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Thursday, August 16th, 2007
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1:45 pm - RADIOTHON - THEY KNOW IT'S ANNOYING
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Hey bros, if you want to subscribe to RTR during Radiothon and you haven't already subscribed during Laura Miller's program(s) Golby and I would really love it if you subscribed during our program. You do win prizes and you do help us not look like utter failures to the rest of the stations (which believe me is how they look at you) but it is also a good deed. The benefits of RTR are pretty pervasive in terms of boons to not only local music and news but also to companies that need cheap advertising and people seeking experience in broadcasting, production, sound, DJing and journalism. I'm not going to say that you will benefit from it but you ought to feel good about sacrificing $35 for it. Heck, you don't even have to pay up, just say you will, Golby and I get the same benefit regardless.
Anyway, onto less boring news, I was not aware of how smokin' M.I.A. is! Check it:
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, July 29th, 2007
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3:27 pm
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My criterion for my bedroom being clean is not having to step over anything on my way from the door to my computer and/or bed. Currently I am not satisfying that criterion.
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(8 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, May 14th, 2007
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9:58 am
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Aye, me mateys. This Saturday me and Katie are launching our book, the Love is My Velocity Cookbook thing, at the Bakery. I would say with confidence that this is the most important and proud night of our writing lives and we would love to have as many familiar faces as possible there to beam at. Come to the Breadbox gallery at 7pm to check out an exhibition of A2 prints of work from the book (and drink some free Little Creatures) and/or see some bands in the main performing bit from 8pm. The exhibition still goes during the gig, but you'll have to pay entry ($10) to get into the gig and then see the prints. Here is a flyer:
Party your Eagles loss blues away! I'm looking at you, Duceman.
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(21 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, March 13th, 2007
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11:59 pm - interview with josephine olausson from love is all for the west, ended up not being an article
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All righty, so where are you… where am I calling you… at, today?
I’m at home. In Goetenburg.
Can you describe Goetenburg?
It’s kind of a small town, about half a million people. It has hills and a big harbour. I don’t know what else to say… it’s supposed to be the heart of Scandinavia.
Do you enjoy living in Goetenburg? I read an interview with the band where someone said if there was any scene they wanted to belong to it wouldn’t be Goetenburg it’d be New York.
Hm, I wonder who’d say that. I wouldn’t want to be a part of any scene, um [massive silence where my tape has been fucked up, but she said she didn’t like Goetenburg that much, then I think I asked her if they’re big in their home town] the only difference is there aren’t that many people here, in New York there are obviously more people who are into you. But if you think about it, percentage, I don’t think it’s… I don’t know, we’re not famous here anyway, and we’re not the type of people that people call when they want a quote if something happens in the world. I don’t know if they do that in Australia but sometimes the media will call up famous people and be like “So how do you feel about the economy in Portugal?”
Would you like to be in that position? A pundit?
No, not at all. It’d be nice if I could show my mum sometimes, she’s always asking like, she wants something to show her friends.
What has Love is All’s activity been in the past two or three months?
I’m terrible with time but I guess we were in America, then from there we did some shows in France which was really nice, great food and stuff, then we went and played some shows in Germany and Holland and Belgium, which was also really nice, then we had a long break, over a month now, for Christmas and stuff, and now, a couple of weeks ago, we started writing some new songs and recording some new stuff. So that’s what we’re doing, meeting every morning at 10. Sort of like a real job. Just playing together, mostly drinking coffee and talking.
Is that how you write, is there much discussion?
There’s a lot of discussion about the songs, like way too much, which is I think our thing. It’s hard because we’re making our second album and the first one was a complete surprise, we didn’t set out to write a record and we had no expectations then we did those songs… it was never even in the back of our heads that we’d be doing this full time. So it’s hard, I don’t want to talk about how to repeat the success, so instead there’s a lot of talk about how not to talk about that and how not to think about that. All five of us love to discuss things to death.
As much as you wouldn’t want it to, it must be hard for the success of Nine Times That Same Song to creep in as a factor.
Yeah, exactly. You want that same… not knowing what you’re doing is what made that a great record. So to try and find that but knowing is hard, and trying to write good songs but without having to think about them as being something that could be… the last record is hard to play on the radio and I don’t want to think about things like, can this be played here, is this a hit song? I guess we just sort of decided to think of each song as a separate thing and to just do it until it feels right.
It must be a different feeling writing songs before in relative anonymity to now, you kind of know that there’s a built in audience that’ll have a look at what you’ve done.
Yeah, exactly, and how there’s now a style of music that we’re supposed to play, and what if we don’t want to do that? I guess it’s up to us but you don’t want to disappoint people.
Is there a temptation to completely disappoint people and go in a different direction?
Um, not so that we would set out to disappoint people. We’re saying now that our third record will be completely crazy.
Have you completed any songs for your second album?
Yeah, we got… they haven’t been mixed or anything but we’ve recorded five songs that I think I like. I don’t really know. Three of them are from last week, they haven’t really sunk in yet, we need to play those live and re-record them maybe. But yeah there are a few songs already.
I had read that the songs on the first album took a long time to write, is that process being replicated in the second album?
Yeah. I think that’s why we’re already now trying to write some new songs, because even if they feel good after we record them we know they’re going to change often during the next few months. We’ll be like, this part here should be like this. Nothing is easy when it comes to us writing songs. Every single stop in every single song, or every drum beat, we can discuss, like, should I hit the snare or the tom here? That’s something we could be discussing for like half an hour.
How does that minute attention to detail come about?
I think it’s a necessity. In the same way we’re just doing our own thing even if we’re all playing together, I think if we weren’t talking about things it’d just be non-stop chaos where everyone is playing their instrument as loud as they can and I’d be screaming as loud as I can. Everyone wants to be heard the whole time, so that’s our way of being cooperative. Then it takes a weird turn.
I know you’re a big Slits fan, are you happy that they put out the Return of the Killer Slits EP last year?
I am! I mean, I’m sad to say that I don’t think it’s as great as their earlier stuff, but I’m glad they did, I’d like to see them play.
Have you ever seen them play?
Never. I was actually going to interview Ari Up once but that fell apart. I was really scared about the thought of doing that.
Yeah, where would you have started?
I don’t know. I used to write and do your job, but I would be terrified, I hated doing interviews, I would be so nervous, I sucked, so I don’t know what I would’ve said. I would’ve been completely star-struck I think.
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, March 12th, 2007
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5:52 pm
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| Friday, March 2nd, 2007
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1:29 am - interview with princess superstar. mentally insert own emphases on most "really"s and random nouns
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[half a question that I didn't record because I was making chit chat/a cup of tea] you been doing it for a while?
I mean I’ve been making music for a long time but as far as remixing for the dancefloor it’s new. It’s really exciting, it’s really fun and new and different and I’m really into it.
You have been making music for a long time, how do you keep yourself stimulated?
I guess it’s because I keep switching up my genre. That’s really it. I move from hip hop to electronic to punk rock, I go all over the place, that’s what really helps keep it fresh for me, being able to mix everything up.
What guides those changes?
I always change it up. My DJ career is in dance music but the thing is that sometimes I’m there rapping over the dance tracks I’m playing. I’ve always got one foot in one thing and one foot in the other.
Is that because you just like both kinds of music equally?
Yeah, for a while I was really stuck on hip hop and I was really closed minded about it. Like a lot of hip hop people I was like, dance music sucks, but then I started going to Europe around the time of the electro explosion and I was like, this music is amazing and the parties were so fun. People were going nuts at the parties, so I was like, I’ve gotta do this, this is really exciting, because the hip hop scene wasn’t really growing for me. Having said that I still love rap and hip hop but I needed to change it up with my own musical sensibilities for excitement purposes.
So you think you’ll continue having two feet in both worlds?
Yeah, because I think I can, so if I can why not? Hehn.
Yeah sure. Can you talk about how your album’s coming along at the moment? How’s that going?
Well, that’s really too soon to tell, but I have a lot of stuff coming out we can talk about which is like, a mix CD I did for 10 Years of Gigolo Records, and also I have a best of Princess Superstar which is going to encompass the best of my five albums that I’ve done, that’s coming out on Central Station records in Australia, I have releases coming out with Cockburn and the Glimmer and Mason.
Can you give me the story behind the mix CD?
Well, DJ [indecipherable] and I have been friends for a long time and he was instrumental in helping me become a DJ. He really inspired and invited me to Berlin to play at a Gigolo party. He wanted me to mix 10 Years of Gigolo so I did and it was this really big honour.
How did he inspire you?
He was so instrumental in the movement in 2002. Think about the artists on Gigolo, Vitalic, Miss Kittin, Fischerspooner, it was just an important time in dance music. I was really more in the hip hop scene at that point and he influenced me by showing me what was going on in this other world.
How has your DJ skill developed since then?
Well, I learned how to mix, haha. Then I got further and further into dance music. I really developed a taste for what I liked. Basically I really learned how to be creative and how to entertain people and make them dance and have a good time. It’s so much fun, so different from performing live with a band.
Did you have an analytical approach to it? Yes, definitely, because also I’m pretty new to DJing, I’ve only been doing it for about five years. I’m the sort of DJ who is like, oh they like this, oh they don’t like this. I would never compromise my style and play something shitty that I knew they’d like, but at the same time if you’re a good enough DJ you have shots that you know will work in a certain club but won’t work in another club. If you play a more mainstream club certain kinds of tracks are going to work. But I’m definitely there to entertain, I want to make people happy. I don’t understand DJs who are like, ‘No matter what I’m going to play what I want to hear.’ No, that’s not what it’s about. You should stay home and listen to music. It’s about entertaining. Maybe it’s because I’ve fronted a band for song long or I’ve come into it from a different perspective.
Do you have any cheesy, unexpected tracks you like to put on?
Well, cheesy… there’s cheesy in a good way, I have a remix of 9 to 5 by Dolly Parton in this dancefloor remix and it’s so f…ing great. That’s cheesy man, that’s as cheesy as you can get in a good way.
But you never put on a straight Shania Twain track.
No, nothing like that.
In your experience what is dancefloor poison?
Ummm… dancefloor poison… oh, well, sometimes I like to go really hard. I’ve had some guy DJs come up to me and go wow, you play harder than I do. Not cheesy hard, but some of the Boys Noize stuff and some of this new French stuff like Ed Banger stuff is really hard and I like a lot and that seems to be dancefloor poison sometimes. You really want to make your girls dance, because if you make the girls dance then the dancefloor fills up. I think because I’m a girl I can make the girls dance.
Do girls’ tastes really differ from boys’ taste?
I think so, I think girls like it a bit softer.
You were talking about your Greatest Hits before, were you handpicking tracks for that?
Yeah, definitely. I’m a big control freak.
So what was that like, going through 11 years of recording history?
It felt really really happy, really proud of myself that I kept going even when I had no record deal or things looked down. It was really really nice to see that I kept with it. I think that’s really half the battle in anything you do man.
Were you surprised by your old tracks, did you think after giving them another listen, wow, I’d be happy putting this out now?
You’re both, you’re like, oh my God this is so embarrassing, I’m so glad that album only sold 5000 records. Then you also have, oh this is dope, this would work now. So I tried to pick those tracks. Some of my stuff used to be more rock, which is cool because it’s kind of timeless.
What about your past albums are you kind of embarrassed by?
The truth is that there are moments on all five of my albums that I’m embarrassed by. This is like, I think most artists say that, it’s hard, you do your best. Sometimes you’re just like ohh shit. But then there’s moments I’m really proud of. Overall I’m really proud of my records. There’s always that nagging voice saying, ooh I shouldn’t have said that.
I guess you’re inevitably going to end up with embarrassing moments if you’re the kind of person to take risks.
That’s it, that’s a really good point. If you’re going to play it safe and not experiment… I always tried to make something new, try to be innovative, and if you’re trying to do that then of course you’re gonna fail. And you know what? You’re failing on a public level. But at the same time you’ve just gotta follow your heart and believe in yourself, and that’s true of anything, music or whatever. It’s important to be brave and try something different. And what’s the big deal, so you made a stupid song, who cares, you know what I mean? It’s okay, you’re not gonna die.
You mentioned the mix CD, you mentioned the greatest hits, what else did you say you had coming up?
I’ve got this Perfect Exceeder track right now which is in the top 10 in the UK for the last few weeks, that’s really nice, that’s coming out in Australia. I have collaborations with Coburn, the Glimmers, Fetish, there’s more, I don’t even remember.
Collaborations being…
For their record, guest vocal, yeah.
When someone asks you to do a verse in their song how do you do that? Well first I gotta like the track, that’s first and foremost. Then I listen to it and just try to write what I think of with the melody and the vibe of the song. I’m working on a track right now for Out of the Sky and it sounds like the theme from the Olympics or something, a real sports anthem, so I’m trying to do a cheerleader chant type thing, it’s really funny.
Because I mean, I love Jay Z but whenever he does a guest verse it sounds like he’s just phoning it in because he just does the same thing.
I know, and he’s such a brilliant lyricist. I guess at a certain point it’s like, this is the problem with money and fame and power, at a certain point you just get really blaise, you know it’s going to sell, you know you just need to put in the minimum amount of effort to do your job. I think that’s really shitty. I worship Jay Z, I think he’s a genius, but I know what you mean, but sometimes like you said it’s phoned in.
Sometimes the guest verses don’t have anything to do with the song that they’re in.
He probably doesn’t even listen to it, you know what I mean? I know how it works, they send them the track over the internet basically and he records it and sends it back. It’s not even… I’ve even done that myself and I’m nowhere near that level. And they get paid so much money, oh my God.
You mentioned you had a top 10 track in the UK at the moment.
Yeah.
Do you often have top 10 UK tracks?
No, not often, no, haha. The last time was Bad Babysitter which was a number of years ago.
Are you looking forward to the Australian tour?
Yeah, superexcited man, this Future Music festival is going to be great.
What do you have planned for that, are you in hip hop mode or DJ mode?
It’ll be DJ mode but it’ll be a big crazy dancefloor. But I’m always on the mic, I’m always with the old school hip hop MC mentality of being on the block and it’s a crazy party, I’m always like, C’moon.
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, February 27th, 2007
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11:17 am
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Oh and if anyone is after a Yo La Tengo ticket I have a plus one you can have. The only condition is that YOU MUST CONSENT TO COMING TO GOLDEN PLAINS. Not really. But do reply. I may have already given it away by the time you do so but if I haven't you're probably welcome to it unless we have some mysterious beef.
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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10:49 am
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All right so who wants to come to the Golden Plains Festival with me? We'd get to Melbourne on March 9 and leave on March 14. The Golden Plains Festival is on the 10th to the 12th and you would see the Slits, Comets on Fire, !!!, the Drones, Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Dexter, Sebastian and Kravinksy, Gotye, the Presets, and a bunch of stuff that is probably really good but I have no idea what it is, like George Rrurrambu and Birdwave. Tickets cost $169.90 but because I have received a free ticket I'll split the freeness with you and go halves in it. Might catch !!!'s and/or the Slits's shows in Melbourne too. I'm serious man, these festivals are fun but they're funner if you can go with somebody.
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, February 20th, 2007
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1:48 am - interview with one of the members of the walkmen. i think it's peter bauer, the bassist
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[Some question about New York that I forgot to record, along with half of his answer]
When we first started the Walkmen Walter and Paul all lived in a house up there. That was a couple blocks from our studio. It was a great life to have, you could just go back and forth. So… there were only five blocks between our house and the studio so we could work all day and do that all night. It was really nice. It was a cool neighbourhood.
Was that always a dream, to move there?
I guess so. It just seemed like a place where a lot of good stuff was happening and that’s where young bands went, but I’d never actually been there so I had no idea what it was like. I’d been there one time for a funeral before I was 18. Other than that I didn’t know anything about it. The guys in the Walkmen who were in the other band, Walt and Matt and Paul, lived up here and were successful, so me and Hank thought it was the obvious and logical thing to be a band in New York because we too wanted to be successful.
Was it a case of falling in love with New York as soon as you arrived?
Well, I thought it was really neat. I was a really young kid, and it’s kind of a weird place to be when you’re growing up away from your parents for the first time. You kind of go crazy. You can drink at any bar, you can do whatever you want, everything’s open all night, so it was a really fun time and it was a lot to take in.
Do you think that experience helped you to become a creative person?
I don’t know. It was something I always wanted to do since I was a little kid. A lot of people say that there’s something typically New York about the Walkmen or something like that. We resisted that for a while but it’s kind of become a fact. We never really thought anything of it but at the same time we are, y’know? We’re not a Washington band, we’re a New York band. Hey, can you hold on for one second? Do you mind?
No no.
Okay, one second. [Two minutes later] Sorry about that, I’ve got a one and a half year old son and he just woke up. Hope that doesn’t happen again. He should be asleep but he keeps shootin’ up.
No, that's okay, I understand, my sister has some young sons as well. So, what do you think makes people say you’re a New York band, is it just that you sound like other New York bands or is there something more quintessentially New York about you?
I hope it’s not because they think we sound like other New York bands. We always made an effort to not sound like other bands. It was just what it was when all those bands came out with their first records at the same time. We knew some of those bands so I’m sure we were of a similar ilk, we played some of the same shows, but I think we’re so far removed from that at this point that we don’t sound very much alike anymore.
It feels like bands across the globe think of New York as the place to play, so where do New York bands want to play?
I don’t know, like, Chicago? [Laughs] LA, London, Paris… major cities are always the place we want to play. We’re really excited to be coming to Australia for the first time, we just want to go as far as we can.
What effect did the warm reception of the first album have on the band in terms of mood, I guess, morale?
We really toured on it forever, so whatever positive morale it had wore off eventually because we’d been touring for two and a half years. We ended up relying on those songs so much that it was really hard to get going again on something new. But I think now we’re really trucking along at a very high pace. We’ve already got half a record to put out later this year. We’re pretty excited about it now, but with that first tour it felt like it went on forever. People just kept booking shows for us and we kept playing. Our music is sort of so heavy, like The Rat, they’re so screamy and it was all we’d play for a while so we were tired.
Were you overbooked?
No, I just think we’re not a band that’s a real touring machine. We’re much more about putting out records that are doing new things. We’re not a band that can go out on the road and play all the hits. One of the things that we’re looking forward to about playing to Australia is that it’s a new audience, we don’t feel so stupid playing The Rat because not as many people have heard it there. Whereas if you play it in New York, we’ve played it to them 10 times already so they’re not that excited.
You were saying that you’ve hit a good songwriting patch at the moment?
Yeah, I think our next record is going to be really good. We’ve been recording a lot and we’re really excited. We’ll play a lot of the songs on our trip too.
Did you hit that good patch before or after before 100 Miles Off?
I’d say toward the end of it. Now it’s different, I think 100 Miles Off was… Ham and Walt had to shoulder a lot of responsibility for it because I was having a kid and the other guys were getting married and we could only write in blocks. But when we recorded that we had a great time. We recorded it at Inner Ear Studios with Don Zientara who has produced a lot of great DC and Dischord bands and when we recorded it together we really had a blast. So that was when it took off, because before that it was really difficult.
It’s funny that you mention the Dischord connection because one of the more surprising sounds on the album is the 80s hardcore drums on Always After You and Tenley Town.
Yeah, that was something we really tried… I mean I don’t know how it came out but we really tried about 400 different ways of doing that. We figured there would have to be a song that was faster than The Rat and we wanted to do something different and… I don’t know, we were always trying to do hardcore beat songs. It feels good though.
In one of the interviews I’ve read Hamilton says that you’ve experimented with doing Bad Brains-y songs but they all ended up sounding pretty bad.
Yeah, it’s really hard to do and to not just sound like a bad hardcore band. I mean you can do that and you’ll go, oh, that’s a bad hardcore song. That was sort of our challenge.
So was the answer to include more calypso and Bob Dylan singing?
Yeah, we get that a little bit. The Bob Dylan thing, that’s one of those things where we put it in the press release then everybody picked up on it. I don’t really hear it that way.
Oh no? Well, Bob Dylan sings in a lot of different ways but I do hear it in an obvious way, but when you listen to the album what do you hear?
I don’t know, y’know… very stripped down, five guys playing together all at the same time. No overdubs, within two weeks, maybe a month, and the next thing you know it’s finished. It was very brief. We wrote half the songs very quickly. Like, the song Louisiana, which is the song that probably comes out as the best song on the record for us being happy with it, really sat around for most of the time we were making the record. We didn’t think it was going to work, we recorded it as an after thought and it came out great. Same with All Hands and the Cook, those are probably my two favourite ones.
Louisiana is definitely a favourite song of mine too, was it one of the earliest songs to be written, did it set the tone for the album?
We tried to, it was one of the earliest parts that we worked with, the horn part. But the song took forever. We didn’t really think about it much, it sat around for a year before it was done.
But was it a song where, when it was done you thought it’d be cool if the whole album was in this kind of vein?
Yeah, I think we all like the kind of music that Louisiana sounds like. Our next record’s a little more like that. It’s a lot more calypso. I think we’re very much into that kind of music now.
Oh right, so you’re going to continue with that sound?
I think we really like that light sound, and we like using trumpets. I think we’re a lot happier now, we’re a little less bitter now, so really heavy, minor sounding rock is harder to come up with, I think.
It’s a lot more relaxed than The Rat, which is more unsettled.
Right, exactly. We’ve kind of moved away from that.
Do you think you’ll eventually move into the ultimate in relaxation music, reggae?
Yeah, I think that’s the way we’d all like to go, but we keep shrugging out when we go in that direction. We’d love to, if we could figure a way to do it where it works well. We’d be so happy. But I don’t think we were born into that.
Well, if you can make Bad Brains work you should be able to do reggae.
Right, well, maybe it’s like late solo Keith Richards. Maybe that’s about as close as we could get.
So was the want to do more relaxed music the result of playing that rigorous tour you were telling me about?
Yeah, I think we got tired of incredibly over the top dramatic stuff for a while. I think we’re trying to make good songs in different ways played on different instruments.
Have people been receptive to this change?
It’s different. I think a lot of people don’t like it and a lot of people do. I think once we finish up it’ll make more sense. It’s hard to tell, but I think it’ll be really great. We put on a good show now. I’d feel a little funny up there jumping around to The Rat, so I think that was a different thing and we’re coming up to something really good and different now, which is what we’re hoping for. We don’t want to do the same thing again.
Just finally, in interviews that I’ve read Hamilton often says that there are no preconceptions going into the writing of new material and that albums generally consist of the first ten good songs you come up with. Is that accurate? Is it that kind of freeform?
Yeah, it definitely is. It’s like, after writing four songs the next eight are responding to the first four. Right now we have six songs of the same tempo, you don’t want to have six more of them. It’s not like they’re not interrelated… you know what I’m saying?
Uh, yeah, I guess?
I don’t think it’s half-assed or anything, I just think it’s hard enough to come up with a song, coming up with a type of song is even harder.
He also says that he doesn’t know what his own lyrics mean. Do you think that’s true or is he just keeping the meanings to himself?
I think probably a little bit of both. They definitely have meanings, but I don’t think he thinks they should make that much sense on the first glance.
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(8 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, February 14th, 2007
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11:23 am
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I don't see what the problem is with dancing about architecture.
Besides that, writing about music isn't like dancing about architecture, it's like writing about architecture. A communicative form describing an expressive form. Songs, at least, also have words in them most of the time.
Elvis Costello my ass.
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(13 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, February 13th, 2007
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10:11 pm - interview with ian mackaye from the evens for the west australian. a swell guy.
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Hello?
Hello, is that Ian?
Sure is.
Hi, this is Matt Giles, calling for our interview.
Hey Matt.
Hi. Are you ready?
Yeah I’m ready.
Cool. All right, what’s been going on today, first of all?
Well, at four o’clock I was sitting here waiting for all the interviews to start but it turns out there was some confusion about the time difference so it was actually 7 o’clock you were supposed to call. But before that I was at the Brazilian embassy dropping stuff off because we’re trying to go to Brazil and I had to get a document officialised and legalized by the Brazilians. Then I came and did all sorts of work at Dischord, just trying to prepare for not only leaving but also working out all this stuff that’s going on with the label at the moment, and manning the phones. Amy and I practiced this morning and tomorrow I have to go buy a guitar case… y’know, just the usual crap.
Is that a pretty typical day for you?
A very typical day, yeah. Essentially I do whatever’s in front of me. And every day there’s something to do. That’s why I’m so fortunate.
I saw on the Dischord site that you’re planning a tour to South America, is this the first time you've been there?
Not me but for the Evens, yes. Fugazi’s been down to Brazil I think two times or three times, I can’t remember. And Fugazi went to Chile and Argentina as well, but is the first time for the Evens. It’s our southern hemisphere era.
Right, wow, so you've maybe been there more times than you've been to Australia?
Oh no, I’ve been to Australia three or four times actually. We did 91, 93, 96, then I had a lung collapse in Sydney and I spent 20 days in Saint Vincent’s hospital there and we came back in 97 to make up the shows that we had to cancel. I’ve spent quite a bit of time down there.
Just as part of a band?
Yeah, in Fugazi. I’ve been there once on vacation, on a visit. But this’ll be the first time in 10 years, last time I was there was in the summer of 97.
Yeah, I was going to ask, why the break?
Well, first off, Fugazi in 2002… after 97 a surge of things started to happen. One of those things was people in the band’s families started to grow, in other words they started having kids. Also our parents were getting sick, people’s parents were dying and so worth, so things started to slow down with the progress of the band. Basically, you have to remember in the beginning Fugazi would go on tour and we’d do two US tours a year. Then it was like one a year because we would go to Canada. Then we’d go to Europe so you keep adding new places, like Japan and Australia, the world just keeps getting bigger and it takes longer and longer to get around. So then your touring cycle turns into years as opposed to months. Then you throw into that the fact that people are having kids or their parents are getting sick, it just slows down everything. It just starts going at a glacial pace. 2002, it just became clear that circumstances in life had made it impossible for the band to continue in the way that we need it to. So we decided to put the band on indefinite hiatus. That meant that for the first time in 15 years each of us could then turn our attention to other parts of our lives that have been waiting to take a break from the band. In my life part of what developed after that was beginning to play music with Amy and developing what became the Evens and developing that musical conversation and relationship. I could’ve immediately made a call and said, “Hey we want to come to Australia,” but I just don’t work like that. I believe in organic growth. So after we played a while and after we had two records out and I assume that there’s some interest in us coming down there that’s not solely just like, “That’s the dude from Fugazi,” and people are aware of the Evens. At that point I feel like, all right, let’s go down there. I think it makes fiscal sense, I think we’ll at least break even, but in any event we get to come play music and we get to go to a place that is so far away from that it’s kind of amazing. It’s an incredible gift and it’s one we don’t take lightly.
So that was the birth of the Evens? Were you interested in playing with Amy before…
She and I have known each other since the early 90s, she moved down here in 91 and we became really close friends. She played in a band called the Warmers, my brother was the singer and guitar player in that band and I produced their record and we put it out on Dischord, so she was really part of the family. For years we’d go watch bands and talk about the band and say we’ve gotta play music together at some point, but I was always really busy with Fugazi constantly. It wasn’t until the very early 2000s where there was a period when Fugazi would take breaks because babies were being born, we’d take eight months off or six months off, and I was kind of going crazy and I said to Amy, would you be up for playing, not to form a band but just to play music. And she said she wanted to just play music too. So we just started playing and writing songs for each other. We started playing in 2001. It wasn’t until 2003 that we even did a show, or 2004. We just played music and it developed naturally. We eventually said why don’t we do a show, why don’t we do a tour, let’s do a record. It kept on developing. We toured for a year before our first record came out. That’s just the way I operate, same was true of Fugazi. Fugazi played all of the US and all of Europe before our first record came out.
So the Evens has firmed as a thing that you’re going to pursue for the foreseeable future?
Yeah! That seems clear to me. That’s what I’m doing, that’s my band. I think a lot of people see it as “the dude and his girlfriend’s project.” That’s just not the way it is. This is my central – this is the music that I’m making. This is it.
In my head I just thought that you’re the kind of person who’d be in a band no matter what else you were doing, and that the Evens rolled over from Fugazi.
Essentially. Historically in my life… I think of bands as relationships. In none of the bands that I’m in has any of the members been replaceable. In other words I was never in a band where, the drummer quit so we got another drummer. It never happened. To me, the music that comes out of every band is the result of those individuals in the band. If anyone leaves then the band is over. With any band I’ve been in that’s been true so with Fugazi it was so central that if all four of us couldn’t do it then we couldn’t work. Obviously as soon as a band ends… music is not a choice for me. It’s coming out no matter what.
Did you think you’d ever scale back playing music and settle on releasing music?
Well, I guess I have done that to some degree between bands. See, I don’t know, “scaling back”, “scaling up”, I don’t think in terms like that, I’m just living. It’s never… there’s no graph, there’s no formula, there’s no logarithm, it’s just life. I just do what’s in front of me. I don’t think about things like, I need to amp up, push this, pull back. Today I just thought, I’m going to do some interviews, I’m going to do this, this and this. It’s weird, sometimes I think I’ve been doing this for so long, but it feels completely fresh to me. I think that’s because I engage with all aspects of it. I have been on the phone with every promoter of this tour. I have been discussing every facet of this tour with everybody. Steph may have organized these interviews but both she and I talked about it. I don’t have a press agent, I don’t have a manager, I don’t have a lawyer, I don’t do any of that. It’s just me. Amy and I make music, and in terms of this stuff, this is what I do. For me, the fact that I’m involved at all levels, right up to driving the van and loading the gear, is so engaging I don’t have time to get burned out. I’m too busy.
I read an old interview with you in which you were saying that creating the art and managing the art is the art, but even with that principle, are there ever times when you think, God I wish someone else would do this for me?
Occasionally there are things I wish I had some assistance with. I wish people would be more mindful of them. For instance, the Evens, we do not play regular venues. We want to play all ages shows outside the regular joints if we can. That’s what we want to do. For me, it’s license for imagination. You can do anything you want. I wish people, when we go play somewhere, that people would be less like, “You can play this place or this place because these are the two places people play music in.” We come with our own PA and we do it all ourselves so we can play anywhere. The Evens have played in junkyards and libraries, we’ve played in theatre foyers, we’ve played in art galleries and restaurants, Indian restaurants and Chinese restaurants… the idea is that music can exist and should exist anywhere and everywhere. If there’s ever a time I feel frustrated it’s because I feel a bit bracketed by the machination of rock’n’roll or punk rock or whatever you want to call it. That business stifles people’s imagination in a way because they say, you’re a band with guitar and drums, so you should be playing on this particular stage. Whereas I think, it’s music, and it can be anywhere. We’ve developed something that can be put it anywhere. Let’s make it something that is really unique, let’s not just do the same damn thing. Beyond that, to simply answer your question, no, I don’t wish someone else could be doing my work.
So how do you hook up a different kind of venue in a place that is on the other side of the word, how is that possible?
It’s hard, it’s really hard. When we come people will get it, but one way we do it is, we’re adamant, we’re only playing all ages shows. That automatically rules out a certain kind of venue. Fugazi was a bigger band so we had a bit of pull or leverage and we could play in larger halls or venues that could be economically sustainable. The Evens are a smaller band and a band our size invariably ends up at like, y’know, hotel pubs, those kinds of things. That’s the kind of place a band who plays to 50 or 100 people plays to, they play at clubs or pubs. But if we say, we’re not playing shows that are not all ages, that instantly forces the issue. Then I talk to people and I say, be creative, be creative. But no matter what, ultimately, once we finally come there and play, when people see us they’ll understand. So the next time it’ll be a lot easier. We did a tour of Europe and the first time we did it people were scratching their heads, but the second time people stepped up to the plate. They were like, I know just the place you can play and no-one’s played there before. That’s perfect.
Are you happy with the venues you’ve procured for this tour?
I don’t know, I haven’t been there yet. I’m a little bit… some of them, I don’t appreciate venues that charge a premium for all ages shows. I find that really annoying. That’s a practice that I really disagree with because it underscores the hold that the alcohol industry has on entertainment or music. This idea that if you don’t sell alcohol you have to pay extra, that just seems completely disgusting to me. That bothers me because I don’t know how music became subservient to that industry. I just don’t understand how something as sacred… music has been around since the beginning, right? It’s a form of communication that predates language. It’s something that has attended every important moment in the history of the world, practically. But somehow it’s been consigned to jukebox status in the corner of a business, and that particular business happens to serve alcohol. You know this, you know that the alcohol business really dominates music. The sponsorship, all this stuff. This is not an ethical thing or moral thing about alcohol, rather it’s about business. For me, okay, it’s the alcohol industry, but for me it could be, for that matter, an ice cream store. Imagine if you had to go to an ice cream store, or perhaps a car repair joint. It’s all the same damn thing, it’s a business that in one corner of the room they have a jukebox that brings in the clientele.
Yeah, the liquor licensing lobby and the music industry advocacy group are tightly linked here.
The whole idea of the linkage between music and alcohol, like if you play music you’re also a drinker, that linkage, I think that’s a fallacy. I think that’s something that’s been promoted by our respective alcohol lobbies. It’s like in America, there’s an idea where, you have air, you have water, and then milk, those are the things that you need in life. But that’s the dairy industry going like, buy our products, buy our products. They’re businesses and they’re hammering their products home. Rebellious rockers, they’re just like, god’s gift to the alcohol industry. They just reinforce this notion that that’s what you do. Wanna play rock’n’roll? Buy a bottle of Jack Daniels. But y’know, I’m on the outside looking in.
Okay, I better get off, I think I’ve gone a bit over time, but I’m really looking forward to the show and I really like the Evens.
Thankyou, my friend, see you later.
Bye.
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5:41 pm - rejected stina review for cool perth nights and interview with birds of tokyo singer ian kenny
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Stina, The Bakery, February 9
The flowers on the tablecloth, which sits on a table where the solo players play, which stands on some Astroturf to the side of the stage, has these little pink flowers on it and it’s like, those are so Stina. Those are so delicate. But that’s kind of a misconception. There are tinkling sounds, chimes and stuff, in Stina’s pocket songs, but the meat of the music is ambient machinery, industrial hum, played down a little to allow the tune room to move, but it’s there.
And there is also a beat. Flomoe kicks out after the first song, a place where harpsichord meets a millionaire’s daughter in 1865 on an ice skating lake needing to bounce a little bit. It’s really quite a fat beat, charmingly incongruous with the tablecloth, as is the scratchiness, but the melody fits, is a tea pot in an antique shop, and when it comes you are aware that Stina is a composer in the tall sense of the word, has been to that school, has learned that shit, but has put it aside a little in favour of the scratch and the beat.
The songs are playful beyond simplicity of rock ’n’ roll, this sound comes and leaps a backflip over the cheesy game you’ve got going, it dances a Swan Lake over your two step, but innocently, when it doesn’t even know what its doing. Is that fourth song new? And she’s just sitting there on the ground finding what she’s done quite groovy. It peeks out at you, it winks, the spirit of the sound and its body.
Ian Kenny from Birds of Tokyo and Karnivool
Hey Ian, what's Birds of Tokyo been up to?
We’ve just finished the record so we got the Big Day Out coming out then we’re heading out for a week and a bit touring on all the capitals on the east coast, then we’re coming back and doing the west coast thing including the Prince of Wales and Three Bears in the down south quarter. Then we’ve got a couple days off and we’re heading to Monkey Mia and Kalbarri and Geraldton, part of the WAMi tour. So it’s basically the first leg of showcasing the record now that we’ve finished it.
How long has it been finished for?
I got it back in my hot little hand about a week ago. It’s probably been finished for two months but getting the artwork sorted and the pressing done takes six weeks to two months to get it sorted.
Have you been listening to it non-stop?
Not really man, I don’t do that with my music. I listen to it a lot while we’re recording to make sure it’s what everyone wants but once you’ve done it I leave it where it is. If you listen to it too much once you’ve actually make the final decision you can start to hear things that you might want to change. It can drive you insane. Listen to it very sparingly I think.
How was the album making process?
It was a lot of fun man, we did it ourselves, the Birds and Adam Spark. He’s our engineer, so having him on board really helped get the record done. We did all the drums in a studio in Fremantle, Couch Studio, and we tracked one of the songs there, but after that we took the rest of the songs and a whole bunch of recording gear, the Protools rig and all the monitors and stuff to this big double ended house down in Dunsborough. It was like a mansion but not quite a mansion, it was just a very big and nice house, and we decked it out as our studio for ourselves for two weeks. We had living quarters at one end and the recording area at the other end, and we basically did it ourselves.
Right, that sounds like a really good way to do it.
Yeah man, really cost effective, and you get the time and the headspace when you remove yourself from your day to day grind, whatever it is, you can do what you want to do in the time you want to do it in.
It must focus you totally on the recording too.
Yeah, it’s all about coffee and music man.
You were saying it’s cost effective, does it beat recording at an actual studio?
Definitely man. If you’re in a studio you’re paying daily rates to use someone else’s studio and someone else’s time on someone else’s ground. But if you are fortunate enough to have people who have the gear and are willing to lend them out and let you do it elsewhere, then shit yeah man.
For a first album, what do you think is important, making a big statement or just getting it done?
I guess just getting it done is one thing, because it kinda breaks your brain when you’re doing these things. But, I dunno, it’s gotta make some sort of statement about where the band is at the time. I honestly believe that that’s what records are, whether it’s your fourth or fifth it’s always a visual of what the band is or is doing at the time, because sometimes it can be a year or two between records. I guess it just sums up the band. This is what we’re doing in the band at the moment, so if you like this you might like what the next record is about.
So what does the first Birds of Tokyo album say about Birds of Tokyo?
At the moment we’re just really enjoying being a four piece rockin’ band with pop influence and we just love to play as hard and honest and fast as we can, I guess.
Can you describe the journey of Birds of Tokyo up to this point? It seems like it’s been a gradual but steady upward rise from the outside.
Yeah I think you’d be right in saying that. I guess we’re getting close to being together for two years now that we’ve got the record under way. It started when Adam Spark had written a bunch of songs and intended on using it in some publishing stuff he had in mind and he asked me to come in and do some vocals for some tracks. After that he decided that it turned out better than he thought so he’d keep it for ourselves. That turned out to be the initial Birds EP. After that we decided we had to get a band, so we approached Adam Weston and Anthony Jackson from Tragic Delicate and they became the rhythm section. We went to Melbourne later on, did a double A-side with those guys, it turned out equally good so we decided then to write a collective group of songs that were going to be an album, and that’s how the album came about.
Was it different creating a sound for a band that has formed by accident than doing it in a band that has more intent?
It was quite exciting actually, for me and most of the Birds, who have never worked with people they haven’t worked with before. It came together really easily and free. It was exciting to see it evolve and see the songs come into their own right.
Is the upcoming national tour the band’s first?
We’ve been in Sydney and Melbourne doing some spot shows but it’s the first to go to Brisbane and Adelaide as well.
What are the band’s expectations?
It’s kind of a hello tour because it’s the first time we’ve done a big-ish national tour. We don’t really know what to expect but we think there is some sort of general interest in the band so we’re just expecting to play as well as we can to the people who come to the shows and make an impression.
How important do you think it is to make a strong touring impression?
I think it’s very important. If people enjoy what they see they’re going to keep coming back, and if people want to be a part of the show you’ve got to put on a good show. I think we do, purely on the fact that everyone in the Birds enjoys playing live, we really get off on it, so we seem to carry some sort of energy at shows that people respond to.
But in terms of WA bands having to make the extra effort if you want to go to other states, do you think it’s important that they do for the longevity of the band?
Yeah, man. It’s crucial. You’ve gotta do it, if you want to push your band into bigger and better things.
Is that the plan for Birds of Tokyo, lots of national tours?
We’ll see. We do intend on acting as a touring band, but we’ve all got other things happening. I’m involved with Karnivool and the other guys play in Tragic Delicate so we’ll just see how it rounds up. But we do intend on touring as much as we can, for sure.
Do you all think of Birds of Tokyo as on par with the other bands or is it more of a do it when we can kind of thing?
We kind of make time for it. We’re all quite keen on what the Birds is at the moment, we’re all getting a lot out of it as far as playing and writing goes, it’s feeding our engines so to speak. It’s something we collectively try to get together and make work as much as we can.
Is it a different outlet for you than Karnivool?
It is, because it’s coming from a different place. They’re two completely different bands so I get a lot and learn a lot from each band.
Because Birds are a bit softer?
Yeah, totally, and because I’m working with different people as well. They’ve got different views on writing and different ways they approach certain things. It’s good to see it all happening.
What about the other guys, do you think they take a different reward from Birds of Tokyo?
I can’t really speak for them but I’m confident that they do. Again, Tragic is a vastly different sound, it’s more moody and stuff, so I guess they’re drawing on something else while they work for the Birds.
Do they look up to you at all for being part of Karnivool?
Haha. I don’t know, but I can say that across the board we all have a very healthy and honest respect for each other as musos, the four of us. I’m not sure if that answers your question.
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, February 12th, 2007
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12:55 am - a piece i was commissioned to write for empty magazine. naff idea, this is what i did with it
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“Mistakes are the Portals to Discovery" – James Joyce
I don’t think history really captures how much of a fuck up Christopher Columbus was. He did not simply go a bit off course and find the American continent. He spent many months in Europe shopping around an idiotic proposal that was full of flubs.
He was a bad researcher, ignorant of much exploring convention, and a bad mathematician. He read maps thinking they used Italian miles instead of Arabic miles. He obtained an incorrect figure for the distance of the Canary Islands to Japan and used it to pitch his voyage to the kings and queens of Europe. Venice, Portugal and Genoa all told him to piss off. When that happened, Columbus didn’t recalculate or reevaluate his information, he simply packed up his shit and tried to sell it somewhere else.
It took six years of lobbying before Spain would let him attempt his voyage. The deciding factor was that, because his information was so fucked up, they thought he’d die at sea, and they wouldn’t have to pay him. Then he discovered a passage to America, a very valuable edge in Spain’s mercantile trade, and one of the building stones to the creation of that great nation.
The part of it I like most about that story is not the success; that just seems like luck. It’s Columbus’ attitude. I did well at school so I believe in being correct. I don’t take risks. Columbus, on the other hand, struck out into the wilderness of fundraising and exploration with a handful of facts he seemed to get off the back of a napkin.
When he was rejected he kept on. He had learned that which an education doesn’t tell us – knowing stuff is secondary to doing stuff. This is worthy advice in both professional and creative realms of art. The intention to create and the theorization of one’s own work should be carried out in accord with its production, while there are doubts and fears, while mistakes may still be made.
There is no special charm about mistakes that makes them portals to discovery. They are simply necessary by products of doing your thing. Columbus did his thing, whatever his motives were – the propagation of Christianity, the joy of sailing – and mistakes were made. He looks like kind of a fool in retrospect but jokes on you, because he’s become immortal. More than that, while he was alive he breathed and slept his passion, unafraid of failure. For that, I envy his Italian ranga ass.
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, February 7th, 2007
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2:05 pm - interview with macromantics for the west australian. she was a nervous rambling woman, i liked her.
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Hey Romy. What activity have you been up to in the last couple of months?
We’ve been doing a couple of shows, writing new material, working on a mix tape, kinda trying to enjoy time with family and friends. But I’m constantly working, I never stop, just trying to do my thing at the record store.
I heard you mention the mix tape at the Perth Erase Errata show, what’s the deal with that?
It’s just the whole mix tape thing which is pretty big these days, using other people’s beats and writing over them. I guess it’s just a good way for people to hear me in a different context. People might have a problem with my beats or whatever so this is just pure rhyme and having fun.
When do you think it'll be done?
I want to get it done as soon as possibly, but that said everything is kind of chaotic at the moment and it’s a struggle to find the time. I’m not to sure. Between everything else I work a job, so it’s very time consuming. It’ll be a little release, it’ll only be sold at shows. It’s using other people’s beats so you can get in trouble if it’s a big release.
Are you outraged that you didn’t win the J Award?
Nah, it makes sense, I didn’t deserve it, those people have been around for years. It’s so amazing that I was nominated but I didn’t expect to win it. It shows my work has been taken seriously and I’ve been overwhelmed by that, to be put among those artists, that’s important for me.
What does it mean to you that your first album has done as well as it has done?
Well, whether 10 people listen to my record or 1000 I’m still going to do what I do, so I’m not really affected by it. I’m amazed that people are open to hearing a whole new voice, something that they might not have heard before. I do feel that what I do is a unique style of rap that not many people are doing, but I’m going to do what I do regardless, because this is survival to me, it’s what I have to do in order to grow as a person. Anything else is a bonus.
To me it’s a confident sounding album, it’s like straight away you knew what you were doing. Were you confident in the creative decisions that you were making with it?
Yeah I was. I never set out to do anything, we just said we’d make a record and it was a really easy process that took its own shape and form. You could be in control of that but you also had to let it go and take its own path. I felt like I did that and it’s where I was at and where the world was at at that time. It’s very honest and real and true.
How did you end up getting to release it on Kill Rock Stars in America?
That’s one of those things where you have to trust when those things take their own shape. It just seemed really perfect that it would be released on Kill Rock Stars so I sent them a record, they were pretty much the first label on my list who I thought would get the record and who I felt my record would fit best. Slim Moon who [ran] Kill Rock Stars had heard my name, I’d been to America and done a lot of shows on the pacific north west and the west coast where they’re based. A couple of his friends had mentioned my name, that they’d heard this girl performing that they thought he’d be interested in. One of them gave him one of my early EPs and he loved that and when he heard the record it was like consolidation, “I think she’s ready, she’s put in the time and effort and takes her work seriously,” so they just wanted to do it.
Is it a compliment that you’ll be their first hip hop artist?
Yeah, it’s a huge compliment that I’m on the same label as some of my favourite bands in history, people who I really respect and look up to.
What were those first trips to America, how many times have you been?
I’ve been maaany times. First it was for love, but long distance relationships are hard to maintain and it didn’t work but at the time it was an amazing experience and having your heart broken is probably the most immediate amazing cocktail of emotions you can experience… anyway, I would go over there and obviously I wanted to do something else while I was there and that was playing music, collaborating with others and setting up shows. I’ve been there overall in the last three years probably seven times.
So it was just doing the odd show?
Yeah, it’s only recently that I’ve been going over with the purpose of touring.
Who’d you play with over there?
All different people. I was over there for CMJ, I played the KRS show with all those bands, then I also played underground hip hop shows, local indie stuff. Kinda similar to here really.
So you think you’ll exist in two spheres over there as well?
Yeah, I don’t know why that happens. I think people just pick up where my background’s been and what I reference in my lyrics is hip hop, pop culture and punk rock, so I guess I speak to those two kinds of walks of life.
So you’re going to America on the occasion of the KRS release?
Yeah, at the beginning of March for South by Southwest and to support the record as well.
Will you stay for long?
At least a month and a half. It could be longer, the record comes out next week so anything could happen. I have no idea what people’s response will be and what people’s requests are and what kind of opportunities arise. I’m open to that and seeing how it does.
But you’re not going to go over for six months to try to make it?
Nup.
So you’ll stay based in Australia?
Yeah for the meantime, we’ll have to see. If things go amazingly I might move there, again I’m just lucky that I’m at a point in my life where music is my priority so wherever I need to go for it is where I’ll go.
Is the story of discovering rap while on tour in America with Ben Lee true?
Yeah it’s true. I discovered Nas and Wu Tang Clan. This is 95, 96, one of the golden eras of hip hop, all my favourite stuff came out in 93 to 96. Nas, best rapper of all time, easy, Wu Tang, I got given the Ol’ Dirty Bastard record then, Group Home, Mob Deep, KRS One, all that east coast stuff. I was into west coast too but I really liked that east coast, gritty street raps, that self-conscious consciousness buzzed out stuff that spoke to me. It was raw and real and immediate and it changed my life.
Did you start rapping immediately after that?
Yeah, I did. I’ve always written and it just so happened that hip hop and that style of writing suits my head and where I’m at and how I think and see the world, which to me is in fragments. Pastiches and collages and drawing on absolutely everything, but I don’t think I’m going to write this way forever. I see myself as a writer first and foremost, and hip hop is just one style of writing that I’m at now. I’d love to write screenplays when I’m older and philosophical ramblings. This just suits me and my head now.
It makes sense that you consider yourself a writer foremost considering how compact and ornate your raps are. How did you hit upon that style, was there anyone you took cues from?
No, I don’t take inspiration from rappers at all really, I don’t listen to rappers and think that’s how I want to sound. I dunno, it’s just how my head works. It’s how my thoughts on the world work and it’s how I feel comfortable expressing myself. It just works for me, it’s unconscious.
Do you spend a lot of time crafting your raps? Because you squeeze so much material in there.
I have to say that I don’t need a lot of time on songs, they just come to me. I don’t really know how to answer that, it just feels natural. I would never want anything to feel forced or weird, it’s gotta flow. Otherwise I don’t wanna know it. I’m lucky.
Do you have any ideological lens that you focus all your ideas through?
I see what I do as criticism – pop culture criticism, social criticism, I see myself as a politically minded person. I love art, I’m constatntly aware of the latest films and books, and I’m constantly in touch with that, reporting on that. I am a reporter, this is journalism what I do. Being aware of all that stuff, that it exists, you can just pull it out when you need it, your work grabs at those strings along the way. I don’t really start at a point, not often do I?
The Dark Side of Dallas is one of the stand out songs on the album whose meaning I haven’t been able to get a grip on, can you elaborate on that one?
Yeah, it’s just about the dark side and that it exists, and don’t be scared of it. Everything is focused on the light and the good but I think that there is a dark and evil side to all of us that you shouldn’t really be scared of or shut off. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. The universe, scientists believe, is made of 90% dark matter and they don’t know what it is. We mirror the universe, obviously we are going to have that dark side too. So it’s about finding balance and controlling that. It’s hard, knowing that exists, because it can bring you down. Darkness is a shade of light, it’s there, so harness it, basically. Otherwise it consumes you.
On the album and when I’ve seen you play there’s this big emphasis on loving yourself, you say it explicitly on the album and during performance. When did that come to be a central theme for you?
As much as I say that I’m full of… yeah, self-loathing, at the same time I go through the motions. Being good to yourself, it really helps. I’m trying, I’m seeing what works for me. I’m not perfect, noone’s perfect, so don’t be so hard on yourself or take it out on yourself. There’s a bit of cynicism in that when I say it as well, it’s not totally true. It’s very easy to say love yourself but it’s the hardest thing in the world to do. Most of the time I don’t love myself, so maybe if I say it out there it’ll project.
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking before when you were saying you didn’t deserve to win the J Award. I thought you definitely deserved it at least as much as any of the other guys.
I just think it’s my first record. I don’t know, the dudes who’d been nominated had been around for ages. You’ve gotta pay your dues. I feel like I have, this is my first album but I’ve released an EP and I’ve done this all myself. I feel like I’ve paid my dues and now I can kind of get comfortable and release records without it being a struggle. I feel like I’ve got a team behind me so the good stuff can be flowing. Then I’ll feel like I deserve it, I just need more experience at it.
I saw you supporting Erase Errata and at Meredith, which were not really hip hop crowds. Do you feel like you win people over a lot of the time?
Shows like that, I like how I don’t win the crowd over with the first song. It’s a journey that they go on. By the end, even if they didn’t get it in the beginning there’s some sort of affinity between us. I work well in those awkward moments. I like jolting people, making them think, this isn’t hip hop, this isn’t whatever, and by the end of it there’s this raw energy. Even if I haven’t won them over and they don’t get it or like it that’s fine, as long as I’m provoking thought.
Was 2006 a good year for you? Do you feel like you’re on an upward climb in terms of enjoying your years from now?
Yeah, 2006 was definitely a good year… for Macromantics. For Romy, I don’t know. I’m still going through my things. Macromantics is part of Romy and vice versa, but I go through struggles with cycles and bad habits… it’s something that I’ll continue to struggle with. I’m just trying to balance the two worlds.
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| Tuesday, February 6th, 2007
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3:18 pm - interview with Aaron Turner, singer in Isis, done for the West Australian
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Hey Aaron, what's going on today?
I did another interview with a fellow named Troy from New Zealand. I’m not sure what the publication was but in any event… I did a couple of domestic interviews, I’ve been working on the layout for the next Pelican record, and I’ve just come back from a walk with my girlfriend and my dog. That’s been my day thus far, and Isis rehearsed this morning again for our impending tour.
Where do you take him?
Just around the neighbourhood basically. Just to get him out to stretch his legs and stretch my legs. I find it’s a good way to gather your thoughts and prepare for yet more work.
You must have to do that a lot, considering all the stuff you have to work on?
Yeah. I usually try to get out for at least 45 minutes a day and a bit longer on the weekends if I can. It’s a pleasurable way to spend time and recharge for work purposes.
Do you work from home?
My time is split between three places. There’s the Isis rehearsal space which, when we’re working on an album or preparing for a tour, we’re in it three or four hours a day five days a week. Then depending on my girlfriend’s schedule, if she’s home I try to work here. We’re both so busy that it’s one of the few ways we can actually spend time together. On top of that I try to pop into the Hydra Head office for at least a couple hours a day if I can manage it. I’m bouncing back and forth from place to place but luckily for me they’re all in close proximity to each other.
Do you get sick of all those places because of how much work you do at them?
I like to stay busy. The reason I do so many things is not because I feel I have to, it’s because I’m compelled to. I’ve chosen this line of work because it’s what I like to do. The fact that I’m not in the same place all day I think actually helps me. If I was confined to one of these places for eight or ten or twelve hours a day it might start to get claustrophobic but as it is I’m fine with it.
Do you know why you’re so into working?
I don’t know what my motivations are entirely. I’m just not a person who’s content to do nothing essentially. I like to keep busy; I like to have a lot of activity going on all the time. I never imagined that all these things have become as intense as they have. Isis wasn’t a full time band in the sense that we could make a living off it and not have to work other jobs until the last two years. Hydra Head has just sort of grown exponentially over the years. My responsibilities over there change but the workload has been consistent. I’d rather be doing a lot of things I love than a little of this and a little of that that don’t really fulfill me in any way.
So what do you do when you don’t have anything to do? Or have you forgotten what that feels like?
I’ve forgotten. There really isn’t a time when that’s the case. My idea of doing nothing is still not nothing, it’s sitting around listening to a record or reading a book, or spending some time with dogs and my girlfriend. I guess I’m not one to be idle in the truest sense of the world. I can’t imagine what I’d do with myself if I actually had to do nothing.
Does that stuff feed into Isis?
It does, and also into Hydra Head. The only way to discover new bands is to listening to different records and seeking new things out. That is in a way a part of my job. Also I think that apart from reading being an interesting activity in and off itself it does help me as a writer. It gets the gears turning and helps me consider different subjects I might address in my lyrical content. That’s often the way that I’ve happened upon concepts that have ended up being the backbone of our records.
Do you like to sing about external or internal stuff?
I find that one is a portal to the other. I’ll come across a topic that I find really interesting that isn’t related to me personally but it is of personal interest to me. Sometimes I’ll discover that there is a parallel between what I’m interested in and writing about and what is going on in the world that I’m living in. I don’t see the things as being exclusive from one another in that sense. To me it’s more about what I’m drawn towards at the time when I start writing. I think there has been something directly from me injected into every Isis record from a lyrical standpoint, but it’s come out in varying degrees and in different channels. I can’t say what my specific area of interest is, I just know that the things that are interesting to me in a really deep way and things that have a lot of room for exploration are the things I choose to write about.
Do you feel uncomfortable writing about yourself explicitly?
I guess I must because I’ve never really done that. Very early on I guess I wrote some lyrics that were very autobiographical but everything was illustrated through the use of metaphors, however poor they were at the time, but I don’t think I could write anything that was blatantly obvious that was about me personally. In another way a part of my decision to write the way that I do is to represent not only myself but everyone in the band. That’s not to say that they were choose to write about the same things but I at least try to choose topics that will be interesting to them as well as to me. I would never write about something that was specific to me and to me only. At least not for an entire album. To me that would be defeating the democratic persona that is Isis.
How do you go about representing everyone else in the band?
We’ve been the same current line up for eight years and the same core three members for the past 10 years so I feel like I know everyone pretty well by now. We spend a lot of time together and end up having conversations on a whole range of topics. I don’t know everybody as intimately as I know myself of course but I have a pretty firm grasp on where everyone is coming from and when it comes time to work on a concept and lyrics for a record I share it with the other guys through the process and I get feedback from them. If there’s ever anything that somebody feels is inappropriate I’m willing to address that and figure out some other way to work things out so that everybody feels that, if they’re not directly represented, is appropriate for Isis as a whole.
Is that kind of effort something that they appreciate or does it go over their heads?
I think they definitely appreciate it. Everybody puts a lot into this band, we do it in different arenas but everybody contributes something aside from just the parts they write in the songs. This is just part of my contribution and we’re all very appreciative of the things that the other people in the band do. That’s part of the reason we’ve been able to retain the same line up for so long.
Are the others guys as interested as you in the historical reference points that you end up including in your lyrics?
I think it’s to varying degrees with each person. If anybody feels a topic I’ve chosen isn’t appropriate and doesn’t fit the music I won’t go in that direction. In that sense everybody’s interested enough in it that they feel like they can allow it to be on an album that they’ve put a lot of themselves into. It’s not a direct expression of interest or a topic that they themselves have chosen to write about but at the same time every time I’ve brought something up they’ve been engaged in it and they do some research on their own, or it’s something they knew about before I brought it to the table as possible album material.
So what’s something that might be considered inappropriate for Isis?
Well, it hasn’t happened yet, but if I was writing about something like my personal relationship with some person or another people might feel like that’s not necessarily the road to go down. But it’s been rare if ever that there’s been concern about… there’s been times when I’ve brought things up and perhaps not explained it as well as I could have and that raises questions and people want to know a bit more about it. Generally they’re okay with it when I articulate it as best I can.
You were saying that in the past two years nobody has had to do anything apart from Isis. Has that made the band more relaxed? Does it free up creativity?
Without a doubt. In the past it was really difficult for people, as much as they’d want to, to be completely present at a rehearsal after a full day of work. Especially with some of the physical labour some of the members have had to do from time to time, it was hard for them to put everything they had into music. The fact that it’s no longer a luxury but our livelihood has made people more relaxed. They don’t have to worry about finding a job after the tour is over, they don’t have to take time off when we’re making an album, we’ve been able to practice five days a week rather than two evenings here and there. All things considered it’s been a good event in the lifeline of Isis.
Was it also a compliment from fans and industry, in that they think what you’re doing is good enough that they’ll buy it in numbers that’ll support you financially?
I guess so. I’ve never really thought of it as a compliment necessarily. I’m certainly very appreciative of it, but I feel like there are plenty of other bands who make music that to me is not all that interesting and they seem to have everything come so easily. I’m not sure that… I don’t think popularity really fits into my idea of success. Success to me means making work that you can stand behind and that you feel confident about more than anything else. But I am very grateful for the level at which we are, and I’m very excited that at least for the moment everybody can work on Isis and Isis only.
Given that there wasn’t the distraction of work while making the Absence of Truth, does that mean that this album is the purest expression of what you guys are going for?
I think so. It’s hard to assess what the actually outcome is of being able to work in this fashion now, but I do feel like it’s our most focused work to date. I feel like we were able to finesse the songs a bit more and ultimately I think we’ve ended up with an album that is more satisfactory in our estimation than anything we’ve done in the past. That’s not to say it’s perfect by any means but in the past we’ve had to squeeze things in and work things out in the rest of our lives. This time around this has been everyone’s focus and we’ve come out with a stronger result.
From the outside it’s an album that does sound different from the other ones, but not too different. From the inside though you must be able to see more changes, what changes do you see?
I feel like the performances and the individual parts are more interesting in the past. I felt like every album we’ve done in the past was good for the time at which it was created, and I still enjoy some of that stuff quite a bit, but I guess some of that stuff does seem overly simplistic to me. I’m enjoying the newfound complexity. It doesn’t sound vastly different as you mentioned, but I do feel as though everything has been stepped up. Everybody’s been able to perfect their sounds a bit more, they’ve been able to develop their parts a bit more rather than latching onto the first thing that sounded okay. I just think that all the time we’re able to dedicate to it helps us grow on every level, from competition to our individual musical ability, as well as our ability to interact and communicate with each other.
I was reading an interview in which you said on this album you let people play their own parts on their own without everybody else coming in and playing the same part in a big layer, which created more space. Is that what you’re talking about?
Yeah, to some degree. There was a lot of unison playing on the other records where we’d all play the same part, now I feel there’s more interplay between the instruments and while we’re all still working within the same… mode, or… I guess I can’t explain these things in technical terms because I’m not a trained musician so I don’t know how to define what we do, but I feel like rather than people just playing the same thing all the time we’re doing a lot more playing off each other. We’re giving each other more room to try different things and create different textures and moods. I do attribute a lot of that to being able to try new things rather than having to rush to have an album together by the time we’ve booked for the studio.
So you think that interplay is more interesting than the stacking of one part?
They both have their merits but before we were unwilling and unable to have that sort of interplay in our music. It’s taken a little while to figure out how we can make that work for us. They both have their merits and there’s a place for everything and we still do play some parts all together but overall the further we’re able to travel down that path of interplay the more interesting our music will be.
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| Sunday, February 4th, 2007
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12:35 am - a thing about mariah carey i wrote a year ago for a website that never got off the ground
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It’s Good to Give Things a Shot or So, I’ve Been Listening to Mariah Carey Quite a Bit Lately
It’s good to give things a shot.
During one of my various traipses around the internet I read that Snoop Dogg had guested on a Mariah Carey track. Not only that, but said track had been produced by the Neptunes. These facts momentarily eroded the skepticism with which I previously beheld Mariah Carey and her ill-conceived “Mimi” relaunch and I allowed myself to hear the track, titled “Say Something’”. I had visions of Carey taking on a Kelis-like persona under the guidance of the Neptunes. I wanted “Say Somethin’” to be “Drop it Like it’s Hot” with a diva in the middle. Instead, it was Mariah Carey’s usual thing, with Snoop doing a verse and Pharrell pushing record. She had failed to let her guests electrify her. I put the track away.
A month later I was casting about for new music. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! had had their time, and the new Cat Power album was months away. On a whim I decided to listen to “Say Somethin’” again. It may have made a middling first impression, but it was a notable enough collision of celebrities to warrant further unpacking. I listened again and this time I heard something I didn’t hear before. I heard what the Neptunes were doing.
After my first cursory listen I thought they had phoned in a limp, slow beat with none of the spark of “Drop it Like it’s Hot” or “Milkshake”, but the song is more complicated than that. Synths that sound like pipes made out of deep sea coral and holograms grapevine along the roof over a booty bass bed while the voices of about five Mariah Careys quantum leap in and out of existence. Hugo and Williams hadn’t flung Carey some scraps, they’d taken their Neptunes-iness and adapted it to her. They’d given it curves and taken it to outer space. They’d made a good song.
That was a pretty jarring realisation. At the beginning of all this I had consented to giving Mariah Carey, one of the most overblown, egotistical and unendearing acts of the ’90s, a chance. That was on the basis of the Neptunes and Snoop Dogg making her sound different. Here she was, though, up to the same old tricks. I was disappointed on a conscious level, I had, on a more primal level, ended up digging it. I thought, what the hell, and I bought the album. It had flooded record store chains before Christmas and was therefore pretty cheap, so if it sucked, no big loss.
It didn’t suck. Or at least if it did I couldn’t tell. I listened the first time and the variation surprised me. The Neptunes track was one of the more staid of the bunch. There were others, club-worthy and bouncing and bootylicious. There were yet more others, epic ballads the likes of which have damned R’n’B for most people. I kept listening, taking in the roll of the peaks and the troughs. I came to know them. Suddenly, I realised that I was no longer treating this album like a science experiment. I had started wanting to put it on because I wanted to hear it.
I had started to like it.
Now, frighteningly, after a solid eight weeks of listening, I have several favourite parts of The Emancipation of Mimi. In fact, that’s an understatement. I have many. I have about as many favourite parts as there are songs, meaning that almost every song builds toward and reaches a memorable highpoint, meaning I can listen to each song on the album with equal interest and the album itself the whole way through. In this way it shares company with Chutes Too Narrow and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and other albums that are generally considered to be actually, legitimately, y’know, good.
What’s more, I like Mariah. I like her high notes. I like her vocal runs. I like her slow numbers, her chimes, her overuse of the word “baby”, and I like her facile lyrics, like this one from fourth track “Mine Again”: “We were made for each other’s arms / I know you’re my destiny.” Okay, I guess I don’t exactly especially like that line, but on the other hand I don’t hate it. It walks through my metal detector, it passes my urine test. Something has happened that has taken the tooth out of me when it comes to Mariah Carey, and I’m not sure I like it.
This isn’t some kind of funny funny joke, either. It’s not the same as liking, I don’t know, Metallica, because their songs are stupid and hilarious. It’s not that kind of deal. I knew it wasn’t after I made it through “We Belong Together”, which is exactly the kind of song you think it is, without turning it off. It’s too slow and serious to be appreciated ironically. Really, the only way you can go with it is seriously, and that, my friend, costs you something of your soul. But it’s worth it.
It starts off with some light piano and Mariah warbling a short “A woo wooo ooh ohh oh”, followed by a few plucks of acoustic guitar. Then the beat, your customary Boys II Men-style bass, handclap, bass bass, handclap, drops in. A pretty fake sounding hi-hat ticks over like a double speed second hand while the song glides (or plods, depending on your patience) along. It’s all deceptively white bread until the third repetition of the chorus, at which point Carey kicks her pitch up an octave and sheds a coat of gloss off her tone. Here she becomes desperate, singing, ready for it: “When you left I lost a part of me / It’s still so hard to believe / Come back baby please / Because we belong together”.
When that part comes along, signaling the song’s forthcoming end, there’s this weird intersection of the surface meaning with the knowledge that it’s probably this kind of desperation that lost Carey the guy she’s singing about and landed her in a mental health and addiction clinic in the early 2000s. There’s tragedy in that dramatic irony, in Carey’s ignorance, or unconfessed knowledge, whichever it is, of how much of a freak she is. It’s sad, even raw, despite being so massively produced you can feel the binary code dripping from the notes. It’s about how even grown ups with talent and a million dollars can’t get their lives right.
Her final show stopping vocal blast, a ten second hold on the “ther” in “we belong together” slowly fades out and, strangely, becomes a majestic vibrato just before it dies. That note encapsulates all her problems – she has come back a changed woman but she still can’t help pulling out all the stops when she sings, just like she can’t help getting too attached to the losers she’s singing about, just like she can barely control her public perception as a nutcase. Although her career’s on a much needed upswing, there’s a security she wants but will never have. All she can do is go about her business, and wait for somebody else to fade her out.
Perhaps I’m reading too much into this. Perhaps this is like those women who hit middle age and start crying when they see ads for baby products. But at the very least, Mariah Carey didn’t make too bad of an album. I got turned around on her. I was surprised by music, and I was starting to doubt that could happen at all any more. Not long before all this I had started to not like anything new, to not even dislike anything, to just avoid any investment at all. To coast, and avoid risk. Then on several whims I gave, of all people, Mariah Carey a shot. And it paid off.
So when you’re looking at a video of Mariah Carey not wearing any pants and sitting on a giant red telephone and you’re thinking “Crazy bitch,” remember this: well, yes, but give her a shot. It’s good to give things a shot.
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| Wednesday, January 31st, 2007
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3:15 pm - big day out ticket ya stoopid mutha fuckaaaas
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Does anyone want a Big Day Out ticket? I'm selling mine. I'd like to give it away but I could use the money so I'll sell it for a bit less than the shops do, say $100? I was thinking of selling it on eBay but if there's someone I know out there who'd like it I feel like, morally obliged to give it to them instead.
Also just now I have done a spray rinse and spin cycle on our new washing machine which is broken in such a way that you have to press the "the lid is down" switch with a pair of tongs to make it go, and I tell ya, no one should have to look at their washing being washed in a washing machine. It's like seeing one's own bone, or parents having sex.
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12:42 am - this is a story i wrote to get some bad habits and cliched themes out of my system
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Northam
I hadn’t practiced at all and Mr Stokes knew it, but we kept on with the session, kept on with the pieces, and I was still good, but he wanted me better, and he was angry.
“That’s enough,” he said, packing up the sheets, putting them in the book. I stood up without taking apart the clarinet, just watched him end the session 20 minutes early. It was a hot day in the drama shed and locusts were in town this year, the first plague since I was five, and we both had to get home in an unforgiving twilight. He checked his watch and looked at me examining his mood.
“Mm? What? What is it?” he said.
The stand was a little busted, one steadying hook bent, the other missing, but it was the only one the music teacher, Ms Spadacini, left us. I could see Metallica stickers half torn off the legs and the outline of a box of smokes in Mr Stokes’ chest pocket. He had purple veins at his temples. I often disappointed him and he thought I didn’t notice and didn’t care but I did, both.
He tutted and walked to the piano at the back of the room and collected his wallet.
“If you aren’t going to practice there’s no point in me coming here,” he said.
“I did practice,” I said.
“Oh nonsense,” he said. “Nonsense. Imagine how good this would sound if you played it well. Imagine the looks on the faces of examiners in the city, a skinny, crooked toothed pale boy from the wheatbelt and this is the sound he makes. Practice it this week and see what I mean. You will go to Perth and impress them and you will get a scholarship to Perth Modern. But first you have to practice.”
He pulled the cigarettes out of his pocket and headed for the door. He gestured for me to pack up and get out.
With my case in hand and my bag on my shoulder I passed by him out into the heat and he locked up the shed.
“Have you got lice or something?” he said.
“No,” I said. “I just shaved it.”
“It makes you look like a neo-Nazi. Well, see you next week.’
“Sure thing,” I said.
“Practice,” he said, his back to me, on the way to his car. “Practice, practice.”
I moved down the wheelchair access ramp, through the quad and over the oval. You could hear the clicking of the plague before you even stood on the grass. Tonight we were meeting at Andy’s house and I didn’t have time to drop my stuff at home. We were deciding how we were going to kill the first coon, so I picked up the pace, a cloud of locusts rising up behind me.
“It ought be a beating,” Andy said. “A bludgeoning. With a blunt object. In an alley or a paddock somewhere, and we ought to put him up in a tree after. We ought to make him ugly to scare the other niggers. They have to know what’s coming. We have to take them down a level.”
We had recruited for a month before tonight but only the original three of us showed up to this meeting. A lot of the others lived out of town, in York or Toodyay, and needed to catch buses home immediately after school. They said they’d help with the lynching, the first one, then they became less committed, simply said they hoped it went well. Then we shaved our heads, me and Andy and Michael, and the school started to notice what we were doing, the kids and the teachers, and they didn’t say anything to us anymore. Andy said they’d come back after we did the first one and they saw the power we had, how well we could do it. Our courage would inspire loyalty, he said. Michael agreed, I said nothing. I was quiet in the meetings, held twice weekly in Andy’s dad’s shed.
“Next weekend the niggers will be out in force, swamping our traditional, white Australian celebration of the Avon Descent, the Avon River Festival, and they will spoil it by scaring our little brothers and sisters, fighting them, and stealing their money to buy spirits to drink in front of them.”
Andy liked to say nigger. He said it slowly, held onto the N and fired out the rest. Nnnigger. He liked it because that’s what the original KKK called them. It was a global word, unlike the more Australian boong, which Michael used, and Andy thought of us, in his dad’s shed, 14 years old, drinking the dregs of the Jim Beam Michael stole from his mother, as part of the global white cause.
He had emails of praise from actual Grand Wizards in Texas, Tennessee, Omaha, LA, commending his commitment to white pride, calling him a bright beacon in a dark day. They had not answered Andy’s request for money to start up his own KKK chapter in Northam. They had not told Andy how to make our group fully KKK endorsed. They had not recommended how best to cover our tracks after the first killing. They had not used the word nigger, but Andy was very pleased to get the letters, which called him a young soldier, a prodigy, an intelligent young man.
I couldn’t bring myself to say nigger, opted for the somehow milder coon.
Andy’s dad opened the door to the shed and Michael hid the Beam between his thighs. He saw us and nodded, a cigarette between his fingers, spattered white with paint.
“Take the bin out, Andrew,” he said.
“I will,” Andy said.
“Do it now Andrew.”
“I’ll do it fuckin’ later.”
His dad took a step toward him and bent forward a little, pointing with the finger that also held the smoke.
“You’ll do it now if I have to watch you every step of the way. Now get up away from your fuckin’ friends and take the bin out, please.”
Andy stood up and stormed out. His dad said sorry, boys, and we said no worries. We knew that when he came back Andy would be sullen and the meeting would be over, and while we heard the low rolling of big wheels across the driveway we shared burning swigs of Jim Beam, keen to finish it and be made sick on our manhood. Tomorrow it would be 10 days before we killed a coon.
There was no difference in my demeanour. I was faking Mr Stokes out. He was tired, he was wiping his face, I was his last lesson today, and the other kids practiced less than I did and sucked much more.
“All right, you’re warmed up,” he said. “Let’s have it.”
I was sweet. The wooded sound of the clarinet cut through the haze and the air conditioner hum and the sound of locusts slamming blindly against the outside wall and I was sensuous with it, but a virgin and still I knew that I was, that this was what Mr Stokes meant when he told me about the romance of my instrument.
The piece ended and immediately he said, “Come on!”
“Come on!” he said. “You’ve been practicing. What a fucking relief.”
I couldn’t manage to mask my smile until Mr Stokes went suddenly quietly and downcast. He looked at my head, bald still, fresh shaved in fact, then at my face. There was redness ringing his eyeballs and darkness in his cheeks.
“Peter, I’ve heard some disturbing things,” he said.
I said nothing for a long time, then, “Like?”
“Like what all this,” he waved a pen at my skull, “is about.”
I shrugged.
“What? What’s that mean? Are they true?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Let me be clear: you have started a Ku Klax Klan group in Australia?”
“Yeah,” I said.
He swung back on the rear legs of his chair and wiped his face.
“That is just so… so incredibly stupid. What does this group do?”
“We have meetings,” I said.
“And what do you discuss at these meetings?”
“I dunno,” I said. “White rights. White history.”
“Oh Jesus.”
He stood up and walked to the other side of the room.
“What did you talk about at the last meeting? Just, just out of interest.”
I liked Mr Stokes enough that I briefly considered telling him the truth.
“Why,” I said, “why the media promotes political correctness gone mad.”
He walked back over to me and sat back down.
“And what conclusion did you come to?”
“That… the left has… been successful in promoting its… black armband view of history.”
Mr Stokes hunched forward and held his hands open in the air, toward me, as if poised to throttle.
“Peter, you’re not an idiot,” he said. “I don’t see how you can possibly believe these things you’re saying. But let’s pretend you do, that you’re not going along with this simply because your friends in the small chinned hate brigade told you to. You’ve got to snap the fuck out of it. This little teenaged experiment will land you in trouble, and, and it’s just basically wrong, and we’ve got to go to Perth next weekend and you’ve got to play your piece for the board of examiners. In two years I’ll have been teaching in Northam for ten years and in that decade I wish there to be at least one success story. So, so just stop it, all right? Hm?”
He was sweating, much more than usual.
“Okay Mr Stokes,” I said.
The lesson was over and as I left down the wheelchair access ramp Mr Stokes watched me, smoking a cigarette in plain view.
I had been friends with Shaun in primary school, we sat together in year three and it was one of those things where you just decide to be friends. For three years our ritual was to stay behind after the final siren and play on the H bar, a playground apparatus in the shape of an H with a bar across the top. You stood on the middle bar and swung off it or the side bars or both and landed on your feet in the sand. On the final day of year four I missed the middle bar while falling forward and landed flat on my face, knocked unconscious. Shaun ran to the staff room and after three days in hospital I went back to school and showed him the wound.
“You were so still,” he said. “I thought you was dead, boy.”
Since graduating to high school we had been put in different classes and we fell out of friendship. None of my friends were black anymore, none of his were white. He hung out with Aboriginal kids from our primary school and they walked through the school together and it disgusted Andy the way they did it, so confidently, so above everything, undragged by his hate.
Tonight they wandered the Avon River Festival together, while we watched, and Andy was disgusted again.
“Niggers,” he said.
They bought donuts and walked through the coin games, idly bumped the machines to make the dollar coins drop, were yelled at by the attendant, got bored and walked away from sideshow alley and the rides and down the river. We followed all in black and carried pipes in our hands, me and Michael and Andy, Michael running away once to throw up, coming back sallow and shaky but hand gripped white knuckle tight on his weapon.
We kept a long distance until they came to the mill bridge over the Avon and Shaun’s friends went south while he went north. The bridge was well lit but there were no cars on it, no cars coming from either side. Everybody in town was at the festival. Andy began to jog toward the bridge, still quiet, and I looked at Michael who looked at Andy, wide-eyed, and I set off after Andy at the same pace, keeping my distance, and when he got to the bridge Andy began to ran and I did too, Michael not far behind me, his steps less fluid than ours, sometimes tripping, and he breathed hard, and Andy began to bolt, the pipe banging against the handrail of the bridge, and Shaun turned around and saw Andy and probably me and he didn’t do anything for a second except round around on us briefly before saying “Hey, what you – ” and rounding around again and running away.
He yelled, nothing to us, nothing meaningful, just “Hey,” repeated “Hey, hey, hey” screams, and he was scared and Michael behind me was moaning and breathing weirdly, I’m pretty sure he was crying, and Shaun was much faster than us, would have been even if we weren’t carrying lead pipes, and he made it into Apex Park and into an alley before we got off the bridge.
Andy kept after him, through the park and into the alley, hopelessly outpaced with no way of knowing where Shaun went after that, and I stopped in the park to catch my breath. I turned around and Michael was watching me from the bridge, cheeks shiny with wetness. We gazed for a while, breathing hard, then he dropped the pipe and ran away, back up the bridge. Andy’s steps were inaudible now and I was only five minutes from my house. I dropped the pipe and walked home.
“Well, thank God your hair’s growing back in,” Mr Stokes said, as I stepped into his car. “Genius musician’s a hard sell when you look like you’re prepped for a lobotomy.”
It was a Saturday so he picked me up from home at 8:30 in the morning. My mother waved bye from the verandah in her dressing gown and squinting eyes and we set off down Cody Street, onto Gordon, which would take us to the Great Eastern Highway and onto Perth for my examination. My clarinet case had a chip in it and I picked at it softly for the first few silent minutes.
“The important thing is not to be awed by the occasion,” Mr Stokes said. “But don’t get complacent either. You know the piece well, you’re playing it the way it should be played, it’s a difficult piece so they’ll be impressed, but you still need to let that sense of occasion push you into top gear. Just don’t be awed by it, that’s all.”
He was a nervous driver and hardly ever used his mirrors, darting his head all ways at the turn of every corner. Along Gordon the town was waking up. Tiny flaxen haired girls were pulled viciously along by their gigantic dogs, semi-historical houses were tended by dirt encrusted gardeners, and groups of overweight young men in Jim Beam and Metallica t-shirts walked up hill toward something, punished constantly by the terrible sun.
I had not seen Michael since the night of the festival. Andy called me a few days after and said he’d become introverted, fled all contact with not only Andy but his own family. This, he said, was a good result from our test run – we’d weeded out the weaker element. He said he’d call later to arrange the next meeting but was hiding out at his cousin’s house for a while after smashing a house window with his pipe when he lost Shaun’s trail. I said okay and hung up the phone.
“Anyway, it’s really no big deal,” Mr Stokes said. “If you get it, great, that’s a good opportunity for you. If not, you’re coming along fine on your own. All you really need is someone to tell you to practice.” He looked at me quickly then back at the road. “Would you even like to live in the city?” he said.
“Sure,” I said.
Then we passed the public swimming pool and the agricultural vehicle yard and the camel paddocks, and before us was nothing but trees and fields, and we were well on our way out of Northam.
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| Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
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10:19 am - DON'T YOU DON'T YOU WISH YOU NEVER, NEVER MET HER
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I was in the shower just now pretending to be interviewed for the West Australian's list of most eligible bachelors and I came up with a really accurate answer for the question:
Q: How would you describe your love making style?
A: I make love like a Windows pop up - always asking, "OK or cancel?"
Are you sure you want to continue with a CIRCULAR MOTION? OK? CANCEL?
Well, I wrote a short story for the first time in like 2 years last week, so I'm probably going to post it on here once I've edited it. It didn't take that long hey. I could do like one a week, instantly become the country's most prolific writer of mediocre short stories. My aim at the moment is not to not suck but to just get things done, and maybe I won't suck by the time I'm 30.
I've been getting back into PJ Harvey. 18 is not really a good age for n00b country boys to understand "Lick my legs I'm on fire, lick my legs of desire, I'll tie your legs, keep you against my chest, you're not rid of me, I'll make you lick my injuries." Okay it probably wasn't my country-ness that made me unable to understand that, in fact I'm sure there was plenty "injury licking" in Northam before I left.
Been playing with my bald spot a lot recently and have shaved my beard and have cleaned my room.
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| Sunday, January 21st, 2007
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2:16 pm - he flies through the night looking for a fight but he's back before daylight
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I tend to go around thinking that everyone knows what I'm up to these days so I don't talk about it. This leads to people going "Have you written anything more for the West?" to me which is sort of an absurd question. You have to go, yeah, I work there. It's what I do, it's my job. Understand? Except it's more like "DUH YEAH OF COURSE, MAROON." So in the interest of not yellign at people condescendingly and calling them maroons, and just for the Sunday afternoon hangover I-can't-do-anything-else-ness of it, I thought I'd do a quick catch up.
But first I believe I must put a Beyonce song on and fetch a cup of tea.
There we go.
Anyway, yes I am still working at the West, but no, I don't actually work in the building. So I spend almost all my time in my house, and that is a struggle. To work at the place you live is to have no refuge from two things from which you need to have refuge, so I am currently broadening my personality to both not need refuge so much and to make the places I am in places I want to be in. I guess those two things are pretty much the same, but what I mean is, I'm trying not to need to be away from my house, in general, but I am also trying to make my house easier to be in. I am learning to clean when I think about it, which feeds into acting on things as soon as you think about them, which is a string absent from my bow... is that the saying? And I am learning to recognise things that I don't like about spaces. I didn't know why I didn't like being in our bathroom, then I realised it's because of all the scum, mould, hair, empty tubes of stuff, soap spittle, etc. See what I mean? It's like going from not knowing about art but knowing what you like to knowing about art. Recognising that combs and hair caught in masses of cobweb is gross is knowing about art. Anyway, to get back to the first thing I said, yes, I work at the West, you can catch my things in the music section, on Thursday and Friday. It's a pretty nice place to work, it allows me to be carefree with my time and work at my own pace. Of course I wouldn't like to write the articles that insinuate that aggressive Serbian tennis fans are illegitimate Australians, but I'm okay with writing about bands.
Income from The West pays all my overheads so I don't work anywhere else right now. I am, however, getting something like a review a week on the Mess + Noise website (http://www.messandnoise.com) and something like a feature every four months in their print magazine. That's more of a doing-it-for-the-love thing, they don't pay.
I am also doing a cookbook with Katie. That thing is real, it's an actual cookbook, but it's mainly something to write about Perth bands in. There is also an artist component. We want that to go well so if you'd like to be involved let me know. Uhhh, here's the Myspace, myspace.com/limvcookbook, if for some reason you'd like to know the Myspace. People just assume that you want to know the myspace. See how the WAM awards are being voted on Myspace? A small chunk of Perth's future will be decided by Myspace users. Good work internet. Anyway we got a grant for that which is encouraging, I want to go for millions of grants to do shit like this.
I'm also dabbling in short fiction and I hope to enter a competition a month and write a short story a month this year, then publish that collection at the end of this year. I think that I will write about children in 2007 and in 2008 I will write about romance.
Man I just looked in my bag from last night and there was this huge bottle of white wine in there. Does anyone remember giving me that?
Well speaking of romance I might as well speak about romance. Probably the most intimate relationship I've had ended for the second time a week ago. It was a sad brekaing up but the reasons were good and I haven't been that upset this week, but I got very upset last night, that thing of coming home and not having anyone to come home to or with, not now, probably not for a while. It was a nice time though and I feel like a have a knack for relationships now, where I didn't before. I thought I couldn't do them. Turns out I can. Huzzah! Being back in the field is pretty scary though, especially when you know that if you try you can actually make something happen. Before you could just coast along and do whatever because you knew all you were going to do was pine and make nothing of it, but now you have things to lose. You have prospects! I have some hopes on someone already but it's probably a bit too soon after the other one ended to really go nuts about it, especially when I'm not sure how she feels and I suspect she doesn't feel the way I do, but at the moment it's just nice to make friends who are different from your other friends and just are generally really super. Friends! Superfriends.
I wish there was a way of imparting all that information without using the words I jsut did. Writing tha tparagraph I felt like heaving. But there you are, that's what's going on there.
I wouldn't say I've been out that much, altough I have been going out a bit. I went to Aomplifier last night and it was one of those times where before you knew it it was 5am!
Okay well writing is exhausting at the moment so I think that I will go to the pool before I shower and cool down a bit or something. If I had wishes they'd be to be more charming and to be nicer to my friends who I feel like I'm letting down in various ways and I'm not worried enough about it. okie dokie!
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