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Song of the day – 443: Scraps

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Scraps

Beautiful 7″ on my desk. None of this “digital download” shit.*

Nice solid cover: sepia-tinted seemingly, but in a variety of tints, with the name of the band made up of Pac-Men in different poses. Colours are blurry, saturated. The main photograph looks to be somewhere on the Sunshine Coast – I’m guessing – but not too built up, couple of yachts on the beach, some folk walking through and enjoying the surf. The song is called ‘Secret Paradise’. It’s performed by this Brisbane lady, goes by the name of Scraps, been meaning to check out her cloaked electronic-looped live act for some time: all things being equal I would’ve done, but having three small kids and an overarching sense of guilt means I’ve been confined to quarters for time immemorial. So I can only imagine what this plaintive, personal, playful music would feel like in the company of some drunk people and little ventilation.

I like to think it’d be like standing on the balcony of the Old Museum on a warm Brisbane summer’s evening, watching the bats flit about.

Here’s the BandCamp. *Oh wait. Plenty of this “digital download” shit. Plus my record-player is deliberately out of commission, because of my fear what my kids would do to it if they saw a revolving turntable. So …

The Scraps 7″ is on a great label – Disembraining Machine. Would I like this as much if I hadn’t seen footage of Scraps playing live at the screening for the Eternal Soundcheck film, thus providing me with a necessary emotional connection? No idea. Maybe not, but really it’s one of those pointless rhetorical questions. I did see the footage. Next week I’m going to be lecturing in the QUT KMB003 Sex Drugs And Rock N Roll course and I expect to be arguing all semester long that, contrary to what is often taught at tertiary level, there is no such thing as good music, that it a) often comes down to the context, and b) often comes down to your training. Folk disagree with me violently on this point, but I will argue to the grave that Whitney Houston is an appalling singer as she was unable to interpret songs … this, however, doesn’t invalidate the emotional connection people clearly feel with her songs, because (as John Peel, that great arbiter of taste put it) there’s no such thing as good music, only good listeners.

Whatever.  Now it sounds like I don’t like this. You’d be wrong to think that. I do like this. I especially like it because it’s from Brisbane and there’s a connection, but I’d like it anyway. It’s like a less funky Ill Ease, or Alps (who I’m changing my mind on), or Pikelet or someone.

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