MJ

Two of my daughters have become Michael Jackson fanatics in the weeks since his death, and the copy of The Essential Michael Jackson I bought for them has been on high rotation, causing me to realise a few things:

• Everything up to and including the singles from Off The Wall is faultless, except for that one note he hits really sharp in “I Want You Back.” And the song “Off The Wall” could probably do without the creepy laughter in the intro.
• Speaking of creepy, “Ben” is a beautiful little ballad, and probably the oddest chart hit in pop history.
• “Rock With You” is sublime. I liked it a lot when I was ten, and now I know why. Those vocal harmonies in the chorus are incredible.
• “Black or White” is surprisingly enjoyable, considering how much I disliked it at the time of its release.
• The girls reckon Bad was when it all started to go wrong. I think it was Thriller. “Billie Jean” and “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin'” are as good as anything else he did, but the title track and “Beat It” aren’t quite as good.
• It’s strangely fascinating to hear his vocal style as it dissolves into twitches, hiccups and mannerisms.

Dust storm II

Dust storm

More photos at The Red Sydney Project

Black locust, white flowers

A grove of black locusts growing along the banks of the Cooks River at Undercliffe. They burst out in masses of white blossom for a week or so in spring.

Dance

Sonic Youth T-shirt

[a shivery, whining tinkle, a screwdriver scraped down an electric guitar tuned to a whole-tone scale]

There was this girl
in line for coffee
in a Sonic Youth t-shirt
with the Raymond Pettibon cover from Goo
that I thought was trying too hard to be confronting
when I bought that album.

[creaks and thumps like the sound of the couplings on an old freight car plugged into a Marshall stack]

I never listen
to that record anymore
because my pet rabbit jumped on it
while it was playing
one day in 1993.
The record span down
with a sudden EEEEOOWP.
Much to my rabbit’s surprise.

[EEEEEEEEOOOWP. Silence for 7″]

Rock on,
girl in the Sonic Youth t-shirt.

[Explosion of loud distorted guitar with lots of feedback. Repeat till fade.]

Exhalations whizzing in the air

Life imitates art!

The Comedy Wind Scale

0 – calm

1 – raises enough dust to reach the nose of a very short dog, causing it to sneeze.

2 – blows a newspaper off the face of a man napping in the park and onto the face of a cyclist, who rides his bike into the duckpond.

3 – ladies’ skirts are blown up, revealing lacy bloomers.

4 – little kids run around like crazy, grown-ups’ scarves and neckties stick out at amusing angles.

5 – gentlemen’s bowler hats are blown off and roll quickly along the footpath while they chase them.

6 – propels a bipedal coyote riding a skateboard fitted with a lateen-rigged sail.

7 – tears a hole in the coyote’s sail, leaving him becalmed in the path of an oncoming freight train.

8 – a lighthouse keeper sticks his head out of the porthole to check the weather and brings it back with his beard on the other side of his head.

9 – farmyard animals and outbuildings float lazily past. The animals are still walking with their usual gait.

Hamlet

Shakespeare: the not especially funny bits

I’ve already made fun of Hamlet elsewhere in these pages, so here’s something else.

In a chamber at Elsinore

Byron! – he would be all forgotten to-day if he had lived to be a florid old gentleman with iron-grey whiskers, writing very long, very able letters to “The Times” about the Repeal of the Corn Laws. –Beerbohm, Zulieka Dobson

After all these years, I still miss Father.
My very bones are cold — another glass?
We old-timers have got to stick together.

The image of him is as clear as ever,
Although my memory’s not what it was.
After all these years, I still miss Father.

To think he died the same year as his brother,
The year I — yes, I know, the year I “lost”.
We old-timers have got to stick together.

Don’t fuss so. I’m your King, not some old duffer.
I have my funny turns; they always pass.
After all these years, I still miss Father.

And you were always there as Lord Protector.
That dream was horrible — I saw her face —
We old-timers have got to stick together.

Her face was blurred like something underwater.
What would I do without you, Fortinbras?
After all these years, I still miss Father.
We old-timers have got to stick together.

After Goya