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.

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 Planet of the Apes Mid-Winter Movie Marathon (yes, it deserves capitals).

And lastly, my latest entry on Eight Track Mind is about NZ Music Month.

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.

I just bought a freakin’ cross trainer. Lol, wut?

Yeah, I know.

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.

I’ve been in Avondale a week now (the ‘South Auckland of West Auckland’, as my old boss put it), so feel like I should say something about the new place/neighbourhood.

Firstly, there are only four types of shop in Avondale - fruiterers and greengrocers, Chinese-made crap stores, fast food outlets and pawnbrokers/loan sharks.

Secondly, the buses are fast. It’s like Avondale is the located at the extreme end of a pulled-back rubber band about to be let go. It took 15 minutes to get to work today from pick-up to drop-off - that’s how long it takes to drive! Seriously.

Thirdly, there’s a big fuck-off spider ’statue’ which all the local drunks and freaks hang out beneath. It’s so awesome, I think if I’m still here in a couple of albums’ time, I’m going to have to do one called ‘Arachnid-Upon-Avon’.

Fourthly, building code regulations stipulate bedrooms must have a natural light source, so there’s a massive skylight in the middle of both bedrooms. This is great at 6pm, not so much at 6am.

Fifthly, and I’ll make it lastly for now, one of the neighbours has an unsecured wireless internet connection. The upshot of this is not needing to pay for the big-ass bandwidth cap anymore.

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.

Is it wrong that I'm excited about this band?



Yes, that's Bun E Carlos from Cheap Trick, James Iha from Smashing Pumpkins, Taylor Hanson from err, Hanson, and Adam with the unspellable last name from Fountains of Wayne.

And yes, it's a real band. 

Can I get a WTF from everyone?

I'm not sure if we're even playing Scrabulous Lexulous anymore...

Parker's scans this morning I'm told came out fine. Wooo. 

This was my first experiment in using the MIDI Songsmith produced and running it through other, non-Songsmith MIDI instruments. It sounds like Dragonforce raping Blondie.




This is the Killers, yep.

Too much fun. I'm getting shiatloads of views on Youtube too - there are others I've made (some with videos, some without due to copyright/syncing problems) here.

Queen - We Will Rock You, salsa style.



Muse - Supermassive Black Hole, big band style.



Metallica - Ride the Lightning, electro style (couldn't do a video for this one, as I had to mess around with the vocals just to get them in time with the music. Songsmith gave up composing halfway through and just stayed on D and G for three minutes, so I had to quite a bit of post editing on it too).

I call it 'The Ballad of El Scorcho'. I had to slightly speed up and slow parts of the backing track to keep it in time - I couldn't touch the vocals (apart from the frantic middle section that just didn't fit) or they'd go out with the video. I think I've done it pretty seamlessly though!

This next one was my first attempt. Enjoy...or something,
And one last one - Muse. I've had a very productive day!

If you only click one random link this year, make it this one. Then go to Youtube and find more. I'm in tears. This is a new era in music.

 Saturday: Woke up not feeling too bad compared to Friday morning, maybe because I actually managed to get three or four hours' sleep in! After the initial dose of painkillers, I'm quickly feeling not so bad - compared to the last few days. I'm still not looking forward to the inevitable uncomfortable and possibly painful night, but this is a good sign. 

If I'm turning the corner, it's definitely no hairpin, but welcome nonetheless.

In other news, someone posted me an empty envelope that had not even been sealed. WTF?

I'm about 2/3 of the way through Lost season 3. If you're a fan, I highly recommend Lostpedia. It's so geeky, even Tom's fake beard gets a page, and there's an indepth analysis of how often Hurley says 'dude'.

Here's your present - the top odd news stories of the year on 3news.co.nz, as chosen by yours truly... 

 I'm cleaning up my computer (reorganising shit, finding out what I've actually accrued over the years, it's just like real tidying) and I came across this: an email sent to TVNZ by an inebriated James and I, back in early 2003. Having the internet on at home was still a novelty, and we were trashed.

----------------------------

Hi there

PLEEEEEEEAAAAASEEEEEEEEEEE

repeat the Young Ones!!!!! It's been something ridiculous like 3 years now since they last played on TV. that was a looooooong time ago. we believe the public is now willing and ready for a complete (both) series repeat of what is perhaps the third greatest comedy of all time (behind MONTY PYTHON and BACK OF THE Y of course :p ).

When I (dan duran) was in my early teens, watching the Young Ones was my only source of information on what it was to be a student in a flatting situation. Now, some might say that it was over the top and not meant to be realistic, but they would be wrong - i've lived in flats that we're the real-life equivalents of rik, mike, neil and vyvian's existence.

if the show cannot be shown for copyright and contractual reasons, PLEEEEAAAAAAAASEEEEE use the money that ISNT being spent on M2 to buy the rights for it - see if you can get a discount by claiming it is a Public Information Service. I learnt a lot from the exploits of the Young Ones crew, and would love to have a recap.

But seriously, there are 15 year olds out there who have never heard of Rik Mayall and Nigel Planer, who watch TV at random nighttime times who may come across this show and go "Woah!!!! what the f--k is this??!?!?!?" just like i did in my early teens and was forever hooked....

SO, in conclusion, PLEEEEEAAASSEEEEE return the Young Ones to our screens. Even if it is at 12.30AM on a tuesday night....

PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

------------

dan duran & Kerr Avon - Co-Presidents of the People's Organisation for the Liberation of the Young Ones (television show.

(the POLYO-TV)

P.s. we have beed drinking Lindauer wine and Moskva Vodka. I hope this does not devalue the quality of our argument.

I'm tidying the house, and I just came across a wireless mouse I didn't even know we had. But what makes it entry-worthy is that not only is the reciever connected via PS/2, but the installation files come on an ancient 3.5" disk, meaning I can't even install it on my computer.

Weird. I assume this is something Tariqa brought home from work.

Well, not so much bad as automated... ( under the cut for those who may be at a less liberal workplace than mine )

For those who don't want to click, well it's not often you see live boobs and diagrams of weeners so close in the news.

I know I haven't posted much recently, I've been busy doing other things.

My friends page is showing posts only from the dilbert_blog, and nothing else. WTF?! Why does the internet hate me so much?

First off, in order to win the war on pollution its waging before the Olympics, Beijing has declared war on the sky. Yes, in order to clear the thick smog that blankets the city, they are going to make it rain by firing chemically-coated artillery shells into the clouds. This ticks so many 'evil genius/axis of evil' boxes - chemical weapons, weather control, misguided science to name but a few.

Viceland.com sent me a message asking if they could link to and do an entry on Ice McGunface, and I told them no. Firstly, Vice, the magazine sucks. I hate Vice. Secondly, I'd imagine their website to be only worse, and there's no telling what crap people might post. Besides, since when did blogs ask people for permission to link to stuff?

Last weekend we had the Star Wars ultramarathon - it's kind of shameful it's taken this long for me write about it! Rob, Jennah and Simon came over during the early parts of The Phantom Menace, which showed commitment, and yeah. Even Tariqa passed on heading out into what was the coldest day of the year and made it to the end! We passed on watching Family Guy's Blue Harvest immediately afterward though, haha.

My sleeping has gotten better, I think the virus I had at the time must've been a lot harsher than I thought - I didn't even know I had one till the doctor said, and now it's gone I'm not so tired yet awake. I'm getting by on six or seven hours a night, which isn't bad.

I had so much I was going to write about, and now I can't remember any of it. If my phone had a camera I could show you the smashed up bus stop on the way to work which used to have a life-size portrait of Ali Williams on it, and now doesn't, but it doesn't have a camera.

Tariqa's written about the neighbours' big fight with the smashed windows and all that last week, but she made it friends only so I suppose I'll have to say something! They were having a domestic long after I'd meant to have gone to sleep. I heard some pretty heavy banging, so called the police - then while I'm on the phone to the operator, there are three loud smashes, none of which sound like bottles.

Come to think of it, sounds of smashing bottles might've signalled even worse trouble to come!

But anyway, I fell asleep once they quietened down (except the baby, which cried long and hard), which must've been when the cops arrived. Today the windows were suddenly all fixed, large boxes on the lawn their kids ended up playing in (before relocating to our lawn, hence my previous post!). I doubt they called the landlord - I was considering doing that myself to be honest, but never got to it. It seems loud guy (who I'm sure I've complained about before) has moved out now though, so maybe things will be fine from here on in.

Damn, it seems Ice McGunface has raped the battery on this laptop. I've been here half of Viva La Vida and it's already down to 50%.

I'm sure I'll remember everything I was going to write about once the battery hits 5% and the computer shuts itself down...

I finished a new little batch of songs this morning, go here to check them out. It's called Steady State EP. It's not really a big-deal release for me like Scud Of Freedom was, so I'll leave it at that...

Found a couple more compilations with Queen on them at work, and sure enough, they both had Queen as the first track. Hmmm.

I heard from a friend recently that if a compilation album includes a track by Queen, said Queen track will always be the first song. I had a look at a few compilations at work, and sure enough, every single one I could find with a Queen song (there were about five) had it as the very first track.

Is this a part of their deal with EMI or something? Does anyone know? Or is it one of those weird, cosmic coincidences? Can you find a compilation with a Queen song in the second, third, etc position?

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.