Paint the Tiger, Carve the Swan

A bit over ten years ago, some mates of mine formed a band, and they had one performance: at Viv’s 21st. Their whirlwind tour of Robe over, the Scabby Nannas split up, moved on to other projects, and so on.

They are back.

I never thought I’d link to a myspace page, but here we go: The Scabby Nannas.

You can hear their one original track “Always Go For Goals!”, and if you look hard enough you’ll also find videos of their performance earlier this year at the Walkerville RSL. Not sure if this was a paying gig, or just Viv’s 31st, but videos don’t lie.

Since then, they’ve apparently been hard at work, recording this track (and possibly some more, under a secret alias I can’t remember anymore).

(I’ve put this under Popular Music, although I’m not sure they are exactly “Popular”, per se. Maybe one day).

Oh, and happy birth, Mitchell Vickery.

Always Go For Goals • Super Villian • Scabby Nannas ★★★

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xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe

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Back when I first got bought a CD burner, a clunky 4x SCSI internal model for our PowerMac 8600, I went through a phase of making bootleg CDs. Not pirating CDs, but recording from the radio - mainly from Triple J’s Live at the Wireless program that was running at the time, and apparently still is. I obviously haven’t ripped any of those CDs to my iTunes, as there aren’t any there.

One other CD I made was from Merrick and Rosso. They had a group of well-known Australian Artists cover other Australian Artists’ classic songs. There were some brilliant covers, but the two that stick in my memory were You Am I doing a Paul Kelly track (When I First Met Your Ma), and then Paul Kelly returning the favour with Heavy Heart. This was a turning point in my musical taste, with me then purchasing every You Am I, and every Paul Kelly album.

I went into Like a Version Two with a similar hope. That these covers might reflect some of the class, and fun, that Merrick and Rosso had back in November 99 or 2000. Since this is a Triple J release, I was counting on some cool stuff.
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I’ve written about various songs and their meanings, or at least what I interpret them to be, several times before. I really dig songs that have real meaning, and I think about various song meanings often. Today, while washing the dishes, on came James Blunt’s Goodbye My Lover.

This song has had me thinking about what it means for some time now. I’d thought, at various times, that it was about a girl who had left him, or one who had died. Now I’m not so sure.
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We’ve had Nova 91.9 playing while we’ve been painting the last couple of nights. Some of the music is okay, but last night I noticed they are playing exactly the same songs as the night before.

That’s okay - the young folk today are so whacked out on drugs (prescription, as well as recreational) so they probably don’t remember that these songs were on last night too.

After about three hours, I realised they were playing a whole heap of songs for the second time that night!

I mean, come on. You needs to smoke shit-loads of drugs to forget the songs that played in the last three hours. And it wasn’t just one or two, but more like all of them. Are the programmers so lazy they only program half a night worth of music, and just play it all twice?

I want that job!

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A track just came onto my iTunes via Party Shuffle. It’s one I haven’t heard for a while, but reminded me of the time we went to see this band live. Especially notable, as it was at the Speigeltent, during the Adelaide Fringe Festival some years back, and it’s that time of the year again.

It was, I believe, just before Derek left Adelaide for the big smoke of Sydney. Well, Wollongong, anyway. He did work in Sydney…
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#1 Song on This Date in History

This is cool: you plug in your birthday, or any other day, and it tells you what the #1 songs were on that day, back until about 1940.

On the day I was born:

December 1963 (Oh, What a Night) by The Four Seasons

On Jaq’s day of birth:

Disco Lady by Johnnie Taylor

At least I’ve heard of my birth-song!

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With no radio in the car at the moment (I broke the automatic aerial again, and it’s too expensive to justify buying a new one just yet), we tend to put 6 CDs in the stacker, and listen away. At the moment, we have:

• Diesel • Short Cool Ones
• Sheryl Crow • Tuesday Night Music Club
• Coldplay • Parachutes
• Diesel • Solid State Rhyme
• Frank Bennett • Five O’Clock Shadow
• Dido • No Angel

I know, I know, it’s a pretty Early 90s set of discs, but, hey…
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While listening to Party Shuffle on iTunes, up came:

Cigarette • Ben Folds Five • Whatever & Ever Amen ★★★½

Now, I’ve had this album since, well, it first came out. I remember when “Give Me My Money Back Bitch” was all we were singing (Song for the Dumped). But apparently I’d never really listened to the start of this song. It’s about Fred Jones. So what?

But, then, in his first solo album, Ben has the song:

Fred Jones, Part 2 • Ben Folds • Rockin’ The Suburbs ★★★★★

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One of my students today told me she had seen a poster for a band named after me. I did a little research (they played at Flinders Uni last Friday), and came up with this poster:

As you can see, it’s pretty close.

You can read about this band over on Music SA’s Schickel page, or the Official Schickel Website, and even listen to a track. It’s not too bad, actually.

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