So, why Brown Couch?

If you've glanced over the Brown Couch website you'll have some idea of what the show was about but there's more to it than that. (I like to think)

There's an ideology, a purpose of sorts - well there are probably quite a few but that's neither here nor there.

The name came about at a time when I was in my early twenties, living in a string of mildly shabby share houses with a bunch of other young twentysomethings with similar interests - namely sitting on the couch, drinking, smoking, watching crap telly and listening to good music, talking shite and having fun. Perhaps it was mostly a Melbourne thing but pretty well every share house I visited at that time (and many times since) seemed to have a brown couch. Given the dynamics of share housing - young relatively poor students, unemployed, etc move out of home and inherit whatever furniture they can from where-ever it is no longer wanted - I guess it makes sense that there was a surplus of Seventies furniture floating about. (Brown must have been huge back then)

There is another side to the Brown Couch name - it is rooted much more in the wanky just started uni and learning about cool new stuff vein.
In discovering the Dada art movement (a post World War One antiart kind of art), I loved the fact that the name of the movement (Dada, in case you have a memory like a goldfish) came from a child's word for Rocking horse. In some way, Brown Couch seemed to have a similar feel.

There are probably other reasons for the name (there usually are) but none leap to mind right now.

Brown Couch is about looking at the world and the ways that we look at (and listen to ) it.
It's about being able to have a laugh and put things in perspective
It's about celebrating ideas and provoking thoughts (at it's best - sometimes it's just about bad taste and having fun)
It's about the media and communication, where we get our ideas and our information and who controls these things and what we can do about it

It's about time I took my medication and had a liedown

The Brown Couch tv show lasted only ten or so episodes made over a couple of years (though we were one of the first programmes to air) on Channel ThirtyOne in Melbourne but the dream lives on and there is still lots more to say and do.

In time, Brown Couch will be a website with information on media, politics and other stuff which is interesting, fun, amusing and hopefully meaningful. Brown Couch will also be behind tv shows, radio, film and whatever else comes along - including this blog. (Thanks to Dee for the inspiration to start blogging - check out her day at her blog )

This is the plan.