Longing for the day ...

Well, that didn't work!

I have completely failed to turn off comments, as I said I would. Apparently it's more difficult to do that than I thought, but I'm consulting the makers of Movable Type and have another couple of options to investigate.

However, today's mission to to finish some recording, so that's what I'm concentrating on ...

Damn! Damn! Damn the blog spam ...

I apologise to all innocent parties, but I'm going to shut comments down on this blog for a while. This is the direct result of a recent increase in blog spam being posted here - I don't have the time or energy to deal with it right now (or ever, for that matter).

Hopefully the authorities will catch up with the scumbags and normal service can be resumed soon.

I got the Blues ...

Well done, NSW. You did enough to win the match at home. But the young Maroons can take a lot out of what they experienced.

I was really a classic game of youth vs experience. The Maroons came out at a million miles and hour - something lacking in games in Sydney recently - and were winning the armwrestle and putting enormous pressue on NSW. However, when the Blues scored first, against the run of play, off a mistake that could have led to a Qld score, the youngsters lost their way for a while. The Blues were 14-0 up and should have been further in front.

They looked a little rusty and nervous early on but the Qld resolve ran deep, and the Blues never crossed the Qld line after the 21st minute. Qld fought back to level with a couple of minutes to go. Brilliantly, NSW chose that moment to lift and made enugh ground in their first set to score the winner.

The youngster will have learned a lot about what it takes to win these games. Flashes of brilliance are not enough. Every mistake is punished and must be made up for. You can't get down and lose concentration even for a moment in Origin.

The confidence they will gain from their fightback will grow them immeasurably ... Bring on the second game at Lang Park!

Me, in The Cage

Yesterday afternoon I got a phone call while I was in the studio. The message was from Marto, who'd found the letter I sent them last year about my State of Origin Song. He couldn't find the CD I'd enclosed but was interested in playing it ...

After I rang him back I immediately went back into the studio and remixed and trimmed the song and emailed him this version (MP3, 2MB - streaming version is here). This morning at 5:55am they interviewed me on air and then played the first verse and chorus! What a blast!!

I'm not sure I talked about the right things (I was still waking up), but they seemed fairly happy with how it went. Just wish I'd taken the time to rework the song completely and and make more out of it. These recordings were only ever meant to be a demo. Got up this morning and thought I'd better post this in case someone who heard it wanted to know more ... just to recap:

The original version, and all the lyrics, can be downloaded from here.
The new, shorter, impartial version is here and streaming version here.

Origin time!!

Have to belatedly note the impending State of Origin Rugby League contest tomorrow night. Love it!

Both sides have gambled for the first game: Queensland on youth, form and enthusiasm and NSW on the tried and true. As always, my head says the experienced Blues will be hard to beat in Sydney but my heart hopes the Maroons can find the passion they seem to have lacked in recent years and knock the Blues over on their bums.

Without Joey, the Blues are the most vulnerable they've been for years, so GO MAROONS!!! I'll be wearing my own State of Origin playing gear and cheering long and loud!

Doubly predictable

[sigh]

Madonna was always going to do something to grab promotional headlines by annoying the Church in her new show and the Church was always going to help her by biting at her barbs ...

Why is this news?? Why should we care?

A debate for another place, perhaps.

Recovery

The shoulder is recovering slowly. My physio, the wonderful Alison, has told me to take it out of the sling most of the time and has strapped it up tight. This is great as it's reduced the pain involved in the little movement that is possible.

Last night I got these pictures of the "Blueberry Muffin" bruises:

Impressive, hey? The photos don't quite do justice to the colour - there's more yellow than that. They're even bigger this morning but not quite as vivid. I suppose that's good ...

Can't wait to get back into the studio able to play something ...

Toughest gig ever

Last night was the hardest gig I've ever done. It was a 3.5 hour Ceilidh with Bun' Ber E at Acacia Ridge School so there was not a lot of playing but with a sore shoulder, there was intense pain. Every song I had to let go of the guitar neck and then left it back up for the next. I'm very glad it was short ...

Fortunately, I could play most chords in open position, so I did't have to move my hand up and down the neck (which would have been impossible). This also made for some ... interesting ... variations in the sound.

My bicep is also a lovely blotchy purple colour, which I describe as being like a Bluebery muffin. I'll post some photos later.

Missing shoulders

What's the most annoying thing about having a sore shoulder? I have been pondering this point for a while now. There are plenty of candidates. For example, I have learned that these simple operations rely on the unimpaired use of a shoulder (in no particular order):

1) changing gears
2) showering
3) hanging out washing
4) rolling over
5) washing dishes
6) chopping vegetables
7) peeling vegetables
8) retrieving vegetables from the fridge
9) watering vegetables
10) catching vegtables when they roll off the kitchen bench
11) cooking vegetables
12) puting dishes away
13) getting into a car
14) getting out of a car
15) retrieving children's bags from the back seat
16) playing guitar
17) playing mandolin
18) leaning forward with elbows on knees
19) typing
20) getting dressed
21) getting undressed
22) ... well, you get the idea.

The physio says I will be uncapacitated for at least two weeks. The swelling has now gone down and a large purple bruise has formed on my bicep. Lovely!

At least I'm getting lots of ... delicate ... things done. I really ought to be recording guitar parts ...

Pain!

Managed to have a large person fall on top of me last night at touch football and have hurt my shoulder. Can't play guitar or even sleep ...

Plenty to do, not much capacity to do it. Kids have been very supportive and helpful ...

Physio is coming to look at it tomorrow. Until then I'll just have to do what I can.

Download sites growth

It's incredible how may sites have sprung up trying to make money by selling music in download form on the Internet. I've been compiling a list of them for my PhD and have racked up 15 without trying. That's just the ones that have come to me, and doesn't include many of the biggest (it does include iTunes), which already sell our stuff via CDBaby (which is one of them).

In fact, CDBaby now lists Bun Ber E's music in 59 online stores, of which 8 are already "dead". Of course, that's not all of them, it's just the ones CDBaby thinks we (a niche band) could sell in ... but we've only been doing this for two years ...

Surely not all of these will survive. There will have to be a big shakeout of the industry. Some of these will come to dominate (rival iTunes?), others will die rapidly, but it's interesting looking at the different approaches some of them are taking. More on that later.

To true, Bert!

Quote apprearing in today's Australian Media liftout:

"We're celebrting tonight 50 years of Australian television. And concurrently, of course, 50 years of American television on Australian television."
- Bert Newton at the Logies.

Sickening! It would be a joke if it wasn't so serious ...

Welcome back, Beaconsfield boys

Congratulations to everyone involved in rescuing the Beaconsfield miners, Brant Webb and Todd Russell. Well done. As ?someone? said on TV this morning, the only measure of a rescue operation is that it succeeded - and this one did (tell George Bush that!).

The media coverage was only slightly nauseating, given the magnitude of the story. Some of the hype was predictably nonsense, such as "they've been down there for 14 days, some of which they thought they were dead" and so on, but by and large the media seemed reasonable, if intent on drawing the story out as much as possible ... but, then, that's their job.

Loved the touch when the boys took their tags of the board and threw them away when they emerged - real character, that. Typically dry Aussie humour. Also liked the way one of them waved away the camera that was poked into him ambulance ... well done.

I just hope the guys' (apparently minimal) injuries aren't made worse by the media's flying chequebooks ...

On the subject of champions ...

Congratulations to John Wood for finally winning the gold Logie. I'm not much of a fan of the kind of TV John's involved in (although I used to watch Blue Healers every week back in the 90s when it was interesting and innovative) but anyone who can be that close for that long has got to be a winner and it's always good to see that being rewarded.

On the subject of the Logies, I thought my 12-year-old son had hit the nail on the head when he saw an ad claiming "5 hosts means 5 times the glamour" and replied "more like 5 times the corn ...". But then I watched a bit of it and corrected him: actually, it's more like 5 times the cheese. What a crock of pretentious, self-conscious crap. At least Pink added some attitude ...

I'm wondering, though, what was with Rove's subtle dummy-spit? Didn't get that one at all, but there was obviously something in it. Perhaps the pressure is getting to him??

Anyone?? Thoughts??

Joey, you good thing!

Andrew Johns, what a football player. Loved watching him Friday night, hated watching him Sunday afternoon. In both cases, though, he's a class act.

I'll miss him in a Kangaroos jumper and be grateful he's not wearing sky blue in future years. I'll have to make more of an effort to watch the last few games I'll have the chance to see before he retires in a year or two. The guy's a special.

He's got all the skills, but he's also got that intangiable thing that only the truly gear players have got. He can inspire his teammates to do their jobs better while he's doing his own a bit of theirs as well. Awesome! And, despit being a bit of a lair over the years, he's also humble. A true champion!

Thanks, Joey Johns, for playing great football for a lot of years and giving me great pride and a lot of entertainment - even when you were beating my team ...

The pain of songwriting

Just bought a copy of Tunesmith by Jimmy Webb. I've only just started it, but on page 2 he's discussing the difference between amateurs and professionals, and how amateurs fail to appreciate the amout of work needed to write a really good song:

"... songwriting is hell on earth. If it isn't, then you're doing it wrong."

Great stuff - so true and sooo unappreciated. This book was recommended to me by my supervisor, Steve Dillon, who teaches songwriting at QUT. He says it's the only book you ever need to read on songwriting, so I'm reading it. So far so good.

Good to have a win

Went out to warwick on Saturday for the NRA State trials. Played in the Puretouch Punishers Mens Seniors team. We went through undefeated and won the final in extra time - 3-on-3.

This was my first win in rep colours,which was a relief. I was starting to wonder whether I was jinxed at higher levels, since I'd never won a touranment and only a handful of games ... It's good to get that monkey off my back.

Don't know if I played well enough to be selected for Qld this year. There's been a reshuffle and lots of youngr guys coming through, so it will probably be tougher than last year. Time will tell.

Back to park-level touch tonght ...

Tryhard Television

You know Channel Nine are struggling in the ratings when they try such a blatant milk of a story of distress. Last night's repeated crosses to the Beaconsfield mine disaster in Tasmanian were pathetic - typically, Mike Munro was in the driver's seat.

Don't get me wrong, this was an important story and Channel Nine did a great job interrupting CSI and getting a crew on site at the Beaconsfield mine. However, you know they're trying too hard when the cross goes for 15 minutes - 10 minutes afer the new information was well and truly covered.

And I'm not talking about the technical SNAFU that had the production staff's mikes being broadcast, so we could hear the studio prompting the poor on-site reporter with questions. Nor the horrible echo effect that this produced in Channel Nine's broadcast sound. It's the quality of the reporting that was most pathetic.

It's absolutely awful when the sister-in-law and the police both say that the guys have been found and that they're alive (which was the great and really inportant news) and that they will probably be very carefully left where they are until it's safe to bring them out ("tomorrow" at the earliest), and then Munro "sums up" by claiming they might emerge any minute. ABC news currently has them emerging in at least another 48 hours. A blatant lie, caught red-handed, Mike.

It's slightly more embarrassing when Munro asks the on-site reporter about how great it would be if the miners could walk out of the Beaconsfield tunnel, just for the cameras - despite being told *twice* that the cameras were screened off from the tunnel entrance. Yes, Mike, it would make for great footage - and that's exactly why people like you are screened off!

The really telling comment? When the sister-in-law of one of the guys, who had been really co-operative and provided some great footage, was called away by the family, Munro asks the on-site reporter "Is there anyone there we can talk to?" ... that's a deadset giveaway!

Pathetic!