Such a bad song to get stuck in your head

I got the new Amy Winehouse album on the weekend and am loving it. Apparently she's been number one in the UK at the moment, and despite my out-of-touchness, I'm pretty sure she's not that huge over here yet.

But she totally deserves to be. Her voice is incredible and I love what she's done in the genre of music, contrasting with her lyrical content. A track like Me And Mr Jones is such a soulful motown throwback, and yet is full of cusswords and contemporary references. Brilliant.

The one I mean in my headline is Rehab - the opening refrain is "They tried to make me go to rehab,I said no, no, no". That can get you funny looks from your workmates when sung aloud unintentionally, I tell ya.

Tip of the day: you can listen to some Amy Winehouse RIGHT NOW if you go to this page, scroll down to you get to the picture of the cheerleader dressed as sexy santa (ADDED BONUS!!) or do a Ctrl-F search for her surname, but do it twice, so you get to You Know I'm No Good featuring Ghost Face Killah... 'cause its awesome... and that version is not on the album.

FIN.

musical television

I freakin love music videos. Best thing about my degree was getting regularly set homework which involved sitting infront of C4 for hours on end. Sometimes, if I had an essay due, I would even make the effort to traipse out to Sam's (the Manor House, purveyors of Sky TV on the beautiful plasma) and get my arse plonked infront of Juice for a solid 8 hour stint.

Every time I go out to my Dad's, I interupt whatever he's watching (motorsport, cricket or Antiques Roadshow. I guarantee it. Oh wait - unless its rugby or Top Gear. But they're pretty much the same thing, right?). Sky now has a nice little loop set up where you can just start at Channel 30 and only have to press the + or - button to watch music videos continuously. Bless them.

At our flat, this kind of binge happens rarely. Partially because of our crap reception, but also because we Don't Watch TV in our house. The unit is kept under a shroud in the corner of the room. Wedged behind the couch even.

But Sunday evening was an occasion worthy of wheeling out the evil contraption (COUGHstillhungoverCOUGH) and so was time to engage as an active viewer and put those (almost) four years of study to good use.

So, firstly, can I say:

IS GWEN STEFANI COMPLETELY INSANE?!

Because I find it highly likely that she may be. Her new song is rubbish and the video is too. Someone is written mean things about it, with pictures, over at the Guardian. Except I'm so out of touch its probably not even new.

Like, these guys called My Chemical Romance. This was the first time I heard one of their whole songs. Holy moley, they are some angsty wee lads. They were at the Big Day Out and I can only IMAGINE what that was like. It was bad enough watching the whole music video, which was visually uninteresting and looked like it cost about $7.

They had set some shit on fire in the background and did a lot of kicking up dust to cover the rest of requirements for 'special effects'. For outfits, they all just wore mouldy-looking black Sgt Peppers costumes. Oh, and make-up. E to the mo.

I was talking to my mum the other day about seeing cute baby goths in Wangas and she was like "Oh! No, they don't call them goths anymore. There's a new word. Hang on... I know it... waaait." (dramatic pause while my mum racks brain and I sigh) "Emos! that's it!". I was proud of my mum for being so on the cutting edge of modern culture (you should her on the subject of 'bling'... she's a world authority now thanks to her wikipedia-based research).

However, I've heard other people say similar things and I disagree. The people who became goths back in the 90s and the people who've turned into emo kids in recent years are completely different. And also I think that a goth would stomp all over any emo that got in their way. At some eyeliner sale, or whatevs.

Moving right along, they also played the new Nelly Furtado track ("Say It Right"). Again, featuring Timbaland, that cutie. But I kept waiting for the breakdown, and it didn't happen. I think her new music is similar to Justin Timberlake's, in that no doubt it is awesome on the dancefloor, but a little unsatisfying anywhere else.
I do like her fringe tho.

My pick of the day was definitely the new Muse video. I'm not a fan of them, but I do think of these things are cool: birds of prey; cowboys; kung-fu; film references; guns that shoot fire; pashes; hot English guys; neckerchiefs; titles; men that can rock a mo'; holograms; good use of split screen; pantaloons; and, of course, let's not forget ponies.

Muse have done me proud:



Just glorious.

Are there any other good new music videos around that I have missed due to being such a neo-luddite? Please enlighten me, merci beaucoup!!

bring back the beat

Early last year, I found a great mp3 blog which had enough of the kind of music I was into, but you could still trust his taste enough to check out the stuff you hadn't heard of too... One of those great internet finds.

Then I had the great PC debacle of 2006, where two computers went haywire under my care and I lost track of all my Favourites/bookmarks/so forth and couldn't for the life of me remember where this electronic treasure trove was located. But joy of joys I recently stumbled over it again!

So Much Silence gets updated pretty much everyday and always has tracks you can download and good solid info about what you're listening to. Kevin, who runs the site, leans heavily towards hip hop, which makes me very happy, but there is plenty of that indie rock/alt folk stuff that we all seem to be digging at the mo.

Kevin has some crazy contraption where his record player is hooked up straight to his computer, so is able to have available mp3s of vinyl releases, which is pretty cool - speshly for those of us in far away NZ who may never get our hands on the record anyways.

And can I just say that this post made more me excited about television than I have been in a long time?

Oh and then the next day...

...I helped sellotape four reams of A4 paper together. Cause that's how I roll.

ever since I was little...

Music to your ears for my one hundred and first post...

More, soon. Honest. In textual form, not aural.


PS: turn it up loud

PPS: calm down, its not Dragonforce

XXX

boy, even tho I love you

I saw these guys open for the Black Seeds a couple years ago and they just owned. It was awesome. They're called Opensouls and they have their debut album out, Kaleidoscope, which I own and highly recommend. It has quite a hip hop element, with lots of soul and funky stuff happening, not much of that compulsory Kiwi dub - and it will definitely improve your summer - let alone your Northern hemisphere winter!

choosing between a kiss or a punch, and a punch or nothing

I actually quite like Ryan Adams, however there's nothing like a scathing rundown of someone's character. Especially where the writer is equally willing to put themselves on the line, therefore, I quite enjoyed this: Ryan Adams Massive Douche or Real American Hero?.

In other rockin news, courtesy of Triple J, the boys from Shaky Hands have a free download of their track You And I right here which you should check out IMMEDIATELY because it is so so awesome and will improve your day.

Here is the video for it, which I LOVE:


And to finish, the same guy, Erik Henriksen, who wrote the Ryan Adams piece also has this amazing podcast interview with Jonathan Safran Foer.

He's the author Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a truly favourite book of mine. One of those that I thrust upon people, insisting that they read, just open the first page and throw themselves into without questioning. (And then in some cases have extreme difficultly wrangling the damn thing back out of their wrongful possession, but we won't get into that right now).

The interview explores concepts of fame, the emotional aftermath of 9/11, the mix of visuals with his text and touches on his first book, Everything is Illuminated which is now a film starring Elijah Wood. Giggidy giggidy!!

(filmed inside a) garage rock (indie pop)

Nik & Bevan are Over The Atlantic and currently they are over the Atlantic, doing a mad 25 date tour of the States. I have one of the gorgeous posters from their farewell gig, which i bought for ten bucks to help fundraise. Nik autographed it for me like the superstar he is and thanked me for my contribution, as it would gratefully go towards an inflight meal. Bless.

the kind of mail I love

I feel a ...moment... coming upon me each time I hear this song.


Postcards from Italy


And this is what its like when you see Beirut live apparently. Holy moley.

Shapeshifter with live orchestrizzle

Beforehand I was like "do I even like Shapeshifter? what songs do they sing, Sam?" for which I nearly got the smackdown but jokes aside, I hadn't yet heard any of their new album and was rather more looking forward to their warm up act, Ladi6.

She was fantastic, of course, accompanied by Parks on the decks, who did lots of singing too. Casually dressed, Ladi6 commented early on she was more used to a club setting. The Opera House was barely half full at this stage, with everyone firmly in their seats. But she visibly relaxed a couple of songs in and one of her last tracks will surely be a single from her debut solo album (due in April, so she said!). Intro-ing it with "Keeping it in the family, this is one I wrote with my cousin..." she launched into a funky song that was great hip hop but still very soulful too (what I like best about Ladi6). Of course it does help when your cousin is NZ's top hip hop artist AKA Scribe - they got their start together in a very cool group called Verse Two I think...?! I'm sure Sam Brown will correct me :P

Anyhoo, then Shapeshifter were on. Woot.
Haha jokes! Their first half was performed with the Vector Wellington Orchestra. Two amazing live acts and it was incredible seeing them perform together. The Shapeshifter guys were all in ties and shirts too, which was very cute. Keeping up appearances! I would have loved to have seen more experimentation go on, though I guess they were on a limited time frame in terms of rehearsal. It just felt like none of their songs had been restructed to accomodate for these wonderfully talented funky classical musicians: you'd just be hearing a Shapeshifter song - yes, granted, a pretty damn exciting live version - but then there'd just be some strings going on in the background or whatever. I thought they'd at least do something like have a big symphonic opening and then go BOOM! and have a massive drop come in and bust out some crazy drum n bass stuff and fuse the two together...but... nah.
However the sold-out crowd was absolutely lovin it and i don't think a single person was sitting in their seat. Or if you were sitting, you could not sit still. From the bass vibrations if nothing else!! The second half was pure Shapeshifter and they brought out an MC called Electric Puha, a guy from Queenstown I think, who was just fantastic. Such great energy and a nice balance to P Diggss. (Also, they changed their outfits, into like, tee-shirts and caps and stuff. Well played). My favourite bit was when they did like a medley and sampled all sorts of tracks/lyrics - the obligatory FFD (he'd already done the shout-out to Dallas in the dress circle) and I got delirious when I heard them referencing the Roots -woot!!

My other favourite bit was bumping into this guy that I was sort of dating at the start of the year. It fizzled out for various reasons and the few times I have seen him round since he has studiously managed to avoid seeing me. However the last time we crossed paths, he was barrelling down Courtenay with a blonde in tow, their fingers entwined in a way that screamed coupledom. I was like "awwh" because I'd gotten the impression he was quite keen to suss something like that. And so then I saw him again at this gig as I arrived with Sam and finally I get a hullo out of him! And so I was telling Sam who he was (back story: he'd come to look at a spare room in our flat and I was like 'hmm you may be too cute to live here' ...I'd been left unsupervised to vet the new flatmates COMPLETE SHAMBLES) and Sam was all 'no morality' which he seems to say A LOT and then I was like 'oooh he so only said hi cause he thinks that I'm here with some boy and he's all awwh she found someone nice but actually UM NO just cause i didn't want to date you doesn't mean I've found someone else so HAH... yeah!!' and Sam was like 'you sure showed him'.

Ok I've just realised how insanely late it is and this may explain why I am writing so insanely. I also wanted to cover Hinepau, Coldcut and Toi Cabaret but perhaps not. One word summaries: Funny. Funky. Underdressed.
Also: Hinepau was in Upper Hutt and me and Melissa were cracking all these jokes on the way up and telling ourselves off for being such baiches and then the moment - literally the moment - we stepped out of the car, the first person that walked past, clearly a local, was not wearing shoes. I clutched my handbag closer to myself. Melissa tried to get back in the car and make a dash for it but I had an obligation to attend the performance and damn we were glad we did. One of the most entertaining shows I think I've ever seen - lucky kids having something like that aimed at them.

Will add some links tomorrow: [Taaah DAHH!!]
Shapeshifter Vector Wellington Orchestra Ladi6 Hinepau Coldcut Ninja Tune Toi Cabaret The Package [where I got that pic of Shapeshifter rockin the Opera House from]