1968

Nineteen sixty-eight
Listen for sounds that resonate
Everything new is out of date
Coming down fast, I can't wait
You're gonna be late
You're gonna be late

Nineteen sixty-eight
Nowhere on Earth now to escape
Rock 'n' roll planet going ape
Everyone's bent all out of shape
You're gonna be late
Now is it too late?

Nineteen sixty-eight
Now is it too late?
Now is it too late?

Nineteen sixty-nine
Is looming in the mists of time
Nineteen seventy
Is gonna be the death of me

Nineteen sixty-eight
Getting high from the smoke grenades
Anarchists storm the barricades
Paris in flames, all hope fades
But is it too late?
Ain't never too late.

Nineteen sixty-six
We're turning on and turning tricks
Nineteen sixty-five
We're on the strip, getting swingers hip
To the ride of their lives

Nineteen sixty-eight
Motor City 5, Apollo 8
Rock 'n' roll planet going ape
Coming down fast, I can't wait
It's never too late
It's never too late.

(Brad Shepherd/Dave Faulkner, 2009)

1968. Apart from being the best song on the Hoodoo Gurus most recent album (best thing the stellar Shepherd/Faulkner axis have produced since The Right Time) it was also, on paper at least, a pretty fucking year. We've explored previously the thesis that Your Correspondent was deposited on this fair globe just the 30 or so years too promptly, and thus missed out on the greatest eras of music, muscle cars and most importantly of all, South Sydney dominance of the NSWRL. Seems that 1968 was itself, perhaps, the azimuth of all human endeavour. We were mere months away from stepping on the moon. The airwaves were alive with Hendrix, Cream, the MC5, the Who and the Stones. Dougie Walters had just made his debut for Australia - with a century, of course. Holden were winning Bathurst with V8 Monaros which you could crank down the nation's highways at whatever clip you felt safe for the conditions. Souths smashed Manly to win the comp. AIDS, Starbucks and Kyle Sandilands hadn't been invented yet. In short, 1968 was made entirely of fucking awesome. Apart from that whole conscription-for-the-Vietnam-war thing which sounded a bit stink.

And apart from one other thing. This bucket of slop was the best beer in the world.

NZ's Dominion Breweries, these days owned by the Heineken empire, have been making a big retro-promo splash with their 50th anniversary bring-back of the original DB Export brew, which hasn't been available in the Shakies for many summers - largely replaced by the beige, milquetoast DB Export Gold (pretty much a rebranded Export), the drinkable-but-largely-ignored Export Dry and yet another fucking low-carb monstrosity in a world of the fucking things, Export 33. Novel as it must seem today to be in a world where 'dbexport' referred to a beer and not a programming command, DB Export has a mythology to it based around its origins - the response of Dominion Breweries to the 'Black Budget' of 1958, which taxed the living suffering fragmented fuck out of the imported beers which were apparently the NZ working man's preferred tipple. In an exercise in historical revisionism unseen since Johnny Howard tried rewriting the 'black armband' view of Australian history out of school textbooks, DB have painted the introduction of DB Export as some kind of exercise in sticking-it-to-the-man, and Waitemata Brewery owner/head brewer Morton Coutts as some sort of late-50s Robin Hood or Zack de la Rocha figure. When in reality the guy just wanted to make some damn coin, for fuck's sake. Fairly heavily overplayed 90 second TVC here , longer 'doco' version as follows:



It's an entertaining enough watch, but given that New Zealand Breweries (Lion Nathan to you, or Castlemaine Perkins if you live in Quoinslaaaand) have been making exactly the same claims about Steinlager having single-handedly saved NZ from the deprivations of Nordmeyer's Black Budget for most of the last 50 years, you can take DB's claims of historical vindication with the fistful of salt (and hops) they warrant.

So yeah, the punchline to the whole story is that 10 years after DB Export hit the pubs of NZ, it was declared Best Beer In The World. What it won, to be pedantic, was the International Brewing Awards' Championship Challenge Cup for 'Best Beer In The World In Any Class'.

And having sampled a longneck of the recently-released commemorative release of said beer, I can safely say it is profoundly indifferent bilge effluvia, a very testament to the white-bread mediocrity that New Zealand was mired in up until the 1980s, and a beer that would have compelled precisely no bastard whatsoever to abandon their imported Heineken et al in favour thereof, had it not been for Arnie Nordmeyer and his puritanical taxation predilections. DB Export's award winning status stands only to remind us that international brewing awards are handed out with the same discretion and selectivity as the favours of a $2 hooker. And ever more it was the case, but particularly in the late 1960s. 1968: a year of great music, great cars, but SHIT BEER.

Still, DB also own Monteiths, so they're not complete fucking writeoffs. Who's up for a Pilsner?

The Doctor is OUT.

Arguing about music, part two

While we wait for the polar ice caps to melt or for Beeso to make up his mind which of his favourite bleep-bleep-blurp or bogans-rhyming-over-other-peoples-beats albums to put into his best albums evaaarrrr list, thought we should turn our attention to the trigger for this (apparently) - the release of the Definitive List (according to a bunch of grizzled old rock pigs one suspects) of the Top 100 Australian Albums of All Time. Complete with enormous fuck-off coffee table book and 5 CDs, just in time for Christmas. Since that's commercial as fuck, no real surprise this is too. Insert attribution link here. Full list as follows:

The 100 Best Australian albums
1. Midnight Oil – Diesel and Dust
2. AC/DC – Back in Black
3. Crowded House – Woodface
4. Cold Chisel – Circus Animals
5. The Triffids – Born Sandy Devotional
6. Easybeats – The Best Of
7. Paul Kelly and the Coloured Girls – Gossip
8. You Am I – Hi Fi Way
9. Skyhooks – Living in the 70’s
10. Avalanches – Since I Left You
11. INXS – Kick
12. Go-Betweens – 16 Lovers Lane
13. Radio Birdman – Radios Appear
14. Daddy Cool – Daddy Who? Daddy Cool!
15. Richard Clapton – Goodbye Tiger
16. Bee Gees – Best of
17. The Birthday Party – Junkyard
18. Hunters & Collectors – Human Frailty
19. Sarah Blasko – As Day Follows Night
20. The Saints – I’m Stranded
21. Drones – Gala Mill
22. Split Enz – True Colours
23. Midnight Oil – 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1
24. Slim Dusty – The Very Best of
25. Silverchair – Neon Ballroom
26. Nick Cave Bad Seeds – The Boatman’s Call
27. Regurgitator – Unit
28. Hoodoo Gurus – Stoneage Romeos
29. Empire of the Sun – Walking on a Dream
30. Gurrumul – Gurrumul
31. Kasey Chambers – Barricades & Brickwalls
32. Johnny O’Keefe – The Wild One
33. The Church – Starfish
34. The Reels – Quasimodo’s Dream
35. Master’s Apprentices – Master’s Apprentices
36. Savage Garden – Savage Garden
37. Sunnyboys – Sunnyboys
38. Kev Carmody & Various Artists – Cannot Buy My Soul
39. Something For Kate – Echolalia
40. Stephen Cummings – Lovetown
41. The Saints – Prehistoric Sounds
42. Australian Crawl – The Boys Light Up
43. Powderfinger – Odyssey No. 5
44. Mental as Anything – Cats & Dogs
45. Eddy Current Suppression Ring – Rush To Relax
46. Models – Pleasure of Your Company
47. Augie March – Moo, You Bloody Choir
48. The Missing Links – The Missing Links
49. Ed Kuepper – Honey Steel’s Gold
50. AC/DC – Highway to Hell
51. The Sports – Don’t Throw Stones
52. The Seekers – Greatest Hits
53. Cold Chisel – East
54. Underground Lovers – Leaves Me Blind
55. You Am I – Hourly, Daily
56. INXS – The Swing
57. The Living End – The Living End
58. Jimmy Barnes – For the Working Class Man
59. Russell Morris – Wings of an Eagle
60. Hoodoo Gurus – Mars Needs Guitars
61. The Presets – Apocalypso
62. The Dingoes – The Dingoes
63. The Cruel Sea – The Honeymoon is Over
64. The Angels – Face to Face
65. The Hummingbirds – loveBUZZ
66. Paul Kelly – Foggy Highway
67. Chain – Towards the Blues
68. Dragon – O Zambesi
69. Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs – Live at Sunbury
70. The Scientists – Blood Red River
71. Crowded House – Temple of Low Men
72. Died Pretty – Doughboy Hollow
73. Axiom – Fool’s Gold
74. Bob Evans – Suburban Songbook
75. Dirty 3 – Ocean Songs
76. Renee Geyer – Ready to Deal
77. The Church – The Blurred Crusade
78. The Vines – Highly Evolved
79. John Farnham – Whispering Jack
80. The Loved Ones – Magic Box
81. Sleepy Jackson – Lovers
82. Bliss N Eso – Flying Colours
83. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Tender Prey
84. Tex, Don + Charlie – Sad But True
85. Flowers – Icehouse
86. Missy Higgins – The Sound of White
87. Go-Betweens – Before Hollywood
88. Normie Rowe – Ain’t Necessarily So
89. Jet – Get Born
90. Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band – Smoke Dreams
91. Ben Lee – Awake is the New Sleep
92. Rose Tattoo – Rose Tattoo
93. I’m Talking – Bear Witness
94. X – X-Aspirations
95. Beaches – Beaches
96. Baby Animals – Baby Animals
97. Bernard Fanning – Tea & Sympathy
98. Kylie Minogue – Fever
99. Men at Work – Business As Usual
100. Morning of the Earth – Soundtrack

In broad terms, yeah, OK. Most of the cases where this lot have ranked a different album from a particular Australian artist (eg AC/DC or You Am I) higher than I would have I can accept as subjective difference, and have usually discussed in the previous post. And it's rock-and-pop biased because, bluntly, Australian music is, or at least has been across the timescope of this study. Country, dance and hip-hop aren't prevalent, because they haven't been prevalent, on balance, across the last 40-50 years this addresses. Don't really have a problem with that. In specifics, however, this list has serious fucking issues. Even the most mentally redundant arsehat knows you don't put best-ofs in a greatest albums list, because they're as much 'albums' as someone's fucking iTunes playlist is. Our stance on disqualifying live albums etc can be argued one way or another - there's a couple of live albums in here - but compilations are never, ever permissable. Absolute fucking muppets. And there's also some pretty spurious efforts in here from acts which have been out for all of 15 minutes and are clearly Critics Darlings Of The Minute - Eddy Current Suppression Ring? The 45th greatest Australian album of all time? Really?

Actually, the more I look at this, the more an exercise in blanket-based muppeteering this becomes. Neon Ballroom better than Frogstomp? Bob Evans better than anything Jebediah did? Savage Garden being on the list in the first fucking place?

It's just as well music is subjective. Because objectively, this list is clearly the work of a shower of hapless, concept-averse arseclowns.

The Doctor is OUT.

Arguing about music

At the other end of this year we were ranting about the death of the album, and the significance of the studio album as a band's definitive statement of art and intent in time and space at that particular moment of their journey (thanks very much John Mitchell, sorry about that whole getting-stabbed thing). Albums are a time capsule of a band's environment, influences and development which cherry-picking tracks off iTunes is never going to reflect to the same rich depth. And there's plenty of bands who've never managed to get their shit together to lay down that one coherent statement, despite writing great music and in many cases being great live acts - Hunters and Collectors, Black Sabbath, Foo Fighters and the Black Crowes are arguably all examples of bands whose potential never really validated into a great single album you can wave at hipsters as evidence music was never as good as it was long long before they bought their first pair of oversized white-rimmed sunnies.

So to that end the venerable Beeso and I set each other a challenge - list our top 50 studio albums of all time, with the following provisos:
(1) No compilation albums - fairly self-explanatory
(2) No live albums - quite a bit of to-and-fro on this, but in the end a live album has a stand-out advantage vs a studio album in that it's inherently a compilation of sorts (f'rinstance it'd be easy to argue there's three or four Led Zep live collections which are better albums than their best studio effort, simply because of greater depth of material available). In the end we've added an additional top 10 of live albums to follow on from the main list
(3) Only one album per artist - otherwise Beeso would have put Def Leppard's back catalogue 1 through 10, obviously
(4) Only pick from albums you own - not really a hard and fast rule but it's hard to argue an album is in your top 50 if you haven't ever actually shelled out to buy it for yourself.

OK then. My entirely subjective, intentionally argumentative, mostly wrong take on the Top 50 Studio Albums Of All Time starts nnnnnnow...

50. Jet - Shine On (2006)
As mentioned previously (back when we reviewed it as a newbie) this is a more coherent album than The One With All The Hits On It.
49. Filter - Title Of Record (1999)
48. Deja Voodoo - Brown Sabbath (2004)
You won't have heard of this, but it's possibly the first and greatest ever 'beer drinking concept album' (as described by its creators, Matt and Chris from awesomely awful NZ TV show Back of The Y)
47. Audioslave - Revelations (2006)
46. Hoodoo Gurus - Crank (1994)
45. Foo Fighters - There Is Nothing Left To Lose (1999)
One of those bands you wish made better studio albums. Awesome live.
44. Veruca Salt - Eight Arms To Hold You (1997)
43. Metallica - Metallica (1991)
Had to be here, by law.
42. The Cult - Sonic Temple (1989)
41. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991)
A good example of the album as a statement in time and space. The same dudes tried to reform and record the same album a bunch of times since in the late '90s and '00s, and failed.
40. The White Stripes - Elephant (2003)
39. Judas Priest - British Steel (1980)
38. The Hives - Veni Vidi Vicious (2000)
Most of which ended up in the more broadly familiar Your New Favourite Band (2001) - disqualified as technically it's a greatest hits compilation.
37. Guns 'N' Roses - Appetite For Destruction (1987)
Again - had to be here.
36. The Fratellis - Costello Music (2006)
35. Pearl Jam - Vs. (1993)
34. TISM - Machiavelli And The Four Seasons (1995)
Random factoid: this was the first actual CD I ever bought.
33. Them Crooked Vultures - Them Crooked Vultures (2009)
32. Nirvana - Nevermind (1991)
31. Spinal Tap - This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
Technically this is a soundtrack, but it's not a compilation - actually a studio album from one (very talented) group of musicians, the actors/writers behind Spinal Tap themselves.
30. Regurgitator - Unit (1997)
This was very, very close to being their Band In A Bubble album Mish Mash (2004), a remarkable effort considering how it was written and recorded, and an extreme example of that idea of a studio album being a statement by a band at a defined time and of a defined place (both physically and artistically.)
29. The Presidents of the United States of America - The Presidents of the United States of America (1995)
28. Spiderbait - Tonight Alright (2004)
27. Even - A Different High (2001)
26. Blues Explosion - Damage (2004)
25. Grinspoon - Easy (1999)
24. Powderfinger - Vulture Street (2003)
Take this out of their catalogue and they're a singles band who never released a decent album.
23. Rage Against The Machine - Rage Against The Machine (1992)
Back into '92. Still in a room without a view.
22. Airbourne - Runnin' Wild (2007)
Yeah, it's a '70s pub rock pastiche. But it's a bloody good one.
21. You Am I - Convicts (2007) – not any of the great albums of the 90s?
Maybe a bit of a surprise not to have any of the great Triple J albums of the early '90s - the ARIA number 1s like Hi Fi Way and #4 Record - but as a statement by an angry, discarded, melancholic rock frontman, Convicts is the most coherently argued album in YAI's catalogue.
20. The Stooges - Raw Power (1973)
Christing bollocks, they didn't misname this one. Still holds the record for the loudest-mixed album in the world.
19. The D4 - 6Twenty (2001)
Almost missed the start of Bathurst 2002 in order to head into Brisbane city on the Sunday morning after Livid to get this sucker (since the rest of Brisbane is shut on Sundays, thanks v. much Ghost of Joh.) That's dedication homes.
18. Frenzal Rhomb - A Man's Not A Camel (1999)
Though 1997's Meet The Family is also pretty good.
17. The Black Keys - Thickfreakness (2003)
16. Wolfmother - Wolfmother (2006)
Yeah, it's a '70s Zep-Purple-Sabbath pastiche. But it's a bloody good one.
15. Cream - Disraeli Gears (1967)
14. Electric Six - Fire (2003)
13. Reef - Glow (1997)
Sight unseen, this may be the only album which is common between this list and Beeso's.
12. Shihad - The General Electric (1999)
The 'Had have been touring this one as a whole album played live. That would be awesome.
11. The Donnas - Spend The Night (2002)
Allison Robertson is still teh hotness. As the great Flange Gasket put it in their unreleased demo Sandra Sultry: 'Getting on a bit it's true, but Christ I would, and so would you'
10. Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti (1975)
Double album. Shades I, II, Random Runes et al on sheer force of content.
9. Deep Purple - Machine Head (1972)
One of the few places you'll find Purple beating Zep in the Battle of the Great '70s British Heavy Metal Inventorers. But deservedly so.
8. The Monarchs - Make Yer Own Fun (2001)
Why Brad Shepherd was the greatest Guru of them all. Sorry, Dave Faulkner.
7. Oasis - Definitely Maybe (1994)
>>>>>>> that fucking annoying Morning Glory album that chicks liked.
6. The Stalkers - Rock N' Roll (2002)
You could argue this is actually an EP, being only seven tracks. But JESUS what a seven tracks. Seriously high-octane garage punk supergroup.
5. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced? (1967)
The man's a fricken genius. The new release Valleys Of Neptune is also brilliant, transcends the whole obvious-cash-in context behind it.
4. The Datsuns - The Datsuns (2002)
This album grew on me. It began as a'ight, but not as listenable as some of the other 'new rock' acts of the same era. Nearly eight years later, as an album, it stands above the lot of them.
3. The Sex Pistols - Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols (1977)
THE greatest punk album. In THE history. Of THE world.
2. Motorhead - Ace Of Spades (1980)
The only card you need. Roight.
1. AC/DC - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (1976)
Why not Back In Black? Or T.N.T.? Truth is, AC/DC made the same studio album 20 times - as they said themselves - it's just that one album happened to be one of the greatest albums every recorded. This is as much an award for the other great versions of that one album as Dirty Deeds, but the latter shades it for having (a) Bon (b) Jailbreak (c) Three or four songs written in 12 bar bloooze style (d) Bon (e) Big Balls (f) Bon and (g) The immortal line 'Get your fuckin jumbo jet orf my airport' delivered by (h) Bon.

You will notice, no Def Leppard. Unless you're quite unwell (*cough AJ cough*) you will understand it too.

Bonus Easter Egg - the top ten live albums of recorded history:
10. Rage Against The Machine - Live At The Grand Olympic Auditorium (2000)
If you're going to fuck off, fuck off with a great statement. This was theirs.
9. Black Sabbath - Reunion (1997)
Back when they got together the first time, and everyone still had their own teeth. Huge sound.
8. You Am I - The Convict Stain (2007, recorded 2003 LatW)
This was a Triple J Live at the Wireless show from 2003, when You Am I had just been dumped by Sony-BMG in favour of taking on more Idol rejects. A whole bunch of their mates from bands like Tex Perkins, Kram, Adelita, Burnt Fanny from the Finger, Kev from the Jebs and even fucking NFa from Datsun 1200 Techniques chimed in to Add Value, and it contained Much Awesome.
7. Led Zeppelin - How The West Was Won (2004, recorded 1973)
Triple album. Content wins. Plus this has a version of The Ocean so chumpy you can caaaarve it. Much hugerer than the anaemic studio version (separate argument - Houses Of The Holy, worst Zep studio album ever? Even worse than In Through The Out Door? Discuss.)
6. Frenzal Rhomb - Mongrel (1998)
You'll never have heard of this nor seen it, probably - was an add-on to the deluxe version of Meet The Family - but it captures absolutely what Frenzal were as a live act. Loud, sharp, acerbic and funny as fuck.
5. Hoodoo Gurus - Doppelganger (1998)
An awesome collection of cuts from Triple J Live At The Wireless sessions throughout the '80s and '90s, mostly covers and rareties.
4. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - BBC Sessions (1998, recorded 1967-69)
The whole BBC Sessions series (technical controversy, compilations or live albums? Have decided on the latter) are brilliant - the Led Zep one's particularly good - but this is the best.
3. Shihad - Pacifier Live (2003)
Don't get a Kiwi metal band angry. America did, by making them change their name, then ignoring them. This has just about the fucking hugest sound ever laid to tape.
2. Jimmy Page and the Black Crowes - Live At The Greek (1999)
Better than any of the Led Zep live albums? Yessir. This was very, very good.
1. AC/DC - Live (1991) - heaps of great live albums
As with their studio output, AC/DC live albums are many and plentiful, and most of them are awesome. If You Want Blood and Let There Be Rock - The Movie (Live In Paris) were both excellent late 70s efforts. But Live (1991) gets it for THAT guitar sound. And for turning me into an AC/DC fan in the first place.

Right, that's my lot. I'm not sure I agree with me, but drop me a line to discuss your point of view and I would be happy to explain why you're hopelessly, unutterably wrong.

The Doctor is OUT.

Fanfare for the common man, and his boat

Big ups to the English Premier League media wonks for yoinking Kasabian's 'Fire' as their theme for their world-feed matchday and highlights coverage for season 2010/11, a fair step up in sophistication and atmospherics from the fairly asinine guitar-pop anthem they've been running for the past couple of years, or the awful Champions League Lite hymn that preceded it. Now I'm not what the great Roy Slaven might refer to as a 'Kasabian freak-out type' but Fire is a damn catchy wee tune and fits the Prem very elegantly. As does the remixed bit used with the very cool club-crest morphing animation for the preview/review shows.



Which gets us to what more ambitious souls than I might term the point of today's dribble. Great sports TV themes... and how they're usually recycled, borrowed or thefted from somewhere else. Arguably the greatest of them all, the Channel 9 Wide World of Sports cricket theme (arguably because I'm arguing it here, now), actually first saw the light of day on Strayan TV as the theme to Bluey - the Lucky Grills fat sweaty copper show of the '70s, revoiced as Bargearse by the D-Gen during series 2 of the Late Show. Emerson, Lake and Palmer's hoary old standby Fanfare For The Common Man, here being performed in a suitably deserted Montreal Olympic stadium (for the record, Montreal have only very recently finished paying off the debt for those games - anyone really surprised NSW is still deep in financial shit?) is probably remembered by most Antipodeans primarily as being Channel 7's go-to anthem for all their sports coverage through much of the '90s, everything from AFL football to the Bathurst 1000. Although I'd argue that song found its finest and ultimate calling as the theme song to one of the greatest pieces of regional television ever made, Chris Conroy's World of Boats.

For those who didn't grow up within VHF range of the Gold Coast or Northern Rivers, Chris Conroy's World of Boats involved Chris Conroy, and a world of boats, which he borrowed from his mates' local marine dealerships and filmed flogging the Jesus out of up and down the channels, canals and broadwaters of the Goldie. Like a cross between Russell Coight and the first series of Top Gear Australia on SBS, except with even lower production values and unimaginable levels of unwatchability. '80s televisual gold, people.

Still, it could be worse. You could be watching Monday Night Football. Where Hank Williams Jr has been recycling the same cheese-in-a-can (with new, cheesier lyrics each week) since the late '80s, just without the same sense of ironic distance that makes you look back on the old cricket anthems with nostalgia. Still, Mr Williams has a point. Are you ready for some football??... Erm, yeah, sure. Just so long as the Poms handle the music. And the football.

The Doctor is OUT.

PS Chris Conroy lives!!! That's 23 years of self-produced televisual gold to you, buddy. Kudos.

In pink, you stink

It was kinda nice when it started. As I understand it, it started with Matty Hayden, Roy Symonds and a few others, striding out to bat a few summers ago with bright pink grips adorning the handles of their Grey-Nicolls bats, with some sort of understanding that runs scored would equal funds donated to the cause of breast cancer. A lovely gesture, with teammate Glenn McGrath having lost (or possibly at the time in the process of losing) a wife to cancer. That segued into the SCG Test of 2008/09, which saw the SCG turned a particularly virulent shade of pink in support of the McGrath Foundation - and if it all became a bit obvious and self-congratulatory on behalf of Channel 9 by the end, particularly when only a mildly disappointing $500K was scraped together, somehow it didn't really matter in light of just about the greatest ending in Test history where largely-hated South African captain Graeme Smith crawled out of the first aid tent and padded up at last drop to try and save his team from defeat, singlehandledly (literally - the other was quite comprehensively borked) - and almost won the day.

Since then we've had pink NRL refs, pink V8 Supercars, the Dragons in the Big Pink V, union's Western Farts playing a match in a colour best associated with the hindquarters of an aroused baboon, and entire pink-washed rounds of most of the major footy codes in Australia. And yeah, it's all nice. But at what point does this go from being heartwarming charity to cynical PR bandwagon-jumping? Particularly for men's professional sports leagues, which almost without exception have major PR dramas re Women's Issues - in particular endemic attitudinal and behavioural issues related to their players' interactions with women - and could use the halo effect of being associated with something that might stop the ladies from hating on their misogynist testosteronal arses, and (more to the point) start buying more of the Sponsors' Product.

Well, that point was reached whenever the Seppo NFL, a code with more Women's Issues than a AFL roster full of Milo-fuelled Spida Everetts, decided to make every player wear pink gloves and cleats, every sideline coach and bench-warmer wear pink-fringed caps, and basically swathe the entire field and personnel regiment with more pink frills than an explosion in Strawberry Shortcake's boudoir. I realise the Septics as a constitutionally-enshrined SOP genuinely believe that if something's worth doing it's worth overdoing, but seriously. That. Is. Crap. It's cynical, cretinous marketing-led tokeneering of the highest, lamest and most blatant order. Not just because the NFL, like most footy codes, is full of ego-inflated misogynist tossers who think sending PXTs of their dodger is an agreeable courting ritual. Not just because about as many US men are stricken by prostrate cancer as there are women who suffer breast cancer, and in terms of mortality, a much higher proportion of both sexes are killed by lung cancer (figures from Wiki) - so the Push for Pink looks more and more like a marketing decision rather than a genuine response to an unmet need in cancer awareness and surveillance. It's because of the gobsmacking hypocrisy by a league wanting to make a big show-and-dance about how much they care about women's health, while (until very recently) trying to deny or cover up the medical evidence, Big Tobacco style, that the high rate of concussions in their sport - caused by the repeated helmet-on-helmet and helmet-on-turf contacts quasi-legitimized by NFL football - were killing and psychologically maiming their players in later life.

Now I take Beeso's point (from Twunter) that when it comes to cash for cancer, all money is good money - with the caveat that as the husband of a cancer epidemiologist he was always going to say that! - and on reflection it's not necessarily a zero-sum game. And despite my own recent medical misadventures I'm not pushing the barrow for ball cancer - I don't want to know what they'd have on their jerseys instead of a pink ribbon. (Perhaps a phlegm-coloured ribbon for lung cancer awareness?) But the money is trivial, really, compared to the publicity. When you think about what it would cost a paying sponsor to get the same level of exposure from a league like the NFL (much more averse to slathering logos over jerseys and across fields than say the Australian NRL or AFL), the dollar value there in terms of publicity for the cause far far exceeds the actual dollar amounts donated to the charity through gate receipts, corporate donations or whatever. For the charities, this is always going to be much more about generating awareness rather than dollars. And while you could make some sort of case that targeting a national sport with heavy male-biased demography in order to broaden the awareness base of breast cancer beyond the gender who actually suffer from it, it's hard to convincingly argue this is going to be more effective in generating positive medical outcomes than a similarly heavy investment in, say, prostrate cancer - something that kills NFL fans and players, but something which (like ball cancer) seems to remain something to be embarrassed about, mainly because of the, erm, somewhat invasive surveillance regime.

And if it's not about generating positive medical outcomes what's it about? Surely not just cynically trying to appear sensitive to womens' needs and interests. Because that would be making commercial advantage out of cancer. And that would be an act of venal, unconscionable bastardry you might expect out of Big Pharma - not Big Football.

The Doctor is OUT.

And after all...

It's been fifteen years, and I still don't get Wonderwall. Not the lyrics, not the message - just what the fuck everyone else saw in the thing. Just about the biggest song of the 1990s, the calling card of one of the biggest bands of their generation... and I have to admit, I never actually liked the bastard. Not then and not now. Not because I don't like Oasis - though at the time I thought they were wankers - just because they had better songs. Most of which were on Definitely Maybe. Noel and his fruit platter once said of his pre-Oasis songwriting stockpile, all his A1 material went on Definitely Maybe, the next best on Morning Glory, and by the time they got to Be Here Now he was out of killer and down to filler. And also very, very off chops on Charlie. So yeah, Wonderwall... it's OK, but it's no Shakermaker. Or Cigarettes & Alcohol. Or Supersonic...

I'm like that with The Iconic Songs/Albums Of Our Generation, though. I either missed the point for years on end, or never got it to this day. Smells Like Teen Spirit... yeah, it's a'ight. Angsty bit of thrash-punk. Not much to it. It didn't speak to me as a teen because basically I had fuck all substantive to be angsty about. I discovered Nevermind as an album (and a pretty fucking decent one it is, to be fair) about ten years after the fact. The Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Majik I was a much earlier adopter of. Got into that one about four or five years after its actual release date. Definitely Maybe? About ten years late. And likewise for most of the milestone albums of the 1990s. Pearl Jam Vs - a good eight years after the fact; likewise U2's Achtung Baby or Metallica's black album. Blur? Never really got them but after watching their Hyde Park reunion gig flying Air NZ transtasman the other week, it might be time to go raid iTunes. Occasionally, like with Reef's Glow, the Dandy Warhols' Come Down or Shihad's The General Electric I somehow contrived to trip over The Next Big Thing at the azimuth of their cred and be momentarily Incredibly Hipster Cool without actually intending to. Then I'd go and buy AC/DC's Ballbreaker or the best of Motley Crue (apparently there was some) and my CD collection would go back to being a romantic liability.

Which is the real point, after all. As an unattached seeker of luuurrrve in the Nineties and Noughties, if your CD collection wasn't getting you roots, what the fuck was it there for? If you've ever had to reorganise the most cringeworthy items of your collection to the back of the cabinet - or even had to pretend to be into some shithouse act in order to appear shaggable to some particular intended of the moment - you'll know of which I speak. A quick glance at someone's CDs told you more about that person than a series of intimate dates at the cheapest restaurants in the inner west would ever tease out of them. That girl with Pete Murray's Feeler welded into the carousel of her CD player, with So Beautiful no longer able to be played due to having laser burns etched into it from overplaying... she may have baggage. Possible red flag there. Britney, Christina, Mandy Moore... still mentally 12 years old. Proceed at own risk. Tori Amos... either significantly damaged, or a post-op trannie. Caveat emptor. Thirsty Merc or Collective Soul... Christian. Probably better off with the trannie. The Donnas... drunk and promiscuous; as Al Davis might have put it, just win, baby.

Which throws the question over to you, dear reader - what is either
(a) the album in your collection which has cost (or gained) you the most action, and/or
(b) the most shameful, cringeworthy band or performer you've pretended to be into in the pursuit (futile or otherwise) of romantic success.

Your time starts.... nnnnnnnow.

The Doctor is OUT.