The idiot who almost blinded me at the KittyHawk gig earlier this year gave in and pleaded guilty, but to a lesser charge of common assault, as opposed to with a weapon. The cops didn't tell me this, so I was standing around the Auckland District Court twiddling my thumbs for an hour nearly before I got someone to look into it for me.

But it doesn't sound like he'll get diversion - maybe - but it'll probably be attend an anger management course and get convicted without a sentence.

Now here's a video of Noel Gallagher getting attacked on stage last night, from behind, and Liam getting in a punch before security dragged him away. I bet you this guy won't be getting off lightly (happens around the 1.30 mark).

Way back in 2005, the night before I left the city in fact, Hamilton hosted its very own first annual 'Circle Jerk' - Hamilton bands playing covers of other Hamilton bands.

I arrived too late to witness it, but the Clerics did Sleepless, and now, three years later thanks to the magic of the interwebs, I can bring it to you!

I punched 'luna spark' into Last.fm's similar-music player thingee for a laugh (it's like a musician's version of googling yourself), and it played a track by Disasteradio, followed by the Straitjacket Fits. Sweet.


TOP TEN ALBUMS OF THE LAST FORTNIGHT!

1. Weezer - The Red Album
2. Portishead- Third
3. Wings - Band on the Run
4. REM - Accelerate
5. Andrew WK - I Get Wet
6. Coldplay - Parachutes
7. Supergrass - Diamond Hoo-Ha
8. U2 - Zooropa
9. U2 - Achtung Baby
10. MGMT - Oracular Spectacular

I've totally pillaged this link in a fascist fashion from a mate's Facebook... but how awesome would this be?! Mid '90s me, meet mid '00s me. Now, get along, get drunk and be careful at whom you request Wonderwall. If this is Paul's idea of a pre-April Fools' Day joke, fuck him.

I won't go into too much detail about our Wellington trip this weekend, but I will show you this, spotted on the luggage conveyer belt this morning, all on its lonesome, and it made me laugh...



Okay, anything would've made me laugh at 9am after getting up at 6.15am for an 8am flight back to Auckland, but this I thought was pretty deep, and in a way, kind of melancholic. I don't know. I'd had about two-and-a-half hours' sleep. It seemed poignant. And fucking funny.

Anyway, saw loads of bands, my favourites of the night both played early on - Alex the Kid and Thought Creature. Good stuff. Moron Says What? were good in that chaotic kind of way, I'd have no idea how to write/not-write-but-make-it-up-on-the-spot or whatever it is they're doing that kind of stuff, it's not really my thing, but hellishly energetic and fun to watch at the time, you can't help but get into it. Wouldn't want to subject myself to it at home though, ha.

We played an all-ages show the night before, and oddly enough, it was impossibly to not have a beer. I asked some kid who can't have been more than 14 where I could get a drink, meaning a glass of water, as I'd been at work all day, and he leaned over and whispered, "You want some alcohol?" A few minutes later, I went to the backstage area to check on my gear, and was given a can of Ranfurly by one of the DHDFDs. There are some bars which not only refuse to give you a beer for playing, but won't even knock a dollar off the price of one as a token gesture, but at an "alcohol-free" all-ages gig, beer was flowing almost literally on tap. I should have guessed earlier on; Freyburg Square was full of mid-teens, five-to-a-Chardon, in some kind of glorious fuck-you to the man, or something.

I've got my TV3 contract, so I suppose I'd better call an official end to my illustrious end to my retail career, again, hopefully for the last time. About time too - gotta move house and all, bla bla bla.

Tariqa is away on a course till Tuesday, was good to get back in Aucks just in time to see her off (I still find it weird that I can be fast asleep in Wellington at 6am, and in Auckland waiting for the 224 bus to Mt Albert at 9am). I thought I'd record four or five acoustic songs today/tomorrow and put them out as a luna spark release right away over the net, but I didn't have the house to myself tonight, and the soundcard on this computer stopped playing anything out of one of the channels. I worked out there's no tamper seal or anything, so installed my old soundcard I bought for the last computer (when the same thing happened) and it worked fine, thank god. I still have yet to work out why Audition won't play files in single-wave file-view mode, but it'll do for now.

Anyway, I recorded a backing track for a cover version which I won't tell you what it is yet in case it turns out shit, and a basic guitar track for an original, based on a forgotten demo I found on the mixer as I was going through it looking for things to delete last week.

I'm listening to H.A.A.R.P on headphones, the DVD version - through the TV - and it sounds awesome. I think perhaps even more so than the CD.

I know I've been tardy with my own opinion, but I'm angry with all the idiots on the Herald's website complaining the Pumpkins played a few less well-known songs and their well-known material different to how they were recorded - you know, by a different band, over ten years ago. Tards.

On the night I was particularly annoyed by the guy behind me shouting, "Just play some rock!" during a particularly well-done moody controlled-feedback section in United States. I think a few people forgot they came from the 'alternative' rock era, and aren't exactly Nickelback. A highlight for me was a completely re-worked Ava Adore that kicked the album version's ass, and a piano/vocal My Blue Heaven - a Mellon Collie-era b-side, of all things! I was pleased they mixed up the set too - Mellon Collie featured heavily (Porcelina!), there was a bit of Siamese Dream, a bit of Machina, a bit of Adore - plus Cash Car Star from Machina II. I think some people there were just expecting a setlist that ran Today - Zero - Cherub Rock - Bullet - 1979 - Tonight, Tonight - Ava Adore - Everlasting Gaze - Stand Inside Your Love - and done. Well, they played Today - and let the crowd sing it. They didn't play Cherub, nor Zero, played Everlasting (which was ruined by the shit Vector sound, as was Tonight) and Stand Inside Your Love (came off pretty well). Every few songs Corgan pulled out the acoustic, and did a nice 1979 and Perfect this way. But I think the absolute highlight had to be My Blue Heaven. It was just so unexpected, so left-field, and must've pissed off the idiots behind us so much. And it also highlighted another surprise - Corgan can definitely sing live. Watching/listening to old Pumpkins footage was difficult at best, as no matter how well they played, his vocals were always hit and miss. He barely missed a note on Saturday though, and alongside the drums, his singing was occasionally the only clue we had as to what exactly was going on, the Vector's sound was so bad. He was spot on all night, which made the acoustic/piano stuff such a joy to hear.

But why build a venue specifically to attract medium-big acts, and make it sound like a canyon? It wouldn't cost that much to line the walls with egg cartons, would it? Or turn down the sound a little, perhaps, and let a little definition through?

But as the biggest gig I've probably been to outside of the BDO, I have to say unless the Vector people fix the sound, I think I'll be sticking to smaller venues. At least I'd like to - but the way things are going, it's only going to be more and more difficult to see good bands in small enough venues for a decent price. tariqa's complained about annoying people at the latest Muse concert (which had a capacity 2-3 times what their previous headlining gig here did), and I still have fond memories of the amazing sound quality at the relatively intimate Placebo gig at the Town Hall a few years back. And the Ryan Adams gig last year... was awesome. God forbid he be forced to play the Vector on future visits.

And I hope, in some horrible-for-them way, the next time the Pumpkins come here we're supporting them at the Whammy Bar! Haha. Aeroplane Flies High would be awesome in a small, underground bar.

On Saturday night we had a gig at the Whammy Bar, and Kent and I were both prior feeling a bit burned out and not really looking forward to having to play, but showed up as we do, and yeah. Crowd was slow to build up, but ended up being not so bad really. We had loads of technical difficulties, mostly based around my good lead, which is now my broken lead... but we salvaged the first few songs with a killer Realistic Computers, the new song, and ended up getting everyone going and blah blah blah as I said before already.

Sooooo... had a good night, exchanged funny school stories with Tom from the bar, had a smoke with the Randoms guys and hung out with Rachel and others. Eventually it was time to pack up and head home. I'd taken one load of stuff on the carrying-trolley-thing, and was back for a second when I saw a guy I'd seen at gigs of ours before leaning up against the drum monitor. It was balanced on a wobbly table or boxes or something, and he was nearly knocking it over. I let him know, he was so absolutely drunk he didn't seem to care. I held the speaker up and tried to talk him off it - instead, he leaned against it harder, and put his arm around me. Still laughing at how odd it felt to be holding up a guy when I wasn't exactly 100% sober myself, I called to Kent to help me get him away from the monitor. The guy started jokingly coming on to me (at least I assume it was a joke - he's never seemed gay before, and Kent said later on he'd been acting a bit funny all night), and I tried again to get Kent's help, beginning to doubt he was joking.

Just then, he moved off both the amp and I, and made it all out to be a bit of fun. I laughed, suggesting I'd been pretty well "punked" or something, but reiterating that we were trying to clear the stage, so if he could get out of the way, that'd be awesome. He didn't want to, and Kent and one or two others put their feet down so to speak, and encouraged him to get off the stage. They herded him off, which was only two metres or so away, and I began looking around for more stuff of ours we needed to take.

Then just as I turned and saw Kent with his back towards me, standing in front of the guy, I was hit square in the left eye by a bottle. I fell (it's a weird feeling - I didn't fall because the impact physically knocked me over, but my body just kinda wanted to go that way - like it was more of an involuntary ducking) behind the drumkit, and grabbed my eye. After a few seconds I realised I wasn't knocked out or anything, and stood up, still holding my eye. Kent and one or two others had knocked the guy to the ground, and he was protesting, not happy about being forced to the ground. I walked out, and in frustration kicked him in the side of his hip, not very hard I don't think. It's kind of lame to kick someone when two or three other people are sitting on them I suppose, but I still wasn't sure what exactly was going on.

I heard someone shout, "Why hasn't anyone called the cops?" so called them myself. I went up the stairs to ensure better reception. One of the bar staff came over and asked me to take my hand off my eye, so they could see how bad it was - I did, slowly opened my eye, and was glad I could still see. Unfortunately, the first thing I saw was my left hand covered in blood, haha. He went to get a first aid kit.

It's a bit of a blur after that. One of the bar guys cleaned up my eye, the cops eventually arrived and took a statement. The cop gave me the statement to read and sign, but there were so many errors I wanted to make some changes. The cop got shitty with me, and said things like, "just fucking sign it," and other things like how he didn't really care and that I was being difficult (I can't remember his exact wording, but it was riddled with the f-bomb and upset me considerably, seeing as I'd just been clocked at short range with a glass bottle and was now being interrogated as if I'd deserved it).  The Whammy Bar guys were awesome, and joked they didn't mind hanging around as they were all on the clock and probably getting paid overtime. Okay, the overtime was my call, but I'm not their boss.

The ambulance never eventuated, so Kent shuttled me to the hospital in Grafton. To cut a long story short, anyone who wants a tax cut this election is a fucking retard, as this place was so ridiculously understaffed it makes me feel bad for complaining about where I work. That, and the receptionist was a total fucking grade-A biatch. As I said previously, she told me to use a public phone when I asked if I could have a working pen to fill out my ACC form, and refused to speak to tariqa fullstop. That's what pissed me off most, perhaps. Tariqa got out of bed as soon as it was legal for her to drive and came in to be with me, whod' just been attacked with a glass bottle (to put it dramatically), and they refused to speak to her because she wasn't the patient. Fuck that biatch, fuck her with the broken bottle that hit me in the face (at least I hope it broke - I'd hate to lose a fight with a inanimate object, even if it got the first punch).

The lady who replaced her at 6.30am or so was awesome though.

Anyway, got a tetanus shot, came home, and yeah. No stitches, but I'm not entirely convinced that was because I didn't need any - perhaps the nurse was as incompetent as the police and reception staff - though it seems like it might heal fine. The shoulder where the tetanus shot went in hurts more at the moment, to be honest!

And that's pretty much the whole story. I figure I'll need to come up with something more awesome to tell my kids though - if it scars. Any suggestions?

TOP 5 ALBUMS OF THE WEEK!

1. Sia - Some People Have Real Problems
2. Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree
3. Jeff Buckley - Grace
4. V/A - Saturday Morning Cartoons
5. Nick Cave - Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!

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."

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

I'm pretty sure this was the second night, the last Mint Chicks show before they left. It's Disco Peril, in case it's too fast for you to tell. Big Stick is apparently on hi-rotate on Kiwi FM. Sweet!

Both pics courtesy of petrajane. First, here's Kent and I onstage - him looking all insane and awesome, me rocking out and fat...



Then myself (far left, believe it or not), my future bandmates Jed and Amy, and future Clinton-founder Emma out the back of an Eye-TV gig in early 1999. I can't believe how skinny I was - all I ate was pasta and ice cream, and look at me! Fuck!

 

I can't believe that's how skinny I used to be. Shiat. To get there again, or even close, I'd have to lose a quarter of my current weight. Is that even possible?

WEEKLY TOP FIVE!

1. I'll Be Lightning - Liam Finn
2. The Half Light Symphony - Battle Circus
3. Disasteradio - Visions
4. Radiohead - In Rainbows
5. Hot Chip - Made in the Dark

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.

I got Pumpkins/QOTSA tickets!!! And already there are scalpers on trademe - scumbucketfuckfaces.

I will be writing about Camp either later today or tomorrow night.

YUSSS!!!!

And Duran Duran, though I've seen them before.

Shot live at the Yellow Sub, Hamilton, in November. Only a few days left till camp...

Trans Am are playing at Camp A Low Hum, as well as a gig at the Kings Arms. This is so much awesome. It'll bring my number of Trans Am gigs up to five, unless they play twice at Camp, in which case, six. One of the best live bands you'll ever see in a venue smaller than whatever can hold Muse.

And I've decided to buy a new desktop. It just hit me this desktop is four years old now, and no longer the awesome computing device I thought it was when I got it. Time to get a duo core processor, RAM measured in the gigabytes, and a flat screen monitor. In other words, join the rest of you in the 21st Century.

Disco Peril is sitting at #8 on the Kiwi FM top ten. Sweet! Now if only we had a practise room so we can capitalise on this at Camp A Low Hum...

EDIT: I'm watching the first episode back of The Daily Show, without the writers supposedly - and it's as funny as ever!

The past couple of days I've been working on backing tracks for a potential live-luna-spark thing - I'm thinking with prerecorded drum machine and synths, with live lead keys/synth/acoustic guitar. I've always thought it'd be naff going on stage with almost everything pre-recorded - in the few times I've played luna spark live with Rob, I tried to keep the pre-recorded stuff to a minimum, usually just having the drums and playing bass and guitar live. If I'm going to do it by myself, that's not possible, so yeah. But I've seen a few people recently who had loads of pre-recorded or pre-programmed stuff, and if the music's there, it's not all that bad - Disasteradio in particular only plays the lead lines live, most of everything else is just prerecorded - not even sequenced, haha. At least that's what I've been led to believe.

So if it's good enough for him, it's good enough for anyone without a whole band at their whim to play these songs (which don't really suit KittyHawk, at least at this stage). Trying to keep it simple.is difficult though! I'm so used to recording that I'm always inclined to make the tracks as fleshed out and varied as possible... My initial idea was simple drum machine, basic bassline, then with added live keys - instead after three tracks, I've got complex structures, armadas (armadae?) of programmed drums, basslines I could never hope to play live manually, and overall they sound almost ready for vocals and mastering! Ah well...

Who knows if I'll ever get to bring it live anyway - if not, I suppose I'm in the midst of recording a new album, made up of songs I've already done and new, synth-poppy stuff. In addition to Still Panic.

I've made a bunch of 'Special Edition; Scud Of Freedom CDs, which include mp3s of the past albums and some 'exclusive' demos, email/comment if you want one. Probably will give them out at Camp.

This blog entry wasn't meant to be this boring, honest!


TOP 5 ALBUMS OF THE WEEK! First of the year.

1. Patrick Watson - Close to Paradise
2. Radiohead - In Rainbows
3. R.E.M - Around the Sun
4. Smashing Pumpkins - Machina II
5. Dave Gahan - Hourglass

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.

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.

I'm watching Nirvana's Live! Tonight! Sold Out! It is awesome. I'm resisting watching Unplugged (the first album I ever bought) as I'm crossing my fingers to get it fro Christmas.

Anyway... if you're going to Camp A Low Hum in February, KittyHawk will see you there! Woot. And we'll also see you perhaps at the Mint Chicks' last show before they head to Portland, because we've elbowed our way onto the bill somehow...

Very busy at work today - the Xmas rush finally began, and in style. I even managed to fuck off one of our problem 'customers', which considering how persistent and unrelenting he is, is quite an achievement. He came in the middle of a huge rush of actual customers, those people who actually buy stuff, and did his usual "do I have anything on hold?" routine. We didn't have time for it today (dealing with this guy, who's been banned before, and is currently persona non grata at other retail stores in the CBD, can take a long time and a lot of patience), so I told him as such. He persisted, as I tried to deal with the queue of people... so I told him he should know himself whatever it is he has on hold, and he'd have to wait till we were done with the queue of people buying stuff. He got pissed off and began badmouthing us to others in the store, so I stopped what I was doing, told him to shut up and get out because we didn't have time for his shit today. He did his 'offended' routine (I've seen it enough times to call it a routine) and said he'd tell my manager. I told him to make sure he does, he left, and the next customer had a "I don't know whether to laugh or pretend I didn't see anything at all" look on his face... I said to the customer,  "It's okay. Every time I swear at that guy my boss gives me a high five." I think the guy had worked in retail before, as I could tell his laugh was one of recognition.

Two and a half years I've been dealing with this fuck, and I've only sworn at him twice. Considering my usual tolerance for idiots and the relaxed, permissive (and sometimes encouraging) nature of my manager, I think I've done pretty well not to do it more often. Maybe working in those call centres was good for something after all :)

Earlier in the day one of our "can I listen to 2pac?" guys came in, but luckily was out in a jiffy. As a preventative tool, I made a "No, You Can't Listen To 2Pac" sign, complete with a pic of a wigga, and put it on the wall.


Top 5 of the last fortnight!
1. LCD Soundsystem - 45:33
2. The Checks - Hunting Whales
3. Patrick Watson - Close to Paradise
4. Phoenix Foundation - Happy Ending
5. Duran Duran - Red Carpet Massacre

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