The Man Without Qualities

Moved

2009-07-17T17:51:00.003+10:00

After a long while of thinking about stuff, then forgetting about stuff, then having Christmas, then letting 6 months happen, I've finally delivered on my promise to start a new blog. With its own domain.

My new website is at: http://www.withoutqualities.com/

This is not a new post

2008-10-23T23:23:00.002+11:00

I noticed that I'm still getting visits to this website, despite my lack of posting. Which is nice and all, but really, you don't need to. This is just a reminder that, if you want to keep up to date on blogs etc. get an rss reader. That way you'll know when pages like this finally get updated, and, until then, you can ignore it.

And ignore it you should - I won't be returning for a while, but when I do it will be the most amazing thing you've even imagined imagining.

Changes

2008-09-25T13:01:00.002+10:00

I've been hesitant to post recently, because, after about a year of this, I'm starting to think more about what I want from this blog, and what I don't want. Initially, the focus of this was band activity, but that in itself isn't much to write about, particularly given the fairly repetitive nature of gigging and recording.

I still don't have much interest in having a blog which is just personal info, and I still want the primary focus to be on music, but with a slightly different angle. At the moment, though, I find the format of this goes against how I think I could make it work.

In general I think posts need to be closer to daily than fortnightly (or monthly, as is the case now), but there needs to be a good distinction between minor stuff that gets thrown up, verses things I've actually thought about.

Subtraction and I Am Alert both have good ways of dealing with this hierarchy quite elegently: my blog does not.

Also, things like tags are a good idea but ultimately completely useless in their current form. So what's the point?

These things seem minor, but the fact is that the way this blog is laid out, and the way I publish posts works against me ever feeling like posting something, even when I have stuff I want to write.

So, I'm taking a break, while I figure out what to do.

Playlists

2008-08-29T18:07:00.003+10:00

I've been meaning to write a bit about the massive rehearsal and recording sessions with Potential Falcon that I recently finished, but, as usual, I got distracted.

And then, today, I noticed this little comment in the middle of an article on Coolfer, about the future of the album as a format. While Coolfer argues that the album is still the main format in which people purchase music, he got a reply from Aram Sinnreich, of the Wall Street Journal, that I though was kind of interesting.

Aram says that "neither the single nor the album product format adequately addresses the way today's music fans are actually listening.

The new dominant consumption format is the playlist. Only business models that address this behavior -- such as online radio, subscriptions, and ISP taxes -- will take full advantage of consumers' rapidly expanding tastes. The album -- ten songs by a single artist in a fixed order -- just doesn't cut it in this context. "

Whether or not this is true is something I won't pretend to know: people keep making various predictions about "where the industry is headed", and it's impossible to tell who's going to turn out to be right.

But it puts the artist in an interesting position.

As Coolfer points out, it suits both the listener and musician to bundle groups of songs together into an album: it's more economical for both parties, for one.

Also, most artists are at least slightly uncomfortable about just releasing "single songs" and no "album songs". For some this may be a way of covering up their mediocre song-writing abilities, but it is still a genuine concern. Writing a single that will be attractive to radio stations is a useful skill, but it would get tiring to try to make all of your songs fit that mould. Some bands made an art of the single, like, obviously, The Beatles, but for most bands some of their best songs aren't "single songs".

This may simply be because, if you like the work by any one musician, the songs you'll end up loving the most may often be the ones that don't get thrashed to death on the radio. But it's also because if you listen to an album 100 times, the catchiness of a single stops being as much of a great feature, as you come to appreciate the other elements in the music.

So, what about playlists? In some sense, it's like the problems with singles all over again: if musicians suddenly have their music bundled with other bands as the primary format, then won't they just need to write catchy singles and ditch all their other, possibly experimental stuff? That's the obvious answer, but not necessarily the only one.

If a musician was able to play it right, they could use the playlist format as a way to explore more diverse musical styles. An album usually has to have some sort of unifying structure, or it doesn't really work as an album. A performing artist often gets expected to put out some sort of similar product each time round, as this makes both record labels and most fans happy.

But if your primary format for putting out music was the playlist, couldn't you potentially write all manner of songs and find different playlists that would accommodate them? There's always going to be someone who wants to listen to that 10 minute jam piece (if it's good), and they might be someone who wouldn't otherwise buy your album, full as it is of 3 minute pop songs.

I'm still skeptical about the whole idea, but hey, I'm just thinking out loud (but not really, because I'm not talking while I'm writing).

Notation and Interpretation

2008-08-14T11:43:00.002+10:00

I've been reading an essay, if you could call it that, by Cornelius Cardew, about systems of notation and the interpretation of notation by the performer. If that seems dry, it's really not. Though I'm reading it for uni, it's quite funny, at least in my mind:

"I have heard people criticizing interpretations of music in a variety of ways, 'he played some wrong notes, but was faithful to the composer's intention', or 'he played correctly but seemed to miss the point'. Such criticism disturbs me (though I have often found it valid) because it implies that there is something behind the notation, something that the composer meant but did not write. In my piece there is no intention separate from the notation; the intention is that the player should respond to the notation."

Also, this:

"15 - The only criterion for a sound is: 'was the player expecting (intending) to make it?' If not, it was a mistake, and makes a different sort of claim to beauty. As a mistake, it comes under the criteria for action: mistakes are the only truly spontaneous actions we are capable of."

and this:

"19- Towards a music without structure! The 'feeling of structure' is not a very important feeling, I should say, and it is therefore fine if a note goes, say, flat or sharp at the end of a breath. It gives an apparent reason for stopping (the real reason, after all).

Ok, maybe not hilarious. But interesting, and entertaining. To me, anyway. Does anyone else think he's being funny in the first quote?

Copyright

2008-08-10T22:39:00.003+10:00

Greenleaf has an interesting little piece/discussion about music in the digital age (as everyone likes to call it), which is fairly common. Dave Douglas is pretty clued in to what's going on in terms of digital distribution, and as a successful jazz artist has an audience probably comparable in size to many small to medium indie bands, albeit one that's much more devoted.

Although the article is a little rambling, or seems that way in my current state, the thing that I noticed about it was this comment:

"Is copyright protection really helping you as a composer/author all that much?"

It's an interesting thought. Copyright seems fair to most composers and authors, but I wonder whether its intuitive fairness masks its impracticality, at least in the 21st century. Royalties pay the bills for a lot of rock musicians, particularly when they get older and they stop appealing to such a mass audience. So it would be a big risk to give that up, despite the fact that most musicians will never see a cent from royalties in the first place.

I wonder, what would happen if I gave everything I wrote and recorded away for free, if everything was immediately public domain. I wouldn't be able to collect any royalties, but that would most likely only be a problem if I ever became famous enough to earn them in the first place. Barring the nasty possibility of someone else taking my work and copyrighting it for themselves - which I'm certain is an obstacle you could overcome - I wonder what the other issues might be.

I'd be interested to try it, but I don't know what the implications would be, even for a small work. Can I write a song, record it, host it here and on sites like myspace and just say "here it is world, do with it what you will. I require no reimbursement if you choose to cover this song, record it on your own album, put it on ads, play it on the radio, sample it, edit it, etc."?

To some extent, it seems like this is already implied in most freely downloadable tracks, but the author isn't really giving up total control. Presumably they would want to be reimbursed if someone decided to put it on an iPod ad, for instance. But who gets offered that anyway?

Coolfer

2008-07-31T09:45:00.002+10:00

I just updated the sidebar, as you can see. I actually think it looks crap so I may change it, but the idea of having a display of recent posts is kind of good.

More importantly, I added a couple of blogs that I've been reading recently. Most importantly, Coolfer. Coolfer is a blog devoted to finding music industry news and analysing it with some level of depth. Which is good. Read about the kind of profit margins Live Nation makes, etc.

One interesting series of posts was about the idea of the long tail in music. While pop artists get the lion's share of profits, thanks to various circumstances it's been suggested that indie artists have more exposure these days and, thanks to the lower cost, may be making better margins for their labels overall. Coolfer disputes this, basing his arguments on statistics and surveys rather than wild speculation, which is refreshing. It's amazing how much even senior people in the music business conduct their affairs like some sort of voodoo: they rely on rituals that they performed on a previous band that became successful, hoping that the ritual had some part to play in that success. They never know, and it often seems like no one bothers to really examine what works and what doesn't.

Everyone just blindly wanders about, hoping that their album will sell, despite not knowing why any albums sell in the first place.

Tech Support

2008-07-30T16:01:00.004+10:00

Given that I've been away from this blog for over a month, I was planning to put something good down. And I've still got all of that brewing. But I couldn't resist this. Makes me happy to know that even rock stars have the same conversations with their parents as the rest of us.

In the Studio

2008-06-27T14:04:00.003+10:00

Yesterday we went into Eastern Bloc Studios to record four newish songs, as I mentioned last time. The drums had been set up the night before, so it was a painless experience going in to set up. Doing the drums takes time, as you could imagine:

We were in there from about 10 until 3, so it was great to get four songs down in that time. We just recorded the bass, drums and rhythm guitar parts for each tune - after we've edited those takes into good tracks we'll start adding keys, percussion, vocals etc. One of the nice things about how we recorded is that we did all the instruments at once, from start to finish with Rob just singing some guide vocals. It's nice to be so well rehearsed that we didn't even need to talk about what to play for each section and other arrangement stuff. Even though I was in another room from Jeremy and Gabe, knowing I was recording "live" with what I was listening to through the headphones makes a big difference. For one, you don't immediately stop playing if you make a tiny error. And even though I couldn't see them, I could still feel the interaction between instruments more than when playing overdubs.

It will be interesting to see how the tracks take shape in the next few weeks, as we start to play around with the mixing.

Still alive.

2008-06-20T14:01:00.003+10:00

I haven't been playing much music recently, as Plastic Palace has been gig free since the launch last month, and half of Potential Falcon is away in Canada at the moment, with Alex and the Ramps. So I haven't had much to talk about really.

Next week we're going to be putting down some drums and bass for a few new songs, some of which have been kicking around for close to a year now. Anyone who's heard us live over that time will have heard "Carrion", which has pretty much been the default loud song ever since we got it gig-ready last April. "Harvest Song" is from around August, I think, though I can't remember the first time we played it. It's the one with the electronic drums in it. I haven't been that happy with it in a way, but we recorded it live on PBS last week and it sounded surprisingly good. It can get a bit hard to tell how good something is from the stage perspective.

More recently, we've started playing "No Shame", and "Zeitgeist Blues" in most of our sets: No Shame pretty much instantly became my favourite song in our repertoire, and Zeitgeist is growing on me, though it took a lot of work to fuse all the elements together.

With those four songs we hope that at least one of them will turn out to be radio friendly. As so little of our album was, other than Empire Falls, and the brutal edit of Karaoking.

It will be fun to record with the band, as I joined after the album was already in the can last year. It should be a fun process, particularly as these songs still have some arranging to do. Hopefully I'll be able to link to them soon, or at least keep you posted on the process.

How it's heard.

2008-06-08T21:53:00.006+10:00

I was at the football the other night, and was sitting behind a self-appointed cheerleader for Geelong. Every so often he'd turn to the Geelong supporters around him and start the chant: Gee-long! clap clap clap. Gee-long! clap clap clap.

As I listened to it, I realised that there are a couple of ways you could hear it, in terms of a musical phrase. Do you hear the "Gee" as the downbeat, or as a pickup into the "long"? I think most people would think the former (I always did), so you'd notate it approximately like this:

But there's also the latter option: using the "Gee" as a lead in to the "long" as the downbeat, like this:

That's how the guy the other night started: by holding on to the "Gee" for a while, then accenting the "long". But this rhythm didn't continue. At some point during the chant, the emphasis moved to the first example, so that the "Gee" was clearly the downbeat. In order to notate it, you'd need to cut a beat out of a bar, probably like this:

This makes the transition by having a single 1/4 bar in the middle. It may seem really trivial, but I think this sort of thing is interesting. Composers of popular music often get criticized by doing things that are too complicated, like changing time signatures or keys. Sometimes that criticism is apt, but in some ways it's a bit misdirected. If you examine the natural world, or even the basic chants and songs that people come up with at sports events, it's generally more complex than a simple series of 4/4 beats in one key. In order to get that feeling in music, you have to play with things a bit.

Of course, we've gotten so used to pop music having strict, metronomic time and notes that fit a clear scale (without any "out of tune" notes, that it can seem a bit strange when we are confronted with stuff that doesn't fit that mould. Still, I like to think it's an avenue worth exploring.

The Launch Gig

2008-06-07T22:43:00.003+10:00

Yes, yes, I know.

Anyway, about the launch the other night. It was wonderful, thanks to everyone who made it to the East on what was a damned cold night. We had a great time, one of those really perfect nights where we came off stage and just grinned at each other, unable to believe that everything could go so right.

A reveiw of the gig is here (though he devotes more time to his chicken parma than he does to us...).

Some beautiful photos, too.

I have a few things kicking around my head at the moment, as always, so blogging is certain to resume, but I do have some other things to do, and with the imminent arrival of two of my favourite people, I may continue to be somewhat lax.

Deal with it mofos.

Album Launch

2008-05-22T15:25:00.002+10:00

We drove up the east coast two weeks ago. We played in Canberra on a Thursday night, then packed up and drove to Sydney that night. That was little tiring, but at least it meant we could sleep in on Friday morning, before heading off to an interview at FBI (the Sydney radio station - as far as I know we aren't wanted by the feds). That night we played at the Hopetoun - a venue we've always enjoyed. The Canberra show went quite nicely too, given that we haven't been there since April last year when we supported Alex and the Ramps (and my future band Potential Falcon, who I recently went to Canberra with too).

Then it was on to Brisbane. Along the way we saw some fairly lovely, bare landscapes:

As it all passed by.

This really is what we see most of the time on tour. Except for the odd stop. When you finish a show at 2:30 am and have to soundcheck at 7:00 pm the next night, 900 km away, there is little time for taking in the sights. Which is a shame. The only place I've seen in Brisbane is fortitude valley and, sorry Brisbanians, it's awful. The venues are lovely, but they're havens away from the drunken, aggressive crowds that roam Brunswick street. Having "fucking jew" yelled at me while loading a van after a gig isn't my idea of an awesome night, misplaced though the insult might have been.

On the other hand, the Seabellies had a gig the same night at the Troubadour, so we got to hang out with them, which was as entertaining as usual. They've got a gig here tomorrow night, which means that yet again we're in competition of sorts with them for crowds. One day we'll get to share a gig again, once our respective bookers and agents decide that they want it to happen.

Oh, and Melbourne launch tomorrow night (Friday, 23rd May).

Ambition

2008-05-13T14:46:00.002+10:00

I'm not really a fan of Hillary, but this bit sums up a lot of the sexist shit that people like to put out about her. Once again, the Onion is genius, even after 2 years.

Friday Sessions

2008-05-07T19:15:00.003+10:00

We went up to Adelaide last week, and before the gig had an interview on Radio Adelaide. At the same time, we did a live recording for their Friday Sessions. It's up here. Ignore the fudged note in the riff for the first song, my hands were cold or something. Still, overall it sounds pretty good for such a basic setup. The last song is a new one for us, called No Shame. Learn the lyrics so you can sing along with it on JJJ next year! How's that for no shame?

You are not alone

2008-05-04T17:18:00.002+10:00

The A.V. Club has a list of quotes by Kurt Vonnegut that they think are cool, or something along those lines. One in particular stood out for me, as it relates to writers and readers:

"Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.'"

This reminded me of an essay by Jonathan Franzen about what readers get out of reading literature. It certainly resonates with me.

Why I have no money this month.

2008-04-23T16:51:00.002+10:00

I accidentally bought an amp on ebay, because I thought it would go for more than I bid. Which was silly, because I don't need another amp. Also, because it's just the amp head with no speakers, to use it I have to get a speaker cabinet, which is expensive. Still, it's a pretty cool amp, made in Melbourne in 1964.

It took a while to figure out how to turn it on. It's controlled by the tremolo dial, which is strange. I thought the on and off labels meant turning the tremolo on and off. I was wrong.

It came with a cool little footswitch, though it doesn't seem that sturdy.

2:42

2008-04-17T23:50:00.005+10:00

Joseph lists some great songs that are 2:42 in length. So I tried it for myself, as you might see in the comments at his site. It's hard to dispute some of these:
Beatles: Michelle, Lovely Rita, Yellow Submarine
Blackalicious: Alphabet Aerobics
Bob Dylan: You Aint Going nowhere, If Not For You, Song to Woody,
Cat Power: Wonderwall
Elton John: Your Sister Can't Twist (but she can rock and roll)
Neil Young: Walk On
Puccini: Floria! Amore - as sung by Maria Callas and Giuseppe di Stefano
Tom Waits: Black Box theme

It's also worth noting some of the other songs that crop up in that category.

Brad Mehldau: Intro (Live in Tokyo)
Laura Mikkola: Icons, Op. 6: Kristuksen kaste (The Baptism of Christ)
Paul Kelly: I Was Hoping You'd Say That
Stevie Wonder: Have a Talk With God
Sun Ra: Batman and Robin Swing
Uri Caine: Red Eye
Mekons: Where Were You.

If you extend the time period to 4:35 to 4:45 you start getting a lot more Dylan, a lot more Beatles, some Beastie Boys, Zappa, Pixies. White Stripes, etc.

But the thing that's really worth noticing is this: if you look at that time period, you'll find a lot of your favourite artists. But I bet you won't find your favourite song by that artist particularly if they're one of your favourite artists.

That is, if you only like a band for one song, it will probably fall in that time period. If you like a large body of an artist's work, I'm betting (based on the sample size of one: me) that your favourite song won't turn up.

Ornette

2008-04-15T14:49:00.002+10:00

The New Yorker has a good piece about Ornette Coleman in their latest issue, which is mainly concerned with a recent concert he played at the town hall.

I was lucky enough to see him in 2006, an amazing concert that was marred by awful sound at Carnegie Hall. Three basses can do that to any hall, and it was only towards the end of the performance that the sound tech was able to get the waves of bass under control. Still, you could still hear past the technical difficulties to the extraordinary playing.

A lot of people find Ornette a bit hard to get into, which is understandable. One album I'd always recommend is Song X. Pat Metheny often plays music that I find pretty hard to bear, which is all the more upsetting given that some of his stuff is just sublime. One thing people who've only heard his group stuff might be surprised to discover is how great he is as an interpreter of Coleman tunes. On Song X, they play together with Charlie Haden, Jack DeJohnette and Denardo Coleman. It's an energetic, joyous album, that always makes me grin like a fool when I listen to it.

It gets a bit tough if you're not a free jazz fan a bit further in, but the first few takes are just fun.

Keystone

2008-04-14T22:33:00.002+10:00

Dave Douglas is doing it yet again, releasing a shitload of new music.

This time it's 8 sets recorded over 4 nights at the Jazz Standard, with his keystone band.

I have a copy of his previous series from the Jazz Standard, which was 12 sets over 5 nights. It's an amazing series of gigs that presents some of the best jazz musicians in the world at the top of their game. I'm looking forward to hearing this new stuff very much.

Overseas Love

2008-04-14T22:25:00.002+10:00

Cut Copy are doing plenty fine on their own, and I'm sure Pitchfork's review won't have them jumping for joy at the 8.8 rating. Still, I think it's nice to see that Australian acts do get some attention from the international press. What's particularly nice is that the review doesn't mention that they're from Melbourne, though they do mention a similarity to the Avalanches.

I think my distant (literal) friend Jason used to be quite partial to Cut Copy, though I've never paid them much attention. I may not have much choice, now that they've released their second album straight to #1 on the charts. Good on them.

Funding

2008-04-10T08:41:00.002+10:00

I had a fairly interesting phone interview with someone from the Canberra street press. It was interesting largely because she asked pretty probing questions about our satisfaction with the album, whether it was actually likely to be remotely successful, things like that. I'm not sure how it's going to look as an interview, because I struggled to not get carried away with some questions. Being on the phone meant that any silence she left made me feel like I had to keep talking about something, which was a little difficult.

One question that was interesting was about funding. We got a VicArts grant that payed for about half of the album recording, which basically meant that we were able to finish a full-length album as originally conceived, rather than a shorter album it was shaping up to be. We (not me, but the band) went into the studio about 5 months after the original date to record the rest of the material with money from the grant. So that was great. If you're on a major label, you don't pay for any of this stuff up-front, but if you're not signed, it's a pretty expensive process. We've also been lucky enough to get another grant to go towards publicity of the album, which has once again saved our bacon.

Her question was basically whether I thought that it was a good thing that we got this grant, or whether the government should be spending money on more important things. Which kind of floored me, considering this was a promotional interview in which things are usually (annoyingly) suck-uppy.

If there's a debate about arts funding in general, I'm always going to fall into the "passionately for" category, which is essentially what I ended up saying in the interview. I think it's tremendously important that the government funds the arts, as the benefits to the community are massive (often in more tangible ways than people imagine. Think of how much money real estate agents are making out of Fitzroy now, thanks to its prestige largely created by the artistic community).

But when talking about whether your own stuff should get funding, it gets a bit awkward - no doubt a dilemma that is at the root of why so many artists never apply. Do I think that our album contributes to the cultural life of Australia? Is that really a question I should answer?

Also, it's funny to think of rock or pop releases getting funding, as you tend to think about them as commercial releases. The band is, in the end, a commercial entity that we hope to turn a profit at some stage so that we can make a living from it. In that, it's no different from any other small business. Of course, the thing is, the government does support small (and often large) business as well. So why should it be any different for artists?

It's interesting that we hear of government bail-outs of big business fairly regularly, and people talk about saving jobs and all of that. But many people who agree with support for farmers for instance may be less keen on funding for the arts. The thing is, as a musician who benefits from such money, I feel like it's not really my position to contribute too much to the discussion.

The Album

2008-04-06T21:54:00.003+10:00

The album is out!

It's now been out for a week, but sightings are rare. It is rumoured to be in JB's catalogue, and it's been floating around review desks, but that's about it so far. Nevertheless, there's an album that's called "The Great Depression" by Plastic Palace Alice, and you can buy it from shops.

Not just shops, but online too.

You can get it from iTunes (non DRM iTunes+ which is nice, though we can't claim credit for that).

And you can order a hard copy through Inertia's website.

Or you can buy it at a shop by asking for it, and soon hopefully because you'll see it on the charts just above a new U2 album or something.

Or at a gig.

See how many options I'm giving you? Aren't I generous?

Detention

2008-04-05T11:32:00.003+11:00

Plastic Palace played at the Maribyrnong detention center on Tuesday night, to a crowd of about 20-30 people. I'd love to show photos, but of course cameras, mobile phones, etc. were banned from the place. The guy at the gate told us in a very friendly manner that we should probably keep those things in our car, because there are lots of video cameras around and if we got a camera out we'd be ejected in about three seconds. He was right, there were lots of security cameras.

Driving through the double gate (the back one closes before the front one opens, like an airlock) did feel a little scary, and having someone walk around the car with a mirror on a stick to check under the car (for explosives?) added to the hilarity. It was sort of like the airport though, where they need those signs up telling you that joking about terrorism isn't funny. People tend to react to situations like that with humour, but we kept a lid on it.

I tried my best not to expect anything in particular from the place, or the people, but I certainly wasn't expecting the feeling of the room we played in. It was a carpeted room with low ceilings, with everything painted in those beige and other neutral colours that you immediately forget. Facing the performance area - which was made clear simply because by being a semi-circle of musical equipment and speakers on the floor - were a number of couches in loose rows. I spoke to the organiser and started to describe how I thought it felt and he preempted me: "like an old persons home". Which was exactly what I was going to say.

The sound was surprisingly good, given the minimal equipment, and the gig went really well. We were a bit subdued, which was only natural, I thought, given that there weren't many people there and they all seemed a little bit bemused by the whole event. They did clap appreciatively though, and one guy let out loud whistles after each song. It was clear that they all enjoyed the performance, which was nice for us. I don't think anyone would confuse this group with our target market.

After the gig a couple of the inmates came up and said thanks, but most of them walked away pretty quickly. Em said that she felt like they were being shuffled out by the staff, but I was packing up and couldn't really tell. One guy was speaking to Rob about how much he enjoyed it, and how our singing "Happy Birthday" to Lise (yes, she's an April Fool) reminded him of his son, whose birthday it was, too. His son does live in Melbourne, and they do see each other, which at least meant we didn't all cry when we heard that little story. A member of staff stood close by during the whole discussion, no doubt to monitor it. He was a lovely guy and very nice to us and all of that, but it's sort of like the friendly customs official at the airport.

I spoke to Link a bit afterwards, who was the guy who booked us and ran the nights. He used to volunteer guitar lessons their after a friend of his spoke about his time in detention from overstaying a visa. Link said that he's started playing little concerts, but pretty soon decided that they'd probably enjoy hearing someone other than him play every week, so now he tries to get as many bands through as possible. A little while ago Weddings, Parties, Anything played (apparently some of the inmates told staff that we were better, so take that!), and I think Jeff Lang was going to play next week.

Link also told us about the yoga classes and knitting groups and other things that other volunteers ran. Clearly a lot of people give a lot of their time doing this sort of thing, which is lucky if the Government doesn't want to provide services for these people. Of course, it doesn't matter how many concerts you see. If you're in detention you're waiting for your life to start again. A gig from us, no matter how awesome, doesn't quite compare to having a home.

Spaghetti

2008-04-02T13:01:00.002+11:00

Every so often around April Fools day, dad has brought up a story he remembers on the news about spaghetti crops dying out due to drought. Turns out that it was in 1957. It's still a good joke.

Some interactivity.

2008-03-23T14:38:00.003+11:00

I heard "Grease" on the radio a couple of months ago, which was a bit of a blast from the past obviously (yes, it was 104.3, I can't always listen to RRR now, can I?). The first part of the verse to that song is pretty much perfect. The chorus just sort of coasts along though. Which got me thinking about other songs in which the chorus doesn't hold its end up.

Usually a chorus is the hook, of course, so even if it's not as well written or as interesting as the verse, it still tends to have a certain thing that makes it stand out. Some songs just have shit choruses though, and clearly lots of songs have shit verses and good choruses.

One song that I always think of is Radiohead's "Anyone Can Play Guitar", from their fairly boring debut. It starts off with some killer Johnny Greenwood craziness, and the verse itself is pretty good in a dark, angry kind of way. And then the chorus comes and turns it all to shit. At least with "Creep", from the same album, they realised that nothing was going to top the original chord progression, and so they just stick with it for the whole tune.

There are others too, which I can't think of at the moment. But I want to hear some suggestions.

What songs have verses that you adore, followed by let-down choruses? Or the opposite: what songs are barely worth listening to except for the chorus?

The Press

2008-03-22T14:44:00.002+11:00

So we've started getting some reviews of our album that's coming out at the end of March, and it's been quite entertaining to read. If you're reading this blog it's probably because you know me, in which case I expect you to buy the album whether it's any good or not. But you might be interested to see some of the things said about it so far.

First, a good one, from Throw Shapes, who call us "an exceptionally talented, bold and mature band". Aww, shucks. On the other hand, they seem to have not noticed that the blog Stuff White People Like is a joke. So maybe you should take it all with a grain of salt...

And, to show that I'm prepared to point out the bad stuff as well, here's a good old fashioned pasting from The Dwarf. The killer quote here is this:

"No, you can’t blame this band for trying to be a bit more interesting than a standard three piece, by bringing as many instruments as a high school student can get access to, into their repertoire. Indeed none of the songs appear dull by lack of instrumental variation, that arises from them being played without flair. What you can blame them for is giving the illusion of being something more than mediocre."

Aww hell, you can't say we didn't try to maintain that illusion. Unfortunately it looks like our cover is blown.

Get us on the radio

2008-03-19T15:32:00.004+11:00

As I mentioned a little earlier, we've got a new single out called "The Girl Who Cried Wolf" (see what we did there?). It's gotten a little bit of radio play already - Kingsmill was nice enough to play it on 2008 the other night - but we need more god damn it! Our vanity demands constant radio attention, so if you have a second to indulge us, I'd love it if you could request it over at triple js site.

Nothing more.

These Guys Are Going to be Huge

2008-03-18T12:12:00.004+11:00

Empire Falls is featured in this weeks Out of 5 a weekly collection of songs picked by various people around a loose theme, this time being "These Guys Are Going to be Huge". Which is nice (there's no archive by the way, so if this isn't the week 16 -22 March 08, you're going to see something else). It may have something to do with me having lent Pete a microphone last week, but then again, it may be because we're the best band since Talking Heads. It's hard to tell.

I suspect that I'm more likely to get huge from going to boot camp twice a week than from being in a band, but I'll take what I can get.

Tour Junkies

2008-03-18T11:23:00.002+11:00

It's been a bit quiet around here for a couple of months, but all that's about to change! I hope.

Alice has left her Plastic Palace for a little bit, after a fairly exhausting tour schedule that meant driving up and back to Sydney twice in about 10 days. We had the lovely experience of playing 6 gigs in 7 days: Belgrave, Ballarat, Brunswick, day off, Sydney, Sydney, Melbourne. It was 8 gigs in 16 days, as the next weekend we went back up to NSW to play in Katoomba, then Sydney again.

Which was tiring but tons of fun. The Belgrave, Ballarat, Katoomba and most recent Sydney gigs were with the lovely Brunettes from New Zealand. They were playing all the laneway festivals before heading off to Brooklyn for a week or so, then to a tour in Europe, so they had it a lot harder than us in the whole travel thing (check out their touring schedule in the link, it's insane). Musically, they were awesome. They'd tightened up noticeably from gigging heaps just in the break between gigs that we had, and watching their set each night was great fun. Have a listen to "Brunettes Against Bubblegum Youth" on their myspace and if you're not singing along by the end I hate you. Or we just have different taste or whatever.

Hanging out in Katoomba with them was lots of fun too, especially given that they brought their travel companion, Monkey.

He was a surprisingly expressive little gorilla, who managed to keep me cheered up at the very least.

I had a chat with Heather the lead singer and discovered that we'd been living about a block and a half away from each other a couple of years when I was in New York, which was fun to find out and sad to know that she was heading back there, while I remain in Melbourne. Oh well, there'll be time for that when we're world famous of course.

In between out two stints with The Brunettes was with Canadian band Stars, who were also out here for laneway shows and their first tour of Australia. I actually hadn't heard of them until we found out we'd got the support slot, but I'd heard their current single "Take me to the Riot" quite a bit on JJJ. I think they assumed that not many other Australians had heard of them either, because they played at 350 - 450 capacity venues which all sold out in short order. Their fan base had clearly been waiting a long time for their first tour and were queued up early to see them. Which was good for us because it meant that we too got to experience playing to packed rooms - a rarity for many support bands.

Stars have been around for quite a while and it was hardly surprising that their initial reaction wasn't to invite us into their posse for late night drinking. I'm actually surprised by the number of bands who tour constantly who do get on so well with us when we're supporting them, as I'd imagine it would all get a bit blurred. Having said that, by the last Melbourne gig we'd all got nice and friendly, and they were enthusiastic about us going over to play in Canada, which would be awesome.

Here's proof that we're important...

Of course, we didn't actually need the passes, as we were at the venues from soundcheck, and security wanted to stamp our wrists anyway. Still, a nice souvenir of our biggest support so far. Hopefully this is one step closer to opening for Feist.

Demands

2008-03-10T16:33:00.002+11:00

So I've been on tour heaps and cool stuff like that. So yeah, I haven't posted much because I've been sitting in vans for many hours, playing in such exotic locations as Belgrave and Katoomba.

Still, it was all good fun, and I'll be back soon properly I'm sure.

One thing I realised is that I never posted our second video clip. This is for our second single "The Girl Who Cried Wolf" and was shot over two days, then put together over many more. We did it all in front of a greenscreen to try to get some of that Hitchcock rear projection thing going on, which was interesting. Not that I was in it for very long, but it was pretty strange making faces for someone when you don't really know what the shot will be used for. Still, it was a fun thing to do and all that.

It was also interesting to be involved in something which was made shot for shot like a film is made (I assume). The last clip was much more a choreographed routine that was filmed from different angles, whereas this was built up from very specific shots, with no continuity during shooting.

So here it is: Enjoy.

He is it

2008-02-21T11:45:00.002+11:00

I hadn't listened to Wayne Shorter in a while, until this morning. I must remember to do it more often. If you have a spare seven minutes, have a listen to this:

Empire Falling

2008-02-18T12:46:00.002+11:00

Being the empire of A & R reps.
This article is a great piece about the excesses that people enjoyed in the music industry in the 90s.

There are a couple of things I find interesting about the death of such an environment. The first is that a lot of major labels still act as if artists can attain a similar lifestyle if they do everything they're told, when it's simply a lie that keeps young kids happy to earn $20 a week for three years while trying to make it.

The other thing is that the shift from albums to touring as the major source of income for a band seems less possible in Australia. The Australian indie scene is remarkably well-served by radio stations like JJJ, RRR, FBI, PBS, etc. Much better than in the states, in which the radio waves are ruled by Clear Channel. So exposure to indie albums is much more possible for the average radio listener. At the same time, there are so few cities that bands can play compared to the states. Festivals help, because headline acts can get decent sums of money and good crowds, but there are only so many shows you can do on the east coast each year, before you start seeing serious diminishing returns.

We've got an album coming out at the end of March, and we're not expecting to make any money from it. It will be interesting to see what proportions of our income are derived from what sources. It seems to me that very few people in the industry know anymore what to expect in this regard: you hear wildly conflicting stories from different people. It's like every band is finding their own way, if they do find one at all.

Genius

2008-02-07T09:15:00.000+11:00

Most people I know will, at some point, get sick of my constant references to The Onion. Which is tough for them, because I'm going to keep doing it. Its brand of humour is pretty much spot on for me most of the time.

This piece though, is just outright nuts. I love it to bits.

In Lieu of a New Album...

2008-02-05T16:30:00.000+11:00

...from Joanna, here's a cover of one of her many amazing songs, Emily. Not by me, I've spent the past year learning to play the harp parts to Cosmia on guitar, which has been difficult enough.

The cover is certainly a lot more heavy handed than the original, and I can imagine a lot of her fans not liking it. But for those of you who find her voice and manner a little hard to take (Fuck you, by the way, you're wrong and you know it) this still highlights the beauty of the original song. A simple three chord song (as far as I can think of without actually listening to it) that somehow sounds fresh, and lyrics that bring tears to my eyes.

It's by a guy called Christopher Perdue, who I think you're allowed to have never heard of.

Post Rock

2008-01-29T15:36:00.000+11:00

This article was brought to my attention (by an alert individual), mainly due to a certain novel that rears its head.

Still, it's an interesting short piece that looks at both the politics of being in a touring band, and the question of what's left when a band breaks up. The latter being something that's best not thought about too much by people in bands. If you don't become Dylan, The Beatles, Radiohead or even Sonic Youth, there's precious little a band leaves in the way of a legacy. Would anyone's lives be any different if Things of Stone and Wood had never existed? Or Coldplay?

Not that legacy is really that important: most people don't do their jobs expecting that people are going to remember their contribution twenty years later. But you often kid yourself that creating music is Important. Is it still important to add yet another album to an already over-saturated market?

MLK

2008-01-22T09:48:00.000+11:00

Fake Steve Jobs is a genius. That is all.

Carlos

2008-01-20T01:42:00.000+11:00

A couple of choice quotes from this interview.

"My only alliance is to the heart of humanity, like Desmond Tutu, like the Dhali Lama, like Nobel Peace Prize women."

Huh?

"Where I would begin, if I had access to the money that Paul Allen has or that Mark Cuban has, I would get my own TV channel on satellite. The first thing I would show is a woman giving birth. That’s the first thing I would show morning, afternoon, and night"

Ok...

"My dream is to create something more important than the World Cup or the Super Bowl, which is to invite Nobel Peace Prize speakers, women and men, especially women who over the last five years have won the Peace Prize in Africa, the Middle East - they speak, we play. Kind of like a forum. Let’s say Mr. Desmond Tutu speaks, we play “Imagine” after he finishes. A woman speaks, we play “One Love” or “No Woman No Cry”."

Aah, I get it now.

Air

2008-01-17T08:55:00.000+11:00

Many criticisms of the MacBook Air are entirely valid, and I'm not certain that Apple got it right in the same way they got the iPhone so right. It was never going to be what I want from a computer, but I think it would have suited more people if it were a little thicker, but with a smaller screen - more like the 12" powerbook that remains a favourite amongst those who bought them.

Some of the criticisms seem to be a bit funny though. A lot of people seem to be saying stuff like "I can't believe they sacrificed an optical drive and a whole lot of ports just to make it thin", but I think that's missing the point. They didn't leave out the optical drive, firewire and ethernet ports because they couldn't figure out a way of fitting them in such a small case, they left them out because they didn't want to have them.

Having just a usb port, headphone jack and DVI out was a deliberate statement from Apple about what they expect and want it to be used for. It's not designed to be the only Apple computer you own. It's not for people who want to edit movies or run Logic Studio on (though if I could afford it plus the massive premium of a 64GB flash drive it would be a pretty cool laptop for live performance). It's clearly designed to complement Apple's new movie rentals store, so it's not for watching DVDs on. Unfortunately - for people I thought might appreciate a low cost, low specced small laptop - it's also not for students who don't need the power of a MacBook but would love something they can carry around in their bag.

I think the reason why so many people get upset when Apple announces new products is because it hurts to know that you're not a target market for them. Time and again lots of people are reminded that Apple isn't that interested in chasing their dollar. I'm a bit like this with restaurants. Lots of really nice restaurants aren't that interested in catering to vegetarians. Which is their choice, but sometimes you feel like you're missing the main game if you eat at such places.

Fortunately for me, if I want to eat at an amazing restaurant, three, one, two does cater for me very well indeed thank you.

It's a shame that for those who like beautiful design and a user interface that doesn't make you want to stab people they don't have many options.

Going with the Flow

2008-01-16T17:55:00.000+11:00

I have a tendency - like many others I would think - to work very hard at things which aren't what really require my attention at that time. Some people call this procrastination, but it's not only that. Sometimes the work is important, it seems a shame to simply think of it as a time-wasting exercise.

I'm particularly good at this sort of thing when it comes to practising guitar. There are certainly things that I feel I need to work on at the moment. For my rock bands, while I'm technically proficient enough to get by, there are particular aspects of my picking that I'm not happy with, for instance. For jazz, which is increasingly becoming a hobby of mine that I'm unlikely to play much of in the near future, I have a lot of work to do in getting more comfortable hitting chord tones and voice leading my melodic lines.

What I don't do much of when I perform is fingerpicking. Which is why I'm spending most of my practise time going through my book of 120 right hand studies by Mauro Giuliani. I've really been enjoying developing my right hand technique to the point where it's less a random splattering of fingers whenever I try to go without a pick. However, I don't have much use for the techniques in my daily gigging life.

Learning a musical instrument is a very open ended pursuit, which has its good and bad qualities. A positive aspect of it is that, while developing my right hand technique isn't useful for me right now, it will no doubt be something I utilize later especially once I'm more comfortable with it. As I change my focus fairly regularly, I can be confident that at some stage I will come back to other aspects of my playing that need attention - I always do.

However, a downside is that for the average musician, an instrument is far too complex to master every aspect of it in ones lifetime. That's a good thing really, but it means that you are defined as a player as much by what you don't work on as by what you do. And sometimes I feel like, by giving my attention to things that aren't necessarily taking me in a direction I want to go, I'm taking valuable time away from things I'd really like to get better at. I'm never going to be a great classical guitarist, so why not spend this time working on stuff that I could be very good at, rather than spreading myself thin? On the other hand, surely the best way of finding my own voice with the guitar is to not force myself to abandon potentially interesting avenues of exploration. And focusing on a non-existent end point rather than enjoying the process seems to me to be a sure fire way to end up hating playing at all. It doesn't matter how many gigs I get, I'll always practise more than perform, so I might as well enjoy that part of it too.

And yes, I'm being fairly unsubtle in my attempts to tie this in with life in general. So sue me. But it's something that we all have to deal with. Do you try to make a map (which can never end up anywhere), or do you just keep turning down roads that look interesting, (even if you end up where you started)?

Everyone Loves to Talk About Hillary

2008-01-10T08:44:00.000+11:00

I've been thinking about the U.S election a fair bit, not so much because I care about who wins, but because there are interesting things to think about. I've never been a fan of Hillary Clinton, but I get uncomfortable about the kind of shit that people seem to enjoy throwing at her. This article sums up a lot of very good points about the extreme amount of sexism on display from so many, including people whose opinions I generally value (via I am alert, as usual).

I think Hillary would make a bad president. She's conservative, is clearly more interested in pandering to business groups than making any large scale changes that would help working class Americans, is less pro-war than the Republicans but not in a way that criticizes the overall imperialist attitudes of the U.S, and I never hear her speak much about fixing education.

The thing is, these are criticisms I could level at every other Democratic candidate. I don't think any of them will make a good president if I go by those criteria.

Here are some words and phrases that people connect to her that make me want to punch them: ambition, calculating, lack of emotion, too much emotion, aggression, masculinity, femininity, bitch, tough, heartless, etc. Anyone who uses these words and thinks that they apply more to her than to every other candidate can go and get fucked.

Way Down in the Hole

2008-01-08T12:08:00.000+11:00

Khoi Vinh has a great little piece on his blog about The Wire: an HBO show in its 5th and final season in the States. I've just finished watching the third season, and once again I had to watch several episodes a day until I reached the end far too soon. It's a brilliant show about life in Baltimore, from the perspective of cops, drug dealers, addicts, longshoremen, councillors, teachers and lawyers. I don't think I've seen a show that's so convincing in its portrayal of all types of people who live in a struggling city. There's a great piece about it in The New Yorker too.

Unlike Khoi though, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss The Sopranos as being a lesser show. He's right in saying that The Wire feels like it's more real in its characterisations, and that death is given much more realistic weight. However, I think that The Sopranos was always intended to be a more stylised show than The Wire is. For one thing, the very premise of dealing with a Mafia boss of New Jersey needing to have therapy is a much more darkly comic setup than anything The Wire does. The characters in The Sopranos were always close to caricature and in the case of people like Paulie Walnuts and Silvio Dante were way over the line. What was so amazing about The Sopranos is how often a show that was essentially a spin off from Goodfellas managed to say so much about ordinary people's lives.

Carmella was one of the most fully fleshed out characters on any show or film I've ever seen. She was a deeply flawed person who was utterly believable. AJ and Meadow grew up in front of us, in interesting, sometimes surprising ways. Similarly, many other characters constantly evolved to show different sides that meant your sympathies were constantly shifting as you learnt new things about each person. And unlike Khoi, I think the final episode was one of the best pieces of television I know.

The Sopranos and The Wire are both missing things that the other show has, but that's a necessity, not a fault. David Simon doesn't get to have three-episode-long dream sequences in which one of the characters suddenly becomes someone else, because it would be silly. In The Sopranos, however, David Chase can use something like that to take another look at the kind of people his characters are. Similarly, The Sopranos couldn't get away with the mundane, pathetic bar behaviour that Bunk and McNolte get up to, because it wouldn't fit with the stylised nature of other scenes.

I agree with him about his conclusion though, that there is some amazing television going on at the moment. Shame we never get so much of it in Australia (though we're doing pretty well at the moment too, thanks Chris Lilley).

In the Money

2008-01-07T23:08:00.000+11:00

So Radiohead's album just hit #1 in the UK charts, apparently. This is not exactly a surprise, but Fortune magazine has a bit of egg on its face. While everyone else saw the online release of In Rainbows as, if nothing else, a savvy decision by a band who knew what they were doing, Fortune ranked it no. 59 in their 101 Dumbest Moments in Business (via).

Gee, if earning $3 million in a month from a download, and then getting #1 in the album charts is a dumb moment in business, I want to know what the smart decisions were.

That's Why I Don't Like Cricket (That's Why I Love It)

2008-01-06T18:39:00.000+11:00

Wow. I feel so sorry for India, who played so well throughout the test and got fucked over by the umpires in a couple of really important decisions. And I feel especially sorry for their captain Kumble, who had to stand at the non-striker's end and watch Clarke destroy the tail end. Still, full credit to an Australian team that just refuses to settle for anything less than a win, now 16 in a row.

Caucus

2008-01-04T09:46:00.000+11:00

So both Make-believe and The Talent Show think Edwards is going to win the Iowa caucus, beating favourites Clinton and Obama. While I still think this is unlikely (though I haven't really got anything to back this up) I also feel a bit guilty for kind of hoping it will turn out to be true.

Given the other two candidates, it feels a little bit dirty to want the rich white guy to win, especially as he's not a great candidate by any stretch. It's just that whenever I hear anyone take any sort of progressive stance on issues, it's Edwards.

On the other hand, my feelings about this election are similar to when Latham was running here: they can all just go and get fucked.

UPDATE: Go Obama. That's a pretty predictable result, and I'm not surprised to see Huckabee win. All the Republicans are complete freaks though. Interesting to see that Edwards did indeed win out over Clinton. The caucus vote is such a weird process that I'm certainly not the one to make comments about what it all means. America is one large step closer to having an African American president though, which has to be a good thing. Surely.

Separated at Birth?

2008-01-03T15:56:00.000+11:00

Our man Gabe:

And their man, The Edge:

Happy New Year

2008-01-01T11:19:00.000+11:00

The Wrap

2007-12-29T16:07:00.001+11:00

So I was writing a rambling post about music that I’ve discovered this year and all that, but it got out of hand. There’s a reason why people make top 5 lists: it stops long boring musings on random crap. So I’m recompiling what I was writing into awards and lists. So here it goes.

Award for band that most affected my life in 2007: Plastic Palace Alice - without which I would have had a very different year.

Top played tune on iTunes that wasn’t required listening for my course: Olivier Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time, I. Liturgie de Cristal.

Manipulated top 5 played to be more representative of my general listening habits: Joanna Newsom: Colleen, Feist: My Moon My Man, Cold War Kids: We Used to Vaction, Wilco: I am Trying to Break Your Heart, Bill Frisell: Billy in Prison.

Top 3 strange albums: M.I.A: Kala, Patrick Wolf: The Magic Position, Alex and the Ramps: Pisces vs Aquarius.

Bands I discovered or rediscovered in 2007 that I should have listened to years ago: Talking Heads, Wilco, Pixies, Spoon.

Composer I am glad to have finally found: Morton Feldman.

Longevity award for album released before 2007 that I still listen to a lot: Joanna Newsom: Ys

Amazing longevity award for album that is still my favourite after 3 years: Bill Frisell: Have a Little Faith.

Best Melbourne band that I’m not in: Alex and the Ramps.

Best gig: I honestly can’t remember. Did I not go to any gigs this year? Fuck.

Non musical awesome: Geelong winning the flag!

That’s all I’ve got for the moment. So, what were your highlights of the year? What were the albums and gigs and bands that made you dance, or cry or drop your jaw in stupor?

Decrying

2007-12-26T12:46:00.000+11:00

This sums it up for me. It's all very fun to say how Christmas has gotten too commercial, except that it's as common a phrase as "merry christmas". Wow, stores hype up christmas to get us to spend more money at their shops? No!

Hope you all had a lovely day yesterday. I ate, then ate some more. Then listened to Feist, who is apparently my dad's favourite artist of all time now. Can't say I blame him.

The Scene

2007-12-17T15:02:00.000+11:00

Late on a Sunday night, inside after a barbecue. A few people sit in the lounge room on sofas and chairs. A table is covered in the remains of lunch and dinner: bits of bread, crumbs from corn chips etc. A foosball table stands in a prominent position. A nature documentary plays with the sound down, projected onto one wall. Most people cut between watching a scene or two in between conversing with their friends. Prince's "Little Red Corvette" plays on the stereo, to the delight of one particular character, HM. He stands in the center of the room, dancing and singing along clearly feeling the effects of the jagermeister he drank earlier in the evening...

HM: (singing) Little Red Corvette. You need a love that's going to...

Suddenly, in the middle of a particularly wild dance move, HM slips on a newspaper, spins around and falls down, crashing into the foosball table on the way down. Everyone else looks bemused, if not surprised. HM stands and attempts to regain his dignity, but is unsuccessful.

Rock and/or Roll

2007-12-16T03:04:00.001+11:00

Gross.
Originally uploaded by Nick Giusto

It's worrying that I can tell that, due to the neck pickup, this is most likely a G&L ASAT special, with a replacement Seymour Duncan in the bridge. Having said that, the blood is still what catches the eye at first. Ow.

Overheard

2007-12-15T14:34:00.000+11:00

At a rehearsal yesterday I overheard this from a member of a well regarded but awful hip hop/jazz/pop group:

"I reckon we just need to lay down a fat fucking 808 beat over the top of it".

Yes, it is true that, in the words of Beastie Boys, nothing sounds quite like an 8. 0. 8 (money making, money money making, super disco, disco breaking). Still, sometimes it's not enough to save a song at the last minute. They then went on to start talking about what brand of synth was used in The Life Aquatic soundtrack, to get "some of that shit going on".

A Respite

2007-12-15T14:10:00.000+11:00

All rain is good rain in Melbourne. Still, The Age didn't time their cover very well.

Led Zeppelin

2007-12-12T09:05:00.000+11:00

Apparently, they rocked. Which is surprising really, but so good to hear. The chances of them coming to Australia any time soon are about 0, but it's nice to know that they're out there, even if they never play another gig.

You need coolin, baby, Im not foolin,
Im gonna send you back to schoolin,
Way down inside honey, you need it.
I'm gonna give you my love.
I'm gonna give you my love.

Wanna whole lotta love?
Wanna whole lotta love?
Wanna whole lotta love?
Wanna whole lotta love?

(...)

Shake for me, girl
I wanna be your backdoor man.
Hey, oh, hey, oh
Oh, oh, oh
Keep a-coolin, baby,
Keep a-coolin, baby.

The words

2007-12-11T13:36:00.000+11:00

I don't think that lyrics are as important as often seems. When a song is good, I almost always think that the lyrics are good, and when it's bad I tend to hate them. Even if it's the same song. The Byrds version of Mr. Tamborine Man is the kind of song that makes me glad I didn't grow up in the 60s. Dylan's original is breathtaking, even though he's an example of a person whose lyrics are more highly regarded than his music.

Anyway, some people don't like Thom Yorke's lyrics, which is understandable. But because I like Radiohead so much, I tend to go along with them. The Panics, who I'm happy to admit are a good band, just don't grab me, and I can't get over their lyrics. What does everyone else think? Can you judge a song by lyrics? Can you judge lyrics just by reading them?

Radiohead: Pyramid Song excerpt.

I jumped in the river and what did I see?
Black-eyed angels swam with me
A moon full of stars and astral cars
All the figures I used to see
All my lovers were there with me
All my past and futures
And we all went to heaven in a little row boat
There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt

The Panics: Don't Fight it excerpt.

I have no other way
There is a price to pay
For what the man will say
That I was a million miles away
In a promise full of steam
It could take no vacant dream
To persuade me to believe

I think just don't fight it, don't fight it, don't fight it
If you don't know what it is

I left my heart in places
Forgot everyone of their faces
And tried to navigate a broken path
Of which I may have helped create
In any incident, this is never no accident
To stand alone and
Let the silence make itself at home

Ah, give it up,
Those dirty tricks
No quick fix, can undo it
Ah, give it up
I won't resist
My answers always this

Done. Almost.

2007-12-10T15:29:00.000+11:00

So, after a day of intensive soldering and cutting a nut from scratch (badly enough that I'll have to redo it) I now have a working guitar that I put together myself.

This is the guitar in full.

This is the headstock. The company is USA Custom Guitars, I didn't just stick that on there to show how much I love America. A lot of people find Fender decals and stick them on to make them look like actual Fenders, which I don't get. The reason why I got this company to make the parts is because they're great, and I would never be able to get comparable quality from Fender without paying twice as much. So I got their logo instead.

This is the body. I like those old pastel colours from the 50s, which is why I got the pink done. Yes, it was a deliberate choice. The pickups sound great.

This is just gratuitous.

I've already gigged with it and it sounds fantastic. Not sure whether I really need to use three guitars at gigs, but it's a nice option. It fit in well at rehearsal with Potential Falcon as well, and I reckon it will be perfect for gigs with The Guilts. It's a nice cross between tele twang and a fuller, deeper sound, so it's a great jazz guitar for those of us who get a bit over the typical Gibson hollowbody sound.

Coming together

2007-12-05T15:36:00.000+11:00

So today I got the neck and the bridge pickup for my guitar. I got the pickguard a couple of days ago. As far as I can tell, all I have to get now is a nut and some wires and I'll have everything. Yes. Now I have to relearn how to solder.

Post Show

2007-12-04T16:34:00.000+11:00

So last Friday we played at the Spiegeltent, which was pretty exciting for all of us. Walking into that space certainly made us feel like we'd stepped up since our days of playing at Pony, though we are certain to step back down for our next few days.

It was great to have so many people come to a gig that cost 3 times more than any other that we play, so thanks to everyone for doing that. Search Flickr and you'll find some photos if you weren't there. Ignore the idiot in the pen-stained shirt.

Most bands that you see live at any gig other than headlining at the Forum (certainly not simply supporting) or Rod Laver Arena (yes I'm being parochial, deal with it all you people directed here by google while searching for Robert Musil novels) don't make any money. Everyone knows this in a way, but I don't think they really understand it, unless they are friends with a lot of musicians. So, I'll break it down.

Let's say that you're a good local band, who plays once a month, at a medium sized venue, something like the Rob Roy used to be. You get a good crowd, which in Melbourne is between 100 and 200 people, unless you're famous. Let's also say that the venue doesn't take any money from the door price, though many do. Tickets are $10 and there are three bands. The headline band would get about $4 from that, with the remaining $6 split between supports. So, assuming it's a good gig and 200 people turn up, that's $800.

Not a lot, sure, but if it's a four piece band that means taking home $200 each, so that's not so bad is it (I hope you're not stupid enough to be in a 6 piece)? Well...

Out of that $800, take about $100 out for a soundguy. That's how much they should charge per band, unless you're lucky to know a generous one. So that's $700.

Subtract about $50 for posters. Also, subtract the cost of renting a rehearsal space, assuming that you have one before each gig (which is less often than usual), which is about $60, so round off advertising and rehearsal to be $100.

Also, if you're lucky enough to be a manager, you're taking off another $150 or so, leaving you with about $450 profit, not including any travel expenses or the possibility that you'll have to pay for your own beer.

$450. That's the only gig you can do in your home town all month, or else you'll make significantly less per gig. You could do an interstate gig, but you'd have to deduct another $350 in petrol from that figure for the drive to Sydney.

This isn't a whinge, by the way, though it may sound like one. Most bands are happy to play for this amount of money, because playing music is all they want to do. But it's impossible to make a living from it. Logic would suggest that if people were making enough money from gigging to survive that they would have more time to dedicate to their craft, thus giving better performances. Look at the difference in skill between current AFL players and Cricketers from their pre-professional counterparts. Does the same thing happen with musicians? It's hard to tell.

The point is, I felt like I was asking a lot of people to fork out $30 for a ticket to see our band, but if we were to make any money, we'd need to charge that much every time we played. What would the Melbourne music scene look like (and sound like) if every gig cost at least $30? Would anyone pay to see live music? Would it be more or less diverse?

Venting

2007-11-29T16:10:00.001+11:00

Some writers who contribute to music blogs that I link to are completely full of shit, all of the time. As I am gutless and may depend on (un)said blog's favour, I won't say any more. Just that spending your whole time positioning yourself as the arbiter of what is cool in music and what isn't doesn't necessarily mean that you have a fucking clue about anything.

There.

If it doesn't quack like a duck...

2007-11-29T13:04:00.000+11:00

This is pretty much my response to the Kindle as well.

The Show

2007-11-27T09:35:00.000+11:00

Zefrank has posted a few videos about the writers' strike and other stuff. Which is great, but each one reminds me how much I miss his daily show. These three are of particularly high quality though, possibly because he has way more time to make each one. If you don't know what I'm talking about, well...

The Election Post

2007-11-27T08:13:00.000+11:00

Not a particularly big one though.

I had a few chats with my conservative friend (who I'd link to but he's too busy being in love to update his blog) about what defeat means for the Liberal Party. Obviously it's becoming more and more of a shambles as each day passes and that really couldn't make me happier. But before I get accused of just wanting revenge (though I suspect anyone who reads this would forgive me for that), I actually do have other reasons for being happy about it.

Since the 1980s Labor government, Australia has veered steadily to the right on economic issues. As I read somewhere recently, running a budget deficit is now politically impossible, as it gets seen as economic mismanagement. Privatisation is hailed as a good thing, and governments spend their whole time pushing the economy as the most important thing to look after. This way of doing things has ben so successful that now both major parties have ended up in the same spot: Kevin Rudd wins votes by pitching himself as an economic conservative. Whether or not this is a good thing is actually beyond me to know. I tend to feel uncomfortable with privatisation for the sake of it, largely because I think the push to privatise comes from an ideological love of the free market that isn't necessarily supported by the results (and yes, William I know that you don't call this sort of thing conservative, but that's the label its ended up with).

As for social issues, there's also been a big drift to the right. However, while Rudd is socially much more conservative than I am, he still comes into office with a much more liberal and progressive attitude than the outgoing government. Not only that, but with the increase in support of the Greens and other factors, it feels like Rudd has a mandate to drag Australia further left on many social issues.

What's interesting is that as the Liberal Party falls apart, it's the socially liberal members who are coming into more prominent positions. Say what you like about Malcom Turnbull, but he's a far sight more progressive on social issues than Howard was. It seems that the Liberal Party is looking to rebuild with a more liberal structure than before. Now, a strong opposition is a good thing for democracy, but I think that this weakening and re-setting of the Liberal Party a little bit to the left is even better, because it means that the debate ends up being between two parties in which the center ground is much less socially conservative than it was before.

The main problem with this could be who holds the balance of power in the senate, of course.

Still, while we're in early days, I can only be optimistic that we may be heading for a more progressive society. Let's see what happens.

Dinner for a hot day.

2007-11-19T22:22:00.000+11:00

Notice how some kinds of heat are quite nice on a hot day? I love a hot cup of Orange Pekoe. Lots of people immediately bring out the barbeque. Today, I got out the chargrill pan. We don't use it that much, because we don't have extraction over our oven and the smoke gets intense. Of course, I remembered the advice that it only smokes because of the oil. As you shall see, not using oil was a very good idea.

So, dinner. It was a cous cous salad basically taken from a Jamie book. Fairly loose though. Here's how it went:

I charred some Red peppers on the hob, but didn't take a photo. Next, I heated up the pan and did the asparagus. See, no smoke.

When it was done, I drizzled it in a bit of oil and left it to cool.

After taking the peppers off the hob I put them in a bowl and covered it with cling film, to help get the skins off. Once they were ready I slit them open to help them cool down...

...then I skinned them and left them to cool more as fillets.

Meanwhile, I marinated the onion in some red wine vinegar, oil, lemon juice and salt and pepper. This is a trick I picked up from Nigella that helps take the harshness out of raw onion, and makes it nice and tangy. The trick is to let it marinate for as long as possible. I left mine for about an hour, but it will taste even better tomorrow in the leftovers.

You can't have too many herbs in this salad. I used big handfuls of basil, parsley and mint, and some chopped spring onions.

Lots of bowls to wash, but it beats scrubbing a saucepan.

Here is a glamour shot, accentuating the lovely asparagus.

The dressing is just lemon juice and olive oil. It helps to use nice stuff, but you have to use heaps so it's a bit expensive to use the $50 bottle (and if you don't have a $50 bottle of olive oil you don't know what love is)

Soak the cous cous in cold water for 15 minutes. It's firm but soft, and all round great. Finally, combine everything, and you have...

...a perfect summer (or globally warmed spring) dinner!

Laser Beams

2007-11-17T15:25:00.000+11:00

Alex and the Ramps are having an election eve gig. What's cooler is their ad for it. I'll quote from their email as an intro:

We shall be playing at Roxanne Parlour (Level 3, 2 Coverlid Place, in the the City) for their 'Us Vs. Them" night, and if your understanding of "Us" is a collection of illustrated children's book animals shooting multicolored lasers out of the eyes and "Them" being some inquisitive children being killed by the aforementioned eye-lasers, then perhaps you'd like to see the flash animation ad I made for the show here: www.aleksandtheramps.com

Check it out.

The Time is Out of Joint

2007-11-17T15:21:00.000+11:00

Seriously, what the fuck? I don't know how it happened. The hands are in the right position, so I can sort of read it, but it's pretty disconcerting.

Back in (the) Black

2007-11-17T15:04:00.000+11:00

So I've been away, largely because I've actually been working a kind of 9 to 5 job for the past couple of weeks. As it meant spending all day working on webpages, the last thing I felt like doing when I got home was to update a blog. But never fear, no respectable job could hold me for long. So I'm back in the usual routine, this time with some pocket money to buy christmas presents.

I also spent a few days this past week in Port Campbell, with Potential Falcon, recording and working on new material. It was fun to get away and the drive was beautiful - all green grass and cows lunching. We got some good work done. I've still only played on gig with Falcon, but after this session I'm beginning to feel more like an actual member of the band. Plus, it's nice to hang out with people who are into nice food, rather than McDonald's (sorry Rob).

We did more playing scrabble than playing music, because it always takes time to set up for recording, plus Simon writes on the fly, which was a pretty interesting process to watch.

Some photos of my new peeps:

Simon testing microphones, and generally enjoying being shirtless.

Don looking fairly tired. Probably from having to hit a snare 90 times in a row while Simon moved microphones to get a good sound. It was worth it: Don's drum takes were great straight off, unlike mine where I spent many takes getting simple parts down.

Jo creeping up behind Hugo. Hugo is the guitarist who lives in Canberra who I'm sort of replacing, though he'll still play when he's around. He's a much better guitarist than me, and a great pianist as well, so it was good to have him around recording all the difficult stuff.

So now I'm back, and getting ready to go to Adelaide with Plastic Palace next week. Then, it's the Spiegeltent on the 30th. Check our myspace if you want to buy tickets. It will be great fun. We'll have some strings to back us up.

My Working Life

2007-11-10T11:05:00.000+11:00

Spending all day on the internet this week has left me fairly uninspired to add anything here. For the sake of holding back the tide of tumbleweeds, I'll try to make some sort of post before I go away tomorrow.

Starting to come together

2007-10-31T14:36:00.000+11:00

I've been gradually buying random parts for my guitar project over ebay recently and when I was in Sydney I bought a bridge for it. Today was the most exciting day so far, as the body arrived in the mail.
In the spirit of nerdy apple computer unboxing galleries, here's a more concise version.

As you can see, it's missing some fairly vital components, but if I'd ordered the neck at the same time I would have been stuck with import duty. I'm off to buy some solder now, so I can start wiring it up while I wait though.

The biz

2007-10-31T14:28:00.000+11:00

We all know that the music industry is fucked. It doesn't seem any less fucked when you're involved in it, let me tell you.
This is required reading. It says a whole lot of stuff I can't be bothered saying right now (via).

What's interesting is the revelation (I hadn't heard about it anyway) that the new Radiohead album will have more tracks on it when it's released as a CD, and that the manager has explicitly stated that the download was a marketing tool. I felt irritated enough when I discovered how low quality the files were after I downloaded my copy, but this pisses me off even more. It's shitty to think that one of the few mainstream bands who seem to understand anything about the way forward for album sales used such a great oppurtunity to screw their fans. Anyone who paid for the download should not fork out for the album when it comes out on CD. To anyone who does: you've been had.

No excuses

2007-10-31T14:09:00.000+11:00

There don't seem to be a whole lot of reasons not to own a mac these days. The Green guide recently reviewed a few different desktop computers for general family use, and not only did the iMac get the highest score for features and ease of use, it was also easily the cheapest of the bunch, in one case over $1000 cheaper.

Now there's this, which points out that the laptot that runs windows vista the fastest is, yep, a macbook pro (via. Which is amusing.

I've been a mac user for ever and for a number of those years I knew I was paying a premium for the kind of useability I wanted. Which I still think is worthwhile. I still think it's funny how people prefer to pay less for something which they end up hating to use, simply because there are more features (microsoft office is a great example of this, as software that's full of features nobody uses, and is horribly expensive for what most people use it for, which is writing basic documents).

Now, however, Apple has turned it around. Sure, they're still a high-end computer manufacturer - they don't offer any ultra cheap computers like Dell - but if you pick the computer that you need rather than what you'd like it's hard to get a better deal (I'd love a Mac Pro, but I'd spend my whole time feeling guilty for not using a tenth of its potential).

This is all geeky I know, but hey. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a computer nerd at heart, though relative to my sister I'm a technophobe.

I've really only been thinking about this because my Macbook is struggling under the weight of the 47GB behemoth that is Logic Pro, so I'm lusting after an iMac. To all of my wealthy benefactors: argue amongst yourselves about who gets to give me one.

Burn

2007-10-25T13:17:00.000+10:00

So, two nights ago I was making a fairly lovely pasta with peas, spinach and broccoli. I picked up the pot and the teatowel I was using to hold it somehow caught on the stove top, making me stumble. Which was funny, because now my hands are all red and hurty.

So yes, I feel like an idiot.

A few bits from the tour.

2007-10-23T17:51:00.000+10:00

So, as I said before, the whole tour thing was pretty tiring. I drank far, far less than I would have if I'd been at home, which is either good or depressing depending on how you look at it.

I only have decent photos from the Globe gig in Brisbane, as I was running around a bit too much at the others (or napping) or tired or just not in the mood).

The show opened with Mcisko, who is Helen formally of Red Breast, accompanied by percussion. They were brilliant and all of us are keen to do more shows with them when the chance comes up. Helen may have been scared off by the gushing coming from the male members of the band though.

Next up were our old pals Cuthbert and the Night Walkers. This is Richard, looking dapper as usual.

And his backing singers. The band as a whole were great fun to hang out with, and fairly wild. Imagine these three standing over you pouring wine down your throat, chanting "one of us!" as you lie on the floor of a van in the venue carpark.

If you can do that, then you will know how it was to be this man, our lovely drummer. I was being much more responsible, which had nothing to do with being designated driver at all.

Needless to say, it was a fun night and we'll be glad to tour with them again.

The headline act was the Rocketsmiths, but I was stuck at the merch table and thus didn't take any photos. They really seemed to relax with their home crowd though, by all accounts they put on a great show.

Itenerary

2007-10-21T22:12:00.001+10:00

Saturday.

10:00 AM: Wake up in Brisbane after gig at The Globe.

11:00 AM: Leave Brisbane for Yamba

4:15 PM: Arrive in Yamba, have a nap, set up for gig.

9:00 - 9:30 PM: Wait for sound engineer to arrive. Despair. Set up using karaoke mics.

9:45 - 10:30 PM: Play gig, and try to find something to play whenever the vocal PA cuts out due to us being too loud.

11:00 PM: Leave Yamba

Sunday:

7:00 AM: Arrive in Sydney and go to sleep for a few hours

12:00 PM: Leave Sydney

10:00 PM: Arrive in Melbourne dead tired.

She Belongs To Me

2007-10-16T22:22:00.000+10:00

She's got everything she needs,
she's an artist, she don't look back.
She can take the dark out of nighttime
and paint the daytime black.

Empire Building

2007-10-13T16:47:00.000+10:00

It's very exciting going to iTunes and finding a single of ours for sale. How much is a song worth? Forget what I said a few days ago, it's $1.69 Australian. Empire Falls was semi launched as an EP earlier this year, but now we have the publicity machine behind us. Or something to that effect.

By the way, we're playing at the Rob Roy tonight before heading off on tour to Sydney, Brisbane and Yamba. Come along to see the last gig at the Rob Roy ever, as it's closing for good after tonight.

Follow the Leader

2007-10-12T15:07:00.000+10:00

"Who is the more foolish: the fool, or the fool who follows him?"

George Lucas wrote shit dialogue, there's no doubt about that. Still, despite the clumsy repetition I still think that Obi Wan has a point. So I advise Kevin Rudd to heed the words of the Jedi master.

Seriously, the only good reason I have left for preferencing Labor above Liberal is that if I give them each the same number my vote for the Greens will go unrecorded.

Here is a very quick list of a couple of recent issues in which Labor could have taken a principled stance on and, in my opnion, won votes in the process:

Aboriginal Reconciliation - you know you're playing catch up when Howard gets in first on indigenous issues.

Speaking out against the insane attempts at military interference in Aboriginal communities in NT.

Maintaining their previous policy against the death penalty.

Blasting Kevin Andrews for any suggestion that Sudanese migrants were not fitting into Australian society and at the same time introducing new programs to support refugees trying to start their lives again.

Opposing the pulp mill in Tasmania, or at least making the potential environmental impact the major reason for deciding whether it was a good idea or not.

This is not even scratching the surface. Rudd, how I loathe thee.

Ape

2007-10-12T08:56:00.000+10:00

So here's how the EG gig guide chose to list us for tomorrow night's gig at the Rob Roy:

"Arcade Fire-aping pop sextet, with Cuthbert and the Nightwalkers and The Rocketsmiths".

Just for the record, I remember hearing an Arcade Fire song once, in Canberra before a gig. They sounded fine. I hear they're a great band, and when they tour Australia we'd love to play with them. And when U2 comes back to Melbourne we'd love to play with them too - we might be a better match than Kanye.

Granted, our single was a little inspired by Arcade Fire. Still, this is an invitation to whoever wrote the gig guide listing to come to see us, as I suspect you haven't yet. If you still think we sound like Arcade Fire, well, you get to buy me a few rounds of beer. And then I'll get abusive.

Aping. Sheesh! (don't worry, I'm not really bitter). Now that I think about it, I think there's a "the" in front of their name.

How much is a song worth?

2007-10-07T16:32:00.000+10:00

Everyone's covered this already of course, but it's still worth thinking about. It was great timing of the RIAA to sue a woman $200,000 for sharing 12 songs at the same time as Radiohead releases an album where you get to choose how much to pay for it. So, is a song worth $10,000, or is it worth $1?

It's a trick question of course: songs aren't worth any money at all. Music is one of the most important things in a lot of people's lives, even when they don't directly engage with it or listen "actively". But its very importance makes it difficult to turn into a commodity. Before the days of recordings, musicians got payed for their performances if they got payed at all of course. This made sense: you're not paying for a song, you're paying someone in order to support them so that they can play music for a living. It's a system that's always been prone to difficulties and a lot of artists are uncomfortable with even that arrangement, worrying that by playing to live they're always in danger of lowering themselves for the sake of a few bucks. Still, in general it's a decent system. You pay me money so that I can concentrate on writing, practising and performing so that I can keep making good music. In return, you have a nice night out and hear some things that, hopefully, move you in some way.

It's pretty obvious that recordings are no longer what they once were. A tiny percentage of artists make any real money from album sales now, and that includes those who are making a living from their music. It's still worth recording albums of course, as it's the only way to get heard and get people to come to your gigs. So why not just view the cost of recording as a marketing expense? Why not just record an album and give it away to whoever wants to listen to it? Or instead, why not sue someone $200,000 for sharing it?

Dave Douglas sets it down here.

iConcertCal

2007-10-06T15:04:00.000+10:00

If you use iTunes and you like music (ha!) you should consider downloading iConcertCal. It's a free little calender that runs through the visualiser in iTunes (you know those freaky moving lines that you never activate?) for concert dates. The cool thing about it is that it browses your music library and finds concerts by people whose music you own, which makes it more relevant than most gig guides.

It's not great for Melbourne yet - the only gigs it found for me are crowded house, augie march (the same gig) and Billy Bragg (at Flemington Racecourse!) - but probably more useful is that it also has a calender for upcoming album releases for all the artists in your library too. I now know that during this month we'll see album releases from Jack DeJohnette, Keith Jarrett, Neil Young, Sonny Rollins and David Bowie.

Layers

2007-10-06T14:55:00.000+10:00

It's pretty geeky, but I've quite enjoyed watching a bit of layer tennis. Each person has 15 minutes to construct an image that builds on or in some way incorporates bits of the previous image. The second match was on earlier, and while I didn't actually like any of the images it's scary to see how quickly people can mash together visual ideas and actually create some sort of narrative.
Maybe someone should do this with music: write a song and the next person has to build off one of the riffs, or a bit of the melody etc.

The Process

2007-10-04T00:00:00.000+10:00

There's a big difference between writing a song and arranging one, though until I joined the band I never really thought of it that much. When you're playing acoustic by yourself you basically arrange it as you write: you figure out not just the chords, lyrics and melody but also exactly what type of each chord to play, the way you're going to strum it, the structure of verses and choruses etc.

It's interesting being involved in a process in which the writer brings a tune in for the band to be arranged. A set of chord changes, a melody and lyrics don't really add up to a whole song. One of us might get given a riff to play, or a bass line or a drum groove to start with. Then we work on that for a few times through. The drum groove gets swapped for a different one, the riff gets handed to the keys so the guitarist can play an arpeggio, the bass line gets morphed to lock in with the drums.
Then the verses get swapped around, a chorus gets dropped, the melody gets harmonised by another voice.
It's such a clash of competing ideas that it's amazing there are so few fights. My approach is generally to just start working in parts that I like and wait to see if anyone notices what I've changed. Sometimes it's obvious and I'll either get a look of "what the fuck was that supposed to be?" or an acknowledgement that what I added was good. Other times it's a subtle thing that no one else notices, so I know I've got some leeway in the future for changing it up. Both my guitars probably sound much the same to listeners, but to me they each suggest different ways of playing, different techniques to use.

So then the song becomes ready to gig, after a long process of fucking around with it all. And that's really just the beginning. Once the song's played out you immediately hear it in a different light. You figure out what doesn't work and, even if you really like that bit, you drop it in favour for something else. You try to find a spot for it in the set and sometimes it just gets dropped from the set list because it isn't working at that point in time. One of our favourite tunes at the moment is a newish one that we played a few times and it never quite worked. We took it back to rehearsal and really barely changed anything, but when we brought it back into the set it became one of our most popular songs.

Tom Waits' album Orphans has exactly the right title. We have plenty of orphans already and we haven't even released our first LP. We're bringing a few out to play in rehearsal at the moment. It will be a while before we know whether to save them, or put them back in the drawer.

Greatest Team of All

2007-10-02T17:16:00.000+10:00

I'm starting to come down from the high of Geelong winning the premiership, but I'm still feeling pretty good about the whole thing. Posting may remain light for a few days while I soak up the euphoria.

We are Geelong, the greatest team of all.
We are Geelong, we're always on the ball... and so forth.

I blame the internets

2007-09-27T14:51:00.000+10:00

Part of the problem with spending all day inside a small dark room with little natural light and the smell of petrol creeping in from the laundry in the next room while you practise guitar is, of course, the fact that you're always so close to the dreaded internet. Hence this blog.

Also hence me embarking on a project to build a guitar. Of sorts. I'll be doing very little woodwork and not really even much soldering. I ordered the body from a company in the states last night and when I feel enough time has gone by to escape duty I will order the neck. In the meantime, various components are turning up from ebay.

Pictured are tuners (for tuning), neck plate (for keeping the neck on), electrosocket (for plugging in) and of course knobs (for turning) up to 11. Which would all seem very manly - especially the knobs - except that the guitar's going to be pink. Trust me, it will look awesome. For many, it will also look very similar to guitars I already own. Fuck you, I know what I'm doing with my money.

MAG

2007-09-23T23:25:00.000+10:00

This guy is playing here Next Sunday night for his CD launch. I still consider Steve Mags to be my guitar teacher, even though I haven't had a lesson from him since before Christmas I think. I'm still getting through material he's taught me though, so it sort of still counts.

I started learning from him before I really knew what playing jazz guitar meant and within a year or two got pretty into it. Now it seems the music I'm playing is closer to what I was before I started learning from him, but that's how he wanted it most of the time. Steve always kicked my arse about staying true to the music that touched me, rather than pretending that Charlie Parker was my main musical influence. Pretty quickly Steve himself became one of my main musical influences, and he remains one of my favourite guitarists of any genre or era.

I heard a track from his new, solo guitar album tonight on Jazz track, which was lucky as I haven't heard much from him for a while. He's launching the CD at Bennett's Lane and I bet it's going to be an amazing gig. One of my favourite gigs ever was Steve playing with Julien Wilson and Stephen Grant a couple of years ago - a beautiful combination of guitar, tenor sax and piano accordian. I'm looking forward to seeing him play again after quite a while of not seeing much jazz at all.

Cats

2007-09-22T12:12:00.000+10:00

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaa(breathe)aaaaaaaaaayaaaaaaahooooooo!

See here for a more sober analysis of last night

I am very hoarse today.

knowledge knation

2007-09-19T12:10:00.000+10:00

This is hardly a surprise, but it's still depressing reading. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out the commonwealth funding for Universities is a good idea. Julie Bishop noted, however, that these results are wrong because it counts HECS and other government loans as being paid for by students, rather than government funding. Yeah, that is unfair, because when the student's paid the loan back to the government it shouldn't count as their contribution.

Fuckers!

Priorities

2007-09-17T20:23:00.000+10:00

Not much to blog about recently, so I haven't.
Every waking hour is filled with thoughts about the football. I'm scared and excited at the same time.

Video Hits

2007-09-13T18:39:00.000+10:00

Empire Falls is a single of ours that we've had a bit of radio success with, and a month or two ago we shot a video clip for it. It was directed by Martin White, with his theatre group First Impressions and was shot by Cobra Kitten. The whole shoot was fun and it was great working with the kids (most of them would hate being called that, but hey) who had way more enthusiasm for the single than we did, seeing as we've played it at every gig for almost a year. Anyway, the clip's finally up on youtube and I love it. There's a whole lot of very cute projection techniques going on.

Monkeys

2007-09-12T11:48:00.000+10:00

The amount of time it takes for me to realise whether I like a song or not is inversely proportional to the amount of radio play it gets. This can be good for discovering little-played music, but with bigger bands I tend to discover them years after everyone else has. I'm still not sure about the Arctic Monkeys, but I'm listening to Favourite Worst Nightmare at the moment, and, if I'm not mistaken, they're pretty fucking good. Yeah, I know, everyone else knows this (although this album had mixed reviews), but hey. It's nice to hear singers who have a bit of dexterity. The number of words he manages to squeeze into Flourescant Adolescent is just fun.

Number Crunching

2007-09-11T21:43:00.000+10:00

How to make yourself depressed:

1. Open a spreadsheet document and create entries for each day of the past 6 months.
2. Get your latest bank statement. Enter transactions into spreadsheet program
3. Tally up your net gains or losses for each month
4. Calculate your average monthly losses
5. Start thinking about menial jobs to save yourself from bankrupcy.

That is all.

Paper Scissors Rock

2007-09-11T12:07:00.000+10:00

We're playing a gig with The Paper Scissors next week at Ding Dong, which I suspect will be a lot of fun. They're about to embark on their album tour and I'm glad we get to play with them.
I actually only discovered their music when they asked us to play this gig, so this will be the first time seeing them live. I've been hearing a lot of their single "Yamanote Line" on TripleJ quite a lot recently though, which is awesome.

One of the fun things about being in a band is getting to play with lots of other really good bands, but also hearing about them in the first place, as until recently I haven't exactly been an avid TripleJ listener. I still find the majority of music on the radio depressingly boring, but I'm under no illusion that this is a recent phenomenon. Still, there are plenty of bands playing great music of all sorts, and if you live in Melbourne there's pretty much always going to be a gig on somewhere that's worth seeing. Given that I've just come off a weekend of three gigs in a row, I'll admit that the last comment was entirely self-serving though. Get out and support local music! Give me your money!

Food Chain

2007-09-08T12:11:00.000+10:00

Played at the Forum last night. It was great fun walking back stage and looking around a venue that I'd never really expected to see the other side of. We were on so early that not many people were there, certainly not the full and screaming crowd that Something For Kate had, or even Deloris, who were the main support.

The concept of support band is pretty stretched when you play a gig like this. It was obviously given to us as a favour, as they don't expect you to get anyone there to see you. We were more the background jazz band playing while the guests get seated. But we played pretty well I thought, and the people that were there seemed to enjoy us.

The funny thing was that playing there just made it all the more obvious how far away a headline gig at a place like that is for us. We played well, but we clearly weren't as comfortable up there as the other bands, and it was funny to immediately get off stage and blend in with the crowd fighting to see more of the real bands. Plus, the money was shit. We didn't even get a rider. So, like I said, it was a favour, and one that we were glad to accept. If we get old and the band doesn't get any further, at least we played at the forum. One day we might even deserve to.

whipping boys

2007-09-04T21:34:00.000+10:00

What's amazing about this post is not so much the initial post but the number of reasoned comments posted afterwards.
It's about America, of course, but so much of it applies here. What pisses me off about Howard's attitude towards gay marriage is the sense that so much if it is based on political pragmatism, and that's exactly why the Labor party isn't going to advance the issue either.
Apparently 10% of the population is gay, but unfortunately most politicians have realised that substantially more than 10% are fucking homophobes who like nothing better than to make other people's lives harder due to their fucked up sense of morality.
And for people that don't think that gay marriage is a big issue, well, you're wrong.

But the point that ioz makes is that it's not just the right who are so infuriating in this issue: it's the left wingers who pretend to be in favour of gay rights but are just as embarrassed and disgusted by the idea of actual gay sex as their opponents. They stand up for gay rights in principle, as long as they can keep it all in the abstract. We all love our Will and Grace type homos because they're curteous enough to keep their sex lives private, or, better yet, non-existent.

And I don't think Kevin Rudd is the answer to anyone's prayers on this issue.

Revisionism

2007-09-03T22:12:00.000+10:00

So apparently archaeologists have discovered that the Gauls were a lot more technologically advanced before the Roman invasion than previously thought. According to the archaeologist interviewed here that means that Asterix will need to be rewritten, as it is "based on the typical image of the Gauls which has been passed down through the centuries, one of a prehistoric man who lives in the forest".

Umm. Does this mean that the whole magic potion thing was real? And that all their names really were things like Unhygenix and Geriatrix? I hope they don't find that this wasn't true either, or they'll have to make some pretty extreme changes to the comics. And if it turns out that fights between the Gauls and Romans didn't end up with a whole lot of bashed Centurions making wise cracks about being hit by a menhir, I just don't know what I'll do.

Riot

2007-09-02T15:54:00.000+10:00

To celebrate the new season, here's a reenactment of the premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. It may seem a bit silly, but this beautiful piece actually caused three days' worth of rioting in Paris. It's hard to imagine a time when a musical performance could inspire such passion. Last night I saw Bertie Blackman and the support band spat beer into the crowd, some of which ended up in my eye. Didn't cause a stir.

Reading habits

2007-08-31T17:17:00.000+10:00

Maybe Sudan needs to have some sex scandals.

Friday night Frisell

2007-08-31T17:09:00.000+10:00

This man is just my ideal guitarist. That is all.

I studied literature at university.

2007-08-29T15:16:00.000+10:00

Which helps when reading William Faulkner. It doesn't help a bit when trying to understand contracts though. Jesus Christ, I've got no fucking clue what any of it means. On the plus side, I'm reading a contract, so that means something surely.

Out on the Weekend

2007-08-27T23:44:00.000+10:00

Got back from Sydney last night, after what was a pretty great weekend all round. We had our first gig in ages at the Espy on Friday night, which was lots of fun. We'd had a couple of rehearsals, but we haven't played out in about a month, which is easily the longest break from gigging we've had since I've been in the band. It was good to play to a nice crowd who were really into us, and to remember how much fun it is playing live.

Less fun is getting up three hours later to drive for 10 hours to Sydney. The drive up was fine, but exhausting and by the time we loaded in at the Hopetoun at 6:30 or so we were all buggered. I was nearly asleep on my feet and was in a pretty foul mood. We all knew it was a pretty important gig for us though. The head of a label was there, plus some other random important people, and the Hopetoun is the venue that you just have to play.

Somehow we pulled out a great gig. And not just great, but one of those "oh my fucking god this is awesome" kind of gigs. It didn't hurt that the gig was sold out and there were people standing outside looking in and dancing while watching us. So yeah, despite the tiredness I'm pretty damned happy.

The drive back was filled with talk about the future and other filthy things best kept between me and the others. What happens on tour stays on tour and all that. I took the picture above in Holbrook on the way home. No photo of the famous submarine though.

Seriously, one of the most interesting things about going up to Sydney so often is how well we're getting to know each town along the way. Each time we go up we stop at different towns, though some we revisit. Holbrook, Tarcutta, Gunning, Glenrowan, Gundagai, Albury, Wangaratta. It's funny how much the locals play up their role to us too. They see that we're city folk, and make jokes about how different their life in the country is. It must be funny for them too - seeing every group of unshaven boys in their 20s in their skinny black jeans and sunglasses on their way to give a shot at fame. I wonder how many bands in our position they see, how many become famous and how many are never heard of again. Sometimes you stop and another band is their at the same servo and you can tell right away.

On the Road

2007-08-25T01:27:00.000+10:00

Just got back from super fun gig at the espy. Was nice to play again after a fairly long break. It's 1:30 am though, and we're leaving for Sydney at 7:00 for a gig at the Hopetoun with Des Miller. Good times.
I hope I shall have something for the return post.