Best Home Living - I'm There!

- well, the pigeons think so...




Parramatta Road, Petersham NSW Australia 27 June 2009

Sometimes a Vinyl EP is All About the Cover

A few treats have come home to hang around on my turntable is the past couple of weeks.
Sometimes a picture sleeve can be as good as the record (sometimes better!)

Amongst the collection I now have the lovely Roberta Flack - could I resist this cover, I think not:



An Australian EP, it of course features one of her most famous songs (First Time Ever... and then you snored... heh heh) and a rather forgettable duet of You've Lost That Loving Feeling, which was never such a great song in its first outing (by whomever sang it - don't tell me cause I'm not interested - oh, it was those 2 blokes, one had a really deep voice & they wore beige polyester suits...) Doesn't matter, I would've bought the single of her First Time Ever... but having it for the same price as a rare EP is fab... and, wow, that hair!

Then... sigh... :



An obscure New Zealand EP from 1967 or 68 in fabulous nick - Phillips obviously banking on the popularity of her BBC 1966-67 television show (the photo is from the show) but such a groovy telly!

Phillips brand of course...

- featuring 3 previous A-side singles (Give Me Time 1967, What's it Gonna Be 1967, Wishin' and Hopin' 1964 - USA not UK) they named it My Colouring Book - a B-side from 1964 - who knows how Phillips execs worked then.
One of the nice things in Australia that not only did we get Dusty's UK releases (Her "Where Am I Going" Australian release LP is even a better mix than the UK LP - and it was never released in the USA) but we also got the USA only releases as well but often with different covers.


anyways to fly a little way - 20 years - into the future - I also picked up an English pressing of Nina Hagen's "African Reggae" 45 with picture sleeve - another Parramatta Road bargain:


===

So, that's an Australian release by an American, a New Zealand release by a Brit and an English release by a German

== then there's the Skunk Records Luxemburg EP release of a punk rock benefit compilation (Amore & Anarchia) with 4 bands from... all over the joint and the vinyl is yellow - see:


Tracklisting:
A1 Toxkäpp Märder
A2 Subway Arts Bow To No One
B1 Bakunin's Children Bart Simpson
B2 D'Rotzbouwen Intro / Subcaos
- I'd call it more earthy punk rather than hardcore but it packs a punch when played loud loud and made a very work-weary AH happy the other night when I became home DJ & played my new find before revisiting The Frumpies and a splash of 7 Year Bitch (the later on CD)...

==

Walking past the artist's house

When Sydney has its gorgeous Winter days, it's always a delight going for a walk.
My walk today had purpose - I finally finished 2 years of tax return accounts. I reckon that government payout did the ATO a big favour in that I'm sure it's a bigger record of people doing tax returns than the years when they announce an amnesty...

But, so on the walk, and it IS on the way to the accountants office is the artist's house - the wonderful Jenny Orchard & her fabulous totems:






http://jennyorchard.com/v2/totems.htm

And then there's always an available hand to pat all those charming cats:





==

A song that keeps visiting my brain without permission

This one pisses me off so I thought I'd share it with other folks who are into enjoying being annoyed by squeaky-voiced, hot pants wearing blond Scotts

-as opposed to squeaky voiced extra pair of socks in the jeans choking on own vomit Bon Scott(s) -hmmm will the rock god police hit me with 1 million volts of lightening bolts ... oh, dear I must mean High Voltage!!

Damn, see, corny crap pop from my small child past makes me silly with pun.

the following band was called "Middle of the Road" but I think they should have called themselves the Tweeties or Squeaky Squash Squish goober something...

When I think of 'middle of the road' (MOR) it's a style of music very bland and boring and more like those 1980s soft rock bands or torch singers with bad synth (think Whitney, George Michael, America and their 'ken horse, Eagles, Icehouse and all those A-Ha type bands and without thinking about how nice Annie Lennox looks, have you listened to Eurythmics, There Must be an Angel - it is soooo MOR I may have to self-harm)

MOR cannot always be easily ignored it can be very very very annoying - in the past week I've been working for a lovely fellow researching some archives in Ultimo where there is different boring radio stations piped throughout the building each day and it's been making me a bit ratty.
How can Vega FM make even Patti Smith sound wrong... by surrounding her song with tedious Icehouse and some other shit. Another day it was 2-Day FM - Kenny Rogers and all!
At 4PM one day, the office people changed the station to a christian program - whoa, that's definitely MOR (hands up who wants to see Guy Sebastian naked??) with really odd god advertisements thrown in just to gobsmacked this unsuspecting atheist.

But to get back to 1971 this bit of bubble can on first listening not be dismissed as easily as 80s MOR -it is annoying yet catchy at the same time

urgh - did I write that? Catchy? no it's fucking not. 'ken chirp your fucken cheep... and what is it with the Tweety Pie voice?

See if you can last through the whole song, have a little singalong while you're at it... share it




I don't even know how I got to be listening to this - that's the disease of it...

Laugh along with Bonnie Tyler

http://www.youtube.com/user/dascottjr
These folks have done the best voice over of that corny epic Bonnie Tyler hit, Total Eclipse of the Heart,showing that it's way more fun to sing what is actually happening in the clip - it begins funny and then gets hilarious. I love Youtube - but Sony sucks by being lame copyright corporates - forgetting that the people who did this and people watching it & enjoying it were major contributors to the wealth this one release made (except me I guess... hmmm, maybe those that enjoy this most couldnt't stand the effing thing!)
hopefully you can get the gist of how much fun this is until the greed monsters jump on it again

That'll serve you right for blaspheming on Sunday - get thee to obliteration

Zombiefied humans ride the escalator to heaven or.... obliteration! Do they know? Have they been hypnotised like in some b-grade sci fi film and follow commands without queston from a strange fearsome mutant creature from another planet?
oh, hang on, that's Hillsong or the JW's or Scientology

When in Adelaide...

There were no bespoke tailors (or closets - this IS Adelaide) to be seen in this place so we were suspicious of the true meaning of this arcade...
May 2009