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Recent Entries
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June 29, 2007Great advice, BrianJust got Brian Austin Whitney's latest e-newsletter, and it's a beaut! Personally, I've gone through some pretty life-changing stuff lately and it can be very intimidating at times so it's great to get some sage advice from a guy who's been there before. Brian is the founder of Just Plain Folks, which is one of the best indie music communities on the web. in 2001 he was listed as one of the "15 people you should know in the biz" by Indie-Musician.com. He works his butt off for indie musos and is highly respected by others in the industry. Strangely, his response to my request for help was ... unsatisfactory ... but that might be explained by the "health issues" he refers to in his most recent e-newsletter. Anyway, I won't paste all of his e-newsletter here, but in it he gives 11 tips from his personal experience for getting a new project off the ground: 1. Think about things on a grand scale, treat them like a small thing. 2. The more things slow down, the more you should speed up. 3. Well meaning clueless people will divert you, don't let them. 4. Do what's right and it won't fail (even if it does). 5. It's better to get beat up along the way than to simply rot in one place. 6. Planning too much is as bad as not planning enough. 7. Pleasant surprises usually come when you do something unplanned that could turn out to be unpleasant. 8. When you ask others for their opinion, it usually means you don't like the truth you already know. 9. The most important person in the room is rarely the most obvious. 10. Make sure you get you pleasure from the doing, not the recognition. 11. Accept that no matter what you do, the world will insert obstacles and tragedies along the way that you can't anticipate or avoid. He expands on these in the full text, and I commend it to anyone who's ever tried to get something like my Genre Benders or MusoWiki projects off the ground. His advice is spot on and I take great inspiration from his example. Posted by Hughie at 9:56 AM | Comments
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June 28, 2007Thank God It's Nearly HereChannel Ten obviously think they're onto a thing with this blanket promotion of upcoming shows. No sooner did I whinge about the promos for Pirate Master than they started giving Thank God You're Here the same treatment. I saw promos for that show, which I quite like, three times in one ad break the other night - astonishing! I have to wonder why they're doing this - do they have no confidence in their own marketing department to spread the word? Or perhaps they have no confidence n teh show and they're hyping it to compensate? Or maybe they just don't have enough paing adverts to fill the spots ... Whatever the reason, they can just get over it and resume normal programming as soon as they like ... otherwise I might have to start boycotting the channel ... that would be a pity. Posted by Hughie at 5:50 PM | Comments
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June 21, 2007Over Pirate Master alreadyWhen will the morons in charge of TV marketing learn? Channel Ten's new show "Pirate Master" has been promoted and hyped so much in the past few weeks that, although it starts tonight, I'm not going to watch it ... ever. I just can't stand the level of crap that's being talked about this darn show before it's even on TV ... and it looks like just another overblown "reality' show with pretty people doing mucky things - physically and philosophically. Just as the music industry has had to learn that you can't make people buy an inferior product by hyping it beyond the pale, the TV industry will have to learn as well. In the long run, this approach just turns people off because every time they're disappointed with an over-hyped but not very good TV show (or album, or artist), the promoters lose credibility. Next time they promote a show like this, they are not believed, and the harder they promote, the more desperate they appear ... TV shows, like bands, have to grow their audience organically by proving that they are worth people paying attention to. There's no such thing as a hyped hit any more - reality has been invited into consumers'/fans' living spaces and it will not leave. Consumers have too many alternatives to live music and TV for the promoters to ignore this lesson ... [Grump] Bring on the footy ... Posted by Hughie at 9:08 AM | Comments
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June 14, 2007How good was Guy Sebastian??Update: Guy's official site is here. Thanks to Nessa for reminding me to include it. One of the absolute highlights of last night's Origin game had to be Guy Sebastian's version of the national anthem ... Now, I object to singing the natiuonal anthem at State of Origin games. The game is not an international fixture, it's not even a national fixture. It's two states out of six (and two territories) battling it out for supremacy in one of the most intense rivalries in sport. The national anthem is simply not appropriate there ... and is usually hijacked by some self-promoting singer whose real purpose is to tell the audience (TV and gameside) about their latest offering. Sometimes this has awful consequences - like when Pete Murray sang his national hit "Seen Better Days" at the NRL Grand Final ... ROTFL. But if I had to endure the anthem at any game, I'd want Guy to sing it. He did it with control, tone, passion ... magnificent. Even our tired old ditty sounded like an ANTHEM under Guy's treatment. Awesome stuff. I always knew he could sing but get very tired of the voice-light pop guff that he usually sings ... blechh! With chords and soul like that he should be belting out something with power and meaning ... New respect and kudos to Guy. Posted by Hughie at 12:47 PM | Comments
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Happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy ...Happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, Happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy ... Queenslander!!!!!!!!!! Posted by Hughie at 8:54 AM | Comments
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June 13, 2007My studioThought I'd take some pics of the studio to show you ... it's pretty primitive. Here's the mixing setup, which is what I'm doing most the time at them moment: It's in one half of my garage ... and cannot be sealed away from the weather, though I can keep most of the nastiest conditions out ... :-) I have my Digi002 and laptop on the desk, with the Digi002 sitting on top of my power amp, which is connected to two sets of speekers via a small three-way switch. The smaller speaker (on top) are ancient PYE Hi-Fi speakers from my parents old record player when in was a kid. The larger pair are much newer Phillips three-way bins. Much nicer sound. I need to get them higher off the ground. Here's the printery: And here's the booth: That's where I do things ... it's not much but it's al lI have ... Posted by Hughie at 10:05 AM | Comments
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Queenslander!!Go Maroons! Win at Telstra! Win the series! Bring it home for us, boys ... Show the cocky Cockies how the game's played ... Posted by Hughie at 9:20 AM | Comments
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June 11, 2007A Working Class Hero?Great to hear that politics is back on the musical agenda via this song and Green Day. It's one of my favourite songs - has everything that a great song needs. I also really dig Green Day - they're a great band with an interesting sound and a healthy approach to making music that matters. Unfortunately, I don't like the Green Day version of this song, which is something of a surprise. The arrangement is laborious and predictable and Billy Joe's vocals come across as thin, forced and insincere. He sounds more like a whinging teenager than a campaigner for class-based justice. My very favourite version of this song is by Marianne Faithful on her live album Blazing Away. So powerful and such a simple but crunchy arrangement! Awesome stuff! Even better than John Lennon's original version (which is a bit wet). Posted by Hughie at 4:38 PM | Comments
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June 7, 2007Damn in French = rien!Just got a letter from France saying that Bun' Ber E's French distribution company, Jam Label, has gone into liquidation. This is a bummer, but they never actually earned us anything ... at least, they never paid us anything. We got two statements saying that they had sold our stuff but the amounts never added up to the minimum amount payable (Eur50). My French is pretty primitive, but I think the letter also invites us, as people owed money (about Eur30) to put in a claim for it ... I've worked this out with the help of the Babelfish translator ... I have no idea how to do this or even whether I want to ... I suppose I should but I have no idea whether it's worth the effort ... I guess we ought to at least try - it's not all my money, the other guys in Bun Ber E are owed part of it ... I might ring the trade people in the government and see what they can tell me about the process and so on ... Posted by Hughie at 9:23 AM | Comments
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June 4, 2007A bootleg?UPDATE: the finished product is now available and can be ordered from here. If you want to listen before you buy, the songs are available here. OK, my engineer just presented me with a bunch of quick mixes of the songs for the album. I have uploaded MP3 versions in no particular order to the following pages: 1. Long for the Day (MP3) (Stream) These, like everything else on this site, are made available on a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA licence, which means you can do anything non-commercial with them, as long as you pass on your copies, or remixes, or whatever on the same basis. Enjoy and please let me know what you think. Posted by Huge at 10:50 AM | Comments
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June 2, 2007Hardware malfunction!My PC died this afternoon! I am writing this on my son's PC. I'll have to replace my old PC, which had been misbehaving for some time, as soon as possible. Hopefully I haven't lost any of the info on the hard drive - it's giving me an error at the BIOS level. Until then, please bear with my absences for a while. Thanks for your patience ... Posted by Hughie at 6:34 PM | Comments
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June 1, 2007Astral TravellerAnother of the riffs Tristan came up with turned into this funky number. It's a bit of a nonsense song, really. At the time I wrote (most of) the lyrics I was interested in what my darling and I called "tangent surfing" or changing thought processes rapidly and for no particular reason. I started thinking about the freedom that the mental realm offered and how nice it would be if we could really live like that ... free to change our lives at the speed of thought. The riff and rhythm grew into this song, which has some rather odd timings and key changes ... in keeping with the theme. I kept the basic bass line that Lifta's rather funky bass player, Warren Greaves, came up with, too. It's on the first album and I'll post a sample as soon as possible. Update: If you feel generous you can now buy the version of this song released on The Genre Benders' debut CD "I am leaving! I am leaving!" from iTunes, or GroupieTunes, or Payplay.FM. If you have a different favourite online store, search for it there and if it's not there, let me know so I can put it there. Astral Traveller Say what you want to say Who am I to wonder why? You sit and wonder What is wrong with moving on If you need a place to be, Who am I to wonder why? Be an astral traveller
Please note: This song is APRA registered: Work ID GW11790066. You can copy, reproduce and distribute any part of these lyrics and chords for any non-commercial purpose as long as you acknowledge its source. I'm interested in your feedback, comments, suggestions. If you make something good out of it, let me know and I'll consider adding it to this site. If you perform it or broadcast it for any purpose, please let APRA know. Posted by Huge at 3:56 PM | Comments
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