Gay Your Life Must Be?

I've gotta apologise for my lack of blogging action...

Sorry...

It's because over the last two weeks I've been too busy avoiding swine flu and gangland murders... seriously, all the good shit happens 10 minutes north of Melbourne CBD.

Anyway, for todays blog you'll be treated to my unbiased award-winning journalistic expose on a court battle. Native birds of Australia take on a classic Australian song in a class action law suit.

Men At Work Vs Kookaburras of Australia

Exhibit A.


Remember this song?
How could you not? If you grew up in Australia, you sang it... we ALL sang it. Quintessential Ozzie nursery rhyme. A "seminal" song in all our lives.

Exhibit B.


Remember this song?

If you were a sailing fan in 1983 you would know that Australia II won the America's Cup. The fist time a non-american boat had won The Americas Cup in 6,000 years.

The boat had a SICK sound system.

After they won, they pumped "The Land Down Under at full volume across San Francisco Bay. It was an historic sporting moment and "Land Down Under" became the historic boat's official anthem.

That very day, Prime-minister Bob Hawke made it a public holiday and the whole country got wasted while listening to the song. Whistling the flute line stupidly with some serious national pride.

The song reached number one on Australia, US and UK charts... It made soooooooo much cash for it's songwriter Colin Hay and the rest of the boys in Men At Work...




BUT!!!!!!

There's a line of the flute theme is "allegedly" direct musical quote of the opening line of the Kookuburra laughs theme song. It enters the song about half a dozen times.

It's something that I've noticed for years but it's something that the publishers of the nursery rhyme only just noticed. Apparently after watching an episode of Spics and Specs. Now they're takin it to court.

It's quite possible that the publishers of the nursery rhyme will receive a payout of millions and millions of dollars...

So, since you're the jury.
Ask yourself these questions...

Does the flute line copy the nursery rhyme?
Is it obviously recognizable as a copy?
Does the flute line constitute a significant part of Men at Work's song?

If you ask me the answers are all... "f*ckin oath, yes"


But now it's your turn...
"TRIAL BY ILLEGETIMATE CHILDREN" requires you to leave a comment underneath this blog with the word GUILTY or INNOCENT.

If the answer is overwhlemingly "guilty" then I'll submit it to the supreme court of Australia and they'll tell Colin Hay (Men at work singer) to give a bunch of cash to every Kookaburra in Australia...

Don't be shy... if you get this blog via email, log into the site and leave a comment. Guilty or Innocent? Kookaburra or Colin? Patsy Bisco or Men at Work?

Housing Comission and Beethoven's 7th

Picture from www.theendstop.com

My blog on Saturday morning was crap. I read it back and was totally annoyed at myself... spelling mistakes, grammatical errors etc. It didn't flow very well at all... I've gotta get my shit together.

I've now gone through it and fixed some errors and laid it out better. Sorry. I really dig it when I hear that people read my blog and then I serve up shite like that!

I had a magical evening last Tuesday with my mum... We met after work, we went to a great Tapas resteraunt, drank some wine and had a good ole chat.

Then we walked past some of the most striking buildings in Melbourne on our way to the Rainbow Hotel.
I'm totally fascinated by the highrise housing commission on the corner of Gertrude Street and Fitzroy Street.

The area is sick to the power of mad. ;-)
Million dollar townhouses from early last century, fitted out with beautiful modern interiors, 5 star restaurants and uber trendy bars... and in the middle of it all?

3 monstrous, uber-functional skyscraping cubes. The Atherton Gardens Housing Commission flats. You could consider them an eyesore, but really, they are quite majestic.

from H.e.l.e.n.'s photostream on flickr

The reason we walked through the backstreets of Fitzroy and Collingwoord was to the Rainbow Hotel in order to watch Beethoven's 7th symphony. Performed in a tiny pub by a 25 piece orchestra of professional musicians and some of Australia's best young classical musicians.

25 musicians crammed an area that usually barely fits a 5 piece blues band. The pub, which is tiny was packed full of about 100 punters, you couldn't move... but we were all loving the music... and the environment.

It took all the pretence of the concert hall and packed a tiny suburban pub with beer swilling pub locals. The performance was top notch.

Criticism of classical music abound, but this gig was designed to make it accessible and realler. It was put on by a go-getter i know... check her out.

Normally when you go to see the symphony, you can't drink or talk during the performance. Their are strict protocols governing the performance of the orchestra and the applause and behavior of the audience.
My personal viewpoint ever since I've been going to watch classical music is that these protocols are "GHEY"... get over it. They've existed for hundreds of years but everyone is too scared to change them. Play the music. If you dig it, then let the band/ensemble/quartet/octet/trio know.

Mind you, if it's crap, then they don't deserve applause either.

This time, for this Symphony at the Rainbow Hotel, you could talk, laugh, order a pint of Mountain Goat, a house white wine and listen to the music, just like at a normal gig. You could talk trash and heckle the band (orchestra).
Except this the band wasn't a 4 piece playing indie rock... It was 25 musicians each playing instruments worth tens of thousands of dollars and the repertoire was almost 200 years old with a conductor.

I think Beethoven would have f*ckin loved the shit! I can see him getting into the Stones Ginger Wine at the bar, eating wasabi peas, listening intently between hitting on the barmaid. He'd be having a goddam hoot!

I'm not a classical music lover. I don't know enough of it even though I studied it for 4 years at uni. But I do love some classical music.

It's the same distinction I make for Metal (I love SOME of it but not the genre as a whole) same for Drum & Bass and Jazz...

One thing I do know is that classical music has a pretty bad wrap. The youth of today just don't get it. Which shits me... They write it off as if it all sounds the same...

And now... my point...

All music works through familiarity... If you give something a chance it'll grow on you (Kid A by Radiohead, TV On the Radio, Animal Collective, Fat Freddies Drop, The Beatles White Album)... The more you know a song, the more you can have a chance of liking it. You dont need to know that it is in sonata form, what key it's in, what extra-musical programatic meaning it has... just listen to it and soak it up mofos! If it's good music then it will speak to you in time...



So... next time you have the chance to listen to some classical music... listen to the same piece once a day for a week and I guarantee that you'll start to hummmmmm the melodies, tap your toes, nod your head and really dig that shit...

Will we still be listening to P!nk in 200 years?

F*CK. NO.

Don't Come To Victoria!

Currently I'm suffering from "FLU LIKE SYMPTOMS"...

Seems i've got the Swine.

Reason not to come to Victoria. Number 1.

Victoria's up to about 900 swine sufferers at the moment.



Below is a warning published at Singapore Governments crisis website:

Affected Areas

As of 3rd June, Singapore's Ministry of Health has classified the following as affected areas [that is, areas with evidence of community transmission of Influenza A (H1N1-2009)]:

Mexico
USA
Canada
Melbourne & the state of Victoria, Australia
Kobe & Osaka, Japan
Chile

The public is advised to avoid non-essential travel to the above affected areas.

Yep, seems my fair city is fourth in the list of places not to go to... after a bunch of small, unpopulated and inconsequential places which don't really count for much, called Mexico, the USA and Canada.

Reason not to come to Victoria. Number 2.

Melbournians are attacking Indian students...

No sh*t. Last Sunday I was heading to St. Kilda from Brunswick via public transport. It took 1.5 hours instead of 40 mins because thousands of Indian students were marching in the streets, screaming for justice and protection after a spate of racist attacks on public transport and university campus'.

It caused all public transport through the city to stopp running.
The protesting students didn't leave the intersection of Swanston Street and Flinders until they were dragged away by relatively violent force at 5am the next morning.


It made worldwide news... This from an article in Time Magazine

a disturbing side to Indian student life down-under has come to light, sparking allegations of widespread racism in Australian society, and a failure by law enforcement authorities to act. The first incident occurred in the early hours of May 24 at a suburban party in Melbourne, Australia's second largest city in the country's south.

I feel ashamed.


Reason not to come to Victoria. Number 3.

We're dumb.

I always thought that Victorians were the most cultured and intelligent people in Australia...

Which is what I said to a bunch of Queenslanders before the State of Origin Rugby League snooze fest on Wednesday. Here's edited highlights from an essay on the matter I received from a Queenslander.

Me (ever so smugly, via email):
Ha! ever wondered why Queensland needs to call itself "the smart state"

Fagan (a Queenslander, via email):

The principal at my sisters school recently made a joke about Queenslanders being slow in front of all the staff. This kinda pissed her off seeing she was spending her first year of teaching as a Queenslander in Victoria and she was quick to point out in front of everyone that whilst Queensland has the third worst literacy and numeracy rates in schools they are still better than Victoria (who are only marginally better then the Northern Territory)

You guys are allowed to be proud of your cultural capital though. It is the envy of every artistic person in Australia and as envy turns to desire you get thousands of intelligent artistic types moving to Melbourne from all over Australia and New Zealand thus making Melbourne the fastest growing city in Australia.

Queenslanders are proud too though, proud of our tropical climate and slower paced lifestyle. It too is the envy of many (it’s the second fastest growing city in Oz). Unfortunately though these are mostly over 60's or not so intelligent lower class bogans who don’t care for Melbourne’s artistic culture and realise that instead of living in the cold and working in a factory in Cranbourne they could be living in the tropics and working in a factory in logan.

So whilst our brothers and sisters up north of the tweed are doing their level best to improve their states Numeracy and literacy rates handicapped by the 1000s of stupid Victorians that move their each month, Victoria’s education rates will be benefiting from the children of artistic intellects that move to its cultural capital from interstate and a-broad.


Ouch...

Seriously, get ya shit together Melbourne...

I'm gonna drown my sorrows tonight with other Swine sufferers at the Gershwin Room at The Espy while listening to "seminal" Punk/Rubbish/Grunge/Sludge band Flipper play this uplifting song. Should be RAD.

Sepultura and Bamboo Flute

See these drums?
They're called Taiko

picture from www.disturbing.org.uk

Each drum is made from a single piece of wood and can be up two 2 metres in diameter.

They need incredible rich, strong, dense, old pieces of wood to make these drums.... They'll last forever.
Trees in Japan that come with trunks of beautiful wood several metres wide aren't exactly a dime a dozen. In fact wood of this quality takes at least three hundred years to grow.

It makes these drums priceless.

There are only a few Taiko craftsmen in the world, they come from families that have been making the drums for centuries... A Taiko drum maker today uses wood from a tree planted by his great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather in 1709. He tends to trees planted by all his forefathers since that day and this year will plant a couple more in order for them to be used by his descendants in 2309.

The music is amazing. The tradition is ancient. The performances are equal parts brut force, delicacy, coreography and athleticism.

A good friend of mine is part of amazing Taiko ensemble in Sydney called Taikoz... Check it.
Also if ya want, check out Kodo (the worlds leading Taiko ensemble) play in this video.


When i was a pimple-faced kid in year 9 i had a rather heavy crush on a girl... she was heaps dfrnt to the other girls in my school because she wore more black and liked heavy metal... (sigh). Because of her, my two favorite bands were Alice In Chains and Sepultura.

The point of the story is that we used to listen to a song called Kamaitachi. By Sepultura (who if ya didn't know, are a metal band from brazil). Kamaitachi was an instrumental track which featured KODO (the worlds leading Taiko Ensemble). They recorded it at Kodo Village, Sado Island, Japan.

Brazilian Metal, Ancient Japanese Master Drumming and Shakuhachi. The drums pound, the music is heavy and the combination is haunting and pretty powerful. Unlike a lot of the metal I listened to in those days, I still dig this song.





(Bonus creepy Sepultura claymation film clip of classic song Ratamahata)

Phoenix Love Like Sunset

1.

Back in my music studying days, me and my Marimba friends (my marimba friends and I) were playing a piece of music called 6 Marimbas by Steve Reich.
25 minutes of mallet percussion minimalism, the piece consisted of 6 fast interlocking patterns that played together (on... wait for it... 6 marimbas) for 15 minutes without a single change, until finally, after increasing tension we'd all change 1 single note. although the change was tiny, the release of tension was incredible, 1 note out of 15 minutes!!!! DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD THAT IS?

Let me tell you. F*ckin hard... !

It requires some serious freakin concentration. We invariably f*cked it up the unison change to a different key and the 15 minutes of increasing tension that we'd worked so hard to build would dissipate like the soft on I got from Sasha Barren Cohen giving me a T-Bag.

Steve Reich's music can build tension through repetition, making you increasingly uneasy...
or, it can be calming and intricate... soothing as bro.

Like this one. He wrote some corkers... I love this. Listen to how cleverly it evolves... It grooves hard but it calms as well. Beautiful. I think it's the stuff that dreams are made out of.



2.

When I was a young child my parents packed my sister and myself into a rented BMW and we spent 4 weeks driving through Italy, France and Austria.

Driving through France along the autobahn/freeway/racecourse we drove through dozens of tunnels every day.

photo by fgfathome on flickr

Everytime we entered a gaping black hole cut into the side of a mountain we'd trade the fresh alpine air, dark green forests and crisp blue skys for a world of pulsing of florescent pools of light and flashing headlights.
Some of the tunnels were 10-20 kilometres long. It was easy to forget where you were while traveling through them. You have no sense of distance, where you came from or where you are going... On the other side of the tunnel you were often greeted with a vastly different landscape from the one you left behind.

3.

Listening to triple j (even though I've now officially grown out of it) last Sunday night, they featured an interview with Phoenix.

Thomas Mars (the singer of phoenix) was telling Zan Rowe that the inspiration for this instrumental song came from the rhythm of tunnels that he drove through, driving from Versailles to Paris.... The pools of light, the passing cars, lines on the road, repetition etc. it took me back to my trip as soon as he said it.

He also said he was listening to Steve Reich at the time. The combination of the tunnels and mesmerizing minimalism inspired him to write these songs.



Rad hey? Very interesting... Its nice to hear inspiration like that. Quite filmic. Their version of minimalism is cool, although I think Phoenix could have been a little more ambitious. I would have lost my sh*t if they'd stretched the opening out for another 5-10 minutes before changing to the accoustic guitar and then beat.

Part two is really pretty, a nice contrast to the first part... with words n' stuff.

There ya go....

The Middle East and Porcine Influenza

600,000 Melbournian's are gonna get swine flu!
F*CK!

"Premier John Brumby called for calm after warnings one in eight - 600,000 Victorians - will get swine flu in the next 12 months."

It's alright though... coz the governement have STOCKPILES of a flu drug called Tamiflu

"Almost all H1N1 samples tested last winter were resistant to Tamiflu, the World Health Organization said"

DOUBLE F*CK!

The good news is that there's another drug that's way more effective and being bought by governments all over the world. It's called Relenza... I wouldn't mind buying some biotech shares at this point in time...

I think biotech shares'd be K-Rudd's GFC-Stimulation-$900 cheque bonanza well spent.

That's the hot tip.

I'd buy shares with my $900 for sure...
but I've just spent spent it all on a tattoo, some jeans, a bit of rent, a hoodie and the new Middle East EP.

People have blogged this band to the moon and back, my mentioning them here is nothing new. but seriously. The EP is close to 25 minutes long and world class.
This is the single, listen and love it.

Playing in Melbourne at The Northcote Social Club on Saturday 13th June. Who wants to come?

I've just been told i'm too old for Triple J

I feel like I did when I first read The Alchemist by Paul Coelho. Someone has just told me something that I knew in my heart all along. But they put it so succinctly that it's like turning on a lightbulb in my head. It could change my life.

Remember back in my first blog post? (it got 150 gazillion internet hits so i'd suprised if you hadn't! read it now if ya want.)

It was about how sh*t Australian Hip Hop is and how Triple J lost the plot. (and how many other people also think they've lost the plot).
Check out the facebook group dedicated to bringing down Triple J if you need reminding...

Well, here's a really succinct, insightful response to my increasing frustration with the station on the blog called "parables for wooden ears"
If you feel a little alienated by triple j these day's then I think you should read it...

This article was sent to me by a mysterious friend who's alias is "brew" He sends me heaps of links all day, it's good to have link sending friends. He also made the raddest comment on this blog.

"adios"

So... Triple J doesn't suck. The station isn't crap.
It doesn't even have to lick my balls!

In fact it can just keep on doing what it does best. Playing music for teenage kids who like electro, hip hop, rock and indie.

The problem is with me, and maybe you. It's with us, not the station.

It's because I'm getting old. I'm out of the loop. I'm not the target demographic. I've outgrown it. Triple J is for 13 to 25 year olds dammit!
It's built to ween kids off Nova, Fox and Triple M.
But it wont take you into serious niche territory as your music tastes become refined.

I'm at peace with this. I can listen to Vega, 3AW, Gold 104, Magic 693, SEN Sports and other far more adult stations now.

I can let triple J go... and it'll give me freedom, my life will change for the better.
In the same way reading The Alchemist made me quit psychology, change uni's, dump an ex ex ex ex girlfriend and start diggin life heaps more.

This is a big moment for me, but it's been a long time coming.
I'll look back fondly, but I won't miss you triple j.
I'll tune in and vote for the hottest 100 though.