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| 2007-02-22 12:34:38 |
hold on to what you got |
 daftbird |
(blog from)Monday, February 12, 2007
hold on to what you got
Been feeling a bit like shite for a few days and what do you do when you are feeling a bit like shite?
Well, if you are me, you find something -any thing at all - to cheer you up a bit.
In this case it was getting James Freud's book out yesterday and flicking through it. Only read it again about a month ago (for the third time). It is guaranteed to put a smile on your face. It is one of the few things that has ever made me laugh out loud. James Freud is a very very funny bugger. The book(from 2002) is called I am the voice left from drinking after a line in the song Barbados.
For anyone who doesn't have a clue who I'm talking about he was in aussie eighties band, the models. My favourite song of theirs was Hold On.I actually couldn't stand James Freud when I was growing up - thought he was a tosser. I mean, look at that poster which I've scanned from the book -looks like a tosser to me.
For anyone who likes the behind the scenes of the music industry stuff - this book will do it for you.
The stuff about Gary Numan (you know the guy that did Cars and We Are Glass) was ... quite intriguing . He had a penchant for dropping his guts all the time :
"I awoke on the morning of 29 June 1980 to the now- familiar odour-de-Gary's-fart. I ran out of the caravan gasping for air. It was my 21st birthday.
'Can't you do that outside?' I said to him.
'What, and waste a good fart?'
I must say that it shattered all my childhood illusions as to how cool(?) Gary Numan was. James went over to visit him in the U.K., expecting to be staying in a rock star's mansion, only to find that Gary was living in a caravan in his parent's backyard. He didn't smoke, drink, or take drugs and that he lived on McDonald's - hence all the gas.
There are bits about his good mate, Michael Hutchence. There are mentions of Marc Bolan, Andy Warhol, just about everyone.
And it's all so amusingly honest:
"To this day I'm still not sure what I liked about heroin, apart from wanting to be like Lou Reed, who wrote the best songs about taking heroin. The actual drug was not a pleasurable experience. I would throw my guts up from the moment it hit my veins till I finally straightened up. And my nose would itch so uncontrollably that I would look like WC Fields and end up with a rashy, peeling schnoz the next day. But regardless of all that, I persisted and took my medicine because I had become part of the 'elite' drug culture. We'd listen to the Velvet Underground all day and play 'Heroin' and 'Waiting for the Man' till we wore out the vinyl. I met Lou in an elevator years later, in Liverpool, England.
'Hi Lou,' I said.
'F--- off,' he replied.
It was great".
If you ever come across this on eBay, BUY IT-even if you hated his guts (like I always used to) because it's a great read. And you might enjoy the bit about a dog turd being thrown at him on stage ( Nick Cave claimed that it was he who threw the dog turd). Even if you have never heard of James Freud before in your entire life - still buy it because you will have heard of everyone he writes about.
I was just googling around before and discovered that James is about to put out a follow up next month called -I kid you not - I am the voice left from rehab. Tch tch. He supposedly got his act together in the first book after nearly dying.
Speaking of music things -they showed The Band Aid Story on the ABC again the other night. The lead singer of Spandau Ballet ended up getting a little portly and was wearing a cap which probably means BALD SPOT. That is so very... disappointing  . And the lads from Status Quo are stilll as naughty as ever. Bono being made to sing the only line in the song that he didn't want to sing. But he did do it so very well, anyway.
Oh, and I've been listening to Tim Finn a fair bit over the last few days. Who knows why. It's just comfortable to hear and doesn't make your head hurt. That's always a good sign . On the bonus DVD that came with it is a lovely version of I Hope I Never. It sounded good to me over the weekend.
I'm feeling a bit better just at this minute after having a good feed tonight, in spite of not having a wink of sleep last night. It was food experiment #129 and involved chicken, shallots, lemon juice, olive oil, seasalt, lemon myrtle. Also green capsicum, brocolli. Oh, and potatoes. Must have potatoes.It was very very good and I ate every last bit so there was none left for the starving children.
I went and picked up Barkly's chain(even the biggest collar was too small for his neck so he had to have a chain- even after losing weight he was still 45kgs) and lead from the vet on Friday and paid the bill and received a receipt that reads:
07/02/07 EUTHANASE DOG $55.00
07/02/07 CREMATION $60.00.
All this feeling -and the grief of it- and it just comes down to that -words on a page - just like with everything else.
So, strangely enough, James Freud has cheered me up. Oh, and something else cheered me up just this afternoon. I had to walk about half a kilometre this afternoon with a not-particularly-heavy-but-awkward barstool -just one of those things that you do from time to time - as I walked toward a man on the same path he grinned his face off at the unusual sight of a woman walking around with a yellow barstool, and in typical aussie fashion said: "ya shoulda got a folding one, mate".
So - this continual pulling oneself up by the bootstraps -don't know about you fellas, but these here bootstraps are getting STRONGER.
Well, I'm sure that's more than enough prattling on for one night.
Mood - tired as anything
Music - constant craving -kd lang |
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