This post I suppose is final encouragement for the LJ flist to listen, to say something! Since I’ve been posting from radioovermoscow.com, I’ve not had any comments! I know I’ve been boring, but hey.

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.

I thought after setting up the Radio Over Moscow Facebook, MySpace, iLike, Bandcamp, Garageband, Twitter, Reverbnation, Bebo and LJ that I’d remembered everything.

Then I remembered shit, one of the most important - last.fm! So that’s done now too. You can check it out here. Nothing different to the others, but at least these plays will scrobble (if you have last.fm/Audioscrobbler set up on your iTunes/Winamp), and believe it or not, I get paid! Well, nothing really. I just found out for the luna spark stuff, I’d earned €0.04. Still, you know…

John Key managed to piss me off this morning, telling everyone to spend their tax cuts on charity. Err, instead of giving the rich not-needed tax cuts, then asking them nicely to give it the poor out of the kindness of their cold, black hearts, why didn’t you just legistlate tax cuts to the poor, who’ll duly spend it to survive and help the economy? Oh, that’s right. They don’t vote for you, and only ever do when you’ve duped them into it through non-issues and lies. Dick.

PS: This is the for the LJ readers who were here before this became a part of my music blog thing (hence the ‘Mirrored from…’ at the bottom of each post): the ‘band’/Trent Reznor-ish music project thing is now called Radio Over Moscow. Why? It sounds awesome. A friend misread it as that, and I realised instantly it had to be changed.

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.

I saw a comment on the NZ Herald's website that said something along the lines of, "we all get drug tested when we start a new job and regularly while on the job and if we fail we lose our jobs, so why don't people on the benefit/dole have to undergo drug tests?"

Firstly, I've never been drug tested at any workplace of mine, and I don't think I know anyone else who has either, so that's the first part of that argument shot down. Secondly, people on the dole generally aren't required to be doing anything all that important, so if their judgement is impaired, more often than not it's not going to matter as much as if say, an air traffic controller or a forklift driver was out of his mind. Thirdly, what are you going to do if someone unemployed fails a drug test? Let them resort to crime in order to stay alive, lock them up and cost the taxpayer four or five times more than what it would to leave them on the dole? Think, people, think. Fourthly, maybe some people on the dole drink and do drugs BECAUSE they're on the dole, not the other way around as is often assumed. It can be pretty boring and depressing for many, not being able to find work.

Grrr.

Next thing: we get a lot of emails from high school students complaining about schools enforcing dress codes strictly - a few a day, minimum, from all across the country. All of them read as if they're written by 13-year-olds, at the oldest, but anyway, none of them describe anything my school didn't pull on us back in the mid-90s... yet we never thought of asking the news media to investigate! Then again, it was so much harder to write a letter back then... in my day...

Next next thing: the new Weezer video is awesome, perhaps the nerdiest three minutes in music history.

Next next next thing: perhaps the last Kittyhawk practise for me is tonight, for our last gig (I think) this weekend.

Today was the 18th time I've moved flat/house since I left home in early 1998. It wasn't an overly stressful move, I've done it enough times now to know what I have to do, even if it means waking up on the day of the move knowing there's only three hours till the movers turn up, but still having a shiatload of stuff to sort out. It always works out, my instinct kicks in and knows exactly how much I can leave till the last minute, even if I don't even notice it :)

So we're now back in a place of our own, a tiny little flat but as long as we stick to the promises we made to ourselves to stay tidy and whatnot, it should be great. The property managers seem quite hands-off in a good way. I have a little, minuscule 'bedroom' to use as a music room for now, which should be cool once I have new gear to record with. I'm not going to do a luna spark album this year it would seem though, I was doing the re-recordings of an old one one track a month, but that's on hold now that the equivalent of the sheet music for the next song due was stolen (it was on a memory card stolen with the Playstation). I'll be working on the Raid Over Moscow album as soon as I have the gear, which is a not entirely different project, but one that's meant to have a band behind it (four or five practises down, we're making a hell of a racket, loose as hell but so much fun, perhaps the polar opposite of what the album will be!)

Musically, I've been lost in U2 for the past couple of weeks - I'm up to 1993 in reading U2 By U2, re-acquired their first couple of albums (Boy and October), and saw U23D last night. The book is farking awesome, like the Beatles Anthology or equivalent Monty Python book, chock full of detail and hilarious anecdotes - I know, it sounds boring when I put it that way, but really worth it. Despite the common perception of the band being a bunch of doucheheads, particularly Bono, it reveals a darker, funnier side that many people haven't heard about - particularly in their early days and the Achtung Baby/Zooropa period. They were definitely more punk in spirit than many give them credit for. And those first two albums, the production is pretty sweet, but everything they've ever done pales in comparison to Achtung Baby, sonically - surprising when you actually read about the recording/mastering of the record (dubbing over stereo mixdowns, last-minute guitar solos, wanting people to think their record player was broken when they put it on).

I remember reading once when I was younger in Rolling Stone the '90s in music truly began when Nirvana released Nevermind, which I understood, and when almost simultaneously U2 released Achtung Baby, which I didn't really understand. Now I do. For the (actual) biggest band in the world at the end of the 1980s to come back from a critical disaster (Rattle and Hum) with a completely new sound
and not only succeed, but create an album even better than their career-defining high point (The Joshua Tree), is pretty incredible. It's easy to scoff at them now, after two albums which basically refined their classic sound for a modern age, forgetting they once dabbled in hardcore techno, opera and country-dub-electro, but what they did with Achtung Baby would be like if the new Coldplay record was not only a cross between the Klaxons, Battles and Trans Am, but was actually better than A Rush Of Blood To The Head.

I didn't mean for this entry to rave on about U2, but they're on my brain. The best parts of U23D weren't what you'd expect - I really enjoyed Miss Sarajevo, and Bono totally pulled off the Pavarotti part without a hassle. It's not a song I really know that well, being one of the Passengers songs and all. There was a bit of awkward proselytising from Bono, but at least it wasn't too drawn out. The 3D, for me, was really good - at one point I felt a tinge of anger at the dick spraying his water everywhere, and thought for a second the Edge's guitar was going to bash the guy sitting in front of me in the head - but tariqa wasn't so impressed, as her eyes are differently tuned or something - she could see the outlines that are meant to be hidden through the glasses that cause the 3D for much of it, whilst it was pretty much crystal-clear for me, bar during With Or Without You (which only partly ruined perhaps my favourite song of theirs). As an experiment in new technology, it was understandably a little restrained in its composition, but still pretty fucking cool to look at - if only they'd been able to do it when they weren't all old men, haha. If anything it reinforced my view that Adam Clayton is the coolest guy in U2 - he's about 45, looks about 60 but in a good way, still holds his bass like he's in the Sex Pistols, and has this 'I can't believe how fucking cool this is!' grin on his face the whole time. Reading the book reinforces this, seeing as he apparently couldn't actually play to begin with, and had his first lessons in the mid 1990s.

Ryan Adams' blog takes up three or four pages of my friends list every time I look at it.

TOP 8 ALBUMS OF THE LAST FORTNIGHT...

1. Supergrass - Diamond Hoo-Ha
2. U2 - Achtung Baby
3. Duffy - Rockferry
4.  R.E.M - Accelerate
5. Andrew WK - I Get Wet
6. Morrissey - Greatest Hits
7. U2 - Boy
8. U2 - October

The new Weezer song sounds like their first album stuff, it's on their website streaming.

Top 10 albums of the past fortnight!

1. REM - Accelerate
2. Muse - HAARP
3. Sia - Some People Have Real Problems
4. Radiohead - In Rainbows
5. Supergrass - Diamond Hoo Ha
6. Weezer - The Blue Album
7. The Raconteurs - Consolers of the Lonely
8. Radiohead - Hail to the Thief
9. Bernard Butler - People Move On
10. REM - Automatic For the People

The past month or so I've completely begun to understand The Blue Album. I suppose I should have 'got it' the first time around, being the perfect age and all, but somehow it didn't happen. Luckily I reckon, or else I'd never have fully fallen for Pinkerton which is now, even at 27, one of my top five/desert island albums of all time, ever.

Weezer's new one, out soon, is The Red Album. Well, self-titled. But you get what I mean.

We had our third ROM (we have one of the best acronyms in all of rock) practise on Thursday, and it went awesome, unlike our second which sucked. I've decided, though I'm yet to consult the others in an official capacity, we should all have Motley Crue names. As the songwriter, with an easily-adapted name, I'm Danny Sixx. Marty, as his name begins with M, is Marty Mars. Nathan, as the drummer, had little choice but to be Nathan Lee. No one in their right mind would want to be Vince Neil. I'm nearly fat enough, but I'm still claiming the Sixx spot. If we audition singers, and one is called Vince, or Neil, I suppose they'd get preference. If anyone called Neil, ever, has been able to sing. Cue Neils...

One week till I start my new job at TV3.

Made a new entry or two at Fighting Dantasy. I'm wondering who the first person I know will be to set themselves up at Biographicon.

I have the new DVDs by Muse (HAARP) and the Who (Amazing Journey) to watch. Awesome. The first Raid Over Moscow practise on Thursday was a blast. Cool. I had graduation on Friday and didn't trip over on stage. Wicked. KittyHawk played a show last night we weren't really that keen to do, and which was plagued by technical difficulties, but we eventually got the dormant crowd rocking and off their feet and had a brilliant time. Sweet.

Then as we were packing up some drunkard threw a bottle at me, hitting me in the eye, and I spent the rest of the night/morning dealing with policemen and hospital staff who were at best minimally competent, but a better description would be downright rude and offensive.

My favourite part was asking the receptionist if I could have another pen to fill out ACC form as the one I was given didn't work and being told, "The phone is over there, just dial one."

Frustrating day. Firstly, the adjustments I needed to make to my bike (largely to make the front brakes work as well as the back) which I thought would take 5 minutes took an hour and a half - and even then it seems the brakes themselves just don't work properly, and it's nothing that can be adjusted into submission, at least it seems that way. They just don't centre themselves after use, so one of the things rubs against the tyre permanently - but if you loosen them, to get rid of that rubbing, they barely work. Grrr.

Then just as I made it into the central city, my front tyre went flat.

Then when I got to work, Mark said head office want to cut down the hours worked at the store overall, and sent through a laughable joke of a roster which would see him working ten hour days (opening and closing) with the other "full timer" coming in for four hours a day. It'd be the same on the weekends, except Sudnay would be sole charge - no opportunity for breaks, nothing. Hmmm.

Why? The usual reasons - declining sales, increase in the minimum wage. Funny, because when our sales doubled after two other stores on the street vanished, our wages didn't. And if they want us to sell more albums, reducing the number of people in the store isn't going to do it.

All on a "I'm not even supposed to be here today!" day!

Anyway... I saw some of the SAFE people on Queen St today, and thought I'd ask them if they'd heard about the China/Olymipcs/cats thing - the lady said yes, then barely paused before going into her asking-for-money spiel. Grrr. Enough cats at home already to feed... 

Graduation is on Friday. I didn't go to be degree grad day, couldn't afford it, so will this time.

Looks like an old friend from my band back in Htown is keen to jam on some new stuff with Marty, so Raid Over Moscow looks like it might actually happen... it's been too easy so far, haha, so we'll see.

The NZ Herald gave us this shining example of fine journalism this morning:

Headline: Labour booklet runs gauntlet in Parliament
Article: National produced the 12-page booklet, titled We're Making a Difference for Everyone, in Parliament yesterday and said it was distributed at Waikato University last week - in the regulated period.

Anyway... I haven't written in a while, I don't really know what to say... been working and demo-ing songs for a potential new band I might be forming with a guy at work, Raid Over Moscow. That would be the band's name, not his name.

WINZ are so incompetent they've driven me off the dole and back into the slave wages of retail, haha. It's less hassle working every day for peanuts than it is having to deal with those retards. Helps that we're severely understaffed at the mo, so there are plenty of hours available. I had my second interview at TV3 earlier in the week, and it was really casual, and I've got a good feeling about it... fingers crossed, since the job title include pretty much the three words I was hoping for in any job I managed to get - online, news and editor - so if I don't like it, then who knows what I'm meant to do with my non-rocksstar life, haha.

Had our first couple of gigs with fill-in drummer Matt, at Fordes and Dogs Bollix (last night). Went good. We need some new material though, damnit. I'm sick of playing the same damn songs in the same order. There's one new one in the set, Realistic Computers, which is breaking it up a bit.

Mark showed me two of the funniest things I've seen on Youtube in recent times: Sarah Silverman and Jimmy Kimmel's (don't go, hear me out) pseudo break-up/fued involving one Matt Damon. Part One and Part Two. First one is good, but the second... is truly awesome. But you have to watch the first to make sense of the second, so don't go skimping on the bandwidth.

Alright, I'm off to work out the chords to these songs I've demo-ed.


TOP ALBUMS OF THE LAST FORTNIGHT!

1. Sia - Some People Have Real Problems
2. Replacements - Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out The Trash
3. Midlake - Trials of Van Occupanther
4. Liam Finn - I'll Be Lightning
5. Kinky (Reina)
6. Vampire Weekend  - S/T

Okay, so I stole that headline straight from fark.com, a site where the headlines are usually humorous in nature; it's a cruel irony I suppose this one is no joke. How many times do we have to tell people it's not about smacking, it's about stopping people who beat their children senseless using the "I'm the parent, I can do what I want" defence in court?

That's right, it doesn't really matter how many times we say it, because papers like the Herald are never going admit Labour did something right.

Grrr!

I've been proofing all week at Groove (look out for an article tangentially about MC Stormtroopa), was planning to spend this week working on demos for a potential new band Marty and I gonna try and form, but money is good too. I had a job interview at TV3 on Monday and was told I'd most likely be called back for a second interview, so that'd be awesome.

Anyway, this potential new band needs a name. We're hoping to find something along the lines of a cool 1980s computer game, and have whittled it down to two. One is better, and probably would suit the idea we have more, but is quite well-known and no doubt taken a million times over already - Paradroid. The other is cool, and would make a good Pitchfork/late-2000s-indie band name, but that's not the kind of band we're gonna be, but it's cool regardless - Raid Over Moscow. Any suggestions? The songs I have in mind are a mix of some of what we used to play in SAM/Slow Learner/Vetox, and mroe recent ones, obviously. Start with three of us, keep it loose and simple, then develop from there. Starting a band is the hardest part, and I don't want to start dealing with extra guitarists and keyboardists and triangulators till we've proved to ourselves the band is worth pursuing. I've no idea how good a bassist Marty is, but he's an okay guitarist so yeah. Grunge-pop for the win.

I'm going to re-kickoff my Fighting Fantasy blog, Fighting Dantasy (get it? lol). I'll start with pretty much the same two posts I did back when I tried it the first time (April or May last year) then get stuck in further this time, honest! It's empty at the time of writing though. Will get on it tonight perhaps. I'll consider switching to Joomla (anyone used it?) or Wordpress or something later on, if it's worthwhile, will stay at budget ol' blogspot till then.

So how about that cricket the other day? 300 deliveries apiece, seven hours of cricket, and both NZ and England manage to score a massive 340 runs. Insane. By far the highest scoring draw in ODI history, and if NZ had managed to score two off the last ball, instead of one, it would've been the third highest run chase of all time, and meant they 4 of the top 5 chases, while they currently only have a meager 3 :p


Top Albums of the Last Fortnight!

1. The Replacements - Tim
2. Liam Finn - I'll Be Lightning
3. Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree
4. Hot Chip - Made in the Dark
5. Ryan Adams - Easy Tiger
6. Radiohead - In Rainbows

So, Camp A Low Hum... I'm not going to give a blow-by-blow, chronological account because (a) I'm bound to leave stuff out, and (b) it's hard to remember what happened on what day, seeing as there was very little sleep and very little to differentiate each objectively - they all involved mass numbers of bands, unexpected events, drinking, swimming, wandering randomly, meeting people, dancing, looking for food, etc etc. Instead here are some highlights, tales, warnings and random bits in no particular order...

We managed to play only the first show of our scheduled two, as John fell ill and was unable to stay. Kent drove him back up to Auckland, and unfortunately missed half of camp. We played okay, nothing spectacular but solid enough. Our lone new song went alright, much to our relief. It was odd playing 100% sober, to a 100% sober audience, at one in the afternoon sun, after driving half way across the island. We were really looking forward to the second show, instead I was there thanking those who turned up and apologising for not playing. Everyone was really cool though, a common thread throughout the whole four days.

The first night's "big" act was Liam Finn, who was brilliant. After the first few songs, I thought perhaps his trademark looping thing was a gimmick, as he'd only used it at the end of the songs proper... but from then in, it was all integrated masterfully. He'd have live loops coming in and out, the songs sounding as amazing as they would with a full band but seeming even cooler considering it was only him and a backing vocalist/tambourinist. Either that, or Kent's pot had started to kick in, haha.

I went for several swims over the camp's duration. One turned into an Htown/ex-Htowners vs the rest volleyball match, another was at some ungodly dark hour of morning when a friend Tu and I found some foam lightsabers and re-enacted pivotal scenes from the Star Wars series. Someone had the idea of shoudler-carrying battles, so I jumped on Tu and went up against a succession of challengers... losing to pretty much all of them. His volleyball skills didn't translate to Dan-carrying, and my volleyball skills (non-existent except when accidentally sconning Mo in the head) were unfortunately transferred whole.

One time I wasn't swimming, which I wish I had been, was when a pool rave broke out - that wasn't the part I regret missing, but soon enough Disasteradio came along and busted out a mean set right by the fence. It was only a five-minute walk to get my togs, so I must've been on the way somewhere else to pass that up.

It was cool hanging with Tonamu and Gareth again, I hadn't seen "Namu" in donkey's years.He hasn't changed a bit really, which was cool. They were camped out in a quiet area donkey's years away, which required a map to get to (for someone of my directional capabilities) so I didn't get over there much. They were hardly there either, to be honest.

Spent a lot of time hanging with Wellington Zak & Christy and their friend Frances; Heather was around a bit, but was often busy doing Boxwars/Foxcore stuff. Christy had some killer bruises and cuts from her birthday last weekend - she said she fell off a roof, I asked two questions: (a) was she drunk (yes), and (b) did she shout "I am a golden god!" beforehand (I can't remember her answer). Also hung out quite a bit with a tall guy called Neil, I think he might have been Wellington, I can't really recall. One night there were loads of people made up and dressed as zombies wandering around, so we decided to go Shaun of the Dead on them and get some cricket bats. Mine was missing, but I knew our neighbour had some - we got to their tent, and no one was there, but two bats were - a GM, and an iTomic. His first reaction was "grab the GM!" and I said no, the GM is probably worth a few hundred dollars, the iTomic - probably a few... dollars. So we took the iTomic, and hit the party were most of the zombies were - a '60s soul/beat party. I don't recall much else, but I woke up with the bat and a plastic AK47, which I think I found in the pool. I returned the bat, and some of the Htowners said they knew who owned the AK47, so I left it with them.

So So Modern were great - whatever they were playing wasn't anything I knew, don't think it was anything from their EP. MC Stormtroopa got up and did a song, Lord Vader... one of the musical highlights of my entire camp. After the first verse, Stormtroopa yelled something like "sing it with me" and I thought, yeah, like these couple of hundred people know the chorus... I quickly realised I was the only one, haha! Was awesome. Not forgetting, but being surrounded by a couple of hundred people singing, "Ye-ah, Lord VAY-der you are the greatest play-er..."

Boxwars kicked ass. I've never seen 30 people dressed in elaborate cardboard box defenses smack the crap out of each other to live dance-punk. Have you? There was even a Death Star and a Tie Fighter, but they stood no chance against samurai-dinobot guy and the giant-cock-monster complete with swinging balls and a BANG! flag that came out of it's phallus.

In the end it was won by a couple of girls who'd literally taped themselves together back to back - in recognition of just how dangerous that really was.

There was a boat in the jungle that everyone thought was out of bounds, as there was a sign next to it saying 'bands and crew only'. Seemed kind of weird to let bands on it, considering it was completely separate to any stage or performance area... wasn't till the last day when a rave spontaneously combusted on it (if not later) that I realised the sign was for the nearby stage, and no one was banned from the jungle boat. Luckily, cause I did find myself on it one night, with god knows who. Probably Neil.

The bus made twice-daily trips into Levin for people to stock up, and the one day I went was hilarious. The supermarket staff were obviously under-prepared for massive influxes of indie kids looking for cask wine and powerade, and not much else. The classic, stereotypical stoner which every music festival has to have even managed to leave his bag of pot on the counter at the liquor store, luckily for him the staff were kind enough to alert him.

I chatted to Liam Finn one day, who assured me the wrapping to his album I'll Be Lightning is indeed smokeable, as the paper - not as the active ingredient, so to speak. Some people have apparently tried stuffing the wrapper into their pipes and... you get the rest.

Some cool/dubious videos were playing in 'Cinema Aloha'. I caught about 45 minutes of the Star Wars Holiday Special, which has to be one of the worst pieces of TV I have ever seen, fullstop. To be honest, I only left to get another beer, then decided it was not worth going back to. Wiki it, seriously.

I did catch the first screening of Dark Side of the Rainbow, and was pleased to see Blink had got a pre-synched version with good sound. It doesn't work with PAL vs CD, you see...

Trans Am were great as always, even if by the 4th day so many of us were feeling over bands, over camp, over drinking, over not sleeping, and over wandering the darkness...

Shit, there's too much to talk about. Can't possibly relate it all. Tariqa's laminated map she made for me was a masterstroke though, the first two days of non-wornout map were awesome. After that, I kinda knew my way around, and when I got lost it was still cool cause I'd stumble across people playing music in random places and whatnot.

Who else was great? Connan and the Mockasins, despite people going on about their 'old' stuff bla bla bla... Batrider... Tiger Tones... Sam Scott/Liam Finn/Lawrence Arabia - oh yeah. On the first or second day, I stumbled across a band practise by a bunch of redneck looking dudes playing Wings songs. Turns out that was Lawrence Arabia and the Disciples of Macca - all Wings, all the time. Awesome. They even played Band on the Run and Jet.

Coming across random awesome stuff like that (and random not-awesome stuff like Operation Chloe) was pretty much what Camp was al ll about, especially considering we had no idea who was going to be there before we got there - except Trans Am.

There's way too much. I give up! Camp was crazy and awesome and if you didn't go this year you shouldn't go next year unless you know someone who went this year who isn't going next year cause then it'll get too big. Grrr, you made me sound all indie.

I'm bound to remember stuff I NEED to put in, so will do so as an edit beneath this point.

So you've heard of Yulia, right? The Hayley Westenra-like popera singer who moved here from Russia a few years back? Right. Well, today I proofed an article that's in the upcoming February issue of Real Groove about her recent antics, which intrigued me... check this out.



It's her on Good Morning, performing her new single Love Siege. I have only three words for it... W. T. F?! The best part is, in the article her manager/fiance claims it was deliberate and fully choreographed, inspired by Beyonce and Kylie videos. Err... I've seen plenty of Beyonce and Kylie videos, and I can't say I ever saw one that featured a guy standing on a practise guitar amp while a former popera singer wearing face paint fondled his knees and struggled to hit notes any Idol contestant would nail with ease.

The article I won't spoil further for you here, but it's well worth the magazine's cover price alone, trust me. Read this first though - the press release her manager put out earlier this month announcing their engagement is bizarre enough in itself, and a good primer for the full-on weirdness that is the Real Groove interview.

In other news... I'm reading The Tipping Point, which is quite interesting, and I'm enjoying it more than Gladwell's other well-known book, Blink. We've started writing new material in the band, the lack of a permanent practise space means it's taking a little longer to have ready than we'd have liked, but it'll be good to have some new material when they are ready, for Camp A Low Hum hopefully. Speaking of which, I was checking out the website for Camp yesterday, and holy crap. If there was something like that when I was 17, it'd have been the best four days of my life, haha! Could still be, but I'm less easy to impress and a little more grown up now (a little).

And on that note, I'm going to practise setting up my tent.

I'll try and do this without the benefit of pictures... the net's a bit slow today, and I've already spent hours resizing and uploading stuff for Facebook already - the pictures are here (it's a public album, you don't need to be a Facebook member to see them).

Anyway... we left Auckland on Sunday morning, John, tariqa, Jess and I. Telling the story of a 10-hour road trip can't be that exciting if you weren't there, so I'll leave it to the pics to explain, with a little extra emphasis on the fact we tailed a car with the number plate "DFVADR" for a while. We had a sharpie pen and some A4 paper on hand, so I scribbled out "MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU", Jess held it up to the windscreen, and we got some upturned thumbs. Sweet.

Anyway... the gig was awesome. Little Pictures opened the night and were pretty cool - guy and a girl, she sings, he sings and plays samples/keys with drumsticks on a pad not dissimilar to the one I once saw Peter Hook play in a New Order music video. Collapsing Cities and Connan & the Mockasins followed, so we had some pretty hard acts to follow. Blink got on stage during the Mockasins' set, big old analogue clock in hand, as they were nearly a minute ahead in counting down the new year, at least according to the clock Blink was carrying.

Anyway... luckily, at least from our point of view, we felt like we put on a good set. It had its mistakes, its setbacks - like Kent's guitar strings breaking twice, and eventually having to commandeer a Collapsing City guitar... me trying some half-hearted attempt at a stage dive that culminated with me stepping on a guy's crotch in my attempt to get back on stage, laughs all round... and an actual, real, fight in the moshpit. I was wearing my Nirvana shirt too, and the temptation was there to recreate that scene in Live! Tonight! Sold Out!, but without a bouncer it would've been kinda silly. John was on fire, it wasn't like we hadn't practised in over a week at all... really! During one of Kent's guitar string changes, I called for someone who could play the keys in Eb, meaning the key of Eb, but somehow we ended up with not someone who could play in Eb, but TWO guys who could play Eb... the note. I was laughing the whole time they were on stage, copying what they were playing, while the audience probably hated it. Christy and Heather, two of the stars of our last Wellington trip were on hand to invade the stage during Disco Peril, and yeah. At the end of it we were pretty thrilled with how it went, and Tommy Ill took the stage to close out the night.

Anwyay... I rate it in our top 3 gigs... competing with Vegas Girl and this awesome show we did at the Schooner which no one saw 'cause they were all at the Fancy New Bands gig at the Kings Arms which we'd just played at. I'm not sure if the Welly guerilla gigs count...

Anyway, on the way home we saw a sign reading, "Pony Poo: $1 A Bag", and that was pretty much the highlight of that entire day.

I'll write more later...

Recorded at the Dogs Bollix on Thursday - soon afterwards we went all 'The Who', pity we didn't get that on video too, but this is the song I wanted, so yeah. We played the next two nights with the Mint Chicks and Disasteradio which I'll wax on about in the next entry - I think we may even have footage of us playing Minitron with Disasteradio on keys - and we had a fucking awesome time all round.

And look, someone has made a 'KittyHawk is shit' myspace.

Wellington, 24 Nov, Glover Park. Guerilla, unannounced, powered by a petrol-fuelled generator and a few beers, pretty damn fun.

The other morning I got my hands on the new Nine Inch Nails remix album (I'm not going to try and remember its ridiculous official title), with all the multitrack files, and had a go at remixing Survivalism. And here it is (right click, save). It's a bit rough, for sure, I only spent just over an hour on it, the whole time grinning like a monkey. If I get some spare time in the near future, I might have a serious go at doing some more of the album. It's great working with well-recorded tracks and a vocalist who's on the money.

As of the start of next year, I'm going to be releasing one track a month from my re-recording of 2003's Panic. If I get bored with that album, I might switch to some of the better tracks from Countdown to Meltdown - give some of the better songs a proper go. All my new-song-writing powers are going into KittyHawk basslines at the moment, as few as they may be at the moment.

Day 10,000 (Friday)

Well, as I've posted already, tariqa and I found out Scully had been hit by a car on Wednesday. Not only was I going to be missing Muse, but I was now down one cute, friendly, huge cat. I lost my big fat ginger cat Denver in 2004, and Scully was meant to be something of a replacement, but it was not to be.

The day could only get better, really, and it did, even without the Muse concert. For the very first time, I flew on a commercial aeroplane; I say commercial, as a couple of years ago Rob took me up in a four seater Cessna a couple of times. The second time, Tariqa came with us, and didn't seem to appreciate Rob letting me take the controls over lake Rotorua. Hey, there were 2000 feet between us and anything we could hit! Safer than driving!

Anyway, Kent, John and I (Kittyhawk) were on our way to Wellington for our first gigs there, organised by the awesome Heather (Foxcore). Riding in a plane is weird. We were at the very front, and the view back was something I'd only ever seen in movies - movies about plane crashes, hijackings and venomous snakes. I was looking forward to seeing the country from the skies, but it was extremely cloudy - so I thought, cool, I get to see what it looks like above the clouds. It was more clouds. Okay, I'll see what's above the next layer of clouds. More clouds. Eventually, after passing through FOUR layers of clouds, we had nothing but blue sky above us - and nothing but grey and white clouds beneath us. I couldn't see ANY land or sea at all till we descended before landing. That was odd enough, because as we came in to land, we couldn't see the airport at all... it was as if we were going to be landing on rocks, which was all that was visible from where we were.

So we landed, got everything and took a shuttle (a van with a trailer, not a space shuttle - I'll have to wait till my 100,000the day for that probably) to the venue, the Bodega. Got there just after 9, and it was empty. Hmmm. It remained empty till after 10.30, which caused a few jitters, but Heather assured us no one in Wellington went out till late, and she was right. It eventually packed out, and she said she hadn't seen that many people up and dancing there in a year or so. Tommy Ill went on first, and was quite a surprise - real good, and even being a rapper he still fit in with what we thought people who like us might get into. Heat Like Me went on next, and filled the stage with four or five analogue keyboards and a million leads.

We went on about 1am or so, and it was good. We played well. Before we even started, a bunch of girls were reaching up screaming, trying to touch the guitars - we were thinking, WTF? They left after a couple of songs, thank god :p Bret McKenzie of Flight of the Conchords was there, as was A Low Hum's Blink. We got rid of over 50 CDs, which as awesome.

Eventualy we got back to Heather's and crashed out, not having any idea of what the next night would bring...

Day 10,001 (Saturday)

After breakfast and music store browsing on Cuba St, we planned our next moves... we'd got wind of a massive party apparently happening at this massive house in Mt Victoria, the only thing we lacked was the address. But more importantly, Kent's girlfriend had seeded the idea of crashing it with a gig within us, so we spent the afternoon trying to make it a feasible reality.

We detoured for some light recreation in a park, fucking about on some flying foxes, getting some random footage. By this time Heather's friend Kristy had joined us, providing an extra pair of hands in our mission. I managed to fall off one of them swivelling hold-on-for-your-life rides while being taped... none of us managed to fall off the flying foxes, despite some screams and dodgy two-at-a-time manoeuvres.

In the early evening, the weather threatened our outdoor plans, but a combination of approaching clear sky and some balls saw us getting together the necessary gear (a look that said, "you want a generator for what?" pretty much sums it up) and taking to the streets.

Our first port of call was Glover Park in the central city. When we arrived, a bunch of punk tween bands were just finishing up a concert in one of the local venues. We would've started right away, but realised we hadn't a proper mic/vocal set up, so were delayed a little. A couple of the kids in the last band, who'd closed with Green Day, asked us what kind of music we played. We told them disco-punk. Another came along and asked us what kind of music we played, and the first told his friend, "some kind of funk-rock". D'oh!

Anyway, their parents had dragged them all away by the time the vocal gear arrived, by which time we had a potential audience of one friend of Heather's who'd heard about the gig on MySpace in the last hour, two random passer-by bros, and a passed-out drunk. The PA didn't work, so we got the vocals working through the bass amp, and waited for the police to leave. They spent about half an hour dealing with the passed out drunk, but seemed to ignore the fact a band had set up outdoors, on the grass, with a smoking generator. Yes, it was a smoke machine and power supply in one - no problem, just dirty fuel or something.

Eventually the cops left, and we began. Within a single song (Land of Lemon), we had a crowd of 20 or so, soon upped to over 30. It was fucking fun too - the sheer volume of it meant even a few metres in front of us the drums struggled to fight through, and everyone was really enthusiastic. We kept the set short, six songs or so, and didn't get shut down - that's Wellington for you,  I suppose!

BUT... we forgot the bloody CDs! So told everyone the website, etc etc so they could get in touch... but the best part perhaps was that abotu half an hour after we finished, I looked around and realised all our gear had been packed back into the trailer, and I'd barely done anything. A crew had somehow formed, and many of them hung around long enough to get a CD once they'd arrived, and even came along with us to the main event....

The Mt Victoria party.  We got the address, and headed out. We parked around the corner, and some went in to check it out. They came back not sure it was a good idea... apparently the party was quite flash - hundreds of people, a MASSIVE two-storey mansion, everyone dressed up to the proverbial nines... perhaps we'd just be ruining their night, rather than enhancing it. A straw poll of people walking past suggested that perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad idea... regardless, we decided as a band (and a randomly assembled crew) to just do it.

So we cruised down, found a spot outside, set up... no one complained... and we started playing. Opening with Land Of Lemon, following with Allergic to Style... and perhaps a hundred or so people on the front lawn had turned from facing each other to us, dancing like maniacs.

At this point, one of the tenants got wind of what was happening, and accosted Kent, apparently saying something along the lines of, "this is great and everything, but ah, who the fuck are you?" Kent apparently replied, with typical casualness, "We're the band."

She told us she was afraid of the noise issue - not that having four hundred or so people partying was an issue already - and that we could play one more song. A reasonable request, so we played two, of course, Disco Peril and Minitron. And this time, we had CDs on hand! Woot. Best of all, we didn't actually get kicked out. As soon as the gear was on its way, Kent, Kristy and I went on partying. Probably more, I can't remember. There was a Bowie room, and some girl asked if I was dressed as a comic book nerd. Everyone else was dressed up as something, but obviously she'd missed the short, but loud and hopefully memorable performance we'd put on.

On the way home, at some ungodly hour, Kristy took us via the Basin Reserve, where I picked up a loose picket. It's what you do at that hour, right? Luckily it fit into my bass case, as it's perhaps not the most innocuous item anyone's ever tried to get on a plane.

Day 10,002 (Sunday)

We ate bad-for-us servo food, as we were in a rush to return the gear, trailer and generator before our flight. Luckily, we had the best crew ever on hand. Wellington people are awesome. Foxcore Heather and her bf Zack were the best hosts we could have hoped for.

So the flight home was amusing for two reasons: one, we were on the other side of the plane, so although it was fine, I still didn't get to look at NZ, and two, my old friend from the State Insurance call centre, Lauren, is now an air stewardess. Tariqa picked us up, and we piled all our gear into the tiny Fiesta, and came home.

Shit, I think that's my whole weekend. I hope so. This entry has taken ages to write.

This is the weirdest thing that's happened to me (without anything really happening to me) in ages.

I had to write one more CityBeat blog entry for my class, so thought I'd might as well go out with a bang... but how weird is that? What were the chances?! Grrr. A rapist? Why, of all things, a rapist?!

I've just written 1300-odd words on an 'ethical dilemma' I had during my course - so I chose the "should I or shouldn't I write about him" situation I had back in April. Nothing else came to mind really - execpt perhaps being told to spam forums for Yahoo!Xtra while on my internship, but I doubt I could've got 1300-odd words out of that without killing someone.


Slow internet sucks. Nothing works.

But in happy happy joy joy news, it's tariqa's birthday tomorrow! I hope you all got her nice presents. And KittyHawk will soon be back up and running, as soon as we can all find a simultaneous gap in our schedules. I wonder how the Polyphonic Spree organise band practises.

Benji Jackson, host of Fleet FM's Bored Housewife Radio show (it even has its own Wikipedia page) has made an entry on his blog raving about how awesome Kittyhawk is.

If you want to find out for yourself, we're playing second at the Ausm Battle of the Bands final tonight (at Vesbar on the city campus), but have a $200 bar tab of beer to give away, which we will be doing so from 8pm. We haven't the time to drink it all ourselves... and don't want to try, cause there's a couple of days recording time for the winners, which we plan to be.


Cool. There's meant to be a review of Scud Of Freedom in today's Waikato Times, will be checking it out later hopefully.

EDIT: And here it is. Awesome!