and this has messed up my coffee machine. Yesterday I made a perfect latte with just the right amount of foam, and today it was back to Melbourne style flat white, which I don’t really like. These are the things that annoy me now. Since I’m not talking about politics any more there is a whole world of things I can discuss without focusing on the narrow world of so-called news.
Yesterday I finished editing the Armchairs tape, but then after I watched it I decided that there were parts that I didn’t care for. These won’t affect the overall enjoyment of the experience, they’re just bits of banter that are better left out. It’s basically the band saying stupid things, which if we were all five years old, nobody would care about, but we weren’t, and I do.
Having said that I am confident that it will be posted on Friday, so everyone can look forward to it. What is interesting is that I am playing a stylophone and it may be the only recorded instance where in my case, this has happened. I bought the thing sometime in the late seventies. I don’t even know where I got it. It must have been a music shop because we didn’t have ebay back then.
There’s one on Ebay for $20. Most of them are $50 and up.
I don’t think I want one now even at that price. I loaned mine to Chris, the guitar player in Go Wild in French and I never got it back. Neither a borrower or a lender be…The stylophone was invented in 1967 by Brian Jarvis, and promoted by Rolf Harris, an annoying fellow from Perth, WA, who had a very long and prolific career as an entertainer. That finished suddenly and brutally when he was convicted in England in 2014 of the sexual assault of four underage girls. It was all over for Rolf because it effectively ended his career.
Rolf’s talents were writing songs, (usually about Australian subjects) singing them and using a variety of instruments in his performances, notably the didgeridoo and the Stylophone. He is also credited with the invention of the wobble board, which you will see Brian Henderson use at the start of the video below. Rolf appeared on TV a lot in the 70’s and 80’s. His other talent was rapid portrait painting, sometimes using house paint. In 2005, he painted an official portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, although I don’t know if he used house paint or not.
Trust British Monarchs? Sure can!
This journal is turning into Rolf Harris retrospective, so I’ll stop right here. I never met the dude, but Go Wild In French did perform a couple of his songs live and as recorded pieces. The highlight of all that was probably the night at some pub in Richmond somewhere when GWIF were blessed with a visit from Crystal, the dude who used to hold up the head of Dickie Knee on the Hey Hey It’s Saturday Show on Channel 9.
Dickie Knee gives Daryl Somers some stick
Crystal took it upon himself out of the goodness of his own heart and at great risk, to borrow a smoke machine from the Channel 9 props department, and employed it on Go Wild’s performance of Rolf Harris’s “Sun Arise”. It was a sublime moment in the history of Australian show business. Unfortunately cell phones with cameras were not invented by then to record it.
Good Day.
The Stylophone is still being made today, but it looks nothing like it used to.
“Let me First Nations People’s go loose Bruce…”