Music, Martinis And Misanthropy

I was fairly chuffed to discover, via a search from Poland, that Drinks-After-Work is the third-ranked Google result for "music martinis misanthropy download blog".

My suspicion however is that the searcher was looking for a download for the 2001 album Music, Martinis And Misanthropy by American musician and possibly all-round dodgy-bastard Boyd Rice (right).

Oh well.

Gonna hunt you like an, uh, uh, animal

It's pretty awesome that Def Leppard are still touring. Fuck, it's pretty awesome that they're still taking their shirts off, too.

Check out all the action at the contemporary Def Leppard concert photos blog.

So take off your hard hats boys, in a moment of silence

The night after the fog, everything was back to normal. Five second exposures at f2.8, looking west:


... and north:


The green light looks great on these long burns.. of course it's not green to the naked eye, but you can only really successfully "white balance" for one kind of white light at a time, right? Unless you wanna go "automatic", which I didn't.

Iggy Pop - How Do Ya Fix A Broken Part (1.96 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)

Another track off New Values, which I seem to keep on coming back to.

No more leaky holes in your brain, and no false starts

At the bus station, they have powerful spotlights set into the ground and which point upwards, illuminating things with their powerful powerfulness. When it's late at night and you're waiting for a bus and you're very bored, you can play about with them; for example, you can block them partially with your feet and pull faces:


You can also photograph yourself doing this, to the loud amusement of the attendant deros.

o o o

Thom Yorke out of Radiohead put out an album a couple of years ago. It's called Eraser. I really really like it, although -- notoriously (want a better link? Try Google) -- not all Radiohead fans feel as I do. Atoms For Peace is one of my favourite tracks from the album.

Thom Yorke - Atoms For Peace (3.58 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)

Excuse me, but I have VERY IMPORTANT BUSINESS

I thought this was funny:



... but possibly only because it's fun to make your cat talk to you when they are waiting for you to open the door for them and they are very very very hungry.

"LEMME IN YOU BASTARD!!1!1@!one" etc.

How come the sun's too bright to live

Last night I was walking home across Newtown about 1am and boy, it was foggy. Not exactly a pea-souper or anything -- I could quite easily see where I was going and whatnot -- but it was doing that weird and neat acoustical thing where the slightest sounds are amplified out of all proportion. Was having a lot of fun strolling down Lawrence Street while sounding like the BFG or something tromping along.

The cell-phone camera really didn't do the business, though -- it's really quite shit in the dark:


When I got home I set about taking some photos with my digital camera -- improvised tripod (stack of books on the window-ledge, anyone?) and all. This is looking west with a 5-second exposure at f2.8:


It's not a completely accurate representation of the scene, but it's as close as I could get. I tried to stop the shutter down but the field depth was too great and the resultant image not as effective.

One thing which alarmed me somewhat was that the flashing red lights on the cranes at the new hospital building site were completely invisible in the fog -- to the naked eye, anyway. "So," I thought, "let's try burning-in a loooooooong exposure to see if the camera can pick them up". This is a 30 second exposure looking north, using f2.8 again -- this time to get as much light as possible:


"Hells bells," thinks I -- "not a smidgeon of a trace of the warning lights. What happens if a plane comes flying down the valley and smacks right into the cranes, or worse still -- one of the hospital buildings!? It'd be like a re-enactment of the bloody Erebus disaster in my back yard!"

I zoomed in to 3x optical (Carl Zeiss lens, thanks for asking) and tried another 30 second exposure:


Wait a minute... did you see that?


Ho ho ho etc. Actually, of course the reason that the warning lights on the cranes were not visible is that construction of the super-structure of the new hospital is complete and the cranes were taken down some weeks ago.

Phew.

yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars

I'm getting kinda tired of the whole killer-guy-from-Twin Peaks-look schtick. It's been a number of months since my project reached fruition and I've done nothing about it and I'm now thinking of something new. In fact, after a comment from a friend a few weeks ago likening me to Allen Ginsberg (R.I.P.) and then seeing the brilliant fantasy scene featuring Ginsberg and Bob Dylan in I'm Not There, I think I will look in that direction.

Of course that's David Cross playing Ginsberg in the film, not the man himself. I probably can't manage that degree of hirsuteness; I may have to go for a more senior Ginsberg a la his 1985 self-portrait (right, via the Village Voice).

I feel I will also have to lose a bit of weight to get there.

o o o

It's Saturday today. Last night at a Mexican restaurant I realised that there is still a lot of very nice tequila about that I haven't yet had the pleasure of drinking. I immediately resolved to rectify this situation. Hopefully this pursuit does not turn out to be mutually exclusive with the Ginsberg project. More soon...

o o o

New album out recently from Wiley. It's called Grime Wave.

Wiley - Local Lad (1.84 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)

The sound is STRONG, yo.

I understand that you now are surprised

I quite like the idea of karaoke, but the reality never quiet matches up to the glory of the fantasy. One of the main problems I have is finding something that I actually would like to sing.

If it were up to me, I would have a karaoke room painted in the blackest black, with a rock-band lighting rig, and blacklights, and minimalist black vinyl and chrome accoutrements, and a karaoke machine stuffed full of my best and favourite music. Like Iggy's The Endless Sea, which I have been walking around singing at the top of my lungs for days now.

Iggy Pop - The Endless Sea (3.29 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)

The Endless Sea is off New Values, which I wrote about the other day. What a song. Sometimes I even sing the backing vocals as well as Iggy's main part. And what is up with that keyboard part? Not the tweetily-synths (which are super-awesome in their own right), but the comping: it sounds like a Fender Rhodes run through a laptop running some sort of glitchtronica granulation software -- none of which AFAIK was available in 1979 (aside from the Rhodes). And who would ever have thought that baritone saxes doing an "oompah" part in the bridge would be so powerful.

I'll let you know if I ever get my karaoke room built, 'k?

o o o

I keep finding graffiti around Newtown that I myself must -- but without any recollection of doing so -- have executed.


That is the only feasible explanation, right? No two people can actually come up with the same ideas at the same time completely independently, can they?
Can they really?
Hmm....


Nope, didn't think so ;)

Logo WTF x 2

This morning I got all testy on The Wellingtonista about a shitty logo and some awful copy which got up my nose. About 20 minutes earlier I had also noticed this:

Yup, that's the logo for the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind. Cute, I guess, that it's in the shape of an eye and depicts impediments to seeing clearly; awful awful awful that the impediment looks like... a blind. WTF, RNZFB?

Awful, awful, awful. Hence today was Logo WTF x 2 day.

Above us is a dirty sky full of youths and liquors

I spotted another pair of Love Field Deviations; these ones are notable because they appear to have been infected by an alien virus:

This raises the issue of whether or not the infected vexed local Love Field Deviations should've been administered with inoculations and vaccinations against said virus -- or an alien so viral... living spaceapes creatures covered smothered in writhing tentacles stimulate your audio nerve directly... no-one conflicts with me... hallucinating senses individually insiduously or in any combination rhythmically shifting gears focusing intensity... no-one conflicts with me... mind starts slipping from familiar tracks bending warping interfering with the facts sensory language leaves us with no habit for lying... we are hostile aliens immune from dying...

Kode9 - Victims (feat. The Spaceape) (2.63 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)

Victims is another track from Kode9 and the Spaceape's amazing Memories of the Future album.

Happy birthday Prince (the purple one), for the other day

Prince at 49 years of age:


Now 50, just as sweet as...

He loved him madly

In Nelson, my favourite tree is the persimmon tree in the back yard:



It looks a lot less lovely when it is covered in big green leaves, and the air is not perfectly still, crisp and there's still a surprising amount of warmth in the sunlight even though there's snow on the mountains just over there. And the lure of the persimmon is so great that it turns the eighty-yr old woman next door into a kleptomaniac; under cover of darkness, their number is regularly diminished. The only trace of human activity is a set of mobility-scooter tracks leading up the neighbour's driveway.

Some luv for Dead Bees

My new seht CD dead bees ((the((quiet)earth))suite) has been out for a couple of months, and I've finally scared up a review! Gayle Brogan, a Scot of note and who runs the Boa Melody Bar music shop/distribution, said:

It's a while since we've had anything from Stephen Clover and this new album delivers with an opening monolithic drone masterpiece. It begins with an ebbing and flowing synth drone with ominous undertow; as the piece progressed the undertow starts to win out and it feels like the dark waves are overwhelming you. The second track is not quite drone-based but is a utterly focussed repetition of some jerky cinema-organ notes until they are submerged in an icy hiss. No-one else does this quite like Seht.

Yeah, yeah I know, one review and a small one at that -- whoop-de-shit. But that's just the way that it goes sometimes. I always enjoy reading what Gayle thinks of my stuff, though. In time, this page is where you'll be able to read other stuff about the album. And, you can still hear a sample from the album here.

Want a copy, anyone? Drop me a line..

o o o

I'm out of town for a few days, and normal activity here may not resume until my return.

No I won't be bored I won't be there

I've never made a secret of my abundant, absolute and all-consuming love for Iggy Pop. If you're gonna call The Idiot number one and then Lust For Life number two, then 1979's New Values is the third part of a divine trilogy of albums, which -- appropriately -- rivals Bowie's Berlin trilogy in seminality; it's not until the fifth track Don't Look Down, however, that anything* verging on the timeless greatness** of those first two records is approached.

Iggy Pop - Don't Look Down (3.3 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)

[*] That's not to in any way diminish the excellence of Tell Me A Story, Girls, I'm Bored and the title track; it's just that they're in a different league.

[**] Is it weird that there's no word which means "the good quality of the song-writing" in the same way that 'lyricism' somehow means "the good quality of the words of the song"? Or is this just Vocabulary FAIL.

Expansionism FAIL

Once you were there, but now you are gone:

Evidently the Strathmore 44 aren't aware of at least one of the two World's Worst FAILblunders -- never get involved in a turf war in South Wellington [citation required].

o o o

Notice the real estate sign on top of Leo's "Superb Seafood"? I wonder if that means the building is being sold/scheduled for demolition/otherwise gonna disappear? Hope so. That way I won't have to write a really nasty post about how fucken awful their fare is.

Something to go to in Wellington

My friend John Lake is having an exhibition:

He's an ace photographer and it's going to be really really good, I reckon.

How could some sexy-ass bitches walk around ride-free

This is a red Toyota Celica *snigger*:

In case you can't read the slogan on the licence plate, it says

SEXY BITCHES DRIVE RED CARS

Now, I've not seen anyone driving the pictured automobile, but rest assured that if I do catch a bitch in or in the vicinity of the red Toyota Celica, I will try to determine the voracity of their alleged sexiness. In the interests of science. And art.

Smog - I Was A Stranger (from Red Apple Falls) (3.89 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)

Reportback is pending.

How could someone wicked walk around free

If you read some of the comments on YouTube regarding the version of My Little Red Book posted yesterday, there's some conflicting opinions as to who did the best version:

A Burt Bacharach song recorded by Manfred Mann and later murdered by Love.

I'm a Love fanatic, but I do think this version (and the film version) captures the essence of Bacharach much better.

this is the definitve [sic] version. reminds me of my childhood growing up in swinging london.

etc.

Say what?

That was horrible.

GrigoriSom (1 month ago):

Manfred Mann never did the definitive version of anything... including The Mighty Quinn.

Thank you. Goodnight.

If my baby don't love me no more, I know her sister will

I'm pretty disappointed that super-awesome guitarist Bo Diddley has died. This video is a fantastic tribute, though:

German freak-psych-rockers Guru Guru named a song after him on their second album, 1971's Hinten:

Guru Guru - Bo Diddley (6.85 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)

There aint no girl in my little red book who could ever replace your charms

Boy oh boy, I surely love this song:

That's Love performing Burt Bacharach and Hal David's My Little Red Book.

Over at MOG you can listen to Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach performing the song in a style more in keeping with the original intention, you might say -- as in, it's not all Nuggets '66 West Coast garage punk rock.