Of Japanese beetles, wanky journalists and students

To hell with politics and war.

Right now I'm obsessing over Japanese beetles. The bastards are a plague on my sweet corn and Kentucky Wonders. My sympathies go out to those who grow things for a living today.

Instead, I'm trying to think happy thoughts.

The Go-Betweens have a new album. They're now in their fourth decade of bohemian reverie. Their new album is quite good.

Bonus putdown, this from the Guardian review:

Whenever a band reforms, they are understandably subject to mistrustful inquiries about motives and consequences. Except, for some reason, the Go-Betweens, who reconvened in 2000 after 12 years apart without causing a solitary suspicious eyebrow to be raised. One ex-Go-Between who did not participate in the reunion, drummer Lindy Morrison, would claim this was because no one cared in the first place, except "a fistful of wanky journalists and some students."

I've always been a (slightly) bigger fan of Forster than McClennan, though they are, as everyone acknowledges, a paradigm of complementarity (don't know if that is even a word). Here are the lyrics to Darlinghurst Nights, which is a brilliantly cracked tribute to the joys and self-deceptions of boho life:

DARLINGHURST NIGHTS

I opened a notebook, it read “The Darlinghurst Years”
I snapped it shut but out jumped some tears
I didn’t have to read it, it all came back
Dragging my fingers through my hair
Hidding behind her back

Gut rot cappuccino, gut rot spaghetti
Gut rot rock’n’roll through the eyes of Frank Brunetti
And always the traffic, always the lights
Joe played the cello through those
Darlinghurst Nights

One more coffee and I must go
Back to my room more chapters to go
We’ll meet up in an alley with more places I know

I’m going to change my appearance everyday
I’m going to write a movie and then I’m going to star
in a play
I’m going to go to Caracas because you know I’m
just going to have to get away

Marjorie and Kim, Andy and Clint, Debbie, Bertie, people came and went
And then there was Suzie who we never ever saw again

And always the traffic always the lights
Climbing that hill star studded nights
Joe played the cello

Alright.

The Go-Betweens. God bless 'em.