A Geezer's Top 10

by BRETT WOODWARD

THIS is how I became a geezer in one short year:
b cocks

Top 10? Buzzcocks? What year is this?

My liver packed up and moved to larger premises. I admitted to myself that I was never going to live my dream of becoming a rodeo star - even IF I learned to ride a horse. Then my opinion of modern music went into sharp decline. Listening to a new CD - ha! -I'd rather be Nanna-napping or applying cream to my rash!

The signs were there for a while: complaining about crowds, cigarette smoke and the price of a beer at gigs and only attending shows with seating that would accommodate roids the size of Roma tomatoes. So anyway that's why my 'Year's Best' list is so grouchy, full of names from yesteryear and desperately in need of new dentures. I'm happy with my 'Geezer Defence'.

When I recently spent a ripper evening going over 2006 Top Tens with a couple of good friends, I hadn't even heard of 75 percent of the new artists they named. Since the morning that I got a fast internet connection I've spent a ludicrous amount of time catching up on what I missed between 1955 and 1995. I fully intend to get to 2006 some time early in 2031.

I am absolutely a fart. I console myself with the thought that when my Dad was my age, he reckoned that Jimmie Rogers, Hank Snow and Johnny Cash were responsible for all of the good music made in the 20th century. He did concede that there was this young upstart by the name of Willie Nelson who was also doing a decent job (this was some two decades into Willie's career).

My list includes listening AND viewing because downloading has made my entertainment consumption habits so futuristic it's like I'm living with the Jetsons aboard the Starship Jefferson. Putting on a CD is as much of a chore as LPs used to be. There's a hard drive loaded with thousands of tunes that will spin in my lounge room until the Microsoft police come to lock me up in file-sharing jail.

Free-to-air TV has become one long phone-in competition and hours of the kind of Reality TV I'm not interested in. Hey Mr Network Executive, what about a reality show called "Sexy neighbours hang out their knickers for hours on end" or "Two really pissed guys have a fight at the fish and chip shop and wind up on the floor chasing their dropped dim sims"? The next genius idea will cost you!

The real hero of my list is music blogs. I haven't even fired up Limewire or any other music search/downloading tools for a year. I found one themed music blog. It contained hundreds of albums and directed me to blog links for an entire universe of great music.

1. Roky Erickson/13th Floor Elevators

I always liked Roky's late-1970s/80s solo stuff but never really looked closely at his 13th Floor Elevators period, or the bizarre train wreck of his personal life. I thank this year's fabbo bio-documentary, 'You're Gonna Miss Me', for opening my eyes. Now I drool over the Unreleased Masters Triple Box like it's a psychedelic 'Penthouse'.

This came on the back of stumbling across chocoreve.blogspot.com. I thought blogs were where people inflicted their poetry on you or moaned about their jobs and spouses. Turns out that canny people use them to create the online equivalent of incredibly specialised record stores where all the stock is free.

When I first hit chocoreve he was putting up the recorded output of every 1960s garage band. The 'Nuggets' and 'Pebbles' box sets were such a triffling starting point that chocoreve felt obliged to flesh out your collection with hundreds of proto-punk acts from Thailand, Peru, Turkey and Eastern Bloc countries that don't even exist anymore. From there he began to wade into the 1970s, which is where you should be with him NOW, combing through the 11-CD Zep outtakes 1968-1980 box!

2. Buzzcocks

I lumped The Buzzcocks in with the pop party punks who wore yellow latex trousers. Never had the patience. I saw a show by the late-80s reformed band, was sent snoring to the bar and had my prejudice reinforced. Got around to giving the 'Product' boxed set and 'Chronology' outtakes disc a concerted spin just this year. So now I'll just shut up and buy some Magazine albums.

3. Hawkwind

I feel that I owe an apology to a very funny and decent human being by the name of Clint Waring for all the snide remarks I made about his favourite band. I didn't even consider Hawkwind a real band for years, just a bunch of hippie Spacerock jammers. I now own two Hawkwind box sets and as many albums and bootlegs as I can get my hands on. This is as sad as keeping all your toenail clippings to make a necklace. I sometimes tell record store staff I'm buying the albums for my brother-in-law, a wanker of proportions so mythical that Hawkwind should write a cosmic opera about him.

4. On-U Sound

Wading through the 100 On-U albums posted by friendselectric.blogspot.com I re-evaluated this legendary reggae and post punk label. Yes, they put out way too many albums. Sure, they religiously released half killer/half filler discs, handicapping some of their artists. But, holy Hawkwind, they still released a gargantuan amount of superb music.

This stuff sent me on a whole post punk jag -again thanks to music blogs. I mean the shouty vocals, guitar strings scraped with a hacksaw blade, drums so crisp they make your teeth ache, all recorded in a concrete toilet cubicle kind of post punk: Mark Stewart, Slits, The Birthday Party, Gang of Four, This Heat, Swell Maps, Wire, first three albums by The Cure and P.I.L. Lots of long out of print stuff at >postpunkjunk.com< -and he does insane podcasts as well!

5. New York Dolls

Never warmed to these cross-dressers, until now. What do I know? I worry about getting grey hairs on my arse! I was taken by surprise by the 'All Dolled Up' DVD. It compiles almost four hours of live footage, interviews and assorted appearances from the early and glory days, shot by fans/filmmakers Bob Gruen and Nadya Beck. The shows were wild and, even though entirely constructed, their schtick was crazy entertaining.

I got side-tracked while hunting down more New York Dolls stuff but along the way nabbed a mountain of great tunes by other dino-punks like The Godz, The Monks, The Seeds, Standells and Oklahoma nut-jobs Debris, whose one and only album, 'Static Disposal', you can thank >insectandindividual.blogspot.com< for.

6. Krautrock

There is so much more to this woolly and absurdly ill-defined term than Can, Faust, Neu!, Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream and the albums mentioned in the Julian Cope book 'Krautrocksampler'. I tore off down the autobahn and by the time I bought my Volkspanzermuzikmobile to a screeching halt I'd been from Munich to Hamburg and back. Achtung! Bootload of greatness.

If you made an album in Germany between about 1968 and 1975 that didn't sell very well you were labelled 'Krautrock'. Still, that's no excuse for the 'Art Rock' detour I took along the way. There are 50 albums just of Klaus Schulze outtakes. Stop by my place if you're ever hungry for jellied Pigs Trotters, cabbage Schnapps and a 28-minute synthesizer solo.

7. COP SHOW: 'The Wire' Series 1 & 2

Grim, hard-drinking, piss-stained undercover police work with lashings of incompetence and corruption. Any resemblance to your local constabulary is purely coincidental. A sensational show butchered by Channel 9 but saved by DVD. Add to the long list of programmes ignored because most people SAY they want something different but MEAN they want 'CSI: Footscray'. Getting excited about Series 3. It's taken over the time-slot from 'The Sopranos' on Mondays at midnight. Not to be confused with the bog-standard British cop show, 'Wire In The Blood'.

8. COMEDY SHOW: 'The Critic' box set (originally aired 1994-95)

All the reviews warned us not to expect 'Simpsons', 'Futurama', 'Family Guy, 'South Park' level of laughs BUT little bits of wee came out every episode I watched. That reminds me, I need to get a prostate exam.

9. CRAZY SHOW: 'MPD: Psycho'

Takashi Miike ('Audition') detective/horror/sci-fi. The whole internet cautioned that it was a bit loopy and hard to follow. Takes two or three of the six shows to get who the characters are and why they keep stabbing, shooting, burning and looting in such a macabre manner. Turned out to be an actual story as opposed to gratuitous mayhem and bloodshed -whew! There's a secret 60s political cult, body swapping, human skulls used as flower pots (while the owners are still attached and alive), nightmare amputations, schizophrenic lawmen (the title abbreviation stands for 'Multiple Personality Detective') and Miike's groundbreaking visual and sonic style. Did somebody hit the Japanic button?

10. TV ON DVD

Monkeys program TV stations. This year - due to the banana shortage -viewing on all the networks hit an all time low. If the tag line for selling TV shows on DVD was simplified to 'All the jokes left in -no ads' I'd be in the queue. This was the stuff I watched, re-watched and re-re-watched this year and loved on DVD. Came to some of it late, just glad I didn't miss out altogether: all the Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge series, The Shield, Battlestar Galactica (the new one, not bloody Lorne Green, mate!), Arrested Development, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Mr. Show with Bob and David, Deadwood, Scrubs.

Sorry to have vented. Now go get me a stool, my feet hurt from drinking my Metamucil too quickly!

cartoons, contact, codswhallop at www.myspace.com/brettwoodward

19 December 2006

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