Leaps And Bounds

Melbourne

2008-11-28T06:25:00.000-08:00

A friend asked me to write a few thoughts about Melbourne for possible publication. Here's what I wrote.

Melbourne must seem exotic to most parts of the world. But it’s most exotic to the people of Sydney.

The (two) centuries old argument of which is better – Sydney or Melbourne? – continues to this day. We may never have a consensus, but there is something about Melbourne that is like nowhere else in Australia. It’s little wonder that the rest of the country looks at it, and scoffs.

The biggest complaint about Melbourne is the weather. Decades before global-warming became a catch phrase, Crowded House wrote ‘Four Seasons In One Day’ about their adopted hometown. A morning can be so hot, you wish you could be one of those men who walk around without a shirt. That same night you will find your running for shelter as your socks get wetter and wetter. True Melbourners have learnt to ride it out. The rain wont last. The heat will go. The winds will pass. Change is normal for Melbourne.

It’s biggest compliment is the arts. Sydney has the film studios, the record companies, the government and business. But somehow Melbourne has wrangled the nation’s cool. It’s a city where creativity thrives. Cheaper than Sydney, it attracts the young and creative types in droves. And not just from Sydney, but from all over the country, and especially the country side. If your dream goes beyond having a big office in a skyscraper, then Melbourne is the city in Australia that can make that dream come true.

It’s almost an embarrassment of riches. So much so that even the locals will argue amongst themselves about what part of Melbourne is the coolest.

There is the south, by the water, which has St Kilda at it’s heart. A beach and a famous esplanade frames the area. The it follows a curve around the water, an inviting smile that leads you to another smile – a huge clown face that leads you to the tacky yet charming set of carnival rides known as Luna Park.

The south is relaxed. Days in the sun, on the beach or in the parks. Late afternoons in bars, or in the shops along the super wide roads. Even the sidewalks feel like they are too lazy be too close to each other. Then wind down the nights on the rooftops of someone’s terrace as the sun sets. Travel a bit wider in the south to find Prahan, with it’s hip clubs and second hand shops, which ends at the Astor – Australia’s greatest repertoire cinema.

But many would argue that it’s all about the north! The symbolic heart is the suburb of Fitzroy, with the long Brunswick Street full of all manner of shops. A down-home Asian grocery, an indie rock venue, an up-market pizza joint, an adult book shop – most likely in a row. And hey, why not have some street art that double as benches? It’s where the Melbourne art scene comes to show off it’s colours. Writers, musicians, students and more mingle in the cafes where you can barely find a seat that’s not covered with pamphlets and flyers.

Fitzroy at night is not as glamorous as some places but there is that Very Melbourne thing of choice. If you’re bored of the gallery opening, just wander down to the club that’s having a Japanese noise band night, or watch a local band at any second bar, or find a chilled little wine bar to melt away the hours. Sure, it’s a little pretentious, and maybe even a little proud of it. But it leaves the rest of us looking in, and only a hard heart will not have some sense of curiosity.

The north spreads out too. The Italian area, which has Lygon Street at it’s heart, has some of the best Pasta in Australia if not the world. And the art house cool of Fitzroy has started to drift north into suburbs like Northcote.

But it’s the area known as the City that is the heart of Melbourne. It’s a perfectly set grid – no winding roads here. This perfect grid with the big shops, and then smaller streets with smaller, cooler shops. I’ve spent so much time in Melbourne, but I could walk through a few thoroughfares, turn into an alley here, turn right that way, turn around there, and find myself lost. In the best way. Might as well sit yourself in a little cafe, or check out that little elegant bookshop. You’ll find your way out.

But getting a bit lost is the best way to explore. One of my favourite record shops (Basement Discs) is actually in a basement, below a cafe. My favourite cafe (Cookie) is above a second had record shop. You could walk right past my favourite Italian place without noticing it at all. I’m always being taken up some stairs, around a corner, to somewhere both literally and figuratively off the beaten path.

There are big things in the City too. The big shopping strip which is Bourke St runs through the heart of the City. Somehow they managed to squeeze a world class University, a seedy Red Light district and a Chinatown in there somewhere. Not to mention thousands of tourists.

Best of all, the City has yet to turn into a collection of faceless office buildings – although some parts of it are getting close. But it’s hard to imagine them knocking down the old train stations, the old theatres, the old expensive hotels. It’s part of Melbourne’s character. Again, it’s ever changing. You’ll find an old stone bank building next to a flashy new age sneaker shop, and back again.

And there is so much more. Just outside of the City lies two big stadiums. One is the classic Melbourne Cricket Ground (although you’d call it the MCG). The new and controversial culture park that is Federation Square. And the whole city is linked by the most Melbourne of Australian icons – the tram. It’s slow, it’s frustrating, it’s always full. But if you need to go somewhere and a tram doesn’t take you there, then you probably don’t really need to go there.

Oh, and a big ugly casino. And a murky river. And an international racing course. It’s all in there somewhere, all before you really reach the identical looking suburbs that belong to Melbourne in name, but never in style.

Maybe Melbourne doesn’t have the easy wins that a city usually has. No world famous structures. No great historical resonance. No big business mecha. But what it lacks in the One Big Reason to go, it gives back in the hundreds of smaller reasons. Any given day in Melbourne can be completely different from the next. Depends which way the wind blows, or maybe there will be no wind at all. Change, after all, is normal for Melbourne.

Australia - The Game

2008-11-24T03:43:00.000-08:00

So it takes this to inspire me to write

Australia - the Game.

Yes, it's a viral game about Australia, made to promote Australian tourism and Baz Luhrmann's new film.

I refuse to let my home be driven to stereotype. Bad enough that the Ozmusic stand at conventions have blow up kangaroos. Luhrmann, how I have hated you for years, but this takes the cake.

When I grew up in Oz, I did not get raised on a farm. I remember the bicentennial, in '88, and promoting of Australia as multicultural and modern. Larrikin culture, although having a place in our history, is as dated as the drunken Irish or pencil moustaches on Frenchmen. We used to be proud of our pacific nature. We used to be proud to be a young country, making our mark, with little burden of history.

Howard did more than anyone else to destroy this, and he brought back the white Australian Policy in culture if not in law. Australia is stuck - there's no racial minorities on Neighbours or Home And Away, nothing in our culture that reflects us. It's just an easily digested cliche.

The game has a Drover (as one newspaper put it, that's Aussie-speak for Cowboy), chasing cattle around. Oh, what to do, for that country I love so much. Rehional Australia is dying a slow death. I've heard some commentators say this this summer will make or break. More farmers are packing it up, the culture is dying. And someone has put a $130 million bet that tourism is the answer?

There's so many problems here. Someone has to save the outback for one. But that is such a huge issue.

Australia's cultural image is still stuck in the past, and doesn't reflect the 85% of the population who do not live on an cattle ranch in Kimberley. Yes, the Australian sun burnt landscape is lovely, but it's really nothing but cool looking dirt. What about the culture, and the people.

The two films that most spurred on tourism in my time is Notting Hill and Amelie. Both were small stories, and love letters to something particular about a culture. Both were modern. And yes, both were cleaned up, idealised versions too. But both are also great movies (kind of) beyond their postcard nature. There was at least a plot.

Australia needs help. And maybe all is not lost. This could be the prog rock before the punk. Maybe it will inspire a generation of Australian film makers, writers, musicians, actors, painters and people to not sell a cheapened version of our culture. Fuck pandering to the cliche, I'm going to tell my story.

Anyway - enjoy the game. If you like driving cattle.

Danny

Test

2008-07-07T12:15:00.000-07:00

Hello?

You only know where you are when you move

2008-07-03T05:34:00.000-07:00

Start of summer has meant a lot of travelling of late. So much to say, and really, no time to do it. New York was amazing. Boston was heart warming. And me, I am tired.

I came back to a day of paint balling. Who knew pain could be so painful? Short trips, long trips, all sorts of random business to get me through the summer. My first year here, I sat around in Summer, wondering how everyone else got so organised. This year I'm getting there.

Again, no real point, just checking in.

7 and 7 is

2008-05-22T08:18:00.000-07:00

A friend told me once, and it’s stuck with me, that men go through crises every 7 years.

Not saying that I’m going through a crisis (any more than usual) but as I approach 28, it’s been on my mind.

28 is a bit of a nothing age.

A bunch of us get married and have kids. A bunch of us start really making good strides professionally. You may lose one or two on the way. This looks like it will happen every few years ago. Maybe it’s just a big circle from here on in.

So is it true this crisis happens? At age 7? I don’t remember. 14 – puberty. A given. Rough times all round I think. 21? Sure. Leaving the safety of home and childhood notions of things. It’s scary.

But 28?

Is this related to what is known as the 27 club? Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Brian Jones are the most famous. But lets not forget Chris Bell of Big Star, a band I adore. D. Boon too. All haunted men. And to look at a photo of any of them, men I respect and admire, and to think that in any of those photos they are younger than me. Just weird.

Australian author David Malouf talked about a different 7 year theory in his book Johnno. In it, the title character explains how the human body completely regenerates itself every 7 years. All the cells that make you up, none of them are more than 7 years old. For Johnno, this means it will only take him 7 years to shit every part of Brisbane out of himself.

So is that a part of it? It’s because you’re someone new, all over again? Like a mini-version of Saturn’s return. Maybe you’re born again, every 7 years.

The last really odd ting for me about 28 is that there’s a song I love from ten years ago, about being 28 (by Tim Rogers). Funny how the 18 year old me heard that song, and silently became it. I guess I’ll be fully formed next year…

Danny

Since Page One

2008-05-21T06:38:00.000-07:00

The BBC has just announced Steven Moffat will be taking over Doctor Who in 2010. It’s amazing how this guy keeps popping back into my life every so often.

I would be a different person if not for watching Press Gang when I was young. The story of teenage kids that ran their own newspaper, it was full of great plot twists, fantastic dialogue and…in Spike and Linda…shaped all my young notions of courtship and love. Every 4:30pm I would come home from school and turn to the ABC, and catch up with my friends at the Junior Gazette.

(Favourite episodes: At Last A Dragon – Spike and Linda’s first date. The Rest Of My Life – Spike is caught in a building explosion. The Last Word – when a kid with a gun invades the Junior Gazette. Day Dreams – an imaginary future for the team.)

I didn’t know anything about Steven Moffat at the time. I didn’t know that every episode was written by the same guy. I didn’t know that the vision he had also led to many awards being won. I just loved the show. It was easily my favourite show at the time, as a kid, and it inspired a teenage me.

Many years later, almost ten years later, I came across a show on late night ABC called Coupling. It was an energetic and exciting sit-com about 6 friends, and the adventures of finding a partner in your twenties. The dialogue was super smart, and the show format was inventive – one episode was a split screen all the way through. Another was the same nine and a half minutes repeated 3 times from different perspectives.

It made a big impact on me, at that time in my life. I bought all the DVDs and watched them all. And this is where I realized that the guy who wrote this show was the guy responsible for Press Gang. The similarities were there. The dialogue, the inventiveness of the form, and most importantly the romance.

(Favourite episodes: The Man With Two Legs – Jeff falls in love but ends up telling her that he’s an amputee. Split – Steve and Susan break up, leading to a battle of the sexes over a split screen. Naked – Jeff’s birthday becomes a disaster. Nine And A Half Months – the finale, and a baby.)

Friends and I used the terms pioneered in this show. The Sock Gap. A girl I could not get out of my life, we called her the Unflushable. As I was going out more and meeting more people, all those odd encounters, faux pas, and miscommunications were so well portrayed in Coupling.

He has written four episodes of Doctor Who, and they are easily the best four. The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances won so much acclaim – a kid wearing a gas mask in WWII, the introduction of Captain Jack and all sorts of goodies. The Girl In the Fireplace was such an intricate, beautiful love story that crosses time and space (with lovely French-ness) and finally Blink, which barely had the Doctor at all, but the most brilliant villains (don’t blink!).

By all accounts Moffat’s always been a big fan, and it’s heartwarming for me to see this man, who has brought me so much happiness, getting his dream. The point of all this, I guess, is that I feel this way at all. I feel like I’ve known Steven Moffat for so long. He was there when I met Linda Day and courted her. He was there when I got trapped under that building. He was there when I made a fool of myself in a bar with a pretty girl. He was there when I fought clockwork mechanical soldiers in the far flung future (ahem).

Anyway, good work old friend. Looking forward to seeing you quite a bit more.

Danny

Strum

2008-05-18T15:15:00.001-07:00

So if you're wondering why this blog is so blank, it's because I have been focusing my writing energies on other things. One of which is the online revival of Strum, my old zine. Although revival may be a generous term.

This blog is by no means dead. I have some new pieces of the boil...

But check out Strum and tell me what you think...

Presently

2008-04-13T14:44:00.000-07:00

I have not written for a while. Here's what's going on.

+ I have resigned from my current job and will be starting a new job
+ Doctor Who has restarted and it's terribly exciting.
+ Winter is over. We had some snow, now the nights feel like they don't end. It's great.
+ I am still in love with REM's Accelerate.
+ Have decided that Creedence Clearwater Revival were the greatest band ever.
+ Spending a lot of my Sunday afternoons listening to podcasts - Enough Rope, NPR Fresh Air, Sound Opinions, Prairie Home Companion are my favourites. I can imagine this quirk of listening to my talk shows will last me well into old man-ville.
+ Just tonight I've decided to give up trying to plow through the religious pompous crap that is the Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho.
+ So, I moved onto a book about the founding of Google. Once again, computers are the new Rock 'n' Roll.
+ French lessons have begun again. I actually think I'm doing ok. Don't ask me to say anything.
+ Watched Millions recently and wonder why I ever gave up on Danny Boyle.
+ Catching up with my movies - Sideways, Little Miss Sunshine and more...
+ Saw 'Jersey Boys'. Need to do more of that stuff.
+ Very much loving Popdose.com, especially columns like 'When Good Albums Happen To Bad People'.
+ Started mucking around with Muxtape
+ Was good to see a lot of people after SXSW. Looks like this will be an annual thing.
+ Desperately trying to catch up with everyone.
+ Not been keeping up with the blog. Actually, I have been. I have been writing but not finished many things. Will do soon.
+ I'd say, 7 out of 10.

Danny
London

I Like What They Say

2008-02-24T15:22:00.000-08:00

I saw Nada Surf play at the Scala this week.

Their 2002 album ‘Let Go’ has been a constant companion. I love a lot of music, but this is one of the very few records that I am always listening to.

My friend Simon gave me this album out of nowhere. He had an advance copy, and he’s one of those older guys who I always admired. He had not just great personal taste, but he could nail what records you would like with just a few simple questions. And he got this one so right.

I wrote a few months ago about Pet Sounds, and that funny relationship you have with an album you have known for many years. Not a record you loved for a while then went back to. But one where you know all the parts. When the band played Inside of Love this week, and that tinkly guitar part before that big last chorus kicked in, it felt like home.

The other odd thing about this record is that it has meant so many different things t me over the years. It started as a record for unhappy times. Lots of listening to this record in the dark, smoking my eyeballs out, feeling pretty crap. Then it became a dark party record. Songs like Happy Kid and Hi-Speed Soul were the soundtrack to my first steps towards being really, really decadent (in my own way). Sitting at a corner at Death Disco while they played another shit Strokes song, and then just giving into the moment. Those upbeat songs ran through my head in those moments. Later on, I decided to rip off this album in any way I could in my own band.

Even the individual songs have flip flopped over the years. Take ‘Inside Of Love’. It’s sadness was well soaked up by me when a relationship that meant a lot to me dissolved to nothing. And then shortly after, when I met a girl who also loved this album, it became a hymn of hope.

(And again, I hopelessly ripped off the riff to this song for own of my own.)

I told everyone I could about this record. I worked for the record company that was distributing this album in Australia, and every few weeks I would order another bunch of copies and just give it away. I paid good money for it on vinyl (with an alternate tracklisting – the record collector in me had a nerdgasm), and downloaded plenty of bootlegs.

They have a new album out. It’s called ‘Lucky’, and it’s been 6 years since Let Go. And I find it funny how many people ask me what I think about it. Even seeing Barry and Casey in Sydney, over a few beers, we had to get back and talk about this record. It’s just a part of my life, of our lives.

Lately, this record has come to be something quite soothing to me. With not a lot of drama in my life, it’s become a warning of traps I fell into in the past. If that makes any sense. It’s just interesting that this album has changed again.

Its also interesting when I think of the time I loved that record for the first time, there were other albums that I loved. Weezer’s Pinkerton. Belle And Sebastian’s If You’re Feeling Sinister. Even Wilco’s Being There, what I consider to be my favourite album…according to my ipod I have not listened to some songs on that album in over a year.

So that’s me and Let Go. I don’t really care if anyone else ever discovers this album. It doesn’t really appear on many greatest albums lists. But I’m thinking this is probably my new favourite album.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_Go_(Nada_Surf_album)

http://nadasurf.com/

Danny

My heart won't stop

2008-02-20T18:19:00.001-08:00

I am so tired. I've had a biggish night of dinner and laughing at a tv, some walking and of course a long day at work. I am utterly exhausted.

And I can't sleep. It's 2am, and I have been lying here for three hours.

When I close my eyes my brain still feels wide awake. Maybe it's something on my mind, but this is usually the case anyway.

Its really quite horrible. My body is not in anyway wired. In fact, I barely want to get out of bed to get water or anything. I'm wasted. Yet I know I'm not sleeping.

This happens every so often. A lot less in the past year, but still several times a year. And I've eaten well today. No coffee since this morning. No soft drinks at all. Even had a glass of wine with dinner that should be soothing me. It's not.

I even yawn. My eyes don't want to stay open. My arms and legs sag, like bean bags in their own funny way. But the vicious circle is I'm trying hard to be relaxed. And after several minutes and I just have to toss and turn a bit. And we're back at the bottom of the hill.

How do you sleep? Who teaches you? I vaguely remember primary school, and the counting sheep trick. That has never worked for me. how do you relax when you have trouble sleeping? Even more cosmetic things like pillows and what to wear. On your side, or on your back? No one teaches us. So I'm just guessing. I would like to know how my hair gets the way it is come morning.

So writing this has wasted some more minutes. The rest of the night will pan out like this. Around 3, 3:30, I will get really annoyed I'm not asleep. I will roll around and just try and force myself to plateau out. Around 4:30 I will start feeling really guilty about tomorrow and start trying to convince my body that it will be hurting tomorrow, that we have like four hours left. By 5:30 I will be thinking I might as well lie here for a bit longer and then go straight to work, nuking my system with coffee to get by.

Then by 6 I will fall asleep, and wake to my normal alarm, and feel like hell.

I can't even do anything. I can't read. I can't listen to music. That is commiting myself to no sleep. I have to hope that somehow, some way, I will sleep very soon. I can't miss it when it happens.

So I better get back to it. This could be the moment.

Danny

Everybody here comes from somewhere

2008-02-17T11:52:00.001-08:00

The new single by REM, Supernatural Superserious, is fantastic.

Biases on the table time. I’m a huge REM fan. I can’t think of the moment where this band got me. At my age, they were already all over the radio by the time I was aware of them. The One I Love, End Of the World, Losing My Religion, Everybody Hurts, Man on the Moon, What’s the Frequency…all songs that were such a part of my language that I never had to study it. I just picked up being an REM fan.

The last couple of records have had moments of beauty, but were generally uneven. They were downbeat, folky and overall dragged on a bit. But the promise of the new album Accelerate is that’s it’s back to rock. The single certainly harks back to Monster era R.E.M.

It really taps into what I love about REM. It’s a thrill ride of guitars and hooks. It’s a song for everyone, with a dash of sentimentality and hope. It hints at what I really love about the albums by the Hold Steady of late. That even a small life should be separated.

The whole thing is over in just over three minutes. We’ve had a stadium winning riff, a brilliant opening line, and a revitalised band crashing into a song. There’s the Peter Buck guitar. Mike’s flawless harmonies. A killer chorus, that riff again, and an ending as wonderful and mysterious as anything they’ve ever done before. Supernatural, superserious? I have no idea what Stipe is on about.

There’s no words to describe it. It’s been a while since I have listened to a song over and over on repeat, like I have with this song. And it’s no “Good Vibrations” or anything. But for me, this is the meat and potatoes of what makes me a music fan. The sustenance I keep returning to.

I can’t wait to hear it live. Stipe, looking over all of us, in the wasteland.

You gotta hear it.

Danny
London

PS. Terrible clip though

Quit this crazy scene

2008-02-11T15:32:00.001-08:00

This is the counter argument.

I am in a very, very small town in Germany. My guide tells me you can walk from one side to the other.

Its a cool little modern place. All the mod cons. It reminds me of my though that I won't move back to Sydney but to Perth, or Brisbane. Younger, smaller, cooler.

This place revolves around simpler things. A horse riding festival. The tragedy of an old lady being hit by a truck this morning is on everyone's mind.

This is community. Walking down the road and seeing people you know. Shopkeepers that say hello.

So. International city vs. Small town. Tough call.

Danny
Cologne

In (possible) Germany

2008-02-11T09:26:00.001-08:00

I'm in Cologne.

This place is not new to me as an idea. I even thought I might come here years ago. Now it's something else.

I am thinking of the David Malouf idea that your body regenerates itself entirely in 7 years. So the person I was seven years ago, all the things I did, I should have shat that all out.

A hair in the sink is a memory. I like this idea. A new person every seven years. Slowly though.

Some things have, or are coming to an end, in my life of late. I'm thinking of new things to fill it with.

Anyway not much to report other than here I am in Cologne. Doesn't mean much to you I'm sure. but I'm in Cologne and ready for new things.

Danny

The Internationalist

2008-02-10T12:20:00.000-08:00

I have a dream that one day I will see a truly internationalist city.

London does pretty well. This weekend has been, just for example, I went down to Soho to see Chinese New Year’s festivities. I met people in an Irish bar and had Vietnamese noodles on Greek St. Got some Indian takeaway for dinner. Spent some time in a comic book shop, which is the most American thing I can think of. It was Waitangi Day (or New Zealand Day) this last week. I’m off to Germany tomorrow.

The most Australian moment was listening to my podcasts and catching up with Andrew Denton’s Enough Rope. He talked to Lindsay Fox about trying to save Ansett. And Jimmy Barns and John Swan, about growing up poor in Adelaide.

I’m still doing French lessons, and downloaded the trailer to The Diving Bell And the Butterfly. And, of course, British things everywhere. Oh, and my whiskey is from Scotland. And Isabelle is in Belgium. And I looked at an Italian suit.

I’ll stop making lists now and get to my point.

My point is, wouldn’t it be great if the best of this, was what the world is like? Or maybe some parts of the world.

Because I don’t like that Star-Trek-y vision of the future where everyone dresses the same. Even though there are all sorts of races and creeds, everyone is the essentially the same. Boring.

I always took languages for granted in school. Now I wish I was forced to learn them a bit more. At the Indian place, I wish I could order food in Indian. Just a few phrases.

So imagine a large cosmopolitan city with a flavour of everything. All races mixing, mingling. The best of everything – great food from all cultures. A place you can get an authentic Irish stew in one place, Wasabi peas next door. Every book shop and CD store has foreign language sections as a given. Not just America and Britain. Your average pop culture fan should know the big stars in Swedish cinema. Churches of all kind. All that stuff.

There are reasons against this. I love fact France, and Paris especially, has laws that has stopped big corporations building big nasty skyscrapers. But my history is I was born in a Commonwealth colony of China, and grew up in Australia, a multi-cultural society (we used to be proud of that…). I’ve had a taste of mixed culture overload. I want more. And I don’t feel strongly aligned with anything, so I want a taste of everything.

I got an email today, a general one, from our Israeli office, with a review of an album from Israel’s biggest music web site. Isn’t that great?

I feel like things like the Euro, budget airlines and the Internet are bringing us closer. I can’t wait to see what kind of world my kids grow up in. Dare I dream this world might actually turn out great?

Danny
The Earth

The Emotional Middle Class

2008-02-04T16:11:00.000-08:00

We are the spoiled.
The emotional middle classes.
With our minds in the washer,
And our heads up our asses.

When there’s so much to be doing
But we just stay indoors
Taking things as a sign
When they never mean more.

Circling around the airport
We are never going to land
Because our feet can’t touch the ground
Til someone understands.

We should be animals!
We should be engines!
We should not be worried
About the centres of attention.

But we are spoiled
The time in our mind passes
As if it has all day
The emotional middle classes.

Show Me the Money

2008-01-16T05:53:00.000-08:00

At the moment, Guy Hands, the newest owner of EMI, in unveiling his new plan for the company. He will cut 2000 jobs, refocus on A&R, rewrite the model to attract more revenue from touring and merchandise, and do away with things like advances* (in favour of a reward system) and even management structure throughout the world.

There is a lot I can say about why this model is insane. But the point is - EMI don't sell CDs. They sell artists. And yet their whole plan is about making more money of the artists' output, than investing in the artist.

So you have a company that has no staff left to take care of the artist, and a very public backlash from the major artists, and they expect to sign new bands for less money and ask them to give EMI more ways to make money off them?

Laughable.

Worse still, this could kill EMI. And it’s smaller, more famous labels. Parlophone, who had the Beatles. Capitol, home of Sinatra, Beach Boys and Crowded House (also the Beatles in the US). Virgin Records. Hands will either sink it, or turn them into corporate brands like Paramount.

So maybe I’m being a stick in the mud here. Yes, I’m biased. I’m a big fan of the old labels. They loom large in my legend. Mo Ostin is my hero the same way Bob Dylan is my hero. My interests in music extends past the sound, to the culture of it all. Album covers to radio stations, great music venues to musicians favourite films. To me that’s all part of the rich tapestry of being a music fan.

I also played in bands for a long time. And in a funny twist, I hated marketing anything I was involved with. When it came to playing music, any thoughts about leaking tracks or viral campaigns (let alone corporate sponsorship and digital royalties) were not anything I gave a shit about. I didn’t start writing songs so I could make my childhood dreams come true of assigning ISRC codes to tracks.

(Fuck, I didn’t even like mastering)

And I know a lot of people in bands, and want to be in bands. And I have conversations with those people. And we all want to make money, but we all want to play music. Its common for a band who has some audience to take a low advance for higher royalties. REM did that back almost 20 years ago. Are EMI going to try and convince bands to take the money over exposure? Where does that lead them on their second album?

It’s the problem with the Radiohead model. They made more money than ever, but sold less albums. Sure, they do more than enough of both to survive. But so many bands don’t. And will Radiohead continue to lose their audience now?

But at the heart of this is the philosophical argument for me. I work in the industry of music. There is a ‘coolness’, an un-attainability. A credibility, at heart, to put out music to the world. And by the world, I mean taxi drivers, nurses and kids in the suburbs, not what the Indies are doing.

This could all come from the fact I watched Jerry Maguire recently. And yes, he went for the money. But the success came with the personal touch. Investing in your artist – taking the risk together. You have to protect, as well as exploit, your artists. But artists don’t work for the record company. The record company works for the artist. And EMI is going on about putting artists on a salary.

Strange comment alert: the music industry is a beautiful thing. When it works. Elvis Costello’s career was so well managed. He had a talented artwork person behind him. Great label. Good manager. And they rode the pipes to a degree of superstardom. Now he plays around the world all the time. There arer so many, many positive stories. The Zombies in America scoring a hit with Time Of the Season. Drums on Sound Of Silence. Musicians having a sympathetic circle around them can only lead to good.

The general consensus seems to be: from the music industry – shock and disgust. From the two guys in the Indie sector – joy. From the business sector – loud applause. Time will tell. I hope he doesn’t destroy EMI, but if I was a betting man I would be betting he will.

Today is not a good day for music.

Danny

Other points to note.

Hands, from an investment background, is sending out a lot of press to the business side of newspapers. It is, of course, great copy in that section of the paper. If a company like, say, Motorola, can cut staff and costs, in actually encourages people to do business with them. The same cannot be said in music. Why would a band sign to you if you have no support staff or money? It’s a really fundamental error there.

Guy Hands has done an interview where he claims to have paid £40 for the In Rainbows box set. His credibility is paper thin. Geez. Doesn’t he know that what we deal in is credibility? That is number 2 from music. That’s image. Idiot.

* Advances. Bands get ‘advances’, that is, a sum of money, that is paid back to the record company through album sales. It can come in all sorts of ways. A recording advance is simply a label putting up the money for studio time. Tour advances is when a label puts up the money for a band to go on tour. The most talked about advances at the moment is the signing advance. When you sign a band, you usually give them an advance. There is DEFINITELY a side of it where it’s a back slap, but essentially, it’s money for the band to live on. Buy some new guitar strings, get a haircut, don’t worry about where your next meal is coming from, you concentrate on doing what we are paying to be.

It is, essentially, NHS/Medicare for musicians.

We shared some history, this town and I

2008-01-13T14:11:00.001-08:00

There’s a bit of catching up to do on this thing.

The last few months have been up and down. There was a big issue at work that almost made me walk away. Emergency passed, but I’ll be frank; it shook me up. More than anything it was because my happy little bubble of being in London got truly burst.

Life picked up again and I spent some weeks at home.

I have so much to say about Australia. So much. Friends. Family. Elections. Houses. Music. Life.

I loved my time there. My friends (who let’s face it, are still the only people who might be curious enough to be reading this). But there was such a feeling of leaving things unsaid.

The song that comes to mind is Flame Trees by Cold Chisel. It’s such a great song. I felt like the only tourist in town. Visiting where others live. A strange pinch in the gut when conversations would lead to things happening after I’ve gone. Get togethers I wouldn’t be a part of, gigs coming up…etc.

So, not shitcanning anyone or anything here, but since I’ve been back, the common question is, of course, ‘how was Australia?’

I’m not sure what to say. It wasn’t, clearly, a three week concentration of the best things I could ever do in Sydney, slipped right back in and lived like a king. And that’s not anyone’s fault.

The really odd thing upon returning is how much THE question, the ‘how was Australia?’ question, is asked with sympathy over here. It’s more a sense of ‘did you get through it?’.

I feel like, I barely did. I got to see a lot of people – but not enough. I wasted a lot of time. I got pretty stressed to the point of intense sickness. All the places I couldnt wait to go back to, didn’t feel like home. Everyone says I’d be surprised how little changes. But I was more put off by the small changes that did happen.

It’s not a new feeling, I’m sure. Flame Tree alone nails it, and nailed it a good 20 years before I felt it. The saving grace is the words from someone I didn’t know very well, sharing a cigarette in the London cold, telling me it gets easier. It’s just odd, and completely unexpected, that Sydney would not be easy.

The one practical lesson that floats up immediately is to not do things for old times sakes. The townie was a bit depressing. Where as seeing friends new houses and things seemed very exciting. Still, it felt like I’ve arrived very late at a party, and I’m far too many drinks behind to catch up.

I love Sydney. I spent a surprising amount of time on my own, though not by choice. Stuck somewhere or other and I found myself wandering through a lot of old haunts. The sun setting whilst walking through Camperdown Memorial Park one day. Walking over the Harbour Bridge. Even Parramatta, the crazy expanding Borg Ship that is Parramatta.

I was pretty inspired by it all, an there is something I want to say about all that stuff. Like I said, I have a lot to say about Australia and I’m writing a lot of it down.

So since being back, it’s been pretty normal up and down of pretty normal life. Christmas was, well, it happened. New year’s was good, an nicely sensible. Back at work and very busy. I was already working last January, and for the first time in London, looking over the cold Winter of Kensington, I think, here I am again.

Which is all a pretty long way of saying, not much to report. Things are… fine.

Love, Power And Responsibility

2008-01-03T19:34:00.000-08:00

An Open Letter To Joe Quesada

I wanted to write about your editorial decision to separate Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson in the Spiderman comics.

You have made many claims that a single Spiderman is a better Spiderman. It gets more into the core of the character. The struggler. The melodrama. The soap opera. By making Peter single again, it will tap into the golden spirit of Spiderman.

Fuck the golden era of Spiderman.

If you were to retell those golden stories now, it would be a dated pile of shit. Terribly ham fisted plots, one dimensional characters and cheap pulp novel dialogue. We really, really, need to say goodbye to the Stan Lee era of comics. The era when comics were made for an unsophisticated child audience. Because that is no longer your audience.

You can’t expect to turn back time and get Paul McCartney to wear a Beatles wig and write you a new Can’t Buy Me Love. You can’t expect Dylan to write another Times They Are A-Changin’. And you can’t change the modern Peter Parker into the nerdy, struggling teenager, being terrorised up by Flash Thompson (or some updated version).

There is a unique quality of comic book serials that is, as far as I’m aware, unwritten about. That is it’s strange use of time over a long period. Batman is 70 next year, yet still has a decent set of abs. It’s something that cannot happen in TV shows, as people age. And I can’t think of anything other than comics where you have characters that survive continuously for 50 year plus without “aging”.

But not aging doesn’t mean not changing. Superman was a villain when he started. Over the years, talented writers and artists refined him into the classic image of him. They introduced kryptonite years later. Perry White. The bird/plane line. Then the up, up and away line. The whole Smallville thing. Then Supergirl came a long.

Superman is such a great example, actually. Because in so many ways, the public view of him is frozen in that first, Richard Donner directed Superman movie. The phone booth. The glasses. Lois and Jimmy. But so much has happened to the character since. On an adventure level – the dude DIED. On a personal level, he shares his secret with Lois. Characters have to grow.

And Spiderman is no exception. If, as you claim, that the core of what sets Peter Parker apart from Batman and Superman is the secret identity side, that Peter is dealing with the true struggles of life behind the mask, then I don’t see why that has to change when he’s married.

A good writer, and there are many, can turn the Batman/Robin relationship into a powerful drama. A man with HUGE parental issues trying to be the guardian of an angry, reckless kid? There is a wealth of stories here.

I’ve never been married, but I can imagine dealing with life is not necessarily easier. And think of all the great modern fiction about married couples, as they struggle to make their marriage work. Set that to the backdrop of “great power comes with great responsibility”. Drama. Struggle. Soap Opera.

In the end, I don’t think you have a bad premise. You have a bad approach to writing. There are no bad stories, just stories badly told. And having no good stories for a married Spiderman is not going to help you find them for a single Spiderman. You can’t use a 64 track recording studio with a one track mind. And stop looking to the Stan Lee era to solve your problem.

Why do I care so much?

Because I love, more than Peter Parker (the name of my first ever band too), I love Mary Jane. I love that relationship. I grew up with it. I fell in love with it. As a teenager, reading the comics, it was (as I’m sure was the writers intention) how I felt about girls, right there in four colour. And I followed it all, rooted for Parker all the way. And when they got together, it meant a lot to me. It made me, lets face it, think about Love.

(And yeah, OF COURSE it’s fictional. Yes. It’s just a character. So was Dumbledore. And it was pretty sad when he died, wasn’t it? So shut it.)

So seeing you piss on that, Mr Quesada, all those good times I spent disappearing into that world, is sickening to me. It’s like finding out that those love songs I love were written and performed with indifference.

And think of all the writers who poured their own hearts, and their own stories, into Peter and Mary’s. But you’re the Editor In Chief of Marvel Comics and I’m not. But I’ve lived through many of you, and someone will come along and correct this. I lived with John Howard for 11 years. I can wait this one out.

And even if it never happens, you wont be able to rewrite the history in my mind. When I think of Peter Parker, I will think that he loves Mary Jane Watson, and she loves him right back. Always.

Danny
London

You’re kidding yourself cos everything else is old

2007-12-31T10:50:00.000-08:00

I really loved the song “The World Is Outside” by Ghosts this year.

One of the things I get from the song is that, well, as the title of the song says, the world is outside. Get out of your inner head and get out there. (This could be totally wrong in terms of their intention for the song, but it’s the meaning I’ve applied to it, and if anything, it’s more valid than their’s.)

It’s been on my mind a lot lately, the way people get stuck in their own heads. Especially at this time of year. It’s a reflective time. So reflective, it seems, that this time of year there is a spike in the number of suicides.

So it’s New Year’s Eve, around 6:30pm, and I’m just milling about. We’re getting to go out. I’m actually trying to not get reflective. What good does it do?

This year was what it was. Oh, I can give you platitudes, if you want platitudes. It had it’s ups, right? It had it’s downs. Oh, big changes. Oh, how some things stay the same. Yadda yadda, bullshit bullshit. You only find out what you already know. That’s why they call it reflection.

For the longest time, I never realised that the first couple of lines in Auld Lang Syne were supposed to be questions. I always took it as statements, or better yet, instruction. Old acquaintances SHOULD be forgotten. They should never be brought to mind. I always thought this was harsh. But again, I apply my own meanings to things, and I think, right on. Let’s look forward to the future shall we? Can’t let old ghosts drag you down.

“The World Is Outside” makes reference to the last Monday in January being regarded as the most depressing day of the year (at least, in cold countries). I remember hearing this on the radio last year when it happened (ha, there I go with the reminiscing). And I remember Tim telling me, a few days after arriving around this time last year, how depressing winter is here.

But all the happiness in the world is outside. It’s all there, to be grabbed, hugged, kissed and drunk. I wish it was midnight right now. Fly, little hours, fly.

New Year’s is a funny time. No two ways about it. But it’s a door, not a room. And I’ve spent a year in this room and I don’t want to look at it anymore. It’s done. I wont ever be back.

Let’s see what’s behind door 2008.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Danny
London

1. Making It, Whatever That Means

2007-12-29T17:52:00.001-08:00

1. Favourite Worst Nightmare – Arctic Monkeys

Lets look at it this way. Two years ago, my favourite album was a piano album by a dude pushing 40, about kids, loss and growing old. Last year, it was a record by guy 6 albums in, an adult pop record about maturity and love.

This year, my favourite record is by bunch of kids barely 21, rocking the fuck out. It’s a good example of how my life has changed in the last year.

But firstly, the record. So much better than the first, it is one of the best rock albums I’ve ever heard. This is the best band in the world on almost all the levels that matter to me. Let’s tear it apart.

Musicianship. Top notch. They remind me of Uncle Tupelo and Minor Threat, those bands I loved so much in the past. Early twenties working class kids who just PLAYED. Drummer Matt Helders can handle all the freaky changes, the math rock stuff, sudden stops and starts. For pure, grinding musicianship alone, they belong in the pantheon of bands like Fugazi, Minutemen and all. And the devil is in the details. The hint of a riff here, and pause there. Changing rhythms every chorus. Build ups. Slow downs. It is an absolute masterclass of musicianship. No band their age is even close to them in this field.

Songs. If it was just the playing, it would make them a great technical band. Which is great. I love bands like that. Like, the Grateful Dead. It’s all about the execution. But you will never catch the Arctic Monkeys bashing out a four chord rock thing. Stunning riffs. Great changes. I spend all my time listening to songs, and I cannot tell you where these compositions are going. Opener and first single Brianstorm opens with surf drums and fuzz guitar before cutting into the song proper. Then it ends and comes back with the intro for no reason. Well, the reason is because it’s a fucking cool bit.

And for the first time ever, they throw in a ballad, the Only Ones Who Know. And instead of Cast No Shadow, it’s this gorgeous, complicated thing. I can’t describe it. There’s a slide guitar on it but it’s not country. It’s not Beatley. It’s not Oasis-y. It’s Arctic Monkeys.

Tunes. Well sung too. There are a couple of difficult songs on here, but mainly, this is melodic rock. Some of it I find so irresistible. The group all yelling “We are defenders!!!” just takes my breath away. The million words a minute rapping of Fluorescent Adolescent is catchy, and a wonderful way of undermining the poppiest song on the record.

And finally, the lyrics. Gosh. Even if you were good players, with good songs, that weren’t a wank, to have one of the best lyricists I’ve ever heard writing your stuff…brilliant idea really. And I’m a big lyrics guy. And Alex Turner stands with the best of them. And it’s not just a wit and a clever line. The bigger ideas of this record is there too. Turner has made a record about all the outcasts, the wankers, the losers, the villains in his world.

The infidelity of the Bad Thing, the indie scenester in Brianstorm (“we can’t take our eyes off your t-shirt and tie combination”), the older girl who’s lost her youthful passion and sexual excitement (“is that a mecca dobber or a betting pencil?” – it’s a penis line. A betting pencil we all know, and a mecca dobber is that big fat thing you get at bingo)… all paints a picture of weirdos living in a weird world. Reality star wannabes, thugs in balaclavas…they all get their dues.

The sum is greater than it’s parts. And the sum, this record, is one I just kept going back to. I would look at the CD case, and it’s what I always want to think when I look at a CD case. In it is a record I love. A perfect record. And I just kept coming back to it. Every couple of weeks I had a new favourite song.

And it also helps that every interview I’ve read or seen with the band this year, they seem to holding themselves well. They are workers, not rock stars. They are not tabloid fodder like Razorlight. In fact, the one big gripe about this band is that they have no star power. They are boring in person. I LOVE that about them.

This record made me so excited this year. About new music. About guitar music. And even more importantly, it made me look out at the world. It’s probably the most important thing music can do. New to this country, I could see the indie wanker in Brianstorm. The ASBO tragics in Balaclava. The lonely hesitant lovers in The Only Ones Who Know.

It was also exciting to be here as this record ‘happened’. Like being in London for the last Harry Potter book, you could feel something in the air when this record came out, and destroyed all sales records. And to hear the songs on radio, on TV, posters around…this was happening now. And I’m usually so ambivalent to all that.

This is also the only record in 15 months that made me want to play music again.

And even the B-sides are great. The Bakery! Jamie T would kill for a song like that. So would Ray Davies.

So. Record of the year. By a long shot really. An album that has resurrected my interest in new young rock bands.

2008, don’t fucking let me down.

2. I Survived, That’s Good Enough For Now

2007-12-28T05:48:00.000-08:00

2. Sky Blue Sky – Wilco

Let the calls of loyalty buying die down, please.

Thank you.

How does this band keep managing to nail where I am in life? As I come crawling out of that cesspool called the Indie scene, and that dark sky known as the Early Twenties, I have become a happier person. Travelling has allowed me to meet lots of people, plenty of people I would have never had met in my small, closed off life in Sydney.

And so here comes an album, a gentle, hushed album, about ambiguity. About life having it’s own plan. About surviving, and how that’s good enough. About going on and on and on, however short or long our lives may be.

Yes, Sky Blue Sky is the sound of six guys going “whatevs…”. Having come off the two highest selling and critically acclaimed records of their career, and hence very little to prove, Tweedy wrote a set of songs for his wife. They played it pretty straight, a tad indulgent-y, and lots of love.

My fave Dylan album is John Wesley Harding. A very talented guy just kicking out some sweet tunes. This record reminds me of that. Sure, 10 minutes of krautrock is interesting. But a tune? Those are awesome.

So once again, the mp3s of this album are well worn on my ipod. It has captured my year, as I walked around the canals of London. As I’ve been bored, alone in the house. It hasn’t been a dramatic year, unlike my last couple in Sydney. No dramas. No heartbreak. No anger. In short. Whatevs.

Favourites? Apart from ALL, I would have to say You Are My Face, which is probably not as straight as some of the other songs. The title track, which is so Grateful Dead-ish, and that all important line about surviving that means so much to me. The silly noodling of Walken. The gorgeous finale On And On And On.

The thing about Wilco is that they don’t stay still for long. My only worry is if they continue making Sky Blue Sky over and over again. Then again, as I get older and older, maybe that’s good enough.

3. A Thousand Different Versions Of Yourself

2007-12-27T16:25:00.000-08:00

3. Wincing The Night Away – The Shins

This record came out at the start of the year, and I still listen to it. The Shins, I think, will go down as my favourite band of the decade. Their two previous albums, Oh Inverted World and Chutes Too Narrow have soundtracked the last six years. This continues with Wincing the Night Away.

I have good memories of this record. Walking around Kensington, middle of the night, listening to the opener, Sleeping Lessons, and looking at the open sky above Hyde Park. That keyboard line is the twinkle of stars. James Mercer, that brilliant man, screams out some brilliant nonsense over it.

There are a handful of classic Shins pop songs on here. First single Phantom Limb is the best of the lot, really. It reaches for the sky, with a sadness and again, beautiful nonsense. You kind of do, and you kind of don’t, know what Mercer is on about. Turn On Me, another highlight, is a lot clearer. A goodbye to someone you don’t get along with.

And again, there’s that soundtracking. Which pushes this record, and the two records ahead of it, above the pack. I will listen to this record and forever think of being in London for the first time. I did see them 4 times this year. So Turn On Me makes me think of someone I never got along with. And Girl Sailor, the third of the great pop songs, just nails something I’ve felt. By being wonderfully ambiguous about it.

The rest of the record has some nice slow haunting stuff, and some trippy sampling stuff. All of which is great. It’s a bit hypnotic, this record. Someone could come along and remix it. There are oddities, like the less than a minute long Pam Berry.

So I’ve listened to this record at least once a week since the start of the year and there are still things I’m learning about it. I think Chutes… might just edge it out, but if they come up with another great record before 2010, they will have ruled this entire decade for me.

4. Easy As Humming A Song

2007-12-27T12:51:00.000-08:00

4. At My Age – Nick Lowe

Nick Lowe’s last three albums have found him exploring a new sound. Gentle, country-soul, match against his fantastic wit, and songs that sound simple because they are.

At My Age is no different. It’s a subtle record, but it’s a red wine, late night record. It’s country, but with that dash of soul, of jazz and of torch songs too. None of the musicians are showing off here. Everything is second to the song.

Some of Lowe’s best songs are on here.; in the classic heartache mode. Just the titles alone…Rome Wasn’t Built In A Day, I Trained Her To Love Me, Hope For Us All.

It’s not a terribly inventive record. It’s not Radiohead. It’s just a very, very good one. It’s sweet. It’s sad. It’s funny. It’s groovy. It’s smooth. And I listened to it a lot this year.

I don’t actually have much more to say about this record. Or most of Nick Lowe’s albums. Like Paul Westerberg, what he does is just candy to me. I will always go back to this kind of stuff.

5. My Thoughts Keep Returning To You

2007-12-26T15:06:00.001-08:00

5. Time On Earth – Crowded House

When I first fell for Crowded House, everything about music was a mystery. I couldn’t tell a bass from a banjo. I couldn’t tell a bridge from a coda. At best, I could tell you a key change is where the song gets a bit more exciting. As a band that I loved in my youth, I hold them dearly, but also see them through a mist of nostalgia.

So it’s lucky that the record is fantastic. It also helps that, as a solo artist, Neil Finn has continued to deliver great records. And if I’m honest, whether this was a Neil record or a Crowded House record, it would mean the same to me.

Don’t Stop Me was such a weird song. Could it stand up with the classics? It was pleasant enough on first listen. And on repeated listens, it really warms up, and you realise there’s something weird going on, lyrically. I’ve had quite a few conversations this year about this song, mostly along the lines of, it’s good, isn’t it? Which is the thing, Neil just let the song talk us into it.

Gorgeous, subtle moments abound. Nobody Wants To is so relaxed, it’s like a Whiskeytown ballad. Pour Le Monde, although sounding a bit like Coldplay’s The Scientist, is full of confidence. Slow burning (and long, for CH), it’s a song about the current war. Which makes the only really poppy moment, She Called Up, stand out all the more.

And yes, there is a stench of death on this record. If not directly taken from Paul Hester, the theme of losing people here. Most of the record is steeped in sadness, but not in a whiny, woe-is-I way.

My favourite song, and very much not indicative of the album, is You Are The Only One To Make Me Cry. Recalling Tim Finn’s All I Ask from Woodface, it’s a string laden jazzy ballad. No one can touch this guy when he wants to write a really song-y song. This is pretty much showing off for such a master songwriter. And like most Finn songs, I don’t know who he is thinking of in that song, but I know who I think of when I hear it. Oh, the power of songs.

I can’t think of another reunion album I’ve liked as much. But again, I’ve bought an album by Neil Finn every couple of years anyway. And I don’t care who’s name is on the cover, I just, as always, look forward to some more songs by Neil Finn.

6. Now I Have To Start All Over Again

2007-12-26T08:56:00.000-08:00

6. Angie Hart – Grounded Bird

Some facts-y stuff: Angie Hart was the former singer for Australian pop band Frente. They had one massive hit (Accidentally Kelly Street), then burnt out after their second album (Shape, 1996, a personal fave). She then left Australia with her husband, musician Jesse Tobias, and formed a second band, Splendid. They did one album, one of the best I ever heard, called Have You Got A Name For It. Some tracks are in the Buffy TV show but otherwise, her career ended there.

So did her marriage. A couple of rare EPs and things since, Angie, single again, has moved back to Australia and has decided to take her first steps as a solo artist, some 15 years after she was first heard.

At first, I missed the guitars. Without Jesse Tobias or her Frente backing band to rock out behind her, it seemed like something was missing. But this IS a slow record, but it’s also a beautiful one. It has the keyboard-y, trippy sounds that made Beth Orton’s early records so great. It’s maybe a bit rock, and a bit heavier than that. Still, it’s a hushed, Sunday morning album.

And the voice! The record starts with a short blast of harmony. And ends with one of the best tracks of the year, Start My Day, which is built on a sample of Angie singing;

Get back up when I fall off

Then layers on top, verse after verse of beautiful, simple, life affirming stuff. It’s a mantra, mixed in the thoughts of modern life. Bits of feedback drop in and out and all, but it’s like nothing I’ve ever heard, except maybe Spiritualised’s Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space track.

And the songs, usually co-writes, are top notch. Lyrically, Angie is on top her game. The heartbreaking album centrepiece is ‘Kiwi’, the wingless bird, capped off my the fantastic line;

If I don’t set my sights too high
I can fly

Every song ticks every box for a wonderful song. Thoughtful lyrics. Wonderfully sounded. Heavenly singing. Smiley moments. Sad moments. A place to start is the current single ‘Care’. Although it’s pretty straight compared to some of it.

It’s the newest album on this list. I’ve had it just over a month and I’m looking forward to spending more time with it. And I’m so glad to have her back.

7. The Devil And John Berryman

2007-12-23T16:26:00.000-08:00

7. Boys And Girls In America – The Hold Steady

The name that gets dropped with this band is Springsteen. They mix that urban poetry, that hopeless romance, that growing old feeling, with grinding guitars and rapid fire lyrics.

But many have done this before (hello, Marah) but the Hold Steady have gone for the throat. The album is called Boys And Girls In America for fuck’s sake. Let’s put aside the freakiness of a 37 year old (lead singer/songwriter Craig Finn) singing about teenage girls, and celebrate a doomed youth.

Most of the songs have to do with the great unwashed, and how beautiful that is. Chillout Tent is about being taken out of a festival and catching the eye of another outcast of the opposite sex (and never meeting). You Can Make Him Like You is about a girl who is seeking boyfriend who comes from a better school.

I love the album cover. Just a bunch of kids partying. And how those weekend nights will add up to their life. And how important it is to them, to us. And the title of the album, declaring that they are going mass market. Indie band is going for the suburbs. It’s all there in the standout, Massive Nights, about liquor runs, fights, girls with something to prove, and one of my favourite lines:

“Everyone was funny, everyone was pretty
And everyone was heading to the centre of the city.”

This has got to be the getting-ready-to-go-out record of the year. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s the best record to feel nostalgic about the times when you did that.

The best song on the record though, the one that’s gotten the most talk, is the opener, Stuck Between Stations. An inflated, overly romantic retelling of John Berryman’s suicide. It imagines his depression, walking with the devil over Washington Bridge, the moments before his suicide. And hidden not very far below the cleverness and the wit, is a big fat slab of riff rock.

The perfect record for a massive night.

8. Don’t Care If It Sounds Cliché

2007-12-23T10:06:00.000-08:00

8. Structure And Cosmetics – The Brunettes

Oh, great, glorious, silly pop music. The Brunettes are Jonathan Bree and Heather Mansfield, two New Zealand multi instrumentalists (and perhaps to two sexiest people in music) who have put out previous albums of indie pop fare. Adorable little Jonathan Richman tributes, with titles like ‘When Ice Met Cream’.

That’s all pretty much gone out the window for this year’s best BIG pop record. Opening with Brunettes Against Bubblegum Youth, a huge, symphonic, kinda Pet Sounds-y, kind of Queen-esque, but utterly charming opening number. It sounds like several hundred people singing “B-A, B-Y, I love to call you baby”.

And from then we are off. Eight more wonderful pop confections, each moving and swaying with no real sense of strong structure. Just brilliant catchy pop bit after brilliant pop bit.

Heather is singing her heart out. Her layers and layers of vocal melody, matched with the sweetness (and oddness) of the lyrics are the album’s heart. She sings about hairigami sets, banana bread, aliens, and lots of sha-la-las.

But the star is Jonathan Bree. Nothing about the Brunettes before suggested they could make such big leap. Breezy psychedelia, beautiful arrangements…this sounds like a classical record, or a song suite. Keyboards, guitars, trumpets and all manner of noodling swim in and out. It’s very exciting on headphones.

In the end, this record is something new. I can’t really think of anything like it. And I like it. More than like it, I love it. I suggest you start with “If You Were Alien” and go from there.

9. You Gotta Have A Problem To Invent A Contraption

2007-12-22T13:06:00.000-08:00

More ramblings on my fave albums this year.

9. Icky Thump – The White Stripes

I completely gave up on this band until I heard the first single and title track on Icky Thump. The riff sounded like a machine gun, Jack White howling over the top. Like John Spencer says – the blues are number one.

I love the guitar playing on this record. It’s so up front on this record, in ways it hasn’t been in the life of Jack White in a while.

But what makes the White Stripes so awesome is the myth of the White Stripes. They are these almost Chaplin musical characters. They are mariachi spaghetti westerners on Conquest. They are Oliver Twist style hoarders in Rag & Bone. They have their own little (red and white) world so wrapped up. You either have to dive right in or leave the party.

Lyrically too, Jack is on fire and having a lot of fun. “In some respects I suspect you have a respectable side” he sings on You Don’t Know What Love Is. And the highlight, the last track, Effect & Cause is beautiful, playful fuck-you to an ex.

When I first heard the White Stripes, I was so taken with these odd siblings and their candy striped madness. And it’s a feeling that’s come and gone over the years. But this record brings it all back. Even after having become superstars and tabloid fodder, listening to Icky Thump still makes me go “wow, who are these guys?”

I'm still excited to find out.

10. Chocolate Biscuits Wired To A Car Alarm

2007-12-21T04:49:00.000-08:00

Welcome to our annual top 10 countdown. Warning you now, a lot of music posts coming up.

10. The Boy With No Name – Travis

This could be considered loyalty buying if not for the fact I almost didn’t buy this album. But slowly, the singles started to get caught in my head, and I pulled out the money to see what my old friends were up to.

There is a lot of talk about a return to form, that the wonderful politically angry Travis has been buried with 12 Memories. And that’s true, it’s not an angry record at all. And yes, it’s full of the optimistic melancholy that Travis mines better than anyone else.

And in the end of the day, what I like about Travis is they are just good. No tacky tricks. No stadium anthems. It’s a very intimate band – which I guess is why fans get so obsessed.

It seems songwriter Fran Healy is in a happier place. There is maybe a bit more optimism than melancholy this time around (and a theme in most of the albums I loved this year – happy albums). It’s slow, beautiful, and at moments very fun.

The slow burn winner is the first single – Closer. The only way to describe this track is seductive. It’s a beautiful love song, nothing more, nothing less. Tremendous backing vocals. A classic that these guys will be playing at every concert for the rest of their lives.

There is, of course, quite a few gorgeous mid tempo-y things on here. One Night and 3 Times And You Lose being top of the list. And some genuine rockers. Selfish Jean was everywhere on radio at one point. Eyes Wide Open is in the same mould.

But two other songs are worth a mention. My Eyes, the current single, is pop bliss. When they abandon the sadness, they always do well. And a great film clip to boot. Finally, New Amsterdam, the closing track. So breezy, romantic and reminds me of listening to French records and having no idea what the singer’s on about. Just a loose collection of images, sparsely recorded, and sweet as truffles.

Maybe it’s me, but I don’t need fireworks. I need just good solid bands. Songs I can rely on. And it’s been used as a degrading term for them, but I love a reliable band.

Sleeping in a racing car 2

2007-12-13T07:08:00.001-08:00

Next day. Lunch. Talking about spouses, 40th birthdays and divorces.

Sleeping in a racing car

2007-12-12T10:56:00.001-08:00

You know that scene in the Simpsons? Milhouse's dad is newly divorced. He tells Homer..."I get to sleep in a racing car! Where do you sleep?"

To which Homer replies..."I sleep in a big bed with my wife."

I'm at the pub with 3 others, all on the phone to their wives. My thoughts are my own. This has been happening to me a lot lately.

I'm the loser sleeping a racing car.

Danny
London

It’s the end of the highway…

2007-11-27T17:40:00.000-08:00

There is an American folky, country band called the Creekdippers. They have a great, sort of campfire sing-a-long feel to their songs. They have one called The End Of the Highway, and I have been slowly swaying around Sydney, singing it to myself. With one little, minor, lyrical change.

“That’s the end of the highway, Howard.
You’re a sorry, silly man, with a pocket full of mumbles.
Please nod off like the old Generals do.
I wonder if they’d even have you.”

Occasionally, the song doesn’t fit Howard, because of what I figure is his one saving grace – the guy wasn’t evil. He can’t be compared to Bush. Or the Stalins of history. But he was a selfish, backwards, lying prick.

John Howard has been PM my entire voting life. So when he lost the election, even by such a spectacular margin, I had no idea how to feel. As friends (older) punched the air and threw stuff at the TV, I kept thinking, what a relief. And “finally”.

And I don’t want to be forgiving, as this man bows out. I pride myself in seeing the good in most everyone, but the media and Howards team are so good at sweeping things under rugs and tweaking history.

Lets we forget:

Being elected on the promise of NO GST (the thing that killed John Hewson) and then with no apology, in his first term no less, brings it in. I don’t mind the GST so much. The flat out lie, however, was fucked. As an early adult I thought that was a nasty, fucked thing.

KYOTO. I missed the lead up to the campaign, and missed how big this issue was. And thank God! Now we’re not the only modern nation left out. What exactly was the problem here. Yes, environment is good, it would be good for the planet to survive. However, we need to make money. This isn’t sifting through your garbage and sorting out your plastics. And much, much bigger economies in the world have been behind the Kyoto treaty, and taken bigger losses on less healthy economies. Really, can someone do a Howard debrief and just go – “John. Kyoto. What the hell was going through your thick skull?”

BABIES OVERBOARD. I’m descended from boat people. My family didn’t give up their entire living and worldly possessions so they could come to Australia themselves! They did it so their baby children could have a better life, education, a warless society, fair working conditions and maybe a suntan. Would they really throw them overboard?

It brings up the Liberal party’s constant HATEMONGERING. Of immigrants, both before and after September 11. And not to mention Howard’s old nemesis, the Asians. As someone who is not a Howard Battler, it was pretty clear to see they guy never once spoke to me in any forum. He was talking to the whites, with whom I sometimes mingled. This culminated in the party’s disgraceful Fake Flyer campaign. That guy should be shot.

But when it comes to racism, how can we forget the CRONULLA RIOTS. It was the boiling point from years, if not decades, of racial tension. The Liberals, and Howard, did nothing to stop the racial tensions. Under their watch, they bred the cautious, suspicious White Australia – leading to Pauline Hanson. But the worst thing about Cronulla, was the chance we lost. I just thought, this was so disgusting, such an act of unbelievable racist hate, that it would be a turning point for us as a country. A humbling look at ourselves would follow, and we would be better for it, having seen how ugly our distrust have become.

But no, John Howard came along, and played it down. Wiped it under the rug. Not a racist act, he tells us. There is no problem. Nothing needed to be done. Lets all carry on with no effort to understand eachother. That’s not an answer, Howard. This is the scar you left on my country.

But the word that I hope someone writes on John Howard’s grave for all time is SORRY. Again, an act of such ignorance, and a blind refusal to admit a problem in the interest of solving it. How can he stand by this? How can you not say sorry to a generation of kidnapped children? It happened. It shouldn’t have happened. Howard hid behind the legal liability card. That any official admittance of “sorry” could leave the government open to legal action. This, from our great government ever, in an economic sense. You could afford it.

There have been so many times that I thought about meeting Howard. Maybe years and years in the future. Somewhere, I will see him. Like in a Scorcese movie. Out on the docks somewhere on Sydney Harbour, as the early evening sets in. I’m standing there in a trench coat, looking out at the harbour, the bridge, and the skyline. A black van pulls up behind me, slowly. The back doors open up, and a sorry figure in a wheelchair rolls up beside me, and looks at the view. The van drives away, leaving us to talk.

“Hello John.” I would say, without looking at him.

“Hello Danny.” He says, as we both continue to look out in the distance.

“You know, John, you were a terrible Prime Minister.”

“I did what I thought was right, what I thought was best, with the blessing of the majority Australian people.”

“But you’re not the majority of Australia. You’re our leader. We needed you, who sat in those meetings about finances, and environment, and more, and to make the right decisions for us. You failed us, ad you can’t fall back on I-was-voted-in, I’m-always-right.”

“The people trusted me. And I stand by my decisions.”

“I know you do, John.”

And with that, I take a pistol out of my pocket, and I shoot the little fucker in his little fucking wheelchair in the side of the head. I kick the body out of the chair and into the harbour. It makes an ugly splash, as the man pollutes Australia one more time. I walk away and don’t look back.

We will never be sorry to see you gone.

Danny
Sydney

PS. The original of End Of the Highway is about Donald Rumsfield.

If we can't get it together

2007-11-24T18:06:00.001-08:00

I'm at one of my favourite spots in the world - town hall steps, Sydney.

Was it only ten years ago I was here, as a couple fought, but we couldn't hear what they were saying, so we made up our own story?

Danny
Sydney

Ambition Makes You Look Pretty Ugly

2007-11-08T06:29:00.001-08:00

I am finally, officially, completely and utterly over Radiohead.

There is an article in Billboard today about how Radiohead’s back catalogue enjoyed a spike thanks to In Rainbows. This is the most non-news that news can get.

I don’t care if you’re Coldplay or Seasick Steve; if you put out a new record and don’t get a decent spike in the older albums, you might as well shoot yourself in the head right now. To give some perspective, a recent Neil Young and Fleetwood Mac promotion enjoyed a 1000% spike. It sold ten times more in one month than the month before. This is not news.

Except it is. Because it’s Radiohead.

I have a handful of records that have been given away. Wilco have been streaming albums for free since 2001 BEFORE release. Harvey Danger’s last wonderful record has been free, one of many American indie bands doing the same. Prince gave away his new album with a newspaper (granted that made the news). But so did Ray Davies. And the new Travis single.

Sure. I hear ya. The old “band at that level” clause. BUT, that’s the thing. They can get away with the financial risk. It’s no risk at all really. It’s really easy to be charitable from the Ivory Tower.

And lets talk about what didn’t work with the In-Rainbows-Oh-God-Everything-Is-Over model. No preview? You could have been buying anything. Which for me screams that this is not about the music. It’s about the band, and the brand. This past week, the Eagles debuted at number 1 on just about every chart in the planet. Radio play? TV? What drove the sales? The Eagles name.

And Radiohead are becoming the Eagles.

And they are continuing to appeal to just their fanbase. This back catalogue boxset. That just smells of the Eagles. Expensive deluxe versions of the albums, aimed t the people who already own them all.

Any why donations? Why not give the record away? That charitable band of rich people just earned a lot of money. Let’s not forget that major fact that they are laughing their way to the bank.

You might not agree with me. That is fine. But all this talk about Radiohead being the future… they have presented a new way of releasing music into the world. Fine. They have given us one way.

And I don’t agree with it. If anything, it’s made me think about what I value in the music-to-listener process, and Radiohead goes against everything I believe in. Paying for music. Choosing track by track. Previewing; that is allowing people to judge you on your music (first two, heart of the iTunes model).

I believe in music for everyone. Putting your album in record shops and supermarkets so some 12 year old kid can get it. In having your music exposed far and wide, first and foremost.

The coolest thing you can do in my world is to put out some corker song on a cheap single and put it everywhere, so everyone can hear it and anyone can buy it if they want. Radiohead is the opposite of this.

Radiohead has released no music, made a multimillion payday on the faith of their fanbase, and can happily give up now. Why even try and push the album any further. I guess most of those people will buy the box et next year.

Anyway, all this Radiohead business has made me sick to the stomach. Word is Oasis may do the same. And that’s when I will opt out. That’s when you’re too fat and have started eating yourself.

So before you continue being dazzled by these Radiohead figures, please, think about what you believe in music, and how it should get to people, and ask yourself how well Radiohead’s ideas gel with yours.

Don’t follow. Think. They might be wrong.

Danny
London

Additionals:

If you think Radiohead are just doing what they are feeling as right, and it’s the media that has caught on this story, then…well, you’re not naïve. That’s fine. But in the end they are still doing what they think is right, and I’m allow to challenge that.

Start today tomorrow

2007-11-03T21:26:00.000-07:00

I had a big lazy day today.

I haven't had one in long time. It wasn't even a day where I was catching up on emails or anything useful. Just lazy.

Woke up far too late. Stayed in bed and finally got back into reading my book which I haven't touched in weeks (JR Reid's The United States of Europe - guy writes a little too much from an American perspective but the history and the facts are great). Read most of the new Mojo, and flicked through quite a few of the CD booklets I've gotten lately and not spent any time with.

Conversations about the death of music artwork interests me. So many poor album covers. And so very few timeless ones these days. And liner notes are a lost art. Which made reading the notes to David Gary's new Greatest Hits so great. I don't know half the songs on there, but he writes about everyone, and does it so well, that I put every one of those tracks on my ipod.

I also caught up on my podcasts. Absolutely top of the lot is Sound Opinions. They call themselves the world's only rock 'n' roll talkshow. And it reminds me how much I love good radio, and how much I loved making it. They really get into talking about albums...really, it's like the Panel, but about rock.

The boring day continued with catching up with the Office (Joss Whendon directed) and Heroes (so poor so far). Dusted off the guitar and tried to work out every Neil Young song ever (almost). Very little blackberry, or even TV. It felt so good, because next week will be so very busy.

Although, I missed fireworks. It's on my list of things to do next year.

So not a very interesting post, I know. But you have to write about what interests you, and being totally lazy is very exciting for me. It wont last...

Danny
London

Who Do You Love?

2007-10-30T17:02:00.000-07:00

I have fallen in love with Doctor Who. 6 months ago I’d never seen a second of the show. As of the current writing, there is probably nothing in the silly world of pop culture more important to me.

It’s good to note that this happens to me sometimes. And I think many people I know too. Getting really, really into stuff. Watching a whole season of some TV show in a weekend. Looking up all of a band’s interviews on the internet. Every live performance of some comedian on YouTube.

Obsessive? Perhaps.

I think it’s a bit more like finishing your food.

Anyway, back to the Doctor. Of course, I’ve heard of him. And I’m completely aware that the Doctor Who phenomenon is one of the biggest, longest running sci fi franchises in the world. I know a Dalek if I see one. I know Billie Piper is in the new one. That’s about it.

But being here, one of the things I wanted to do was get into British culture. I’ve been watching British movies. Buying best of CDs by bands like James and Squeeze. And when the huge, inescapable publicity of the start of Doctor Who season three was everywhere, I sat myself on the couch and decided to give the thing a go.

And it’s love.

See, the problem with American sci fi, as typified by Star Trek, is it has to be believable and plausible. You can find books discussing the science of Star Trek. Whereas British sci fi has a long tradition of being just unexplained. The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Red Dwarf and so forth. Sure, they screw around with what can possibly happen for drama (destroying the world to build a highway) or laughs (playing billiards with planets)…but at the heart of it, British sci fi will choose inspiring over plausible.

And Doctor Who, which from a distance seemed weird and cheap, is the most inspiring of all. The new series has shed the old crap production values. It’s a super slick, modern show. No wires. But the stories are so excellent.

Every week, the Doctor travels through time to a new adventure. He is a Time Lord, the last of an ancient race. His ship is a TARDIS, which due to a malfunction is stuck looking like a British Police Box. He’s usually got a companion or two in tow, who has befriended the friendly Doctor.

From that flimsy premise, we can go anywhere. Werewolves attacking Queen Elizabeth the first, to the day the sun finally goes nova. The fall of Pompeii, to the upcoming London Olympics.

At the heart of it all is the Doctor himself. Played by so many actors over the years, he is the same person who has fired the imagination of so many people for so many years. An adventurer, who rarely resorts to violence. An intellect and proud of it. An optimist and a knowledge seeker. Always wanting to see what this universe can be, always excited about new challenges. A man who always does good, an loves life.
And it’s easy to forget the bloody thing is at heart, a kids show. One Saturday morning, possibly because I was still up, I watched Totally Doctor Who, the kid’s talk show devoted to the Doctor. How lucky are these kids though, to have stories written for them that win sci fi writing awards, and best drama TV awards, year after year.

So for me, of course, I love the Doctor. I’m an optimist. I’m always excited by new things. I also like obsessive things. Things with rich histories. And a sense of funny. I also love good TV. The sad scenes – up there with some of best teen drama I’ve ever seen.

The Doctor explores every corner of the galaxy, hoping there is something amazing he has never seen before. And for me, after so many years of loving music, TV, movies, books etc…it’s a great feeling to know there are things out there I can fall in love with. I’m not that sad dude who still misses the X-Files.

Below: this Halloween, I dressed up as the Tenth Doctor. The raincoat came in handy for the weather, I tell you.

Danny Yau
London

Walk Out to Winter

2007-10-30T16:33:00.000-07:00

Summer is still a vivid memory, but the last few weeks we have fallen straight into a cold snap. With my crutches, for a few weeks I felt like Richard III. I wanted to stumble up to kids at bus stops, point a crooked finger and go “Now is the winter of our discontent…”

It’s not yet the pretty, winter-y London. It’s this odd middle ground. There’s plenty of cute girls in cool jackets, scarves and hats about. The outdoor areas of pubs are empty. It’s noticeably darker all the time. People are settling in.

Which is the opposite for me, a cripple who has finally lost his crutches and cast. Although the cold has meant bits and pieces of me have started to hurt again. I’ve accepted the fact that during the cold I will always be Uncle Danny with the funny limp. I am seriously thinking about Mia’s suggestion of getting a walking cane. Unfortunately, my shoulder is the only part of me which is still in pretty bad shape, and the cane needs that. One day…

It’s a been a big few weeks for visitors. Thomas Heymann, Hawker, James, my brother, Chris and Ian from Prague, Katy…and I can almost keep up. Liz has had some visitors too. Her sisters and her friends Colm and Luke. It’s been a very social house of late, a big change from living alone.

It looks like the next few months will be very different, as each of us will be jetting off again. Between now and the end of the year I’ll be away from London more than I’ll be there. I’m not the only one. Next thing you know it will be Christmas.

So bits and pieces have been going on but not much to report. Got back from Paris. Saw Paul McCartney play, which fulfilled a life long dream. Back at work full time. Even started setting the CD player alarm again and trying to keep normal hours (currently it's Camera Obscura's lovely album from last year, Let's Get Out Of This Country). Very much back into old, bad habits.

Feels like I’ve been here before. Chilly London. People pulling their scarves up, scurrying into shops. The sky threatening to rain. Long nights in. I'm looking forward to it again.

It feels good to be home.

Danny Yau
London

Don't change your plans

2007-10-16T07:27:00.001-07:00

I am sitting in a cafe in Montpanasse, on my own, after several coffees and beers. And god knows how many more cigarettes.

I just spent €200 at FNAC. The radio is playing You're Beautiful. Its not helping my mood.

Bottom line, I don't know where I will be next year. It's now a major issue. My plans have, well, not completely fallen through, but has definitely dropped 16 floors, smashed hard against the floor and is now lying heavy on cracked and creaking floorboards and can go very south from here.

I'm being dramatic I know, but its one of my good points, really.

So point is, where to next? I'm having a big think about it all. Maybe it is time to move on...again.

The worst thing in life is confusion. I don't mind when things go wrong, I can handle that. It's not knowing. It's like when you don't know where you stand with someone. Its better to be bad and know than to not know. I think so anyway.

So I can only look down at my plans and hope it all works out. Of course, it will all work out in some way.

Just WHAT?

I wish I knew.

Danny
Paris

Bonjour encore de Paris

2007-10-14T09:27:00.001-07:00

I am in Paris, again.

Here sorting out last minute visa stuff.

I'm so utterly seduced by this place. Not in a teenage crush way either. I'd like to think it's a more mature love. I know its flaws. But I love the city inside. I'm ready for her to grow old and fat and I will still see the face I love.

I just missed hawker being here last week. Its a shame, we would have been perfect, sitting around cafes, looking at the people. The obvious tourists, the girls who look so cool and would never talk to us, the baffled locals, the dodgy scamsters.

But I've always loved a sense of place. It seems every part of my life is pretty tied to a location. Be it King St, Newtown or Portobello Rd, I like going somewhere and feeling I'm FROM somewhere.

Paris has that is spades. How could you not feel pride if you are from here? It seems even in Barcelona, the street performers could be from anywhere, performing anywhere. Here, its a dude with a beret, a hot tall french woman, dancing to accordians. Being French is in everything they do.

I almost want to scream out my window and ask them to turn the french down. Let's take these buildings and make them look less interesting. Let's turn the cobblestones to asphalt. Widen the streets and put up more McDonalds. Replace the scattered rooftops with metal and glass skyscrapers.

Thank god they don't.

They could make the place more friendly to the disabled though. Its been a semi struggle today. I'm going to relax all night. Leah found me the best hotel, high in Monmartre. I can see everything from my window. I could just stare at it, listen to the street noise and practise my french.

Most importantly, after this trip, I'll finally know where I'll be next year. Fingers crossed.

Danny
Paris

Chapter 26

2007-10-11T09:37:00.000-07:00

It’s been an amazing year. On my birthday last year I had a day off. I remember a phone call I got at Belfield train station, from a great friend, laughing there on the platform, early evening in the impending Sydney summer.

It was one of my last rehearsals with the Reservations that day, and then I ran off to spend the night with someone lovely. I wrapped up my life, spent good times with my best friends, said goodbye to my family and got on a plane.

26 has been about moving. Moving country, moving on and just moving in general.

To Paris! And others…but it’s Paris that lives in my heart still. Walking around Monmartre, meeting great people. Beef bourguignon and beaujolais. Napping in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. The friends I met here who I don’t think I’ll ever get rid off.

Running in all directions in Europe, seeing Alicia is 5 different countries. Countless loss beanies, boarding passes and public transport day passes. That jumper from Barcelona I lost and I’m still heartbroken about.

Regina Spektor’s Begin to Hope has been the soundtrack to all this. Easily my most listened to record this year. Anything that my life threw up just stuck on her songs. But also a year of rediscovering rock. Arctic Monkeys. Fratellis. The Killers. Muse. Been a long time since I’ve listened to so many guitar bands.

A beautiful Christmas and a snowy London was my home. I walked through Hyde Park almost every weekend. I read The Virgin Suicides, awash with romance. Managed to borrow a copy of Leviathan, but also trying to read and see British things. And god knows how many hours I spent with my head buried in Lonely Planet guides.

Also managed to see a few gigs. My first Fountains Of Wayne experience. London Live Earth at Wembley. Muse, Wilco, the Shins, REM, Amy Rigby, Prince…even managed to see Bob Evans. But really not been doing that too much. Missed all the festivals but I’m promising myself a couple next year.

I am also so happy. I’ve met hundreds of people this year. I got a great job which I love, and the people there are fantastic. I’ve managed any challenge that came my way. Sorted out the red tape, and even survived a nasty accident. I found a great house to live in, and met many a lifelong friend.

Now I have some close friends here, both old and new. And a steady stream of foreign visitors. And also still managing to get away from London a bit too. In fact, I’m back in Paris in 3 days.

It’s amazing how I got here. I wonder what the next year will hold. I don’t feel like I’ve even found my stride in London sometimes. And next year I will go to America. I just have to. There are changes coming. People coming. People going. The cast is changing.

It’s been the best year of my life, easily. Not only have I done so many things I dreamt of doing, I’m actually struggling to think of unhappy moments. Maybe there are none. And that is amazing. Thank you everyone who shared any of it with me. Whether a few days drunk in a strange city, every weekday at a cubicle, or old friends from home who keep in touch and keep me grounded…and all in between and outside and more.

London has dialled up a rare sunny day in October. Happy birthday indeed.

Danny
London

You Send Me

2007-10-09T17:21:00.000-07:00

I know I’m not the only one has ever made the bold claim that I could be happy in a country house in the middle of nowhere. As long as I had access to Amazon and the like. Being homebound, I have been putting that to the test.

The most important of which is ordering groceries online. What a world this is. Click on some sausages, some milk, some eggs. Then, select a delivery time, usually the next day, specific to the hour. Then there’s a dude knocking on the door, with all of it in shopping bags. So easy. You can even save your order. No need to remember to buy more detergent. Just save it from days before. You can even get Mojo Magazine home delivered! God bless Sainsburys.

Amazon UK has also been my friend. I’ve spent a lot of time on Amazon in the past, but it’s always been this faraway thing. Not anymore. I blew £200 before I knew it. It’s just like shopping in a store. You just browse around and pick stuff up. And again, before I knew it, a knock on the door and there you go. It’s not just CDs, but DVDs and books too. Being housebound and crippled doesn’t stop me spending (all moneys spent is justified by me not going out).

I also managed to spend a lot of money on that new iPod. Delivered straight to my door. It was so great. And I do that thing where some guy hands me a clipboard and I sign it. Very professional-like. I also like when they give you a tracking number, and you can look online at where your order is.

I’m now looking at Argos. The behemoth of Argos. You can get ANYTHING from Argos. I have my eye on some more CD shelves, a DVD player and an electric piano. How crazy is that? Can't afford it, but I can save it to my cart.

All this made me very disappointed by the service offered by Forbidden Planet, the main sci-fi/comic book shop in London. You figured they have their home ordering sorted. But no, orders could take two weeks according to the site.

Bloody amateurs. It would take me an hour to get there on a bus. If I could get on a bus.

Although, this short lived love affair with courier deliveries may soon be over, as I am getting so much better every day. Pretty soon I’ll be hobbling around HMV in person. I can go get those comics on my own. I’m able to get by okay without the crutches. The foot is getting better. There is little strength in my legs though. Muscles need to warm up again.

Very exciting is that I have friendly visitors helping me out in the last few weeks and for the next couple of weeks. It’s been quite a ride but I know the ride is coming to an end. It’s been a good practise run for when I buy that house in Dapford, Victoria, but that little glimpse into the future is fading like the end of a movie flashback.

Goodbye to being housebound and window shopping on the web. Hello world.

Can’t hardly wait.

Danny
London

A very flickr update 7: Krakow

2007-09-30T15:41:00.000-07:00

Some lovely pics from my lovely time in Krakow last month.

Me at Wawel Hill, and the wonderful storybook like castle grounds.

Heading down from Wawel Hill you can find the Wawel Dragon. Legend has it that it did something once and it was cool. Now it's a tacky tourist thing and actually BREATHES FIRE. Sigh. They ruin sudh good stuff.

Aushwitz and Birkenau, the famous Nazi concentration camps. I am so fascinated by modern history, and this was one fo the big draws for me for Krakow. Such a harrowing, somber expreienc to walk through there.

1. Entrance to Auschwitz 1.
2. The execution wall at Auschwitz 1.
3. The entrance of Auschwitz 2, also known as Birkenau.

Interest in war stuff continued when I found Oscar Schindler's factory. I had a surreal afternoon there fixing a projector and walking through the abondoned ruins, and buying batteries. I'll tell you about it sometime. It's probably my best travel story yet.

It wasn't all doom and gloom in Krakow. It is such a beautiful place and the people were just wonderful. Best was he town square called Rynek Glowny.

1. Rynek Glowny, and the building in the middle called Cloth Hall.
2. Tessa and Sarah, friends from the Hostel
3. St Mary's at night. Lopsided funny church that is also in Rynek Glowny.

I loved Krakow. If you go, stay at the Orange Hostel. They were so good to me.

Danny
London.

Computers and the new rock and roll…

2007-09-23T16:08:00.000-07:00

I got a new iPod. Silver, lovely 160GB. And it’s finally time to retire my old one.

I was very late to the iPod. Checking my memory, I think I bought a girlfriend an iPod before I ever got one for myself. I got one just over two years ago. I’m trying to remember how I would listen to music before then. I basically carried around 20 or so CDs with me everywhere I went.

Needless to say, I’m not going back.

I like how the iPod can track what you’ve listened to over the years. It’s a pretty interesting snapshot of my listening habits.

Here are some interesting* statistics

Number of songs on it – 11,390.

That’s a hell of a lot. And I had to start culling when I ran out of room a year ago.

Number of plays since August 2005 – 54,897

Again, not counting tracks that I have since deleted off the ipod, and of course, listening to CDs and stuff which I still do.

It’s pretty much dead on two years that I’ve had this iPod so check this shit out:

Average number of songs played a day in the last two years – 75

Geez!

Number of songs that have ZERO plays – 742

These are songs that have sat on the iPod that I just never got to. Or kept skipping. Poor ‘Sunday Girl’ by Blondie was added to my iPod on 16th August 2005, and has still not been able to get one little play out of me. Nothing. It’s only 3:06 long. Still, no love. Sorry Debbie.

Top Twenty Songs

Pretty easy this one. The songs that got the most plays in the last two years.

1. Romeo and Juliet – Dire Straits (42)
2. Fluorescent Adolescent – Arctic Monkeys (41)
3. Sentimental Guy – Ben Folds (41)
4. Thunder Road – Bruce Springsteen (41)
5. Don’t You Think It’s Time – Bob Evans (40)
6. Girl Sailor – The Shins (40)
7. Phantom Limb – The Shins (39)
8. Turn On Me – The Shins (38)
9. Time – Ben Folds (37)
10. Rattlesnakes – Lloyd Cole And the Commotions (37)
11. Teddy Picker – Arctic Monkeys (36)
12. Sadness & Whiskey – Bob Evans (36)
13. Read My Mind – The Killers (35)
14. No Quick Fix – Nada Surf (35)
15. Sleeping Lessons – The Shins (34)
16. Let It Go – Youth Group (33)
17. Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying – Belle And Sebastian (32)
18. Don’t Change Your Plans – Ben Folds Five (32)
19. Hey Julie – Fountains Of Wayne (32)
20. Mystifies Me – Son Volt (32)

Good to see how much new music is there. I’m not still listening to Big Star and Gram Parsons.

And I totally love every single one of those songs. Especially Romeo And Juliet. And Thunder Road. Corner me somewhere and ask me about those songs. And be ready to lose several hours of your life.

So I have my new iPod now. I’m putting the old girl away. I’m trying to think, and it’s the only thing I’ve carried with me every day for he last two years (I changed wallets this year).

It will be interesting* to see what happens in another two years.

Danny
London

* any claims of anything interesting is ambitious at best.

Injury (and the Blockheads)

2007-09-19T06:38:00.000-07:00

When I decided to go travelling, this intensely personal, spiritual journey, it seemed like everyone and their dog had a travel story. Especially the great Australia to London odessey. My sister did that. My friend did that. My dog did that.

And I'm not knocking it. I loved those stories. It lead to what Casey calls Place-Dropping. We would practise imaginary Place-Dropping back home. You lost a lighter? I remember one time I was in Vienna and I lost a lighter. It's cold? Yes, reminds me of autumns in Madrid...

You get the idea.

So the new thing is accident stories. And again I love them. Although some are painful. It seems quite a frightening amount of people I know have seriously hurt themselves in their lives. Tales of collar bones, hips, broken thumbs, broken jaws, flying over the handle bars and in one case, getting hit by a taxi, this time in New York. The recovery stories are also lovely. 3 months in bed. 3 months in hospital. 3 months hanging in the water tank Luke Skywalker was in at the end of the Empire Strikes Back.

Everyone I know has suddenly become experts in medicine. In particular, orthopedic experts. I'm hearing (and reading) perfectly normal friends of mine use words like 'femur' in conversation. Apparently, all bones take 5-6 weeks to heal, regardless of which one. But according to another expert, foot bones heal quite fast. Maybe I need a 22nd opinion...

So the new game now is Body-Dropping. As Debbie told me, when her uncle got sick, he decided it was from then on completely OK to talk endlessly about his body. Quite inappropriately intimately too. It's stopped hurting to urinate. The scabs on my legs have started to peel off. There's still heaps of dead skin from where the cast was. Want to hold my glass eye?

So for me, my hip is fine, but when I cough or sneeze, my muslces in that area naturally seize up, and it hurts like hell. Laughing is also not as fun as it used to be. I'm getting pins and needles in my left foot a lot. And yes, most of the large cuts and stuff have now scabbed off and odd, innocent-looking, new pink skin has revealed themselves.

(Body Dropping, like Place Dropping and Name Dropping, is only fun for the Dropper. But it's so much fun.)

Which all goes to show

a) how unextraordinary my situation is, really.

b) how much sickness and injury touches our lives. I've spent a bit of time in hospitals, both for myself and to support friends. And none of them have been good times! And...

c) how amazing the human body really is. It really is.

Danny
London

The Greatest Album of All Time

2007-09-14T17:22:00.000-07:00

I’ve been sitting in my wheelchair, tired, unable to do much today. I decided I needed some cheering up and I put on Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys.

It’s a very, very important album for me. It’s one a cherish deeply. It’s not my favourite album ever, because sentimental reasons come into play. Not that I’m not sentimental about this album. But if aliens ever come, and they ask me what the greatest album, the greatest achievement of music mankind has ever known, I would point furiously at this CD.

Apart from being a marvellous, complex, involving bit of music, it’s also so pop. So accessible. Anyone who’s ever looked into it could tell you Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys’ resident “genius” (and it’s an overused term, I know), used some amazing musical tricks. It’s performed fantastically. The vocals! Geez. Mind blowing.

But it’s a record you can enjoy when you’re 12. Or 120. You don’t need a degree to get everything you need to get out of this album.

By luck, I came across this album in high school, at a time when I had no right to be finding music this cool. I had some great mentors who pushed me into the past. The Nuggets box sets. Television. The Ramones. All sorts of stuff that you just don’t hear in suburban Sydney.

Sean, the You Am I tour manager at the time, told me this great story. When he was a wee lad, he was given a cassette tape (by his parents? By a friend? I will ask him when I next see him). The tape had Pet Sounds on one side and the Byrd’s Sweetheart of the Rodeo on the other.

(I fell madly in love with Sweetheart of the Rodeo many years later, remembering Sean’s sage words. It was an album when every other fucker went psychedelic, they did a country album. And what an album. Oh Gram Parsons…)

Everyone knows the Beach Boys – from golden oldies stations and nostalgia documentaries. I even knew Wouldn’t It Be Nice, sort of. I knew the hooks. But when I got the record and put it on...and after the twinkle of bells, the drum snap! Bam!

Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older?
Then we wouldn’t have to wait so long.
Wouldn’t it be nice to live together
In the kind of world where we belong?

For me, Pet Sounds is about being young. Or not being young anymore. Just listen to the fucking marching band rattling along behind the glorious vocal on Wouldn’t It Be Nice. Isn’t that the tumbling hearts of a million teenage dreams? Isn’t it the power of teen romance. All big and exciting. We are going to last forever. God, this song just rules the school. It’s just a glorious, glorious thing.

I love the line about the kind of world where we belong. It’s something that comes up a lot. That’s Not Me, I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times and others all allude to someone feeling kind of left out by the world. Of not fitting in. Is there a more teenage, or post-teenage emotion than that? The feeling that this world is not ours. Yet.

Then there are the handful of love songs. The heartbreaking Caroline, No. The absolutely timeless God Only Knows. It’s done with such hopefulness. There’s nothing complex there. It’s big, sad love.

And then there is just the nice familiarity that comes from loving an album for ten years. I know all the little breaks. The horn solo in I Know There’s An Answer. I can and do sing along to every single bit of backing vocal. It’s an old friend.

I will always say that there is more to the Beach Boys than this one record. And many people I know own this, maybe a best of, and calls it a day with the Beach Boys. Fair enough, really. Can’t blame you. At least you have Pet Sounds.

If you don’t, you’re really missing out. Grab a friend’s copy, a glass of wine and a window to look through. You’ll think of love, of expectations, of hopes and dreams, of the world as a whole. It will also make you happy, ultimately. Nothing cheers me up like this album. There’s something really rewarding about listening to it.

So this world probably has enough writings on this album. All I really wanted to say is, well, ignore all that. It doesn’t matter how revered an album is. All that matters is I had a kind of crappy day and this album made me happy again.

Genius, ain’t it?

Danny
London

A very flickr 6: Prague

2007-09-12T14:35:00.000-07:00

So back to our regular programing for a second...the second installment of my photos from Europe. This time, Prague.

Me in Wenceslas Square, Prague

So I got to Prague by plane from Brussels. Getting off the plane and onto the bus, I met 5 really nice guys from New york. We spent most of my time in Prague drinking, with me dragging along anyone I could find from the hostel.

l-r: Nate, Ian, Alex, George, Chris, Sarah, Alex number 2, all from NY

I wasn't prepared for how beautiful Prague was. Simply put, no one told me.

Random Pretties

1. The John Lennon Wall. Still not sure why John Lennon has a wall here, and it's just graffiti, scribbles and things from local youths. At least they are being political and optimistic with their graffiti. Good on 'em.
2. The view of the Vltava river from St Charles Bridge. I had a beautiful moment just standing there looking at the world one afternoon.
3. The somewhat Back To the Future Part 3-esque Astronomical Clock at the Old Square.
4. Steps leading up to Prague Castle
5. St Vitus Catherdal, within the castle walls
6. The Prague Castle itself, but at night, looking over the main city. So beautiful I cannot describe. This photo does it no justice.

More drinking buddies. Above, Brian and Adam. Below, Batman and the Joker.

I was already completely in love with this city when I stumbled onto this at the Old Town Square. A bunch of beautiful women doing a marching baton dance. To an instrumetal version of my favourite musical ever - My Fair Lady. I was clapping and hooting like a maniac with just pure joy, as the sun shone and the military band played: I'm Getting Married In the Morning, With A Little Bit Of Luck and I Could Have Danced All Night.

An artist greatly under-appreciated in his own time, and a statue of Frank Kafka.

Finally, my fave thing in Prague. The Dancing House by Frank Gehry. From the other angle, it looks like Fred Astaire holding Ginger Rogers as her skirt spins in a dance. It's awesome.

I took so many more photos, these are but the highlights. More on Flickr. But even a billion photos cannot describe how much I loved every second in Prague. I can't wait to go again.

Danny
London

Homeward Bound

2007-09-12T13:39:00.000-07:00

I like the fact that this blog, started almost a year ago now, has gone from a travel blog, a loose philosophy blog, the inevitable music blog, a few poems and will now be an accident recovery blog.

So I'm home after my accident. I'm doing fine.

It's day one and I'm pretty much living in my room. Nathan found a disused wheelchair in the street (we live near a hospital) and decided to bring it home. Some people questioned why, but it's come in mighty handy today. I'm been on it, bouncing around the room. Going from the toilet (I have an ensuite, thank god), to my desk, my CD racks, my tall boy and my bed. Quite efficient really. Also, the keyboard stands Josh Pyke left at my house to look after make good handles. One sits either side of the toilet, and I can climb on them. Brilliant.

The only thing I cannot do quite right is stairs. Which means I can't get downstairs, to the front door or the kitchen. So food is a challenge. As is opening the door for people.So I can't even recieve couriers or mail. It's something I hope to look at conquering this week.

But it is so good to be home. Did some work today. Replied to some emails but I'm still behind. Caught up on the news and cleaned the room a bit to give myelf more room. Talked to my folks. It's all going to work out I think.

Above is me barrely two hours after the accident. I healthy reminder to look left and look right. And lets not forget look left again.

Danny

Such nice things

2007-09-07T01:26:00.001-07:00

They say such nice things about people at funerals that it makes me sad to realise that I'm going to miss mine by just a few days.

- Garrison Keillor

Everyone has been so nice.

Having watched far too much Scrubs, or indeed, just pop culture, it's weird to step into a hospital and feel cliche. You think of flowers as dorky, cards as tacky.

But they aren't. I love everything I've gotten. I don't know when I last needed my friends to show me they love me, but they certainly came through. I don't know how to react.

It made me think of the quote above, which I only learnt two weeks ago from a girl in Krakow. And I'm glad I didn't have to die before my friends said some nice things to me.

The medical update is as follows. I have gone from dead, to not being able to use my spine, to a fractured hip, a foot and a torn muscle in my shoulder. That leaves one limb unharmed - my right arm. Insert jokes here.

They've checked everything and that's all they've found. They've looked at those three areas quite a bit and still haven't decided on a course of action. I'm comfy and all, but I really want to know. I'm mentally preparing to kick up a stink today.

I've spent so much time in hospitals, but never as an adult, staying in a long period. Funny to watch the schedule. Breakfast at 8. Sheets at 9. Rounds at 10. Lunch at 1. Visitors at 3. Dinner at 6. Lights out at 10.

My parents are doing fine with everything. I have friends here and Australia helping me in all ways. Lots of people have dropped by. My nurse kids that I have a small library and chocolate shop here.

Talked to many people over the last few days. I'm feeling loved, which is the bottom line. One of the last people I talked to was Bec, my dear muffin. And it took me ages to find her, so by the time I got through to her, it felt like I was calling for the first time.

I'm good, emotionally. I'm optimistic physically. More news soon.

Danny
London

I got hit by a car

2007-09-05T09:29:00.001-07:00

At 11:30pm on September 4, I was leaving work after a couple of drinks with colleagues. I walked out, a little woozy, yes, and saw my bus across the road.

The bus was blocking both lanes of northbound traffic, so when there was a break in the southbound traffic, I made a dash for it.

Unfortunately, a taxi decided to do an overtake of the bus. I smashed right into the middle of the taxi, going at 30 miles an hour, and ended up almost 10 metres from the point of impact.

I remember seeing the taxi. Just the split second before it hit me. And I had so many thoughts. How do I get out of this? This is what a car crash is going to be like. This could be the big one.

I did not black out according to others, but I can't remember anything but being on the floor next.

Right in the middle of Kensington Church St. I was in shock. When my mind started to clear a little, I screamed. I could not move. I didn't know where my guts were. My legs could have been in Holland Park for all I knew.

Then the pain hit. And I screamed again.

I owe it all to Gary, another cabbie and a volunteer firefighter. He made sure I kept still, got my details off me before I became totally incoherent, checked my spine and neck quickly and most importantly, he held my hand and told me it was going to be ok.

The Police and the ambulance are a blur. I remember being put in the stretcher and being taken away. I remember thinking of Batman being in an ambulance in a comic I have.

The Ambulance people later told me that they were called in for a fatal. They brought body bags.

I remember them cutting through my jeans thinking, those are good scissors to cut through denim. Even delirious, I took off my leather jacket so they wouldn't cut that.

I was taken to St Mary's hospital, and was strapped down hard so I could not damage anything further. My Doctor, Will, and my nurse, Lizzie, could not have treated me better.

We had to do several Xrays at the base of my spine and my neck. It looked as if there may have been fractures there. And as much as I could feel someone squeezing my foot when asked, all I could really feel was pins and needles. I totally thought I would lose my legs.

The Xrays gave me the all clear in the neck and spine department. They did find fractures in my left hip. It hurts like nothing I've ever felt before.

Later they discovered I broke some bones in my right foot. They put me on pain killers, and after 7 painful hours, let me out of my neck brace. I have been napping all day and in my drowsy state it feels like the neck brace is still there.

I was taken away from Emergency then and put in a bed. Today, I have been doing further Xrays before they decide on a course of action.

The problem is the hip, which destroys my motor functions below the waste. I can't even get into a wheelchair. Also, if the damage is significant enough, they may have to operate.

I hope not. I was very silly, but I've been lucky so far. Very lucky. Being hit by a car front on? And no permanent scars and maybe a funny hip forever. That's nothing.

Even my bag with my laptop, camera, glasses, ipod and all survived. Well the bag is wrecked but the insides are ok.

All my London friends have really stepped up and looked after me. I have a fresh set of pyjamas for tonight, bunch of mags, and plenty of emails wishing me the best.

I am going to be ok. Which is nothing short of extraordinary.

Danny
London

A Very Belgian Flickr Update, flickr number 5

2007-09-03T16:28:00.001-07:00

Now that we caught up on London, finally I can post the some of the hundreds of photos from my recent Europe jaunt. Firstly, Brussels.

Me at Grand Place

Undisputed, surprise highlight was the Comics Museum:
1. Asterix (and Dogmatix! I love Dogmatix)
2. A Smurf statue (Surgeon Smurf?)
3. Fancy shot of a Smurf House, lightly reminiscent of a photo of Elvis Costello I really like. It's the back of the All This Useless Beauty record, trainspotters.
4. Some of the very first sketches Le Schtroumpf.

There was a free music festival on at all different sites around the city, and Katia and I enjoyed lots of great music. Katia also did a lovely job translating the French lyrics for me.

A symbol of rebellious spirit, and a shit statue of a boy having a piss.

If I don't look impressed it's because I wasn't. This is the Manneken Pis, a statue of a boy having, well, a piss. It's supposed to be ironic, and cheeky. It's a bit bizarre and disturbing. Just like Isabelle's humour then.

I love random things at the best of times. But to see the head of my favourite comic strip character at the disused children's play area at Brussels airport takes the cake. What the hell? This is Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes. He, and his creator, Bll Watterson, inspired the very first song on the very first album I ever made. He doesn't license this sort of thing out either, making it an illegal ornament. Makes it even better.

(Yes, it's just a picture. I'll get over it)

Danny
London (but my heart is in Brussels)

This Is Not A Blog Entry

2007-09-02T06:47:00.000-07:00

I love this painting very much.

It's by the Belgium painter René Magritte, and it's called the Treachery Of Images. The french writing translates to 'This Is Not A Pipe.'

We live in information overloaded times, and it's interesting how someone like me can come across someone like René Magritte. There are two really obvious ones - The Beatles Apple logo is based on an apple from a Magritte painting, and Paul Simon wrote a wonderful song called René And Georgette Magritte And Their Dog After the War.

I love the Simon song. It is one of my favourite Paul Simon songs - and that says a lot. Just like Magritte's work, Simon's song is a surreal thing, but somehow very tender and sympathetic. It's basically an imaginary story of René Magritte and his wife and dog, living in New York, dancing in hotel rooms, listening to 50s Doo Wop. Bizarre and lovely.

But the real way I cam across Magritte is this painting is used in a comic. Scott McCloud's Reinventing Comics. In it, he uses this painting as a larger talk about art.

And that's why I love this painting. It reminds me to not get too up my own arse when I fall in love with a song, a painting, a movie, a book, a whatever.

I mean - This Is Not A Pipe?

It's most clearly a pipe, right?

It has many pipe like features.

Actually, it doesn't. It's a painting. Wikipedia tells me it's Oil on Canvas.

Well, it's not even Oil on Canvas. It's a jpeg. Pixelated little lights on a computer screen. My Dad would find it hard to smoke out of this pipe. It's pretty much light. So, ok, Magritte is right. This is most definitely not a pipe.

So?

...

I like it because art is about trying to capture something. People painted huge elaborate scenes to try and capture a moment. Or a place. Or a portrait. But at the end of the day, it's not the same. And for hundreds of years of painters saying, hey, this is what this actually looks like...well Magritte gave all that the finger.

Treachery Of Images is like someone in a movie turning to the audience and going 'This is all a bit of bullshit, isn't it?"

And it is. All art is bullshit. And you have to question what you learn from it. You don't really know someone just because you listen to their songs. You don't know an object just because you read a book on it. It's the great lie of art. To make you think the art can represent something else.

I tried to buy a print of this when I was in Brussels. But everything is closed there on Mondays. They are also building a Magritte Museum that opens next year. So maybe they'll buy this painting back and I'll actually get to see it.

Danny
London

A very flickr update 4: Summer In the City

2007-09-01T08:56:00.000-07:00

Here's a bunch of stuff that's been happening:

Josh Pyke continues to tour here a lot. Here he is with James Lees, sitting around at Balfour Manor. sorry to Hawker who I think we called during our drunken night.

Went to this year's Mojo awards and had a blast! Belinda Carlise. Alice Cooper. Arcade Fire. Bjork. Iggy Pop. Damon Albarn. And in the photo behind me, Noel Gallagher.

Emily left Warners but it hasn't stopped us from seeing far too much of eachother still. This weird shot was taken at her farewell.

I have decided I am in love with the new series of Doctor Who. One of the more crazy things about it is the TARDIS, which the Doctor claims can just fade into the background and no one would notice. Well, Jeanette and I have both passed this Police Box in Earl's Court many times and only just noticed it one drizzly morning on the way to Dublin. The Doctor was right.

Dublin:
1. Jeanette at Trinity College
2. REM live at the Olympia Theatre, opening night
3. One of history's greatest wits, and a statue of Oscar Wilde

More Doctor Who, this time at Live Earth, where he introduced the Pussycat Dolls. I was more excited about the Doctor, really. Spinal Tap, Madonna, Beastie Boys and the Foo Fighters were all fantastic.

Jodie, on the left, left us for home. The end of an era and we miss her heaps.

Two work colleagues. Actual names - Julie Wright, and Julian Wright. No relation.

One of so many random nights at home. Bec Couche having a lot of fun. Emily not so much.

My new bike. Well it's old, and a present from Torsten. I've decided to name him Gerald, after the mouse in the Pink Floyd song 'Bike'.

Nicole and Isabelle at the O2, for the opening night of Prince.

Olivia and Nathan, outside the weird Springfield recreation FOX made for the Simpsons Movie Premiere.

Finally, the newest member of our team, Monty Davis, son of Sian. Mark and Julian look on as David holds the big guy. Monty looks very happy with life in this photo.

Danny
London

Inspiration

2007-08-27T13:21:00.001-07:00

Its my last night of the trip. Everything is done, and as I walked back to the hotel I wandered slightly into a courtyard with pretty lights. I walked down it, via pond side resturaunts and turned back to see Ste Catherine's Cathedral at night. I took one last photo and went home.

Kind of funny, just when I thought nothing else would happen, someone drops this scene in my lap.

In the last few days I have seen paintings, buildings, bands, comics, performers, castles, rivers, etc...all food for the soul.

I thought once that maybe I could be a great artist of some sort. Might still happen I guess, but its not for now. Right now I'm happy with the inspiration. I'm happy to be a consumer.

Talking to Brian in Prague, we discussed High Fidelity, and what a great tribute it was to guys like us. The ones without talent, but the ones that get the most out of what talent can provide. We're the middle masses.

Back at work tomorrow. Will be posting lots of photos very soon.

Danny
Brussels

Working on the moon

2007-08-26T05:38:00.001-07:00

I am sitting in Rynek Glowny, on a beautiful day, enjoying a Zywiec after a hectic morning.

Its my last full day in Krakow. I fly out at 7am, and trying to fit everything in.

A number of interesting, important things have happened here. Firstly, met some great people on the train. They gave me quite a lot to think about. I also went out drinking with some locals. One girl told me living in London is like working on the moon. This fantasy. It was very, very humbling.

Auschwitz took up most of day two. I could have spent another day there, but I was so disturbed already. I was going to write a whole thing on Auschwitz. I might still do. But for now...when walked through the gas chamber and looked into one of the ovens where they burnt the bodies... I wanted to throw up.

I met Sarah and Tess who had dinner with me last night and today is tourist day. Saw the castle, Schindlers factory, the Japanese museum and now back in the old square for some serious beating up of the memory card.

All this walking is killing me though. This time tomorrow I will be in Brussels where I plan on getting a regular hotel, get cleaned up and catch a eurostar straight to work Tuesday morning.

There is so much to say. So much I've seen and learnt. Sad to think it is pretty much over.

Danny
Krakow

I Often Dream Of Trains

2007-08-24T16:09:00.000-07:00

Finally, some alone time with a proper computer.

I am in Krakow after a wonderful time in Prague. I just fell so in love with Prague. My first night, when it rained, I braced it to find some food. And turned a left and looked right and found this random gorgeous boulevard, leading up to the magnificent Museum. In the sparkling rain it was very magical.

I met some great people in Prague, people I will keep in touch with. First and foremost my New York friends, and getting pretty close to betting Chris would throw up on St Charles Bridge. We had some massive nights. And the afternoon I sat in a bar and wasted a lovely afternoon getting drunk with Adam, discussing a lot of Tom Waits.

My favourite memory of Prague comes from the Castle. If you do not know, Prague is divided by a river with the Castle, high up, looking over the town. It looks gorgeous at night, by the way, all lit up (I have plenty of photos that I will share). But out front of the Castle are these well kept gorgeous gardens, that look over the entire city.

It's been hot all week, and I was walking through these gardens, sweating. I walked right through a courtyard in the middle, spotted a pretty girl, suspiciously on her own, without a book or an ipod. Sunnies on, just smiling. I walked past her to get to a fountain to wash my face and turned back, and like the fairy tale end of a movie, this good looking dude walks up from over the horizon, and greets her. They hug. They kiss. On a gorgeous day looking over the whole city, that I have decided is the most gorgeous spot in the world. Were they locals? Were they long separeted lovers? I don't know. I almost took a photo but that would have been weird.

So I didn't even do all the things I wanted to do in Prague but I will be back. And sadly I left, caught a train to Krakow. Met some great people on the train. Just the usual...where are you from? What do you do? Essentially, who are you and what are you about?

There was a frighteneing moment when I couldn't find my passport, and the long train journey wore me out. Finally made it to the Orange Hostel, where I was supposed to meet Judie but am now 9 months too late.

(Sorry Jubes, all the people you knew here are gone. Aga is now a stewardess and very happy, though)

Had drinks tonight with two lovely random girls I met in the square and then went to a club with people at the hostel. Needless to say, I'm really loving it. And I've only been here 6 hours or so.

Tomorrow it's a bright morning start for some serious sight seeing. Couple more days, then back to Brussels and home. I can barely remember work. But it will be good to lie in my own bed again.

It is 1:30 and I'm decalring it an early night. I will bore you with more later.

Danny
Krakow.

I am on a train

2007-08-24T01:22:00.000-07:00

In a cabin car with french teenagers, all around 17. It's 10:30 and they just cracked out the wine and offering the bottle around.

Oh, Europeans! How can I say no...

Danny
On a train to Krakow

Leaving On Your Mind

2007-08-23T14:34:00.001-07:00

I'd like to say it's cos it's Prague, and I had such a magical time here, but as I crawl into bed, knowing there's a train in the morning, there's a weird feeling in me.

Another town, another place, and just leaving something behind. But if you don't leave, someone else will. This is not even close to life. It's a holiday.

I am excited about Krakow, but its just the thought of packing it all up, moving on... It's over and will never be again.

Danny
Prague

Wherever you go there you are

2007-08-23T03:16:00.001-07:00

I was crossing the Charles Bridge two days ago here in Prague. Ipod on, looking at this bridge and all the buskers and tourists that line every side.

Until there was a bit of a gap of people, and oh it was so cinematic. Camera pans then lifts and you see the amazing river from the Charles.

I stood there for a long time, thinking about how I got here, people I miss and all that.

Prague has been wonderful. I've met so many awesome people. Seen some breath-taking stuff. Drank a lot of beer. Good times. The Castle at night...oh my.

More details later. Right now I'm waiting for my breakfast, in a cafe typing this and looking at last night's photos.

Krakow tomorrow.

Danny

Oh what a night

2007-08-22T19:00:00.000-07:00

Third night in a row of great, great nights in Prague. I love this town. It is 4am and I am wasted. Goodnight and I hope you are well.

Danny
Prague

Prague

2007-08-20T11:08:00.001-07:00

Kim, in her Kim on Tour blog, linked to the right there, had the best headline for Prague. I won't even try.

Said goodbye to Brussels, which was lovely. I will be back. Spent last night with Katia, and we saw some music at Grand Place, then a french band call Les Fatals Picard.

These last guys were the french eurovision contestants but were actually brilliant. They had a pogues/madness vibe, and weezer called and wanted their guitarist back. Actually, reminded me of Barenaked Ladies too (I like them, fuck off).

Today we tried Little Asia on Goris' recommendation. I bought Harry Potter one in French in an effort to better myself. It is all good.

Now I'm in the Prague, in the best hostel ever, recommended to me by Dave Keys. I'm in pretty high spirits.

Hope all's well with you, wherever you are.

Danny
Prague

Sunday, here again

2007-08-19T06:54:00.001-07:00

Once again, I'm caught in Europe on a Sunday. There is nothing to do so I do whatever.

The Jacques Brel Museum was closed and will be tomorrow. Such a shame I don't think I'll see it.

I did see two wonderful Museums. One was Musee Royaux Des Beaux-Arts Belgique, ie the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Belgium. It had Rubens, and quite excitingly, James Ensor, who was the subject of a They Might Be Giants song. Most excitingly, Rene Magritte. I will write more about Magritte later.

The other is a comic museum, featuring the rich, rich history of cartoons in Belgium. Tintin and the Smurfs are the main two. Its amazing. The first floor has over a hundred original works. From comic book pages to cartoon strips. Romance comics, sci fi adventures, cowboy shoot em ups and just cartoon fantasies.

I'm a big fan of comics. Newspaper strips and comic art, and yes, American Superheroes. Where as this place had a whole floor showing the evolution of comics, American mainstream stuff has stood still.

This place had a whole floor dedicated to comic's evolution. Both visually and thematically. Where as in the US you have to bend at the altar of Stan Lee, and any speaking out against him and his style is treachery. You must have screaming damsels. You must have cackling villians. You must have an alliterated name. I hate Stan Lee.

Otherwise Belgiums been lovely. I'm meeting someone I met last night and we're going to see some French folk music. Tomorrow will be the music instrument museum then off to Prague. Right now I'm at Ste Catherine, downing Hoegaardens and wondering if I'll be able to buy more socks today.

I doubt it.

Danny
Brussels.

Shuffle 'round the earth like a ping pong

2007-08-18T11:16:00.000-07:00

I'm staying in a terrible hostel in Brussels.

Why do I keep choosing the cheapest ones. I think maybe I can afford a better range of Hostel. Note to self. what really should have given it away was the name. Youth Hostel Van Gogh. It's just one of those names that international travellers will recognise. I just put one euro in this machine and you only get 12 minutes. Ripped off. Oh well.

So it's a very strange feeling travelling again. Last time I really did this, I kind of had nothing else to go back to. Now I do, and I miss home, my current home, already.

But I'm getting back into the spirit of it. It's kind of like putting yourself in an elastic band and just shoot yourself off. It's random and fun and the aim is to just keep going. Manage to forget the battery for my camera and a European adapter. Argh.

I'm liking Brussels so far, although I have not done much. Wasted some time in record shops. There's free music in the Town Square tonight so I will go check it out. Saw some lady truly destroy an Alanis Morrisette song earlier. And it's a little bit quieter than what I'm used to. I might buy some shoes. And there's a FNAC here, and those places are always good.

Will hit a couple of cafes on Isabelle's list and check out the Jacque Brel Museum if I get the chance. And get a Tintin t-shirt. But you know, really looking forward to some serious sitting in a park time too.

Danny
Brussels

Something/Anything

2007-08-15T11:04:00.000-07:00

Becky asked me for a little timeline of bands she should listen to, of old stuff. I sent her this...

Here is a timeline of significant events in human history.

5 Billion Years Ago: The Big Bang

1972: Todd Rundgren realeases his double album masterpiece, Something/Anything.

Todd Rundgren was at one point the talented frontman of The Nazz, one of so many bands in the 60s who thought they could be something like this band called the Beatles. The Nazz were actually way better than the Beatles. At least they were for one glorious song, Open My Eyes, a song that sounds like Snow Patrol only in title.

The Nazz did three albums, called 'Nazz', 'Nazz Nazz' and then, just as you thought the third album would be called 'Nazz Nazz Nazz', they called it 'Nazz 3'. And by 'they' I mean everyone other than Todd, who left.

Todd did two fantastic solo albums, Runt (1970) and Runt: The Ballad of Todd Rundgren (1972). 'Runt: The Ballad of Todd Rundgren' should not be confused with 'Runt'. Although it often is. That's because it's fucking confusing.

All that was like taking off your shoes and squishing your toes before the long, orgasmic glories of Something/Anything in 1972, released on Bearsville, a label out of Woodstock (the real one, not the fake one) run by Bob Dylan's manager.

To be clear, it is a glorious ride of 70s radio rock. From Carole King ballads, Motown thumpers, Rolling stones rip-offs, New York Dolls like sex drenched glam, Rufus Wainwright show tunes with flutes - you put it on and you are on a trip through all that is great about music.

The album is split into four sides - each with a name.

First is a 'Bouquet of Ear Catching Melodies'. Which is exactly what it is. Take the best of the Beach Boys, the Cars, Queen, Chicago...all the greatest shiny over produced pop, and that's what this start of the album is about.

This side, and the album itself, opens with the single lifted off the album - 'I Saw The Light'. Todd writes his own notes on the album, saying he thought it would be a great single, so he put it first on the album, like Motown. This confused me for many years, as I had a copy of the Bearsville pressing, but didn't understand why he would write liner notes for himself. Then I realised people did that back then. Nowadays they wait for the reissue.

(Another reason Todd is better than everyone else)

It has such great tunes. It Wouldn't Have Made Any Difference that was used in Almost Famous, and Wolfman Jack, a tribute to the legendary DJ.

Sides two is 'The Cerebral Side'. It starts with a spoken word skit, where Todd runs you through all the different glitches you can get in a studio (bad mastering, hiss, pops, etc). It's plain weird, and lightly experimental. What a guy.

Third side is 'Kid Gets Heavy'. Now, I've heard Prince say he loves Todd Rundgren a lot, and seeing him recently, reminded me how great Prince is as a guitar playing, but he's no Todd. Todd is the man. It's the jam rock side. I mean, it's a double record from the seventies. Expect jamming.

The first three sides of the album, Todd PLAYED EVERYTHING.

And he played everything better than anyone else.

That's just the way he is. He is the Chuck Norris of 70s pop.

But, just to prove he has friends (because, we all know Calvin Harris has no friends), the final side of the album, brilliant named 'Baby Needs a New Pair of Snakeskin Boots' is recorded live in the studio, raw and tough. From this side, we get the album's other big hit, Hello It's Me, which probably made it all the way to #30 or something, but was straight to the top of my personal charts, and has stayed their ever since.

The album ends with three of the weirdest songs. 'Some Folks Are Even Whiter Than Me', which is horribly politically incorrect now, 'You Left Me Sore', which is about sexually transmitted disease, and finally, the awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome rocker 'Slut', where the whole band is singing along

"S-L-U-T
She may be a slut but she looks good to me!"

And another line about not keeping his hands to himself that I find quite funny. The trumpets groove the whole thing along, as Todd belts the tune out. Then it's all over.

It's a great album.

The original vinyl only has the word SOMETHING on one side, ANYTHING on the back. It has a stupidly cool looking photo of todd standing on a chair in his studio. He looks so damn cool, that if you held the gatefold cover up to the sun, it would stop global warming.

The album's catalogue number is 8122711072.

End of timeline.

Mike Wieringo/Tony Wilson

2007-08-14T11:41:00.000-07:00

So I'm really busy but just wanted to write a two things.

Tony Wilson passed away. I'm working in music in the UK and his legend looms large. Many people have told me amazing stories about him. I've enjoyed reading him interviewed, his writings and I adore his legacy. But there is no better tribute than the film 24 Hour Party People. Funny, that I'm working on a project now that is one of Tony's. And I've been batling and struggling to get it done despite the ridiculous packaging, and someone pointed out - "That's Tony." The man who lost money on every Blue Monday single sold because it was the right thing to do.

Mike Wieringo also passed away. I'm not going to say he was a personal hero of mine or anything overblown. He drew many, many comics I loved. But more importantly, one of the greatest run of comics for me is the Mark Waid era of The Flash, that ran in my late teens. It's such a mature, well written, loving, funny, epic run of a comic. It's considered THE Flash era by many, and one of the best titles in that 90s comic explosion. And Mike was there. A great artist, with a great happy style that was so far away from like, the Punisher or Spawn. And when I think of that excellent run of the Flash, and then I see the Flash in my mind, it's drawn by the hand of Mike Wieringo. That's something.

Danny
London

Is the right time

2007-08-06T16:29:00.001-07:00

I am always pretty awake and alert at midnight. Why can't I be at work now? I'm no use at 8am. Who came up with 8am?

An Unrecorded Song

2007-08-05T15:28:00.001-07:00

I read a lot of biographies. My favourites are ones like Nick Drake – The Biography by Patrick Humphries. It’s full of interesting stuff - who knew that the tall skinny (and remarkably handsome) Drake was born in Burma? But it also has what may be a dying art in biography – a sense of mystery. He died so early, in such obscurity, no one kept records.

Are we the last generation of lost records? By records I mean official documentation. I’m pretty sure from 1990 or so there accurate records of every place I’ve ever lived. I’m sure if someone wanted, they could easily find all the places I’ve travelled, and when. There’s a computer somewhere that has every journey I’ve ever taken. Except maybe one trip from Korea to Taiwan where I was issued with a paper ticket. Maybe, that’s the one black mark.

And I like the black marks. I like not being able to join the dots sometimes. I like to think there are things that people never know about eachother.

This isn’t an anti big brother rant. This isn’t me walking down your street with a sandwich board saying the government is watching you. It’s just a belief that a life can be more than what can be assumed from documents, even interviews.

Have you tried googling yourself? Then, there are now myspaces and facebooks. Facebook, you can even tag photos with people’s names. There are many photos of me I’ve never seen. Then there’s Youtube! How long before you’re there, in the background of someone’s camera phone.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I like a bit of mystery. It doesn’t feel like I can do much these days without people knowing about it. Which is fine. But sometimes, when you are somewhere, and you realise, no one knows where you are, or what you are doing, can be a beautiful moment.

I have to believe that there will always be mysteries in the world. That we cannot be captured simply by the tracks we leave behind. And that there are things in the world that cannot be looked up in Wikipedia.

They put out another Nick Drake collection this year (in the same month there was ‘new’ releases by Elliott Smith and Jeff Buckley). I didn’t get it, but I have plenty of Drake boots. He did a lot of covers and just jamming stuff. I have to believe that maybe there is a beautiful song he wrote and played that maybe is never recorded, that I’ll never hear. I have his three albums, and about 10 other collections, boots, demos and stuff. And after all that, I want to be able to say that it was just a part of his bag of tunes.

No one knows if Nick Drake’s death was an accident or if it was deliberate. I don’t want to know. I don’t ever want to know everything. I want to keep guessing.

Danny
London

The ashtray says you've been up all night

2007-07-25T01:51:00.001-07:00

There gets to a point when it's 5:45am and you're still wide awake that you are pretty much trying to waste another hour tossing and turning in bed before you make yourself a slow breakfast and proceed through the day as if by some miracle you woke up early, as opposed to not having slept at all.

Come Home

2007-07-13T07:44:00.000-07:00

For Jodie

Everybody loves a holiday
Everybody likes to run away
Home is both a time and place
Everybody feels that way sometimes

I have a feeling you’ll be fine
Wherever you go, whatever you find
But Jodie don’t you think you should come home?

You’ll be out on another date
Some other guy in some other place
You can talk to us any day
If you want to call us from time to time

I have a feeling you’ll be fine
Wherever you go, whatever you find
But Jodie don’t you think you should come home?

We’re gonna miss you, just so you know
We’re standing still and you’re gonna show
Us how it’s done
To go back to everyone
To conquer all your fears
While we pretend we’re kids for a few more years

You can’t always be on holiday
You can’t always be running away
We will miss you every day
And maybe you will think of us in your new life

I have a feeling you’ll be fine
Wherever you go, whatever you find
But Jodie don’t you think you should come home?

The Balfour House Date

2007-07-03T15:40:00.000-07:00

So, I’m doing well in London. And yes I have scored a pretty decent job. But that’s not what is making my time here a comfort and a joy.

That’s my home.

I’m living in a three storey place in Ladbroke Grove. The area is synonymous with Notting Hill, mentioned in a Pulp song and is where the Clash and Blur cut their teeth. Nick Lowe wrote a song about Basing Street. Notting Hill the movie was of course set here. Most excitingly, one of my favourite Blur songs, Best Days, mentions Trellick Towers. Those strange looking apartment blocks look down at me as I leave the house every day.

(Also, Trellick Towers was designed by the Belgian architect Goldfinger, a man who would offend Ian Flemming so much that he would name one of his greatest villains after him.)

I love the people I live with and I’m quickly trying to capture something about them before things change.

What I have come up with is the Balfour House Date. It sums all four of us up.

The BHD starts with me. I’m the chatterbox. The ice breaker. I would get a couple of drinks, ask how you are, be genuinely interested in who you are, what’s going on, and all that. I’ll make you comfortable and relaxed.

Next is Isabelle. She’s the more arty, fun and passionate one of the house. She’s an architect, and she would switch to the wine or the scotch as the atmosphere winds down. You would stumble out of the bar with Isabelle, tipsy, happy, talking about meaningful things in funny ways.

Then comes Nathan. Nathan will have sex with you. He’s tall, well built, and a doctor (a research scientist). He’s a good looking man, and a fantastic person, funny and yet has a great curiosity about the world. He also plays guitar. He would take you home, sing you a song, then take you to bed.

Finally there’s Jodie. She will marry you and take care of you forever. The steady head and shoulders when we need it, she is organised, smart, caring and motherly. She will make a great mother. She cleans when she’s restless. She’s a great cook and cooks often. She gives me dry cleaning advice and worries that I still haven’t put a new light bulb in my room for about 2 months (I have a lamp). She’s the last part of the Balfour House date, and the best part.

And she’s the one who is leaving us next week. It’s very sad, but I wont dwell on that. Plenty of time to do that. This week we have been interviewing potential housemates and it’s been a drag. Only one person seemed to fit in with us.

It has pulled the rest of us closer together. Isabelle and I wet through people today, and I just felt like we both loved this place, and we were going to protect it from the spoilt, the daysleepers, the non English speakers and the plain unsettling.

Nathan has been here the longest. Four years or so. He’s sad about Jodie too, but he has a perspective I don’t. People leave all the time. He’s lived with all kinds. Strange feeling, that. But at least it looks like Nathan and I will be pretty stable parts of this house for the coming years.

Home is a time and place. I’ve said it before. Jodie reckons she’s put off her real life long enough. But her last couple of years, her real life has been travelling, and London. As is mine. And nothing stays settled for long these days.

Danny
London

Temple bar is under me

2007-07-01T04:00:00.000-07:00

This is a travel blog right?

So I'm about to board a plane home to London after a great weekend in Dublin.

I could have sat around and listened to people talk all day.

I came mainly for the REM show, but I must say the Irish Stew was the best meal I've had in the british isles thus far.

And an almost Bono and Edge sighting to boot.

Home tonight... Where things seem to be flooded and scared.

Danny
Dublin

Names For Kids

2007-06-26T14:52:00.000-07:00

for Kim and Lisa

Just like every girl I’ve ever met
She had the names for her kids all set
Two seconds and a first for two boys and a girl
All future husbands will just have to accept

Funny how a name can recur through a life
I refer to experience that they’re all alike
Good guys named Ben and sweethearts named Em
Familiar names tend to make good friends

Remember the time we found that book in that store
Written by somebody with the same name as yours
If I ever meet someone with her exact name
It would only kick up old feelings again

I’ve never met anyone with that name before
Your folks were inspired when you were born
It echoes in my head and it's so pretty to say
I want to write it on my pencil case

Danny

A very overdue flickr update (part the third)

2007-06-22T04:43:00.000-07:00

One of history's greatest villains. And a wax statue of Moriaty.

It's coming on summer, they aren't cutting down the trees, and I figured better than doing a whole lot of explaining (like my brother Vince would), I would let these pictures speak a thousand words.

Jay, Josh and Natalie @ the Borderline

Asho and Ali @ Barfly

Nathan & Andy Clockwise

Tim Byron in a phonebooth

Sophie and Ash

A nice flow of friends have been coming through London. I don't feel like a tourist anymore. Josh Pyke, a very talented and hairy singer, and an old mate, has come and played in London several times. Asho, a great old friend has breezed in and out as well. Andy Clockwise, who I barely knew in Sydney, spent some time in London, and some time drunk on my couch. tim Byron, ex Reservations keyboardist, came for a visit of universities, and spent some days in London. Two of my oldest, dearest friends, Sophie and Ash, jetted here for gigs and time off. I think we laughed the whole time.

C'est moi et Erin, dans Paris

Paul & Ann

I have done very little travelling in the last few months. A quick stop in Paris to visit Paul and Ann who were on holidays there. I love Paris so much. Erin and I recreated the movie Before Sunset one morning. Look at us chatting away about intense topics.

Emily and Isabelle, striking a pose

Nick, Nathan and Jodes

We had a party at my house and it was a great night. Above, Emily and Isabelle striking a pose. Also, Nick, Nathan and Jodes the morning after. I had a wonderful moment at the party, thinking I got to London with nothing, and built this life for myself. It was great.

My desk, circa May 2007

It's changed quite a bit since then, but I thought it was funny. I will update this as time passes.

More actual proper 'what I've been doing' type updates coming soon.

Why not smile
Danny

The Last Week Of Smoking In Paris

2007-06-13T07:30:00.000-07:00

I was there for
The last week of smoking in Paris
Before they banned it in all the bars.

And I met a man enjoying
What may have been his last ever cigarette
Like an old friend he will never see again.

And yes, it wasn’t always good for him.
And yes it did him harm.
But he remembers the good times they had.

And he has promised to quit
It’s best for the long term; best for his health
He feels like his chest could feel better.

He’s been smoking so long
And it may take a long time
But he’ll get over it one day.

You were there for
My last week of living in Sydney
Before I left you in all the bars

And I saw you were enjoying
What may have been my last kiss on your neck
With an old friend I would never see again.

And yes, you weren’t always good for me
And yes you did me harm
But I’ll remember the good times we had.

And you had promised to quit
It’s best for the long term; best for our health
I feel like your smile could be better

We’ve been at this so long
And it may take a long time
But I’ll get over you one day.

The Lowest Form of Conversation

2007-06-09T17:01:00.000-07:00

I’m up and sleepless. With worry.

A weight is in my chest, just above my heart. My throat is a little dry, and my muscle wont move but wont relax. This is what thinking about the future gets you.

It’s come up lately. And the right thing to do is not too far from something I want to do. You know in school, in your last few years, they make you study your ass off for stuff you don’t care about to keep your options open. This terrible idea of keeping your options open.

Options are closing now. But that’s not even really what I’m thinking about. What’s got me worried is coming home.

I don’t think I want to.

Cathy thinks that every traveller here thinks of leaving. They may have been here 30 years, but if you ask them when they are going home, they will have an answer. Maybe it’s a few months. Maybe it’s a few years. But there’s a finish line.

I don’t know where that line is for me. But I know I have to be home soon and I’m dreading it. Johanna always said I was running away. But I just don’t like going back. I just feel like there will be many people back home for whom I will have nothing to say.

‘Remember When…’ is the lowest form of conversation. Remember when we did this? Or that? I know some people love it, but I hate it. And I’m dreading, really dreading, from the bottom of my washing machine stomach. Just writing this – it’s making me want to throw up.

This might sound mean. I don’t know I feel the need to write this down. And maybe it’s good. I’ll have low expectations. But from experience, people see you with old eyes. First impressions are hard to break. And people dislike change. Generalisations, yes.

And it’s not everyone, of course. The people who still mean a lot to me, and I hope I make it clear who you are when I speak or email (or text) you. But the rabble. Oh god.

I don’t want to sound like the arrogant prick who says “I’ve been overseas and nothing’s better than that.” I don’t think it’s that. You might not think so, though. But I’m on the defensive already.

I’m trying to think of the point of this rant to sum it up. I’m not sure there is one. All I wanted to say is I’m coming home. And I’m worried. I guess, I don’t like change either.

Danny
London

Boys And Girls On Earth

2007-06-04T14:41:00.000-07:00

I don’t throw parties.

Historically, I’m an introvert. There’s a clear way of spotting introverts. Recorded music versus live music. I prefer to stay home and listen to CDs (or the ipod). When I played music, I preferred writing and rehearsing to playing live. Even the great live bands…I prefer listening alone, in comfort.

Take the Hold Steady, a band that Q magazine are touting as one of the 10 hottest bands on the planet. Their sound is bar band – Replacements, Bruce Springsteen, etc, and a hot one at that. Yet I put that disc on (yes, the disc) and I’m taken away. I lie in my bed and imagine I’m at the gig. If you don’t understand that, then I’m never going to be able to explain it to you.

The Hold Steady album is amazing. It’s called Boys and Girls In America and it’s just that, a snap shot of drunken nights out, big nights, the meat market of modern dating and suburban life. As Jarvis cocker said – we drink and dance and screw cos there’s nothing else to do.

The album cover has a bunch of kids cheering, as if at a gig, looking up at the sky. It’s been quite a lauded album. All it does is celebrate normality, maybe even mundanity. But maybe that’s where we are heading.

So my household threw a party. I thought a lot about the Hold Steady song ‘Massive Nights’, and enjoyed it for what it was. Meeting people, dancing, wasted myself and more, and less, and all around. And I loved it. And we built nothing useful. We wrote no songs, made no progress, but we laughed and had fun and kissed and hugged and fell further and further away. The opposite of the Rimbaud tortured artist. Rimbaud can go get fucked. I never liked the guy anyway.

So maybe it’s not artistic. It’s not big. Maybe every orgasm we have is another novel lost. Myeh. The Zen revelation I had when I sat on my back step a good 16 hours later with a cup of tea is that you have to enjoy every moment that lets you enjoy it. And maybe we are passive. Maybe we could have left the house and saw some painting. Maybe we could have been chaining ourselves to a tree.

The party was great. It ended. We survived. And by surviving – we lived. It’s good enough for now. I put on the Hold Steady album, and listen and become introverted again. So yeah, like that dude John Mayer says, we are the generation that is waiting for the world to change more than doing something about it. This is life on earth, 2007, London. It’s as valid as anyone else’s. And we had some massive nights.

I smoked too much.

Danny

Television Addict 1

2007-05-28T17:00:00.000-07:00

I have cable TV for the first time in my life. I also have wireless broadband at home for the first time. Yes, look at me. I know what year it is! So the combination has led to a lot watching of TV shows. And current stuff! Not just Press Gang on DVD. As it's finale season...

The Office (US)
I know people who feel it's a crime to watch this show. You are missing out. It's taken the place that Arrested Development left in my heart. If you only know the UK version, well, a lot has changed. Its more of an ensemble piece. Every character is great and have their own story. And there is more subplots - it's the one thing the US are great at - building tension over weeks.

Steve Carell is amazing. Very different to Ricky Gervais. He's not a mean soul, more of a loser. The Rainn Wilson/Dwight character is also very different now to the Gareth character. Rainn is a nerd. His perfect woman is an anime character. He loves Battlestar Galactica. The new character of Andy is possibly my favourite of them all.

But it's the love story. Handled with beautiful subtlety. Season Two was the highlight. And after three years, I think they finally nodded again to the UK series, and turned a classic scene on it's head. When Jim asks Pam out, quite publically, she says yes, and the season ends. It was such a great hour of TV.

Really, you're missing out.

Heroes
Well, it started of great. Television Sci Fi is always touch and go. We see so much in movies that the cheap production values and lack of planning really comes through. But the concept and the style is great. And they don't try to be too much more that bubblegum adventure either.

Pity then that the season finale is so shit. Plot holes everywhere. The mystery has no pay off. It reminds me of the hollow feeling I had after Spiderman 3. I'll watch next season, sure. But we expected a lot. And this show was built on hints and shadows and didn't pay off.

Lost
If you're a fan then you probably know what happened by now. Brilliant, eh?

They kind of lost their way for a bit, but they are back on track. There is a mission. The characters are in fascinating places. And always, it's so well done. We're getting answers thick and fast.

I just wonder how they are ever going to resolve it ALL. Like, how will they possibly tie up every single weird thing? How can there possibly be a single explanation that makes us go 'of course!'? But I'm so there. So there.

Doctor Who
A new discovery. How could I not? It's the one big geek show I've never discovered. And when I heard David Tennant based his Doctor on Jarvis cocker, I was set.

British Sci Fi has such a rich, peculiar history. It's usually made on low budgets, so they usually have less spaceships, and less explosions (and less cast). And then there's that British sense of humour, that Douglas Adams view of the universe. That's all come into force in the new Doctor Who.

It doesn't try to be American. Production-wise, it reminds me of Harry Potter. But it's all about David Tennant as the Doctor. He will be a defining character for generations. The scripts are always brilliant - th cream of British writers (including my hero, Steven Moffat).

The episode just aired here was Human Nature, with the girl from Spaced/Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. I'm so happy to be around for this. I want a sonic screwdriver light pen thing I saw on Amazon.

The Sopranos
When you watch TV on DVD, you get to a point where you go...one disc left, it's almost over...what will I do now?

There are two episode left in the Sopranos. The stage is set for all hell to break loose. They've been killing people off, left right and centre. And they still manage to have something to say.

I loved the episode 'Walk Like A Man', all about AJ being the emotional boy after a break up, descending into depression, and all it says about being a tough guy in the modern day. This show is just so damn good, so sophisticated, without being flashy. The violence is down to earth, making it more disturbing. They still talk about people who died years ago, they aren't just written out and forgotten.

What will I do without this show? I'll have to visit Jersey one day. The bigger question though, is how will this all end? How do you end one of the greatest TV series of all time?

So that's usually my Saturday. Watch TV on my computer until Doctor Who hits at 7pm or so. I'm going to miss it. Heroes, Lost and the Office are done. Sopranos is not far behind, and only a month or so of Doctor Who left. Sigh.

Maybe it's time to go out and see my London more.

Danny
London

It's almost dawn

2007-05-12T18:57:00.001-07:00

I have been so busy.

And up so late.

I never get a chance to write.

So much stuff happened this week. Time to pull my socks up.

Planning a week where I do nothing but write emails and myspace messages to you all.

Then saving some money to see YOU soon.

And to pick up my reading slack. To get better on the guitar.

And do right.

Why not smile?

Danny
London

Where Have All The Billy Braggs Gone?

2007-04-30T18:21:00.000-07:00

I have been writing a lot. I know. It’s an experiment.

Who are your heroes?

I know who mine are. Like most people, I have many, not just one. You see those people on the street who have just one sometimes. You can tell they want to be Keith Richards, or Liam Gallagher, or Woody Allen.

But I have many. How could I not? I’m just a big sponge for culture anyway. So many influences come rushing my way.

Just think for a second of how many people you’ve ever met in your life. Then add people you’ve read about, or seen. Then add fictional characters from movies, books and all. Must be thousands. Tens of thousands. Maybe hundreds of thousands. How many names do you know? Friends, family, famous and fictional. How can it not rub off on you? How can you not have a million heroes.

But there’s one type of hero for me that I keep returning to. A bunch of guys with familiar character traits that make me think, and think often – I want to be like that.

Bruce Springsteen. Elvis Costello. Joe Strummer. Billy Bragg. Lloyd Cole. Paul Westerberg. More I can’t think of right now.

(Funnily enough, all men who were at their prime in the 80s as people)

It’s got nothing to do with the music, but them as people. There’s a mix of strength, of rocking, of doing, mixed with passion and emotion, and quite a bit of smarts. All those men you can imagine rolling up their sleeves and changing a car tire. All those men you can imagine have had their fair share of dark moments in love. And all those men are well read and are articulate.

And it’s the mix that’s most important of all. Of Tough, Romance and Intelligence. Obviously there are those who lean highly to one of the three. Steven Segal is all brawn, rock, and physicality. He can fix your shed, but not much else. Romance taken to the extreme and you get the flowery poets. No one likes them. And all intellect is another cartoon – Steven Hawking?

When you mix it up a little it gets more interesting (for me). Romance and Intellect gets you into Niles from Frasier territory. It’s a character I love to pieces, but useless more than not. Romance and Tough, you get Rocky Balboa. Emotional, and can only bash at things to express his emotion. He would attack marble with a mallet. Intellect and Tough? You get Henry Rollins. I hope than man gets into politics. Personally, I need a bit of heart.

And it seems each has a detractor. The indie nerd eschews toughness. The Silent Types eschew emotion. The jock eschews intelligence.

So I go on about this for a very good reason. I feel like that kind of guy is lost. Or at least it’s been a while since I met one. Especially in greater culture. Where are the artful, emotional and strong role models? The man who understands the world, who can feel for the world, and can change the world?

We need another Billy Bragg. We need someone who can play and sing and spit with every muscle behind him, can write a sad song about girl he once loved, and use a line as intelligent and witty as ‘I put you on the pedestal, they put you on the pill.”

Where have all the Billy Braggs gone?

Danny

I am an island...

2007-04-29T10:34:00.000-07:00

I don't usually do these sorts of things. But this was funny and I think, worth keeping.

What Kind of Music are You?

You are Rock!You are articulate, likeable and popular. You have a taste for living large and you don't often look behind you to see the damage you leave in your wake. You can influence lots of people very easily, you just need to determine which issues you feel are most important. Also, watch out, many people you call your friends might just be flakes along for the ride. Try to figure out who really cares about you and who you really care about in return.
Take this quiz!

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Hmmm...

I think what I like best is this quiz also dispenses life advice. How to cope with being the music you are, and to enjoy a full life regardless of your condition.

Danny

What are you running from?

2007-04-27T09:08:00.001-07:00

When I first started meeting people who have been traveling for like 18 months, at first I was judgmental.

What are you running from? That's what I wanted to ask these people.

One of the many, many great things I've learnt from Bob Ellis is the idea of a witness. Someone who is your closest friend for a short time. Friend is not even the right word. The word IS witness, someone who can testify who you are for a certain time and a certain place. And that's it. On the road for 18 months, sometimes more, how would you know anyone other than witnesses?

What are you running from?

Has something hurt you in your life? Was your old life so bad? Did you run the routine life into the ground? Do you just love the unknown?

Here's the thing that changed my mind about it. With maybe less than a half a dozen exceptions, it seems I don't have much more than witnesses myself. And in most cases, the people who knew me best, who knew me intensely, for a night or a couple of years, they are not with me.

So maybe if you ever meet one of these people, somewhere, and ask them about me, they can tell you who I was, back in a time and place. But I'm not the person they know, and they aren't the person I know.

I came across a photo today of someone I used to know. For a year or two, we knew eachother better than any other human beings known us. I think she's married now, and I'm not even sure. She got sick a while back, and I don't know with what. She doesn't know where I am, I doubt.

And I have to say, the memory hurt. I'm not unhappy to be faraway from that. And part of me, a big part, just wanted to run. For god sakes, stick me in a forest somewhere in remote South America. Or Holly Golightly in the desert with strangers. Hide me in a hostel in a European city, one that is the same as hundreds like it. I don't want to think about it. I don't want to deal with it. No connections. Just witnesses.

And I'll tell you just enough about me so you don't have to think about me again. And no more.

In a world where you basically can't be a hermit anymore, I think the best alternative is to pass through people's lives at such awesome speed that you leave no trace. You don't have to be the Invisible Man, when you can be the Flash.

What are YOU running from?

Danny
London

Famous People I've Seen On the Streets Since I Left Home

2007-04-26T06:00:00.000-07:00

The new irregular series

Who: Mischa Barton (twice). You know, the skinny one from the O.C.
Where: Once in a restaurant in Madrid, and six months later at a Shins gig in London where we stood next to eachother.

She is actually quite stunning. But I find it interesting how many girls say this too. The ones who were with me when I saw her have all commented. She is also very tall, and I think possibly the most famous person on this list.

Who: The dude who died at the end of the first Lord of the Rings, in that really long drawn out scene.
Where: Just at the pub, on his own. Having a pint. No trace of over acting at all. He looks a bit like my mate Simon.

Who: J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr fame.
Where: Near Denmark Street in Soho, the guitar capital of London. I was very much going to go up and say hi and say how I liked his music...until two kids beat me to it. So I walked on, as if I was meaning to walk past the whole time.

Who: Mike Skinner of the Streets
Where: PC World, Kensington. I was too distracted with my broken laptop to see what he was doing.

Who: The dude who gets picked on in fat fighters, that recurring sketch in Little Britain
Where: Virgin Megastore, Oxford St. I didn't see what he bought. Maybe Little Britain on DVD.

Who: The entire cast of the IT Crowd
Where: a little cafe between work and home. I love that show. It was very exciting actually. I noticed one of them first, then the others. I don't know about you, but I'd like to imagine that people in TV shows are all friends. To see that they are was great.

I'm sure there's more but, you just don't get this type of celeb watching in Sydney.

More when I remember...

Danny
London

The Shins in Monmartre

2007-04-23T04:10:00.000-07:00

So things come together

My favourite band at the moment, my favourite place in the world.

I have no idea how this came about, but wow, for me, what a clip.

I know exactly where they are. And those two songs, gone For Good and Turn On Me are two of my favourite songs of theres (plus Alone Again Or!).

Just lovely and coincidence ridden. It's like it walked straight out of my fantasy.

Danny

At least that's what you said

2007-04-21T04:51:00.000-07:00

There's a webcast of the Wilco Sydney show on right now.

All I can think is I'm listening to some of my best friends in the world laughing.

I miss you all

Danny

I don't want to die at Euro Disney

2007-04-19T05:50:00.000-07:00

I don't know what to write about Paris this time.

It was the most amazing, inspirational couple of days. And I don't even know how to share it. From the people I met, the places I saw, the silly things I did...it was all amazing.

Caught up with old friends, recreated Richard Linklater's Before Sunset, found the hotel used in Charade...and trying not to let the Da Vinci Code ruin it for me.

I didn't want it to end. My French is getting better. The food was out of this world. And the weather! 28 glorious degrees, beautiful women everywhere. Sleeping on the grass, crepes avec jambon et fromage, 1 euro wine...

But it was more than that. It was just refreshing, I had enough time to just wander and think about stuff. Finally hit on something to collect in my travels. Those big old fashioned travel stickers you see on old suitcases, but they will be for my guitar. Anyway, I just wanted to bookend this trip with another post.

Suffice to say it was alright. Suffice to say it wasn't bad.

Danny
London

Paris again...

2007-04-14T15:03:00.000-07:00

Bonsoir!

I'm back in Paris.

I'm jaywalking like I own these streets.

Gare du Nord is my albtross. It's the only place in recent memory where I felt so unsafe, uncomfortable and undone.

Today I walked through it without a hesitant step. I would have kicked any black cats that would have thought about crossing my path.

It is the hottest I've been anywhere since I left Australia. I cannot remember the last time I well and truly sweated!

Today there were hundreds of people on the steps of the Sacre Coeur, just sunbaking.

I know it's a cliche for someone like me to love Paris but I do. I even love the mess on the streets. It's like the living room of the locals. You leave a bit of a mess because it is yours.

I have a couple of more days here. I am thinking of joining the pretty young things on the grass and just daydreaming my hours away on the Parisian sun.

Oh and French women, who looked beautiful in summer... Well when they pull out their lighter tops for winter...oh my. I'm not sure what will make me faint first, the heat or the cleavege.

I'm stumbling home and all I can think is I have to get residency in London, so I can live in Paris.

Danny
Paris

Heavens to Betsy now we're late twentys...

2007-04-13T05:05:00.000-07:00

I know I hark on about it, but growing old has been on my mind a lot.

Something Craig and I have discussed often is that we would get better with age. The early twenties didn't fit me right. Maybe it doesn't fit many people right. I found my own niche, had fun, hard tough times, struggled with what this blue and green ball was all about...but it didn't really feel like I was a part of things. i think they call that 'Indie'.

One of my life's greatest heroes, Tim Rogers of You Am I, told me once that he never wanted to be younger, always older. I feel the same. When he sings about watching old men in pubs and the respect and sadness of age really hits me.

I've also been listening to Tim's first, brilliant solo album What Rhymes With Cars And Girls, a lot. It's a very mature work for Tim, and written and released at a time when he had broken up from the major relationship of his twenties, and just past his first flush of success. It's reflective, funny, and sad about growing old, all those drugs he didn't take anymore, but he doesn't want to go back either.

I am, however, really loving the twenties, which is what I wanted to write about anyway. Is it me, or does it feel like this is our time? Sure you get the odd exception where young-uns like the Arctic Monkeys still set the scene. But it seems like our culture's youthful voice isn't actually that youthful at all.

There are many reasons for this. We are staying in school longer for one. Society is so fragmented it's harder to start a scene. Or maybe, I'm just older now, and very few 19 year olds have much to say to me. But it does seem like we a target market of our own. You look at things like Word magazine, movies like Little Miss Sunshine. We, the Bourgeois children of Woody Allen.

A friend of mine made a movie. I saw it last night and it was fantastic. Another friend of mine made a fantastic album, of richness and depth and actually sold a truckload of it too. Another is a leading scientist in his field. I've been meeting matte painters, novelists, actors...all of us in our early twenties, here in London, living it up.

Things are going really well right now, and I feel like I'm taking the biggest gulps from the cup of life I ever have. And as much as I'm happy and how I feel like this time in my life is a really important one, I look at my friends, I see them sitting around my living room, at the pub, us out in the streets of London, and I think - this is their time too. It's a strange feeling, and someone needs to give it a name.

I love all the songs on What Rhymes With Cars and Girls - but one of my current faves is the duet with Sally Datsey of Tiddas, a song called Up-A-Ways, about travelling. The line is

Those wandering dues sound oh so good in a tune
But you need some place to waffle all that mud off your boots.

Danny Yau
London

ps. Paris, AGAIN, this weekend.

Sleeping Lessons

2007-04-01T17:48:00.000-07:00

I am sleepless again, so I thought I’d write something. Quick note: life is good and I’ll tell you all about it later. Right now, something else I’ve been meaning to write about.

The Shins are going to go down as my favourite band of the 00s.

It’s heartening and inspiring that, after all these years, I only just saw the greatest gig of my life. And that the next one around the corner may even be better.

I’ve seen the Shins a handful of times. And, they have been one of the worst live bands I have ever seen. To turn around and say they are now one of the best…well, that’s one big almighty turn around.

I love how a band can bookmark a life.

My first encounter with the Shins was through a band called Beachwood Sparks. In a lot of ways, the Shins stole their thunder. Out of nowhere, that dated grunge label SubPop had signed a pretty cool band. And then they signed this other one, one that people told me sounded like Love (the 60s band). Weird little indie album cover. You know, I didn’t even buy it. Someone sent it too me, when I was working at a community radio station.

The album is called Oh! Inverted World. I listened to it and liked parts of it. But it wasn’t as good as Beachwood Sparks…

Hanna really loved the first song, ‘Caring Is Creepy’. And it’s pretty good. I remember Craig and me at some girl we just met’s house, at around 2am on a random night, her trying to find some demo of some guy she used to go out (he wrote a song about her) And we were listening to something, and Craig and I discussing the Shins, and him quoting some lines I’ve never noticed before…

Lucked out, found my favourite records
Waiting for me at the Birmingham Mall.
The songs that I heard, the occasional book
Are all the fun I ever took.

I don’t think I ever heard lines that summed up my upbringing and teenage life so well before. The record still didn’t really hit me though. Yeah, it was VAGUELY Love-esque, but there was one more part of the puzzle I didn’t have to unlock that first album.

I don’t even know who it was now but some guest host on Rage introduced ‘New Slang’. And they just said that this clip was amazing, and how it referenced some 80s album covers. And did it ever. Oh my. Let It Be. New Day Rising. Double Nickels On A Dime. And other more random ones. Faithfully recreated in this silly little film clip with the saddest melody. By then the record was pretty old but yeah, I was all ears for the next one.

And for Chutes Too Narrow again, after a slow start, it won me over. And by won me over, I mean bowled me over completely. It was my early 20s album. To it’s raw and angry-ish sounds I felt my highest and my lowest.

But it was the songs itself. It towers over other albums that soundtracked that part of my life. The mystery of the lyrics, the weird chord changes and rhythms. That terrible/wonderful mix. The wisdom. The images. And the great record cover - so much better than the first.

It’s album for the early to mid twenties. It’s when life gets a bit more complicated, and you need a voice to reflect that. As the relationships in my life got more grown up, the more Chutes Too Narrow spoke to me.

The songs of love – ‘Gone For Good’, ‘Kissing the Lipless’, etc, just struck a chord so much more than say, the love songs of Oasis did for me 7 years earlier. There was a smartness to them, but also a maturity. Something that I call a gentleman-ness, that you can find in the music of Ray Charles. When Ray sings a heartbreaking ballad, you know he’s being a gentleman about it, and not being a whiny singer-songwriter.

But it was ‘Mine’s Not A High Horse’, a brilliant pop song about arguments and close-mindedness that really struck me. In ‘So Says I’, Mercer regretfully chronicles our own violent natures. For an optimistic kid moved out of home and living in the melting pot of cultures that is Newtown NSW and the indie rock scene, those songs meant a lot.

I remember pretty much killing that record. My girlfriend at the time used to listen to it all the time, and we would one-up eachother with the details we could find in it. She explained to me the line;

Just a glimpse of ankle and I
React like it’s 1805

It’s about perving on girls. We think. Anyway, we listened to that record as we drove through NSW that Christmas. Later, I got the record for a friend who knew all I knew about music and more. He later said it was his favourite album ever. And as much as I’m loving the new one, I think it’s my favourite too.

But like I said, it’s amazing that when you think you have all your favourite things worked out, a record and a band can come along and top your personal chart. I have been listening to the Shins every day.

The new record is fantastic, obviously. The lyrics are amazing. The production is very different, but hardly commercial radio fodder. Early highlights are’ Turn On Me’, which sounds like Roy Orbison, and ‘Girl Sailor’. That 50s backbeat is used in a number of tracks and apparently a big influence on this record. And the single ‘Phantom Limb’ – geez, what a song. If you’ve never heard of this band and decided to make your way all the way through my rambling and down to here, I suggest you seek out this track.

All I know is that it’s already the soundtrack to this part of my life. I think of my through those songs now. I’ve been sitting with Charlie Brown and working out the chords. And I’m in love with a band completely again. I’m starstruck. I’m 14. I want to join the fanclub. I want to play the record to all my friends.

I hope they get another record out before the decade ends. And when I look back at those ten years, the memories will sing with the voice of James Mercer.

Danny Yau
London

Definitivism

2007-03-24T07:51:00.000-07:00

This is actually an old piece that I wrote a couple of weeks ago but I've decided to publish it.

This is a term I’ve made up, and it’s something I think about a lot. Definitivism is the degree of how definitive something is; that is the best and most effective run of a recurring, serialised medium. You know, it’s when a TV show was the best.

For example, the most definitive era of Superman is when he’s still keeping a secret from Lois, when Jimmy is still a photographer and Perry’s the boss. For many people, high school Buffy is THE Buffy. Cheers with Diane. Etc.

So it’s the era that everything else is judged by. And not necessarily the first part of a run either. I’m sure you can list plenty of your own. Now, there’s a reason I bring this up.

This photo dates back from 2002. I’ve never seen it til last week when my friend Daniela sent it to me. I’m working for the same company I’m working at now, via a detour and in another country. I was very happy then, and I wonder if that, 2002, will be the definitive period of my life.

It happens in the 20s, right? That’s when you make your mark, write your story, find your path. I look at myself in that photo and all I have are good memories and dreams that never came true.

This photo fascinates me. It mirrors so much of what I’m doing now, and so much of what I have been. Although my hair is long and my stomach is fat.

I’m still desperate to find sunglasses like the ones I’m wearing there. Aviators that are rimless. Bought for five bucks at a BDO in Melbourne. That jacket has since developed a large hole. The shirt betrays a man in love with alt-country music. That backpack is with me right now in London, holding the laptop that you see in that dock below that big monitor. The yellow flyer to the left is for a screening of the Wilco movie I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, a band I still love.

In the far right bottom is a box of digibetas that I still don’t know what they are for. The photo pinned up on the very right is a picture of me, Jon and Linkin Park which I still have. Bec sits on your very right. We would talk a lot. I don’t know if it was my day to get the tea or hers, but the fact there are two mugs suggests it’s the afternoon. Ah, so many memories in that photo.

So back to Definitivism. Maybe this was the defining era for me, right there. It sometimes seems like I’m trying to get back to that point. I think maybe that’s why my last job was so disappointing. It was like Buffy with Riley in it. It just wasn’t the same.

Anyway, so I’m kind of back on course with things I think. It’s not the same. The budgets are a bit bigger. The cast are a little older. What we have here is Star Trek: the Movie. Not definitive, but still an important part of the overall story.

And I’m not saying I’m never going to be that happy again. But the time in my life when this photo was taken, was a golden period. I don’t miss it, but I remember everything about it, and think about it a lot.

Anyway, it’s just funny cos I’m wearing sunnies indoors.

Danny
London

That Last Post.

2007-02-14T15:26:00.000-08:00

Funny how the word 'Last' has two meanings (actually probably more). Last can be the end of something. Or last can mean the continuation of something.

I haven't changed my mind that I am taking a break from posting here. But some people have emailed me after that last post and...yeah there are reasons to keep going too. So...not the last then, in the first sense.

But it is the last post in that I feel like what I said in it meant a lot to me. It built up over months and years of my life about what my beliefs are, what and how I think, and basically being self centred and egotistic.

So when I die, and they find that folder on my computer called "Things To Publish When I'm Dead", that Last post would make a good ending, even though it's hopefully not even halfway to the end. In the meantime, a big break from this blog is called for. There's been enough deep and meaningfuls, really.

Danny

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love/I’m A Believer/Let It Go

2007-02-10T18:33:00.000-08:00

My final post. For Beth.

I saw Peter Tork of the Monkees tonight. He performed with his band, the Shoe Suede Blues, and it’s not just a silly pun. You can tell he is a man in love with the blues. And also, in love with music.

I had a long talk about beliefs with Beth a while ago, and it’s been on my mind. To the point where I came up with my perfect epitaph – “I’m A Believer.” I want it on record that when I leave this world that I want that written under my name and place of birth.

Let’s look at that phrase. It’s synonymous with one of the great pop songs of all time. And pop music is something I have believed in all my life. It captures me, inspires me, warms me and thrills me. Even tonight, in the Notting Hill rain, I passed a record shop and looked in the window, and stared at a copy of the Shins record on vinyl.

“I’m A Believer” is also one of the greatest love songs of all time. One of the great downbeat-verses-then-euphoric-choruses. The man has been saved. And love, and love songs, has also played a huge part in my life. Love in all it’s different meanings…friends, family, women, strangers and country. And more.

Lastly, there is the word Believer. I definitely am one. I use no facts to shape the way I live my life. I just believe. In music, in fate, in love and in life. I just do. With no basis. I would have made a great religious zealot if someone had got to me early. Someone other than the Beatles.

So I’m thinking about all these things. It’s coming up on Valentines day, and I realised that love is an unexplainable thing, and I live in a life that tries to explain it. I’ve written love songs, and I’ve listened to them all my life. My job is, essentially, to get more love songs out there. But they take tinted photos of love. It’s not real, and it never is. Paul Kelly once sang… “I’ve never heard a love song yet/That I can call yours and mine.” I think it’s because none exist. If you can describe what makes you love a person, in any definition of the word love, then it’s not love.

Same, in many ways, with death. There is a dictionary definition, but it’s also inexplicable. I could write forever about those two topics, and you will never, ever, see it my way. Which is why this blog is ending. I’ve realised that leaving a record of my thoughts here, for the public, is a hopeless idea. I could never describe to you the things I see, the way I’ve felt. It’s mine and it will never be yours.

The other reason is the excitement is over. I started this blog because my life was at a point where there were things to write about. It was a time to write a diary, because every day was different. Now it’s not the case, as days bleed into eachother and I fall back into a rhythm of regular life.

So it’s time, again, to let it go. Send me an email if you want to hear from me. But none of my life will be on here for public record again. You’ll never get it. And it’s not that interesting anyway. And the past, Australia, is far away. I’m sure I’ll keep in touch with many of you as I have done, but this has to stop.

We should be ashamed to think we know what we talk about when we talk about love. Or life. Or death. Or anything. But on the other hand – I’m a believer. I believe in all those things, without facts, on pure faith and just, you know, something to believe in. Just to keep going. So I’ll believe, and not feel ashamed.

Peter Tork played I'm A Believer tonight, to a small crowd, because he is still drawn to it. He still wants to play music. He still believes. I do too.

Danny Yau
London

I’m gonna wait til the midnight hour

2007-02-05T17:56:00.000-08:00

I’m not very good at sleeping. I’m not sure when exactly I was supposed to learn this skill, but I never did.

It’s not like I need more reasons to love Tom Waits, but he once said something to the effect of sleeping at night is another way society makes you conform. Certainly, magical things only occur after midnight.

Firstly, the world is your own. I walked home from a night out last week, past the world famous Royal Albert Hall, around 2am. And I stopped in front of it and realised, I am the only person in the world right now, standing here. No one is walking past, or about to. Maybe if I walked into Hyde Park, I could have had the whole thing to myself.

Okay, so when I can’t sleep I don’t necessarily go wandering in parks. But you feel more alive when everyone around you is asleep. If there is someone of something watching over us, you have their attention. If there’s songs to be plucked out of the air, the air is clear for you to grab them.

My mind is at it’s clearest after midnight. I know this. I often manage to get a lot done, if I’m writing, or even just cleaning or sorting something out on the computer. Even Ikea furniture construction. And Tom Waits is right. When you’re on a roll, why does the world say you have to sleep?

The argument against, of course, is if I got good healthy early nights, my brain would actually work in the mornings. But there is a part of me that thinks if I go to sleep before 12, I’m wasting precious time. And once you hit 12, 3am’s a piss in.

The idea of sleeping pills has been considered and considered too scary. I get addicted to things enough thank you. The fact I eat crap every day may also be making something in me not balanced. Is there a sleep vitamin? Pot smoking and wanking have also been suggested. I will not admit publicly to either but in any event I’m still not sleeping.

So back to what happens when you’re awake past the witching hour. Listening to music is always like listening on headphones, whether headphones are used or not. You’re more attuned to the details of it. It’s far easier to lose yourself in the world of a late night movie (or more likely an episode of the Sopranos). And when it’s raining…geez you should have been there to sit and just watch the rain from my old place, with some light music on. Something like Still Crazy After All These Years.

The real magic happens when you’re not alone. When you have someone to call. Londoners were especially great, and now I guess it’s true for Australians. Perth was always good to me. But sometimes you find someone online, and you’re both up, and you say, gimme a call…

Sometimes it’s easier in this day and age to just stay online. But when you’re crapping on at two in the morning… you know the scene when William calls Lester Bangs in Almost Famous? And Lester says, the greatest currency we have is the moments we share when we are uncool. You’re not at the pub, you’re not out, not worried about people overhearing. Some good stuff happens. I used to talk til the sun came up. I was working part time when this was happening.

Work really kicks this part of one’s life in the ass. I need a planet with longer days, and I don’t see terraforming happening in my lifetime. It has occurred to me that sleeping better may be something I need to work on, but I’m not sure how. Hopefully old age will just get me and I just sleep all the time like, well, my Dad. There’s always hope.

Okay, I should be sleep. Society, it seems, has got it’s claws in me again. It’s been nice talking to you. I’m going to try and dream my dreams.

Danny
London
(apologies and thank yous to Kim and Laura)

Something for the weekend

2007-02-03T16:51:00.000-08:00

So allow me to reassure everyone that despite appearances (or the last post), I am doing very fine. I have days like that in my head all the time. I just never had a blog before. If there is something to worry about I'll let you know.

So, it's the weekend again. The days are just flying by. To misquote Lou Reed "My year is better than your week." I'm back in routineville.

But routineville aint bad. The weather, the first thing anyone here talks about, has been great. Sunny skies...I even pulled out the old sunglasses today. Nick of Nick-and-Dave-from-Paris fame is back and crashing at mine. Next week we have a bunch of visitors - Alicia, Davey and Kath.

Got a great cheap denim jacket today, along with a stack of old Mojo magazines. I've never even seen ones this early before. I love Mojo magazine. I watched the not-as-bad-as-I-thought movie Notting Hill, and you know, that's my friggin hood. Also managed to catch up with a few people on MSN, Skype and iChat. Robert, I hope you are proud of me.

And work is going great, but supremely busy. But a friend sent me a link where someone noticed something I did and it was quite flattering. I am recorded in world history for something I did. Look. Let me have my moment.

It's going to be a fun, busy few weeks to round out the month. I'm VERY behind in my writing and my reading. But you have to live as well.

One last thing. Happy Waitangi Day everyone. I heard rumours of the scale of the thing here in London but all I can say is I was impressed. I walked out into the street today and was greeted by thousands of black t-shirts, loving life. It was great. And it went well to my current re-obsession with all things Finn brothers.

Danny

I maybe climbing on rainbows

2007-01-28T13:22:00.000-08:00

So, I might as well be honest.

This weekend has been kind of crappy. And I can’t quite put my finger on it. Just general bottled up frustrations. Crappy Australia Day. Work is very busy. Can’t seem to find a better place to live. Worried about this. Worried about that. Getting angry just looking at the face of strangers. Big existential doubts. Missing people. And places. And travelling. It just led to a low ebb this week.

Which is the best time to write, really.

I spent some time this weekend just wandering around. I’ve got my favourite walk down pat. Start at Starbucks on Kensington Church Street. Buy a coffee (Grande Latte) and a muffin (Classic Blueberry usually, although yesterday I got Chocolate Chip). Walk past Kensington Palace, home of Princess Di, into Kensington Gardens past the high school sports teams and curse myself for getting that stupid muffin, as muffins are not really designed to be one handed meals.

Take a slight detour past the pond and use the bin there to throw away the muffin cup paper squiggly wrapping thing and the paper bag. Light up a cigarette and both coffee and smoke should be done by the time you reach the bins and exit near Lancaster Gate. From here you can trundle on for twenty or so minutes to Soho or jump on the tube.

So nothing frustrates me more than nothing. I’m supposed to be writing but I haven’t really been in the mood and my writing space is a bit blergh. I need some clothes but I don’t know what to get. I’ve got all these half things that I’m putting off, waiting for something I don’t know.

Anyway, all this rambling IS leading somewhere. It sets up quite nicely the mood I was in as I got to Soho today, nominally to look for a present for a friend. And I remembered that since 16 I had an outlet for my stress, my frustrations, my creative energies and my whimsy.

So I bought a £200 guitar.

It’s a ¾ sized Art and Lutherie, a Canadian company. It’s blue, making it look both odd and a bit like a toy. I was trying to think of something small and blue to name it after and I’ve pretty much settled to the emotionally crippled, manic depressive that is Charlie Brown.

Got out the old notepad today and I pretty much finished one song and got most of the way through a second. And it feels good. Also managed to do some recording on Garage Band. Exciting is not the word I would use to describe it, more just comfortable. I should have gotten one earlier. Everyone needs a talisman, or a security blanket.

I’m going to go work out the chords to Bread’s Make It With You now.

Meet Charlie Brown

Danny

UPDATED: 31st Jan

Ha. Sometimes I surprise myself with my own multi-layered genius. The first and most famous security blanket of them all belongs to Linus van Pelt, also from Peanuts. How apt that mine is named after another 'Peanut'. What do you mean you don't see how funny that is?

A very flickr upate 2

2007-01-25T12:54:00.000-08:00

I am the proud owner of a new Macbook. I got a white one, because black just looked like a PC. So goodbye old Dell crazy thing, with your angry screen. I'm up to date with things like Messenger and Skype too. Most importantly, I can finally upload some of the photos I've taken.

Tim, who along with Marianne were my first hosts in London. He is putting together the Christmas tree I got to know very well.

Emily, and her store. We worked together at Warners and now both find ourselves in London in the same point in our lives. I will have big news about her soon, but so far we have been loving Wagamamas.

Nick and Dave, last seen in Paris, chilling on the couch. They crashed with me for a few days before Dave returned to Canada and Nick slowly makes his way to Sydney of all places.

A couple of photos from the tremendous Tate Modern museum. I know Nick found it frustrating, as did I in many places. But I loved the wankery of it, the art as ideas only part. I wont wank on, but the first shot is of the series of slides that you can go on in the main entrance hall. The second in a series of automatic doors made of mirrors.

Back in Paris again for Simon's birthday. We actually ran into eachother in the streets on Monmartre, near the Sacre Coeur, my spiritual heart of Paris. From left to right there's Adam, Simon's brother who's apartment this photo was taken. Chris, who Simon met at a tourist office when travelling through Europe last. Simon sits next to Joan, his mum who along with Adam treated her to this trip. Far right, Swedish Pete, who along with Swedish Tom (not pictured) joined a random crew for a big random night.

Finally, it snowed in London as January faded. It was such a wonderful thing, this blanket of magic light that covered everything, put everyone in a good mood and made us amazed at the world we lived in. Or at least it did for me. 1) The car outside the building I live in. 2) Em and the snowman that was a group effort amongst the office staff.

Hopefully it wont be that long before another photo update.

It's snowing! It's snowing!

2007-01-24T01:50:00.000-08:00

Well it did. Last night. I was snowing.

I did my usual zombie wake up routine, looked out the window and did a double take.

Cars are covered in white. People are still driving them.

People are scraping them off surfaces into snowballs and walking off with a big smile, devious snowball filled schemes running through their minds.

I tell you, I almost skipped through the streets.

Of all the things that make me feel like not working, snow is the best one (I can think of right now).

Danny
London

UPDATED

The day is ending. Hopefully it will snow again.

People were in a great mood today. People told me of their snow memories. A little girl in starbacks was jumping up and down and looking out the window, amazed at the sky.

It was great leveller.

Em made a snowman. We all took photos. I went for a wander through the gardens.

It made for a lovely day, and for such a simple reason. A reminder that I am living in an amazing world.

Danny

Hate-triotism.

2007-01-23T03:01:00.000-08:00

Or when I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver.

When did Racism become taboo? Why are we so embarrassed by the fact that there are racists in the world, living amongst us? Why can't we admit there is a problem.

Australia has flaired up with a debate on 'nationalism', which is basically another word for racism. Partiotism is also another word for racism.

The debate revolves around the Sydney Big Day Out Festival discouraging people from bringing Australian Flags into the festival. They point to the violence and racism of last year's festival, caused by people using the Australian flag as a symbol fo superiority and elitism.

How can I put this bluntly? People with the flag were breaking the noses of people who didn't.

Australia has been on a downhill slide for a long time. I remember Pauline. The Cronulla Riots. This. Someone could write a fascinating book about the history of racial intolerance in Australia. The White Australia Policy. Villawood. One Nation. Her track record is embarrassing. A lost beacon of the white western world stuck in the middle of nowhere.

I've moved out of Australia. For many reasons. I love a lot about Australia. It's culture, it's weather, it's foods, it's natural beauty. But I don't miss the people, in general. There is something very wrong there, that something as terrible as the Cronulla Riots can flair up, but we are told it was not an act of racism.

God forbid we admit our problems and deal with it. Instead we put the monster asleep until it wakes again. And it will by a 2 dollar shop Australian Flag when it does.

So why take the flags away at all, if it's so bad? Because something has to be done and our leaders are either unwilling - or even scarier - unsupportive.

For me, my view of Australia is when I look over Sydney's Darling Harbour, when I see the some what tacky attempts of modernity, the open air, the beautiful water, and that mad mix of culture. We are right below Asia, we have a strong continental European community, and we are a bright, vibrant diverse face. We are multi-cultural.

Our leaders. I don't know what they see when they look out, but I don't think we see the same thing. I really don't understand how being Australian can be anything but a mix bag of of the many cultures that makes us up.

I'm not missing Australia today. I'm feeling quite embarrassed about being Australian, just days before my first Australia Day abroad in twenty odd years. And I don't see it getting better.

In And Out In Paris And London

2007-01-22T02:48:00.000-08:00

Paris.

You put jugglers in my throat
And breakdancers in my chest.

Little Things: Part 1

2007-01-17T09:59:00.000-08:00

So, allow me to tell you what really sux.

It's the little things that I can't share. Either you had to be there with me, or the people with me now are still getting to know me and don't get how interesting I find little funny things.

Then I remembered I had a blog, and I had if you are going to be excluding and indulgent, then there is no better place for it.

1) The song 'Up the Junction' by Squeeze. I love this song. I remember sitting in the Town Hall Hotle in Melbourne after a gig and a friend with a guitar played this song and it just blew my mind.

Cool thing is he first line of the song mentions Clapham, a suburb I've spent a lot of time in now that I'm in London.

How great is that? See how indulgent and uninteresting this all is?

Be excited for me please. And track down this song.

2) My email address has 'Baker St' in it. Yes, it's a Sherlock Holmes thing, but also a Gerry Rafferty thing, with his seminal song Baker Street. I put this on a Yacht Rock compilation for friends recently. It makes me laugh even now.

3) I wrote a story once about a character named William Miller. The name came from discussions with my friend Sophie about a good name for me if I decdied to change it to play music. We decided on William Miller because it was a combination of country artists last names - Hank Williams, Lucinda Williams, Victoria Williams, Rhett Miller, Lisa Miller, Buddy Miller. We later realised it was also the name of the main character in the movie Almost Famous.

So at Portobello Road markets on Sunday I was sifting through t-shirts and found one that said "Bill D. Miller - State Senator". I bought it immediately. It was pretty weird ok?

Okay, that saves me boring people in person for a little while at least.

Danny
London

Like the warmth of the sun...

2007-01-15T07:55:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since a proper update. Here we go.

Emily has arrived in London. There was a golden year there when we worked at Warners and we used to joke around. Being back at Warners and having her around, it feels both comfortable and frighteningly familiar. Even the desks and the atmosphere are kind of 2003.

We went to great New Years party that was as random as it was fun. The highlight was at 5am, when we had no idea how to get home and out of nowhere the clouds parted and provided us with a cab.

Since then work has definitely kicked into gear. Been spending a lot of time at work but that is fine, it's keeping me occupied. I'm living 5 minutes from the office so I can go home for lunch, and sleep in til the absolute last minute.

I have been having a few sleepless nights. But I'm definitely keeping busy. Meeting lots of people, going to drinks and parties, but not many gigs yet. I have tickets to the Fratellis and Ash at the moment. The weather has been quite mild and if anything negative has to be said about the whole thing, it's that it already feels quite like a normal life.

I miss the travelling quite a bit especially now it's warmed up. Had a long chat with Adrian and he helped me realise that maybe staying in London for the next three years or whatever may actually be a worse case scenario. And I can't forget Europe is just across the water. To that end, this morning, I booked a Eurostar to Paris and will stay the weekend. I love Paris.

Otherwise London has been lovely to me. I'm in Kensington and on Sundays I walk through Hyde Park into Soho. I've been gawking at guitars and MacBooks. Yesterday I finally went to the Tate Modern, which I can only describe as breathless. Photos when I get my new laptop, don't you worry.

I've also decided to explore British culture more, now that I'm hear. I re-read the last Harry Potter, and started on a John Peel biography. I've been watching This Life. Listening to the radio. Getting into the vibe. I have lots of books I will finally read - Trainspotting, Saturday Night And Sunday Morning, some Sherlock Holmes.

Today I'm at work, trying not to drown in it. My feet hurt from walking. But it's getting better all the time.

Danny
London

Things I Miss About Australia 2: January

2007-01-03T03:58:00.000-08:00

I know exactly what you're doing.

You're starting to wake up early again, restless from the heat.
And you're lightly sweating as you brace the trains
In the brilliant sun that you don't appreciate til winter.
Your head swims over jokes and stupid behavior
From yesterday afternoon at the pub that turned into last night.

The office is half full, and I'd be joking and lazing
Feeling sorry for the two people who look busy.
We'd complain how no one is sending us any emails
Except those we are jealous of, those still away
In Byron Bay, Nelson Bay or is it Jervis Bay?

There'd be afteroons where we'd all look at eachother
and we know what's on eachother's minds
So we all decide to leave early, grabbing the day by the balls
Living that day for an extra hour and a half
Before the working year really starts and turns it all to shit.

There'd be those friends who'll surprise us by being at the beach
The one time a year they interlope into Bondi
With beach towels and swimmers we never knew they owned
While my real Bondi friends will ridicule those same interlopers
With a smile, a tan and a demeanor that comes from being truly Bondi

The rest of us will stay in our brick and concrete suburbs
Opening windows and doors wide, damn the risk of the fly invasion
And talk about which Big Day Out Sideshow we're all excited about
And see a band at the Hopetoun, first on before the sun has even set
And we'll drink out the back and discuss what we did for New Years

Even those who never go out, we'll see them once or twice.
Their young kids hit the parks and their young fathers hit the bars
And the girls will wander in, still in their summer crop tops
Even the ones that don't have the great bodies
Are offering their freckled arms and cleavage to the sun.

And soon those girls will be wearing unrevealing coats
Towels and swimmers will be put back in the bottom of wardrobes
Sleepy people will return in station wagons or discount airlines
And the working days will drift late and the billiant sun will set
And you'll curl up in your cold quilt and wait for January.