Metal City - Hai Ina Ia Mai Ana Ka Puana

Was I cool before anyone even knew what cool was - or have I simply always been a sad, tragic figure?

WARNING: This is not an 'article', as such. I noticed something weird and something amusing tonight, and felt like writing about it. I promised myself that this wouldn't turn into those 'I had a glass of water today, isn't that fascinating?'-type pages, but I can't resist the opportunity to share this with whoever is listening. Regularly scheduled observations strangely revolving around music and film will resume tomorrow.

I came home from Puppy's place tonight, and found my mother in fits of riotous laughter. She was perched upon the couch in our back room, surrounded by wallets of photos, and was going through them, snorting and sputtering with unhinged comic fury at the sight of her dyed-blonde mullet, giant earrings, and tragically eighties clothes. Not being one to avoid a bit of 'Hah! You suck!', I sat down and began going through the photos with her, guffawing mightily at the ridiculous eighties clothes, the horrible hairstyles, and - in my father's case - the mere existance of hair. One thing we noticed, going through the pictures, was that since I was a young child - I am a complete and total moron.

Hey. Wait a second. That's not what I meant - leave my ego out of this.

In almost EVERY photo taken of me from the ages of one to fifteen, when I started avoiding cameras all together, I am doing something inane.

"There's a nice sheep standing in the field, David - go stand next to it and I'll take a photo."

What's my immediate response?

I pull some hideous face. I scrunch my eyes up, tilt my head back, and open my jaw as wide as it will go. Or maybe I'll make kissing faces at it. Or perhaps, I'll simply pose with one hand on my hip, and the other pointing at the heavens, as though I have just conquered the mighty beast through sheer force of my awesome physical strength.

I was a knucklehead - a genuine, one hundred percent freak of nature. And the best part about it is that I didn't need to put on eyeliner and start listening to Ministry to do it. THAT came much later.

A mutant child, yes - forged in some primordial place where the fundamental laws of human behaviour simply do not apply. If there was a camera around, my body would suddenly become jelly-like as I twisted and contorted myself into odd shapes, kicking my legs in the air and baring my teeth - which, by eight had grown to quite an imposing length in the incisor region.

The creepiest thing is that as I went through the photos and traced my wretched physical development from the glittering, porcelain perfection of the first few years, through to the slow disfigurement, and eventual development of an abberant structuring of my body, which seemed to cruelly mock the standard conventions of the physical form, I realised that I slowly turned into my grandfather - my grandfather at age 70. Very disturbing.

Yes, my spine began to slowly liberate itself from the established protocol of the upright, my cruel inability to play sports rendered me incapable of becoming the buff, diamond-cut machine that was to be my destiny - and I became dorky. So dorky that Anthony Michael Hall himself, even at the height of his Sixteen Candles dorkiness, would stare at, guffaw awkwardly, and prounce: "That is a DORK."

But not in the way you're thinking. A young turd like you probably thinks that I'm talking about double chins, pens clipped to the pockets of tartan shirts which are tucked into the far-too-high corduroy slacks. You couldn't be further from the truth. My mother paraded me in the choicest of garish 80's fashions - from the humble joys of the Hypercolour t-shirt, to the sleek cool of Fido Dido. My bubblegummers, complete with the logo from the first Batman movie, were wrapped comfortably around my young foot - as I snacked on a Bubble O'Bill, read 2000AD, and went home to watch Voltron.

No, I was dorky in a far cooler way. And, thanks to foresight on the part of my mother, I have photographic evidence which I'm going to share with you. So, I turn 8, and suddenly decide that The Beatles are The Greatest Thing Ever - in addition to being The Creepiest Thing Ever, leading to my first bout of overpriced psychotherapy, which is definately a story for another time. If ever.

I'm inundated with books on The Beatles, and copies of their albums, and tapes of their movies. The most excited I can ever remember being was walking into the Doncaster K-Mart at age 11, and finding a copy of 'Magical Mystery Tour', their horribly pretentious home movie (with a great soundtrack), and whining to my mother to buy it for me. She did, because as she stared into the sea-blue swirl of my young, wide eyes - and saw the thick, bowed lips which protruded from my face shivering and trembling - almost imperceptibly - in anticipation, she knew that there was simply no other alternative. Could she truly deny her son of his access to art? To some of the finest music of the modern era? To one of the most pretentious pieces of drivel ever to not be a 1990's David Lynch film?

Of course she couldn't. But all of this is beside the point. The point is that after spending a while obsessing over The Beatles, and pondering an alternative future in which John Lennon isn't assassinated, and records one last superlative album of brutal, confessional songwriting, I needed a new set of symphonic, overproduced pop music to chew on. Clearly, the music of the day wasn't going to fit the bill - The Proclaimers? Milli Vanilli? Bananarama? Fuck that shit. Even at 11, I could smell bullshit.

So, when you want to listen to The Beatles, but you're sick of listening to The Beatles - who do you listen to? That's right. The Electric Light Orchestra.

I imagine some of you turkeys are snickering down your sleeves right now, conjuring up images of aviator goggles, wide lapels, and bombasic prog-for-imbeciles music which has polluted the airwaves for nearly three decades. This is because you are ignorant scum - I shall now school you.

See - we SHOULDN'T pick on E.L.O. They wrote some of the finest pop music you'll ever hear. How can you not groove along with Sweet Talkin' Woman whenever you hear it in Safeway? You don't like Livin' Thing? What's the matter with you? You think Can't Get It Out Of My Head is sub-Pink Floyd wankery? Shows how much you know about how much of a bastard Roger Waters is.

I loved E.L.O. Of course, being a young, broke punk - I had no money to go otu and buy their albums. So, I did what all good suburban children did - I nicked it. Now, I'm man enough to admit that I broke one of the ten commandments of life as a young, urban intellectual - "Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Parent's Records" - but when my mother whipped out her copy of 'The Best Of E.L.O", I just couldn't stop playing the damned thing. Those gooey, marshmallow harmonies, creamy slide guitar solos, and completely meaningless lyrics had me entranced. Sure, they weren't The Beatles - but they were as good as I was going to get. And, as the future would have it, they BECAME The Beatles, so I was pretty much on the money.

I'm going somewhere with this. Just hang in there.

So, I'm going through these photos, and tracing my slow development from a fresh faced, porcelain skinned cherub into a buck-toothed mutant who listens to 70's rock - and I stumbled upon a photo which both disturbed and amused me.

Will you fucking look at that? It's a birthday cake from my 12th birthday - and it has the bloody E.L.O logo on it. I really don't know what to say about this - but I'm going to try and figure out exactly what is going on here, because when I asked Mum about it, she basically pointed at me and screamed with laughter for ten minutes - then went outside to meditate.

I think I am responsible for this desecration of a traditional birthday gesture - I must have got it into my head to warp the idea of the birthday cake by injecting it with the nefarious cancer of my ceaceless dorkiness, recording the whole decadent display with a camera so that future generations - such as yourselves - may react with a mixture of stunned fear and horrified revulsion. An E.L.O cake. Holy shit.

The other explanation that I can offer is that I was cool. I was so cool, and so confident that my love of good 70's power-pop was so right and pure that I decided to express it through the medium of icing. I decided that I'd make a COMMITMENT to the cause of preserving the legacy of Mr. Jeff Lynne - and afterwards, I would EAT that commitment. Probably with a mug of warm milk, after tea, while watching 'Hey, Dad!'.

Both of these are probably correct. If anyone has any thoughts on the issue, email me at the usual address.

Posted by David at February 19, 2004 12:25 AM | TrackBack