Lee Gamble on Max Headroom

This Thursday 24 March for Max Headroom on www.rrr.org.au I'm joined by ex-junglist and post-rave experimentalist Lee Gamble ahead of his appearance at this weekend's Inner Varnika festival. Listen live (from 7pm) here.

1980s Japan - Are We 30 Years Behind?

With the contemporary obsession with 1980s Japanese music, epitomised by recent reissues of releases like Mariah and Dip In the Pool and less recent interest in City Pop and corporate new age by the likes of Green Linez and Root Strata, are we simply 30 years behind?





Certainly the Balearic New Age House that's currently popular owes much to 1980s Japan, particularly that from around these down under parts.





I doubt they'd mind the connection, all part of the retro world we're living in, but if we are 30 years behind should we be paying more attention to Japan in the 1990s to see what we're up for next? Shibuya-kei? Might not be so bad.

DJ Tropical Breeze

I've started DJing under the name DJ Tropical Breeze and have set up up a blog as a repository for all things DJ Tropica Breeze - http://djtropicalbreeze.blogspot.com.au/. Here's the blurb:

DJ Tropical Breeze plays laid back, familiar, comfortable island music.

Yacht Rock, Exotica, Lover’s Rock, Disco, and many points in between.

And this is a theme song of sorts:

Haruomi Hosono

On 29 October 2015 for Max Headroom I presented a special on the early works of Japanese maverick Haruomi “Harry” Hosono. I paid particular attention to his run of tropical albums from the mid-to-late seventies, truly glorious music. Stream it here, and here's what was played:

Apryl Fool - Honkytonk Jam
Happy End - Kaze Wo Atsumete
Haruomi Hosono - Party
Haruomi Hosono - Muji Original BMG (excerpt)
Haruomi Hosono - Peking Duck
Haruomi Hosono - Exotica Lullaby
Haruomi Hosono and The Yellow Magic Band - Japanese Rumba
Haruomi Hosono - Hepatitis
Haruomi Hosono - Coral Reef
Haruomi Hosono - Atlantis
Haruomi Hosono - Cosmic Surfin'
Haruomi Hosono - Philharmony
Haruomi Hosono - Pac Man
F.O.E with James Brown and Maceo Parker - Sex Machine
Miharu Koshi - L'Amour Toujour
Haruomi Hosono - Sportsmen

Flat Champagne: The Last Albums of the Rat Pack

I wrote this for Triple R's The Trip, a subscriber only magazine issued in August.

The Final Albums of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr

Between 1982-84, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr, the core members of the Rat Pack, all released their final solo studio albums. Strange, patchy affairs, with two recorded in Nashville and the other adding electronics, they are incongruous blots at the end of generally esteemed careers. By 1982, they were hardly in their prime (Sinatra 67, Martin 65 and Davis Jr 57), and their boozy crooning and misogynist humour was not in vogue. Even the lounge revival, itself a disrespectful satire of their Vegas showbiz style, was a decade away.

Lured by money, contractual obligations, curiosity or boredom, all three returned to the studio, perhaps regrettably, for a last hurrah. For all their faults, each reflects – in a rather warped way - the history and personality of their star, and collectively they reveal a picture of the entertainment industry’s perception and treatment of faded glory. Let’s revisit these long forgotten (if ever considered) products and see if anything still sparkles.

Frank Sinatra: LA Is My Lady (Qwest, 1984)

Sinatra’s final solo album (not counting Duets of 1993, or indeed 94’s Duets II) is the most respectable of the three, with by far the biggest budget, and corresponding effort, and is consequently the least interesting. Hardly surprising as his career had fewer outright lowlights than Dean or Sammy, and Sinatra, the consummate professional, seemed unable to do anything half hearted, or use irony (his appearance in The Canonball Run 2 excepted – note his body double in scenes with Burt Reynolds). It’s telling too that, of the three, only Sinatra strives to remain relevant and update his sound for the eighties: recruiting Quincy Jones, at his peak in 1984, and a huge cast of crack players, from George Benson to the Brecker Brothers. He also adds synthesizers, and on the title track, disco rhythms. These kitsch moments are amusing, but for the most part it’s just a bigger big band and a tired Frank. This is especially so on “How to Keep the Music Playing”, another disco number, which asks the wrong question and truly drags. The joy of LA Is My Lady however is in watching money and talent squandered, producing something dazzling but flat, smoke and mirrors, more coal than diamond. It was also released on video and featured Frank’s latest pallies, Eddie Van Halen, Donna Summer and David Lee Roth, broadcast on the fledgling MTV Network. As a final insult, LA is my Lady was recorded in New York .

Dean Martin: The Nashville Sessions (Warner Brothers, 1983)

By 1983 Dino hadn’t released an album since 1978’s Once In A While, which was cobbled together from recordings from back in 1974. Like all of his seventies output, Once in a While was an ugly melange of 1930s Tin Pan Alley standards rendered in country-tinged pop-brass, with Dean swanning in at the last moment to overdub his vocal parts. The ultimate menefreghista, as biographer Nick Tosches dubbed him: he didn’t care then and he certainly doesn’t on Nashville . Dino had dabbled in country on a number of albums (Dino “Tex” Martin Rides Again, Country Style, Gentle On My Mind), not to mention dixieland (Way Out Yonder, Dino Goes Dixie, Southern Style); indeed, there was little he didn’t touch (French Style, Cha-Cha-Cha D’Amour, Sings Italian Love Songs, Dino Latino, countless Christmas albums). With The Nashville Sessions however, Dino dips more than a toe in the country pool: Merle Haggard joins him on “Everybody’s Had The Blues”, and Conway Twitty on “My First Country Song”.

At 65, and with a lifetime of booze, fags and indifference behind him, Dean’s voice has a weathered purr comparable to late Johnny Cash (Dino always, bafflingly, had a Southern drawl, despite being an Italian from Ohio), and few seem as comfortable fronting such studio froth (his TV career was sodden with canned laughter). Opener “Old Bones” is a highlight, a loping self-pitying ballad about ageing featuring the line “I love life I’d like to do it again”. This rings particularly hollow given Dino’s addiction to painkillers, suicide attempts and almost violent misanthropy. “Drinking Champagne ” is more accurate: “I’m drinking champagne, and feeling no pain, ‘til early morning”. The pace never quickens from slurred ballad crawl, with “Shoulder to Shoulder” and “In Love Up To My Heart” both particularly narcoleptic, cloaked in anodyne female backing (a Dino trademark). The Nashville Sessions also features Dean’s only music video, produced by his son Ricci, “Since I Met You Baby”: tuxedoed Dino, glassy eyed and lost amidst sequences of swimsuited eighties ladies, palm trees and cheap video effects. Prime fodder for sampling chill wave hypnagogues but, alas, The Nashville Sessions has so far eluded the modern hipster’s retro grasp.

Sammy Davis Jr: The Closest of Friends (Applause, 1982)

Recorded in Nashville, hardly the logical musical resting place of Sammy Davis Jr, The Closest of Friends (also known as Sings Country Classics) is among the most strangely poignant of final albums. With material penned by the city’s country finest (Don Gibson, Kris Kristofferson, Merle Travis), yet cheaply recorded with plastic keyboards and hokey arrangements, it pits Sammy’s still impressive croon (he was the youngest of the three) against cold industry indifference and musical mediocrity. This was a context Dino seemed drawn to, even thrive in, but Sammy comes off second best. “Smoke Smoke Smoke That Cigarette” is pleasingly macabre, opening to Sammy’s wheeze before he boasts “I’ve smoked all my life and I ‘aint dead yet” (he would be, by throat cancer, in 1990). Sammy is on decent form throughout, but it’s a struggle: through ill-fitting flange guitar gospel (“Come Sundown”), wayward Casio runs (“Mention a Mansion) and awkward lyrics ("Hey, Won't You Play (Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song)". The standout however goes to “(We Could Have Been) The Closest of Friends”, which reads like a heartfelt plea to his more famous and accepted white Rat Packers, his musical colleagues in Nashville, and even his audience. As with Martin’s late work, there is something perversely endearing in the loveless product that is The Closest of Friends, but this scrapes a barrel lower than Dean ever did, with Sammy reluctantly forced to eat what he’s served. As testament to the industry’s enduring disrespect for Sammy Davis Jr, The Closest of Friends is among his most frequently reissued albums, generally with misleading album title and artwork.

Sammy was the first to go, aged 64 (damned cigarettes!), with Dean following in 1995 (fittingly on Christmas Day, aged 78) and Frank making it to 82 in 1998. All joined forces, briefly, in 1988 for a railroad-stadium reunion tour, but Martin bailed early, to be replaced by Liza Minelli. Aside from Frank’s stocking filler Duets albums they recorded nothing more. Out with a whimper, like flat champagne, but one with a strange, lingering aftertaste that may just grow on you. 

Abul Mogard: Circular Forms

Beguiling - if slightly untrustworthy - back story to Abul Mogard: apparently he's a retired Serbian metal worker who now makes industrial tinged electronic music. Nonetheless Circular Forms on Ecstatic Recordings is excellent. Touches of Deathprod and Thomas Koner in the 16 minute final piece 'House on the River', and in the hissing undercurrents of all four works here. Beautiful with hints of dread but never overpowering, remaining more alluring than threatening.

Dean Martin - The Later Years, on Max Headroom

More belated and perfunctory posting. I recently presented a special on the later years of Dean Martin for 3RRR FM's Max Headroom, which can be streamed here. There I celebrated what I find to be Dino's most interesting period, a strange world of almost intentionally lacklustre recordings, a melange of stale Tin Pan Alley standards, big band, country and sixties bubblegum pop that, in the late 1970s, sounded particularly incongruous. Ironically such product could also only come from the 1970s.

Here is the blurb for the show:

Over his long and varied career, Dean Martin, "The King of Cool", was a heart throb, crooner, film star and leading member of the rat pack.

He was also known as "The Laziest Man In Showbiz", churning out countless albums of stale standards and hosting formulaic, TV specials for over 40 years.

On Max Headroom this week, Joshua Meggitt explores this lacklustre Dino, playing choice filler from his later albums, with excerpts from such cinematic highlights as The Cannonball Run 2

By focusing on the later years, I intentionally avoided his younger, more well known material, the stuff of nostalgia shows and Scorsese films, and went straight to the end: his lazy, resolutely uncool, critically condemned, and now long forgotten (if ever paid attention to) final years. It's a world of strange, almost studied mediocrity, so mindlessly middle-of-the-road that hearing it now, its quite unlike all other music. Exemplary is "Old Bones", the opening song from his final album, 1983's The Nashville Sessions:

Today, Dean Martin is largely remembered as a lazy, lackadasical Frank Sinatra, a Las Vegas self-parody, his reputation resting on a few comedies he made with Jerry Lewis, and some charming pieces of pop fluff that once topped the Hit Parade with retro “lounge” revivals and appearances in mafia films. Even by the later years of his own career, his early days as a global, charismatic romantic icon are long forgotten… and yet I can’t look away! This song is so stupid, but I love it: "Love Thy Neighbour" from 1978's penultimate Once in a While:

The main appeal with Dean Martin was his carelessness, a quality I've even managed to get my four year old to appreciate. He was, as biographer Nick Tosches dubbed him, the ultimate menefreghista - one who just doesn't give a fuck.Or, going further, what contrarian commentator and Oxbow singer Eugene Robinson describes as outright violent misanthropy. 

Dean Martin’s vocals say one thing to my ears: FUCK YOU!

The more I listen, the more I agree. Hostility and scorn for both his material and his audience is clearly expressed in his reading of "It Keeps Right On A-Hurtin'", from the wonderfully titled, My Woman My Woman My Wife of 1970. Essentially a ballad about the pain of breaking up, listen to Dean laugh as he delivers the line, "I cry myself to sleep each night", as though the very concept of him feeling heartbreak is absurd:

The ilovedinomartin Dean Martin fansite blog got wind of the program and promoted it heavily. Check out their kind words here but here's an excerpt:

Hey pallies likes are we in for the hugest of huge Dino-treats as today, as promised we share our newest pallie, down under dude Mr. Joshua Meggitt's  coolest of cool "celebration" of our Dino....an hour long radio programme that is a marvelous  mix of  '70's and '80's Dino-croons and choice audio recordin's from our Dino's later work on both the small and big screens...
We gotta 'fess up that we  grooved on each and ever moment of this purely potent programme of passionate appreciato for our King of Cool.  We particularly loved listenin' to a number of croons from our Dino's last al-b-um, "The Nashville Sessions."  And, we couldn't 'gree more with Josh that these particular croons really are remarkably revelatory of our Dino's life and times at that point...truly these croons form a stellar set of Dino-teachin's!!!!!

We coulda goes on and on, 'bout the wonderful mixin' of Mr. Meggitt's Dino-reflections with our Dino's singin', but likes we wants  youse all to enjoy this amazin' programme lovin'ly presented by in-the-know Dino-holic Mr. Joshua Meggitt.

We salute Josh for this tremendous tribute to our main man and for encouragin' his audience to develop a deeper understandin' and relationship with of our Dino by readin' Nick Tosche's Dino-bio, "DINO: Living High In The Dirty Business Of Dream.  And thanks ever so much to pallie Josh for even givin' a nice shout out to our humble little Dino-blog, ilovedinomartin. for doin' our part to promote his Dino-special.

I suspect there'll be more Dean Martin posts...

How High The Moon

Filling for How High The Moon tomorrow, 10pm Friday 6 March 2015, on 3RRR 102.7FM. You'll be hearing this: