For reasons too silly to mention, I found myself embarking on a 2.5 hour round trip to SunnyO yesterday afternoon, to pick up a cat & bring him back to town.
There's nothing at all interesting in this, save I was planning to use the reflection time driving, to dream up some proverbs for NZBC. Sadly, the muse was absent.
Happily though, I had one of those wonderful bogun moments, having stopped briefly at New World Waikanae, having travelled thus far listening to Jim Mora & some boring guests, I was turning left back onto an oddly deserted State Highway One, when Jim, brightly announced "And here is Alice Cooper".
And it must be that I haven't heard No More Mr Nice Guy since the 1970s. Yet I remember every lyric (except the name of the preacher that punches him in the nose).
And I blasted North in my Euro Planet Muncher (TM) bellowing:
I used to be such a sweet, sweet thing.
Till they got ahold of me,
I open doors for little old ladies
I help 'em find a seat.
I got no friends 'cos they read the papers
They can't be seen
With me, and I'm feeling real shot down
And I'm, gettin' mean!
Honestly, Marilyn Manson is a wannabe.
But from the sublime to the ridiculous, just a little earlier, navigating the borderline chaos that is Centennary Highway, Mora was pleasant enough to treat us to Paul McCartney's new single, which (have you been reading Doonesbury recently?) was launched yesterday in every branch of Starbucks in the world. Non stop Macca. In fact, non stop very mediocre single song Macca.
This in itself is unremarkable, I'm sure Sir Paul has churned out many, many songs that are not destined for the greatness of some of his earlier work. The strange thing is that I heard this one.
What IS remarkable though, is that later last night, we chanced upon a biopic of John Lennon on Rialto. We missed the first few minutes so I have absolutely no idea who played the main roles, nor what the film was called. They looked kind of like the Beatles if you squinted. Although whoever played Astrid Kirchher looked JUST like Sheryl Lee, who played Astrid in Backbeat.
Well. Maybe not THAT remarkable. All I'm saying is it was poignant, seeing a dramatisation of the glory days, juxtaposed with a boring ditty released that very day. Wonder what Lennon would be doing if he was still around?
Oh, and the biopic played no actual Beatles music, not even when they got to the bit where they were making their own.
Maybe Michael Jackson would only give them the music rights if they let him play Astrid.
Anyway, after all that, skip the Rialto movie, watch Backbeat.
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