I got, somewhat both to my amusement and bemusement, called a ‘Boomer’ recently by one of my staff.

OK… so I own my house outright (not that a brick veneer dump in Avondale Heights is much to boast about) and have a tidy amount put away into my superannuation, but I am no Boomer. I was born in 1969, which makes me four years too young to be that, and puts me squarely in the first third of Gen X.

But, as I hurtle at high velocity towards early retirement, it caused me to realise that for the first time in my life, all the people I supervise are younger than me, some by quite a considerable distance.

It was weird, when talking about music in the office, how some of them had never heard of some of the singers and bands I really like, such as Suzanne Vega, Kate Bush (some 30 year old remarked “Isn’t she the crazy one?”) or The Pretenders, just to name a few.

And Gen Y minstrel Sandi Thom, with her 2006 break out song ‘Oh I wish I was a punk rocker, with flowers in my hair’, totally missed the point of Punk Rock.

But to be honest, I was always a little too young for Punk Rock. I was not quite 9 when Johnny Rotten dropped the mike and ended the Sex Pistols, and I did not get around to listening to their music properly til the Covid lockdown, where I streamed their album and a few other classic underground bands (by which I mean bands which will never get played on the radio).

Some bands, like The Grateful Dead, well, you can be grateful that they do not get any airtime.

The Sex Pistols are far better than that. Angry young men who seemed to have a message. ‘Anarchy in the UK’ and ‘God Save the Queen’ are classic anthems for a point in music history.

I finished watching Pistol, Danny Boyle’s biopic six part series about the Sex Pistols, last night, and I think that for all that I did not previously know about this seminal band which flashed through the mid 1970s faster than a soccer hooligan’s sharpened pennies, he did a fantastic job of capturing their rise and inevitable fall. It is gritty, authentic, and mostly true to what happened.

I did not know that Chrissie Hynde (she who led The Pretenders) moved in the same circles as the Sex Pistols, nor that she sought to marry Steve Jones and then Johnny Rotten so as to get a working visa (a scene which, whilst probably not accurate to real life, is a classic in the series). That is true, although the casual affair with Jones in the series is not.

And whilst Johnny Rotten tried as hard as he could to prevent the making of this series, he is presented in a very positive light, with greater empathy than other band members, particularly in the third episode ‘Bodies’ (I will not spoil it for you by giving away details).

I am delighted that Kate Bush has another number one hit after so many years thanks to it being played on Stranger Things on Netflix, but I would also be delighted if, it being the 70th Jubilee of our Queen’s reign, if that song that the Sex Pistols released for her 25th Jubilee oh so long ago would also reach number one as a result of streaming TV.

TISM put it much better than I could, but readers of this blog would well know by now how skeptical I am about our national emphasis on sporting success on the international stage:

The Lord of the Rings prequel series The Rings of Power is due to start on Amazon Prime on 2 September, so I have started getting ready.

Firstly, I bought myself a nice new iPad yesterday (first time I have ever used click and collect), so that I can watch it in great comfort whilst lying on my Chesterfield sofa. Indeed, as I am very resourceful, I simply used up the giant bank of Apple store credits I possess (how I came to accumulate a giant pile of Apple store credits will take a whole other blog post), so the iPad did not directly cost me a cent.

Secondly, I re-read The Silmarillion. I last read The Silmarillion in my teenage years, some 39 years ago, and I remember it as pretty hard going and a whole lot bleaker than the other Tolkien I have read (whilst I am no Tolkien scholar, I have read The Lord of the Rings at least a dozen times, and The Hobbit quite a few, as well as most of his cutesy shorter works).

However, in some parts, I was quite shocked as to the bleakness, which is far darker than what I remembered.

As context, The Silmarillion is made up of five parts: Ainurdale, Valaquenta, Quenta Silmarillion, Akallabeth, and Of The Rings of Power and the Third Age. I presume that the new Amazon Prime series is going to mostly be based on what is in the latter two parts, and what is covered in the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings.

Akallabeth covers the history of Numenor from its creation until its downfall. It is mercifully short, but in the later few pages, where Sauron is brought as a hostage to Numenor and then proceeds to corrupt the king, Ar-Pharazon, into outright worship of the diabolical original dark lord Morgoth, complete with widespread human sacrifice on a scale not seen in real human history outside the Aztecs, it is quite disturbing.

How this story, complete with a creepy (rather than overtly menacing) looking Sauron, plays out on the screen is going to be rather interesting. But it could very easily turn out to be extremely dark.

I was vaguely aware that many eccentric women are in the habit of gathering together in parks and dancing to the moves of Kate Bush as per the video for her hit Wuthering Heights.

I just didn’t know how big a thing it is.

Pleasantly surprised to discover from reading my feed this morning that it is a worldwide phenomenon, the Most Wuthering Heights Day ever, and it occurs on 30 July each year, which happens to be Kate Bush’s birthday.

And this year, with Kate Bush on top of the charts again thanks to Stranger Things, it’s bigger than ever!

Huzzah!

The last time it snowed in Melbourne was around 11.30am on Friday 25th July 1986. I was in chemistry class and we all rushed out to stand in it. The snow melted before it hit the ground.

That also happens to be the only time I’ve seen snow – what you see flying over mountains in a plane doesn’t really count.

Given how cold it was this morning, I wonder whether it will snow this winter.

The last time it snowed in Melbourne was around 11.30am on Friday 25th July 1986. I was in chemistry class and we all rushed out to stand in it. The snow melted before it hit the ground.

That also happens to be the only time I’ve seen snow – what you see flying over mountains in a plane doesn’t really count.

Given how cold it was this morning, I wonder whether it will snow this winter.

I’ve mostly written off our chances of making the finals this year, but very delighted this morning with the news that the Western Bulldogs have reached 50,000 members for the first time in our history.

This era truly is our golden age.

‘Hello Old Lady, I know your face well. I know it well.‘ – Kate Bush, Jig of Life, 1985

In the early 1980s, music critics used to write really dumb things about Kate Bush, such as that she had failed to live up to her early promise. After all, her debut single, Wuthering Heights, had gone to number 1 on the charts in 1977.

Now, thanks to it featuring in the Netflix show Stranger Things, Kate Bush’s haunting 1985 single Running Up That Hill has given her another number 1 hit, some 37 years after its release, and 45 years after her first number 1.

When you put this in context in time, this is really freaky. If you go back 37 years before 1985, you are in 1948, at the start of the Cold War and seven years before Rock Around The Clock redefined music. If you go back 45 years before 1977, you are in 1932, not all that long after Yes We Have No Bananas became the first ever documented Number 1 hit song, and where Weimar Germany was in its death throes. Either comparison takes us back to a very different world, far different than 1985 is from us now, for all that we have smart phones and internet on tap.

I am very happy about this resurrection of Kate Bush. I have been a fan of hers since my teen years, particularly since the release of Hounds of Love, the 1985 parent album that featured Running Up That Hill.

Between Wuthering Heights, which came off the 1978 debut album The Kick Inside, and Hounds of Love, she had put out another 3 studio albums, making for the respectable output of 5 albums in 8 years. Whilst some of those albums were a bit uneven in quality, they all featured at least one fantastic song.

After that, her output slowed down, with The Sensual World in 1989 and The Red Shoes in 1993. Then she disappeared for a long time into a life away from rock music, resurfacing with Aerial in 2005 and 50 Words For Snow in 2011.

She’s been quiet since then, until this pleasant surprise of an unexpected revival.

And let’s face it, for all that the moronic music critics of the early 1980s used to claim to be disappointed with her, Hounds of Love is a brilliant album (and a very solid comeback for her after her frenetic early productivity), and a great entry point for a new generation to discover Kate Bush.

For a while there, I thought that her more mature work, The Sensual World and The Red Shoes, were better albums. But last night, I lay back on the couch and streamed all my old favourites from those albums, and I was reminded as to exactly why I thought Hounds of Love was such a great album.

Pulling out my CD of that album now, I can confirm that the original B side to the album was named The Ninth Wave, and the slip includes a quote from Tennyson’s The Holy Grail:

“Wave after wave, each mightier than the last

‘Til at last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep

And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged

Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame.”

And perhaps that it is a hint to us from Kate Bush, that she felt that the six songs on that B side of her album, whilst none of them are exactly singles worthy or particularly suited to the lowest common denominator which is radio, are perhaps her greatest work.

I certainly think so.

I recently joined the Kelvin Club, one of the more inclusive and quirky of the private members’ clubs in Melbourne (they are inclusive because aside from welcoming women as members for the past 30 years, they accepted me as a member).

Last Friday after work I hosted several of my colleagues as my guests at the Club for a few drinks, which turned into a few more, and then we were still then when an acoustic duo showed up next to our table and started performing some classic Australian songs.

Being of the countdown generation, we knew and loved a lot of the songs (1980s classics) and after a while, as the vibe got very merry, we sang along.

It was quite a lot of fun, and we had a chuckle about the evening on Monday morning when we next assembled.

Which is a good way to explain why I have particular tastes in music.

As I was a teenager in Australia during the 1980s, I have a significant affection for American band The Motels, who were more popular here than anywhere else in the world. [I remember being told that Martha Davis, the leader singer, was 37 or so, and to me, in my early teens, that seemed positively ancient. I can laugh at that now forty years later.]

Recently, I have been listening to The Motels a fair bit on Apple Music, and also to Martha Davis’ long forgotten 1987 solo album Policy. Policy was a bit of a commercial failure, even though Tell It To The Moon was a song I enjoyed very much at the time of its release, which goes a long way to explaining the impossibility of finding the album online in recent decades/

Comparing Tell It To The Moon to some of the classic Motels songs I know and love so well, such as Total Control, Cecilia, Shame On Me, and Bonjour Baby, I think I can see why Martha Davis did not enjoy great success when she chose to go solo when The Motels were about to start their next studio album.

Put simply, the music is over produced, it is too perfect and lacks any of the quirks in the songs The Motels did when they were a band. It was Martha Davis getting her own way, and somehow, the soul of the band was lost.

When listening to it, I was reminded of the scene in Bohemian Rhapsody where Freddie Mercury explains to the rest of Queen that he needs them, that when he just paid session musicians to do his solo album exactly the way he wanted it, he only got what he wanted, not what his band could contribute.

Martha Davis, for all her great talent as a chanteuse, was far greater at the front of a good band, rather than a solo artist.

And I tell that to the net.

My smallest shareholding, which is worth less than pocket change, is in Broo Ltd, a craft brewery enterprise.

I have been writing about it occasionally in recently months, firstly when there was a stoush between the Founder/Exec Chairman and a recently appointed new director, which was resolved in favour of the new director’s interests, and secondly when the new board suspended trading on 9 May pending some restructuring of the company.

I would be lying if I said that I was awaiting developments anxiously. I am only an investor in Broo for the fun of it, and my retirement does not hinge on my shareholding in Broo (nor, if I am honest with myself, on my substantial share portfolio mostly held in blue chips and ETFs and REITs etc).

Late last week, finally (!), we had a public announcement. The long and the short of it is that several holding companies owned by Broo Ltd were put into voluntary administration. The part of the business (two holding companies) relating to the Mildura Brewery Pub is in the process of being liquidated, and the Sorrento Brewery will also be wound down (to my discredit, I am not sure as to what, if anything, is run down in Sorrento, except perhaps the original microbrewery).

None of this surprises me particularly much. The main assets the company owns, after all, are the Mildura pub, the land in Ballarat, the brand & recipes, and the public listing. Getting rid of Mildura (and Sorrento) and Ballarat are logical steps, but leave me wondering at what price the company is really intrinsically valued at right now.

The company remains in a trading halt for the time being. I look forward to seeing this company trade again at some point, and even am happy to participate in another rights issue (after all, the last one only cost me $0.36) to see it keep on going.