urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobithe continuing adventures of...RADIO OVER MOSCOWobidankenobi2009-12-07T09:11:00Zurn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobi:172414‘Cause everybody else is doing it… Top 100 Albums of the Decade!2009-12-07T09:01:25Z2009-12-07T09:11:00Z<p><img class="alignright" style="border: 2px solid black; margin: 5px;" src="http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x172/dan_duran/absolution.jpg" alt="" hspace="5" vspace="5" width="200" height="200" align="right" />Wholly unscientific and biased towards shit I like, of course.</p>
<p><strong>1. Muse - Absolution<br />
2. Ryan Adams - Love Is Hell<br />
3. Queens Of The Stone Age - Songs For The Deaf<br />
4. Arcade Fire - Funeral<br />
5. Radiohead - Kid A<br />
6. Primal Scream - XTRMNTR<br />
7. Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots<br />
8. Ladyhawke - Ladyhawke<br />
9. Coldplay - A Rush Of Blood To The Head<br />
10. Andrew WK - I Get Wet</strong><br />
11. Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand<br />
12. Muse - Origin of Symmetry<br />
13. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible<br />
14. Thom Yorke - The Eraser<br />
15. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver<br />
16. Depeche Mode - Sounds of the Universe<br />
17. My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges<br />
18. BRMC - BRMC<br />
19. Mint Chicks - Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No!<br />
20. Muse - Black Holes and Revelations<br />
21. Grandaddy - The Sophtware Slump<br />
22. Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker<br />
23. Brian Wilson - Smile<br />
24. Manic Street Preachers - Journal for Plague Lovers<br />
25. The Decemberists - Picaresque<br />
26. The Datsuns - The Datsuns<br />
27. My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade<br />
28. LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem<br />
29. Bic Runga - Birds<br />
30. My Morning Jacket - Z<br />
31. At The Drive In - Relationship of Command<br />
32. James Dean Bradfield - The Great Western<br />
33. The Good, the Bad and the Queen - The Good, the Bad and the Queen<br />
34. The Strokes - Is This It<br />
35. The Killers - Day & Age<br />
36. Guns N’ Roses - Chinese Democracy<br />
37. Damien Rice - O<br />
38. Sufjan Stevens - Illinoise<br />
39. Coldplay - Parachutes<br />
40. Radiohead - Amnesiac<br />
41. Martin Grech - Open Heart Zoo<br />
42. Supergrass - Supergrass<br />
43. Weezer - The Green Album<br />
44. The Hives - Veni Vedi Vicious<br />
45. Scars on Broadway - Scars on Broadway<br />
46. System Of A Down - Toxicity<br />
47. Mars Volta - Deloused in the Comatorium<br />
48. The Hives - Tyrannosaurus Hives<br />
49. Depeche Mode - Playing the Angel<br />
50. Divine Comedy - Regeneration<br />
51. La Roux - La Roux<br />
52. Oasis - Dig Out Your Soul<br />
53. The Killers - Sam’s Town<br />
54. Keane - Hopes And Fears<br />
55. Deftones - White Pony<br />
56. Johnny Cash - American IV: The Man Comes Around<br />
57. Portishead - Third<br />
58. Morrissey - Years of Refusal<br />
59. Fur Patrol - Pet<br />
60. The Coral - The Coral<br />
61. Flaming Lips - At War With The Mystics<br />
62. Ryan Adams - 29<br />
63. International Noise Conspiracy - A New Morning, Changing Weather<br />
64. D4 - 6Twenty<br />
65. Neil Young - Living With War<br />
66. Doves - Lost Souls<br />
67. Radiohead - In Rainbows<br />
68. Dangermouse - The Grey Album<br />
69. JJ72 - JJ72<br />
70. Blonde Redhead - 23<br />
71. The Clampers - Giant Diamond Eater EP<br />
72. The Darkness - Permission to Land<br />
73. BRMC - Howl<br />
74. Smashing Pumpkins - Machina<br />
75. Manic Street Preachers - Send Away the Tigers<br />
76. Kaiser Chiefs - Employment<br />
77. Patrick Watson - Close To Paradise<br />
78. David Gilmour - On An Island<br />
79. The Decemberists - The Crane Wife<br />
80. Goldfrapp - Supernature<br />
81. Morrissey - Ringleader of the Tormentors<br />
82. The Tears - The Tears<br />
83. Manic Street Preachers - Lifeblood<br />
84. MGMT - Oracular Spectacular<br />
85. Oasis - Don’t Believe The Truth<br />
86. Ryan Adams - Cold Roses<br />
87. Grandaddy - Sumday<br />
88. Muse - The Resistance<br />
89. Raconteurs - Consolers of the Lonely<br />
90. Dandy Warhols - 13 Tales From Urban Bohemia<br />
91. Duffy - Rockferry<br />
92. New Order - Get Ready<br />
93. Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot<br />
94. Interpol - Turn On The Bright Lights<br />
95. QOTSA - Rated R<br />
96. The Killers - Hot Fuss<br />
97. Amy Racecar - Conclusions<br />
98. Midlake - The Trials of Van Occupanther<br />
99. Elbow - Asleep In The Back<br />
100. Pluto - Red Light Syndrome</p>
<p>Disagree? Then tweet me your rage - @radioovermoscow - and tell me what I forgot!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU"> </span></p>
<p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?p=325" title="Read Original Post">Radio Over Moscow</a>.</small></p>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobi:172051Behind the Scenes #8 - True2009-12-05T10:50:03Z2009-12-07T08:50:20Z<p><lj-embed id="114" /></p>
<p>Another song, like the last one, which was originally written a long, long time ago. In the original demo, the lead part - the catchy Moog synth bit, on the album - was played by a lead guitar which sounded like it was tuned by Helen Keller. Okay, something that badly out of tune wouldn’t even be funny, even if it was Helen Keller who twisted the knobs. It was vaguely in key - VAGUELY - so you could tell what notes they were meant to be, but out just enough to make even the worst American Idol contestant double-take.</p>
<p>I’m working on some new material, and in one of the songs, I somehow accidentally programmed the lead Moog part a whole semi-tone low, which if you’re not expecting it, can be a source of much bewilderment, and then, hilarity.</p>
<p>Anyway… I recorded the song initially as a “hmm, maybe”, but it came out well enough for me to chuck it on the album. I mean, it’s barely two minutes long, and with the added little bassline licks and chorus guitar riffs, I thought yeah, it stands up.</p>
<p>It got singled out as a track to skip past in a recent review, but to be honest, I like it. I thought it was catchy enough to stick on the album, and whilst recognising it’s pretty lightweight, it’s over so quickly it doesn’t detract from the record.</p>
<p>And when I decided to try and duplicate the record live myself, armed with a MIDI keyboard and a laptop, its simplicity meant was the first track I went to.</p>
<p>Lyrically, it was/is about a girl I knew very well a long time ago. You could tell that from the opening line, I guess - which I wrote five years after we met, and recorded 15 years after we met… Thing is, we met in the early/mid 1990s as young teens. People change a lot in their teens - which explains the second line. And that’s pretty much it.</p>
<p>Yeah, the lyrics really are as simple as the music, but that’s what you get from a song written by a then 18-year-old who could barely play the guitar. “I had a crush on you, then we changed, and WTF, you’re different! Woah. I should’ve done something then, huh? Even so, it wouldn’t have worked out. That’s pretty much the end of the song, which is good, ’cause no one would want it turning into <em><a title="New Moon... via radio over moscow" href="http://www.chud.com/articles/articles/21614/1/REVIEW-NEW-MOON/Page1.html" target="_blank">Twilight: New Moon</a></em>, would they?”</p>
<p><strong>LINK</strong>: <a style="text-decoration: none;" href="http://radioovermoscow.bandcamp.com/track/true" target="_blank">DOWNLOAD ‘TRUE’</a></p>
<p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?p=317" title="Read Original Post">Radio Over Moscow</a>.</small></p>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobi:171947Behind the Scenes #7 - New Electra2009-11-28T13:03:20Z2009-11-28T13:04:16Z<p><lj-embed id="111" /></p>
<p>Sometimes you read that a song had a really long gestation, and then you read Wikipedia only to find out what differentiates a ‘long’ gestation from a short one is the number of hotel rooms and hookers, multiplied exponentially, the guitarist had to pass through in order to come up with the band’s next hit.</p>
<p>In contrast, the main riff to ‘New Electra’ was one of the very first I ever came up with on picking up a guitar. Which was in the mid 1990s. As a reminder, ‘Battletech’ came out in July, this year.</p>
<p>The base of the song was laid down in the late ’90s, early 2000s, and pretty much left to rot. I never brought it up for consideration in any of the bands I was in, and never considered it for recording in my my previous solo iteration, luna spark, which wasn’t as ‘rock’ oriented as ‘Battletech’.</p>
<p>But new technology and such let me try it out, and though it evolved greatly in the mix, I don’t think it could have come out any better. It’s a far cry from what I imagined in 1996 or whatever, but if you knew what lyrics used to hang off the riff, you’d be worshiping the ground Charles Darwin used to listen to music on.</p>
<p>‘Cause really, the whole song is pretty much that riff. And to have some whargarbll over the top of it, with some crappy AutoTune, w0uld just be lame.</p>
<p>The verses aren’t so hot, so AutoTune there is required, for sure.</p>
<p>If you’ve got the album, and it’s a free download, so if you’ve read this far I’m guessing you do, you’d notice the snare sound is different to most of the other songs. It is, yeah. I used a different sample, and to this day, I’m not entirely sure why. It has a more generic session-bad pop sound to it.</p>
<p>The synth sound in the second verse you’d recognise as one I’ve scattered throughout ‘Battletech’, and it’s cropping up a bit in the new recordings I’m working one - perhaps a little too much! I’ve had some troubles with one of my wrists this past year, and combined with the fact I’m now a freakin’ dad (”freakin’ dad” ’cause it’s still a freakout that I’m a freakin’ dad) I’ve not been on the guitar/bass so much.</p>
<p>In its place is that pulsing, so-very-1990s sound. Or ’80s. I”m not sure. Needs more guitar to sound like Rob Zombie, less to sound like Ultravox - the dilemma of my life.</p>
<p><strong>LINK</strong>: <a style="text-decoration: none;" href="http://radioovermoscow.bandcamp.com/track/new-electra" target="_blank">DOWNLOAD ‘NEW ELECTRA’</a></p>
<p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?p=311" title="Read Original Post">Radio Over Moscow</a>.</small></p>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobi:171741Ouch… no more?2009-11-24T01:15:41Z2009-11-24T01:16:26Z<p>Typing this with one hand… no, not because of that. I had a steroidal injection (okay, that sounds dirty too) in my wrist this morning, exactly 24 hours after seeing my new hand surgeon. To put this in context, I’d seen Dr Incompetent for two months or so without ever coming close to knowing what was wrong, let alone trying out a treatment.</p>
<p>I won’t explain now what made him so bad, seeing as I’m typing with one hand and all. Next time maybe.</p>
<p>Maybe once the injection has kicked in, I can get back to recording too.</p>
<p>Lost a few kgs, but the past week has seen my weight loss stagnate, so back to walking the 7km to work. Better leave now…</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?p=307" title="Read Original Post">Radio Over Moscow</a>.</small></p>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobi:171455Behind the Scenes #6 - Fiction2009-11-10T12:18:41Z2009-11-10T12:18:41Z<p><strong><span style="color: red;">FICTION<br />
</span></strong><br />
<lj-embed id="105" /></p>
<p>I sometimes go through phases where I try to write songs I could imagine a famous band or artist playing. Normally each artist gets one phase, then I move on - Weezer are an exception. I’ve tried to write a thousand Weezer songs in my life, with varying results.</p>
<p>This was one of the success stories, I feel - even if it ended up sounding nothing like Weezer (much like Weezer themselves, these days).</p>
<p>It began in 2008, I think, making it one of the most recently-penned tracks from ‘Battletech’. It was initially just the power chord verses, with a fairly monotone, wordless melody. The bridge/chorus chords came soon after, but it wasn’t until I recorded it that it really took shape - there was no demo version, what you hear on the album was the first and only attempt at putting it together.</p>
<p>For example, the synth lead that underpins the entire bridge (bit after the verse but before the chorus) was only added as a way of making the bassline melody stand out, and ended up being perhaps the catchiest phrase in the whole song. It also leads nicely into the guitar solo, contributed by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/rwilliammurphy" target="_blank">R William Murphy</a> - he who helped write <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?page_id=11#purpose">‘The Purpose Of Man’</a>. I told him ‘like van Halen’, which is probably the first and last time I’ll ever ask for something with those words.</p>
<p>The vocals were one of the first I tried using software to do pitch correction, and found by doubling it up with octave higher and lower backing vocals, it gave the song an other-worldy, robotic kind of feel. I utilised the technique to fill in vocals on the other songs, liking what I heard here. Because the verse melody on ‘Fiction’ is quite plain - all the catchiness there being in the chords, really - it helped make the vocals stand out, sound more interesting.</p>
<p>The lyrics are one of my signature mish-mashes of two different ideas; one which came with the chords, and one when I actually sat down to flesh everything out so I could record it. The first idea is that gossip - lies in particular - doesn’t spread by itself. Pretty obvious, really. It takes people to pass it on, and people get a kick out of it - else they wouldn’t do it. In other words, fiction is a lazy bitch, or as the song puts it, Yoda-style, ’such a lazy bitch, fiction is’.</p>
<p>The second angle is basically an attack on the current National Party. They’re always good for a kicking, and last time they were in power I could barely even play the guitar. Still can’t, but hey.</p>
<p>And no, I don’t know why the tom roll going into the second chorus is so quiet. I must have accidentally muted the close mics when I was putting it all together, and by the time I realised something was wrong I couldn’t be arsed remixing it. One mixing error that made the master is still about 5000 less than the Beatles had, per song…</p>
<p><strong>LINK</strong>: <a style="text-decoration: none;" href="http://radioovermoscow.bandcamp.com/track/fiction" target="_blank">DOWNLOAD ‘FICTION’</a></p>
<p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?p=294" title="Read Original Post">Radio Over Moscow</a>.</small></p>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobi:171027Behind the Scenes #5 - Policies2009-11-07T12:49:22Z2009-11-10T12:25:59Z<p><lj-embed id="109" /></p>
<p>In the past couple of weeks, here in NZ there’s been a whole lotta <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">love</span>, no wait, the opposite - what’s that, hate? - for a couple of politicians who were previously seen as being of multiple opposite sides of the political polygon, but have spent the last year in coalition - for reasons unknown to themselves.</p>
<p>Or for power. Take your pick.</p>
<p>Thing is, I had respect for at least one of them up until this week. Background alert: this part may bore non-New Zealanders. Feel free to skip to the next paragraph or 16 - promise, I will get to the song at hand eventually. It does relate.</p>
<p>Anyway, I like Hone Harawira, and though I’ve not always agreed with his politics, since he came and spoke to us students on our overnight marae trip on my grad-dip journalism course (part of which I skipped for a gig), I’ve appreciated his candour and way with a word and situation; until now.</p>
<p>Turns out the motherfucker - to paraphrase Harawira himself - is a wacko racist. Sure, I should have been ticked off by fact he is in the race-based Maori Party, but he struck me as someone who could transcend that crap and actually say it like it is, on behalf of the left.</p>
<p>As we all (in NZ) now know, he took a detour whilst on one of those random overseas missions no one actually knows or cares about until a politician fucks up. His fuckup was taking his wife on a sightseeing tour of Paris whilst he was meant to be in some apparently un-sightseeing-worthy Belgian town - Brussels, I think. Turns out he paid for that part of his trip himself, and by his own account, he’d done his business the night before, or something. Like he operates in some kind of freaky world where race-based electorate MPs from obscure Pacific countries get to meet the world’s playmakers at some kind of pre-ball party and knock out the real arrangements, leaving the formalities to nerds like the UK and shit.</p>
<p>So far, so meh. But when he got back, instead of arguing his case - what he did was within the law, he’d done his work already, it was fully legal according to the rules and fuck, if you were in a day’s drive of Paris and hadn’t been, wouldn’t you go? - he accused “white motherfuckers” of I don’t know, <a href="http://lyrics.wikia.com/Flight_Of_The_Conchords:Mutha'uckas" target="_blank"> ‘uckin’ with his shit.</a> I wish I was, but I’m not <a href="http://www.3news.co.nz/Harawira-faces-up-to-Maori-Party-president/tabid/419/articleID/128670/cat/909/Default.aspx" target="_blank">kidding</a>.</p>
<p>The whole puritanical bullshit argument he tried might have flown in the 19th century, but it’s 2009.</p>
<p>As for Rodney Hide, the irony precedes itself, surely. But think about it - Rodney Hide is pretty much capitalism incarnate, so the fact he’s raping the public purse without remorse (to paraphrase, “I disagree with these perks, but I’m not a martyr”) and thinks he is entitled to it, I’m guessing through his own interpretation of virtue, shouldn’t really surprise anyone.</p>
<p>Sooo - to the song at hand, <em>Policies</em>. Written in its initial form over Nov/Dec 1999.</p>
<p>I suppose it’s odd that it starts with an <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?page_id=118" target="_self">apparent grammatical error</a> - but no, it’s just a possessive. ‘Policies are all’ would have been acceptable, but the word ‘policy’ fits, okay? Not that I’ve been asked about it very often.</p>
<p>New Zealand had a general election in November 1999, a year throughout which I’d developed my songwriting and political idealogy to a degree, I guess. We’d had a right-wing govt for nine years, and the election result was a foregone conclusion. Helen Clark’s Labour won, but as us young’uns are wont to do, we soon imagined cracks.</p>
<p>To be honest, I’m not sure what cracks I could have seen that quickly, despite the lyrics. I was yet to endeavor on proper student protest (that would come in 2000) and Labour’s victory was something I’d awaited since 1990.</p>
<p>The ‘no party vote’ lyric I suppose is the most interesting part. The reasoning was at the time, we’re so young, we don’t have a party we’re loyal to (we get two votes in NZ - one for an electorate, which is nigh on useless, and one for the party, which decides the government). It was a very fresh idea at the time, the separate party vote, and it has fallen in recent years to the same kind of political manipulation as the old meaningless electorate vote used to be prey to.</p>
<p>The electorate vote is still almost entirely useless, but seems to hold a spell over much of the electorate who want a return to the bad old days.</p>
<p>I can’t say much more about the original lyric, but its message seems as timely as ever - listen to the distinct messages each party sends, as opposed to their stated policies. And judge them on those.</p>
<p>Sound and structure-wise, the song has remained remarkably intact since it was first written. A few synths were added, replacing what were originally guitars, but apart from that, what’s on the album is pretty much what was on the demo I recorded in 1999.</p>
<p><strong>LINK</strong>: <a style="text-decoration: none;" href="http://radioovermoscow.bandcamp.com/track/policies" target="_blank">DOWNLOAD ‘POLICIES’</a></p>
<p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?p=288" title="Read Original Post">Radio Over Moscow</a>.</small></p>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobi:170979Behind the Scenes #4 - Pakistan2009-11-05T12:43:20Z2009-11-05T12:48:59Z<p><strong><span style="color: red;">PAKISTAN<br />
</span></strong><br />
<lj-embed id="101" /></p>
<p>I say in the blurbs (and soon, hopefully, the interviews) I’m heavily influenced by Nirvana, yet no one seems to get it. People hear drum machines and think it’s synthpop, and/or hear distorted guitars and assume because they’re accompanied by drum machines, it’s Nine Inch Nails I’m ripping off.</p>
<p>Whilst both assumptions aren’t entirely false, I think it’s a little lazy to write off just how much an effect Kurt Cobain’s songwriting has had on me.</p>
<p>The first album I ever bought was <em>Nirvana, Unplugged in New York</em>. I’m not sure there’s a cooler album for someone my age to have begun with; I suppose I was a late starter, being 14 at the time, but I was doing alright for a fan of Australian rugby league who switched his allegiance from balls (balls) to penis substitutes (guitars) almost overnight.</p>
<p>I remember sitting in my mate’s garage when we were 15 (he’d been kicked out of home, and moved to the garage - it sounds lame, I know, but when you were 15, in 1995, the fact he was allowed topless (not full-frontal) pics on his wall, simply because he was no longer in the house, was pretty awesome), listening to Nirvana pretty much non-stop.</p>
<p>It was the same at home - mum once came into my room, and asked: ‘Do you like any other bands, apart from Nirvana?’ I thought about it for a few seconds, and replied, ‘No.’ Obviously.</p>
<p>A few months later I’d jump on the whole mid-90s Britpop/Beatles wave, but anyway, years later…</p>
<p>I’d learned a bit about using semitone discordance from Placebo, using single-string riffs from Muse, yet still loved the basic, ‘happy’ C-F-G power-chord progressions of your everyday Weezer song… and one day in early 2004 hit upon the main riff. I used the fact the riff - based in E - landed on C, giving it that minor kind of sound, to switch to F-C-G in the choruses, but keeping an angry melody, and somehow it resulted in something that was simultaneously catchy as hell, without being a total cheese-fest.</p>
<p>That sounds totally nerdy, but I insist - I have absolutely no musical training or knowledge, honest. It just sounded right.</p>
<p>The first time it was played live in my band at the time, Vetox, was the drummer’s… something. Engagement party? It was an odd audience anyway, and he hadn’t been in the band long, but it was draining, which yeah, made me think there was something to the song.</p>
<p>And as for the parts everyone says sound like the Killers, a) I’m actually quite proud I managed to pull off a song that equally ripped off Nirvana and the Killers, and b) one review said instead it was White Zombie I was channeling. Which you cannot argue with, or Rob Zombie will kill you, or something.</p>
<p>The recording obviously uses a lo-fi approximation of Muse’s Chris Wolstenholme’s distorted basswork, and if you listen carefully - it’s more apparent on the dynamic, alternate mix - drum machines in the intro and from the second verse onwards.</p>
<p>If you’ve read this far, you might even be interested in what the song is about - well, it’s a clumsily-written simplified view of what Pakistan, the country, seemingly wants from the United States. Crossed with wanting a girl. Heavy shit. This is where I insert the ‘in a post-9/11 world’ quote to get people’s ears on fire, I think.</p>
<p><strong>LINK</strong>: <a style="text-decoration: none;" href="http://radioovermoscow.bandcamp.com/track/pakistan" target="_blank">DOWNLOAD ‘PAKISTAN’</a></p>
<p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?p=279" title="Read Original Post">Radio Over Moscow</a>.</small></p>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobi:170616Behind the Scenes #3 - Images Of Bliss2009-10-10T12:28:19Z2009-10-10T12:40:18Z<p><strong><span style="color: red;">IMAGES OF BLISS<br />
</span></strong><br />
<lj-embed id="99" /></p>
<p>It’s no secret that ‘Battletech’ was frontloaded, which led to a few internal debates over whether to put the best ’songs’ at the beginning of the album, or go with what felt natural, soundwise; I aimed for a balance, which resulted in the first four songs sounding pretty much nothing like each other.</p>
<p>So after the electro-psychedelic ‘The Purpose Of Man’ and new wave/industrial ‘Anti-Human Nous’, there’s ‘Images Of Bliss’ - which has survived its eight-year genesis surprisingly intact.</p>
<p>I wrote the song in 2001, in true John Lennon spirit - my sister had delivered me her latest artistic masterpiece, and being seven years old at the time (her - not I, obviously), it was of some people, a house, the sky, etc etc. Not to discount her effort, but you know what kids paint/draw at that age.</p>
<p>It got me thinking - kids, when they’re not brought up in wartorn societies or being sung about by U2, almost always draw happy scenes. Yet, if you’re old enough to vote, drawing a guy with a near-perfect sphere for a head with a shit-eating grin is near enough to land you in the loony bin. Why?</p>
<p>And that’s pretty much the story behind the opening line - “Have you noticed how little children draw images of bliss, and talented artists don’t? Says a lot about growing up these days.”</p>
<p>In late 2001, I was a part time dole bludger living in the ground-floor room of three-storey apartment owned by a [as far as I could tell] rich American guy who used to be in a hardcore punk band, and then worked in 3D TV screens which had some connection to the US military, and his girlfriend who was a fellow Kiwi I met whilst doing the night-shift at a semi-student radio station.</p>
<p>The best part of this odd-sounding arrangement was that my room was seperated from their room by an entire empty floor, and I had pretty much all the time in the world to just crank my 25W amp and learn how to rip off Weezer and the Dandy Warhols. It was a fertile period, split down the middle by 9/11, which had a marked effect on my writing - as in I went from writing songs about crayon drawings by children and pretending to be attacked by vampires (I’m not sure <em>that</em> song will ever see release…) to tackling, you know, issues. as clumsily as any half-a-world-removed 21-year-old does.</p>
<p>The initial demo contained perhaps 80% of the final recording’s DNA, obviously minus the eight years learned production experience. Over the next few years, it was demoed again and again, and played live in bands I had going, yet barely changed. I have to mention the repeated drum fill added by - I can’t remember if it was Simon or Nat - but it was sub-Ringo in its simplicity, yet just fit so well I kept it for the recorded version. I owe whichever of you it was a beer, or something.</p>
<p>And being one of the songs that had been repeatedly played live beforehand, I have to thank the other guys in the band - it’s probably too far removed to remember exactly what contributions to its arrangement they made, but Tonamu and Gareth - and Nathan, as late as you came on the scene - if you can hear any of your influences/suggestions in the arrangement, thanks. The song hasn’t made any of us millionaires - or even ten-a-naires - but it was all good fun.</p>
<p><strong>LINK</strong>: <a style="text-decoration: none;" href="http://radioovermoscow.bandcamp.com/track/images-of-bliss" target="_blank">DOWNLOAD ‘IMAGES OF BLISS”</a></p>
<p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?p=243" title="Read Original Post">Radio Over Moscow</a>.</small></p>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobi:170435New track - ‘Deja Vu’, free download2009-09-25T03:01:39Z2009-09-25T03:13:16Z<p>‘Deja Vu’ - it was a track that didn’t make the cut for the ‘Battletech album’, not because it wasn’t good enough but ’cause it just didn’t fit. I’ve remixed it significantly, and figure I’m not gonna bother recording it again from scratch so might as well put it out there - and here it is - free download, etc.</p>
<p><lj-embed id="96" /></p>
<p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?p=234" title="Read Original Post">Radio Over Moscow</a>.</small></p>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobi:170070I fought the council and I won2009-09-15T10:00:48Z2009-09-15T11:32:46Z<p><img class="alignright" style="border: 1px solid black; margin: 5px;" src="http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x172/dan_duran/5-signcloseup.jpg" alt="" width="238" height="178" />A couple of months ago my new car was towed from where I’d left it, near work. The council said it was parked in a clearway, and wanted $120.</p>
<p>I disputed the ticket, arguing I was not parked in a clearway because there was no clearway sign. You could see where there used to be a clearway sign, but there wasn’t one any more - and I sent them photos to prove it (one of them is attached - note the gap above the 60 sign).</p>
<p>Cutting a long story short, the council have now backed down and waived the ticket - but somewhat stupidly have yet to replace the sign.</p>
<p>If I was of a more masochistic bent, I’d totally park there again tomorrow. But Tariqa would call that silly.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?p=224" title="Read Original Post">Radio Over Moscow</a>.</small></p>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobi:169945They’re not from Earth?2009-09-14T10:45:22Z2009-09-14T10:45:22Z<p><img class="alignright" style="border: 1px solid black; margin: 5px;" title="BSG" src="http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x172/dan_duran/bsg.jpg" alt="Battlestar Galactica" width="250" height="167" /></p>
<p>This probably isn’t the first time I’ve said this, and probably won’t be the last, but I do pretty much all of my ‘blogging’ via Twitter these days (a quick look shows it’s been two whole months since I last said that!).</p>
<p>It’s a slow night at work though, you see - the evenings usually are. Been a while since I did evenings, and it’s good to see nothing much has changed. Thank fuck the boss is back though - things around here have been a little… tense, let’s say. Won’t go into it here, but.</p>
<p>One of the news directors has loaned me the first three seasons of <em>Battlestar Galactica</em> on DVD - it’s a show I’ve always heard was good, but I realised early on it wouldn’t be a show to dip into, or take on without serious consideration. I mean, I’m on my third (for some episodes, fourth or fifth) <em>Lost </em>watchthrough. It’s almost like work - if work was totally awesome. But my point is, it’s not exactly <em>Friends</em>.</p>
<p>Took me a while to get started - the show dumps you straight in, but after a few false starts I think momentum will get me through the first season at least pretty quickly. It’s pretty damn good, and I’m glad I’ve managed to avoid spoilers all these years.</p>
<p>In other unimportant happenings, I’ve had to make the ‘loud’ version of the album free to download at any quality, not just 128k mp3. Bandcamp (the host) simplified their sales policy, so you can’t sell low quality versions at a cheaper rate. Their justification was that it just doesn’t work, which is fair enough. Still, with two versions of the record on sale - one sonically superior - I think it’s no harm done really. Not like I expected to make any money from it, ha ha! The $60 I did make from the Fark greenlight was awesome enough.</p>
<p>I make music for the satisfaction of it - to me, if no one else, it has inherent value. Maybe one day I’ll be discovered, probably after I’m dead. Pfft. Stupid death.</p>
<p>Anyway, work happening.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?p=220" title="Read Original Post">Radio Over Moscow</a>.</small></p>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobi:169701‘Images Of Bliss’ music video2009-08-31T18:41:48Z2009-08-31T18:41:48Z<p><lj-embed id="91" /></p>
<p>Keeping with the zero-budget theme, here’s the music video to ‘Images Of Bliss’, from ‘Battletech’ - which is now available on iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, etc as well as on radioovermoscow.com.</p>
<p>Let me know what you think…</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?p=216" title="Read Original Post">Radio Over Moscow</a>.</small></p>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobi:169042When do we start the Paula Bennett-bashing? How about now?2009-07-28T00:18:56Z2009-07-28T00:18:56Z<p>It hasn’t taken long for National to trot out the beneficiary-bashing - I really thought they’d leave it to the second term, but I suppose they’re riding high in the polls and feeling a bit cocky.</p>
<p>The irony is in this case that Paula Bennett, the minister for social development, is stripping away the exact kind of support that got herself off the benefit and into a career which has seen her go as far as well, being a minister in government.</p>
<p>But the most disturbing aspect of this current round of kicking people while they’re down, is that Bennett is basically saying if you disagree with the government, it’s okay for the government to release your personal details to the world and invite the ugly side of NZ society to publicly attack you.</p>
<p>These women are trying to get themselves off the benefit by going into training - and to be recieving benefits as large as they are, it’s obvious they have a number of children to look after, whose fathers aren’t in the picture. It’s hard enough bringing up kids when both parents are present, let alone doing it by yourself. And what would the privileged arsehole class suggest she do? Stay on the benefit, the one they’d strip from her if they had the chance? Kids don’t choose their parents, and it’s not the mothers you’d be punishing the most by taking it away.</p>
<p>When will people learn that punishing children for the choices of their parents’ only leads to more money being spent on social needs further down the track?</p>
<p>And when will they learn the key thing to getting people into paid employment and off govt support is education and opportunity?</p>
<p>No matter how much money John Key managed to siphon out of the economy as a money trader, his job will never, ever be as important as someone who brings up children alone.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?p=197" title="Read Original Post">Radio Over Moscow</a>.</small></p>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobi:168913Behind the Scenes #1 - The Purpose Of Man2009-07-24T10:53:21Z2009-11-10T12:22:46Z<p><img style="margin: 5px;" title="The Purpose Of Man" src="http://radioovermoscow.com/images/thepurposeofman.jpg" alt="The Purpose Of Man" hspace="5" vspace="5" width="200" height="315" align="right" /><lj-embed id="108" /></p>
<p>Okay, so this idea might go over some people’s heads, but I’ve always found it interesting to find out about bands’ writing/recording processes, so thought I’d write about making ‘Battletech’.</p>
<p>I know it’s not exactly the <em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Albums" target="_blank">Classic Albums</a></em> series, but how often do you read about obscure, no-budget recording sessions, that don’t end with the phrase, ‘thank god for that NZ On Air funding’? If nothing else, writing this stuff down will at least be interesting to myself in decades to come../</p>
<p>Anyway, so we’ll start with the first track on the album, and the oldest song on the album by a long way, ‘The Purpose of Man’.</p>
<p>The song’s genesis dates way, way back to 1996. From memory, <a href="http://web.mac.com/r.williammurphy/iWeb/Site/Home.html" target="_blank">R William Murphy</a> (not that he called himself that in those days - let’s call him Rob) and I were in town - Hamilton, of course. We were walking down the main street, on our way home I believe, when two Asian Christians accosted us for a chat. This wasn’t entirely normal in mid-90s Hamilton, but my bullshit detector must’ve been functioning well ’cause I got out of my conversation unscathed, whilst Rob’s guy wound up trying to get him to come back later that night for a streetside baptism - and no, that’s not a euphemism.</p>
<p>So after 20 minutes or so, we managed to extricate ourselves, but the bible-bashers left us with a parting shot - a small booklet called ‘The Purpose Of Man’. Yes, that’s it in the pic - the exact one - complete with 13-year-old pencil scribblings in my handwriting.</p>
<p>Now, in my memory’s version of events, I can’t remember which came first - the words or the ‘music’. I put ‘music’ in inverted commas because what I had written down was most definitely not music. I was yet to learn how to play, and from memory had drawn a series of lines on a piece of paper with dots representing the next note in the riff I’d supposedly composed. I gave this ‘music’ to Rob, who understandably not having a clue what I’d done, came out with the choppy, key-ignoring riff the song’s verses are based around.</p>
<p>For the chorus, we literally just took the chords from the verses and played them from lowest to highest up the fretboard as power chords, then highest to lowest, repeat. Seriously, that’s how you write songs when you’ve just learned to play! Go the barre chord.</p>
<p>The lyrics were a collaborative effort, from memory, written pretty much at the height of our Beatles obsession. The idea was pretty simple - write the first great hippy anthem of the next millenium; hence the references to flowers, colours, hazes, the outside world, things being in your head, the plants being peculiar, colours surrounding you, being amazed, and so on. Pretty simple stuff, but when combined with the very British-sounding off-key riff, quite effective.</p>
<p>The structure of the song has a slightly more convoluted origin. There’s an old demo of the two of us in ‘96 or ‘97 recorded onto a tape recorder with a borrowed Yamaha keyboard providing the beat (that keyboard has an entire story of its own I won’t go into here!). One of us (probably me, as Rob was the only one who could play the guitar properly) tapped out the chord progression on the keys as a thin, tinkly rhythm played, soon followed with Rob’s dun-dun-dun, dun-dun-dun guitar riff and the first verse.</p>
<p>The demo followed this basic pattern until halfway through the second verse, when we started shouting, and Rob dropped the staccato playing for a straight strum.</p>
<p>And as for the outro, I can’t recall whether it was spontaneous or planned, apart from the slowing to half-time. The falsetto I’m sure was a shock, even if we were only 16 at the time. It’s seriously high, and Rob did it without the benefit of technology!</p>
<p>We played the song in our band Sequester in 1998, which is where the more menacing aspect to its arrangement arose - the military-style beat in the second half of the second verse. As I said, we’d always made that part louder, but our drummer Arie threw in these vicious, urgent snare rolls that flipped the song’s feel and attitude entirely. Live, it would start out as a plodding psychedelic pop song, then have its meaning put in doubt by a raucous, menacing twist.</p>
<p>Then we’d throw in five minutes of feedback and noise, and play it again. It was a great way of padding out a short set!</p>
<p>So when it came to recording it for ‘Battletech’, I was a little wary - I’ve always loved the song, and thought it was one of the best Rob and I wrote together, but wasn’t sure if I’d pull it off with all the twists and changes it had accrued in its life.</p>
<p>Rather than rely on the same basic ‘live drummer’ set up most of the other tracks largely use, I beefed up the main rhythm with a loud, compressed dirty hip-hop kick drum and some choppy, gated snares - this gave the track a more synthesized feel than the rest of the album, but as it was already musically quite different, I figured it was a go. For the intro, I mimicked the sound of the old Yamaha using a bunch of drum machine samples, and threw in this great loping synth I’d found (and used) on ‘Images of Bliss’, which was recorded earlier.</p>
<p>I programmed in a pad playing the basic chord progression, so that if further down the line I had pull out instruments that just wouldn’t fit, there would still be at least something droning away in key. It worked too, as I later pulled the electric guitars from the verses in order to make the choruses have more punch.</p>
<p>At the end of each chorus, it seemed a little dull just to have the descending chord progression pay itself out, so I added in a synth-string sweep and some cheesy techno synths, which worked better than I had expected. If someone had told me 13 years ago ‘The Purpose Of Man’ would have strings and a cheesy techno synth, I probably would have punched them for being blasphemous, but hey. Not really.</p>
<p>Something did go wrong in those chorus outros, though. As you can hear, they skip a chord - a gap I’d completely forgotten about in the initial recording. It was only when I sent Rob an in-progress mix of the backing track that he pointed out it had a couple of skipped beats I’d forgotten about completely. I had to painstakingly remove them, adding in fades to cover up the edit.</p>
<p>Throws a little doubt on how accurate my recollection of the ’90s might be though!</p>
<p>So, coming to the outro of the song, I initially planned to get Rob to do it, hoping for a repeat of his ball-busting effort on the mid-90s demo. Instead, I relied on ol’ AutoTune to get me through, and when Rob first heard the mix, he said he wans’t needed. Or words to that effect. He did have some slightly more intricate vocal runs I couldn’t do, but in their place I put some melodic bass runs, doubled up on a last-minute synthesiser - in fact, the last thing recorded on the entire album, I think.</p>
<p>I planned early on to close the album with ‘The Purpose Of Man’, figuring if I pulled it off successfully, nothing could really follow it. Somewhere along the line I decided it was far too good to shove at the back of an album probably no one will hear, so promoted it… to the front. It was just so different to everything else, it kind of had to be had out of the way, so the album proper could start. It’s the only song on the album I didn’t write alone, and has its genesis in a completely different part of my life to most of the material.</p>
<p>Still, I’m very proud of it, and think yeah - perhaps back in 1996, we did just write the first great hippy anthem of the new millenium. Even if it took cheesy techno synths and a dollop of AutoTune to get there. Putting it at the front of the album certainly weeds out those who don’t have an open mind, and serves as an excellent red herring for the next track, ‘Anti-Human Nous’ - which was composed 12 years later, and will be the focus of my next, no doubt much shorter, entry.</p>
<p><strong>LINK</strong>: <a style="text-decoration: none;" href="http://radioovermoscow.bandcamp.com/track/the-purpose-of-man" target="_blank">BUY ‘THE PURPOSE OF MAN’</a></p>
<p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?p=188" title="Read Original Post">Radio Over Moscow</a>.</small></p>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobi:168660Battletech available on Amplifier.co.nz2009-07-22T10:09:26Z2009-09-15T10:09:28Z<p><img src="http://radioovermoscow.com/images/amplifierlogo.png" alt="" align="right" />If you don’t want to use the Bandcamp.com-based store, the album’s now on <a href="http://www.amplifier.co.nz/artist/49505/radio-over-moscow.html" target="_blank">Amplifier.co.nz here</a>. It’s a little pricier, at NZ$1.99 a track, but at least it’s a NZ-based company that’s been around for years, so you can trust ‘em.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?p=185" title="Read Original Post">Radio Over Moscow</a>.</small></p>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobi:168242Battletech - out now!2009-07-18T08:52:21Z2009-09-15T10:09:41Z<p><img class="alignright" src="http://bandcamp.com/files/39/86/3986460244-1.jpg" alt="" hspace="5" vspace="5" width="210" height="210" />The album ‘Battletech’ is out! And here it is, in two different versions… if you’re not sure which to grab, well, the first one is louder, shinier and will slot in with the other albums on your iPod; the second, alternate mix, is quieter with more dynamics, more suited to closer, dedicated listening. The former you can download free at 128k mp3 quality, or pay-what-you-want for any quality right up to and including FLAC; the latter is pay-what-you-want only.</p>
<p>If you download the full album (of either mix), there are two remix bonus tracks.</p>
<p>And that’s it! In the time I’ve spent working on this album, I’ve learned to drive, had a baby, moved house, started a new job and had two birthdays. I hope you like it. (If you can’t see the widgets below, you may need to install the latest version of <a href="http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/" target="_blank">Flash</a>, or go straight to radioovermoscow.bandcamp.com and try downloading from there).</p>
<p><strong>BATTLETECH</strong></p>
<p><lj-embed id="93" /></p>
<p><strong>BATTLETECH - ALTERNATE MIX</strong></p>
<p><lj-embed id="94" /></p>
<p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?p=161" title="Read Original Post">Radio Over Moscow</a>.</small></p>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobi:168097It’s been a while… but there’s a reason!2009-07-01T09:06:33Z2009-09-15T10:10:29Z<p><img class="alignright" style="border: 1px solid black; margin: 5px;" title="Battletech" src="http://bandcamp.com/files/39/86/3986460244-1.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="200" />And that reason is Twitter. It used to be I’d collect my thoughts up, like guitar riffs, then put them altogether in a blog entry (or a song, in the case of guitar riffs, ’cause they don’t make such good blog entries).</p>
<p>But nowadays it’s just, ‘Ooh, I’ll put that on Twitter.’ It’s probably just as well, ’cause usually I’d forget my thoughts (and guitar riffs) when it came time to write a blog entry.</p>
<p>So I suppose a proper update is in store - but you’re not gonna get it just now, haha. But I will say the album is pretty much done - been working on the opening, and therefore most important track, ‘The Purpose of Man’ these past couple of days. I think it’s done - might cut part of the intro out, as it’s about 45 seconds in before the first verse otherwise, and the last minute-and-a-half has no drums at all, which might give a false impression of what’s to come.</p>
<p>Another one of the tracks might need a little vocal editing, and a few need them pushed a little higher perhaps (Jebus, I never expected to see myself writing <em>those </em>words - thank YOU, autotune), and one needs Rob’s killer guitar solo, then yeah. I’ve got the mastering settings pretty much locked in. Shit, might even be done for my birthday on the 7th.</p>
<p>I’ve completely dropped the double-album idea now, so the album’s just gonna be called <em>Battletech</em>. I’m still deciding whether next to work on all-new songs, use songs I already have but haven’t used, re-record what I did in these sessions (but better), or re-record an old luna spark album I <em>know </em>in my heart is good, but ears (and friends) tell me isn’t. No matter what I do, the result is going to be more electronic/synth oriented than Battletech, ie. no ballads.</p>
<p>I should make that a rule for ALL future albums, otherwise I’m gonna be stuck with autotune forever…</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?p=142" title="Read Original Post">Radio Over Moscow</a>.</small></p>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobi:167932New car!2009-06-13T01:20:03Z2009-06-13T01:20:03Z<p><img style="margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px; border: 1px solid black;" src="http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x172/dan_duran/thesantino.jpg" border="1" alt="" hspace="5" width="282" height="211" align="right" /> I can’t believe I now own two cars. We bought this last night, a 1999 Nissan Tino, ’cause it’s not only almost 10 years newer than our previous car, and almost of this millenium, but it’s a lot safer, and being automatic will be easier to park on the hilly free parking street next to work. </p>
<p>We’ve nicknamed it the Santino, for obvious and <a href="http://santinorice.com/blog/" target="_blank">not so obvious</a> reasons. </p>
<p>Took it for my first drive today, and it’s weird - I’m used to driving an ancient manual, and it was so much easier - except the constant worry of how wide it is, which I’m sure I’ll get over.</p>
<p>Nicer stereo too - though no iPod/cassette input, so I’ll have to get an iTrip or make a whole lot of compilation MP3 CDs. That’s harder than it sounds, cause most of my stuff is in AAC (iTunes) format.</p>
<p>Just have to get rid of the old warhorse now… any takers? </p>
<p>I have Parker all afternoon to myself, ’cause Tariqa’s out counting votes in<a href="http://www.3news.co.nz/Politics/MtAlbertbyelection/tabid/1130/Default.aspx" target="_blank"> the election</a> today. If he’s good, I should get some recording done.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?p=140" title="Read Original Post">Radio Over Moscow</a>.</small></p>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobi:167474Remix of ‘Images of Bliss’2009-06-12T22:18:58Z2009-06-12T22:18:58Z<p>I know I haven’t even released the official version yet, but I was mucking around last night and put together this little remix - in other words, stripped out most of the guitars and drums, stuck in a drum machine and some synthesizers, tweaked everything a bit, and voila!</p>
<p>Download it here for free: <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/audio/Images%20of%20Bliss%20-%20Remix.mp3" target="_self">Images of Bliss - Remix</a></p>
<p>Should be getting some more of the album proper done this afternoon - had a few weeks off - and Rob will be up in a few weeks, maybe we’ll get the vocals to <em>The Purpose of Man</em> done. We wrote it in like, 1996 or something, and it’s a psychedelic britpop-electro weirdo thing that pretty much sounds like nothing else on the album. Remixing that one will be fun too.</p>
<p>I haven’t blogged much recently - most of it’s been on <a href="http://twitter.com/radioovermoscow" target="_blank">Twitter</a> and Facebook, haha. Shows what kind of attention span I’m forced to have at work when there’s actual news happening.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?p=136" title="Read Original Post">Radio Over Moscow</a>.</small></p>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobi:167285All roads lead to… lost2009-05-29T13:21:15Z2009-05-29T13:21:15Z<p>I sat my restricted driver licence test yesterday, at the grand old age of 28. The timing though not deliberate, seems apt.</p>
<p>Young guys in their cars statistically die more often between 16 and 25, and I’m past that. Rock stars die at 27, so I’m free of that obstacle too. In more ways than age.</p>
<p>I was always convinced when younger I’d die in a car accident - my suspicion was it wouldn’t be whilst I was in a car, but cycling or jaywalking, but I figured with accident rates as they are for young guys, my rock star ambitions and the fact I grew up in a car-less family in a flat city, I’d be better off not getting behind the wheel too soon.</p>
<p>Still, there was never any conscious decision to wait this long - I began learning in 2003, with lessons from <a href="http://www.mp3.com.au/Forms/MediaView.aspx?MediaId=129186" target="_blank">Rob</a> - as a part of my post-freakout/Aropax, get in line phase - which never got beyond practise drives around Flagstaff. The theory was if we (I) hit anyone, the family would either be nice and rich enough to handle it, or evil and rich enough for us to be doing the universe a favour. Then again, getting to speed where injury was even a possibility was a problem, with my inept gear-changing skills.</p>
<p>I barely touched a steering wheel again till late last year, when Parker’s impending arrival, the realisation I had a real job, being past 27 and Tariqa’s … encouragement, got my motivation back up. </p>
<p>I ran out of money a couple of times, and had to cancel what I thought would have been my last lesson - driving on busy motorways, lane changes and parallel parking - because Parker decided to arrive a few days earlier than we expected. That night was my <a href="http://obidankenobi.livejournal.com/154279.html" target="_self">first time driving by myself</a>, which despite the disaster of getting completely lost, gave me the confidence I could actually make a car go forwards in the direction I wanted it to, etc.</p>
<p>Now, after spending a couple of months sometimes bussing, sometimes driving to work with the well-rehearsed (in my mind) ‘But officer, I’m 28 - I have a family - I’m not some 15-year-old hoon, I’m just trying to get to work,’ spiel ready to go, I have my restricted licence. The testing guy was a dick (’For the love of god, look out!’ when I was travelling 30km/h down an empty road towards a deserted pedestrian crossing), but gave me a pass, despite not saying a single nice thing about my driving skills from the time we met till the time we parted (where he took care to lock his door, but left the window wide open). </p>
<p>I was driving home today in heavy lunchtime traffic, and realised, holy shit - I’m an Auckland commuter, in my own car, driving home from work to my <em>family</em>, listening to the Rolling Stones and Floyd on a Friday afternoon with the window down. </p>
<p>In my defence there are no buses at 4.30am for my morning commute, and even if there were, I’m sure they’d still find a way to take 45 minutes to get to Eden Terrace. And I was listening to Bis and the Talking Heads, which are still cool. Aren’t they?</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?p=133" title="Read Original Post">Radio Over Moscow</a>.</small></p>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobi:166927I had a (weird but awesome) dream…2009-05-26T04:04:50Z2009-05-26T04:04:50Z<p>And in this dream, Depeche Mode recorded an acoustic album, made up songs written by Paul McCartney (music) and Mark Mothersbaugh (words). Weird… but awesome.</p>
<p>I’m close to finishing the Radio Over Moscow recordings. Might see if Rob’s keen to do the The Purpose of Man vocals while he’s up here for my <em>Planet of the Apes </em>Mid-Winter Movie Marathon (yes, it deserves capitals).</p>
<p>And lastly, my latest entry on <a href="http://www.3news.co.nz/ScienceTech/EightTrackMind/tabid/1135/Default.aspx" target="_blank">Eight Track Mind</a> is about <a href="http://www.3news.co.nz/Another-year-another-NZ-Music-Month/tabid/1135/articleID/105798/cat/876/Default.aspx" target="_blank">NZ Music Month</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?p=114" title="Read Original Post">Radio Over Moscow</a>.</small></p>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobi:166837Riderless horses, Chomsky’s Camelot…2009-05-19T11:31:48Z2009-05-19T11:31:48Z<p><img src="http://www.metacritic.com/media/music/artists/manicstreetpreachers/journalforplaguelovers/picture.jpg" alt="" hspace="5" vspace="5" align="right" /> Picked up the new Manics album on the weekend, and have been listening to it almost non-stop since. I’m not sure how much any of you care, but it’s good hearing James singing Richey’s words again, even knowing it’ll never happen again. It’s a grower of a record, only the first couple of songs (<em>Peeled Apples </em>and <em>Jackie Collins Existential Question Time</em>) really stand out on first listen, but the rest soon show themselves - I’d have to say apart from those two, <em>This Joke Sport Severed</em>, <em>All Is Vanity</em> and <em>Marlon JD</em> would be my favourites. Steve Albini’s production is nice and heavy, but it’s been given a proper shiny mix so it’s not unlistenable. Rating at <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/music/artists/manicstreetpreachers/journalforplaguelovers" target="_blank">83/100 on Metacritic</a> at the moment, which is impressive for any major label album there. Nice artwork too, and all the lyrics printed out, which made the first listen (on my big headphones after a couple of drinks) all the much more enjoyable and eye-opening.</p>
<p>Anyway… that morning I was trying to catch a bus to town so I could pick up the CD before work, but didn’t have enough credit on my card. I figured I might have time to get some money and race onto the next bus stop, so hoofed it to the ATM and began navigating the long-winded menu.</p>
<p>I then heard this woman yelling, and turned around to see she was yelling at and approaching yours truly. WTF? I thought maybe I was being robbed - checked she wasn’t holding a knife - then listened to what she was actually saying: “GET OUT OF MY BODY! I TOLD YOU TO STAY OUT OF MY BODY!” Err, okay… she was shouting this whilst wearing a bum bag and rocking a boy’s haircut, waving her woollen-gloved hands in my face.</p>
<p>Then she attacked me - it wasn’t hard to block her blows, but it felt faintly ridiculous - I was being attacked by an insane lesbian. She then stormed off, much to the amusement of everyone standing around watching. The bus went past, and I thought shit, my bus to town, and ran off after it. I caught up, and for once the bus driver was accommodating, and pulled over for me.</p>
<p>All I wanted was to get my Manics album before work…</p>
<p><strong>TOP TEN ALBUMS OF THE LAST… MONTH!</strong></p>
<p>1. <em>Sounds of the Universe</em> - Depeche Mode<br />
2. <em>Journal for Plague Lovers -</em> Manic Street Preachers<br />
3. <em>The Holy Bible -</em> Manic Street Preachers<br />
4. <em>Doves -</em> Kingdom of Rust<br />
5.<em> Screens -</em> Mint Chicks<br />
6. <em>Day & Age </em>- Killers<br />
7. <em>Years of Refusal</em> - Morrissey<br />
8. <em>Modern Life Is Rubbish</em> - Blur<br />
9. <em>Cardinology</em> - Ryan Adams<br />
10. <em>Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future</em> - The Bird and the Bee</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?p=111" title="Read Original Post">Radio Over Moscow</a>.</small></p>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobi:166518Lol, wut?2009-05-16T11:51:11Z2009-05-16T11:51:11Z<p><a href="http://www.liquidgeneration.com/Media/Games/Quizzes_Puzzles/Personality_Quizzes/Which_Lost_Character_Are_You/" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.liquidgeneration.com/content/extras/whichlostcharacterareyou_resultcard_h.jpg" border="0" alt="" /><br />
</a></p>
<p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?p=108" title="Read Original Post">Radio Over Moscow</a>.</small></p>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobi:166267Bit of a Blur2009-05-15T11:41:08Z2009-05-15T11:45:37Z<p><img src="http://www.littlebrown.co.uk/assets/images/EAN/Large/9780316029957.jpg" alt="" hspace="5" width="195" height="300" align="right" />I’m reading a book at the moment (Shock! Horror! But I’ll have you know I used to read like… some kind of reading… machine…), Alex James’ autobiography, <em>Bit of a Blur</em>. It’s entertaining, but worthless if you want any kind of insight into Blur’s songwriting and recording processes.</p>
<p>As a result I’ve been relistening to Blur’s catalague (I’m not so sure about my ‘listen to every song on my iTunes in order of shortest to longest’ idea anymore), and I have to say because I had such crappy stereos and headphones as a kid, I never realised what an awesome bassist Alex is.</p>
<p>It’s easier to read on a bus than it is walking, which is one advantage of living out here in Avondale. The other, I suppose, is that we miss the new motorway by a kilometre or two, give or take.</p>
<p>In other news… Parker did his first tummy-to-back roll today! Then wouldn’t stop doing them.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?p=103" title="Read Original Post">Radio Over Moscow</a>.</small></p>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:obidankenobi:165951Hopefully this one won’t get stolen…2009-05-14T08:44:56Z2009-05-14T08:45:50Z<p><img style="margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px; border: 1px solid black;" src="http://radioovermoscow.com/images/newguitarmay2009.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="400" align="right" />Bought a new guitar today - from the reviews/retail prices I’ve seen, I think I got a major bargain… $300 including the case, and it’s pretty much new, hardly been used. Apparently the mum bought it for her kid, but he didn’t take to it, preferring the Epiphone his uncle or someone got him. Ah well - my gain! </p>
<p>It’s a Karina Les Paul copy, looks pretty much like the classic white Les Paul <a href="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/148/414980320_d7b5ea7b5c.jpg?v=0" target="_blank">James Dean Bradfield plays</a>.</p>
<p>Watching the season finale of Lost tonight… treading carefully on the interwebs till then… </p>
<p>In other news… Melissa Lee <a href="http://www.3news.co.nz/News/Political-gaffes-leave-Melissa-Lees-campaign-in-tatters/tabid/209/articleID/104183/cat/87/Default.aspx" target="_blank">continues to entertain</a>. We’re no longer in the Mt Albert electorate, just outside of it really, but I can still confidently say she never had a chance before this week, but well and truly doesn’t now. I doubt she’ll ever be able to stand for Waitakare either, considering her support for the motorway through Mt Albert is predicated around bypassing criminals west.</p>
<p>Assembled my cross trainer yesterday - if only that was the hard part. Now I have to convince myself to use it. I think I’ll find a way to set the computer never to display the calories burned, as it’s a little depressing. It’s a minute of running/walking/whatever it is you call what you do on a cross trainer to hurn off a Diet Coke. That’s not encouraging!</p>
<p>New Manics album next week. Freakin’ excited.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><small>Mirrored from <a href="http://radioovermoscow.com/?p=99" title="Read Original Post">Radio Over Moscow</a>.</small></p>