Did I stumble upon his/their avatar in a Tibetan Plateau marketplace?
Peter Lewis’s essay is an amusing and perceptive look at “Scotty”and Billy, as fellow “masters of pastiche”.
Morrison doesn’t even pretend to try to build his own coherent body of work. It’s not that he can’t come up with a tune. Far from it, there is a ditty for every occasion. It’s just that it’s not leading us anywhere.
Peter Lewis’s essay, published Wednesday 07 July 2021 in the Australian edition of The Guardian, is primarily about Australia’s current PM.
In passing, it is also acute on Billy Joel:
Joel never created anything that could move music forward; rather than an enduring legacy, the Piano Man is left to serve up his disjointed canon as the regular crowd shuffles in…
and on Scomo’s recent predecessors:
Rudd had the sugar hit of a boy band, Gillard was surprisingly discordant, Abbott was a one-hit wonder, while Turnbull could never keep in time with his band.
Click here to read the entire essay.
Footnote:
the curiously Scomo/Joel-esque, appropriately ersatz “dog” is a stallholder’s “entry statement”… in a roadside market on the eastern part of the Tibetan Plateau, around a half-day’s drive west of Xining.
Photo is copyright Doug Spencer, taken at 2.15 pm on 22 October 2019, in Qinghai, China.