TONGUES ON FIRE! -
The Journals Of D.Zarakov, continued.

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MONDAY 14th (?) November 2000 - finally got around to playing some music with Sean [O'Reilly] & Roddy like we have been saying we would for a long time. We were trying to record stuff but nobody had any microphones that worked so we couldn't. Still it was pretty good.

THURSDAY 17th(?) Nov - 2nd shot at doing Roddy's "recording session", as planned at the last attempt at same...Once again,didn't happen - in fact this time we had not even gotten as far as bringing any kind of tape deck. If Clint Simonson is reading this - yeah well, I hope you aren't. We did some OK stuff but overall I guess it was pretty half-assed - we smoked too much pot. Roddy kept lapsing into cliched boogaloo moves - "this one's our tribute to Foghat!" (the singer from Foghat died earlier this year so I guess it was high time for some tribute boogie from someone who cared...) - yeah well that's how it seemed to me , I dunno tho', maybe it was my fault. Like I said, we smoked too much pot.
Yeah so we played until inspiration was a tiny receding dot on the desert horizon, & then we played some more ,& then we stopped...at various points in there we almost certainly played some kind of cool stuff tho but we will NEVER KNOW) (on account of it did not get taped)...A possible highlight of the set - a song where I took a bongo solo, it was hot poop.Yeah well I thought so, but, uh yeah, we will NEVER KNOW.
{STAY TUNED to ROCK CITY ROCKER for further exclusive reviews of the musical endeavours of a bunch of losers who can't get their shit together!)}

SATURDAY 9th DECEMBER 2000 A.D. - so we bought a 1975 Volvo station wagon & moved to Dunedin. "It's All Right Here." (actual slogan of the city of Dunedin). This town is supposed to have a really "happening" "scene". Actually right now there is just about nobody around 'cause all the students have gone away for the summer, it's quite good. In fact you could say,"It's All Right Here." [Tho' when I say "here", actually I'm not even there today (I'm in Timaru) (but we're going back down there today).]

FRIDAY 19TH JAN - Hi, I'm back.
Not that I've been anywhere. I'm in Dunedin watching TV & smoking pot.
I note with great excitement that they've (= the BBC I think) made a TV series out of one of my favourite rock books, Pete Frame's "Rock Family Trees" - narrated by John Peel (pretty obvious choice of the guy to do this, but a good one).1st episode (last night at 7:30 on 3) was based on the "California Dreaming" chapter (I guess you'd call them chapters,even tho they're usually only 1 page) - made me wanna listen to more of the Blues Project (the orig. "Jewish Beatles").

SATURDAY 3rd FEB. '01 - Since my last journal entry I have been mostly smoking pot & watching TV. Including 2 more episodes of the ultimate Mojo old geezer rock programme, "Rock Family Trees" - it's really not very dynamic television, with lots of sort of fragments of not very lucid rambling from guys who were in bands when bands had names like Stud or Refugee or Stone The Crows (you know, the early '90s),lots of too-long-held shots of pages from Mr Frame's great book ("no sensible criticism of such a work is possible" - NME) & contemporary fetish objects - it's Beard Rock TV - but of course I'm still going to watch it. The last one was an unpleasantly swift history of Deep Purple,racing professionally through lineups for 30-something years.

Since I got into this smoking pot & watching TV thing I haven't been reading much. The last 2 bks I read were "Pure Drivel" by Steve Martin & "The Lonely Planet Boy" by Barney Hoskyns (he was a NME writer of the early '80s, who I thought was very good - he quoted from philosophers a lot, which was fashionable, but was very Pro-Rock (Meat Puppets, Angry Samoans, Panther Burns,etc), which wasn't. More on him soon because he writ a bk on The Band ["Across The Great Divide"] which I read as part of my Beard Rock research.)(The Barney Hoskyns novel,"Lonely Planet Boy", by the way, was terrible, don't read it. Read the Steve Martin bk tho'.)
The last like actual literature I read I guess was Houellebecq's (I just learned how to pronounce that) "Atomised". Everyone's read that,right?

MONDAY, 26 Feb. - Why is just about everybody's weblog more interesting than mine? 'Cause everybody else's life is more interesting than mine.
It's 'cause I stopped taking drugs.
Today's exciting excitement - we went for a swim at the Moana Pool and had to vacate the kids' pool (where you hang out if you don't wanna swim lengths, or get in the way of people swimming lengths) 'cause some kid had pooped in the pool. It took 2 pool attendants about half an hour wading round with all kinds of poop-collecting apparatus before we were allowed to leap back into the befouled water. I don't know where the actual pooping took place (didn't see it) but I suspect it was in the , whaddaya call it, the circular stream-thing...that'd be a pretty good place to poop I guess. I wonder how many laps round the thing it would make before anyone noticed.
Yeah this town's all full of students again by now...fuckin stupid young people everywhere...we didn't appreciate having the place to ourselves when we did, that's for sure...they keep us awake with their drunken rowdiness, they poop in our swimming pool...we're gonna have to give up our illegal use of the University Library computers because the fuckin' rightful occupants are in the fuckin' way all the time...why don't they fuck off, fuckin' grippers. Yeah, you too.

THURS. 29th FEB. 2001 - Man, isn't "Grosse Point" a great show? and you know what, I just did a Google search to look for fan sites for it & could not find a single one, doesn't anyone else like it or something? What else is good on TV at the moment - how 'bout "Da Ali G. Show", that's pretty funny. I thought it would wipe out the werd-up-white-gangsta look from the streets of our cities, but the little buggers are still walking round out there...impervious to parody I guess...How 'bout that interview question (to a guy in a gun shop) "So, has anyone ever been killed by guns?" Wick-ID!

THURS. 15th MARCH '01 - Check it out - Rock Action! About time too (only played 1 show in front of people since I came back from the USA, however long ago that was...September or something...)but we got (in a couple weeks...22nd this month, at Fuel cafe in Dunedin, if yr in this part of the world) a show with Gavin Shaw's new PLC band (him on gtr/vocal, me on drums, this guy Chris on organ, this other guy Dave probably on bass but he hasn't been turning up to practices so I dunno, Matt Middleton on additional gtr & whatever else) & Matt Midddleton's new Aesthetics lineup (1st & 3rd times ever respectively in front of live people)...Will we rock you? Oh, I guess!

Also to look forward to on the same day, at 6:00 on Prime - this special rock crit episode of "Doctor Who" - The Talons Of Weng-Chiang (part 3) - "The Doctor battles 51st-century war criminal Marcus Greel, whose followers regard him as the incarnation of the ancient Chinese god Weng-Chiang."(The Listener).

I just went to the practice room before, I was just going there 'cause I was feeling kind of tense & panicky & I thought probably nobody'd be there & I could hang out there & play records, but I got there & Gavin & Chris & Matt were there...I was talking to Matt & he was kind of drunk & he was saying he was thinking about more tattoos to get, I went, More?(didn't know he already had some.) & he showed me (1) a circular logo of the letters CE on his stomach & (2) a sort of Menorah thing on the back of his neck...I asked what the CE symbol was & he said it's this symbol that's on lots of electronic equipment. Meaning what? I asked...He said he'd gone into an electronics place & asked, & the guy told him it was a stamp of approval or something that the Canadian authorities put on stuff. He went & found that out after he got the tattoo?

Yeah anyway, so is "Grosse Point" the only good thing on TV right now or what, did I already ask you that?

Yeah & also, does anyone wanna buy a 1975 Volvo station wagon? Suitable for parts, stupid drunken hoon activities (attn: all you students!), parking on your front lawn for the kids to play with, movie extra work - $250 O.N.O. ?

FRIDAY 16th March - I just wanna say, y'know when I related that anecdote about Matthew Middleton & his tattoos, if it sounded like I was ridiculing him, I certainly was not. I've always admired people who make bizarre seemingly random decisions.
So have you seen "Almost Famous" yet? I haven't...people tell me I oughta check it out because (a character based on) Lester Bangs is in it. I think I can wait 'til it's on TV. And if yr. too young to know the diff. betw. Cameron Crowe & someone actually hip or cool, here you go - Richard Meltzer lays it on the stick.

FRIDAY 23rd MARCH '01 - I gotta say that show last night wasn't all that hot...I gotta also say I don't think it was my fault. It went on too fucking long, that's one thing that everyone seems to be in agreement about.

FRIDAY 6th APRIL ’01 - OK, I admit there hasn’t been too much going on round here lately, but check it out, we’re lookin’ to get busy on this thing now. ’Cause why? ’Cause 2 things, #1 = that I got access to a computer at home now (inasmuch as I have a home [& that’s scheduled to change pretty soon too]) - no internet access here yet (’cause no phone) but that’s cool, it means that now when I get on a computer I’m gonna mack down on some actual writing ’stead of ridin’ the wild surf; & #2 = I just got a scanner, so we’ll have some graphical content for you soon. NEW FEATURES SOON - 1st new thing we’re gonna start will be the obscure band series, where I run down the hoodoo on all the great NZ bands you never heard of even if you already read "Stranded In Paradise" & "Social End Product" & "Mysterex" & "Have You Checked The Children" & Dan Vallor's website & the Chris Knox interview in Forced Exposure... Starting with the And Band family tree ’cause they (A.B. & Perfect Strangers) were the 1st bands I saw that made me go "I wanna be in a band like that.", & then probably continuing with the bands I’ve been in myself. ’Cause someone’s gotta get that stuff down before everyone that remembers it is all dead or insane. (Serious - a few of ’em already are).
Anyway so it’s pretty cool down here right now ’cause my sister is in town for a few wks to do some art stuff & I figure we’ll be able to put together some lineup of Space Dust & do some of that stuff. Maybe a new album, seeing as so many people bought the 1st 3. Hold your breath by all means.
So tonight me & Maryann & Violet went round to Jane Quail’s place & watched Herschell Gordon Lewis' "Gruesome Twosome" - boy, great movie. I don’t know why I like movies made back then so much more than modern ones but I think it’s something to do with finding the sophistication of modern stuff really fraudulent - with modern movies they kind of seem to try real hard to tell you that you’re not watching a movie, you're watching actual reality - so the supposed "sophisticated" movies treat you more like you’re a dumm-ass than ones where it’s real obvious that you're meant to suspend disbelief to some extent. I'm sorry if I’m not expressing this very well. Anyway, maybe I could manage a review of that movie - it's true our reviews section has been proceeding at a fairly glacial rate. We had big plans. Yeah well we still sorta do. We'll see!

SATURDAY 7th APR. '01 - Today we went flat hunting with Jane & Richard. The kind of stuff that I really hate having to do - anything where you have to go out there & deal with people, I put it off as long as poss. - but on this occasion it did feel pretty good to be doing this stuff. I think living with these people will be good. Reintegrating myself into the community, or at least a community, at a manageably microcosmic level. It's what I’m supposedly supposed to be doing, I think. Anyway just having a proper place to live will be a step back towards, whaddaya call it, civilization (& 2/3 yrs of couch surfing* dope-addict scumlife pass like a dream) (I hope).
Yeah & check out this uncanny coincidence, I’d just been writing that thing about the And Band over the last couple days & then one of the houses (the best one, hope we get it) we went to & met the owner of it, & it was Susan Ellis from the And Band. But I didn't say "hey I know who you are & I’m trying to write a article about your old band" or whatever, it would've seemed weird. That’s what I thought anyway but maybe that was dumm, I mean what would John Baker've done in an analogous situation.

(* - actually very little time spent on literal couches, but you know what I mean.)

SUNDAY 8th APRIL '01 (probably.[I lost sense of chronology for a while somewhere round here]) - This afternoon me & Violet & Maryann took a drive out to Pt. Chalmers & Aramoana; in Port Chalmers we found a garage sale so we stopped to look for some stuff - Violet's mainly looking for stereo speakers & stuff that she's gonna use in her art show, I'm of course mainly looking for records. & as it happened I did pretty good - you wanna complete list? OK - "One Track Mind" by the Four Fours ( that one's a little bit beat), "Sittin' in the Rain" by the Underdogs (so's that one), "Honey Do" by the Challenge, "Tin Soldier" by the Small Faces, "You Never Give Me Your Money/Carry That Weight" by Orange Bicycle (anyone know who that is? me neither), "Gloria" by the Pleazers, "Set Me Free" by the Kinks, "Great Balls Of Fire" by Jerry Lee Lewis, "Land Of 1,000 Dances" by Wilson Pickett, "Crimson & Clover" by Tommy James & the Shondells, "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man" by Bob Seger, "Morning Dew" by Lulu, "Magic Carpet Ride" by Steppenwolf, "Black Night" by Deep Purple - yeah there's a few "why'dya have to buy another copy of that?" type items there, but I just can't go past those 50-cent singles. & all that NZ stuff, those're some solid scores, beat or no. A couple albums too - "Otis Redding Live In Europe" & "Say Siegel-Schwall" by the Siegel-Schwall Band. Singles are the thing tho'- it was like the death of pop music for me when that format became obsolete. This town's the place for ’em too, I've accumulated a ton of the little buggers since I moved down here.

By the way here's the spellcheck robot's suggested substitutions for the unrecognisable words "Otis Redding" - "Otiose Redoing".

You should go & read Maryann's diary, it's more interesting than mine.

FURTHUR