The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

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Alita Battle Angel

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Year: 2019 Director: Robert Rodriguez

Bit disappointing this one. I can imagine the pitch – ‘Bourne Identity’ meets ‘Rollerball’ in the ‘Robots’ animation. Unfortunately it just glues together all the cliches from each of those films and just presents them with the latest gee-whizz CGI mixing humans and graphics. But yet another amnesia recovery story?

Having said that, Christophe Waltz as the android doctor was my biggest problem, he seemed to be very conciously and deliberately ‘acting’.

That was closely followed by the Jennifer Connolly story line, completely inconsistent and unconvincing. The doctors ex-wife, who also turns out to be pretty handy with human mechanical interfaces. Except in stockings and suspenders for some reason.

Might appeal to people who enjoyed:

Popcorn sci fi starring Tom Cruise.

Afro blues in Sydney alert

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Paging @junior-wells – coming up in sunny (?) September in Sydney is a gig at the Camelot Lounge with Moussa Diakité, a guitarist who “was part of the golden era of Malian music in the 1970s and ‘80s, performing with some of Africa’s best, including Salif Keita, Oumou Sangare, Toumani Diabaté and the Super Rail Band de Bama”.

World cup cricket – why is someone practicing their covers band?

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I love cricket, and I hate badly played covers. So this the world cup, why for each fallen wicket do we get some bozo practicing their classic cover riffs? Fluffed notes, then it blends in to the actual track. In the England-NZ replay I’m currently listening to a mangling of Layla, but he couldn’t even do Summer Of 69 right earlier. Sweet Child O’ Mine was another shocker.

Movies you liked back in the day, but when you see them again…

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I remember liking original of The Mechanic with Charles Bronson a long time ago, and liking the Jason Statham remake in it’s popcorny way. I also remember watching the original all the way through too, but it was on TV over the weekend and wow is it bad. I got about 20 minutes in to it when Jill Ireland makes an appearance and I couldn’t take it any more. I know all the jokes about Easter island statues having more range, but nobody seemed to be even trying to act.

Any other movies that were loved/liked at the time but haven’t aged well up for a discussion?

Dylan playing the Enmore Sydney on Sun 19th Aug

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One for the Sydneysiders – Bob Dylan is playing the Enmore theatre in a couple of weeks, Sun 19th Aug. Nice small place, tickets correspondingly run from very-expensive to oh-my-god. Goes on sale tomorrow (Mon 6th). I’m not curious enough to justify it, definitely not a fan, and several leagues away from being anywhere near knowledgeable on the catalog. Keep trying to convince myself to buy the albums everyone recommends and never get round to it…

http://www.enmoretheatre.com.au/events/2018/08/19/bob-dylan

Don Letts “The Story of Skinhead”

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Well this was a surprise. UKers are probably aware of this from back in the day when it was released, but I’d not seen it on Oz TV. The only reason I watched it was because it was Don Letts and I had enjoyed his ‘Punk’ doco so much. I have to admit, my knowledge of skinhead history was down around the Daily Mail/Express front-page level of ignorance and mis-informed garbage.

It doesn’t help that ‘skinhead’ is now synonymous with ‘fascist’, ‘racist’ and ‘thug’, particularly in other countries. I think I’ll show it to my kids, mainly because the period footage from the early 70s is absolutely how I remember the UK as it was before I left in the 80s (pre-Cool Britannia), and it was why I left. Things might have been better elsewhere around the country at that time, and certainly things have improved since then (but not everywhere), but jeez it was bad. And it was amazing to find out Gary Bushell wasn’t quite as big a tool as I had thought (he’s still a fairly substantial tool though).

Link below.

A new pleasure

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I had no awareness whatsoever of the Monks Of Doom till today. Listening to the Underwater Sunshine podcast, this track off their 2006 covers album “What’s Left For Kicks” came up and I have been playing it repeatedly ever since. The Calvary Cross (link down thread), sounds like it’s being done by The Gin Blossoms with added technical ability. That’s a good thing for mine. OOAA.

Here’s a heresy – I think it’s better than the Richard & Linda Thompson original…

What very little I’ve heard so far is all over the map, so this may not be considered representative. The other one that caught my ear was a sort of proggy/country/zappa-esque thing. Then they do Oh Well very convincingly.

David Immergluck from Counting Crows, plus everyone else from his earlier stint with Camper Van Beethoven. Except David Lowery. Perhaps.

Squeeze

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Venue:

Metro, Sydney

Date: 28/04/2018

It was a sell out crowd at the Metro, the place was rammed and had a really nice atmosphere.

Dr John Cooper-Clarke opened and was hilarious. Having not seen him before I hadn’t realised quite how much his schtick is a blend of stand-up and poetry, done in a horse-racing-caller delivery. Priceless. Shame about the noise spill from the band next door, kind of spoiled it a bit making it a little harder to pay attention, and it needs your attention.

Following on from @SteveT back in 2016 (https://theafterword.co.uk/squeeze/) I think we might have got a similar show – opening with Please Be Upstanding and Hourglass, a fair few tracks off the most recent albums, and a canter through the hits. The band were rock solid, it sounded perfect….but….there was only Glenn Tilbrook from the old days. I know they’ve had a relatively stable line up for nearly 10 years and a couple of new albums, but… Difford “won’t fly”, the drummer looks a bit like Gilson (and he hits the skins bloody hard), but it still comes across as Glenn and a backing band.

The audience:

I’d be guessing » Continue Reading.

Thievery Corporation

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Venue:

Enmore, Sydney

Date: 10/03/2018

What a surprisingly fun night, on a balmy Sydney Saturday evening. We turned up to see the tail end of the support act, a very professional looking karaoke singe called Klue. We also found a polar vortex billowing around the auditorium, the air con turned up to 11. Thoughts turned to the merch table and a t-shirt for purely insulation purposes, but thankfully the crowd piled in and once the Enmore was rammed with people shared bodily warmth took over.

When Thievery Corporation came on (early I thought, at 8.30), I really didn’t know what to expect – I know very little about them aside from a couple of hits. What I wasn’t really expecting was a rotating roster of vocalists, 6 all up coming in and out of the proceedings. The blend of dub, hip hop, rap, rock, middle eastern, eastern, and all through the americas (well, Argentina to New York up the east coast) was a constant surprise. Really nice. Not so sure about the dancing dickheads around the place which caused us to move a couple of times, but when you’re on the dance floor whaddyaexpect.

For my tastes, the dub » Continue Reading.

ATM – buying a camera

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Tapping the collective wisdom/hive mind of the massive, are there any recommendations out there for cameras ? I want an SLR or similar camera which can also do video, particularly in low light (school events) and sports (school again), as well as the obvious stills for sport and landscape (my amusement). It’s an xmas present to myself so I want to get it right…well, more than I would for someone else. Thoughts below

Willard Grant Conspiracy

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It was fairly recently that I expressed one of my major regrets was not seeing the Willard Grant Conspiracy a couple of years ago when they toured Australia, not long before Robert Fisher died. So I was blocking out the office ass-hats earlier today (the dipsticks who use speakerphone in an open plan office, or feel they need to project into the phone for a conf call), and I was listening to the Let It Roll album, as loud as my phone and headphones will allow, and my god this title track is fantastic. Like Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds meets Jim Morrison, playing with Counting Crows. And half of Train. No jazz guitar or Manzarek keyboards. Must be played loud…I just tried it as background and it doesn’t work.

Please note, the intro is about 3 minutes…then you’re getting warmed up.