My long-standing rating of Mojo magazine gets called into question from time to time, particularly when (as happened with the March 2009 issue) the cover features someone like Nick Cave with promises of Cave-heavy content within.
Portrait of a 21st Century Genius?
Piffle. Put me to one side and call me a fuddy duddy.
A quick flick through the pages, however, restored my equanimity when I sighted the Filter: Buried Treasure page, featuring the wonderfully titled A Meal You Can Shake Hands With In The Dark by the equally wonderfully named Pete Brown & His Battered Ornaments and the reminiscences came flowing back.
Given Hughesy’s affinity with the obtuse and the obscure the average reader may be surprised to discover that most of the Buried Treasures unearthed on that page are items I’ve never heard of, and sighting the Battered Ornaments there came as something of a surprise, since the album holds a significant position in Hughesy’s memory.
A Meal You Can Shake Hands With In The Dark appeared on the horizon at some point during the year when the first phase of Hughesy’s academic career went down in flames and one of my mates was in the process of repeating Year Twelve and seeing whether he could drag the results from a pretty ordinary first attempt even lower.
It was a time when the explosion of musical innovation was just starting to subside, having swept the world to the point where every town or city of any significance in the western world had a head shop, a rock festival or two and, in many cases, an underground newspaper.
Faced with the need to take a break from the pressures of business, the proprietor of Townsville’s first and (as far as I can remember) only head shop needed someone to look after the shop and, for some reason decided that one of my acquaintances was the man for the moment.