Weather With You

It was with some shock that I read online about Crowded House drummer Paul Hester's suicide by hanging in a Melbourne Park last March. I had a similar shock reading about INXS frontman Michael Hutchence's suicide several years ago. It's sad when talent leaves the world that way, abruptly.

I've been a Crowdie since "Don't Dream It's Over" hit the US Billboard Charts at No. 2 in 1986. Recently I completed my Crowded House mp3's (both studio and live tracks), and came up with a playlist of my favorite 21 tracks from across four of their albums (Crowded House, Temple of Low Men, Woodface and Together Alone). Their music has been alternately described as pop, folk-rock and blues. I love the energetic and soulful guitar on most of these tracks, and I always find myself unconsciously singing backup to Neil Finn's amazing vocals. Been playing it over and over; if you ask me, it's the kind of music I'd bring with me to a desert island:

1. Don't Dream It's Over
2. Something So Strong
3. Mean To Me
4. I Walk Away
5. Now We're Getting Somewhere
6. Tombstone
7. World Where You Live
8. I Feel Possessed
9. When You Come
10. Into Temptation
11. Distant Sun
12. Private Universe
13. It's Only Natural
14. Fall At Your Feet
15. Whispers & Moans
16. Four Seasons In One Day
17. Fame Is
18. As Sure As I Am
19. How Will You Go
20. She Goes On
21. Weather With You

Naturally, I've also been collecting Neil Finn's solo work ("Try Whistling This" and "One Nil"). I love his voice, the same way I love Paul McCartney's and Paul Young's voices. I'm not the first one to note the Beatles vibe; one reviewer on Amazon.com says, "Neil Finn has a McCartneyesque gift for melody and a Lennonesque gift for lyrics." Imagine, for example, The Beatles' "Blackbird", segueing to Crowded House's "Into Temptation".

Crowded House's strongest album, in my opinion, is "Woodface". My favorite lyrics come from "Mean To Me":

So I talked to you for an hour
In the bar of a small town motel
And you asked me what I was thinking
I was thinking of a padded cell
With a black and white TV
To stop us from getting lonely

Crowded House remains underrated and tagged unfairly (outside of Australia and New Zealand) as an '80s band. I beg to differ; the songs in my playlist always sound fresh and undated, except possibly for "Don't Dream It's Over" (as a result of its relatively heavier airplay, because it's such a classic). They also performed really well live. I believe they could've been managed and promoted better in the US, but then that's moot. They broke up way back in 1996, holding a mammoth farewell concert in Australia, and releasing their greatest hits album "Recurring Dream". Fortunately Neil Finn has gone from strength to strength in his solo career.

My favorite songs? The heartbreaking "Better Be Home Soon", the romantic "She Goes On", the atmospheric "Private Universe" and of course the anthem "Weather With You".

Personal Geographic

Joy that was, the time
When I was blind, and blinded
Times over to all that warning senses
And the known world's boundaries
Had ever taught, that plain sight
Never could, completely.
And so I embarked to diligently map
The rough terrain of your
Uncharted country.

I had fallen and drowned, and was
Wrapped in the winding sheet of
Love which was a kind of death
From all life's tiresome etiquette,
Yet was reborn for a time
To walk in beauty and in music,
In the book for whose pages
We continually hungered.

I can never travel there again,
Where once we walked invisible
Among the real lives of others, though
Time and its easy way of
Erasing the paths of previous explorations
Reluctantly allows me every
Ghost of you.

It is another life to which I have
Awakened. The protocols of duty,
Their continuance, now consume me,
What was left of the fires
Even we could not extinguish.

After taking stock of all
My memory's possessions,
I grant the braille of your lips to be
The most indelible, having read them
Repeatedly, then, with all
My exposed and secret skins.

23 January 1995

Copyright Pomona Caccam. All rights reserved.

And Here My Troubles Began

In the past few weeks I've had the pleasure of reading a series of different graphic novels, from Tristan's personal collection. This included the classic definitive Batman comic "The Dark Knight Returns", "Sin City" (soon to be a motion picture starring Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis and the very dishy Clive Owen), the drama-filled "Watchmen" (about a group of costumed crimefighters contemplating their obsolescence, quite a period piece), and the whimsical yet literary "Moonshadow" (dreamy watercolors and witty, thought-provoking dialogue). I love comics and graphic novels, but I'm not a collector or such a rabid fan that I know all the names of the writers and artists and be able to compare them like fine wines. I simply like what I like, and what stirred my heart was reading Art Spiegelman's "Maus".

The "Maus: A Survivor's Tale" series is made up of two volumes, "My Father Bleeds History" and "And Here My Troubles Began". The latter volume won a special Pulitzer Prize, and with good reason. There's a story within a story: Art Spiegelman struggles to tell the story of how his father Vladek and his mother Anja survived Auschwitz, while coming to terms with his ragged relationship with the obsessive-compulsive Vladek in Rego Park, New York. All the Jews are portrayed as mice, and the Nazis as cats, and other nationalities as other animals. Think of the food chain. The frightening aptness of these representations, in black and white, only heighten the drama of the story. The dialogue is also worth mentioning. I guess I've watched too many tv dramas/comedies portraying cantankerous yet affectionate, aged Jewish fathers, but while reading "Maus" I can distinctly visualize Walter Matthau, talking like Einstein.

Spiegelman's artwork is so honest and raw, you can see where the ink is so agitatedly applied to the page. I found myself strongly affected by two particular scenes: the one where Vladek organizes a belt and shoes for a friend in Auschwitz, and the one where Art and Vladek argue about matches in the Catskills. In these scenes we see Vladek the survivor, and the older Vladek who never quite gets out of survival mode.

Witness the virtuoso play of irritation, stubbornness, impatience, and somehow, affection in the following exchange. In a perverse sort of way, it's funny and painful at the same time:

Vladek: -- ARTIE! WHAT DO YOU DO?!!

Art: Huh? I'm just lighting my cigarette…

Vladek: Better you shouldn't smoke: For YOU it's terrible, and for ME, with my shortness of breath, it's also no good to be NEAR… But if ANYWAY you're smoking, please don't use from me my WOODEN matches. I don't have left so many, and already to make COFFEE you used one. Only to light the OVEN I use them. These wood matches I have to BUY! The paper matches I can have FREE from the lobby of the Pines Hotel.

Art: JEEZ! I'll buy you a whole BOX of wooden matches!

Vladek: It isn't necessary. At home our oven is automatic, and here I'm staying only 15 more days. And I have still 50 matches left. How many matches can I use?…

Art: What a MISER! I can't take any more. I'm going out for air!

Vladek (to Francoise): Always Artie is NERVOUS -- so like his mother -- she also was nervous.

Art (outside on the patio): Bah.

To those looking for a different kind of read, I highly recommend both volumes of "Maus". Reading both volumes is a MUST, otherwise the experience is incomplete. "Maus" is a very human, intimate and yet heroic work that treats the history of tragedy and the triumph of survival in a very different way, becoming powerful literature beyond "plain comics", that bears reading again and again.