Happy birfday to me, innit

I got a bunch of great presents last night. From Dave and Rose a huge skeleton-guy cushion/pillow; from Campbell a beautiful, tragic, beat-up accordion; from Marnie a drawing; from Jo and Matt a drawing and a photo; from Shana a pair of signed 7" records by The Stabs; a bottle of wine and a wee painting from Simon and Anya; and Antony gave me a copy of his new cd.

Big ups my mates, then. No really, thank you. I love yous all.

More drinking buddies

I've added Callie and Bad-Aunt, over there in the side-bar.

Hare rama, rama rama

Today is my birthday, and in honour of this auspicious occasion we held a long and raucous party last night, which culminated in my dear friend Malcolm bestowing on me another of his now-reknowned 2 a.m. haircuts. I won't go into the gory details, but suffice to say that if I were to obtain saffron-coloured robes, a small hand-organ and a book of annoying songs, and go and hang out at the airport, I very much doubt that anyone would bat an eyelid.

I am now the very proud owner of a rat's-tail.

At right is a special celebratory drawing by The Jarman.

Hunter and Painter

This fifteen part daily comic strip, by British illustrator Tom Gauld, appeared in the Guardian between 20th December 2004 and 7th January 2005.

It's the funniest thing I've seen in ages. Especially strip 2. Managing to convey accurately and entertainingly the concerns of the modern artist whilst in a Neolithic setting is no small or insignificant feat; Gauld pulls it off with ease.

Hunter and Painter depicts the artist as he struggles to come up with the "difficult second album", music-lore-speak for the less-accessible sophomore effort from a lauded new musician or band, and we are all reminded that, when it comes down to it, more or less we've all "got to keep the customer satisfied".

[Tom Gauld's site].

INTP Central

Us INTPs, we've, like, got our own website. It's definitely a good spot to kill a few minutes/hours/whatever you've got to spare.

Some famous INTPs:

CHARLES DARWIN
RENE DESCARTES
ALBERT EINSTEIN
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
BLAISE PASCAL
SOCRATES

I can't say I particularly identify with any of these in particular. Except perhaps Socrates; I have been known to run about the house naked and shouting. And maybe Descarte: "I can think, therefore I've definitely had coffee and a cigarette this morning".

It gets worse over at TypeLogic.com: F'shure they add Sir Issac Newton to the above list, which is fine, but then lumber us with such wretches and buffoons as Henri Mancini, Bob Newhart, and Rick Moranis. To top it off, we get C. G. Jung, (Freudian defector, author of Psychological Types, etc.) and Tiger Woods in our team.

INTP U.S. Presidents:

JAMES MADISON
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
JOHN TYLER
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
GERALD FORD

Whizzo. (Actually, for the most part, who?!??)

Please note that this is all a bunch of supposition and nonsense; most of these people have of course never been subjected to a Myers-Briggs personality-typing test, and if any of them have been, the results almost certainly have never been submitted to the public record.

The cheap and nasty-looking INTP Survival Guide provides, amongst other things, what passes for Humour for INTPs, mousepads and T-shirts. They do reckon, however, that Linus from Peanuts is a fellow INTP:

"Miss Otthmar, Miss Otthmar" etc.

I think I'm going to go and hang myself, right now.

Finally, TypeTango.com gives us something to get our teeth into: well-known INTP-types are supposed to include Isaac Asimov (author), and Friedrich Nietzche (philosopher), as well as the insufferable Lieutenant Commander Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

PS. Rose will be pleased to note that in this post (I believe) I've successfully managed to correctly combine acronyms and possessive apostrophes.

Good husband material...

Doin' tests... doin' tests... ev'rybody's doin' tests... so yeah, I joined in the game and did some tests. (I can hear Ross P. Kettle choking on his soup from here!)

I'm quite enamoured with my Warmth-14% and Dutifulness-22% vs. Introversion-90% and Abstraction-74% in the Cattels 16 Factor test. Regarding Emotional Stability-26%: I suspect we already knew.

Of more concern is the Borderline-78% on the Personality Disorder Test: "individual shows a generalized pattern of instability in interpersonal relationships, self-image, and observable emotions, and significant impulsiveness." I'm keeping schtumm on the Schizotypal-70% and Avoidant-74%, and I've no real idea where the Dependent-70% came from. For the full wrap check out the Personality Disorder page at similarminds.com.

I've known I was an Myers-Briggs INTP for a while. So are a number of my friends. Estimates of our population proportion vary between 1% and 3.5%. I've got a rare blood-type to go with it, not that I'm suggesting there's any kind of link.

Dunno what to make of the Enneagram results - Sensitivity-73% and Detachment-76%. Cute pictures though.

Cattell's 16 Factor Test Results

Warmth 14%
Intellect 78%
Emotional Stability 26%
Aggressiveness 46%
Liveliness 42%
Dutifulness 22%
Social Assertiveness 14%
Sensitivity 62%
Paranoia 66%
Abstractness 74%
Introversion 90%
Anxiety 74%
Openmindedness 86%
Independence 82%
Perfectionism 58%
Tension 78%

Take Cattell 16 Factor Test (similar to 16pf)
personality tests by similarminds.com

Enneagram Test Results

The Enneagram is a personality system which divides the entire human personality into nine behavioural tendencies, this is your score on each...

Type 1: Perfectionism 40%
Type 2: Helpfulness 23%
Type 3: Image Awareness 56%
Type 4: Sensitivity 73%
Type 5: Detachment 76%
Type 6: Anxiety 40%
Type 7: Adventurousness 26%
Type 8: Aggressiveness 23%
Type 9: Calmness 20%

Your main type is 5 "I must be knowledgable and independent to be happy."

Your variant is self pres

Main type

Variant

Your main type is whichever behaviour you utilize most and/or prefer. Your variant reflects your scoring profile on all nine types: so = social variant (compliant, friendly), sx = sexual variant (assertive, intense), sp = self preservation variant (withdrawn, security seeking). For info on the flaws of the Enneagram system click here.

Take Free Enneagram Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Personality Disorder Test Results

Paranoid 70%
Schizoid 62%
Schizotypal 70%
Antisocial 38%
Borderline 78%
Histrionic 58%
Narcissistic 34%
Avoidant 74%
Dependent 70%
Obsessive-Compulsive 42%

Take Free Personality Disorder Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Jungian Myers-Briggs Test Results

Introverted (I) 77.42% Extroverted (E) 22.58%
Intuitive (N) 56.41% Sensing (S) 43.59%
Thinking (T) 73.33% Feeling (F) 26.67%
Perceiving (P) 59.09% Judging (J) 40.91%

Your type is: INTP - "Architect". Greatest precision in thought and language. Can readily discern contradictions and inconsistencies. The world exists primarily to be understood. 3.3% of total population.

Take Free Jung Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Sloth

Last night I went to the opening of my friend Dave's new solo show at the 91 Aro St gallery. That's him over there in the Drinking buddies. (There are links to his blog and his website).

The show is a series consisting of a very reasonable number of works featuring Dave's creation, the somewhat obviously auto-biographical Skeleton Guy. Skeleton Guy is ostensibly a painter, and appears again and again with the tools of the trade - studio, paint, easel and so forth - but seems to spend very little time actually painting. He rather uses the 'studio' as a private space into which he retreats to do whatever the hell he feels like - and frequently does, with characteristic torpid insouciance. Any suggestions from us that this is less than reputable behaviour and even downright duplicitous are challenged with a deapan stare that a Maltese mafioso would be proud of. At the very least we can expect to have cigarette smoke blown into our faces in a less than respectful fashion if we don't shuddup.

I am reminded of the (good old?) days when I would head for my studio at every possible opportunity to thwart the cloying mawkish clutches of my annoying girlfriend. Popular culture would have us believe that this is a common male behaviour - retreat to the den, the shed, the workshop, the garage, the local bar etc. to avoid the shrill girlfriend, the shrewish wife, the responsibilities of a family life - but I am left wondering what it is that prevents us from confronting the issues head-on and acknowledging our apparent need for solace and escape.

I know in my case the annoying girlfriend would accuse me of outright abandonment if I dared to express my desire for some "solace and escape", hence the utilisation of the convenient 'studio' justification. This is clearly weak, but for the sake of a decent night's sleep, worth it. I hope for everyone's sake situations like this are not common; I fear they may be. We're all doomed, aren't we. Go on, admit it - we're doomed.

But I'll never go to see Lambchop play again

I paid NZ$54 to see Lambchop play the other night. Lambchop, the darlings of alt.country - almost up there in darling-ness with darling Ryan Adams (ugh) and darling Jesse Malin and The goddamn darling Handsome Family. It was fine, I guess, but I'm never going again. Actually, if you want the truth, it was boring. And nice.

The cost of the experience is especially galling when you consider I had a ticket to give away on my radio show the Monday previous. I should never have given that ticket away, I should have kept the bastard for myself. Then I could have gotten really drunk and had a really enjoyable time, instead of just getting a little drunk and still being cogent enough to not enjoy the band.

Anyway, after all's said and done, I can't rid myself of this unpleasant nagging feeling that Lambchop is somehow the Jose Feliciano or the Gordon Lightfoot of this generation. And that's not a nice nagging feeling. It's the feeling of being duped... by niceness. Nothing against those fellows, but it's all just a little too... nice.

And should I trust my instinct when people I don't like who play in bands I don't like rave to me about how great Lambchop are?

The Voice of the Taniwha: Promotion

The global promotional campaign for The Voice of the Taniwha has gone into full swing already. The above image shows advertising in Pack Place, Asheville, North Carolina.

The Voice of the Taniwha

My new album The Voice of the Taniwha is now out. It's been released on the Providence, RI label Last Visible Dog.

Here's what label honcho Chris Moon wrote about it:

Another of the NZ bands that have risen in the aftermath of the mid-90's free noise frenzy, but seht is much more about minimalism, field recordings, and still, beautiful moments. Some tracks here (like Canned Laughter) are quite experimental and outright disturbing while others focus only on solo acoustic guitar. [...] seht demonstrates an all-too-genius use of field recordings, the pinnacle of which being the 10 minute 'St. Valentine's Day 2003' that escalates a found recording of a Salvation Army band to near cosmic proportions!

I'm really proud of it and glad it's finally seen the light of day (the release schedule has been somewhat impeded by factors out of my control). Gotta show my gratitude to my brother Andy for his work on the cover design, and the contributors and guest artists too. Oh, and I know I owes some of ya a copy - please rest assured you'll be hearing from me shortly.

O the shame, the hideous shame

One of the most emarrassing events of my life just happened to me. Y'see, I was in my studio and I was working on a new painting. (That's it there, on the right; its working title is erm Self-portrait as an alien). I had just finished a wet layer on the t-shirt area, and I had decided, contrary to my original intentions, that I was now going to ornamate the figure with - how shall I put it - a cock and balls. To those of you familiar with my work this should come as no surprise; to the rest of you, welcome.

Problem was, it's a big painting (1.6 m tall), and I needed an appropriately big model. Not in the interests of vanity or anything, mind - I just needed a decent-sized todger to look at in order to paint one at larger-than-life scale. Now I had a few pictures in an underwear catalogue, but that wasn't going to cut it. So I decided, since there was no-one around, I'll draw myself. A little awkward to *ahem* pull-off, given that I didn't have a mirror, but I thought I'd make do.

So there I was, perched on a chair, overalls 'round my ankles, inspecting my own tackle, when the door suddenly opens and in walks one of the other studio occupants, on his way through to the main door.

Poor guy didn't know where to look. (Neither did I for that matter.) He muttered an apology and hurried off.

I don't want to know what he thought I was doing, but needless to say, I rapidly revised my plan, and went back to work on the torso.

Afterthought: Actually, I've got a reasonable idea what he thought I was doing, because I was kinda playing with it - undertaking a certain manipulation, an auto-stimulation; this was necessary, of course, due to the aesthetic requirement of having aforementioned tackle not in a condition similar to Michaelangelo's David, but rather something approaching the soft, heavy semi-wood of a Playgirl model.

I also feel the need to point out that my familiarity with Playgirl magazine stems from the fact that the fiance of one of my best friends is the former editor; during a dinner-party at 'theirs' one night she got out a stash of back issues for our regalement.

Partial obituary prematurely composed in response to the imagined death of Mayo Thompson

No one's going to be doing an obit on him on the late news. He's not going to be inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame. He's not going to be awarded a post-humous Grammy, or a post-humous Lifetime Award for Services to Music, and the anonymous remaining members of The Red Krayola aren't going to accept it on his behalf.

But he's arguably - demonstrably, even - a greater musician than any of say Brian Wilson, Lennon and McCartney, Zappa and the Mothers, Beefheart, Klaus Dinger or Michael Rother, Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison or Mo Tucker, Conny Plank or Conrad Schnitzler, Roky Erikson, Ralf und Florian, Van Dyke Parks, Eno, Mobius or Rodelius, Uwe Nettlebeck and Faust, David Bowie; anyone who set out at roughly the same time and who did something significantly weird; something outside of the pantheon, of the expected, of the projected trajectory of rock music.

I realise that this is a very big call, but I stand behind it 100%. And the good thing is, he's not even dead; I couldn't imagine a greater opportunity to laud the man and his work. So yeah. Mayo Thompson and Red Krayola = good. Bloody good, in fact. As Ritchie Unterberger puts it (on allmusic.com), Thompson "seems as concerned with deconstructing the language of 'rock' music as with actually expressing himself within it. This makes Red Krayola's catalog challenging, often difficult listening. Its saving grace is the quirky charm of Thompson's songs and vocals, with a whimsical humor and open-mindedness rather atypical of avant-rock."

Over the course of nearly forty years, Thompson has created a legacy of wonderful music in a series of superb recordings. He has also recruited a diverse succession of excellent musicians to play with him - a few being Gina Birch (the Raincoats), Epic Soundtracks (Swell Maps), Lora Logic (X-Ray Spex) and latterly, the perennially multi-faceted Jim O'Rourke. He has himself played in the legendary Pere Ubu for a time, in the 80s.

Apparently you wanna know where to start. I wouldn't go past God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It (1968, highlight Victory Garden, surely the only love song penned in the voice of Eva Braun and sung to Adolf Hitler); Kangaroo (1981, highlights Portrait of V. I. Lenin in the Style of Jackson Pollock Pts. 1 & 2 and Born to Win (Transactional Analysis With Gestalt Experiments)); Black Snakes (1983, highlight The Sloths); and the Blues Hollers and Hellos EP (2000, highlight Container of Drudgery).

Also check out the internet to find out lots of information about new releases of old, unreleased Red Krayola material, including the astonishing 1977 album Corrected Slogans. You'll also be able to read all about how the company that makes Crayola crayons forced Thompson to change the band's name from The Red Crayola.

photo by James Welling.

Trade me

I buy a lot of vinyl, and I buy a lot of it second-hand from TradeMe, New Zealand's answer to eBay. (I also buy books and consumer electronics.) In the interests of posterity, as well as an audit of sorts, here is this month's haul [what, did you think I was gonna link them all up?]:

Eye In The Sky by Philip k. Dick
MORE DEVILS MUSIC Various Blues LP * GB RARE VG++
NEWPORT IN NEW YORK 72' Various Jazz LP Orig OZ
Megadeth - Peace Sells LP Original Press
Danse Macabre - Last request LP
PSYCHOTIC TURNBUCKLES DESTROY DULL CITY LP
>>> Blade Runner - Directors Cut Edition DVD <<<
David Sylvian - Brilliant trees LP
VELVET UNDERGROUND LIVE LP DOUBLE
THE CARDIACS LP The Seaside * RARE Alphabet label
That Petrol Emotion - Peel sessions LP
Fatima Mansions - Valhalla Ave LP
The Wedding Present - Hit parade 1 LP
Ned's atomic dustbin - Intact 10"
Drop nineteens - Limp 7"
David Sylvian/Ryuichi Sakamoto - Heartbeat 7"
Cabaret Voltaire - The crackdown LP
Teenage fanclub - What you do to me 7"
The BOX TOPS / Dimensions LP
Ned's atomic dustbin - Are you normal? LP
JACK KEROUAC Subterraneans early pbk first edition
ACDC, T.N.T LP
Mudhoney - Mudhoney LP
The Fall - Why are people grudgeful? 7"
The Fall - Free range 7"
The Charlatans - Weirdo 7"
BLACK SABBATH/PARANOID CD
Altered Images - Happy Birthday / Bite LPs
THE BOO RADLEYS--WAKE UP! CD
Virgin Prunes - If I Die I Die LP
Pere Ubu - Art of walking LP
VA "Summit Meeting". Jazz LP
Chainsaw Masochists- Thrashing Around 7"
Hank Jones."Ain't Misbehavin'". LP
Misc "Bebop Spoken Here". Jazz LP
Car Crash Set - No Accident LP
FELA KUTI Zombie LP
ARCHIE SHEPP Yasmina (France) LP
LONNIE LISTON SMITH Astral Traveller LP
CURTIS MAYFIELD Curtis LP
MCCOY TYNER (2 LP's) LP
THE ASSOCIATES/ WILD AND LONELY LP
Bob Dylan Nashville Skyline LP
Tim Buckley "Greetings from L.A." LP
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. pback
Clifford Brown and Max Roach. LP

yikes.

Some notes: I already have a copy of PKD's "Eye In the Sky". I'm not sure why I didn't realise this before I bid $16.50 for it. The David Sylvian "Brilliant trees", Virgin Prunes "If I Die I Die" and FELA KUTI "Zombie" LP I have downloaded as mp3, but normally I only double-buy mp3 stuff on vinyl when it's for DJing. Sylvian and Prunes don't fall into this category, however. Tim Buckley "Greetings from L.A." and Bob Dylan "Nashville Skyline" LP I used to have on CD, before I was robbed a few years ago. The Pere Ubu "Art of Walking" is my third copy of the LP - hopefully this one won't suffer from the manufacturing fault the first two did. The Associates "Wild and Lonely" is/was a waste of money (1990!). The Stanislaw Lem "Solaris" paperback is the post George Clooney remake edition and so loses out on hip points for that. The Car Crash Set "No Accident" LP (punchy, solid NZ post-punk/new-wave) is almost impossible to get, especially in this condition, and was an absolute steal at $8, particularly since the seller included a CDR copy of the LP, with a bunch of other rare tracks, at no extra cost. McCoy Tyner's "Enlightenment" 2LP is some of the greatest post-Coltrane jazz I have ever heard. What else. Mudhoney's first LP is their best, easy, although their recent (2000+) work is very cool. The last time I heard Megadeth's "Peace Sells...But Who's Buying" was in 1989, so I'm looking forward to that one arriving. Teenage Fanclub can not put a foot wrong with me (if you ignore their stink later output). I've been waiting to find a Cardiacs LP (any LP, any tape, any CD, anything at all, any music shop employee who's heard of them, any catalogue, any website fer fuck's sake) since being bowled over by their track "Is This the Life?" on the CD88 Indie Top Twenty compilation I bought about 15 years ago.

Drinking-buddies and so on

I've started building a directory over there, on the right, of drinking-buddies. Email me if you want to appear. Also tweaked various aspects of the blog, including putting the archives into a drop-down, and inserting a by-date menu of titles after the monthly archive selection.

The Shins 'Oh, Inverted World' (Sub Pop 2001)

As promised; the following is the review I penned in 2001, for the magazine Looking for a fish-drying plant?, of The Shins' Oh, Inverted World:

Don't be alarmed by the opening track Caring is Creepy, an awkwardly skewed new-wave sort of thing which sounds like a CURE B-side from the late-80's. The rest of this album is a wee gem of oddly-comforting pop, if not comfortingly-odd pop, rather like a very affectionate homage to the 60's psych of TOMORROW or LOVE or THE BEACH BOYS (the vocal dept.) or SYD BARRETT to name a couple, very carefully and cleverly done with quick-fire (mostly) sub-3-minute songs and aptly sparing use of effects. This is extremely tasty stuff which just reminds me track-after-track that I should really get The Great British Psychedelic Trip vol. 1 thru 3 CD's back off whoever it was I lent them to about two years ago. Best line: "You may notice certain things before you die / mail them to me should they cause your algebra to fail".

The review was part of an article in which I reviewed and raved-about my favourite psychedelic-pop albums.

The King is dead: long live the King etc.

A guy I affectionately refer to as Ass-Computer, a pal in Finland, paged me earlier in soulseek saying "have you seen this?" and passed me a link which ended with "obit_thompson.html".

My heart sank and a heavy grief overwhelmed me.

"Fuck!" shouts I. "Mayo Thompson is dead".

Of course, it quickly turned out that it was Hunter S. Thompson, erstwhile Doctor of Journalism, a.k.a. Raoul Duke, who was in fact deceased.

A weird mixture of relief and frustration and fulfillment replaced the grief. In a sense I'd been expecting it. I mean, the guy's been dicing it; lining up to bite the big one for a well over forty years. It's not exactly unexpected, that he would go on a crazed acid binge after gnawing for several hours on the pineal glands of kidnapped Amazonian tribesmen, and shoot hisself in the head as he battled to fight off the giant man-eating reptiles.

Or something.

So I guess the bats finally caught up with him in this world; now he's barrelling down the highways of the next, in the midst of a depraved ether and qualude bender, furiously shooting off his six-gun while they're screeching overhead, dive-bombing the car and snatching at his aviators. Probably with the devil riding shotgun, "as your Lord of Darkness, I advise you to use the flame-thrower." etc.

R.I.P. Duke, and take care, you mad mother-fucker.

Short tribute. HST has had arguably the greatest influence on my life in terms of how I view the world, how I think about states of existence, the managed consumption and abuse of intoxicants and narcotics and the beauty and potential of the written word. For that I'm incalculably grateful.

PS. Oh yeah, and if you're the bastard that's got my copy of Songs of the Doomed (yeah, I know I lent it to ya but I've forgotten who you are) get it back to me, would ya?

PPS: Non-deceased Musical maverick Mayo Thompson has recorded and released an astonishing amount of incredible music under the project name The Red [CK]rayola since approximately 1966.

Fly like an eagle or some shit

These days the opportunity to reflect on the passing of time is never more greatly afforded than at a rock concert. Face it son, you've been doing this for fifteen, nearly 20 years. Face it son, you've become the old weird guy standing at the back of the hall. Face it son, you're old. You know, "What the hell am I doing here? Would the drinks-after-work of 20 years ago even be here?"

So with that in mind, I went to see The Shins tonight at Victoria University Student Union Hall. Note I didn't stand at the back, though, I braved the heat and the sweat and the dank of the fifth-row; I endured the great unwashed and the downright sheep-dog-dag-smellin' kids down the front. Especially you, yeah you - you know I'm talking to you - you 6'5" stoopid-Leo-Sayer-afro-lookin' mutha-fucka with yer collar turned up and the elbows all over the fucken place and the talking at 120dB through the quiet songs. That was me who smacked you upside the head. (and then hid).

So. The Shins. I mean, they look like nerds (also see the photo-album at allmusic.com), but they rock like motherfuckers (see below). Don't get me wrong, I love The Shins - I've been playing them on my radio show and singing their praises for almost 5 years - but they're a weird band, a band-apart, almost a band of two parts. One part is a fairly straightforward, almost nondescript, indie rock band, albeit one with a penchant for penning gloriously beautiful pop songs which are sometimes even a little reminiscent of the splendour of Brian Wilson's Pet Sounds. The other part is the voice and vocals of singer James Mercer. It's that part which suddenly and repeatedly turns the chair-of-the-song over and exposes it's legs; it's cartwheeling across the lawn and there's something weird about the sun and the legs scrabbling, clawed, and spazzing shards of guitar out at you while a huge bird, an eagle or an albatross or whatever soars overhead.

Mercer possesses a very wonderful set-o'-tonsils. He sings in three registers, the first of which is a not particularly unexpected mid-range. Then there's his powerful pitch-perfect high-register; add to that his ability to launch into a stratospheric falsetto, once cruising velocity is attained, and you have a singer of some ability. Which translates quite naturally into a great band of some distinction. And they have a very, very, very fine set of lovely, lovely, lovely stripped-back cut-down acoustic ditties. And they walk a very fine line when it comes to the length of their songs (they're markedly, sometimes preposterously, brief) but they always come out on the right side of the ledger, y'know less is more and all that.

They put on a fantastic live show too. Near-flawless, actually. And here's the thing; that eagle, or hawk, I was talking 'bout before, that's James Mercer's song. Only it's not a bird, see, it's a giant mechanical robot-hawk-thing with metal wings and razor talons and laser eyes and it's wheeling above, like a vulture or some shit, waiting to strike and peck at you. Live, the faux fey trappings of a nerdy-hippie pop-band from Alberquerque, New Mexico are stripped away and you have Mercer, bug-eyed and bulging-veins as he bellows in his impossibly pure voice soaring above the clamour of a very rockin' band and he doesn't miss a single note and I was waiting all night for him to fall and you know what? he never did. And they nailed the acoustic lullabyes 5-0.

Anyway, The Shins have two albums out; shortly I'll post a review that I wrote for a magazine of their debut Oh, Inverted world when it came out in 2001 or so. Chutes too narrow is their second album and it's a goodie, too. There's another The Shins page here, and an Oh, Inverted World album page here, but it's kinda stink.

At murder shed

Last year my band The Stumps met with two other bands - Birchville Cat Motel and Pumice - for a one-off 'supergroup' recording session. A French record label has offered to release the recording and it'll be coming out soon - we're calling it At Murder Shed. I've been working on the layout for the CD artwork, and this is an essay I've just written for the booklet.

It's raining but not too much. Cars running by on wheels of white noise as I'm checking outside for the others to arrive. Door knocks and they're here... in comes Pumice and Birchville and the rest of The Stumps and a couple of cases of beer which we immediately begin to devour.

We repair to the recording studio... it's what we call the recording studio, anyway... it's my art studio and the home of The Stumps. A giant run-down corrugated-iron warehouse in an old condemned industrial compound down the road, it's notorious for 2 artists, one party, gang-style fortess-ifications, two brothers from the same crime family and one brutal murder. It's in limbo and it's been that way for nigh-on thirty years. Times passes slow on motorway-designated land. Buildings age almost as you watch them... oil-stained concrete, weeds, rotting planks, pools of lichen, gutters hanging and gone, rodents, paint hardening and lifting and blowing away... ghosts...

Fall cassette in and on and blasting as we chat and pass round more beers and start to set up... suddenly Stefan is away, rattling at his kit while James configures his guitar's output for takeoff. Campbell is making electronic soup, deafening, and Antony plays louder than I've ever heard and my ears are ringing, bleeding noise, before we've barely begun. I've built a polyphonic bass drone loop which I'm laying waveforms over but my head is full of Sunn)))o and Sabbath and my fingers itching and aching, playing my lowered-4^th litany over and over and over and over. Campbell is growling, or singing or something and then I'm watching Stefan and he's watching me and we lock together and we're rocking and rocking... Campbell and Ant have combined and twine an agonising feedback pierce then without warning James tunes in and blasts off in a startlingly prosaic solo that climbs and climbs through registers to meet them...

And then we must break, exhausted, wind it down. We can't go on like this. But now Ant busts into a guitar riff which sparks Stefan into a furious march, some kind of a tattoo and we're off again. I'm watching him again and I slap on another riff and I'm watching him as we slip together and I'm looking at my feet and now I'm pushing my volume pedal, pushing it through the floor. I want to beat the bulldozers and the wreckin' balls... I want to knock the shed down around us somehow with my sub-harmonics. Something is rattling and Stefan gone mad with drum fills breaks us up and I could swear I just saw him throw his head back and howl. Campbell kills us with a sear of hiss and we slowly topple over into a warm, colossal drone.

The rattling is my amp. I'm wondering if my speaker is wrecked but I can't care now, this is too good for bummer thoughts like that to interfere with. I'm parched and bug-eyed and I have to drink a beer so I drink a beer. We have to relax for a while now, surely, we have to rack it back a couple. Antony starts poking little shards of cosmic sonar as us. Campbell is singing and humming and droning along and Stefan accompanies them, pushing into their interplay at acute angles and complex tangents. I've decided to hell with it and start stepping up the filter on the synth-drone and it gets rougher and rougher and rawer and louder and then James throws a raised-5^th feedback line all over me and now I'm as loud as I can be, as loud as I'm ever gonna be. This is our hymn, our prayer to the gods of music and beer and rain and friends and we transcend, climax together and it's all gone quiet.

The rain falls on the iron roof. Stefan's snare buzzes tiredly. Someone's delay parameters collapse into themselves. We pack up, drink more beer, turn the lights off and leave.

Stefan Neville:-drums, guitar, mad howling styles
Campbell Kneale:-electronics, death vocals, electric bagpipes
James Kirk:-photon-guitar, drums, smoke
Antony Milton:-guitar, beer, tools
Stephen Clover:-monophonic synthesizer, bass, Fall cassette

Dork-baiting

It's a new sport and possibly one that should be considered for the next Olympics. I invented it. (Well, I didn't really). Anyway, when you have a moment, cruise around the directory on BlogExplosion looking for right-wing/conservative/Rush Limbaugh/Ann Coulter-wannabe muthafunkin' dumbass muthafucker blogs. Once there, use all the skills in your possession to write short, literate and explosively-aggravating remarks in their comments sections; then sit back and wait for follow-up responses to arrive.

Of course, you're right, it's infantile and petty... but I did my first one earlier today and, hot-damn! it felt good. And I'm not talking about plain abuse here. Slay 'em with the power of your argument, guys.

Note: I was actually going to call this post Nigger-baiting, but I couldn't find a definition on the interweb that justified it...

Banner

I made a new banner. That's it upstairs, there ^. I actually made it for BlogExplosion.com but decided to use it on this page as well.

That's me there on the right, and on the left is SpaceKitten(TM), the logo for my [sometime] clothing label GalleryHag.

I made the banner in Adobe Premier, printed it to an AVI and then used the shareware tool Amazing Photo Editor to convert it to an animated GIF. Actually I'm not entirely happy with the render I achieved - principally the dither-ey effect on the text as it fades in - so if you happen to know of a free tool (or even a non-free tool) which I could get a better result with, I'd be grateful to hear about it.

EDIT: I redid the banner using a 24-frame sequence, created in Adobe Photoshop and animated in Adobe ImageReady. I like it a lot better now. It really was still far too much work though, for what it is.

Penultimate holiday snap round-up

Ok you lot, sit still and pay attention.

Approximately Ring of Fire

In the Bay of Plenty there's plenty of small, conical volcanoes... some on land and some out to sea. This is Motuhora (Whale) Island, from Waiotahi Beach, near Opotiki.



White Island (not visible), is the most active of the islands.

How the Elephant Got His Trunk

In Huntly, whilst admiring the lovely power-station, I had an ephiphany. I was suddenly struck that here, at last, after all these years, had I finally seen a great grey-green greasy river... approximating, somewhat, the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River of Rudyard Kipling's cautionary fable The Elephant's Child (or as it is colloquially known, How the Elephant Got His Trunk) from his Just So Stories collection. Suddenly, with piercing clarity, I could see in my mind just where it was that the Kolokolo Bird sent the Elephant's Child to find out exactly what it is that the crocodile has for dinner.

 

This river, of course, is the Waikato River rather then the Limpopo, and despite a thorough examination of both banks, did not appear to be all set about with even one single fever-tree.

More mulch for the memoirs

Skinny dipping at sun-rise, Hoffman's Pool, Kauaeranga Valley, Coromandel

Granted, sunrise was about 8.30 am given that we were in the lee of some fairly monumental landscape, but the water was like ice. With shoulders under, you couldn't speak, let alone breathe... communication was limited to short noisy expulsions. Crown jewels disappeared in the direction of the centrally-heated abdominal cavity, much to the amusement of the Jarman. It was a foolish and excruciating - yet invigorating - way to start the day.

Wildlife, Kauaeranga Valley, Coromandel

Yep, that's a cow licking it's arse. Another one of those things we'd all do, if we could. Apparently.

Cows are quite good. If I may be allowed to anthropomorphise for a moment here, they have very wise faces. They will also happily look you in the eye - with their large, souful brown eyes - for minutes, and let you quite close to photograph and admire them. But they're not all work and no fun; the angle their ears describe to the sides of their faces is quite jaunty, and the attitude of their heads often verging on the rakish.

I also quite like how they talk. Very sombre... the lowing of the cattle and all that.

What you don't ever want to do is to think about sausages; specifically in the context of the lips, udders, and anuses of cows.

Quite often, if you spend long enough hanging around on the edge of the highway checking out the cattle in the field, a farmer will come and zoom anxiously up and down the road in his car or on a quad-bike, a bit like a jealous girlfriend.

Horses, a more recent enthusiasm, are also quite good.

Crime-spree in Gisborne

Hmmmm. Long story short... Small commercial book-shop in Gisborne (popn. 43,000). Discovered 5 copies of new edition of Ray Bradbury's classic Fahrenheit 451 - the 50th anniversary edition - on the shelf. Immediately postulated theory that store clerk mistook same for book-of-movie of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9-11 and ordered 5 copies, thinking "these'll sell like the proverbial". Chuckling. Delighted with compound irony of situation given theme of Bradbury novel. Delighted with self at inventing 'compound irony'. So delighted, in fact, was compelled to celebrate and liberated one of the copies by putting it in my pocket and walking out of the shop.

Now, let me say at this point I did feel a bit guilty. Also, I did not attempt theft without first checking that there wasn't a security tag on the book, that the staff were busy, and reminding self that we would be driving to another part of the country in a few minutes.

It's a good book. I also have the DVD of the Francios Truffaut film adaptation from 1965.

If it wasn't 0258 in the AM and if I wasn't exhausted and starting to think - and write - like Bridget Jones, I'd link up this post... look back later after I've had a chance to do it, 'k? Edit: Done!

You'll also notice, if you look closely enough, that that is - of course - not the security camera picture of me liberating new edition of classic Ray Bradbury novel. Of course it's not - unless you think I'm writing this from jail. I just stole the picture off the internet. God bless Google Image Search.

Goodness me I'm bad-ass.

Most blatent song quotations ever...

Elastica, for butchering Wire's Three Girl Rhumba [Pink Flag] in their hit Connection. They settled out of court.

Closely followed by Devo's Uncontrollable Urge [Q: Are we not men? A: We Are Devo!] which liberally lifts from Led Zeppelin's Misty Mountain Hop [Led Zeppelin IV] in its intro.

NOTE: Least blatent song quotation ever - Neil Young's Borrowed Tune [Tonight's the Night] which he 'borrowed' from the Rolling Stones' Lady Jane [Aftermath]. Sing to the tune of Lady Jane:

I'm singin' this borrowed tune / I took from the Rolling Stones
Alone in this empty room / Too wasted to write my own

The implications of this lyric are massive and bleak. Massively bleak, even, possibly.

Others, perhaps?

EDIT: Allmusic.com's Stephen Thomas Erlewine comes up with some bullshit argument in support of Elastica's 'song-writing' practices. I also overhauled the post, re-doing all the links that mysteriously vanished from the published version.

The Futureheads in revisionist revivalist copyist shocker

As soon as I heard them I thought The Futureheads were a great band, but right now I'm listening to their album The Futureheads, with a view to deciding which track to play on my radio show tomorrow night... and suddenly they just sound like lame-ass retro-fitted copyists of the worst sort. This is hard to swallow - all at once they sound like The Jam's [particularly In the City], Devo, the Cars, XTC, Psychedelic Furs and Gang of Four. And that's just for starters.

Of course this shouldn't be a problem for me 'cos I love all these bands... and this shouldn't be a problem for me because I think that people who dis' bands for sounding like their influences are unrealistic idiots and, well... wankers; but basically I always have a hard job endorsing such bands when the timing is so utterly propitious to their fortunes.

What am I saying? Great band, but... well, put it like this - there could never have been a better time in the last 20 years for a band sounding like The Jam, Devo, The Cars, XTC, Psychedelic Furs and Gang of Four to put out a record. Know what I mean? [And get fucked, I actually came up with some of those comparisons myself. You think I'd link to sites which make the same comparisons if I hadn't?]

So anyway, what am I going to play in my set? Robot of course:

"I am a robot.. living like a robot.. talk like a robot.. in the habititting way / In the future we all die.. (robot!) Machines will last forever.. (robot!) / Metal things just turn to rust.. when you're a robot / The best thing is our life span (i don't mind).. We last nigh on hundred years (i don't mind).. / If that mean's we'll be together (i don't mind).. I have no mind, i have no mind...

Anyone who knows me will understand. I'm slowly regressing into fantasies from an imaginary childhood of space-travel and robots and shit and... and here's looking forward to some new material from The Futureheads. [Although some of the remixes on singles like First Day and Decent Days and Nights are right-up-to-the-minute and pretty damn hot].

If you haven't heard The Futureheads and you like Franz Ferdinand or Bloc Party - or indeed any or all of the above-mentioned groups - then you owe it to yourself to check them out. Dammit fool, whatchoo waiting for?

Everything is Wrong With Me guy

Folks, allow me to direct your attention to Jason Mulgrew. Jason is the best, the funniest, the plain ole good-god-damn baddest blogger on the planet. In fact, as he tends to keep reminding you with only just enough irony, he's a fully-carded Internet Quasi-Celebrity.

Jason used to blog as Everything Is Wrong With Me but now he's gone legit and got his own site. But don't let that put you off checking out his archives.

There's no-one's musings I would rather waste my precious time reading.

[Jason, if you are reading this, I hope this puff-piece is sufficiently fluff to earn me a blow-job].

EDIT: Someone asked, so here's the answer to the question: He's actually a bloody good writer. Somehow he manages to convey a combination of self-conscious sensitivity and devil-may-care ebullience... which captures something really new and vital in the 'zeitgeist' as well as allowing his readers a hilarious and thrillingly voyeuristic 'schadenfreud'.

Legless in Devonport

At The Depot art space in Devonport, both the coordinator and the coordinator's dog were - in what must be some sort of first - missing limbs. The coordinator had one of those coloured-oxidised-aluminium stick-with-foot-on-end contraptions, while the dog wasn't nearly so lucky.

They both also seemed to be reasonably good-humoured about the whole thing, which is why I trust they will be the first to forgive me for the appalling pun in the title.

We were there on an urgent fact-finding recce for my bruvva, who is showing some work there next week and needed to know gallery configuration and floor-plan and so forth. Nice space... however the stuff on the wall was fairly wretched [when we were there, anyway]. Hopefully Andy will do me proud, especially with the interactive installation piece I helped him build [more soon...].

More travelogue

101 Croations

What we found really strange, as we bowled into Kaitaia from the north, was that the Welcome To Kaitaia sign said it in Croation too. Big letters. Dobro Dosli. I wish I had a photo - it also has weird Croatian-lookin' accent marks over a couple of characters, which helpfully won't show up in this font. [how do I know it was Croation? Lemme just say that it helps sometimes that the Jarman is from East Jarmany.]

The good thing about Croation - or any of those Slavic languages - is that you can pull off a passable imitation/parody of them by talking in strange, gruff, oddly-metred low register monotones. If I was to phonically represent our attempts at pronunciation it'd look something like:

dob-o-roh dozzsh-lee

Try it. It's fun!

So anyway we spent the next few days running round laughing stupidly at cows in fields and saying "Welcome" to them in Croation.

Apparently there is a large Dalmation population in Northland. They used to be gum-diggers.

Look who's back...

I've just gotten back from a two-week touring holiday around the North Island of New Zealand, with the Jarman. Previously I'd never been further north than Auckland City - yep that's right, never even crossed the Harbour Bridge - so the trip's been packed with new sights and sounds.

3,500 km later and it's good to be back. Thirteen days of not being able to properly clean the wax out of my ears has certainly taken it's toll on my mental state.

Cape Reinga in a pea-souper

I've never been to the Cape before and we picked a fantastic day to go - a low front had just moved in off the Tasman Sea bringing with it a depression resulting in cloud, rain and fog all over Northland. Visiting one of New Zealand's premier scenic attractions without being able to see more than a few feet in front of your face gave new meaning to the term "fucken waste of time" but what the hell - I've seen it on calendars and postcards my whole life and the Jarman wanted to go regardless. So go we went. It also gave me an opportunity to piss about with the manual settings on my new digicam to try to get some images for use in artworks.



The lighthouse experience was weird. You could hear the two oceans smashing into each other and the rocks below - the water-heavy atmosphere carried the sound and whirled it around and made it seem as if the waves were crashing just behind you; similarly, you could see only a couple of metres down the cliffs, and I have no idea how far I was from the sea-level.

This was the view from the carpark, looking back up the approach road, and from inside the car. Perhaps it was some sort of act of disappointed rebellion as - despite the presence of two cops strolling around the carpark telling tourists off for doing the same - we sat and ate our sandwiches, well inside the area designated as sacred and so food and drink free. To no avail I tried to spot spirits as they zoomed overhead, making for the afterlife.



An abundance of bauxite or some similar mineral gives the soil a freakish red colouration, and in the weather conditions that afternoon the landscape was distinctly alien.



Then we left and drove to Kaitaia.



Coffee to go in Kaitaia

Looking for a quick fix upon reaching Kaitaia we settled upon the rather charmingly-titled "Flix-Mix". Entering it appeared as if they were closing up; machines were being cleaned, floors mopped, and jokes told. Not wanting to waste any time I chose quickly from the menu-board and advanced to the counter.
"Hi, what would you like" sez proprietor.
"Macchiato to takeaway, pls" sez I.
Incredulous look follows. "You wha'??"
"Macchiato to takeaway, pls."
"What the hell's a macchiato?"
"Um, it's a long black served with steamed milk."
"Are you serious? I've never heard of one of those before."
Pointing... "Um it's up there on your board."
Look of bewilderment replaced with look of amusement. "Ooohhh. When my cousin painted that up for me he looked up some extra coffee names on the internet. Nobody's ever ordered that one before."
Me "Ahhh.." etc.
"Where you from then?"
"Wellington" I say, knowing what's coming next.
Merriment, jokes about city vs. country culture follow. "Ok how did you say you make it again?"
Me looking at ristretto, macchiato, thinking fast "Nah better not. What do you recommend eh?"
"Large flavoured latte."

Mine was Irish cream flavour, and utterly delicious.

Red-Light/Vorortromantik/Architecture/Death

I'm exhibiting new work in a four-man show which opens soon, at One Eye Gallery in Paekakariki. I'd like to extend a warm invitation to y'all to attend the opening on Saturday afternoon from 3 'til 5 pm.

Participating in the show are Jo Russ, Sandra Schmidt, Matt Couper and myself. It promises to be a great show.

If you can't make the opening, please feel free to pop up to Paekak of a sunny afternoon and check out the show for some spiritual and intellectual edification. You can, of course, spend the rest of the day in the fine second-hand bookstore, on the beach or in the pub.

The show runs from Saturday 20 November until Sunday 19 December. Gallery hours are Wednesday - Sunday 11 am 'til 5 pm. You can contact the gallery on 04 292 7044, or check out their site.

Now pray for Yassir Arafat

Yassir "The Moderator" Arafat, probably at the prospect of having to deal with - on top of Ariel Sharon - four more years of the Bush govt's policies of lunacy in the Middle East, has gone into a coma.

Hunter S. Thompson on Arafat:

Yassir has never been well-liked or popular in the Arab League nations. He is ugly and loud, and spittle flies off his lips when he talks. His beard is unclean and his eyes are like bags of dirty water. The starch in his uniforms gets rancid after two or three days of soaking up fatty acids, and even good friends avoid him in private. -13 October 1986 [Generation of Swine, p170]

"There were times when I could Have strangled him
There were times when I could Have murdered him
(But you know, I would hate Anything to happen to him)..."

[or something]

Don't get me wrong, I am not anti-Semitic or even anti-Zionist by any stretch of the imagination. However, as probably the only thing standing in the way of full-on jihad against Israel - and by [almost-]logical extension, nuclear conflict in the Middle-East, Arafat has his uses, so to speak. I hope he pulls through.

EDIT: In the interests of clarity I have slightly reworded some of this post.

Well... piss up a rope... again

Anyone who's ever lived here - Wellington, New Zealand - will know what I mean when I say that yesterday, Wednesday November the 3rd 2004, was a sublime Wellington day. The wind died away mid-morning and we basked in sun from heaven all the rest of the live-long day. God was clearly softening us up for the blow.

Looks like the Top Gun shit did the trick, goddammit.

So the Dorking Labs crew and miscellaneous hangers-on assembled at a pub and - drinking fast and hard - watched the live CNN broadcast of the unfolding results in the US elections a bit like it was a rugby-match. And like most rugby-matches, I lost interest when it became clear at around the 55-minute mark that the result was a given. Then it all got a bit silly for a while - our taunting of the CNN presenters' unwillingness to 'call' this state or that state [obviously wanting to avoid scandalous premature announcements a la 2000] turned surreal as we loudly suggested that they cross live to (the recently deceased) Hunter S. Thompson, a random blogger, the Symbionese Liberation Front, Mumia Abu-Jamal, the exhumed corpse of Jefferey Dahmer, the Una-Bomber and so on, anyone, anyone, and get them to call the result in Delaware or some shit. We also started revising the American electoral system, mooting for example that only Hollywood stars ever be allowed to become the Governor of a state, and that anyone who's ever released a good album be allowed 20 votes - in perpituity - rather than the standard one. Then No Offense, But... bit my hand for reasons that are still a bit unclear - possibly trying to express the collective mood in some sort of regressive act of savagery - if I had a digital camera I'd post a little snap of his teeth-marks some 12 hours later - and after a little while we drifted away into the night.

Today the weather did the only decent thing again, and packed it in.

Everything Is Wrong With Me-guy writes - as per usual - some really funny shit about god, George Bush, and his America.

Elsewhere on this site Blog-In-Mouth presents the unexpurgated version of his 'mourning'-after cartoon. You also gotta check this one, if you haven't seen it yet.

A chocolate fish for the first person that can find me a link to a good blogger who is celebrating the result. Fuck it, I might as well stake a blowjob, it's not gonna happen.