So I have a ticket to Darwin from Denpasar on Feb. 3, and despite some of the impressions afforded by the Bingtang sleeveless clad Aussie masses swarming around Kuta, I’m going. My general plan is to possibly take The Ghan down the middle of the country to Adelaide, then with gumtree.com/au rideshare make my way east, hitting Melbourne, and most likely fly back to the US from Sydney later that month.

Sometimes, with this blog, I don’t know… I’m proud I keep it up, and it’s rewarding in it’s own right, but I wish I got more meaningful response. From strangers I mean, the kind of strangers I’d like to meet. Of course I appreciate the old friends who follow along. That having been said, I have had two pleasant comment encounters in the last few months. Once from an old friend of Patrik Keim who found me via his small image archive here; and another, a reader who put me back in touch with an amazing woman I met in southern China in 2010. He claimed instantly to know who I was talking about and had no doubt from my description. Now, much of that is a testimony to the power of her personality, but it was also “good to blog” validation for me.

So as I try and build my itinerary for AU, I’ll go ahead and put this out there: where do you think I should go? Unfortunately the West is out on this trip. I will have a finite amount of time, and some financial resource, but as I’ve been earning RI Rupiah for the last year…not THAT much. And their economy is doing well compared to the rest of the world, in part because they seem intent on mining up all that China will buy. Beers are $10 each at the moment, ouch!

All I know are Grinderman dates don’t currently extend past Dec.; I’d like to have some bizarre, quasi-Star Wars via Tatooine experience in Cooper Pedy; I must go to Melbourne; and might try and swing Tasmania. So give me all other recommendations for the Central and SE areas, oh Darwin too, though I don’t plan to linger. Band dates, film festivals etc that might overlap the time I’m there – essentially February 2012.

I summon thee, o dark and mystical forces of the Interweb! Speak! Er, I mean… Comment!

After his Pusher trilogy (…well at least the first one), Vallhala Rising, Bronson and now Drive, Nicolas Winding Refn is becoming one of my favorite directors. Gosling does the tough guy well. Only Albret Brooks bugged me here and it wasn’t so bad. Definitely more psycho than cutsie-poo. Bryan Cranston and Ron Pearlman fill out the cast. Some seasons with Pearlman in a tux might take you back to on of his earlier roles in Chronos. The female lead is rather understated. At first I thought it was again Gosling’s co-star from Blue Valentine, but was in fact Brit Carey Muligan, of the recent Never Let Me Go. It isn’t entirely plausible why he would fall for her, but it’s a bit like a western: he’s the protagonist, and she’s the girl -so he falls for her, without their being much carnality between them.

Excellent use of Eno’s Apollo soundtrack (ed 12-14: I see now from Wikipedia it isn’t credited! Well it is under Apollo soundtrack, but not the Drive entry. It’s also unclear exactly what Angelo Badalamenti did on the film. His name is clearly seen in the opening film credits, and A.B. wikipedia has Drive listed with his name, but he’s not mentioned in Drive wikipedia.) Other music is techno and seems an odd choice, but it works. It’s an early 80′s techno sound.
It isn’t huge “blow you away” sort of film. More of a subtle classic.

Despite the overpriced alcohol and massage plus, one thing Indonesia has over China is an established history of rocking. Enter The Tielman Brothers. Yes, the did move (possibly were “forced”) to the Netherlands early in their career, but Indonesia can still claim them. Dude played guitar with his teeth before Hendrix… This clip is only the rockabilly-esque tune with a still image, but you can find others, many ballads.

Here’s another. Make’s ya wanna have have a swingin’ knife fight…

I didn’t actually go into the show, as tickets were 700.000 rupiah. That’s 64 small beers, 33.5 large beers, a month and half’s scooter rental, nearly half a month’s rent, or three overpriced massages with handjob…depending on how you look at it. But I did pay 23 cents to get into the parking lot and get some footage.

A few things you don’t get from this: that lot completely filled with 20,000+ scooters, cars and buses and it was quite difficult to find my own in the dark with no lighting at all, ever so slightly buzzed on Arak. Lesson learned, next time some sort of flag or marker to help with rapid, ill-lit, scooter identification when parking in such scenes. Also the older couple, guy with The Ramones shirt, where the coolest Aussies I’ve met so far, actually knew the Dirty 3 and Grinderman – the first I’ve run into who did so. Also some of those 20-something Indonesians are in a Death Metal band and hopefully will call me to come check them out next time they play Bali. They were from Java, came over to the island just to drink in the lot without tickets or the ability to afford them. That’s Metal. You proabaly could have heard the show from where we were sitting, but I took off soon after dark, before the music (from a band I don’t really care about anyway, just nostalgia – though I’m not saying I don’t still occassionally spin cuts from NotB or Powerslave) and potential clusterfuck could ensue. And the guy in the final shot was a satay vendor, most likely wearing the hat just for sales and to fit in, but I found it classic.

I heard about Flying Lotus from my younger British/South African roommate while living in China. Appropriate then that this video showcases the Chinese zodiac.

Two examples of great 70′s rock out of Africa. First of all, both of these “videos” are only a vehicle to hear the tune, there is no additional visual. I first heard Witch on Pri’s The World. Great tune, and where do I get one of those magic rafts? I think the guy is operating it with his boots…

And tell me the chorus of this Chrissy Zebby Tembo song doesn’t have Ozzy written all over it…

If you like it, get more here. Props to Aesop and his Cosmic Hearse blog.

In early Sept. Dean and I went to Beijing for a culture fix and to celebrate his birthday. In addition to the food and DVD’s we couldn’t get in Liaocheng, we hit the 798 arts district and went to Wodaokou to check out an indie music club I’d heard about called D-22. It was very refreshing. For context, you have to understand the complete lack of decent western music in China. Michael Jackson and Westlife are names dropped when you ask what sort of western music people like. If you are really lucky, someone has heard of the Beatles and have a notion they were influential. So going to a venue in Beijing and liking what we heard was huge. As it was a Tuesday night, there was no actual band playing, but a film. It was a tour film for PK-14, which used their songs during the mundane bits when they were sleeping in the van and such (and to think, bands bitch about being “on the road” in the States) and a crazy ass experimental sound track over the live footage. This was the filmmakers doing and unfortunately I have no info on him. But I bought a PK-4 disc. Imagine my surprise when I got back to L to realize they’d been the global hit on the NPR’s The World the previous day. They is plenty of other press about them out there as well.

I’m trying to get some tracks uploaded to attach to this post but can’t figure it out right now. More later…

Missed out on an obit. last Friday, and this one is a little different as I actually once “met” and interacted with him. He read on the UGA campus in what I’ll guess was ’95, but I can’t reference a month right now. Some friends and I owned a bookstore in Athens at the time and when I walked up to him after the reading, maybe I was being a bit “glory”, but I couldn’t help but throw out the idea that, had he time, it might be cool if he came by. My intention was truly just for him to see and enjoy the place, as it was a bookstore like no other, I wasn’t trying to cash in on some “celebrity appearance”.

But how exactly to spontaneously pitch this?
I guess he wasn’t too impressed, for his response came, and I’ll never forget,
“You have a bookstoaahh?” like a junkie Elmer Fudd doing an impersonation of a New Yorker.

And then quickly some student union handler whisked him away with a promised carrot juice. Surely he was tired after the reading, surely wackballs approached him constantly, and as the sage N. Peart reminds us “one must put up barriers to keep oneself in tact.” I’m not bitter or anything, that’s just my little Jim Carroll story. He came of age in a great city at a unique time in it’s history and wrote some great stuff. I first saw this photo on the inner sleeve of J. Giorno’s compilation “Your a hook”.

J Carroll and P Smith in 1969. photo by Wren D’Antonio