melbourne

god, they NEVER disappoint.



later,

Taste of Tim and Jean

Yeah, I know, I've been supremely inactive over the last few weeks. One one-line post in a month a successful blogger does not make.

So what have I been doing, you ask? Basking.

Basking in the glory of life and music and people and weather.

Basking in the fading memory of Year 12 and the iridescent future.
I've been listening to lots of stuff that I wouldn't have given a second thought last year, hip hop, minimal tech, electro, and less of what I would call my comfort zone. Some of what I hear, I really dig. Other stuff, not so much.
Music for me is becoming so much more than its individual parts, and yet I notice more things each time I listen. Delving deeper into songs and hearing a certain vocal or the way a synth has been processed, for instance.
At the same time, songs become more cohesive and part of a larger global entity the more I listen to them. The way a vocal and the guitars interweave and interact, or the distinct sounds of Australian and American hip hop.

Part of the reason for this deeper involvement is my increased spare time, but also a hunger for new experiences musically. I think it's important to be always craving something new and different. It's what keeps me interested in music, because every time I turn on a radio or browse last.fm or someone shows me a new track I want to embrace it as much as possible.

What's your philosophy on music? Is it all about the sum of the parts? Or the parts themselves? Stick to your comfort zone? Or escape it and take risks?

I don't want to cause a stir, but I think this could be the Guns Babes Lemonade of Summer 2009/10


also... I'm not sure if I condone this or not... but hey.


Later,

beach.

i sat on the beach at 6am yesterday watching the sunrise and i cried at the beauty and brevity of life.

Home.

I heard this song the other day and it brought me to tears. Beautiful, sweet, but not corn-fed. It could almost be June Carter and Johnny Cash singing this duet. I think Dools may be proven correct that it'll make the top 50 in the Hottest 100. But, going on last year's travesties (SEX ON FIRE, WHAT?! >.<) it may just be cheated out of a place.




later,

five.

just in case you've never seen this before and it changes your life.


or were wondering where we get our costume ideas.



LOVE





later,

Aoki + some other stuff.

Y'all may remember a couple months back when I was getting excited about some crazy new stuff being produced by Steve Aoki, that Japanese/American dude who runs Dim Mak and released work by The Bloody Beetroots, Bloc Party, and heaps more. Well, last weekend, I was lucky enough to snag some tix to his Melbourne show at Roxanne Parlour.

Fucking craziest show I've ever been to, bar none. Nick Foley, Dangerous Dan, and finally Aoki rocked the main room, and the mosh was intense. I fell over just as Steve leapt into the crowd, during the opening track of his set, Warp 1.9. I open my eyes to see the man's acid wash ripped as fuck jeans passing over my head. It's his arse. He rolls over. For one crazy second, we lock eyes, and then he's gone. The set is stopped, the crowd's knocked the DJ desk over. The mixers have gone down, the speakers wobbling on their stands. He starts again, that ticking clock driving everyone mental all over again. A second wave ripples through the crowd, everyone surging forward to support this crazy longhair's weight, screaming as he is. My friends are gone, I don't know where they are. I don't care where they are. For the next 3 minutes, until the crowd knock the desk over again, all my brain does is scream 1, 2, WHOOP WHOOP! The set is stopped for the second time. They move him to the back room. All my hard fought jostling to the front is in vain as those as the back simply turn around and become the front row. Lost cameras, wrecked shoes, broken glasses, people drenched in sweat roll through my vision like a dream. I'm floating on a memory, dazed by the sheer volume and intensity of this one dude.

And then we went outside.
Photo from hobogestapo.com (NOT MY OWN, I WAS UNDER HIM)

And now the other stuff:


HYYYYPE

A-Trak remix of Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Heads Will Roll


Due to a mix up between DJ's (I think) (I bet Dangerous was bummed when Nick Foley played it first..), I heard this twice in the one night at Roxanne's. No complaints whatsoever.

Later,

Gala Mill

I'm sure I'm supposed to be doing something else right now but I haven't given you kids anything new to sink your teeth into for a while; so, priorities are in order.

This shall be another of my 'favourite albums of all time' rants, so strap yourself in for the long haul or nick off, I suppose. Gala Mill, the second album released by The Drones in 2006, was nominated for the Australian Music Prize, the year that Augie March won with Moo, You Bloody Choir. In my opinion, Gala Mill is the better album, but then again I'm a rabid Drones fanboy and probably won't be convinced otherwise.

It's a distinctly Australian sounding album. Recorded in a mill on an isolated farm in the wild north eastern reaches of Tasmania, the sense of time and place in the record is palpable. Dogs bark and birds crow in between tracks, cicadas hum and the mill creaks and groans on its foundations. However, far from sounding like it was recorded with a 4-track and a laptop mic, the raucous distortion of Liddiard's guitar and his languid drawl of a voice are clear as a bell.

The record spawned one of the best Drones tracks of their career, I Don't Ever Want To Change, a fast-paced catchy racehorse-straining-at-the-gate of a song. Liddiard's distinct, strongly Australian accented voice half-sings, half-injects itself directly into your ears, his whooping yells and high-pitched squawks during the high-energy section of his performance reminiscent of some crazed country songsmith. The song builds and builds, all wrenching guitars and thumping drums and raw uncontrolled power as he intones I don't ever want to change, I don't ever want to change / I know my limits well, because they're never far away.

Liddiard's not afraid to shred his vocal chords, and the energy and passion he injects into each song makes melancholy more melancholy, viciousness more biting, and emotion more emotive.

Gareth Liddiard's voice is probably one of the most distinctive features of the band's sound, but so is his guitar playing, and the playing of the rhythm man, Rui Pereira. On songs like Jezebel, they rip and tear, like pulling teeth, and  but like on their previous record (Wait Long By The River And The Bodies Of Your Enemies Will Float By) and follow-up effort Havilah, they do slow brilliantly. Tracks like Words From The Executioner To Alexander Pearce, Dog Eared, or Sixteen Straws are slow dirges, where the band shows off a dark, brooding side where shallow dreams of violence, hunger, drunkeness, suicide and despair float through the lyrics. The haunting backing vocals on Words From The Executioner are especially spine-tingling.

Mike Noga keeps the throbbing, aching rhythms of the band, his heavy, thick kit accentuating the somewhat violent manner in which he thrashes and beats at the skins. Not known for simple rhythms, his playing is heaving with toms and almost disjointed.

Put simply, this is one of those albums I can't wait to show my kids. You know, when CD falls out of favour and everyone has mp3 players built into their ear canals, and I stumble across a dusty box of my old CDs in an attic somewhere, drag it downstairs and proceed to bore the kids to death with rants about Nick Cave, You Am I, Sonic Youth, all those crazy dudes who'll be dead or getting high-rotation airplay on Gold FM.

Later,

deadtime

can't fucking sleep
think i'm getting more and more insomaniacal (?)
threw up again today. thought i was done with all that.
guess not.
weirdest songs are coming on shuffle - think this is what happens when i leave it on all night and wake up in the morning to the tunes of super furry animals.
oh god morning won't be fun.
school again. thought i was done with all that
guess not...

I'm In Miami Bitch

Last night I went to Dorothy, the Thursday night at Tramp Basement, to see Miami Horror, with Pop A Cap and Airwolf supporting. Miami Horror are about to drop an album in 2010, and they tore that basement apart. Kids tripping on the $25 gypsy jugs or 20 wet pussies (cough) trying not to look like they're trying too hard to look like they're not having a good time.

I like Dorothy. I like it a lot. The venue just looks fucking cool. The drinks are reasonable, and the people less pretentious than its indie rep would suggest. The silent disco was a kick, too. On channel one: One More Time by Daft Punk. On channel two: All Along The Watchtower. Yeah. Hendrix. But what's missing is just one or two strobes. I love strobe lights. Maybe it's just me, but I enjoy only being able to see when the bass drum hits. It adds to that all encompassing feeling of the music surrounding you, getting lost in the rhythm and totally forgetting yourself.

Gloriously 80's disco-house throwback.


Miami Horror are playing the Corner Hotel on November 20.

NOWWW.
LMFAO. Not even kidding, that's their name. Fucked if I know whether they're taking the piss, but it's catchy and electro and hip hop. In short, it's goooood.



Maybe you've been hearing this around the traps and didn't know who it was, I certainly didn't till I started looking these guys up.



Anyway, so there you have it. A fair bit of electric loving. I highly recommend these two artists.

Later,

some kind of crazy blinding bowling alley

I had a bit of an epiphany whilst listening to Jay Reatard's new track, It Ain't Gonna Save Me the other day. It happened so quickly, between a breath, and now it's completely gone. But it was an incredibly vivid flash of something, occurring underneath the jangling fuzz and frenetic drums, as I drove home from school. It had been raining but the sun was out and the road stretched out in front of me like some kind of crazy blinding bowling alley. And as Reatard repeated the phrase "all is lost, there is no hope for me", I had some kind of paradox of emotions, the same feeling I get when I listen to the chorus lick of It Ain't Funny How We Don't Talk Anymore by You Am I, or Always Love by Nada Surf. It's something about the perfect harmony between lead and rhythm, or vocals and melody that makes me feel every single dearly beloved memory and each painfully repressed yet wistfully recalled moment of despair condensed into 3 minutes of time.




Watch Me Fall is out now on Matador.

Later,

What it means to me.

Going back through my music library recently, I happened upon somewhat of a sonic time capsule. I’m not entirely sure how proud I should be that the first time I put Limewire to use was searching for (then) relatively unknown band, Kisschasy, to use as a talking point with an (ex) punk girl I dug, way back in Year 8. But that’s what I did, and I ended up with the entire United Paper People record, their debut effort from 2005.

Once my 15-year-old romantic sensibilities left the building and I realised that common interests ≠ sex, I was nursing a fairly decent rejection complex. But on the plus side, I had discovered the perfect genre of music to convalesce to.

What followed was a fairly stereotypical adolescent adventure into the  subtly emotional pop-punk which Kisschasy proffered, an adventure which - I’m slightly embarrassed to say as I listen back on some of these tracks as I write this - continues to this day. I can still listen to these songs, because they appeal to my sense of what sounds good musically, but also because when I do, something stirs, something deep within my chest, that place of reminiscence and old memories.

For me, there are times and places, people and events attached to this music. Morning has me sitting in the study at my mum’s house (in the days before wireless internet), with the sunlight streaming through the window, making the fatal mistake of coming on too strong. Face Without A Name’s distinctively playful lead guitar lick, and I am transported to the couch in the old holiday home rented down at Inverloch in the 2005/6 summer holidays, with the prospect of two long weeks at the beach and messing around after dark with the kids I saw at this time of the year only, and haven’t seen since. Ione Skye drags me back to Maroondah Festival in February 2006, running around creating innocent mischief, watching the bands, and stencilling anti-emo phraseology all over my genuine Rolling Stones Forty Licks tour t-shirt, a gift from my uncle in London, because it was the only white t-shirt I could find, a decision I regret terribly with the gift of hindsight.

Which brings me to something of a point. With hindsight, I look back on that 18-24 month period as part of the happiest of my life. It’s a constant summer in my mind, the sun always shines. I was in a band. We made music together, just played as loud as we could, and spent more time jumping around pretending to be rockstars than trying to become them. It was enough for us to play AC/DC and Nirvana covers, trash the little space set aside for rehearsal, and argue about how a riff should sound.

With hindsight, I think of sunny lunchtimes at school, before they cut down the trees and demolished the embankment we all used to hang out on.I remember talking on the phone till 3am about anarchism and the evil empire of capitalism, about running away and being free. I remember wondering what it was like to be drunk, what it was like to be in love, and finding out about both.

Hindsight allows us to look at the past through rose-coloured glasses, remembering the good times, preferring not to think about the bad ones. I don’t think about struggling with self-esteem. I don’t think about my parents arguing, and I don’t think about lying in bed unable to remove a female infatuation from my mind, because I’m constantly bombarded with wistful, memories at the edge of my consciousness of the first time I stood up on a wave, the first girl I kissed, and playing simple garage rock tunes with my best friends.

I’m glad I was able to experience such a purple patch of happiness and discovery during what is sometimes an incredibly hard time in adolescence.

That’s what Kisschasy mean to me, anyway.

Later,

Clever well adjusted psychopath.

I love house parties. There’s something about the idea of opening your house to a bunch of drunken loons, giving them free food and loud music, and allowing nature to take its course that immediately excites anybody to well beyond normal socially acceptable levels.

Year 12 so far has been pretty much chockers with just such events. And mostly they have been amazing. Oh, sure, there were a few misfires, some quieter than others, some less controversial, some very much more so, but on the whole I think I speak for us all when I say that the bar has been raised this year.

School has become, for a lot of us, what happens in between the other two nights a week when we’re totally out of our minds. And I’m not the least bit regretful of this. They’re an essential part of the downtime between the pretty much constant stress and anxiety caused by high school. A time to let hair down and get messy. Sometimes really messy. Sometimes so messy that you wake up in the morning with no idea how you became so clean-shaven or paint-free, until you see the video.

With the year drawing to a close, soon these magnificent social conglomerations will be a thing of the past. Well, at least until kids start turning 21. I say, it can’t come fast enough.

In the mean time, here's something to tide you over till the next jam.

For some reason, I can see this being MASSIVE at the Big Day Out, round about sunset. Hmmmmmm.

Later,

A.O.K

Some more Aoki goodness coming your way right now so heads up. Found this gear on bitbeats and loved it

It kicks in at around 4:30; don't bother with anything before that.

Also some new tracks:

Steve Aoki - 1967 Poem

AutoErotique - Gladiator (Steve Aoki & DJ AM Remix)

Later,

Footpath

Recently I was reminded of the weird situations that modern technology can get us in; A friend told me about the time I broke up with my last girlfriend, and how she had heard the entire conversation due to an unfortunate situation involving my mobile phone and an open MSN voice convo.

It went a little something like this.

I had been talking to a couple of friends using the built-in laptop microphones we all have over MSN, trying to psych myself up to commit this heinous act of heart-breaking, and when I made the actual phone call to my now-ex on my mobile, I forgot to close this voice conversation I was having. So my friend heard the entirety of my side of the conversation, in a weird kind of internet-eavesdropping incident. This was only revealed to me today infact, well over 4 months since the actual day it happened. Apparently she had told all our friends about this, and they hadn't seen the need to tell me. I saw the hilarious side of what happened, mainly due (I assume) to a subconscious desire to spite my ex, but it just goes to show what can happen hey?

Anyway. Onto today's dose of music. It's another 90's post punk guitar driven collective, Pavement. In seven years between 1992 and 1999, they released five albums, and although they enjoyed only moderate commercial success, they achieved a considerable cult following and became one of the most influential and recognised lo-fi bands of the 90's. Their two most hallowed records were Slanted and Enchanted, and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, placed at #5 and #8 respectively on Pitchfork Media's 100 Best Albums of the 1990's, and given various 5 star and 10/10

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain is probably their most accessible work, and as I'm mostly concerned with introducing you guys to listen to stuff you probably wouldn't consider otherwise, it's a good starting point. The album features highly melodic guitar and bass tracks, heaving and fuzzy beneath the somewhat shaky and frenetic drumming of Gary Young and Steve West. The vocals of Steve Malkmus, often nonsensical and sung shakily and off-key, transform on tracks like Unfair. Standout tracks are Silence Kid, Gold Soundz and Cut Your Hair, but the album is fairly consistently driven by the interaction between the thumping bass of Ibold and Malkmus' inventive guitar melodies, somewhat left-of-centre.

Newark Wilder shows off the band's slower, softer style, harmonics and rhythm guitar floating between very Doors-ish guitar licks acting as gaps between the verses.

The very next track, Unfair picks up the tempo a little bit, leading into Gold Soundz, in my opinion the best track lifted from this record. The wistful, adolescent lyrics weave through the shimmering, playful guitars to create something purely melodic, the only equivalent to which i can relate it being The Sound of Settling by Death Cab For Cutie in its melodic tone.

Enough wankish terminology from me, check out this album, and get into their other releases if you dig it.

Later,

ROMBORAMA

Well, it was supposed to be released on the 21st, but I guess as happens to everyone in this digital age we live in, it leaked.

The Bloody Beetroots' debut studio album, Romborama is chock full of thick, heavy beats, huge synths and some pretty ingenious vocal tracks.
The main track to drop off this LP has been Warp 1.9 (feat. Steve Aoki), famous for THAT 'woop woop' vocal sample, but watch out for Awesome (feat. The Cool Kids) and It's Better A DJ On Two Turntables.

I don't feel myself quite so qualified to harp on about electronic music as say, mid 90's post-punk, so I won't waste your time trying to describe it. Let your ears decide.

I will, however, say this: It fucking bangs.

Listen at Bitbeats.

Later,

Mr Icecream Introduces...

Yeah, I know this track has been around for a year or so now, but what the fuck.
Just the thing for a case of winter blues.



Later,

Noise.

I have always had an affinity for noisy, raw, rocknroll bands. The punk DIY aesthetic and the rocknroll lifestyle go hand in glove with some romantic, anarchic spirit that lets you know that yes indeed you are alive. Noise and fuzz and feedback and long hair and more drugs than Pablo Escobar’s bathroom cabinet.


The songs below are in no particular order and are meant to be a snapshot, a quick look into the last 4 or so decades of noise/raw rock. So, without further ado, I present to you my RAW/NOISE ROCK PLAYLIST.


1. The Stooges – No Fun, The Stooges, 1969
The dumb simplicity of this fuzzed out surf tune is compounded by catchy hand claps and Iggy’s debased howl. Iggy and The Stooges are one of the most loved (and ridiculed) bands ever. Their influence stretches far into subsequent decades, and Iggy’s self-harming stage antics and rampant drug abuse are quintessential.


2. Dinosaur Jr. – Freak Scene, Bug, 1988
Having changed their name from Dinosaur in 1987, they released Bug fresh from signing with Blast First and riding a wave of popularity generated by this song. Characteristically Dinosaur, the extremely high gain, melodic vocals and Mascis’ unique, wandering guitar solos still don’t sound dated. Rivalling Alive, by Pearl Jam for the kind of air guitar epicness possible, Freak Scene is jagged and fast paced, a melodic and catchy 3 and a half minute punk gem. 


3. Sonic Youth – Teenage Riot, Daydream Nation, 1988
While Dinosaur Jr. were ripping up kid’s eardrums with Mascis’s heaving guitar, Sonic were quietly going about the business of creating a masterpiece. I’ve already written at length about Daydream Nation, here. Teenage Riot is the best track off this album, a jangling, shimmering chunk of youthful rebellion and a snapshot of a band at the height of their power.


4. Mercy Arms – Shine A Light, Mercy Arms, 2008
20 years later, it is good to know that the spirit of guitar experimentation is still alive. You’ll find it in spades on this album, but Shine A Light is the standout. Be it feedback, weird squelchy effects, whammy bar, string scratches or lightning fast plectrum work, its all there. It’s a shame this band ran out of steam a few months after their debut release, because they were worth seeing just to hear another track, Half Right, which garnered some serious radio airtime last year.


5. The Velvet Underground – Heroin, The Velvet Underground And Nico, 1967
This song builds and builds and builds and builds and builds and builds and builds till it rips you apart in glorious, screetching feedback, Lou Reed’s slow, spaced out voice struggling to be heard among the cacophony. A hurricane of a song.


6. Nirvana – Been A Son, Blew EP, 1989
This preceded Nirvana’s debut effort Bleach. Been A Son is Nirvana at their raucous best, loud, callous, thick and heavy. Kurt’s dark lyrics and Novoselic’s thunderous bass drive the track forward in a mindless, freight train kind of way.


7. The Birthday Party – Happy Birthday, The Birthday Party, 1980
Originally released under the name “The Boys Next Door”, The Birthday Party was re-released when the band changed to The Birthday Party. Nick Cave’s sub-vocalisations, grunts, shrieks and impersonations of a dog on this track, along with the two lead guitarists discordant and jarring riffage ripped chunks out of conventional song-writing and was the first foray into music for Nick Cave, Mick Harvey and Roland S. Thompson.


8. Pixies – Debaser, Doolittle, 1989
Black Francis, the lead singer and guitarist for Pixies had already written a breakthrough album in Surfer Rosa, their debut. Debaser continued in this tradition of catchy yet unconventional songs, the fat drums and fuzzy guitar typical of Pixies style. The vocals, referencing surrealism and Salvador Dali were a pop pastiche, the high pitched yelp of Francis offset by Kim Deal’s sweet innocent pitch. Garnered them even more critical acclaim and cemented them as one of the most influential bands of the 80’s, especially on the subsequent Seattle Grunge explosion.


9. Children Collide – Economy, The Long Now, 2008
First recorded on their Glass Mountain Liars EP, CC re-recorded Economy for their 2008 long player, showcasing their harder-edged, nouveau grunge sound. The chaotic, deliberately discordant guitars and menacing drum track render this an angry listen at the best of times.


10. Animal Collective – For Reverend Green, Strawberry Jam, 2007
Unconventional pretty much fits this 4-piece from New York, New York, their extremes of experimentation and weird instruments causing them to be labelled as freak-folk or noise-pop. They remain hard to categorize however, a testament to their versatility as a song writing force. For Reverend Green has me stumped as to what instruments are used, save the heavily affected guitar and the screamed vocals. An unrelenting ache of a song that pulses and drives relentlessly onwards.


So there it is. My noise/raw rock playlist, in all its longhaired glory. As a sort of disclaimer, let me say this. My musical experience may differ vastly from your own and, probability dictates, from everyone else’s as well. What I’ve seen and heard will shape my perception of noise rock as much as it will yours. Use this list as a guide or a refresher, listen to these songs, buy the albums.
Later,

The Man Comes Around

The song, from the album American IV: The Man Comes Around was originally written by Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails, appearing on their Downward Spiral album of 1994, but Cash makes it his own, imbuing a sense of regret and pain upon looking back on his past that is poignant and real.

The video features various images from his life, acting as a miniature documentary, showing footage of his hometown, June Carter Cash and his short-lived TV show.

Something about this, the final video produced by Johnny Cash before his death in 2003, makes me come over all wobbly - It's powerful, beautiful, wounded and regretful.

Later,

Bad Moon Rising

Well, who else could it be? Shimmering guitars, pulsating drums and those pipes. That kind of angelic voice doesnt come around very often, but when it does, you better believe these guys are going to be big. Soon.



On another note, I found this awesome photography collective, Hobo Gestapo. Check it out if you like photography of left of centre fashion and underground youth culture.



Later,

Daydream nation.

I’m going to talk about albums that I adore and focus on some new stuff that I'm digging as it comes out. I thought it best to start on a high, so to this end, I give you Daydream Nation, by Sonic Youth.

It’s a record I put on late at night after a night out, lie on my bed and get lost in the ramblings and searchings of guitarists Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore.

If you’ve never listened to Sonic Youth before then this, their 5th effort released in 1988, is an ideal starting point. It’s sort of the crossover album from their noisy, dissonant and musically deconstructive past, to a more polished, melodic sound, fairly accessible if you are into stuff like the Pixies, or other 80-90’s guitar-driven bands, whilst still keeping an authentic punk edge.

Over 70 minutes, the album jangles, shimmers, rattles and hums in a glorious cacophony of sounds. I liken it to a pot of water on a stove, sound boiling over and splattering on the kitchen floor of your mind.

The first single from Daydream Nation, Teenage Riot is probably Sonic’s most well known song. Beginning quietly with Kim Gordon performing stream of consciousness prose over Moore and Ranaldo’s interlocking guitars, the song quickly picks up and Moore takes over vocal duties. Fat drums and clashing guitars ensue, and a fast paced epithet to the spirit of restless youth and modern boredom is the result.

Immediately following this is a substantially harder-edged track, Silver Rocket, discordant and fast-paced, interrupted by about 45 seconds of trademark Sonic Youth noise guitar experimentation. Similarly, the next track, The Sprawl is probably the best example of the pot of hot water analogy. A large part of the 7+ minutes of the song is given over to this sound experimentation.

Gordon and Moore’s lyrics fluctuate between sophistication and the knife, between some kind of urban cool and pop stupidity, a surreal trip across a vast expanse of sonic landscape: Shots ring out from the center of an empty field/ Joni's in the tall grass/ She's a beautiful mental jukebox, a sailboat explosion/ A snap of electric whipcrack.

This sort of style permeates the record, punk and noise and rock and dissonance and experimentation. Eric’s Trip, Total Trash, Providence, through Rain King and Kissability. The sprawling final track, Trilogy serves as a book-end, a moment which draws the album to a close, the intensity building to the penultimate climax and then, finally, silence.

Ultimately, the wonder of this album lies not in the wild spirit of experimentation, or the youthful naivete of a group of musicians at the height of their powers, but that it has been so under-appreciated for so long.

My Pawn Shoppe Heart

What can I tell you that you haven't heard before, and what can I show you that you haven't seen before or can get elsewhere? If you want fashion you can read any number of magazines readily available in many places that have a much better finger on the pulse than I do, and the same goes for music and art. My three main loves thus eliminated, I'm left with very little to tell anyone. That's the conundrum I am currently wrestling with as I realise I've put the horse before the cart, or the blog before the subject matter as it was.
Can I really get away with not giving anyone anything new at all?

Probably not.
Unless I just make this into a shameless internet meme blog.

Later,

I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning

While I figure out exactly what I'm going to do with this additional attention seeker creative outlet, here's a list of some of my fears:

• Heights.
• Water when I can't see the bottom.
• Water when I can see the bottom. And its on fire.
• My house burning down and being forced to pick one Nick Cave album to carry to safety.
• Big spiders.