An appointment with the Boss

Two weeks ago Rich and I acheived a long held and discussed mutual ambition and went on a lightning quick road trip (along with Rich's brother) up to Auckland to finally see Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street band live, after years of being a fan. Rather than try and review the concert, I'll let the Herald's excellent run-down do that. Instead I thought I'd just record a few notes and impressions.

-Wandering around downtown on a sunny afternoon with good friends noting every music shop is playing Springsteen, and spotting Brooooooooce fans is a great way to spend an afternoon pre-gig.

-Train is the best way to get to an event like this. No muss no fuss, and we didn't even have to pay for it, even if we were nowhere near as photogenic and bubbly as the people in the picture.


-I've been to Mt Smart stadium for so many concerts now it doesn't even feel like leaving home - I know it better than the stadium in Wellington even. It may have it's critics, but I really can't complain about it. Sunset on a summer's evening at a concert at Mt Smart is one of my favourite places to be.

-Some people just don't get the art of buying merch. Waiting until you are at the front of the queue before deciding on your purchase (after trying on every option) is not cool. Know your size, spend your time in the queue looking at the display items on the back wall of the cart, get there, get it and get out. Job done.

-Concentrating the bar in one large area might seem like a good idea, but is kind of shambolic in practice. Queueing 25 minutes for a (warm, overpriced) drink isn't fun.


-Being able to shed shoes and socks and chill out for a bit on some very nicely manicured turf is nice, although that ground is hard at this time of year - I'm glad I don't have to run around on it wearing football boots to earn a living. That and I'm shit at Rugby League.

-Mahlia Barnes was capable as a support act, even if not really my style, and let's face it no-one is there to see the opening act anyway.

-Second support act Jimmy Barnes doesn't sing so much as yell at the microphone until it does what he wants. Barnes' trademark rasp also appeared to be giving his sound engineer headaches judging by the levels. Still it was a good set, with a lot of old favourites from his solo stuff and Cold Chisel. It's often dismissed as bogan chic but the guy has actually written more than a few good songs in his time. I loved seeing "Flame Trees" and "Working Class Man" in particular, "believes in God and Elvis", and "who needs that sentimental bullshit anyway" from those songs being some of my favourite lyrics by anyone.


-The crowd doing mexican waves, and Bruce timing his walk out, alone with no fanfare, only an acoustic guitar and a harmonica, to exactly the moment the wave got to the stage and starting to sing this. Legendary moment.

-Covering Royals as the local song for this venue appears to have polarised people a bit - a lot of people hate the song choice and rendering, and a lot of people love it too. I'm in the latter camp. I thought it was a great choice, and here's why. Lorde is current, and in at least one way, comparable to Springsteen - both are from relatively humble backgrouds they have both been deemed the next big thing at some point in their lives. Some people have said "oh he should have done Crowded House, or Finn, or Dobbyn or Shihad or something" (usually the people to whom NZ music begins and ends with those artists), which would have been okay, but also cringey in a way (and I'm a fan of those artists too). It's been done already for one, and those artists are just not as relevant as Lorde is right now. And I liked Springsteen's rendering, and his lyrical changes - a good cover should sound like the artist wrote it themselves, and while not perfect, Springsteen managed that. Disclaimer: I like Lorde and Royals anyway.

-Seeing Tom Morello in this context is initially a bit wierd, but quickly becomes normal.

-The E-Street band is tight, and a buzz to watch. They may have done all this a thousand times before, but the exuberance and enjoyment is right there for all to see. Speaking of which, the three giant screens only showed what was on stage, which was great for those of us in the 200th row, but also good for focussing on the music rather than any stageshow gimmicks. This gig was all about the music. Even the slightly contrived moments, the rock and roll theatre stuff you're expecting still works because everyone involved is having such a good time.

-Compared to Barnes' at times patchy sound mix, Springsteen's was perfect.

-Bruce himself clearly knows and appreciates the art of audience interaction, even if he isn't familiar enough a performer here for the crowd to pick up some of his leads.


-The set and show itself was epic, three hours with only very short breaks, and Bruce himself sustaining the energy and performance like a guy half his age. It was just one big party. I know a few people who were less than enthusiastic about the E-Street Band being on this tour, and of a few who declared they wouldn't bother because it wasn't Bruce without the E-Street Band. It's a purist thing I guess. His most well known material is with that band, and if that's too commercial for you, meh. Playing the "Born in The USA" album in it's entirety seemed to justify the "commercial" critics (and while most successful, I'll admit it might not be his best or most representative album), but this was only the second time he has ever played NZ, and the first with E-Street. "USA" was a breakthrough album for him here, most of it never played here before, so why not play it, especially when there is an hour of other material either side of it in the set. It just added to the spectacle. There was only one two songs I really would have liked to see that weren't played, but I can't complain given all the others that were.

-The old story of seeing songs you've grown up with live for the first time played it's part. I've been listening to "The River" for thirty years, but never heard it with as much emotion as I did seeing it live. Likewise for some of the Born in the USA tracks, just for seeing Max Weinberg doing all that drumming I love on that album.

-Closing the show as it began, alone with a guitar and harmonica to perform "Thunder Road" was a perfect coda.

-And then it was all over. The lights come up and it's time to go. I've seen it a bunch of times, and it never fails to impress just how quickly a big crowd can disperse after the show.



-And after that, the familiar walk down the road in industrial south Auckland to wherever your ride is:

-It was awesome.

12 Things I hate about X-Factor

Note: this was written a few days ago, when it was slightly more current, but Ruaumoko had other ideas.

1. The host. I'm not sure what look Dominic Bowden is going for, but if it is slick smug sarcastic insincerity, he's got it nailed. Oh, and the paaaaaussssinggg.

2. Moments like this:

Man, that Stevie Nicks dude wrote some great songs back in the day. . . If you are going to judge material, at least pay the courtesy of fecking knowing it.

3. The X-factor they are looking for isn't talent. It is marketability. In some of the few moments of actual honesty on it, the judges near constantly refer to their charges ability to sell records to the "market". They stop short of referring to the performers as "units", but it isn't far away. It's not about making music. more about making money. It has nothing to do with good music, nothing to do with learning and honing your craft, of doing all the hard and unsung work, and it's hard not to see it as insulting to the musicians and performers that have paid their dues. It's designed to create an instant disposable product for an audience that generally doesn't know any better musically. I wonder how many in the rent-a-crowd studio audience knew who The Manic Street Preachers were without having to be told. Probably too busy waving their elbows as directed to care.

4. The show itself like most of its kind is a disposable product, designed to do nothing more than generate revenue for it's sponsors. Both the show and the performers it produces are intended to be short lived , the details forgotten by next season so they can do it all again. Whoever wins it will be a figurehead for whatever campaigning follows the show. If they are really lucky they might have a career afterward.

5. It's not reality. It's insincere, scripted and contrived at every turn. "Look, here's one of our hopefuls at McDonalds. Who happen to be one of our sponsors! And look, they happen to be talking about the show! How lucky it was our camera crew was present to capture this spontaneous moment!"
Let alone all the banter, arrangement, song selection to favour or disfavour a performer and pretty much everything else.

6. It doesn't find artists. It creates disposable carbon copy performers, to fit in a narrow mould. When they let contestants write and perform their own material rather than soullessly butchering other people's in a sort of hyper karaoke I'll be much more interested.Which brings me to point 7.

7. Butchering actually good classic songs and turning them into two-minute cheese-fests.

8. The public voting system is dubious at best, since it doesn't appear to be transparent, and there seems to be nothing stopping the producers from just making up the numbers anyway. Even if it is legit, it further reduces the talent factor, by way of turning the thing into a popularity contest. Not to mention raking in the cash at $1 a text.

9. It promotes the fantasy that the NZ music market is big enough to sustain pop mega-stars for more than a few singles. Bowden can say "living the dream!" as often as he wants, that doesn't make it true.

10. "Taking it to the next level". Etc.

11. The hype. It's inescapable. Inescapable enough that I can mercifully write this without having to watch too much of the show itself.

12. It's just wrong. Hey, no-one said this had to be rational. Like all rant lists, the objectivity is all mine.

Nice Music

Listening to: Hauraki

So further to the observation of my girls dancing to Soundgarden, with the public holiday today I had my mp3 player hooked up to the stereo on random all afternoon. It was still going quietly in the background at dinnertime, when I noticed Sophie dancing in her seat to this track:

"Sophie dance?" I asked.
"Music nice daddy!"
She liked the next two tracks offered up as well


This is encouraging :).

Re Compiling

I've been making comps for more than twenty years, first on tape, then on CD. I never used them to try and woo anyone, although I did make one for a girl I fancied as a birthday present, but more because I was broke than because I thought it would affect any other proceedings. They were more or less done for my own listening pleasure (for a while, there were times when I wasn't listening to actual albums at all). Besides countless tape comps, I made more than twenty CD compilations of my favourite tracks, including a 6-CD set that soundtracked my 30th birthday party. Listening to them now, especially the ones where I didn't record the tracklist anywhere can be a lot of fun, not only for reminding me of what I was into when I made them, but also since I've often forgotten what was on them, leading to lots of pleasant surprises. And the occasional skip or three when I wonder what I was thinking. Acquiring an MP3 player, and a car stereo that said player could plug into though effectively rendered the comps redundant, so it's been a few years now since I have put any together.

When that car died last month though, the stereo went with it. Our new ride has an actually much better stereo set up sound wise, but alas it doesn't have an AUX port (not yet anyway). And with it's first road trip beckoning yesterday, suddenly the comp is back in vogue, although being able to rip tracks straight from the MP3 player makes things a bit faster than the last time I did this. It was fun switching media on a whole bunch of new artists and songs I had never plonked on CD until now, and remembering the rules of making compilations. I was in a rush though, and a programme crash obliterated my first, near-perfect tracklist (which of course I neglected to write down first). Three road CD's resulted from a quick and dirty compile on Saturday morning.

The first one came out like this:

1. Unkle - "Keys To The Kingdom"
2. Dropkick Murphys - "Shipping Up To Boston"
3. Underworld - "Diamond Jigsaw"
4. Shihad - "Hard To Please"
5. Buffalo Tom - "Mineral"
6. Better than Ezra - "In The Blood"
7. The Twilight Singers - "On The Corner"
8. Big Country - "Porroh Man"
9. Third Eye Blind - "Motorcycle Drive-By"
10. Deborah Conway - "Today I Am A Daisy"
11. Jane's Addiction - "Mountain Song"
12. The Twilight Singers - "Never Seen No Devil"
13. Jakob - "Everything All Of The Time"
14. Talk Talk - "Life's What You Make It"
15. Chemical Brothers - "The Test"
16. Friendly Fires - "Jump In The Pool"

Having literally roadtested it now it kinda works, although "Today I Am A Daisy" and "Mountain Song" more co-exist than go together smoothly, and "Everything All Of The Time" does slow the pace a bit with it's epic moodiness.

The second one had more of an electronica theme, and not planned so much as themed.

1. Concord Dawn and Rido - "One And Only"
2. Underworld - "Scribble"
3. Crystal Castles - "Not In Love" (the Robert Smith version with a proper vocal)
4. Computers Want Me Dead - "Circles"
5. Concord Dawn - "The Space Between Us"
6. The Tutts - "i20"
7. Underworld - "Two Months Off"
8. Leftfield - "Open Up"
9. Shapeshifter - "One"
10. Prodigy - "Poison"
11. Chemical Brothers - "Star Guitar"
12. Unkle - "Burn My Shadow"
13. Underworld - "Rez"

That tracks in this genre tend to be longer is evident in the shorter traklisting. "i20" works as a kind of halfway break, and I originally planned to close it with "Burn My Shadow", but opted for "Rez" as a more trippy rather than punchy ender, and sort of breaking one of my own rules about not having too many tracks by the same artist on the same disc.

The third one was most rushed, and is more or less tracks that had caught my eye while putting the other two together:

1. Julia Deans "Skin (Everything Is Coming To A Halt)"
2. The Twilight Singers - "Gunshots"
3. Interpol - "Obstacle 1"
4. Foals - "Inhaler"
5. Hunters And Collectors - "Angel Of Mercy"
6. Paul Banks - "The Base"
7. Pearl Jam - "Brother" (the version with lyrics)
8. Neneh Cherry - "Manchild"
9. Dave Dobbyn - "Shaky Isles"
10. Foals - "Spanish Sahara"
11. Concrete Blonde - "Someday"
12. Hunters And Collectors - "Run Run Run"
13. Motocade - "Commandeering"
14. Pearl Jam - "Hard To Imagine"
15. The Twilight Singers - "Sublime"
16. Neneh Cherry - "Buffalo Stance"
17. Ween - "Mutilated Lips"

It's probably the messiest to listen to, but all three could flow a bit better. Maybe I should just play them all on random anyway.

The Smiths and I

I've always had a love/hate relationship with The Smiths. Love the music, but the vocal stylings of lead singer Morrissey not so much. Morrissey's utterances both on and off the records were a major impediment to me enjoying the band (I have the same issue with Rage Against The Machine as well), and since The Smiths are one of those bands that many deem essential, I wondered if I was missing something.

Then it clicked. I didn't have to like Morrissey, as long as I liked Johnny Marr:

That riff is perfection.

Music for the Mall

Much as you try and put it off, inevitably at this time of year you might find yourself at a mall, or a supermarket. These can be bad enough year round, but at Christmas they are boss-level.  To get through this while finding that perfect something and remaining sane, you need planning. The best way is to figure out what you are trying to get beforehand, exactly where you might find, get in, and get out. But, there will still be distractions. To get around those, you need:

-Focus

-Determination

-An MP3 player

-Beats

I found this a good track for the purpose at this time last year (not that you’d actually want to paint the mall walls black or anything. That might make the experience worse than it already is.)

You want to start while you’re still in the carpark (not getting to the carpark or in the car itself, you kind of want the opposite effect there, unless you drive a bumper car and have a very good relationship with both your insurer and local law enforcement). That way the track builds with your anticipation as you approach the entrance and you enter the building before the beat kicks in. That also gives you time to pause and survey the melee (action movie style, while the camera does a slow crab around you), steely of eye and grim of jaw, while deciding your course of action. Experience with sports that require dodging and blocking is a plus; you need to be able to keep a good pace while automatically moving around people without flattening them. Once the BPM goes up, you're off.

Having got amped up with the drum and bass, you want to keep the vibe flowing. Anything will do, as long as it is driven and loud, like so (some NSFW):

Etc.

Do this right, and you can shut out almost all distractions, including shop assistants, and particularly sales reps with stands you have to walk past. Whether or not you turn it down when actually purchasing is up to you, although it is useful to remember that if someone is staring at you while smiling politely they have probably asked you a question.

Do this right, and your shopping can be done before you know it, and you can play something like this in triumph as you drive away.

And now, Brian Page

Just wondering if I was the only one who thought Brian May was doing his best Jimmy Page impersonation at the Olympic closing ceremony. . .

Page, Beijing 2008

May, London 2012

Maybe he was just being sympathetic to Page not being involved in London at all, or maybe the organisers thought Page was dead or something (as opposed to say, Keith Moon).

Deb's Night Out

A couple of days after seeing the Shihad doco on the weekend, which is well worth seeing for its own sake even if you have no interest in the band, I came across this revisiting of one of my favourite tracks of theirs, "Deb's Night Out", as well as another better known song (that I kind of have a love/hate relationship with). I knew the broad backstory to "Deb's Night Out" already, but I enjoyed the more detailed insights into just how it came to be.

It's the song that finally got me into the band, after flirting with earlier singles. I remember hearing it on the radio sitting in a car in a supermarket carpark in 1995, hearing that looping melodic drone, the line about "pray for the rain, to wash you far away", the relentless drum sample that propels the song forward and I was hooked. It was perfect. In its more guitar based reworked live version it has become one of my favourite songs to see at a gig as well. The doco used the song brilliantly, cutting from live footage of it being performed last year to archival footage of the band's manager at an early 90's show.

When released as a single it was packaged as an EP, with four other tracks, two of which are also favourites, the bulldozering cover of their then manager's band Flesh D-Vice's "Flaming Soul", and the gloriously moody and atmospheric instrumental "Last Day Of A Three Day Journey". I remember driving around in a car all night with a few friends in 1996, talking about loves and life, and playing this tape over and over until the sun was about to come up. The video too is cool, capturing the conflict in the song perfectly (as well as some Wellington locations that are now either very different or gone altogether).

I like it's unusual structure, and the way it presaged where the band was going creatively. It isn't only unique in style on it's album, it pretty much stands alone in their entire back catalogue. But it showed there was more to this band than just riffs and noise. It's dark, moody and uplifting at the same time, and I love it.

New Booster Order

I know I've posted Space Shuttle booster cams before, but this one really is the shizz, great sound, some beautiful imagery and telemetry to show just how fast the thing is actually going:


The shot of the other booster trailing smoke and plummeting at about 5:47 is one of my favourites.

By coincidence the first time I watched it I happened to be listening to this, and found it a perfect accompaniment. When both are started at the same time the song syncs with the video quite nicely:


It looks and sounds good to me anyway :)

I don't hate The Feelers

Before hitting the road to come home from Taupo we had lunch in a park on the lakefront.
To the surprise musical accompaniment of The Feelers (well half of them anyway: The Feel?) playing an acoustic set. That in itself was slightly surreal, but it got even weirder when they started playing covers ("Save Tonight" and "Where do the children play" were the ones we heard).
Now apparently if you are a "Real (NZ) Music Fan"TM you are supposed to hate them. Pouring scorn on them and everything they do is de-rigeur in certain circles. And to be honest, moving in some of those circles, it gets boring.

I don't hate The Feelers (heresy I know). I don't love them either, and will happily damn them with faint praise, but they are what they are, which is harmless. They produce to my ears bland, somewhat calculatedly mainstream cookie cutter rock (which I think they admitted once might have always been the plan: their first big single initially sounded to me like a simple Bush rip-off, who themselves had been busy ripping off Nirvana but I digress), sold their musical soul to both the National Party and the RWC, and somehow still qualify for NZonAir funding thus depriving more deserving artists (more a problem with the funding model than the band though), so there are reasons to hate on them but I just can't be arsed. There are more important things to worry about.

The Feelers are successful, do what they do, do it well, and that suits the fans. I don't get why this is such a problem for the sneerers. There is this elitist aspect to criticism of this band and others that really pisses me off. The Feelers might be your favourite band ever. They aren't mine. Such is life.

I have the first album from 1998 (and no interest in any others: they have spent the last 14 years remaking it, so you only really need one of their albums), and even got it signed way back when it was new (screw whatever street cred I may have acquired...). I still listen to it from time to time and still like most of it, this track in particular. Screw the haters.

Thing from the past

Listening to: Pearl Jam - Live at the Gorge 05/06 (2007)

Occured to me the other day I hadn't heard this in a long, long time:


I was kind of shocked to realise just how old it is now (it was recorded in 1993). A friend of mine who remains very knowledgable about such things (D3vo) introduced me to it circa 1994, and many a great time was had with it as a background throughout the 90's. Lots of good memories :)

I wonder what that baby is up to now.

Record Store Brain Fade

Listening to: Random MP3 again. Right now it is this (not the proper video, because that is on youtube Vevo, and I hate Vevo).

I think at 35 I can reserve the right to be old fashioned about some things. One of those is continuing to buy albums on CD. I like the physical experience of browsing the record store, finding the thing you want, that you might have been looking for for ages, and checking out the artwork and inlay while you listen to it. In the age of everything being available on MP3, I feel we are diminishing one of the essential parts of the music experience: listening to a track in context of the album it came from. Sometimes albums are a collection of otherwise unrelated tracks, but other times they flow and feed off each other.

I tend to be handicapped in the record store process though, in that while not shopping I know exactly which albums I'm interested in, once in the store I often forget which they are. In this way, albums I have meant to buy for years slip through the cracks.

A couple I have rediscovered recently.

One of them is this one, solely on the basis of this track:


I quite like what the poster has done with the video too. It works very very well.

Another one is this, which always reminds me of a rainy day in the summer of 2005/6, when we would listening to the radio in the lounge with the door to our deck open, the relaxing sight and sound mixing easily with the music. I never picked this one up at the time mainly because I could never figure out what the song was actually called.

Exquisite noise

Uploading a couple of clips from local post rock noise practitioners Jakob, because I went to their gig in Wellington last night. And it was excellent. I quite like music like this; not having a lead singer, or usually any vocals at all means more focus on the music speaking for itself rather than conforming to an image or expectation. Apart from thanking the crowd and support acts, about the only thing anyone said on stage was "Hi, we're Jakob from Napier."

And what music. A lot of their tracks build from quiet melodies up to layered walls of sound full of intensity and atmosphere, often slowly and steadily to the point where you suddenly notice it has gotten very loud. Some might just call it noise but I like it. A more musically learned friend of mine pointed out once when discussing radio edits of songs that some people just don't handle instrumentals; a song must have lyrics before they can relate to it. Their loss.

Nice day for an earthquake. An older track, but a great video. Honestly, who hasn't wanted to do this to a TV at least once? Sorry about the quality, but it is the only one I found that was embeddable.

I got to violently destroy a TV once; it involved boots (the old screens are surprisingly hard to kick in), metal chair legs, bricks and a half round fence post and was very cathartic.

Safety in Numbers. Should be obvious why I like this one :) It is a really nice match of sound and visual though.


My favourite track of theirs is the low-key (by their standards) I Was Hidden. I'm not even sure why I like this track so much: I just do.

CS-Ire

My indifference for the various CSI franchises is not only based on the fact that what happens on screen bears about as much relation to actual scientific investigation as hard-core porn does to childbirth, but also that they reduce great rock music to the status of mere theme tunes. The only upside is that it might get more people to discover and appreciate the genre bedrock that was The Who.

This has probably been done a thousand times before elsewhere on the interwebs, but to set things right a bit here are the three Who songs from the 70's in question, properly, not as thirty second sample mixes :)

Who Are You? (CSI Las vegas)


Won't get Fooled again (CSI Miami, the 'YAAAAAAARRRGGGHHHH!' is at about 7:50, right after Keith Moon starts demonstrating that apart from the debaucherous legend, in rock drumming there is him, John Bonham, and everybody else in their shadow.)


Baba O-Riley (CSI New York, sometimes mis-referred to as 'Teenage Wasteland')


You're welcome

Record Store Day

Listening to: See Below
So I was kind of planning an interesting night out tonight, starting with a bit of Roller Derby, then moving on to Cirque de Medusa (in the process finally getting to see a friend of mine sing, something I have been meaning to do for months now), but the migraine I had yesterday and still affecting me today put paid to that.

I figure migraines are like a very condensed night long party in your head. Except it is the kind of party you don't get to enjoy, like when it is at the neighbours place, there are too many bright lights shining in your window, the music is too loud (and playing only songs you hate), people are vomiting over the fence and leaving junk and debris on your lawn, you are thinking of calling the cops and you weren't invited anyway. Anyway the fuzziness and nausea that was yesterday afternoon left me with a bruised and battered brain today, remarkably similar to a hangover, but without the preceding fun. Thus low key activities were in order today, including marking Record Store Day by going to a couple of my favourite aural haunts. Including one unfortunately in the process of closing down (possibly but not definitely to re-open in a new incarnation). Despite occasional (and sometimes almost cliche typical independent record store style) flaws, Real Groovy has been one of my favourite places to kill time and add to my collection for the last decade or so. Most of my mumble600mumble odd CD's are from there, at a cost may times less than what I would have paid for them in a chain store. I am sad to see it go. There used to be four of them nationwide (ironically a chain I know), but the chain fell over a few years ago and the stores went independent. The Dunedin one closed at the time of the original collapse, the earthquake literally destroyed the Christchurch one, and with this one going it will be back where it started with a single store in Auckland Charlotte was my partner in hunting and gathering, and I took a picture so when she is older and asks "Dad what were record stores and what where they like?" I can show her in one, with a caveat that two and a half year olds were not commonly seen there, even though she has been to this one several times.

I think the facepainting at the bar across the road that was also marking the day was more of a highlight for her than the time honoured ritual of flicking through album covers and saying "hmmmm" occasionally.

Today's visit saw me picking up an album by Over the Atlantic, and an old Pearl Jam single I didn't have.

Moving down Cuba Street to Slowboat Records looking for another couple of items on the eternal and ever changing hitlist, I picked up an EP by City oh Sigh, solely because they were playing live in store for Record Store Day and I liked what I heard, having never encountered them before. It was exactly the sort of thing that I like record stores for. I am a very late adopter when it comes to online music. Physical music stores may be in a perhaps ultimately futile evolve-or-perish phase right now, but if they disappear completely (independent ones especially), the music consumer experience will be more than a little less fun.

New toons

Couple of newish tracks I am digging at the moment: Shihad lead singer Jon Toogood's solo project The Adults And a newish track from one of my other favourite acts, The Twilight Singers

Summer's Kiss is over baby...

Daylight savings ends tonight, and with it so does being able to still pretend it is summer and not autumn.

To mark this solemn occasion, here are a couple of my favourite songs on the theme, both from the mid 90's:

'Summer's Kiss', originally by The Afghan Whigs, but here sung by the post-Whigs pairing of Gred Dulli and Mark Lanegan as The Gutter Twins.


And 'Summer' by Buffalo Tom.

Buffalo Tom - Summer on MUZU.

Somebody think of the children!

Dire Straits now officially offensive after decades of being one of the safest rock bands ever.

I get that a throwaway lyric that is actually a quote, in a song that is a parody of both the quoted and the thing he was referring to, could be considered to be offensive language.

But I don't why has it taken twenty five years of virtually continual airplay of a song that was the biggest hit off a monster album (including a radio edit produced at the time of the original release that doesn't feature said lyrics, after they caused controversy then) before anyone got riled up enough about it to officially complain. Again. Especially when there are far more and worse examples of homophobic or otherwise derogarotory or potentially offensive lyrics and themes in other innocuous sounding hit songs.

For example there is one very popular mainstream radio song from the late 90's, with a bouncy catchy riff, and very inoffensive sound, widely played by radio and featured in a few hit movies and TV series even, that is actually about crystal meth addiction, and features lyrics that explicitly reference sex and drug taking. I love the irony of it getting almost daily airplay on my local family friendly mainstream radio station among others. No-one listens to the lyrics apparently :)

In the future all albums will be listened to this way

I really have no idea why I find this so funny (with apologies to those already subjected to it on Morgue's blog), although all things considered any possible emotional reaction might be appropriate:


Do you need a reason? If nothing else for once it ensures the youtube comments are worth reading...

Although I was at the dentist today, and 'Honesty' came on the radio and it reminded me of this and I had to not start laughing since I was mid examination. It was a tricky moment.

Post Jovian thoughts

Listening to: WMA player on random. Right now it is Glenn Frey's "You belong to the city" from the Miami Vice sountrack. The 1980's Miami Vice.

Mental notes from last nights concert:

- I think there is a rule somewhere that no Hutt boy or girl's life will be complete without seeing Bon Jovi play a stadium on a hot summer night. Kind of like muslims needing to go to Mecca, but less classy.

-I haven't seen so many drunk bogan rock chicks since the Fleetwood Mac concert last year.

-I wonder how many were in the audience just to perve at the frontman.

-I also wonder how many thought 'Pretty Woman' was a Bon Jovi song they hadn't realised was a Bon Jovi song.

-The appearance of various punters cause several utterances along the lines of "Is that a wig?", "I think thats a wig", "I hope thats a wig".

-Due to certain demographics the number of people at the gig I recognised was way higher than normal.

-At times the crowd around me was loud enough to drown out the actual music which was fun. Not so fun was the woman screaming behind me, which hurt my ears more than any loud music could. Screaming was alternated with cries of "Owh huees sooo suxay!" (say out loud for better accent approximation) and imaginings of what she could do with Jon Bon Jovi's fingers after his hand was shown in close up on the big screens.

-Speaking of the big screens, the half second lag between live audio and visual was distracting. There were a couple of sound issues early in the show, and I was wondering if there were vision issues as well.

-Jon and Ritchie both saying "Wellington, New Zealand!", instead of just "Wellington!" made me wonder if they were suffering from the "Where are we tonight again?" syndrome, even if reassuring us they did know where they were, even if they didn't know much about where they were.

-Parts of the show were sheer classic arena rock theatre, always slick, often cheesy, and occasionally downright silly. Some parts I think were meant to look spontaneous, but clearly weren't. Meh. I can know these things and not care, it didn't make it any less fun.

-The use of fan videos for 'Living on a Prayer' was pretty cool.

-The encore performance comprising of 'Wanted Dead or Alive' and 'Living on a Prayer' was probably worth the price of admission alone. The whole stadium singing along was a nice moment to be a part of.

It was a lot of fun, even if I was only familiar with at best 30 or 40 percent of the material. It was never going to be sophisticated high culture, even by rock standards. Not the greatest gig I have ever been to, probably not even top ten, but I am still glad I got to it and enjoyed it. And I got a T-shirt.

Rich was there with me too, his observations are here.