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.