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Friday, August 12, 2005
LOGIC WAYS
FLAT TRAP
Screenings
Phobia of Sharks
2005
[Buy it]
Today, a couple of surpassing tracks from Melbourne band Screenings' debut CD, "Phobia of Sharks". The 4 members of Screenings play under artsy alter-egos, but their sound is a refreshingly unpretentious one. Singer/songwriter 'Esteban Castranza' has a self-professed mancrush on Lou Reed. And there are certainly hints of a Velvets' influence in the wandering, lo-fi jam 'The Double Weave'. You know that sound Lou had like he'd been writing songs all his life but only just picked up the electric guitar for the first time last Tuesday? I also hear some Feelies at work, tho they made a career of sounding like Lou Reed. And to my ear, songs like 'Flat Trap' and 'Trouble Comes in Waves' owe a debt more to the modern rock sound of the late 80s, esp. that Athens, GA stuff: early REM (when they started getting a little country), and Guadalcanal Diary (remember them?).
But though it may break Esteban's heart to hear it, there is something elementally Australian about Screenings' sound. Colin Hay, Paul Kelly, Go Betweens. They all have it. Hard to put your finger on exactly what it is; it's definite, yet -- as a prosy shit might describe the outback -- imponderable. It's probably the accent.
The coolest thing about Screenings is that my friend Ed is the bass player. Most people are uncomfortable when it comes to assessing the work of people they know. They really want to like it, but what if they don't? I don't have this problem. I tend to love all things my friends produce. Not because I am forgiving or predisposed, but because my friends are just way more talented than your friends.
Ed is the only friend I have who wears a wig to his day job.
But this is the least extraordinary thing about my friend Ed. If Yahoo Serious is Australia's Woody Allen, which - I'm sorry Australia, he is - then Edward Heerey is Australia's Zelig. Or maybe it's Forrest Gump. In anycase, Ed - and his grandparents and cousins and friends, and friends of friends - rise up on Australia's cultural landscape with an uncanny regularity. Look back on any person or event of significance, and someone connected in someway to Ed is there, standing off to the side. They are like the nation's footnotes. Here are a few quick examples, in no real order of significance. And there are many many more just like this.
Ed's grandfather was Sir Edward 'Weary' Dunlop, the beloved Australian WWII vet, 'The Surgeon of the Railway.' It was Sir Edward who taught Ed how to handle himself on the rugby field. And when a young Ed would tear his trousers in the playground, Sir Edward would sew them right back up and send him out the door, back to his mates. Sometimes he would use a patch. Even though his hands were old, the stitching was always flawless and disciplined, almost like sutures.
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Ed's wife Melinda was the first person ever to dunk in a Japanese Pro women's basketball game. (Because the match was a 'friendly' and not part of sanctioned contest, however, is was never officially recognized by the WJBL.)
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In 1967, Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt drowned while swimming off Portsea during a morning dip. His body was never found. He just waded into the surf, and never came out. With typical subtlety, the Australian government elected to honor their former leader by constructing a memorial swimming pool in his honor: 'The Harold Holt Swim Centre' in Stonnington Victoria. It was at this very same pool that 6 year old Ed Heerey got in over his head and swallowed so much water that his heart actually stopped beating for 10 seconds, until lifeguards were able to resuscitate him right there on the deck.
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In college Ed and a couple of art school pals created a small sensation with a crude art installation. To protest what they called the "folksy irrelevance of Australian poetry" they collected a copy of every book of Australian verse that contained either of the words "bitumen" or "jacaranda" and buried them in shallow graves under the lawn by the Old Arts building. It was a convincing demonstration; the graves stretched out forever, like the killing fields. Word spread quickly, eventually reaching the country's preeminent poet, Les Murray. The editors of the Sydney Morning Herald invited Murray to react to the protest on the pages of their editorial section. He responded with a single postcard with just 2 words scrawled on the back. "Bloody Dickheads."
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You know that movie 'The Falcon and The Snowman'? With Sean Penn and Timothy Hutton? It was partially about the CIA staging to overthrow Australia's left-leaning Whitlam Government. Pretty much a true story. Well Ed has nothing to do with that, but he was called 'The Snowman' in high school because he would sweat so heavily it looked like he was melting.
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During the Apollo Mission that put Neil Armstrong on the moon, an obscure tracking station in Parkes, New South Wales provided vital information to NASA as the capsule orbited out of range of American telescopes. Ed's father was a passionate amateur astronomer at the time, and drove some 12 hours up to the Parkes Observatory to witness the historic event. As night fell, the spacecraft was visible to the naked eye, as it arced over head. But standing there alone in the bush, staring into the heavens, Mr Heerey did not feel the triumph he had expected. In fact he felt crushed. He realized that one more star in the sky of life's ungraspable mysteries had been extinguished forever. He decided that Science was a place without mercy, and he turned his back on it forever. He climbed back into his car, and drove home to start a family. Ed was born a year later.
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Ed has some old relative, a great Aunt or something, who has a rustic shack out by the beach that has been in the family for generations. In the nearby woods, where Ed would play as a kid, there is an old firepit, that is scattered with a half-dozen cracked iron cooking plates. The family used to call them "Ned Kelly's bones". Everyone thought it was a sweet name. Then about 15 years ago, some historical society contacts the family. Turns out one of the plates may in fact have come from one of Kelly's early suits of armor after all. That the name had deeper, more profound roots than then they had ever suspected. When they approached the great old aunt about removing the plates to examine them, she steadfastly refused. The family pleaded with her, explaining that this maybe something of great importance to Australian culture, but she insisted that Ned Kelly wouldn't have wanted to be in some museum, lying in State. He hated the State. He'd have wanted to be scattered in the bush. Plus, she said, she didn't want to "break up the set".
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And finally,
Ed's Uncle Dennis used to work as a security guard in the Australian Institute of Anatomy Collection in the National Museum of Australia. The Anatomy Collection has one claim to fame. On display there is the actual heart of Phar Lap, Australia's most beloved race horse. When he would work the late round, Ed's uncle would be alone in a room that was dark, save for a single spotlight upon the enormous heart, floating silently in its yellowing tank. It is one of the country's most attended exhibits. But Australian's don't always fancy their icons suspended in yellow fluid. When Andres Serrano's controversial artwork "Piss Christ" toured Victoria in 1997, it was the subject of repeated acts of vandalism. In one orchestrated attack "it was reported one teenager acted as a decoy, kicking a print on the opposite wall which distracted the guards who rushed to subdue him while the other smashed Piss Christ about 8 times with a hammer. When the guards overpowered the perpetrator the hammer fell and struck a security guard on the knee."
That security guard: Uncle Dennis.
posted by James
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