A trashy poem

The perturbing irony
Of
A heavy metal band's logo
Crudely daubed on the side
Of 
A rusty pink dumpster
Flesh-coloured ego inviting inevitability 
A scenic route to senility
Rust lines etched like varicose veins
Across the garbage receptacle that is your soul
And so remember this
Metallica – synonymous with thrash
But in this place it equates to trash

 

R.I.P. Nathan Robertson

I got to know Nathan through the comments section of Gavin Scott's blog Chart Beats (now a full-blown website), when Gavin was recapping charts of the early 1990s. Often Nathan and I would be the only two people commenting. Although we never met personally, I got to know him and we communicated by email now and then, usually about music or chart-related stuff. (Actually I think we might have exchanged comments on Youtube years before that, but anyway...)

Nathan and I were born in the same year, so although our musical tastes were not the same, the early-to-mid-'80s through to the mid-to-late '90s were the heyday of our music listening. We both used to write the chart listings down each week, although his were more detailed than mine. Our interest in the charts also waned at the same time, at the end of the '90s.

As well as a music lover, Nathan was a charts man. Specifically, the Australian charts – as compiled by the Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA) – was his thing. He had a contact at ARIA who he regularly asked for chart stats for particular artists, a few at a time, until he had amassed a sizeable database.

He added me to a mailing list where fellow chart nerds shared their findings, and he shared with me heaps of chart info — albums and singles charts spreadsheets, scans of the Kent Music Report (who compiled the charts prior to ARIA) charts, lists of new releases, and ARIA's own music reports.

Nathan was also a fan of the music video as an art form. He had thousands in his collection, digitized from recording hours and hours of the music video show Rage, many peoples' videotape sources (including mine) and VHS compilations, and was dedicated to preserving the best quality versions of little-known and obscure videos on his Youtube channels. While record company neglect let certain artists and videos fall into obscurity, Nathan and his archives kept their memories alive.

He once said to user AcerBenII on the PopJustice forum, "I think music videos really capture a moment in time; more than just listening to the song. A song can be 'timeless', but a music video rarely is – they're usually quite of their time, which adds a nostalgic element." 

If there's an Australian pop song that exists, chances are Nathan uploaded its video to Youtube at some point. He once won a competition to guest-program an hour of Rage, which went to air on May 1, 2010. Although he wasn't seen on screen like a previous winner, the Rage chyrons included the line "Playlisted by Nathan fron Highton, VIC".

In 2020, Nathan started his own chart recap blog, called Bubbling Down Under, where he recapped only releases that peaked outside the top 100. I designed the logo and background image for the blog. He described it as something of a companion blog to Chart Beats, whose tagline was "A journey through pop", and made his tagline "A journey through flop".

I've never known anyone else with as much knowledge of pop music, chart stats, single releases and music videos as Nathan had. Sadly he lost his battle with cancer on August 9th 2025 at the age of 46, and we are poorer for his loss. My condolences to all of the members of his family. May he rest in peace. 

Mayday – a forgotten character

Have you ever created a character intended for all kinds of comic strip shenanigans, only for nothing to come of it? 

Back in the late ’90s, I created a character called Mayday. I wanted to do a comic strip with a female lead. I was heavily influenced by the series Æon Flux, which was airing on SBS at the time and which I watched religiously, even though I didn’t understand most of what was going on. I had never seen anything like it before (or since). I wanted a world that matched it in bizarreness, if not in subject matter. I sketched out the character, but couldn’t think of any plots, so I put aside that idea. Not too long after that I got into anime. In 1999 I created a character called Juliet Prime and began making comics and stories about her instead.

Mayday was very much a proto-Juliet. They both had similar designs — short in stature with short scruffy hair. They were also both heroines who were out to defeat a totalitarian. Like the early Æon Flux shorts there would be no dialogue either.

She also had a little walrus who followed her around. The setting was a Soviet-looking brutalist hellscape populated mostly by hominids and itinerant salesmen. That’s all I really remember about this proposed comic strip.

There are no drawings of what Mayday looked like, so I did this mock-up to show you, to the best of my memory. The walrus I coloured purple here because Rotor, the walrus character in the Sonic The Hedgehog comics, was the same colour.

Also, my niece has a little walrus bath toy that is also purple. Coincidence???

If you’ve read my book Freefall O’Malley (and if not, what are you waiting for?!), the above drawing of Mayday might look familiar to you. That’s because she never completely disappeared down the memory hole. In designing the character Anna Yamaha, I (probably unconsciously) borrowed several elements from how I remembered Mayday to look. So she never really went away, she was just floating around in the back of my mind, waiting to be found again.