Tuesday, February 06, 2007

the end of an era

the blogging was going so well too, and then i crashed and burned!! lol. try to be more regular!!!

Fave new songs at the moment:

Riot in Belgium - La Musique
New Young Pony Club - Ice Cream (Van She Remix)
Muse - Knights of Cydonia
Kasier Chiefs - Ruby
Snow Patrol (yes snow patrol!) - Set fire to the third bar


Can't believe i just posted about snow patrol! Ahhh!!! but it is a good song. : )

Monday, January 22, 2007

Big Day Out!!!


Streets
Blinded by the Lights
Weak become Heroes
Fit but you know it
If I wasn't Famous
Orginal Pirate Material


Kasabian
Shoot The Runner
Reason Is Treason
Sun Rise
Light Flies
Cut Off
Empire
Processed Beats
Last Trip
Club Foot
Stuntman
L.S.F. (Lost Souls Forever)

Muse
Knights Of Cydonia
Starlight
Butterflies and Hurricanes
New Born
Supermassive Black Hole
Hysteria Map Of The Problematique
Invincible
Time Is Running Out
Plug In Baby
Stockholm Syndrome
Take A Bow

Tool
Stinkfist
The Pot
46 & 2
Jambi
Mantra / Schism
Opiate (extended edition)
Sober
Lateralus
Vicarious
Ænema

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

4500km + some.. Part 2

Days 4 & 5 - Melbourne - Phillip Island
Song: True Live - TV and Freestylers & Pendulum - Fasten Your Seatbelts.
Food: Dodgy burgers, even dodgier kebabs, Quick Eze
Beverage: VB from a can (gross) and contraband Jack Daniels!

Waking at 5am, we expertly negioate the suburbs of sleepy Melbourne and head south west towards Phillip Island and our New Years' party plans; the Pyramid Rock Festival. Trip is smooth as with the only one minor issue. Preparing to have the car searched for contraband items i.e fireworks, bbq's, drugs, animals and most importantly alcohol! Amy; thinking little about the consquences of being caught, decides the best option is to hide several stubbies in the camping chairs and placing a whole lot of shit on top of them. Penny more wisely has two back-up plans. 1. bottle of Jack Daniels wrapped in a jumper shoved right under the seat; and 2. Hip Flask in door pocke, covered with road maps and the like. We begin to totally freak out when we discover people's cars, vans, motorbikes are ripped apart and searched like a visit to Long Bay jail... We are out of the car and the search is on. Phew.... the guy misses the Jack Daniels in jumper & hip flask in front seat. Shit he moves the camping chairs, and 'clinkity clink', "what do we have here!" he says, looking at us like we are total criminals. Nervous laughter, "....oh shit, Penny would you look at that, my cheeky brother must have put them in there!" I feel like the worst person in the world. He then insists a thorough inspection of the boot, including the spare tire, but alas does not find the other contraband items! "Ahhh sorry about that mate" I stutter, "yeah have a good one hey", jumping in the car and taking off so fast that I nearly tear Penny's arm off in the process.

Whoa what a heart starter at 8am in the morning! Shaking we proceed to set up camp in tent city and decide it is the right time for a sweet tasting Jack and Coke, whilst re-telling the story with much exaggeration to the neighbours who are impressed at our smuggling feats. The festival is set on one of the most scenic coastlines in Australia, cliffs and blue ocean surround the main stage, with around 10,000 eager punters all camping armpit close to each other.

Bands only worth a mention will get a write up!
Cassanovas - Melbourne trio absolutely rock a small, early afternoon (and us semi drunk) crowd. Next up is the best band we see all festival, again Melbourne based trip hop, hip hop, jass, funk outfit; True Live. Great performance when you can combing Cello, Double Bass and Violin with Hip Hop lyrics and make just about the entire crowd bounce up and down. Plus play a Rage Against the Machine cover with the above said instruments and sound wicked. Karnivool rock an enthusiastic crowd and sound perfect, crisp and clear. Biggest disappointment who must get a mention, Silverchair, for being totally lame, hopeless, flat and so crap we left halfway through the set. Bad, just all bad! Coming back to the festival we finished off with Mylo! yah! who played an awesome set including some of my most fave songs of the moment - Metric, Dangerous Dan, Van She tech and Mason.

Day 2 of the Festival
Spazzys put on an early morning new years set and totally rock out. Awesome chicks. We get really close for brilliant photos. Next up Ash Grunwald has the crowd laughing in hysterics at his 'Dolphin Song', while pumping out sweets tunes with his dreadlocks flying. TZU and the GRATES go off while we listen and dance quite drunk around 4pm New Years' Eve afternoon.. lol. peaking quite early! Ugly Duckling rev us up with more dancing and laughing for the Living End to be awesome and brilliant and do the best New Years countdown ever! Rain starts falling for the thousands still off face to dance to the loudest bass i have ever heard; Freestylers play an energetic live 2am set which is just sweet.

Monday, January 08, 2007

JJJ Hottest 100 - my Top 57 picks

Adalita - Double Dare
AFI - Love Like Winter
Angus & Julia Stone - Paper Aeroplane
Anti-Flag - This Is The End (For You My Friend)
Arctic Monkeys - From The Ritz To The Rubble
Ash Grunwald - Give Signs
Camille - Ta Douleur
Cassius - Toop Toop
Chalets - Love Punch
Cops - Call Me Anytime
DJ Shadow - 3 Freaks
Dukes Of Windsor - The Others
Eagles Of Death Metal - I Want You So Hard (Boy's Bad News)
Freestylers/Pendulum - Painkiller
Gomez - How We Operate
Gossip - Standing In The Way Of Control
Gotye - Hearts A Mess
Grates - Science Is Golden
Herd - Unpredictable
Hilltop Hoods - Monsters Ball
Hook 'N' Sling/Kid Kenobi - The Bump
Hot Chip - Boy From School
Infadels - Love Like Semtex
Jump 2 Light Speed - You Are My Friend In Fire
Justice Vs Simian - We Are Your Friends
Karnivool - Roquefort
Kasabian - Empire
Klaxons - Gravity's Rainbow
Knife, The - Silent Shout
Lady Sovereign - Love Me Or Hate Me
Lily Allen - LDN
Lupe Fiasco - Kick Push
Matches - What Katie Said
Matisyahu - King Without A Crown
Midnight Juggernauts - 45 And Rising
MSTRKRFT - Easy Love
Muse - Assassin
Paper Scissors - We Don't Walk
Peter Bjorn & John - Young Folks
Pony Up! - The Truth About Cats & Dogs (Is That They Die)
Red Riders - Slide In Next To Me
Regina Spektor - On The Radio
Roots - Don't Feel Right
Saboteurs - Steady As She Goes
Spank Rock - Bump
Stanton Warriors - Get Em High
Strokes - Heart In A Cage
Tool - The Pot

The TOP TEN I voted for:

Damien Rice - 9 Crimes
Death From Above 1979 - Blood On Our Hands (Justice Remix)

Grates - Feels Like Pain
Hilltop Hoods - The Hard Road
Mason - Exceeder
Metric - Monster Hospital (MSTRKRFT remix)
Placebo - Meds
Rapture - Pieces Of The People We Love
True Live - TV
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Gold Lion

4500km + some...

Our road trip to Victoria over the New Year's break was a hell of a lot of fun. Seeing the blog often serves as my diary of facts, figures and snippets I guess the best way to document the trip is to write it all down. Few days at a time...

Day One - Three: Armidale - Albury - Coburg (Melbourne)
Song: The Grates - Science is Golden and that random country 'pieces of a broken heart' song
Beverage: Tooheys New
Food: Very tasty laksa & noodles from Noodle Paradise Albury
Lesson of the day: Look before driving over railway tracks!!

12 hours. Armidale to Albury via a million tidy towns. Thank god for the inland way! Shuddering at the thought of the traffic on the Pacific Highway we took the million roads tour with virutally no cars/caravans/camper vans or trucks holding us up. Ended up in a dodge Albury caravan park that night with 1000 other 'dudes' travelling to various summer holiday festivals, who thought it would be fun to drink and talk all night. Fair enough. But when you wake in the middle of the night thinking a truck is about to drive through your tent, only to discover the caravan park is right on a frieght train route is not cool! plus the Hume Highway and BMX training facility = no sleep. www.worstcaravanparkinaustralia.com

Day two we breezed into Melbourne, to the quietest caravan park in Australia. Trammed it into the city for a shopping marathon, indian feast & plonk in the food court with the pigeons. You can drink anywhere in Victoria, it's sort of like thailand. Decided that all Melbournians don't eat enough meat, hate sunshine and never go outdoors. Plus they all wore skinny leg black jeans and looked very depressed. Really nice people though!

Pics to come, plus Day Four & Five of the trip (Phillip Island and Pyramid Rock Festival!)

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Something going off in my head

Five songs which are awesome to hear randomly and turn up super loud and sing too.
1 .Hazy Shade of Winter - Bodyjar
2. Tonight - Smashing Pumpkins
3. Alive - Shihad
4. Leaving Home - Jebediah
5. Missing - Everything but the Girl

Monday, December 11, 2006

We don't Walk

Inspired by another great blog I read today I'm going to document some of the great things I learnt this year...


1. Planes really aren't all that bad. Big ones that is. Big jets that can sit at way up in the air and you don't feel a thing. Found this fact out when I made my first overseas trip to Thailand in August. Had such a great time and also realised that international travel is easy. (Little planes still suck.)

2. I love Australian music more than ever. Have been to see a few aussie bands this year (namely Cog) but just hearing tonnes of stuff on triple J highlights that you could go a whole week and hear brilliant musicians writing, creating and distributing great music.

3. Pineapple is one great fruit. Thanks to thai pineapples for helping me discover the fact i really like them (both fresh & cooked lol.)

4. The best thing I did this year was give up dairy! Feeling over 100% better. Whilst slipping up occasionally on ice cream, brie & camenbert at parties, or butter on toast, the non-dairy diet is definately staying on for the long haul.

5. I quit my job and it wasn't scary. The prospect of being unemployed is scary, although hopefully won't be around for long. Being free and rid of possessions can be quite liberating.

6. All of my friends & family are so brilliant. They give me so much inspiration. They're all over the country, the world, getting married, doing amazing things. But i love the fact we can communicate in a message, an email, a call and they are always there - no matter what.

7. Music is moving, growing, progressing. It just keeps me going - the chance to listen to new things, write about new music and most of all sharing tunes with the people i love.

8. And i really do think that 2007 is going to be the best year of my life.

thanks to www.myspace.com/auslive for the inspiration for this blog. xx

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.

Cool lyrics which you might find interesting today,
tommorow or sometime.
Leave me out with the waste
This is not what I do
It's the wrong kind of place
To be thinking of you
It's the wrong time
For somebody new
It's a small crime
And I've got no excuse
- Damien Rice, 9 Crimes

He could've played guitar better than Hendrix
He could've told the future
He could've baked the most delicious cake in the world
He could've scored more goals than Wayne Gretzky
He could've danced better than Barishnikov
Jesus could have been funnier than any comedian you can think of
Jesus was way cool

He told people to eat his body and drink his blood
That's so cool
Jesus was so cool
But then some people got jealous of how cool he was
So they killed him
But then he rose from the dead
He rose from the dead, danced around
Then went up to heavenI mean,
that's so cool
Jesus was way cool
No wonder there are so many Christians
- King Missile - Jesus was way cool


10 reasons why i hate The Killers

1. the suck big time

2. the songs make no sense. Example “Now she’s smoking a cab, and she’s doing her hair, and I’m getting quite bored, rather wrestle a bear...”, or “Somebody Told Me, You had a boyfriend, looked like a ladyboy, I write like a schoolboy...” and so on.

3. If the Rolling Stones hate them that is worth gold Review - "Why, Killers? Why? It's the oldest story in the New Wave book: (1) Boys get famous wearing makeup and acting tarty to impress girls; (2) Boys wash off makeup and act sincere to impress boys; (3) It never works. Loads of the original New Wave bands fell into this trap, the Killers take themselves too seriously'.

4. they are mormons. Now don't read this as some crazy anti-religious plot, because i have nothing against any other mormon. just The Killers. obviously part of the reason they are so crap is because unlike all other excess lovin' rock n rollers', they just have not had enough sex or drugs, or both in large doses. And look how important that is in music making.

5. chances are that if you hate alternative rock bands with heavy use of the synthesizer, you're probably going to hate The Killers. As PopMatters.com put it: Some might be a tad uncomfortable with the prominence of the synths and Flowers' rather theatrical delivery. Tad uncomfortable!? makes me feel positively ill.

6. Lead singer Brandon Flowers refers to the Sam's Town one of the best albums of the past 20 years. Wanker. Enough said.

7. .Flowers has recently gone on record claiming that Green Day's politically driven concept album American Idiot displays "calculated Anti-Americanism." He explained that he has problems with the album content itself and also the fact that the band's recent live DVD, Bullet in a Bible, was filmed overseas. Stating that he feels Green Day's DVD is a bit of a stunt, he went on to say that he feels The Killers' most recent release, Sam's Town, is a much more accurate representation of American culture. What the?

8. the Lead singers name is Brandon Flowers. How more pouncey and Las Vegas do they wanna get.

9. The song Bones: "Don’t you wanna come with me? Don’t you wanna feel my bones on your bones? It’s only natural Don’t you wanna swim with me"? They sardistic freaks.

10. they just suck big time.

"It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument."- William Gibbs McAdoo (1863-1941)