The Gold Bugs Will Rejoice
Life During Inflation is Worse than During Deflation
We were back up at the Link & Pin in support of touring act Amita Hachidori.
Amita Hachidori was a revelation. They were kind of what you might call Punk Cabaret. Accompanied by just the accordion, the act really consists of this massive voice being projected in the room. It’s wild.
Anyway, it’s always fun to get up to play at the Link & Pin.
“Times Two”
Inflation is a bitch, and it’s getting entrenched. Things are not going to brighten up if what we have come through is a historic anomaly that has come to an end. I’m inclined to support the view the anomaly was huge, and for a more detailed explanation, this video goes through how we got here:
I went to the dentist for the regular check. He found tooth decay at the edge of two teeth so two fillings had to be made, the next thing you know it was $750.00. It’s getting to the point I can’t afford my own teeth. Especially after my car repair from last week.
It feels like things and services are costing roughly double from what is in my own mind map. Years ago before the Pandemic, I might have had a filling and it might have been $120 or so. It has also been a while since, so maybe it’s normal that it now costs $250. The double thing is everywhere. I used to spend just over $10 for lunch. Now I pay over $20 if I want to feel like I’ve eaten. I realise my mental map of this has shifted over time, but if you had asked me a decade ago, I might have said I was being a spendthrift. I don’t know if people’s take home has doubled since 2020.
I’ve noticed a lot of guitar-related doodads are costing double what they used to maybe just before the pandemic. Unless you are buying some Chinese knock-off most things with recognisable branding is costing double. Pedals, cables, strings, tools, maintenance kits, these things are going along with the inflation curve steadily. As inflation complaints go, these are kind of dumb, I know. People out there are struggling with everyday items. It’s not that long ago we were with peace and abundance. It’s nothing but bombings and inflation lately.
I can pin the shift to when the Ukraine War started so this is easily sheeted home to Vladimir Putin. I can’t wait until they hang him from some post in a square in Russia. It won’t make the prices go down but by God it would be satisfying. It’s a shame more Russians with means don’t feel this way.
At least we have AI.
What’s Spinning This Week (in no particular order):
Free - Concrete Blonde
Tyr - Black Sabbath
Rattus Norvegicus - The Stranglers
Learning to Crawl - The Pretenders
The Very Best Of - Talk Talk
‘Free’ the second album by Concrete Blonde was surprisingly good. I didn’t know what to expect but this was refreshingly good. I guess it’s a product of a younger mindset. There’s a lot of verve and energy in the performances and a certain desperate quality that makes it sound dangerous. It’s not staid or relaxed. Post-Punk music ought to feel the desperation of living under Reagan and Bush Senior and Thatcher if you ask me. It very much feels like a record of its times.
I’ve been grumbling about the narrow appeal of the last 3 Black Sabbath albums I’ve listened to but ‘Tyr’ from 1990 is a bit of a game changer. This album has Sabbath trying to stretch out the defined boundaries of Heavy metal they set for themselves. It’s almost Prog but not quite. The broadening of the palette and more accessible musical ideas makes this one a winner for me, although it completely tanked in Australia. Goes to show my tastes are not in line with the general Aussie public.
The Stranglers are a lot weirder than I remember them. They lean into the theory that people don’t hear the band, they see the front person - and I think that’s how they won their spot as a punk band but this early album shows the band behind the voice to be doing a lot of not-very-punk music. If you ignore the vocals, ‘Rattus Norvegicus’ is not very punk. The more I trawl through their deeper cuts, the more I like them. This album has some pretty ballsy playing on it, and that’s always fun.
My nostalgia listen of the week is The Pretenders’ ‘Learning to Crawl’. Revisiting the early Pretenders just to get the context back for listening to some of their later albums has been delightful. It’s good to go back to something you understand from being in the historic context. I even remember when this album was new in the stores.
When I first heard Talk Talk way back when, I thought these guys were cutting edge. They seemed somewhere between being off-the-wall and radically uncomfortable unconventional. I didn’t buy anything of theirs because I was busy buying albums by other acts. Yet they always stayed in the back of my ind as an interesting act. Today, their greatest hits package sounds really dated, thanks to the synth-heavy arrangements. It does have good musical bones if you can get past the old decor and the out-of-fashion sounds.