Tim Devine's Disney Photo Blog

Tim Devine's Disney Photo Blog is a photo blog devoted to Disney Theme Parks, featuring the rides, characters, buildings, and that wonderful feeling you get when you visit the parks.

Tim is in the Law Enforcement / Security business, and notes that it is his goal to provide us [his readers] with the best Disney Memories on the 'net.

On a related note, they sure love ol' Walt Disney over on Stormfront.org, the "White Pride World Wide" site. Boy do they love him.

Heavens blaze forth the death of princes

On Saturday night, I chugged along to see Wellington's own world-famous doom-metal outfit Black Boned Angel (at Scottish mailorder outlet Volcanic Tongue; Salient review) at a little venue in Newtown called Uproar.

Here is a little animation of "lead guitarist"* Campbell Kneale playing his guitar during the show. It runs at about 4x speed (yes, that does mean he was "thrashing" really really really slowly).

The venue is actually underground, in a local grindcore band's practice space. It has a 'stud' of about 6'5" and is the coolest practice space I've ever seen. The entire place is thoroughly soundproofed with mattresses, old couches, egg-trays and the works, all painted black and stapled or otherwise affixed to the wall; very professional.

My ears are still ringing, though.

*a little joke: as in he leads, and James (right) follows.

(click to enlarge images)

Waterworks

This is what Aro Street Park is looking like at the moment. The work to join the new Aro Street drain with the large Te Aro branch-culvert, that was laid up to the park almost a year ago now, is almost complete. On Saturday it was really freakin exciting - after a heavy fall of rain over the previous 24 hours or so, the water was fair gushing down the (temporarily) exposed culvert. You can see the water in the second picture - that's the white stuff at the bottom of the pic.

Having this all wrapped up is good for two reasons. First of all, Aro Street will no longer flood every time there's sufficient rain to overwhelm its (now former) 100+yr old brick stormwater system. This was novel, and kinda cute for a while, but soon became completely tedious.

Secondly, having the park torn up to buggery once again will provide the pedestrian commuters of Aro Valley - once again - with the opportunity to NOT cut across the grass every day on the way to and from work, thereby carving a great big track - which turns into a huge bog in wet weather - through the park and ruining it for everyone else.

In order to remind these people that other residents would appreciate it if they DIDN'T act like a bunch of selfish arseholes, I'm thinking of taking some direct action and posting a pair of small signs in the park. Problem is, I've come up blank when trying to settle on the ideal wording. This is what I've come up with so far:

WAGESLAVES
Spare a thought for your fellow
residents and other park-lovers
Please DON'T cut ACROSS the GRASS
cheers.

Your comments are welcome; nay, invited. Together maybe we can find the ideal mixture of humour and severity.

(click on the images to enlarge)

Creme de cacao

Here's a quick one for you liqueur connoisseurs: how chocolate-y should a white Creme de Cacao be?

Because, the one I bought on Friday (Kings brand, out of Greenhithe, Auckland) ain't that chocolate-y at all.

Pop

Goddammit. If she (left) doesn't stop appearing in the margins of my Myspace pages, telling me that she's a-waiting for me over at ***** Intimate Dating service, I'ma have a fricken heart attack.

Ouch!

Think I'm gonna dance now.

Friday farce: Young Americans

Ha ha ha ha ha.

Ha ha ha.

Ha ha ha ha ha.

*gasp*


Anyone who's ever been in a band will hopefully be able to relate to those moments in the practice room where suddenly, spontaneously, for no apparent reason, you all start playing some appalling version of some (often appalling) song and for a few moments there, a few minutes, even, it's fun and zany and wacky and a huge joke and you have thoughts running through your head like "hey we could totally add this to our live set.. that'd slay 'em dead" (a good thing) and then you all get kinda lost in the bridge except for the guitarist who - oddly - seems to know the song by heart and gets irritated that everyone else doesn't know the changes and.. then you all kinda stop and it dies off except for the drummer who tries to get it going again and then you all realise what a bunch of dicks you are and how awful it sounded and you should be shot for imagining that you should play this live and... yeah? well, not if you're The Cure.

No, apparently, if you're The Cure, you spend most of the late-80s directionless and casting around, trying to work out what to do next, firing and hiring members left right and centre, and putting out a couple of pretty bad albums (e.g. Kiss Me^3) in the process. And recording an utterly wretched full-blown studio version of a David Bowie classic (Allmusic.com song review).

The Cure - Young Americans (3.66 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download)

If you recall, David Bowie got a bit of a bollocking a few weeks back for his awful version of Pablo Picasso; well, now it's time he got one back! Yeah!

*retch*

This song is only available on a couple of obscure radio-station compilations, as well as the exhaustive rarities 4-disc boxed-set Join the Dots: B-Sides & Rarities, 1978-2001.

EDIT
Since Robert Smith altered the song's lyric to reference President Clinton, I assume it was not in fact recorded in the late-80s, but indeed much more recently. However that it sounds like it fell out of a timewarp from 1987 only adds to the ghastly comedy of it all.

What to do, what to do

Looks like Friday night (25th August) is well sewn up if live music is your desir du coeur.

The hipsters will be well sorted at Bar Bodega with the return from afar of ex-Two Lane Black Top guitarist Pip Brown and her band Teenager, which also features Oscar out of Letterbox Lambs on drums. Support is in the form of Pip's solo act Ladyhawke, as well as Charlie Ash, The Actualities and "Wellington's most awesome DJ" Sift. (more here on Scoop).

Meanwhile, over at Happy, bithday celebrations will be winding up with the biggest of the three-night party. Look out for Jeff Henderson's monstrous Deconstruction Unit, as well as the Not Quite Quiet Choir, The Pleasing Mummies, Alphabethead, and on into the night with a "wack funk party".

That'll take care of the pre-hipsters, the post-hipsters and the entirely-uninterested-in-hipsterismists; leaving pretty much sweet fuck all left to catch The Idle Suite and Starcruizer at The Adelaide. Which kinda sucks, because Starcruizer are one of the coolest and most entertaining bands around at the moment. And The Idle Suite and their twin-drummer-propelled post-rock endurances are not too shabby, either.

Melbourne

As you may have been aware, I went with my band The Stumps to Melbourne recently. More on that soon, when I can collect my thoughts, but for the moment, here are a couple of pictures.

The Stumps, in a street in Brunswick. Shifty lot, innit. Self-portrait. Composing self prior to spending about A$500 at Metropolis Books and Music.

Damn I'm good-looking.

Friday farce: Love will tear us apart

I don't really know what to say about Albert Kuvezin and Yat Kha, his Tuvan throat-singing rock band. Except possibly "cookies!"

I would say, however, that Joy Division's classic 1980 single and, er, swan-song Love Will Tear Us Apart almost certainly belongs on the list of songs of which cover versions should never be attempted. Everyone from Calexico (hmm?) to Paul Young (yikes!) have tried, however; I've not heard any of those but The Swans made a reasonable hash of it in 1988, emphasising its nihilistic gothic-chamber-folk nature.

Albert Kuvezin and Yat Kha recently released an album of cover versions (tracklist and notes). Entitled Re-covers, it consists of their versions of some of Albert's favourite songs. Frankly, based on their attempt at Love Will Tear Us Apart, the album sounds completely, utterly, gag-worthy, retch-inducingly 'orrible.

Albert Kuvezin and Yat Kha - Love Will Tear Us Apart (1.44 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download)

You can also listen to their version of Motorhead's Orgasmatron on this page; this at least is as comical as a drunk Irish pub band featuring a retarded Rumanian vampire/Dr. Frank-N-Furter-wannabe on vocals. Or something.

2-fer-1 Friday Farce: The Boys of Summer

It's late, I know, but I really have been whacked since I got back from Australia. So to make up for my tardiness I've put together a super-duper bumper edition of the Friday Farce; so super-duper and bumper, in fact, that it's virtually interactive!

So Don Henley out of The Eagles bounced back from his 1980 arrest and subsequent charging for "possession of cocaine, Quaaludes, and marijuana, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor" and had a few solo career hits back in the 80s; amongst them was a charming tune called The Boys of Summer, which although I feel I almost oughtta know better, I can't help loving to pieces. It's truly "melancholic and gorgeous", and there's something quite plaintive about it which is very affecting.

Today you get to choose between two covers and decide which is truly the Friday Farce: will it be The Ataris' earnest, faithful and ultimately pointless fist-pumping revved-up possibly-even-Emo (*gasp*) skate-"punk"anthemn? Or Spanish retardo-club-techno producer DJ Sammy's appalling-eyewear-wearing bad-haircut-sporting convertible-driving glowstick-in-anus-inserting female-diva-horror shocker? The call is yours and yours alone.

The Ataris - The Boys of Summer (3.95 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download)

DJ Sammy - The Boys of Summer (3.33 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download)

I kinda like the irony of The Ataris altering the "yuppie-baiting" line about the "Deadhead sticker on the Cadillac" to be a Black Flag sticker; as has been dicussed here previously, punk is well and truly dead, and it's due in no small part to clueless neo-pop-skate-"punk" bands like The Ataris doing earnest, sentimental covers of 80s commercial top-10 songs. But don't get me started.

Don Henley's main fan-site is here; this is where I learnt that in addition to snorting coke off the breasts of fucked-up-on-'Ludes teenage jailbait (see above), Don enjoys fishing, reading, "writing scathing letters", cooking, and gardening. He is apparently also "an environmentalist, intellect and crusader for a variety of important causes"; however a cursory investigation hasn't revealed any supporting evidence for these statements.

Over here on his official site you can actually listen to the original tune in WMA and RealAudio formats (it's track 01 off the Building a Perfect Beast album).

Green Morning

Just a quick brag to let you know that my new full length CD The Green Morning has just been released on Digitalis, in the USA.

Here's what the label said about it:

New Zealand's seht (AKA Stephen Clover) has spawned a musical monster around one consistent idea: that simplicity can be the most mind-expanding drug around. Over the course of a dozen releases on labels like Last Visible Dog and Celebrate/Psi/Phenomenon, Clover has perfected this artform. Using a minimal array of instruments and effects, he sculpts every sound source he can find into soothing walls of aural bliss. Doing more with less is rarely done better than this.

The Green Morning is seht's third proper CD release, and comes on the heels of a series of limited CD-Rs. Through his ability to synthesize a seemingly endless array of sounds into a single, focused point, seht acts as a modern composer in the same vein as William Basinski. Clover's drones have explored various territory through the past few years, everything from glacial ambience to desconstructed blues. The Green Morning is like the early moments of dawn, bathed in warm plumes of sonic sunlight. These songs are the memories trapped beneath the floorboards, and by looking back Clover offers a mere glimpse into the ambience of a not-so-distant future.

More info here. If you follow the links to the Digitalis release page, there's a track (Cydonia) you can listen to; you can listen to a further track (Valles Marineris) on my myspace page.

There's also a new 3" tour cdr release "sputnik II" on Melbourne, Australia label Diagnosis...DON'T! recordings but I'll pro'ly blog that separately.

(ps. please contact me if you are having trouble finding somewhere that is selling them.)

Tuesday tune: When she sang about angels

seht and The Stumps are going to Australia tomorrow for almost a weeks worth of shows in Melbourne. Here's the itinerary, as we know it so far:

Thursday 3rd August:
Missing Link (405 Bourke Street) - instore performance 5pm by The Stumps

Friday 4th August
Pony Club (68 Little Collins Street) - The Stumps, seht and AM
with:
Datura Duo (2/3 Grey Daturas), Bad Cop Bad Cop (members of On/The Stabs), Agonhymn (members of Terrorust/Cement Pig)

Saturday 5th August
Bus Gallery (117 Lt Lonsdale St) - The Nether Dawn and seht
with:
Nigel Wright, Blarke Bayer (Ben Andrews of Agents of Abhorrence/My Disco), Skovorodino and Bone Sheriff (2/3 EOH)

Sunday 6th August
Bar Open (317 Brunswick St, Fitzroy) - The Stumps and The Nether Dawn
with:
Malakat (inc members of EOH/Whitehorse), Rod Cooper, and Mike Rose (Mark Groves of Whitehorse/True Radical Miracle)

...

To celebrate the tour, both seht and The Stumps will be releasing limited-edition 3" EPs on Melboure label diagnosis...DON'T! reCoRdings. Needless to say, we're all pretty excited about this.

...

So yeah. There ain't gonna be any Friday Farce this week, so I thought I'd leave you with a tune for Tuesday.

The Go Betweens - Cattle and Cane (5.99 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download)

I posted about the wonderful Aussie band The Go Betweens before; since then, Grant McLennan has passed away (and here), a turn of events that saddened me greatly.

Cattle and Cane, from their early album Before Hollywood, is described as McLennan's "autobiographical masterpiece" and was recently voted by the Australian Performing Rights Association as one of the ten greatest Australian songs of all time. It's not an unreasonable call.

See ya next week!

Bob Arctor

(stupid A Scanner Darkly/Philip K. Dick/paranoid conspiracy theorist/whatever joke follows)

Umm, Bob Arctor wants to be my friend on Myspace. Should I be nervous?