Stupid Honky Can't Help It!
The 5.6.7.8's, 'Can't Help It!', Au Go Go Records, 1991, CD
One of the most exhilarating movie experiences I've had in the last few years (and I haven't had many) was Kill Bill. I was a qualified Tarantino fan up to that point. I liked Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction but they both had a blustering quality that seemed to act as a smokescreen to any real humanity. I know saying that misses the point about artifice and construction and homage and blah blah but I like a little heart in my films.
It wasn't so much that RD and PF had no heart, the heart was there but heavily obscured by cleverness and tricks. So Jackie Brown was a revelation: particularly Tarantino's handling of the potential love affair between Pam Grier's title character and Robert Forster's bail bondsman. Tarantino's soundtrack choices were impeccable as usual and the soft 70s soul used to connect Jackie Brown and Max Cherry accentuated the almost-but-not-quite nature of their romance.
Which, in a round about way, brings me to The 5.6.7.8's.
My girlfriend was in Europe at the time. I took the opportunity to go on an old-fashioned road trip with a good friend. Part of the trip involved visiting his Mum, a beautiful woman with a gift for making great Hungarian food, for a few days in Surfer's Paradise.
Surfer's Paradise is on the Gold Coast, one of the fastest growing SLAs (statistical local areas) in Australia. It's an ever-expanding Legoland of shopping malls and housing estates. I think Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, CA: 'there is no there there'. Something to that effect. The Gold Coast is similar but probably warmer and sunnier. Bridget Fonda's surfer girl from Jackie Brown forever saunters in bikini top and wrap-around skirt between the shopping mall and beach on the Gold Coast.
We're Melbourne guys. The skin on my stomach was now a large, aggressive blister after an ill-advised sunbaking session. We drove aimlessly up and down the main strip in our little red VW Golf hire car. We began to feel like retirees waiting to die. This was after just two days.
By the third day we were scouring for menswear bargains at outlet stores.
Thankfully, our local mall, Harbour Town, had a cinema complex. We looked wrong amid the clumps of teenagers in surfwear - criminally wrong. We had probably picked a kid-friendly session but it appeared that adults on the Gold Coast didn't watch movies. They shopped for homewares and real estate.
Two or so hours later we walked out of Kill Bill and looked at each other as if we had just seen a burning bush in the desert. The numbing stupor of our Gold Coast surrounds retreated and life was now a kinetic explosion of sight and sound. We saw Kill Bill again the next day.
A small part of the Kill Bill experience was seeing The 5.6.7.8's perform in a nightclub scene. I had seen them live a couple of times and seeing them on screen in walloping Dolby surround connected me to the film in some small way. It was exciting they were part of something so incredible. It was like having a team to barrack for.
The 5.6.7.8's Can't Help It! is a compilation of their early 7" singles. I don't listen to it much. 7" singles are concentrated packets of rock'n'roll designed for jukebox listening and a whole CD can get a little tiring. But in one-two punch bursts it still sounds great. It's interesting to listen to changes in the band's sound from the '86 cuts to the '91 stuff. It's hard to go past 'Ah-So!' and the Wanda Jackson inspired 'Let's Have A Party', both from the three-piece '91 recordings.
The real 5.6.7.8's experience is a live one: a great band to get drunk and sweaty with. I remember when their singles started appearing in the Au Go Go record shop singles rack next to all the grunge gloop Sub Pop churned out. It was a revelation for my stupid honky mind that Japanese women could rock'n'roll as well, and better, than stinky long-haired beefbrains from obscure north-west American timber towns. Among all the rehashed Black Sabbath riffs and quiet-loud song dynamics, The 5.6.7.8's spun their particularly Japanese take on the Gospel According to Lux & Ivy.
One of the most exhilarating movie experiences I've had in the last few years (and I haven't had many) was Kill Bill. I was a qualified Tarantino fan up to that point. I liked Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction but they both had a blustering quality that seemed to act as a smokescreen to any real humanity. I know saying that misses the point about artifice and construction and homage and blah blah but I like a little heart in my films.
It wasn't so much that RD and PF had no heart, the heart was there but heavily obscured by cleverness and tricks. So Jackie Brown was a revelation: particularly Tarantino's handling of the potential love affair between Pam Grier's title character and Robert Forster's bail bondsman. Tarantino's soundtrack choices were impeccable as usual and the soft 70s soul used to connect Jackie Brown and Max Cherry accentuated the almost-but-not-quite nature of their romance.
Which, in a round about way, brings me to The 5.6.7.8's.
My girlfriend was in Europe at the time. I took the opportunity to go on an old-fashioned road trip with a good friend. Part of the trip involved visiting his Mum, a beautiful woman with a gift for making great Hungarian food, for a few days in Surfer's Paradise.
Surfer's Paradise is on the Gold Coast, one of the fastest growing SLAs (statistical local areas) in Australia. It's an ever-expanding Legoland of shopping malls and housing estates. I think Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, CA: 'there is no there there'. Something to that effect. The Gold Coast is similar but probably warmer and sunnier. Bridget Fonda's surfer girl from Jackie Brown forever saunters in bikini top and wrap-around skirt between the shopping mall and beach on the Gold Coast.
We're Melbourne guys. The skin on my stomach was now a large, aggressive blister after an ill-advised sunbaking session. We drove aimlessly up and down the main strip in our little red VW Golf hire car. We began to feel like retirees waiting to die. This was after just two days.
By the third day we were scouring for menswear bargains at outlet stores.
Thankfully, our local mall, Harbour Town, had a cinema complex. We looked wrong amid the clumps of teenagers in surfwear - criminally wrong. We had probably picked a kid-friendly session but it appeared that adults on the Gold Coast didn't watch movies. They shopped for homewares and real estate.
Two or so hours later we walked out of Kill Bill and looked at each other as if we had just seen a burning bush in the desert. The numbing stupor of our Gold Coast surrounds retreated and life was now a kinetic explosion of sight and sound. We saw Kill Bill again the next day.
A small part of the Kill Bill experience was seeing The 5.6.7.8's perform in a nightclub scene. I had seen them live a couple of times and seeing them on screen in walloping Dolby surround connected me to the film in some small way. It was exciting they were part of something so incredible. It was like having a team to barrack for.
The 5.6.7.8's Can't Help It! is a compilation of their early 7" singles. I don't listen to it much. 7" singles are concentrated packets of rock'n'roll designed for jukebox listening and a whole CD can get a little tiring. But in one-two punch bursts it still sounds great. It's interesting to listen to changes in the band's sound from the '86 cuts to the '91 stuff. It's hard to go past 'Ah-So!' and the Wanda Jackson inspired 'Let's Have A Party', both from the three-piece '91 recordings.
The real 5.6.7.8's experience is a live one: a great band to get drunk and sweaty with. I remember when their singles started appearing in the Au Go Go record shop singles rack next to all the grunge gloop Sub Pop churned out. It was a revelation for my stupid honky mind that Japanese women could rock'n'roll as well, and better, than stinky long-haired beefbrains from obscure north-west American timber towns. Among all the rehashed Black Sabbath riffs and quiet-loud song dynamics, The 5.6.7.8's spun their particularly Japanese take on the Gospel According to Lux & Ivy.
posted by Engel at 1:35 PM
2 Comments:
You forgot to mention that The 5.6.7.8's "Can't Help It" CD is MINE!
Cass xx
Thanks, Tim. I'll contact you in 25 years or so when I'm up to "M". I like the idea of guest essays.
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