1989@30

Milli Vanilli try to outstare everyone who found out about them.

The Times
The most consistently enjoyable period of share house living I have ever known. Marie H, Steve J, Catherine Mc. and all the people you brought with you who (with a few exceptions) were among the most fun and intriguing I've met. There were skirmishes and conflicts which are inevitable between people in close quarters who also share the edges of each other's social lives, of course,  but even they added to the richness of the year's character.

I started writing a novel called The Day of the Fete which was about tourist monoliths (like big pineapple or big animal sculptures) and Murphy's Law. Eventually, years later, I gave up on it as I had to admit that my shortcomings as a fiction writer outweighed any ability I had to write fine pastiches. I had got back into reading some weird and wonderful books from the dawn of the novel that challenged the form before it had established itself like Tristram Shandy. Big influences, you might say. Until then, I felt like a novelist which was important in a social scene that demanded you be either a creative viceroy or an informed consumer. I really was trying to write a novel but found out swiftly how much social heft I could have in inner Melbourne by not only making the claim but being able to quote myself. Yes, I know how this sounds (well, I know how it is) but I also know how much fun I had.

Apart from a lot of predawns that were party or club nights ending in front of Rage I took in more from the local live scene (by that I really am talking about a few blocks around where I lived) and let whatever was happening in the wider world o' roque. That said, I saw REM at Festival Hall and Sonic Youth at The Corner. Both bands had released major albums in the months before but I was already growing cold from them but the gigs were great.

It was a splendid time to go op shopping. My thang was '60s tuxedos with satin shawl collars and a satin stripe on the trousers. I'd wear that during the day. No ties but the shirt buttoned to the top. I plonked that look until I turned 30 and had to ditch almost everything I was and start a real career. That was later (and a good thing) but for then it was the veriest of verys. One of those would set you back about $20 but a jacket without trousers would be more like $10 or under. I had about five at any one time between 1987 and 1992 so they never went threadbare. That said, I don't have them now so out they went at some point. Anyway, music.

This was a time I returned to listening to a lot of classical music. I had brought tea chests full of vinyl records from Brisbane and a lot of them were music from before the twentieth century. When a friend returned my copy of Mozart's Requiem it was a hit with the entire house. What could the realm of rock  music provide to outdo any of that? Have a look.

Floating Into the Night - Julie Cruise

I remember getting ready to go out with at least one housemate and walking past the radio and having to stop because something strange yet familiar was coming out of the speakers. I stopped for a second. So did Steve and we exchanged a look. It was the ethereal song from Blue Velvet with the big string section and angel vocal. Really? Someone released that? I didn't even think of the Blue Velvet soundtrack because the next track was from the same album and was to be a part of the weird tv series about which at that time we only had rumours: Twin Peaks. Falling was a revelation, adding a great big girder of a baritone guitar. I was at peak Lynch, then, having been a fan from the first I'd seen (Elephant Man and then Eraserhead) and this music felt like one of his movies. The series lived up to the music (well, most of it). This meant more to me than any more conventional music release from that year.

The Burning World - Swans

Swans went from the tough but eerie Children of God to this strangely light outing. The mood was there in things like I Remember Who You Are and the mighty God Damn the Sun but it was swathed in strings and a half-arsed attempt at world music by Bill Laswell who was sledged for his efforts by the band themselves. Oddly, the easiest listening Swans record turned out to be the hardest one to put on. The separate single, a cover of Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart was very pleasing and I still listen to it.







Lick - The Lemonheads

Heard it. Forgot it.














Disintegration - The Cure

Endless instrumental intros and songs that sounded like beefed up outtakes from 1981. I had given up on this band years before and was never able to reconnect.
















Doolittle - The Pixies

To me this sounded like '60s bubblegum grown up to older teen bubblegum. But in a good way. I was slowly beginning to accept that rock was stagnant and that only the quality of this or that reiteration of it would distinguish one act from another. The Pixies did have that Goldilocks blend, though, at least for this one album.












Technique - New Order

I dug New Order up to about True Faith in 1987. After that I lost contact with what they were doing and let the pass by. I've tried this one a few times but can't get into it.
















Bleach - Nirvana

I heard this after they were famous, much later. If I'd heard it at the time I would have passed.

















The Stone Roses

I went to a party that played the single from this, Fools Gold, on a loop for hours while everyone got into some spiked punch. Sounded and felt exactly the same as hearing it straight. Works for me.











Ok, so not a big year for albums from my perspective. How bout them ol' 45s?

Hits 'n' Memories!

Roxette in 1989 staring until everyone
forgets it's not 1981 anymore

Roxette had the look but I couldn't. The already featherlight Bangles sang a stadium ballad about an eternal flame and sounded like the blockbuster hits of a decade to come, prematurely ageing the young band. The Proclaimers yelled about going five hundred miles and then five hundred more, from one football hooligan party to the next. Fine Young Cannibals revealed themselves to be the MOR popsters they'd begun being but had belied with a good debut single. Simply Red hit with a plea about not knowing me by now but I sighed, knowing I never would. A Stepford Wives version of the Beach Boys sang about Kokomo and sounded like old men in Hawaiian shirts coming on to young women in sprayons, with big hair.  Jive Bunny again proved that the UK could still churn out novelty singles that embarrass anyone except lonely psychos who thought it was funny. Milli Vanilli were exposed as models miming to other people's voices. Why was that a scandal? Billy Joel claimed his generation was not the one that started the fire. (He went straight there!) Who said they were? Smelt and dealt, indeed. Madonna thought that someone or something was like a little prayer but I remained an unbeliever. Tone Loc rapped about the Wild Thing and then a glass of Funky Cold Medina. Cher wanted to turn back time (who didn't?) Phil Collins got up for Another Day in Paradise, all the wrong people listened and it was a hit. Transvision Vamp didn't care and nor did I. Roy Orbison at least sounded like himself and pleased with You Got It. Neneh Cherry sang about a Man Child and it was actually moving. And R-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-aaaaaaige! played on unto dawn with countless vows among its viewers to quit if the next song was bad. But all of the songs were bad and the sun rose upon the irascible timewaster like the light of violent redemption.

Come on, 1990s
Ok, it was really back to classical for me. Rock music felt less and less current. The emerging electronica held more promise but at the hoary old age o' 27 I felt it was for the "younger generation".  Then again, most of that stuff that I did hear was at clubs and parties. Rock's effective death meant I could resign from it and acknowledge what I liked rather than follow bands (until trip hop but that's later).

So the '80s were over. I went to a New Year's Eve wake which was fun until an old flame turned up and we went on an adventure which eventually led nowhere, as it had to. That's the thing, though, the turn of the decade felt so humdrum. There were things changing (pop music was getting electronic again but we'd soon see the return of the flannel and fuzz pedal soon enough and race back to the '60s again) but now, with me approaching thirty, I was slowly admitting that this was not my culture to determine anymore and I had to find a place within it or get out altogether. If all the kids were wearing flares and sniggering at my dyed hair I knew which way I'd step.

But other things were ending at different paces. The approach of thirty nagged me. I was on the dole but stringing the year through a series of casual jobs which started to feel like deckchair arrangment on the Titantic. I persisted with the novel I was writing but understood that at some point I might well have to admit it and leave it behind: I had all the time in the world for years and it still hadn't been properly started. This was still before the loosely bound gang that was mine started coupling up and moving into more affordable areas. Then again, I woke on Jan 1 1990 lusciously exhausted from what I took as a rekindled flame who lay next to me, I could still go to the Perseverance or the Rose and guarantee I'd know someone I'd want to see, I could still claim to be an aspiring great Australian novelist and I was even getting back into the idea of writing and playing music again. Sod it, I thought, roll on cruise control, I'm in. Fuck the future!

Me in 1989 trying to outstare everyone
who found out about me