‘Finding apps should be bomb-proof!’

He lifted his gaze to the south. Kebab signs; the Australian Souvenir Shop; one or two vans emblazoned with cedar trees…all good: all 100% dinki-di halal in his eyes but, more pointedly, still no sign of a tram. He shoved the phone into his pants, rueing that moment he’d acceded to his wife’s request to borrow his car.

‘I Zumba at 11:00’, she’d said, ‘…and oh, the shopping. Mine’s past 50,000k’s and needs a full servicing. We wouldn’t want to void our warranty now would we?’  

But what choice did he have? Experience had taught him that a negative response on his part would end in microwave gloop and even further limits to his conjugal rights…and forget a full servicing!

So the tram to work it had to be…bugger.

He remembered the time he got stuck next to a big skinhead; his tattooed legs splayed across a seat in abject contempt of both The Transport Act and any thought of an employable future.

 ‘See this tatt?’ the skinhead had asked, stroking a name crossed out on his inner thigh, ‘It’s the dobber that got me banged up in Barwon jug. Goin’ ta’ visit him… right now’, He then brought his lips up close to James’s ear and whispered, ‘It’s only five stops. Wanna’ join me mate?’

 James answered with a quick exit at the next stop.

Nonetheless, despite this and all the morning’s misery (the quick coffee – the spilt coffee – the coffee-stained shirt), James wasn’t wholly averse to trams, particularly Sydney Road’s Number 19. It never failed to entertain. There were the shop fronts to gawk at and all the Muslim women in their colourful hijabs. And then there were the more ubiquitous tram-y attractions; the toasty smell of brakes on steel; that ding-y little bell, rung by angry drivers at the hoons that hurtled past. Even ticket validating machines had their appeal. James took particular delight in the way they’d regurgitate – over and over and over again – the wrongly inserted Metcards of the exasperated tourists and oldies. And as for Myki – well…

A metallic squeal prised him from his thoughts…the 19. He ascended the steps and wedged himself next to a giggly schoolgirl – the only thing conceivably worse than an ex-con with a bent for violent homo-erotica. He expelled heavily, pulled his phone from his pocket, and proceeded to hunt one last time for Tram Tracker.    

‘Excuse me sir’ asked the girl, ‘What’re you doing?’

‘Can’t find Tram Tracker’ he grunted.

‘Here. Give it to me’ she said, pulling it from his hand.

Her digits danced across the screen.

‘There you go’ she declared, passing it back with an elfin smile.

He found himself smiling back.

‘Tin Cans, Squeems and Thudpies’,

 ‘Illini bands tend to sound like a cow in the last stages of Bang’s Disease squatting on a steel guitar, play ‘bout as fast as a drugged leech on a sticky driveway, and record their albums in green-houses…Then along comes Thunderpussy like a beer fart in Sunday School, really cleaning the air. There’s a lotta’ slice guitar…bat bleep guitaro attacks (lotsa those)…and even a jazzbo or two.’

 April, 1974

Clearly where ‘Ranger Reeek’ is concerned the pongier the rock-piggery the better; he’ll scour your garden, your barnyard, or your bowels to unearth the right – yet hilariously ‘wrong’ – word to delineate the malodorous ‘mung’ piled up before him. And, wherever the lexicon’s caught short, he’s not averse to excreting more of his own. Here’s my crack at nailing a few;

 Dry-drool – amped up amphetamine lip-spittle

Bugaboos – sci-fi insect horror plot devices

Voicecicles- verbal shard shortcomings

Smoosh – sound of a ground squirrel under the wheels of a fire engine (Rick’s own definition)

Munglobes – a higher state of ‘mungness’

Squoozed – basically squeezed but squoozier

Ugga-uggas – your guess is as good as mine…but it sure sounds good.

Autosuck – dunno…a battery-powered diddling device? How about tailpipe fellatio?

‘Reeek’ is aware of the impotence of safe phraseology when plumbing the murkier of musical mire: in its stead he devises a whole new idiom; one to embody, yet not corral, the ooze of the fair dinkum rock thugs – the ‘slime-creatures’ like AC/DC, Thin Lizzy, or The Sex Pistols. This is his gift; to render true the instinct of rock n’ roll – its’ shivers; its’ shakes; its’ ‘thudpies’; its’ ‘squeems’. It’s not an exact science, but nor should it be as any attempt to make it so would, conversely, be shooting wide of the mark…and that means bowl-smear.

All this points to a unique challenge: how best to showcase ‘Reeek’s’ loose motion style without sterilising the contents? Editor Bill Knight opts for an unstructured – one might call it ‘deconstructive’ – approach whereby all the splatter is sprayed beneath broad titles, here are some;

   ‘Bloato hype, gerbilstones & smellbags: MUSIC’

‘A lot about nothing: SLEAZEDOWN STORIES’

‘Weenie Earthlings, cranium pivots & the U.S of Rick: BOOKS’

‘More fun than a bakeoff and a bloodbath combined: VIDEO GAMES’

‘Mondo, modo, dodo and doodoo: Q&A’

 As you can see, ‘Reeek’ ranges across more than music: he was a bona fide baseball tragic, and his throwaway reviews on junk food are a complete hoot. Best of all you can begin anywhere, the text lending itself to a non-linear engagement with form – simply pick it up, flip to a page; any page; and giggle your guts out. It’s the ideal toilet tome to capture, in particular, the noisome noise that is rock n’ roll, and to counter the case put forward in this almost too clever aphorism;      

 “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture – it’s a really stupid thing to want to do.”

–Elvis Costello, in an interview by Timothy White entitled “A Man out of Time Beats the Clock.” Musician magazine No. 60 (October 1983), p. 52.

   My head concurs but my innards disagree. ‘Rick Johnson Reader: Tin Cans, Squeems and Thudpies’, is the best laugh-out-loud-laxative since ‘The Latham Diaries’. Get it now – especially if you’re bound up – and I guarantee that truly agreeable accidents will happen…

Sniping at Swedes is like shooting fish in a barrel, and in Sweden shooting those fish is even easier as they’re already dead,  then left in that barrel to ferment for two months, canned, and then eaten. It’s called ‘Surstromming’ and, like Swedish retail giant IKEA, could best be termed an ‘acquired taste’ (similarly, Nordic Death Metal bands and Swedish tennis players though, if made to choose, I’ll take Opeth’s ‘Bleak’* over Mats Wilander’s ‘den lekfulla lognen’** any day). Yep, when it comes to ripened seafood and  assemble-yourself  furniture, what may smell Swede-y-sweet to one may smell waste-bin whoofy to another. And while, admittedly, I’ve no experience of the olfactory delights or otherwise of Surstromming (I’ll defer to the video on that stuff – make up your own mind***), I can say, with a degree of certitude, that shopping at IKEA Richmond is on the nose.

My experience began with the purchase of the Ektorp lounge suite. Like all IKEA products it boasts practical features: interchangeable covers, sturdy construction, and a classic design; to name but a few. Overall it’s a simple and attractive international model but, like most simple and attractive international models, it comes with baggage. Still, I’ll cop all of Kate Moss’s tanties, bulimia, pissed off PETA protesters, even trips to rehab to visit Pete Doherty, in preference to a life with the Ektorp; at least I’d be half a chance to score a snorter full of nostril-popping nose-candy for my trouble (that’s if Pete hasn’t blitzed it already).  No such largesse from the Ektorp though – not even a single, foisty fish – all its’ gifted me  is $180 in delivery charges, sciatica, and two ill-fitting, purportedly removable, covers originating from…wait for it…Romania.

But let’s put Romania aside for a moment and focus on Sweden and money (money and Romania being a tautology anyhow unless you’re a people-smuggler…hmmm…maybe Moldovan sex slaves made my covers). While the delivery charge is sizeably irritating in itself, what really pains me is the bullshit of this barf-inducing bumf;

 ‘It’s the work we do together that keeps our prices low.  First we do our part…to save on storage we pack things flat.  Then you do your part. By picking up your furniture, bringing them home and assembling them yourself.

 Together we save money.’

 There’s plenty to not like here: the schoolmaamy tone; the cloying attempt to solicit me – the little bloke – into some sort of ‘smarmy-Swedey’ thrift scheme. Worse is the bogus, ‘…we pack things flat.’ We pack things flat!? Well, chuck me in a barrel, ferment my bile, and brine me! Upon acquainting myself with the Ektorp in IKEA’s self-serve furniture area it was clear that no amount of ear-scratching, chin-rubbing or wanton ingestion of hallucinogens was gunna’ flatten out that thing, and there was just no way of merely bunging it in the boot and chugging home…delivery gratis. I was a goner – me and my moolah – and there were no valkyries summoning me to Valhalla to sup at Odin’s warrior table (flat-packed, no doubt, for ease of transport). If, indeed, I needed a nose-bag, I’d have to proceed to the restaurant, conveniently located on the second floor, where, for another $6.50, I was welcome to try the Swedish meatballs served with chips, gravy and lingo berry sauce…lingo berry sauce? What’s that…scum dredged from the Surstromming barrel!?     

Interestingly though, those primarily responsible for filching $180 of my ‘hard earned’ aren’t even Norsemen. No, it’s a crew of Antipodean pirates that sail under the Kings Transport flag and, as the length of the queue testified – those sans trailer, truck, or aircraft carrier – they’ve found their ‘plunder down under’, stashed just beyond the checkouts of the IKEA Richmond store.  

Still, in the interests of lowering my blood pressure I knew I just had to ‘let it go’ (take a gander at the second surstromming video for a detailed example of how to ‘let it go’****); besides, I was sick of bruising my arse on the stacked milk crates serving as my TV chair. So, upon accepting delivery of the Ektorp three days later I’d already ticked off, grudgingly, all the anticipated benefits that healthy Norse design would bestow upon me. I handed the dough to the pirate from Kings and got to work; dutifully dampening my brow in the name of Sweden and their balance of trade figures;

 “Then you do your part. By picking up your furniture, bringing them home and assembling them yourself”.

 Phase one proved easy enough: I even caught myself humming a few lines of ‘Norwegian Wood’ while removing the shrink-wrap; it must have been the smell of pine, or birch, or beech, or whatever the Hell else they use for the frame. The real problem though came during phase two, the self-assembly phase. Upon attempting to slide – nay yank – the second of the ill-fitting covers over a chair back I felt a ‘critch’ as my back deviated out-of-true. I spent the next week walking around like I had a carrot or, possibly, a swede rammed up my clacker (and don’t think that’s not possible, there’s a plethora of Euro porn flicks, or, so I’m told, featuring the very same). And I was simply not prepared to shell out an extra $100 plus for a physio to extricate it…guess I should’ve stuck with the bruised arse. But that’s not all, upon closer inspection the stitching of the cover - direct from that sweat-shop in Bucharest - had torn away in a number of places.  I would have to return to IKEA for a refund, and I was really looking forward to that.

Months have passed since my Nordic misadventure. My return visit was, in truth, relatively incident free, barring the twenty minute wait while a bloke – whose name if it wasn’t Sven probably should have been (blonde, muscled, dark-rimmed glasses, possibly moonlighting as a gym instructor cum porn star) – listened politely and attentively, in that infuriatingly ‘nicey-nice Swedy’ way, to all my wife’s indignation about washing instructions and faulty workmanship. Anyway our covers were exchanged and they fitted, no problem – leaving me sufficiently confident to return to IKEA and buy some scatter rugs and cushions under, sensibly, strict supervision from my missus (my idea of style being a boar’s head mounted above the telly, a seal-pup rug on the bed, and a XXXX poster on the dunny door…cover the backyard in green concrete, whack a rusty engine block out the front, and I’m a happy man). I can’t help but think though that maybe I’ve been the unwitting victim of some sort of trans-national conspiracy; the co-conspirators being Sweden, Romania and Australia - aiming at a barrel - at a stinky little fish like me. Sadly I was already dead and fermenting the instant I entered that store…I just didn’t smell it. 

*

**

*** 

****

Travel spells danger. I’ve seen a turbaned Sikh cracked on the nut by an aircraft baggage compartment, the moorings loosened, no doubt, by a lifetime of dodgy landings and equally dodgy budgeting. I’ve helped a Japanese tourist to retrieve his specs; me and him, on all fours, fumbling myopically across the deck of a lurching ferry off the Thailand coast; a situation made more taxing by the surging bile from a too nauseous – and way too near – German hippy. On one occasion I even spat out the sad amalgam of turbulence, air meal fork, and twelve hundred dollars of bridge-work, twenty thousand metres above the Pacific Ocean (Air travel these days is much safer…fears of fork-effected Fetwahs have largely been assuaged, post 9/11, by plastic cutlery…and it’s easier on dentistry than steel!). Yep, travel has afforded me proof that any abrupt renegotiation of the spatial relationship between body and object can result in suffering – but I’ve yet to experience anything like this;

 ‘The only other vehicles on the road were trucks…Along with their regular loads, almost all of them had a miserable human cargo…The driving compartments would be crammed with people begging a ride, but they were the lucky ones. The unlucky ones were forced to risk their lives, clinging to the bare roof of the containers or perching precariously between the back of the cabin and the container…We came across a grizzly scene. A truck was jack-knifed across the road with a trail of blood, gore and body parts smeared across the tarmac in a line leading to its back axle. The truck had been forced to brake suddenly, some of the passengers had fallen off and the rear wheels had gone straight over them.’

 Welcome to travel, Congolese-style, as detailed by Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Butcher in Blood River: a Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart. If you want an adventure to set your teeth on edge, just shy of dislodging them, then this is it. With only a pen-knife and a pack of baby wipes for protection, Butcher stuffs four thousand dollars in his boots and embarks on a journey to retrace Henry Morton Stanley’s 1874 expedition to map the Congo River. What is vicariously revealed through the eyes of the author is a land rent by privation, fear and regression; it’s the year 2000, but the calendar could just as easily be flipped back to a page well before Stanley, or even Livingstone, set foot upon the African continent. This is apparent the instant Butcher alights from his plane onto the tarmac of Lubumbashi Airport,

 ‘From my earlier visits to the Congo, I knew what to expect when the fuselage door finally opened.  At the bottom of a set of stairs, manually wheeled into position, a crowd of people had gathered, all claiming to be an official of some sort and all demanding payment. I watched as the Asian lady I had spotted at Johannesberg airport stepped gingerly into the melee, only to be tossed and spun like a piece of flotsam, blasted by loud demands for payment. The last I saw of her was an unedifying spectacle. She was fighting back tears, bidding for her own luggage that was being auctioned back to her.’

While the barbarity of the events is unsettling, it is the audacity of the scammers that really jars me, which possibly says more about my naïve Western sensibility than it does about their brazenness. Who would have thought that the illicit designs of a bunch of crooks could be so manifest, particularly within the perimeter fence of an international airport? Struth, even in South East Asia you need to wait for your taxi-driver to exit the terminal and say “Meter no working sir” to get ripped off! True horror indeed lies beyond seven nights in Kuta with complimentary transfers and a sanitised dunny seat – it’s there in that sinking feeling you get when, so far from home, that hapless woman is separated from her luggage by artless thugs. And therein lies the strength of Butcher’s prose; it leaves room for the reader to imagine – to empathise with those who share the author’s  journey – while rendering tangible the immediacy of his travel experience. 

 Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart, ‘yomps’ along at a fair clip (‘yomps’ is the term used by Giles Foden, author of The Last King of Scotland, to describe the pace of Butcher’s tale… I can’t think of a more apt description*). One moment you’re riding pillion on a clapped out motorbike with Butcher and some local pisshead (oh, and yes, the pisshead is pissed and he is driving), the next you’re ferreting through the economic and moral decay of a country that, not so long ago, held appeal enough to draw a surfeit of cashed up Westerners. Luminaries like Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad all toured here, even Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn arrived to film ‘The African Queen’. The country even played host to the author’s mother in 1958;

 ‘Mum described her steamboat journey through virgin rainforest and how she would lean over the rail to point at sparring hippos…She remembered how the boat dropped her off…only for her to scramble up the muddy river bank and find, half-hidden by towering elephant grass, a steamboat waiting to take its passengers on the next leg of their journey, with a steward, clad in a peaked cap of rail-company livery, anxious to keep to the timetable’  

 Civilised eh? Well, consider this,

 ‘Her door opened and she welcomed two Italian aid workers…One of them was thin and haggard, and the other fresh-faced and eager…

‘What was it like?’ I asked the older hand

‘The Congo is like nowhere else. After a year here, I cannot wait to leave.’

I thought of the thirteen Italian airmen who died here in Kindu in November 1961…They arrived in two planes at Kindu’s small airport to deliver equipment to the local detachment of Malaysian troops, but for some reason they left the secure confines of the airstrip and headed into town, where they fell into the hands of an angry mob of government soldiers. They were dragged through the streets to the town centre just a short distance from where we were sitting and beaten to death. They were then butchered and eaten.  Body parts were seen for sale days later at local markets.’

 Grim subject matter aside, it is Butcher’s deft touch as a writer that is most striking – nothing is clunky – the Congo’s sordid past, in this instance, invoked by a single, jaded remark from a burnt out aid worker. A segue such as this can often seem ham-fisted in the hands of a lesser writer.

 ‘Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart’ is sure to suit those looking for a rattling good read. It moves at a frantic pace, yet leaves pause enough for a smattering – nay, splattering – of the Congo’s bloody history; from the cruelty of the Belgian colonialists to the evils of Mobutu. Don’t expect an exhaustive appraisal of the ills of the wider African continent and you won’t be disappointed – I wasn’t, flying, again, over the Pacific Ocean, en route to my second honeymoon destination in The Philippines. Though this time nothing tore free from the roof, my fork was reassuringly plastic, and there wasn’t a pissed hippy or Koran-toting Jihadist within Cooee. Everything was ordered; hermetically sealed; calming and - ultimately - as dull as all Hell.

*yomp (Royal Marines slang) A long-distance march carrying full kit 

Hope is timeless; as is futility – a glance back at the bow wave of history says as much…and therein lays the trick.  Do you see it? Twenty odd years ago I didn’t, my gaze more commonly drawn to the stern of a shapely woman rather than to the flow of a fine writer. But I see it now – there – in all its’ carnal beauty – the word, ‘us’. 

In this, the penultimate sentence of The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald divests himself of Nick Carraway, dispassionate chronicler of Gatsby’s fall, in order to personally address ‘us’ – we who lie beyond the reach of his narrative. However, while we may remain free of the strictures of his plot, Fitzgerald’s use of the word ‘us’ serves to bind us timelessly to his vision; to Gatsby’s dream; whereby in the action of casting our gaze forward we can only hope to view, but never reclaim, our past.

 Pretty bleak, eh?

 Well, I’ll give you something worse, the current fixation with the term, ‘moving forward’. 

Has there ever been a more vapid piece of pop-psychological pap to besmirch our idiom? True, there are many, particularly in an age of self-help literature; midday talk shows; and prevaricating pollies (just listen to a media grab of any presently serving Australian Labour Party front-bencher, or click on the Weaselwords website linked to this blog), but I find this one to be particularly insidious. Consider this from Australian Rules footballer, Jason Akermanis;

 “Why do you do it (perform a handstand upon his team winning a game) when your team mates don’t like it?”

 “Well…well…it’s not that they don’t like it…it’s just that it’s not what we are doing moving forward.” (AFL Game Day Channel 7, March 22, 2009)

See how Aker’ ‘sells the dummy’* to the inference that he is lacking in ‘team orientation?’ In fact, not only does he evade interrogation, he recasts himself as spokesperson for the collective spirit of the team! ‘Moving forward’ becomes the instrument by which he circumvents any need to disavow his perceived selfishness – it’s a ‘win-win situation’ for Aker.

 Or is it?

 Akermanis’ fixation upon ‘the green light’ only serves to underscore a proven inability to ‘fess up’ to past indiscretions. Coaches, team mates and business associates alike bemoan the fact that throughout his career Aker’ has opted to side-step responsibility, preferring instead to be one-out from the team. By ever ‘moving forward’ into the future Aker’ – unable or unwilling to confront his past – is in peril of being consumed by it.   

 Still not convinced? Not swayed by the contrivances of an aging footballer nearing retirement? Well, how about this from US Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton;

 “As we move forward, we will work together – along with the international community – to address the humanitarian needs in Gaza.”

Note again how Hillary’s use of ‘moving forward’ is couched in inclusive phraseology – ‘we’; ‘together’; ‘international community’. As representatives of this ‘international community’, how could ‘we’ deny so noble a clarion-call? Well, ‘we’, it seems, isn’t everyone…this, from earlier in the same speech;

 “The first step right now, not waiting for a new government, is a durable ceasefire. But that can only be achieved if Hamas ceases the rocket attacks. No nation should be expected to sit idly by and allow rockets to assault its people and its territories. These attacks must stop and so must the smuggling of weapons into Gaza.”

(‘Remarks with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni’

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/03/119956.htm)

 On a superficial level, Hillary’s argument is convincing enough and, admittedly, it is one which I’m largely ill-equipped to counter, given my scant knowledge of Gaza and middle-eastern politics. But, without wanting to be perceived as an Hamas apologist, I do know that the most recent ceasefire with Israel (some merely call it a ‘lull’ in fighting), brokered by Egypt on June 19 2008, was, in fact, cruelled by the killing of six Hamas fighters by Israeli forces on November 4, 2008. Israeli sources claim that their actions were justified – necessitated by the construction of a cave by Hamas for holding captive Israeli troops. Conversely, Hamas claims that the cave was dug to shore up their defences on a particularly sensitive border of Southern Gaza. Since then, attacks from both sides have led to extensive casualties, of which Palestinians are the disproportionate majority(The Israeli Attacks on Gaza on www.guardian.co.uk). If, then, ‘humanitarian needs’ is ‘Hillary-Speak’ for fewer casualties, might then the interests of peace best be served by appealing for a cessation of hostilities from both sides?** Is Hillary’s ‘we’ broad enough to ever include Hamas in productive peace talks? And is Hillary willing to acknowledge the significance of the past before ‘moving forward’? It seems by proffering only an abridged version of history that Hillary, as mouthpiece of the most powerful nation on Earth, runs the risk of being ‘…borne ceaselessly into the past.’ And in Gaza that usually means more bloodshed.

A bit heavy, eh? 

Well I’ll leave the last word on ‘moving forward’ to 80’s new wave pioneers, DEVO. Interestingly, their title is shorthand for ‘De-evolution’, a notion that the human race is evolving backwards into a more primitive form – that ‘forward-backward thing’ again.  Spookier still, Jerry Casale, co-founder and vocalist of the band, cites ‘Whip it’, their biggest hit, as a parody of the 19^th century writer Horatio Alger and the American Dream (Sound familiar? Any American Literature student worth their salt could tell you that The Great Gatsby is a critique of Alger and said Dream…I can almost hear the ice chinking in Fitzgerald’s whisky glass). Have a close listen to the lyrics – these guys were way ahead of their time, particularly in their choice of headwear, and they were all over this ‘moving forward’ thing…they may even have managed to outrun history.

* ‘Sell the Dummy’ – Aussie football slang for balking your opponent.

** On March 25, 2009, a lengthy report by Human Rights Watch entitled ‘Rain of Fire’ was released. It documents the unlawful use of white phosphorus munitions by Israel over residential areas in Gaza. (http://www.hrw.org/node/81760)   

 I’ve got the cramps. They announced themselves twenty-three years ago and they remain with me to this day; monstering my wife, my neighbours, and my stereo. I recall when they first bonded with my DNA; it was the instant needle kissed vinyl on my copy of The Cramps Gravest Hits EP, all the way back in 1984. That record was warped from the get-go – literally – a dodgy pressing inciting the stylus arm of dad’s ‘3-in-1’ to buck and lurch like some half-cut harlot. Still, no matter (or none, at least, when the old man wasn’t around), that first track, Human Fly, remains, to my mind, proof positive of how compromised surface geometry can, on occasion, serve to accentuate sound etched into vinyl. And, oh, what sound! When I play that song now the fumbling of Poison Ivy’s ‘who-gives-a-pluck’ rhythm guitar, followed by the crunch of the band lurching into life, still sends shudders through my plumbing…all the way down to my pelvic bone.

 The Cramps slid a hand up the skirt of America; an America left dissolving beneath the hiccups of Gene Vincent and the hip-shake of Elvis; a land of B-Grade Sci-Fi Horror, discarded pizza boxes and Detroit steel. If you listen close enough – right there – in that space between the grooves, you can almost taste the lipstick traces on the dashboard, or – if it’s your thing – that damp patch on the upholstery. They throbbed with primal menace – and for a kid growing up on the outer fringe of Melbourne, Australia that menace was a Godsend, sent special delivery, straight from Hell. I loved them to death…still do.

It was then with considerable regret that I learnt of the recent passing of Lux Interior, the band’s enigmatic front-man. Lux provided the connective tissue (albeit a tad gristly) that tethered those seminal American sounds of the 50’s and 60’s – sounds pioneered by the likes of Duane Eddy, Ricky Nelson and Link Wray – to the punk aesthetic of the 70’s. For the less talented, or those averse to paying due respect to what came before, any attempt to fuse such seemingly disparate epochs may have ended in pastiche. Not so with Lux – he dug deep into the rock n’ roll remainder bin; grabbed the gems and the junk, and assembled them into new forms that pulsed and frugged with mutant energy. Listen to the band’s cover of Surfin’ Bird by The Trashmen, the disposable heart of the original is still there, but the drive now comes from Lux’s manic hiccup style – ala Gene Vincent – holding the whole tawdry mess together. Or play Track 2, John Scott’s The Way I Walk; here his vocal swagger hearkens back to a time – well before all that bothersome bra-burning – where a guy just had to tell a chick precisely what he stood for. Once that was out of the way he could then go on to tell her exactly what to do and how to do it (I suspect that Ivy didn’t want for instruction in this area, her work as a dominatrix in New York City would have afforded her plenty of on-the-job training).

 The Cramps were the gluggy muck stuck between the weave of rock n’ roll. Bold, vital, and just plain fun, they were everything that was great about American music. Only ‘a square’ would choose to dismiss them as camp rock n’ roll recidivists, or as just another punk act past their use-by date. And, if you think about it, that was the point anyway – disposability was their virtue: granting permanence to their back-catalogue of mouldy morsels. So vale Lux! You’ll be missed by this middle-aged kid. I’m going to give Gravest Hits another spin – right now – the neighbours are out and there’s still time before the missus gets home – is that a stirring I feel in my loins?