nd album syndrome. it was like all the good songs were on , at his best , excepting 1 or 2, you could probably say the same about cold fact, i don't know, but there was something missing. i can probably listen to the whole album now, but back then , probably not. the song, i think of you, if it's original, i heard some woman, like a show type, like cabaret , do a cover of it, in the maybe late 80s , early 90s something. i thought i know that song, it's rodriguez, i had to get the old coming from reality album out of storage, and give it a play.

24sept2012
did a search for the , at his best, thinking maybe it survived past moves and a tape clutter throw out, it wasn't where i thought, maybe it'll turn up, like the john peel, but i doubt it. would have made a good photo under the origins story, i think it went a few years back , i have a vinyl and cd of it , so i think the tape went. if you can answer why you hoard something, you think has lost it's purpose , only a short time later after throwing , selling or giving , it comes to purpose, how many times. i could say the same with the alive album, i bought it at a time , when it came out , pretty much my post rodriguez stage. the music scene around 81/82 was far more different from the 70s period. don't get me wrong cold fact did get played from time to time, where as others never got a listen, a lot of laid back stuff just didn't cut it.   the alive album was interesting to a point, i hoarded it for some years, but never really played it, then sold it with a bunch in the late eighties. regrets, not really.

10oct2012
during the eighties there was a few little pockets were i listen to cold fact for a few weeks. one of them young guys got feed up down here and moved to alice springs , installing air conditioners , around 84 something. i caught up with him around 92, he told me he won a singing comp up there. he meet up with an indigenous american indian, he said he turned her on to cold fact, she loved it and never heard of it before . i thought i'd mention that cause i see rodriguez likes pow wows and things. anyways, pocahontas if you ever read this, steve died around 98 of an od.

11oct2012
i spent most of this evening looking for an mp3 i made from a tape of steve playing his mountain song a few weeks before he died. use the password - spms01

steve phillips mountain song 

12oct2012

i had another, knocking on heavens door, i could have also put up, but that's not rodriguez . you know i actually followed both letterman and rodriguez on twitter, but stopped ,awhile back, maybe 1 year or more, i made a policy only to follow who follow, letterman only follow his rivals. as for rodriguez , his twitter page stopped on tour of byron bay. funny that, the girl i talked to on the fence all them years ago, ended up being the mayor of bryon bay. as with my blogs i like to end at the beginning.

h.b. bobby

19august2013
i finally got i see the searchin for sugarman doco. what did i think , does it matter. no. was it worth the accolades? probably not. there's a punkest  saying of the late malcom mc laren , never trust a hippy. i can see a touch of that in this movie, the best part was clarence avant, he pretty much summed it up really. when you say dylan is timid compared to  rodriguez, and there was no other songwriters around that time, you got to question it???. sugerman is volkswagon frank

15feb2016
cleaning i found the tape

 

smoking

 26april12
this came up in the 1975 blogetry, and also came up again in conversation today. its probably not cool, but my first butt was kool (*brand), when i was quite young, although i did smoke passively most of them early years. plus all the other smoke about the place, like fires and such. i was buying them for people, who were sending me to the shop to buy them for the them. in those days, the sixties, anyone could buy them, maybe not, but if you said they were for a parent or someone else. i was sometimes a rather sickly creature, and didn't smoke as a habit, just a show off type of thing and no draw back. the draw back was too heavy for us youngsters. although, i did do the mexican draw back on occasions. which consisted of a drag and throwing the cig on the ground, and do a little stamping dance on it, followed by the word, ole'.

3may12
dont feel that typey  of late, mainly my mind is other places. that's the key to stop anything, a place called nothing and contentment, and as they say, all things pass. it's the time. getting back to the sixties and smoking, i remember buying my first packet of viscount, 10 in a pack 13 cents, 1967. just for something to do. after that, when it came near cracker night, in them days quite a big event. you'd spend all your dough on crackers, and unwind all the little tom thumbs, you'd have hundreds of them or less. rather than buying heaps of boxes of matches, you'd also buy a packet of cigs, just to light crackers.

5may12
this episode took place around 1969, with somebody dropping something and me finding it, something like $10 note. it was suggested i buy cigarettes. so, off we went to the shop, the other guy asked me what kind of smoke my old man smoked, not knowing what he meant, i said phillip morris soft pack, no filters. he meant for me to say something else like viscount or something, we went to a drain under the road to smoke, they were shit. we decide to get someone else to get them, we got marlboro, that was the first time i smoke them.

12may12
high school was the big ciggy thing, 1971. i done a few weeks here and there no draw back though, i think adolescents fucks your head, when i was younger, my inhibitions were much less, then all of a sudden you forget everything. back to square one. the 1971 thing was mainly to hang out with the crowd who smoked, you had smokes you had friends type of thing, they were grubs anyways. strange that, they had some dirty fucking habits, doing the gob hangers on the toilet ceiling. i probably didn't start smoking seriously till about late 72 early 73. mainly winfield (aussie brand promoted by paul hogan), escort and a few others like alpine for a bit. they were around 40cents a pack, i use to go without lunch somedays to support the cig fix.

15may12
s'pose i better finish this, i think why bother now, but maybe someone sometime might relate. to tell you some truth, maybe if we had the laws on smoking now back then, i might have not taken it up,  there was always suicide. smoking seemed a fun way and it was rebellious, or just plain bad. there was smoking in the toilets, round the back, down the creek, on the bus, and in the middle of the playground. the bus was the main influence, if you couldn't smoke on the bus back then well, why bother, nothing like smoking on the bus doing smoke rings and things. one incident comes to mind, one wasteful trick was to light the whole box of matches at once. this happen, and one guy hit the box underneath, and matches went flying everywhere. one landed in a girls hair and caught fire, nobody noticed straight away til smoke was seen coming from her head and the stink. everybody was hitting her head, it became a big deal after that, and the bus driver cracked down. we still smoked but done the smoke shake to stop the smoke, but occasionally got busted and kick off the bus. 

9june2012
i could go on about smoking but i dont. 35 years, 2004, i stopped. hardest thing i've done. takes about 6 months to really stop thinking about. then about 7 years to get it mostly out of the system. it got boring, i mean really boring, no buzz, just mess. eat healthy and smoke, boring boring boring

see you

1975

26march2012
 1975, seems like the next starting point, which starts with the end of a cyclone, named Tracy in Darwin. me, just hanging round the carnival that came every school holiday. they had a day where all proceeds went to the cyclone sufferers, most of evacuated to somewhere else, as i remember. i was looking forward to getting my first dole check, didn't happen. i went all that time , like 4 weeks or something not to get it. apparently, i ticked a box wrong , maybe this was the story of my life. i had a few apprentice jobs lined up, i got one in the mines as a fitter and turner, didn't start till January something.  i think the question was are you ready for full time employment i ticked no, cause of the mine job. i should have ticked yes, i done myself out of weeks of dole.

29march 2012
looking back and thinking about it , the carnival thing was  more early on than this, i had other friends and we'd hang two miles away at figtree riding bikes and such, the carnival was more a 7 till 10 thing,  and at that time money was not a big part , cause you didn't have much, basically scrounging. there was bottles , copper wire , rabbits, and the paper in the phone box trick. when i remember those days of sharing things like cigs, you'd never share these days like that, maybe the youngsters do, and the price now is ridiculous, i don't smoke no more anyways, but a lot of 1975 was spent smoking marlboro and winfield. people would come up and ask for a drag of your fag , and drag the guts out of it, i hated that. they'd check out the name typed on the bottom , not many smoked marlboro, they called them sterile sticks and wouldn't like them . so that was ok.

31march2012
on the music front, i had a few lps as mentioned before, these consisted mainly of lps from the australian cbs recorded club, advertised on the back of certain magazines , you got a number of records (6 in my case) for like $1.99, then you had to buy 1 a month for however long , 1 year i think, at their price, $1 more than the shop, i got a lot of zappa , alice cooper , pink floyd and such from there. on the local front, on the telly was sound unlimited with graham webb and donny sutherland, countdown was just starting really, i didn't go too much on that but watched it anyways , probably for 1 song if that. the big hits in aussie acts where, sherbet - summer love, john young(later jpy) - yesterdays hero, you know i use to like his pasadena song a few years before, mostly vanda and young written ditties. skyhooks with horror movie, i loved this when i first heard it on 2sm radio months earlier , a big hit on countdown, i also liked sherbets, free the people in 1971, i didnt really go much on the later stuff. acdc had the high voltage album out, i never had that although i did play the b side of a single called soul stripper on the jukebox some places, which was also on that album. as far as albums went there was very few australian albums with more than 3or 4 songs which were any good, mainly singles. the albums which i did have were hush alive and buffalo - volcanic rock, and these where later from the record club.

3april2012
don't know if that pilot song January was a hit then or the next year but it sure was hanging on me. other things i remember were joe cocker and alice cooper both in trouble in aussie land . with the mine job , i should have learn t from the tick on the dole form. i passed the test with 96%, the guy wondered why  i only got average mark in the s.c., that's pretty easy i wagged the last 4 months of school , the work i did in the first months helped me just scrape in, i didn't give a shit, but that's 1974. i did the medical out the joint coal board bellambi, blow as hard and as long in these little dunny roll things and keep the pen flowing along the paper, piss in a beaker. then, came the interview with the hierarchy of the pit. old codgers, different world, boats on weekends, houses and shit, i had none of it, sad really. on the way home from up the mountain , i waved at the the bus to stop, the old prick just kept going, long walk home , but i got the job. i'll tell you something if i had a bit better home life things would have been different, maybe it's cliche , but it's all so true. they were real jerks at the mine, you don't know how sad it is to write this. not a happy time.

4 april12
most of the other apprentices were sparkies and only a few fitters, they all started weeks earlier and had fitted in already. the big cruel was to be greased the first week, today this practice would be criminal , though i bet it still goes on, i copped it pretty bad from one arsehole sand and graphite grease, them big bosses just looking on . well that was over with, i wasn't  all that healthy,  i had asthma attacks regularly since i was young and did smoke. the mine wasn't really good for me, misfit. i never missed a day. i only lasted 3 months , i got an ear ring a they couldn't handle it , i was doomed,

6april12
there are always other involved with incidents , with the mine, i could go on, but i have to move. all i can say really, is i didn't say. i told the old man when it was to late, probably to avoid the row. thanks to hitler , he flow off the handle, as always. not for the first time i was out somewhere else. them days there was only the street, none this shit they have today. i done it tough for a week or so, decide to go home when there was just mum there. she was sick with worry, and told me to stay, the old man didn't matter. so i was, i wont say home, but i was there. i eventually got the dole of $26 a week, it was weekly then.

8april12
the dole money helped to pay my record club debt , which was stopping me from buying any other releases elsewhere. i was just going home late, sleeping, then hitch into town and hang around pool halls, dead end. this went on and on , at one stage i was 7 and a half stone, didn't eat much. when i think about it, i left the mine in may, a few things happened in that time at the mine, quite a few really. one in particular comes to mind, the old man probably got tried of driving me to work in the morning, he bought another shitbox , and rather sell the old one he gave it to me. i couldn't drive , anything really, it was a manual. i told some dickhead mates,  they done the old come on lets do it over and over. i should of not even been hanging with them dickheads, we'd just hang at the pool joints till late , and i'd have to go to work in the morning all fucked up. i talked the old man into letting me have the car on friday night, i had a friend with a licence. i dont know who was more a dickhead me or the ol boy, i got the car. i had heard of a band called hawkwind , if you listen to them it was like tripping, from one of the sparkie apprentices. so, my big plan was to buy this hawkwind stuff and drive around like tripping, i had my sister's cassette player, we drove into town a big pile of us, i bought the space ritual tape, played it , waiting to see if it was like tripping, what a gip. we drove all round the place, the dickheads enjoying driving my car, we drove to sydney and back till real early like 2am. one by one they all got dropped off , till there was only 2 of us the other guy lived in dapto, he drove there and left me , i couldn't drive, i tried but was shit at manual , i was only young, the guy said he'd drive me home in the morning. he drove down near the pub a left me there. i walked home and told the old man. that was the end of the car.

13 april 2012
that car incident comes to mind when i see that simpsons episode, when bart got the licence, similar. there's lots of them early episodes that have things that have common with my adventures. i get teary sometimes watching that show , probably the dysfunction. getting back to this,  i could go on with them dickheads, but there's plenty more where they came from. i drifted into another scene in a pool hall/snooker room in town just a couple of school friends , and other pool hall dudes. it had always been a friday night thing, now, it was everyday. playing snooker, kelly pool and pinball. i also started to hang out with some german dudes down the road , from my olds place, in between us was a border line, so they went to dapto and we went to figtree high school. here is where i first heard the plastic ono album, the elder brother had a good record collection. i had to have that album, it spoke to me, it wasn't in the shops had to order it and wait, as i remember $5.95 with an extra lyric sheet, and a little bit of censoring in a few words, that was ok though , i played that album for awhile after i got it. working class hero some lines in that were me, i'm no hero though. they hurt you at home and they hit you at school.

15 april 2012
the timing could not have been stranger when i ordered that album , as i remember. the guy in the record shop said i was lucky to order it when i did, for some reason it was the last or something. anyways one of them dickheads got a half house in town, so the boys from boystown had a home , fagans lair. them dickheads were always in and out of boys homes. the funny thing with me going there, he got me to make some bake beans on toast , and for some reason i got my appetite back and started eating again. they had a few albums there mainly david bowie. they got welcome to my nightmare and venus and mars, thats where i first heard them albums. on my way to there one day i noticed an apple record on a turntable in a department store , display type of thing, john lennon , rock'n roll , although it didn't have a cover , i got it, they didn't like it much. i loved stand by me, but at that time it didn't fit in with the times, even today some of them songs can't be compared with the originals. i thought stand by me was his, actually i thought most of it was. i liked just because too, still do. i think it's as good as the original.

18april 2012
the john lennon  rock 'n roll didnt really get a play all that much, 3 songs don't make an album.  with the record club it was hard cause you didn't really know if the record was good or not, a few hit and misses, the hush alive was a miss, as was this lot santana welcome, status quo piledriver, alice cooper muscle of love although it did have 1 song i liked. i just got greatest hit things after awhile like alice cooper greatest , i got love it to death that was ok, and wish you where here and ian hunters solo that had a couple on it, led zepplin 2 and 4, when they brought out presence , i sort of went off them a bit, the physical  graffiti was a bit out of the reach in the finance department,   i loved apostrophe and overnite sensation by frank, but blew it on a few other of his releases that didn't cut. i had a few  albums before this, but these mentioned here were mainly 1975 .i thought i bought a single this year but i never did.

19 april 2012
the fashion at that time, say for teenages to early twenties, was  long haired hippy look, parted in the middle. there was skinheads mainly in sydney, and sharps or sharpies ,they  had hair styles a bit like mullets of today, but short on top and a bit long in the back. the guy who had the half house flat was a bit of a sharpie, he had the word sharp tattooed on his fore arm , sad looking thing that. started off okay, then drifted down , so the r and p were about half inch under the s , rather than straight across. i just wore levis or californians , type of corduroy material type of levis other than denim. thongs or dessert boots. western shirts were popular and lumber jackets and duffel coats.  t-shirt with pocket for the cigs. others wore pjs a brand of baggy jeans. there was high platform thongs(flip flops) and scaps or slaps or something , soft material amd strips of bamboo, they always broke. ugg boots had been around for a few years, so was most that has been mentioned. other jean types were amco and lee , amco had bogarts , flaired jeans with a crease sewed down the centre and trouser type pockets , i had them , also. i had them ruff tats too on my arm since 1971, i got them covered later that year, with brought ones up kings cross.

21april2012
i asked this bloke today about those thong things, and they were called slaps. funny they were popular, but flimsy things , we used to fix them with safety pins. when i was finishing at the mine , there was talk about another bloke who lasted 10 months and couldn't handle it or something . strange coincidence i actually hang around that guy at the pool hall. he was a bit older than me by a few years, a hippy really, thought i can play catch up but never make it, thats something that really shitted me with hippies. his reasons for leaving the mine, i dont think i ever really got an answer, although we sometimes we hung out together, i never felt part of that scene, he had all the , or his sister did, john lennon albums, i said i bought the first one, and it was, some other ones better, anything you can do i can do better. being my age in 1975, you got that.

continue

20march 2012
continue? yeah i thought about this, you know most just wanna read the little richard thing or get the john peel. that's okay i would probably do the same, my blog ain't so different from the other thousand million . there's just one little difference from the others and that's me, and me is why i'm doing this. it's for me by me to me, and if i get a reader or someone gets something out of it, well fine. this blog is called continue so i'll keep continuing, the band blog will continue sometime, the relevance just happens and continues. you know, i could easily make this a book, that's not really the intention. it's the continuing boredom of the internet in general, i'm sure there's someone somewhere, who's real interesting, but i can't be bothered with it all.

10april2012
looking for something, i came across some old tapes i transferred to mp3, everyone's done a version or tried to play the house of the rising sun, here's mine, use the password rsun96

house of the rising sun 

9june2012

today i went round to see the bloke who had the cardboard record, mainly to find out a few things. if you dont know, i do some charity work fixing old computers, (the cardboard record guy has nothing to do with computers, newspapers at best). anyway, this new guy, in for a few weeks, we started talking about where we're from and such, he lives out my old suburb. coincidence, too many, get this, he moved there in 1983, i moved out 1983. from where he moved is the same street as the old bloke with the cardboard record, next door actually. later, that night i was thinking about it, then i realized the old codgers mother lived across the road from where the new guy lives now, weird or what. the distance between both places is 5 miles (from where he moved in 1983 to where he lives now), not just around the corner. this new guy might mean something in my journey, then again it might just be some inspirational blog story or something. most days weird shit like this happens (i don't like that shit happens in this contents), sometimes i can work it out, it's a time thing, meaning you work it out later, when it don't matter.

12june2012
lately i've thought i should continue here and confuse for awhile. you know i can continue as long as i'm alive, the story does not go away, today is significant for me in a way. i bought some cards on ebay, that don't mean that much, just a little, in the sentiment department. the cards are of a brand called stamina, they made school clothes of quality, and in the pocket was a pack of cards, not the full set, but some. my first day of school and someone pick pocketed my pack, i always wondered about them cards. so now i have some, if it means anything.

19june2012
patti smith hole .ewollongong, use psew password

hole . ewollongong

12sept2012

i seen one of them young guys, you know the fuck me song in the other blog. he's still smoking and sounds wheezy, well his mother died on the 7 sept 2012, 81years, r.i.p.

29may2013

here is my little hovel hideout page, when i make an entry all the spy eyes come a -looky. it has happened a few, what they think, who knows, post but where. this page was good, cause not many checked it out. i've been thinking about the next blog, and finish the lynore later.

26dec2013
john lennon doing bob dylan , use password: makeup

j.l.dylan

6jan2014

audio of everly aust tour 1971 code:-  bro71

everly bros aust tv mp3 1971

3march2014

i find it really annoying, like spy eyes. them couple of dudes seem to be really interested in my blog, but wont come into the open. it just pisses me off and think why bother . invisible shits

28jan2015
here is where i say how i feel about my blog. of late, i haven't  felt like doing anything much in the form of extending the blog further. the couple of spy eyes are still there, i wonder what they think. with this blog i just go with the flow of it, the story is already written, it's just a case of remembering it really.

20april2015
so how do i feel at this point in time about the blog. you might think i have a negative view about it. it's more of  frustration really, the spy eyes and go ogle get my stories for jack shit, sure i can prostitute it. i have no problem just telling the stories for nicks. it's the annoying spys, why not just follow me. they don't realise , they're the ones who fuck most things. there no difference from them and dickheads who stand at the magazine stand reading shit. i don't care who you are, follow me or fuck off. i don't like what you are doing.

27june2015
the vampires are still just looking. i'm probably gonna stop because of them.

22april2016
i deleted a post through not knowing if i wrote the truth. not on my part but hear say. through out my life there has been hear say, white lies, call them what you like. they cause a lot of trouble. for that reason i thought it be better to delete the post.

16sept16
i haven't been feeling like doing anymore blogging. not interested in it much

14sept17
it's been a struggle getting it together since the heart attack. i hope to add more to the blog.

 

10sept24

nearly, seven years since i added here. the spy eyes have gone, haven't had a view for a few days. which is ok, all up i've had just over 10 grand in views. not in money terms, google didn't let me monetize this, that made me feel a bit unimportant, as did the spy eyes. like, i said before it's for me. you know you live your life not knowing stuff, background radiation. my mother is a great one for this, doesn't tell you nothing and/or uses it as a weapon. like they know something. things i've added to the whole clag.eartha blog, have been news to me, things if i knew and understood, i may have trod a different path. we all die in the end, and we still have good and bad days. i decided to do this here, because  the berekley blog is the beginning and end of the blog. if  i had to called this extension blog anything, it would be patches. why?, will become evident as i go. nothing to do with software. it goes back to primary school again. a piano in fact.  don't get me wrong, during primary school i never gave a shit about that type of music, i think i played the triangle, mainly in kindergarten. we all had goes on everything cluckers cymbals all that shit. with the cymbals someone somewhere cut their nose with the cymbals, so it came to hitting one cymbal with a stick.

 

23sept24

after sorting that first bit about the old dude and the new work guy, tried to anyway. i know there is people who still don't get it, i tried. it's just one of those weird things , i can't understand it. there must be some connection. i've put a bit of thought  to it, the only thing i can come up with is it's interrupted this part of the blog. two people were in my life at the same time, they couldn't have been further apart, as to know each other. but where one lived now,is where the other lived before, well next door. and the one that lived next door, now lives a few houses up the same street as where the one lived before. being miles apart. that's all . haven't seen either of them for more than 8 years. maybe i can now think about the piano story. 

21jan2026

you've made it thus far, as far as i'm concerned it's the end. no followers, no surprise. 14000+ views and 98 viewers .that's a ratio of 145 to 1. fair enough if you don't like my blogs, and don't follow, but them  figures don't say that. what i'm saying is you ain't much of anything. 

 

27aug2026

i seen jester about a week ago, he's moved around a bit since i seen him last, he said he wants to move into a nursing home. i thought, what. after reading 23sept24,  i thought about that piano story, i have more about it. trouble is, i forgot what i was going to write originally, no matter i can think about it later. i also forgot what i came here to write about. too many things. i remembered, i think i found the song i heard on the jukebox years ago. which i mentioned in this blog, in the vids and elsewhere. the song is 'back on the street again' originally by steve gillette. it's been done by many artists like the stone poneys. the version i heard at that time had to be by the sunshine company version. it sounded a bit corny, but the music has changed heaps since 1967. i can sort of understand me at that age liking that kind of music. it was the words i felt was me at that time. the reason why i think that's the version, being on a jukebox, it had to be a single. the sunshine company version was the only single released in australia. the whole thing about the vids blog was going out to see if the embassy sign was still there. where i was living at that time, hearing the song, thinking that's me, and trying to find that song until i forgot the song.            

a band

 5march2012
when i look back through the sixties there was a few bands around, young friends had elder brothers in bands, some backyard jams,  i remember one or two. it wasn't hitsville but it was there, at that time we were involed in vietnam. my teenage years were not the best, there's a song from a womans point of view, my mother worked in the rag trade and did sew my jeans , my father was a gambler and a drunk. they were hard years for this little fella. by 1975, i was pretty much the same streetboy that rodriguez sang about. sometime around this, a friend asked if i wanted to be in his band, they needed a singer so the main singer/ guitarist could concentrate on guitar and backing vocals, i thought about. i was pretty much in a mess at that time, i declined, no self confidence  probably 16 or 17 at that time, i was old

6march12
i forgot to mention the main influence for that band was ted nugent, i was never really into him, i did get the album with stranglehold on it, that's as far as it got. i was more into pink floyd, alice cooper, hawkwind space ritual ,black sabbath paranoid & vol4, frank zappa a bit later on. i swapped schools out for sticky fingers around 74. getting back to this band blog, guys around me were also trying to play the guitar, i dont think they were much, cause i dont remember any of the stuff, probably just strumming, all too much for me. around 76 i began to hang around my suburb, rather than the street life of town.

7march12
it was during this time i actually hung around some young foes from school and other. what is termed fun parlors, pinny shops or pool halls were the hang of choice. i had my first taste of rock 'n roll in such a place, we had one in the early 60s, i mean early 61. i apparently got an electric shock from a jukebox, so they reckon. i was no stranger from these kind of places, a gap from say 63 to 68 or something. from 69 on i played heaps of pool and pinnies. i remember these young guys buying an acoustic and couldn't tune it, they asked the shop keeper to tune it, they wanted to play pink floyds wish you were here. i had that in 75 , i remember the big thing was double j radio playing the whole album first week out. it took me years to like that album, i used to play a few tracks and lift the needle. them guys spent hours just strumming rubbish, at best there was a vague version of dueling banjos, no pink floyd though. me, i didn't bother with such nosense, although some young guy left an electric and ones place, i borrowed it for couple of weeks that was ok. then the guy wanted it back, all he played was my sharona. i thought them guys were getting in to it too late, no songs just racket, i did have a song i played with the top two strings, e and a. a little rhythmic ditty called fuck me suck me, which i played for them for about 10 minutes till his mother told me to stop that noise. funny thing is i seen one of them years later he said he used that rhythm in a ditty he wrote, i said  it probably wasn't as good as my fuck me suck me. they did get on the acoustic front, numbers by neil young, bob dylan knocking on heavens door was their big play, jimi hendrix hey joe and all along the watch tower. you know that stuff.

8march12
you know these things happened between 75 and late 79, a lot of things happened in that space of time, so the accuracy on whether something happened before another maybe out a bit. like the time at which they got their guitars and actually played anything proper may have been quite sometime. me, personally didn't hang with them also often, me being somewhat of a loner and also different stuff like trail bikes and such, like the pub. at my 21th them guys turned up at my grandmothers place, still old fashion wood shove and that, i lived there for a few years till i was about 14. one of them guys was actually playing quite good type classical guitar, doing mr bogangles , american pie etc. i thought he was wasting his time just playing that stuff, but he seemed happy with it.

11march2012
so here i am back in 1980, i split up with my girlfriend, was at home feeling bored. my little sister had these hobby tex things like tubes of toothpaste and my mother being in the rag trade was always bring home t-shirts and things like underpants, so i was okay in that department. i decided to hobby tex a t-shirt , but what? i was listening to the bollocks album, i put the cover in a yellow t-shirt and traced sex pistols and coloured it in with the hobby tex. it came out quite good, i thought to wear it around here, i dont know, bit dodgy. i went to the pub in town, i had it under something else, after a few beers i took the jumper off, or whatever it was. the whole atmosphere at me changed, like i dont know, strange in a good way. got talking to a few different people, one guy had like sand shoes with two tone squares textaed on them. he said, he was in a band and they played a sex pistols song submission, he asked me if i knew who sang it, cause it was different. i wasn't sure, i thought rotten, that's about as much as i knew, not much. he said they were playing here in a few weeks and i should check them out.

14march12
now it begins to be complicated, yeah i did see them, they were my age, the mixer was an old foe from primary school, he went to public (different from english, low generic), i went to catholic . he and a few mates spotted me going through the park to my grandmothers for lunch, we had a bit of a blue. i went to the same high school though, i wasn't that tough there, with all the home problems, bit low on the confidence. anyways the mixing wasn't so good. that band was mostly my age excepting for the drummer , who was even too young to get into the pub, a good drummer though, they were different from most local pub bands. the local bands just played covers, the one that was flogged to death was j.j. cales' cocaine, i mean i had that troubadour album, but i really got sick of that song. on occasions a sydney band would play, they weren't bad, there's was a local, i think they were local, they played the traps, called johnny demon dance band or something. they had a song called, you make me spew. they weren't bad, more of a novelty really. i think the guitarist went to england and join a  band called nine below zero. i'm not quite sure of that but i think yes. that was what i heard, i had a few beers with that bloke anyways. i did a google to find out all i found was this johnny demon and the devils , they changed their name .

15march2012
i'm going a bit off track here, i told you it was complicated, see how i go. this has got to do with johnny demon and the devils. there was another band called johnny devlin and the devils around the late 50's . i 've got him doing blue suede shoes with a young backing group called the bee gees, yeah them. i'll have find it on festival. anyway, the cheap alternative to 45s for awhile was rock n roll on cardboard , here's johnny on cardboard,  cardboard rock , use devils2 for password. i'll have to get a photo of them 2 items for here, i think i gave the cardboard record to an old codger, when he was 16 he was a fan. i'll see

17march2012
as you'll find with me everything has relevance to and from the past, the future may also be there it depends on how and who reads it. i looked for the blue suede shoes 45, no luck, hey St. Patrick it's your day where's me luck, maybe i need a beer. i did find another cardboard record, sea of love b/w the shape i'm in, i think that's the johnny restivo number, by peter ash and the rockets with the satellites. i thought i better explain the cardboard records . there a bit like the later flex discs (very thin plastics) that came mainly with magazines of that era. the cardboard were put out by penguin and sold for 3/6, at newsagents, record bars and department stores, 33 1/3 rpm and will play 500 times without damaging the needle. remember the paddle pop story the competition ends in may (i deleted the paddle pop story, after finding out i was lied to about what happened about the stick), john delvin lives out corrimal where paddle pops were invented. i'll get back to the band later.

18march 2012
so much for the band blog, probably have to start another blog. as with anything that involves money, so  the locals want a piece of the action, whatevers a hit elsewhere. so begins the cover band wagon, from bandstand to wheel of fortune. devlin was a new zealander, one of the first of a long list to hit our shore. i think things got bad in the early 70's with djs only playing local versions of os hits, you know the story cause its still going on, one way or another. one of the biggest in the 50s was crash craddock who was suppose to be a big hit in the states, they never heard of him, i think the real craddock was gene vincent, who had success here anyways, but not as much as crash. i'll leave this blog with a pub band from probably sydney , who played the wollongong pub heaps of times in 1980 and before, this ep was on the jukebox by request and played to death,

the layabouts - loose & lively ep, piranha records

ps
i did a google of the layabouts, not much, just a few later ones even a detroit band, and the bushwackers credited with marijuana australiana, which is on the above ep.

11nov2016

i don't know what i wrote about there, couldn't give a stuff. as i think about it, the truth is, i'm not like them people 

 

19nov2025

i had a few views here, so i did a read and clean a bit. it went off the track there. i had more to say about the topic. at this point in time i have other things happening, i say more sometime later. the thing that got me was the blog i deleted about the paddle pop stick. the lie was not on my part. it was a so called white lie, here say. when someone tells you a lie and you believe it. i have no reason not to believe people, when they tell me stuff. but when i pass it on as truth, this bugs me. so that's the reason i deleted that paddle pop blog.