I just posted a new clip – a version of “I Walked With A Zombie” by psychedelic rock legend Roky Erickson, arranged and performed by myself and local dark rock superstar Carol Blaze. It features wild footage from Pittsburgh’s annual zombie march through Monroeville Mall, where George Romero shot his classic zombie satire of consumerism – “Dawn of the Dead” – in 1978. Recorded by A.T. Vish in All Terrain Vehicles studio. Camera by Tanya Andrea Stadelmann and M.S. Reagan. Editing by me. Thanks to The Brillobox for letting us shoot there. Dedicated to Pittsburgh’s awesome army of the undead:-)

Bob and Bing

It had been my intention to devote my next posting to an exciting rendition of a planned trip to groovy Asheville, North Carolina, to help celebrate Bob Moog’s birthday. The Bob Moog Foundation, based in Bob’s home town where the original synthesizer factory and archives remain, is hosting a fundraising event this Thursday. It features a concert by cosmic prog rock keyboard whiz Erik Norlander (now chief synth noodler for vintage prog super-group Asia). And a launch of a new microbrew by the esteemed Asheville Brewing Company: Moog Filtered Ale. Analogue synths nerds everywhere will get the pun – Bob’s creamy sound modulating filters are legendary. Bob is one of my personal heros, a visionary, a man who revolutionized pop music by vastly extending what the human ear can hear and adore, a lovable genius who later in his life started talking about his circuit designs as spiritual channels. My soul was certainly eager to make the long road trip, and so was Chuck, who after spending a whole winter parked on 45th St ignominiously buried under several feet of snow, was keen to show the world the cruising style that will shortly bring him to world attention in Russell Crowe’s forthcoming drama flick where, as readers of this blog will fondly recall, he showed true star quality in several street and parking lot scenes. My body and mind, however, had other ideas. They are still repairing after surgery. And after four months of moving around my friend’s beds and couches, eventually tallying seven invalid relocations, its not surprising that at the last minute, both of them just sat down donkey-like and refused to be pushed out of the peaceful interior of their newly reclaimed Lawrenceville sanctuary.

So this is just a brief life status update report instead, delivered not from the romantic dash of the highway but from the still huddle of my loungeroom/office. And here, by far the most exciting thing that has happened in the last couple of weeks, is siting right before me. Propped on my Ikea birchwood desk, backgrounded by a soft purple lamp and a leopard skin radiator cover, sits Bing. Bing is my new 21 and a half inch iMac.

A new iMac was an essential purchase, to stop me going blind from doing things like editing 24 tracks of audio on a lap-top screen no bigger than a mouse hole. That is not to say I have abandoned Larry – and as I type this, I cast a loving but slightly anxious glance to my right where Larry sits, screen flipped and ready for action. Larry has been my faithful support for the whole of the Jilted Brides journey, right from the start two years ago almost to the day when, in May 2008, I clutched him to my bosom as Tanya and I boarded the plane from Melbourne to Vancouver, full of hope and trembling. No, I do not forget loyalty in machines. Larry will continue to whir away for me doing my day to day writing and emailing for Squonk Opera and other internet based tasks to which he is best suited. I think he knows that size does matter sometimes, but that in my heart, both he and Bing are equal.

Bing has much to do. With the promotional video for Pittsburgh’s Glass Center finally delivered to a happy client, a number of personal projects will occupy my summer. I have to finish off a film clip to “I Walked With A Zombie”, Roky Erickson’s power psych classic that Al Vish and myself covered ages ago. Tanya shot the clip at local cool venue The Brillobox, but on account of Al and I concentrating more on posing and drinking beer than getting the lip synching right (this despite the fact that the song only has one line), T has lost interest in editing so its up to me to learn Final Cut Pro then get this clip out of the way, probably just in time for Halloween.

I have undertaken to do a couple of remixes – one for my super-talented buddy, and international disco-lounge superstar Dougee Dimensional. And another for the legendary Wendy and Lisa, former co-writers and performers with Prince. Wendy and Lisa not only had a big influence on the Prince and the Revolution sound, they followed this up by a highly respected pop and soundtrack career and devoted following in their own right. Thanks to the great good fortune of meeting Lisa at a radio show in LA, I offered to do a remix from their latest album White Flags of Winter Chimneys and I was a happy pussycat indeed when they agreed.

Purchasing Bing and associated software upgrades (Pro Tools 8.03, Abelton Live Suite, iWork) was not possible without finally dipping into a sagging bunch of investments which I have fiercely clung to and laughably referred to from time to time as my retirement fund. Quite apart from the fact that my retirement would need to be awfully short in order for me to live off the cash dribbles set aside for its enjoyment, I have finally started to concede that ‘retirement’ might be a state – like motherhood or experiencing enthusiasm about the Steeler’s chances at the next Superbowl – that I don’t tick off in this lifetime.

Without wanting to be morbid, I figure that at the current rate of one reproductive organ per year packing it in, surely it won’t be long before the other functional organs get tired of hanging around when all the fun organs have split? If, long before retirement age, they all go to the biological cloak-room, gather up their nerve endings, and check out, who would blame them? Then my retirement nest egg would do me no good at all, and out of bitterness for a lifetime spent scraping together a measley wad of cash for no reason, I would refuse to leave a legacy fund to worthy causes like The Greens or The Wilderness Society. Instead, I would make my estate spend every cent on a marble mausoleum with doric columns and scrolls on a scale to rival the Vanderbilts and Baums and other monuments to Pittsburgh’s dead elites and park it for eternity in Allegheny Cemetery. There, for centuries to come, cemetery visitors would pause from their pensive rambles to look up reverentially at the imposing structure. Their eyes would alight searchingly on my epitaph, sprawled upon by semi-naked trumpeting angels and inscribed in massive gold leaf Comic Sans script: “HERE LIES A BUMBLING HUMAN!!!”. Ok, that is a bit morbid, and I’m sorry I said it. No one should laugh and I should be ashamed of myself.

But I’m not sorry I bought Bing. Because Bing’s biggest challenge is to help me finish off a book length version of The Jilted Bride’s american adventures. I have completed the roughest of rough first drafts, and I have promised both Bing and myself that we shall have a respectable draft done by the end of summer at the latest. Out of all the things I can do to help me heal, getting this journey and all its unexpected twists and turns, as many darks as lights, out of my system and into a coherent and hopefully vaguely entertaining form, is by far the greatest.

3 AM Eternal

I once read where top corporate executives have on average about 9 minutes to make a decision about anything during the day and if they get five hours of sleep at night, they have slept in. Thats helpful for me to know, because it means my current insomnia puts me in the same lofty mental league as the CEO of Alcoa or the President of the United States. My brain had apparently gotten so used to sleepless nights in Australia, that it is still failing to see the point of resuming normal REM even though its safe in its own bed now, far away from weapon wielding gynecologists and prescription pain killer superfly pharmacists. Given my working day now starts frequently at 3.00am, I’m thinking the next logical step is for me to run in the next gubernatorial elections.

But one thing I miss about being already awake at 3.00am, which I don’t think the average politico or captain of industry misses at all, is being woken up by pre-fab poems and songs delivered directly into my consciousness from the beyond. These are special deliveries from the beautiful depths of sleep, when the great undermind swims down into the murk and sometimes plucks up a shining shell to bring back and tap inside my cranium to wake me up. I’ve woken up shortly after 3.00am hearing whole songs in my head, lyrics often. But alas not now, every creative act requires my two remaining functioning neurons to rub themselves together very hard in order to make a spark.

So to commemorate Bob’s birthday, I looked back at the last such gift, a poem that woke me up in the wee hours of December last year, not long before I headed back to Australia, and it fussily insisted I write it down without stopping. It has nothing to do with Bob directly, or with synthesizers or revolutions in sound technology at all. But it has everything to do with love and joy, which is ultimately what the Moog legacy is all about to so many music lovers around the globe. And its silly. Maybe not as silly as the novelty Moog record craze of the late 60s and early ‘70s when musicians tried to cover everything from country and western classics to hard rock guitar solos using only squawks and bleeps, but pretty close.

The Kissed Nose

The kiss that will save your life
Will be on your nose
That’s where it will be planted
Watch out for it!

Sur le nez
On the tip of the nose
On zee tip erv le nez

When you least expect it
Wham!
Lips land like a butterfly
On your nose
Then they are off.

And how good does that feel?
How blessed are you?
To have that nose kiss
To you have your nose kissed.

Then have me lean back
And reach out for your hand
Sit back and squeeze
And admire my handiwork:
The kissed nose in its context.

What a fine landing pad for my lips!
They are so glad they went there!
So glad! – they are now telling the rest of the body
“Hey, over there is pretty good”!
But the rest of my body is saying
“I’m happy with the reconnaissance
I’m happy with the brief touchdown on Planet Nez
I’m happy with the report back
I’ll just continue with hand squeezing for now until further instructions”

But there are no further instructions.

Except another scientific urge
To lean over

And this time give the upturned olfactory organ
That sweetest invitation on your blushing face
A tiny
Little
Lick.

For the next few ‘episodes, I am handing over my blog to interviews with people who embody inspirational aspects of Australian culture.

First up, an interview with Mike Puleston, long-standing organiser in the Victorian branch of the Australian Greens. When I told Mike I wanted to interview him because I found what he stood for inspirational, he replied with typical Australian laconic humor: “I’m not inspirational, I’m just a bloody old ratbag!”

Nicole: Mike, please introduce yourself – tell me a little about your personal history:

Mike: I grew up in the working-class western suburbs of Sydney. My Dad and Mum were English immigrants. Dad was a building worker, and Mum had been a factory machinist before becoming a full-time wife and mother. I managed to get a scholarship into Sydney Uni in 1965, a time of great intellectual, political and social ferment. Australia was supporting the US in Vietnam, and young Australian men were being drafted to fight this dirty war, so I got involved in the opposition. Along with this I developed a leftish, soft-socialist outlook which I’ve kept since then. Through doing all kinds of part-time jobs, I came to see the importance of unionism.

My career was spent in various areas of education, secondary and tertiary, specialising in English as a Second/Foreign Language. Thus I came into contact with people of many ethnicities, both in Australia and elsewhere. This helped me to see the world beyond the Anglo-Australian viewpoint. I remained a unionist, serving as local rep. in various workplaces. Even now that I have retired, I continue to pay union subs and proudly carry a union card.

I joined the Australian Labor Party in the 60s, and worked hard at the 1972 federal election, when Gough Whitlam ended 23 years of conservative rule, and instituted a set of reforms that at least brought Australia into the 1960s. But in 1975 conservative forces inside and outside politics conspired to overthrow Whitlam in what amounted to a bloodless coup, and the conservatives were back again.

I went on working for the ALP, but grew increasingly involved in the anti-uranium movement and other environmental causes, joining the Movement Against Uranium Mining, Friends of the Earth etc. During the 1980s I came to see that the ALP had been so terrified by its 1975 experience that, even when back in government, it would never again pose a serious opposition to conservative thinking. The party embraced neo-liberal economic philosophy, which really permeated all aspects of political and social life, so that the ALP increasingly merely presented a slightly more humane side to the same coin which had the conservatives on the other side.

Thus in 1984 I joined the campaign to get Midnight Oil singer Peter Garrett into the Senate, joining his Nuclear Disarmament Party, even establishing a local branch. Garrett was not successful, and I withdrew from political activity, as I spent six years working and travelling overseas. This experience, which included living in Borneo for three years, made me more aware of conservation issues, especially the destruction of rainforests and the plight of indigenous people such as the Penans.

Settling in Melbourne in 1994, I joined the fledgling Australian Greens, and have been active in the Party ever since.

N: The first formal ‘green party’ in the world was established in Tasmania in 1972, out of the campaign to save Lake Pedder. Other Australian state green parties emerged in the 1980s, which then formally consolidated into a national party over the course of the 1990s. Over the last decade, the party has steadily increased its electoral support, attracting over 9% of the primary vote in the last Federal election in 2007. In some Victorian electorates, such as HIggins, the primary vote is as high as 33%, and support in the seat of Melbourne could be strong enough to send a Green to the lower house in the next Federal election. Currently, the Greens have five federal Senators, 21 elected members of State parliament, and over 100 local councillors. The Greens are now recognized as Australia’s third major political party after the Australian Labor Party (currently holding power Federally) and The Liberal Party (Australia’s conservative party).

Mike, why do you think electoral support for the Greens has been growing so strongly in Australia. For the benefit of American readers, I think we’ll need to first explain first the difference between the Australian and American versions of democracy. Our voting systems are very different – our system of ‘proportional’ and ‘preferential voting’ enables the growth of third parties whereas this is all but precluded in the American ‘first past the post’ system. Did you want to have a stab at explaining the key features of our voting system?

M: OK. There are two main points of difference between the Australian and US systems, that enable small parties such as the Greens to make some impact in government. The first is that in the upper houses, at both federal and state levels (federal Senate and state Legislative Councils), as well as in many local government areas, there is a form of proportional representation. Thus if a party gets 20% of the vote it gets, more or less, 20% of the seats. It’s more like the European systems. The second difference is that we have a preferential system of voting. Thus in a local electorate, voters don’t just put a cross against candidate Judy Bloggs, but number all candidates in their order of preference. If no candidate gets 50+%, candidates are progressively eliminated and their votes redistributed, until one candidate gets 50+% and is elected.

As an example, in the coming elections in the state of Victoria, in a few seats, it is likely that no candidate will get 50+% on the first account. The outcome could well be Greens 33%, Labor 42%, Liberals (= conservatives) 20%, other parties, independents etc 5%. The Liberals will probably, in order to spite Labor, advise their voters to put Greens at No. 2, as may some of the other parties and independents. Thus the Greens could get the magic 50+% through the flow-on of second preference votes.

N: In addition to the electoral enablers, what do you see as the key social and cultural reasons why more people are voting for the Greens?

M: We’re getting a better-educated, more-travelled, generally more aware and sophisticated society developing, and these people can see through the Tweedledum-Tweedledee relationship between the two major parties. There is really not much difference between them, more a matter of style than substance, with much focus on the contest between the two leaders. There is huge cynicism and lack of trust. The Greens are seen as honest, and focussing more on issues than personalities – social justice, the environment, peace and disarmament.

N: Why did you join The Greens? You started off life as an ALP man, which has historically positioned itself as Australia’s left leaning party and in this parallel to the American Democrats.

M: I have touched on this in my introduction above. But I’d like to go on and say that I think the Greens today are where the Australian Labor Party was in the late 19th century. In those days politics was very much about large landowners versus business interests. Few people thought that a political party dedicated to representing the interests of ordinary working people would ever form a national government. But it did, first in Australia and New Zealand, then in Britain, Scandinavia and other European countries. Social democracy was a new way of thinking. With time, in Australia and Britain especially, the social democrats parties came to resemble the parties they once opposed. The Greens are now bringing a different way of thinking.

N: How would you describe the political philosophy and principles of the Greens, and how well does the party put those principles into practice?

M:Whew! Big question. Go to the Australian Greens website…… But anyway, Greens principles are based on the four pillars of social justice, the environment, peace and disarmament. This is the template for policy development. Everything flows from that. The Greens have a very localised, grassroots system of organisation and policy development, based on consensus decision making. Compared with the ALP, there is great scope for individual members to have an input in what the Party does. I must say I find the decision making processes frustrating at times. They can be very time-consuming. The advantage is that once a decision is reached, it has broad-based support. But I do wonder if this system can be maintained in a pure form as the Party gets bigger and more involved in government. Within the Party I do argue for a modified version of CDM.

I am not so naive as to think that the Party will be without inner stresses and strains. One potential fault line is that of social justice/environment. The two might not be entirely compatible. For example, in northern Queensland, an issue has arisen with relation to the management of some wild rivers. Environmentalists want the rivers preserved in their original state. But some aboriginal groups want to practice agriculture along the rivers, which run through their lands. The Greens support aboriginal self-determination. So there’s a potential conflict here.

Another potential divide is that of idealism versus pragmatism. Does the Party stay pure and true to its principles, and risk being no more than a pressure group, or make some compromises in order to gain greater support and influence? That’s politics. No easy answer there, though I tend towards the pragmatic end.

So far, by sticking to our principles, the Greens are running at about 10-15% of the vote, more in some areas. But that’s still a long way from what we need. Still, we are represented at local, state and federal levels, and have favourably affected outcomes.

N: There is a huge amount of eco-innovation going on at the grassroots level in the USA, so much so I can’t keep track of all the ‘green’ initiatives and little eco-groups even in my adopted hometown of Pittsburgh. However, a recent international survey of national concerns about global warming, put the USA close to the bottom of the list when it came to people believing global warming is a “very serious issue” (44% of those polled). Australian’s weren’t asked their views apparently, but how would you rate our awareness? We are after all one of the nations currently suffering the most from climate change.

M: Awareness of environmental issues, including climate change, is growing here, particularly among the young. Overall, I would say this awareness is higher than in the USA, but then again it’s not absolute. Who would have thought that Arnie would be doing such good things in California, for instance? (Or have I got that wrong?) It’s a great pity that Copenhagen collapsed, as this caused a lot of Australians to put climate change in the “too hard” basket. Thus our conservative Federal Opposition has been able to push a “climate change is bunkum” barrow. The ALP Government is marginally better, but still are holding to 5-25% CO2 reductions, while the Greens are pushing for 40%.

But still, a lot is going on at the local level, with householders and local governments reducing their energy consumption, recycling, saving water etc.

N: You are now trying to ease your way out of leadership positions at the local level in the party, and you and your wife have set off on amazing adventures traveling around Australia, seeing as many of our remaining wilderness areas as you can. Australia is roughly the same size as the United States, so this is no small task. What have been some of the highlights and downers of your trip so far?

M: Kairen and I did an eight month camping trip through the western two-thirds of our country last year. We got to some wonderful, beautiful places, some of them very remote. It was not enough time to see it all, and we’ll be back, as well as covering the rest of the country. Our national parks services are doing a fantastic job of protecting wilderness areas, often on inadequate budgets. It was also good to see what private philantrophic organisations were doing to buy up clapped-out farms and regenerate them. We were also grateful to meet indigenous groups and to learn more about their perspectives. As they see it, people belong to the land, not the other way round. I guess the trip strengthened my resolve to do more to protect the land we belong to.

Disappointments? There are a lot of dickheads out there, littering, driving dangerously and without regard to fragile environments, generally behaving disrespectfully to the land and other people. Probably no worse than in any other country though.

N: I don’t think any Americans realise that Australia’s current Federal environment minister, Peter Garret, was a former national rock mega – star, leader of the agit-prop Oz rock band Midnight Oil. However, Republican Schwarznegger appears to take environmental sustainability more seriously and tackling the hard issues better than lefty Peter – what went wrong? Should we be turning to Hollywood action heros rather than rock stars as environmental leaders?

M: Poor Peter was swallowed up by the ALP Party machine. They seduced him in order to pull the environmental vote, then neutered him. He isn’t a very effective minister, or isn’t allowed to be. A warning of the perils of trying to change the system from within. Arnie? I don’t know. I guess if public figures have the right ideals, and are strong enough, they can make a difference. But I wouldn’t be going out headhunting celebrities to the cause. They have to find their own way.

I’d like to add something. One of the biggest battles as you get older is to ward off cynicism. When you see what’s going on around you, it’s so easy to be cynical. But cynicism corrodes the spirit, and I think contributes to ageing, and maybe physical and mental illness. I find that working with the mostly younger people in the Greens helps me keep my equilibrium. There are many fine young people in this Party, and the world would be a better place if it were run by the likes of them.

Their time is coming, and one reason I am stepping back from taking a more prominent role is to give them space to do things their way. I will continue to support in whatever way I can. I hope I can go on giving the benefit of my experience – and benefitting from the freshness and idealism that our younger members have.

N: I’d personally vote for AC/DC – the entire band. They’d at least do a good job at representing the alcohol overindulgence vote in Australia, which would be pretty huge. And their campaign parties would be awesome! Thanks Mike!

M: Pleasure!

And finally here are some beautiful pictures from Mike’s recent travel’s around the Australian outback:

Upcoming topics: the Australian electronic underground, community radio sector, independent film

Your gravestone epitaph competition

As I remain in Melbourne recovering from surgery, I find that I miss Pittsburgh quite a lot – in a yearning sort of way. Which is a bit mysterious given I have only really just moved there. But I think I have figured out the major reason for the heart tug: Allegheny Cemetery, which backs onto the street behind where I live. I walked there almost every day last year, and it is surely one of the world’s great cemeteries, encompassing 300 rolling emerald acres and 15 miles of tree and monument drenched roads. Allegheny Cemetery feels more like a happy empire of the dead than an ordinary burial ground. Its beauty and spiritual energy is sublime and very hard to capture in words.

But there is one aspect of the cemetery that disappoints me: and that is the lack of imagination in the epitaphs engraved on the thousands of gravestones and dozens of mausoleums. As I wander around the grave-studded hills, I am always on the look-out for inspiring legacies, some profound words from the departed to the remaining bewildered who are still tromping around their remains. But I hardly ever find them.

There is one gravestone that stands out, fairly recent, and the man that left it seems to genuinely embody that truly American genius for valuing individuality. His epitaph says:

“It takes courage to grow up to be who you know you really are.”

But that is pretty much it for someone sharing their vision of life as they leave it.

Most of the thoughts people have left behind aren’t theirs at all, but those of priests and bibles – conventional Christian pieties like “In the arms of Jesus”, “Rest in peace”, “He did God’s work” etc And just as many drab scratchings by people apparently too poor to afford the cost of extra religious engraving – all they are able to say about themselves is their name, their date of birth and death, and sometimes a one word description of their most important role in life: Father, Mother, Brother, Sister.

Thats not to say that many of these gravestones aren’t moving, they certainly can be. But how much more moving is it when words express grief and love and a vision of life in a most personal way. Here is another rarity, a monument to a recently departed child that makes you smile and cry at the same time, and admire the courage and hope of the parents of that left it there:

Naturally, I fantasize from time to time about what epitaph I’d like to leave behind, were I fortunate enough to find myself nestled for eternity in Allegheny Cemetery in a particularly nice spot with a view. Spike Milligan thought of the best one – he wanted to have the words “I told you I was ill” as his epitaph which would have continued his wonderful legacy of lightening the hearts of millions and showing no respect for authority. But of course his local church, the Chichester Diocese had the last say, they would not allow it.

My favorite monument to my own death at the moment would be this:

“Here lies a bumbling human.”

I can’t claim to have come up with the infectious term ‘bumbling human’, that honor goes to Natasha Dwyer, who in a single phrase has captured everything you need to know about human life in order to be compassionate, amused, annoyed and forgiving.

And in this vein, I have now decided to link two problems: what to do with some of my old vinyl releases – B(if)tek records that I no longer have a home for – and how to amuse myself while I get well. And I have come up with this happy solution to both:

I WILL GIVE AWAY A COPY OF B(IF)TEK’S DOUBLE VINYL ALBUM ’2020′ PLUS A VINYL EP OF ‘WIRED FOR SOUND’ REMIXES TO THE PERSON WHO CAN COME UP WITH THE MOST APPEALING EPITAPH FOR THEMSELVES, POSTED AS A COMMENT ON MY BLOG.

I think I’ll give this competition about 10 days to play itself out. Then I’ll contact the winner, get their address, send off the goodies and announce the winning entry in a couple of weeks time.

Thanks everyone, I look forward to reading your brilliant graveyard legacies:-)

How not to improve on ‘Wicked Game’ (but make it sound more like the kind of track you’d actually desperately record in your bedroom late at night)

Chris Isaak’s ‘Wicked Game’ is one of those perfect songs which simply cannot be ‘improved’ upon.  There are many, many tracks that can be improved upon (ie better arrangements, production, vocals, emotional ideas)- maybe most.  But ‘Wicked Game’ is not one of them.  

I remember Julee Cruise describing ‘Floating into the Night’ as a ‘perfectly realized’ album, and she was absolutely right – the whole thing, in concept, feelings, vox, beauty, originality – it too is flawless.  The eponymous album from which ‘Wicked Game’ is drawn, is up there in the sonic stratosphere with ‘Floating into the Night’.  And they are both entwined with the deep sexual mysteria of Twin Peaks episodes.  

Around about ’91/ ’92, I was going into second hand audio gear warehouses in Canberra and Sydney and trying to find the first speakers for my first home studio.  I remember that very often, the audio guys would slip on ‘Wicked Game’ and stand back to show the great fidelity of the speakers they were trying to sell me.  But I knew even then, that the slinky production values on that track were so astounding, that they would make the crappiest walkman sound good.

So you have to admire the sacrilegious tendencies that goaded A.T Vish (otherwise known as Carol Blaze) and my good self to try and record our own version of ‘Wicked Game’, bouncing track to track recorded in our (respective) studios – which, while not our bedrooms, may as well be.  I’m on keys, A.T plays everything else.

What can I say about it? than the idea was not so much to do a cover version, than to provide a sonic canvas – pre-treated with nostalgia – upon which to paint our own versions of unhinged, unrequited longing.  Which turned into a kind of retro Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Spector smacked-out ‘wall of sound’ crashing down epic.  But gently crashing .

Here it is: 01 Wicked Game

Nerd-watch: The lead is my 1972 Wurlitzer electric piano through a Space Echo box.

Not only, but also:  Here is a picture of me and A.T posing at the Brillo Box:

Life update in dot points for the busy:

I’ve moved into my own flat now and I have established (after 18 months of no privacy, and no capacity to record new music) my own pad and rudimentary home studio in the basement downstairs;

I continue to work hard for the Squonk Opera empire, trying to get gigs in the US and abroad for Pittsburgh’s leading multi-media troupe;

With T and Scott, finishing off a promotional video for the amazing and unique Pittsburgh Glass Center;

Heading back to Australia from 22 December to 17 January. See people I love.  Run the gauntlet of about half a dozen medical tests and check-ups.

T has been very busy with video projects and teaching, but I am still hoping she will have time to finish off the zombie mini-doco, before I go. In which case, you will be the first to get the link:-)