Not screaming up Lake Road

A few scenes from yesterday, but not too many because I do not want to be going on and on.

4am - after several clear days the blood is back and my shoulders slump.

I know what’s needed so I begin: sluice drain sluice drain but it’s clear that not much of what’s going in is getting past the clots.

By late morning I’m talking with the surgeon’s office and I can’t stand all that well and I’m wondering if I’ve gone fully overboard with the water and they say best call an ambulance and do you have anyone with you? Kind Maire Vieth comes over to be with me.

Now I’m on my way up Lake Road in the ambulance and you might imagine we’re screaming up that benighted road at the pace everyone keeps demanding as their Driver’s Right but no, we’re waiting our turn and when you have a full and bloodied bladder and must wait your turn, well, the Lake Rd stories they are sad and many.

Back to the hospital, back to the CDU, back to the catheter, back to the washout, back to the irrigation, and just to make it more fun, blockage at 11pm and 5am and another two washouts and am I feeling dispirited? A bit, but there’s a further option if necessary, to bring this to resolution: cauterise the wound. Time, and an ultrasound will tell.

Meanwhile, this ward of six is its own unwritten play. Eavesdropping, I cannot deny it, but it’s more or less unavoidable to hear each cast member play their part.

There’s a woman who won’t or can’t say what’s wrong. They thought they needed a translater but that got them no further. She goes into her shell when it happens but once the doctors leave she comes back to life, phoning directions to family.

There’s a doctor with a truly winning manner. She tells someone who needs to think about his cardiac future: That’s completely the wrong food darling, you’ve got to stop.

Random thought: whenever anyone recounts their fast food habits, meaning Maccas, BK, they begin with the more respectable Subway.

That’s enough blood and theatre, let’s move on to today’s mighty edition of the matesourcing project.

Does Mr Russell Goddam Brown have a favourite fourth form song? You goddam bet your life he does, and it’s magnificent.

Guest writer Russell Brown

My fourth form year, 1977, was the year of the punk rock revolution. I read about it eagerly in the newspaper before I heard it, and when I heard it, it came in wild, tantalising snatches. One night, crouched over the radio in my bedroom, I tuned into a faint signal from Radio Hauraki in Auckland: "the Sex Pistols", I heard the man say. The signal vanished before I could really process what I'd heard.

Then, a month or two later, I wandered into the fifth form common room at Burnside High, where they had a stereo, and heard, at rebellious volume, what I realised must surely be 'Anarchy in the UK'. Steve Jones' guitar, fat and roaring like nothing I'd heard before. Are you even allowed to sound like that? I thought to myself, excited and perhaps a bit rattled. I was on my way.

Well, actually.

While the above is all true, it would be misleading to say these early rumours of the revolution were actually my favourite records in the fourth form, if only because the internet hadn't been invented and I had no way of hearing them in full. They didn't feature on my primary music discovery platforms: Casey Kasem's American Top 40, and my buddy John's older brother Gerard's record collection.

It would be another year before I heard Casey play Patti Smith's version of 'Because the Night' and had another what the hell was that moment. (I was so stunned I didn't record it and had to sit there with my finger anxiously poised over the button the following week.) And while there was a cornucopia of mainstream 70s rock available to be taped from brother Gerard's collection, he had not discovered punk rock. (We did find his copy of Steal This Book, which was a trip, but that's another story.)

A perusal of the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1977 indicates that Casey did introduce me to quite a number of songs I love to this day. Thelma Houston singing 'Don't Leave Me This Way', the Steve Miller Band's 'Fly Like An Eagle' and 'Jet Airliner', the slinky southern boogie of Atlanta Rhythm Section's 'So Into You', Rose Royce's 'Car Wash'. I have all those on vinyl and I play them to confused old people in suburban bars. 'The Theme from Rocky' hasn't stayed with me in quite the same way, but I have a memory of playing it as an inspiration before going to an exam.

And then of course, there was 'Dancing Queen'. 1977 was right in the middle of the years when it was essentially compulsory to listen to Abba in New Zealand. I'm sure Abba records were subsidised by the taxpayer and may even have been delivered to every home, like the Mazengarb Report. Technically, it wasn't illegal to not listen to Abba, but the social sanction was sufficiently severe that you didn't really want to be caught not doing it.

But mostly my listening was my press-pause-then-go cassette compilations from Casey's show, where you always ended up with a few songs you didn't really want (I heard Kansas's 'Dust in the Wind' more times than was fair or reasonable) – and the tapes from brother Gerard. Gerard liked his heavy rock, so there were Uriah Heep's terrible records and Deep Purple's Made in Japan from 1972 – which, of course, included 'Smoke on the Water'.

And then there was the Supertramp. I deny ever listening to Supertramp. The album covers burned into my brain are false memories, implanted by aliens. Please, let's just move on.

Which brings us to the The Eagles. I am old enough now to understand that The Eagles were merely the airbrushed, processed, cocaine-fuelled representation of a country-rock phenomenon pioneered by their betters. But to be honest, I've always found Little Feat unbearable, and Hotel California the album is replete with smoothly-crafted bangers like 'Life in the Fast Lane'. People talk about 'New Kid in Town' as a soft-rock classic, but it was always 'The Last Resort' that gave me feelings. And then, of course, there was the title track, a mysterious indictment of consumerism with a legendary guitar coda that you – yes, you – can hear in your head as you read this.

To be honest, 'Hotel California' was probably the song I played myself the most in 1977. But we all get to burnish our histories, so I'm anointing the 20th biggest selling single in New Zealand in 1977. The song I danced to in a classroom that year. The song that gave me a what the hell is this feeling that has never really abided. One of the greatest records ever made. A song that will be played at the conclusion of my funeral, as the mourners rise and find their rhythm and dance around my mortal remains in a celebration of love, community and life itself. Take it away, Donna ...

Memories! I also hugely recommend this wonderful suburban song tale by Maria Majsa. Poignant and glowing, it is.

A ball is rolling, there will be more next week!