Monday 14 June 2010

Alexander Ebert - Edward Sharpe and The magnetic Zeros

Alex is in a band I worked for in Melbourne a few months back called "Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros".. Really, really fun. I hooked them up a great friend of mine in Sydney, Steve Frizza. Steve went out with them and shot some gorgeous photos on his lovely Hassleblad and a Super 8 film camera.

Steve also hand prints all his work. Which is why the colours in this shot are so spectacular. Mmmmmmm.

Thursday 10 June 2010

Beck's Record Club -Skip Spence.

I've been absolutely loving one of the latest Record Club offerings from beck.com.. It's recreating Alexander "Skip" Spence's "Oar". Prior to this I knew nothing of Skip Spence, or even who he was. 

Beck's Record Club is awesome.. He gets a bunch of (often random) musicians into a studio and they recreate a classic album in a day, film it, mix it and put it up on beck.com. I'll admit, I wasn't a massive fan of the Leonard Cohen one, but this one is just great.

In the studio with Beck are Wilco (including Jeff's son, Spencer.. How's that for an awesome day to come to work with Dad?), Jamie Lidell and Lesley Fesit (amongst a few others).

I really love the analogue-ness of the album.. It's all hands on and pretty much old fashioned pure talent. There's some really awesome old-school swampy lo-fi electronic beats going on, which I find so refreshing while everything these days is just more and more computer based. From what you can tell on the videos, it's all outboard gear.. Stomp box and tape glory!

Everyone's having a great time, and it really shows. I reckon this is possibly the coolest thing I've seen Wilco involved in since a ghost is born.

Check it out.


Record Club: Skip Spence "Weighted Down" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

I stumbled across a torrent which had the video and audio all nicely split up.. I'm assuming it's never going to be commercially available due to what I imagine would be an arduous task of clearing it with all respective labels, so I've got a rapid share link for you to download it if you so desire. I recommend. It's fantastic.

Mp3


http://rapidshare.com/files/397332204/Beck_-_Record_Club_3_-_Oar__mp3_.zip.html


MP4 Video


http://www.megaupload.com/?d=76CM6G3J

A good reason for me to enable comment notifications!

Some of you may be familiar with my little Guy Sebastian/Twitter fiasco.. I won't go into detail, but basically, I did a nights work of stage tech for his sound guy. The show was mind-numbingly awful, and they made me stay about two hours extra and pack up all their backline while they all just floated around being useless. As anyone who works in what I do would, I checked the fridge to see if there was anything left before I left (as I thought everyone had gone) and grabbed a few beers. I also nicked a roll of gaff that was also left behind. Anyone who works in production will verify that this happens ALL the time, and is hardly out of the ordinary.

On the train on the way home, I tweeted my feelings regarding my night of experiences, perhaps a little enthusiastically, and forgetting the extraneous nature of Twitter. Come Monday morning, I received a rather irate phone call from Anatole Day, the Guy's douchebag sound guy/production manager telling me that apparently someone had called Guy's management, Festival Hall and the audio company telling them all about the stage guy who had been saying not nice things about the show.

I will admit that it was probably poor judgement on my part, and a lapse in my normal perfect professionalism. My tweets are still there for all to see, if anyone's curious, but honestly, I didn't say anything that bad. (Except maybe that it was "so awful I wanted to stab my eyes out with a fork"). But even still, it was all simply me voicing my opinions after work (I did, however, have them protected for a while afterwards).

Ironically, the whole Catherine Deveny debacle reminded me of it somewhat.. Gotta be careful what you tweet huh?

ANYWAY. This morning I noticed a comment from the certain anonymous someone, known only as "Stevo" on one of my earlier blog entries which read as follows...



Blogger Stevo said...







Ode to a wannabe music star

He was a jaded muso working as a stagehand
When all he really wanted was to front the band
With envious eyes he watched backstage
His mind venting and squirming in silent rage
After 7 long years this karaoke show winner
Should be serving him a McDonald's dinner
Not still on stage getting all those cheers
He thought to himself as he swiped some beers
Back home he tweeted about the star and his fans
While sullenly boozing on the stolen cans
Tweets full of malicious jealous stuff
But he didn't know when enough was enough
Boasting about stealing gaffa and a six pack
The stupid tool was asking for the sack
What he did was so very very dumb
He deserved the penalty that was to come
The twit got his just deserts I say
He deserved to go without the pay
23 February 2010 19:26

HAHAHAHAHAH!

Whoever you are Stevo, thank you, I did enjoy that very much. However, I am yet to receive any deserts.. Could you inform me of where I might find them? 


(Of course.. Anyone expressing negative feelings towards in regards to a Guy Sebastian show must be jealous, right?).

Wednesday 2 June 2010

i took some pictures of a band..

I took my camera to a show of some friends of mine when I was in Sydney the other week and took some pictures. Here's a couple. The rest on my Flickr. I was pretty stoked that I can still do it! Yew!






Valar's site here



Monday 10 May 2010

I got blogged! I'm a cute boy with cat!!



Thursday 6 May 2010

i gots me a camera finally

Just a couple of shots I've taken so far..

collingwood


degraves



Lindsay Phillips








Tuesday 13 April 2010

i have been a very slack blogger.

But here are some things for you to listen to.



across the wave by kristofferpaulsen

I was trying out a new bit of gear tonight and this little melody just popped into my head. It's rather Jeff Beck derivative, I know, but I really love it.

(Embarrassingly, the only convenient way I could record it, was to crank up my headphones and put my iphone next to them.. Which turned out surprisingly well, I thought! Uploaded directly from the FiRE recorder app).

My friend Sally had a birthday party last Saturday, and she asked specifically no presents;- just prose. I was working on this one, so I finished it, did a quick demo and loaded it onto a pretty custom usb birthday card.


Better recording coming.



here's to no-one by kristofferpaulsen