Greetings From Michidan

There's this song I'm trying to record for my next album, and it's just not working. It's the first song for this particular record, after I recorded ten or so for the last one before canning it... But for some reason, it's just not clicking with me. The demo is better so far, in my opinion, even after two whole weekends spent on this particular version. Grrrrr. I suppose it's passable irony that the song is called Effortlessly.

So I've been in a bad mood most of the day.

A posse of Italians just passed through and bought $120 worth of CDs, including one of those terrible 'New Zealand' compilations of crap like Kiri Te Kanawa singing Po Karekare Ana and traditional' Maori music. I don't know if it was just this bunch, or if it's Italians in general, but some of them were quite, how to say it... abrupt. I'd be putting on a CD for one to listen to, and there'd be two others going, 'hey, I want to buy this,' at the same time. Random.

I sold James Blunt's Back To Bedlam and the Office Party compilation to one of the cricketing Marshall brothers yesterday, incase you wondering what kind of music the Marshall brothers listened to. Or liked to give to their friends. Or relatives. Maybe his day job is mystery shopping... but if that were the case, he'd be buying smoothies, not smooth records. When it comes to mystery shopping you see, Tariqa only ever seems to be given assignments related to smoothies, and other yoghurt related ingestibles. I applied, and never heard back. Ah well.

I'm thinking maybe I should start a music reviews website, and become a millionaire that way, cause I'm not going to this way it seems.

Did I mention already I had a jam the other night with a couple of guys, that actually seemed like it was worth repeating? Reuben and Enguerrand ('Ongy,' he advised us to call him). They seem to like the demos I played to them, and they seem like cool guys to hang with. Reuben and I sat on his front porch drinking beer for half an hour before we even picked up any instruments. We were waiting for Ongy, who arrived on a scooter. Signs are good, I suppose! Reuben's place is in Glenfield, which I suppose is a minor problem in the short term, as Tariqa won't let me drive the car myself... yes, that's the real reason definitely...

I've been playing the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire DVD game, and it's hard. Even on the junior level. Mainly cause every third question or so on average relates to Australian trivia, that no one that's lived in NZ all their lives could possibly know. That, and whenever you go to 'phone a friend', two of the 'friends' are usually age 9. And the 'audience members,' being Australians, have a combined IQ probably lower than their combined batting averages. I got to the $125,000 question and got it wrong once. Apart from that, $32,000 seems to be my upper limit so far, though I'm beginning to get repeat questions every now and then, so I figure once I've had them all, I'll be able to go off memory and win that dang million. If only Eddie told you the correct answer each time you got something wrong, this plan might actually work...

Turkish for tea tonight, yay. I hope we go to that same place I always want to go to on K Rd. It's yum.

In our store, in five days, Bic Runga's new album Birds has sold 13 times more copies than Rosita Vai's Golden in five weeks. Hell, we've sold 8 times more copies of the Arcade Fire's Funeral than we have Golden. But which one's a household name?