Finished this last night. Was initially worried I wouldn’t get through it before a chat with the author on Thursday but knocked it over in what seemed like only a couple of hours. It’s kinda not what I was expecting from Forster’s debut novel - but then again I’m not sure what I was expecting. On the cover Paul Kelly says it’s “A comic odyssey, a crime thriller and a nuts-and-bolts account of making art.” In descending order it has elements of all of those things. Fundamentally it’s a light’n’breezy caper novel full of often (at least to me) seemingly incredulous events as two songwriters (it’s hard not to think Grant and Robert) travel around the country after an encounter with the law in Queensland (that’s the crime part) and along the way they write and sing a lot of songs (that’s the making art part). There’s also an abundance of song and album references to keep music obsessives more than amused.
Looking forward to seeing Split Enz tonight. This poster put up last night by Jane Barnes reminded me that I was at this festival. I’d travelled over to New Zealand with SE as I was working on a mooted - but never finished - book on the band. I recall sitting in a car with Neil and Tim’s parents during a rain storm and after the Enz played taking some weird speed and walking up the hill overlooking the stage with Tim where we muttered inanities (which no doubt appeared to us as profoundly deep) until day break.
Dr Hook Monday Arvo (DHMA). It was Anthony O’Grady who told me to stop looking down my nose at Dr Hook, to listen beyond the hits and embrace the Hook. As with many other things he was right. This is his box set - signed by Dennis Locorriere (who has just passed away) - which came my way after AOG left us.
Smiling as I read the latest Substack piece from Mikal Gilmore where he writes of a potential sublet of his LA apartment to a New York writer who upon arriving can’t cope with the volume of records - describing the apartment as “an unbearable mess” before leaving.
“Thanks to this dimwit, I came to realize what I’d always wanted to say to these people, even the ones I’d mistakenly loved: When they were among those albums they were in a library full of history, humanity, invention, depth, hope and suffering. They were in the midst of the evidence of much that was the best of us as a people. If they didn’t understand that, they were worthless to me as minds or compatriots. I’m glad I’m rid of them, each and every one.”
The Go-Betweens Monday Morning (TG-BMM). Half way through Robert Forster’s so far totally fabulous novel - which I’m talking to him about on Thursday. It’s dragged me back to the rarities discs on the first box set.
