Righto first and foremost sorry for the lack of postingness recently. It’s getting to the business end of semester, which means I’m studying harder than I’d like, which meant it was study, and either keep a social life or blog every other day. Hard choice I know . Anyway I have plenty to talk about, but it’s too late to be writing for 20 minutes, so instead I’ll leave you with a beautiful bit of flashimation that, let’s face it – we’ve all been secretly fantasising about forever. Using cat’s tails to play bass guitar.

Check it out and prepare to die from joy. It’s a shame you can’t get the semitones you can on a guitar (or a piano if you had black keys working) but it’s supremely satisfying none-the-less. Also of significance is the fact that you don’t end up with a bloody stump of an arm at the end of your masterpiece, which I’d bet you would’ve had you substituted this rather brave e-cat with the real life variety.

Pete

To state the obvious, today is ANZAC day. For those outside Australia or New Zealand, read ahead for a touch of history but for a rough understanding of the significance of the day, try to think of the poignance of Remembrance Day in Britain (November 11) and the national significance of Independance Day in America. Add a little of each and you have a close approximation of ANZAC day, which most Aussie’s consider to be almost an unofficial national day owing to the fact that no-one really gives a toss about Australia Day in January. The historical significance is a bit more long winded than that, but it can be summed up poorly by saying that dawn on the 25th of April 1915 saw the start of one of the more ill-fated and pointless military operations of the First World War.

By the end of 1914 the Western front was little more than a tit-for-tat excercise in trench warfare futility, and so the Allies looked to bolster the Russian war effort in the east. However, in order to do this a naval supply route was needed, and with the Baltic sea in the hands of the Germans and the North corridor frozen year-round, the only tangible option was via the Black Sea, which meant getting past the Ottoman empire (current day Turkey, a German ally). A plan was hatched to mount an attack on the straits called the Dardanelles in order to force a naval route through the Black Sea to Russia. After the plan was approved by the British war cabinet, two months of marginally successful naval operations were carried out, at which point it became clear naval power alone would not force the Dardenelles open.

On April 25th, the first Allied soldiers (the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) landed at what is now called ANZAC cove on the west coast of the Gallipoli peninsular, several miles from their intended landing spot. Due to this navigational error, instead of accessible beaches the terrain was clifflike, although due to this reason was only lightly guarded by Turkish infantry. However, within days the Turkish generals had rushed reinforcements to the area and what should have been a simple beach landing and invasion turned into a nasty and expensive trench based stalemate until August, when the botched operation was pulled and the Allies retreated, with the last men leaving on December 20.

Although the operation was short lived, it was hideously expensive (505,000 lives were lost during the Gallipoli campaign), particularly for New Zealand and Australia – two fledgling nations whose men were often used (as in this case) as the vanguard of military operations during the war. According to statistics, New Zealand, whose population of just under 1 million people sent almost 100,000 off to war had the highest per-capita casualty rate of the war, and Australia with it’s bigger population (but still under 5 million) recorded the highest overall casualty rate of any military in the war. Whether those figures were because the Aussies and New Zealanders ran around the trenches nude with santa hats on, or whether they were the brave and fearless soldiers the history books tell us, these rather sobering facts and figures have meant that since the early 1920′s, ANZAC day has become an important day for the two nations to remember their fallen countrymen, and honour the sacrifice the men made for the rest of us.

Anyway the reason I wanted to post today was due to an opinion piece I read in the Saturday Age by Melbourne writer Alan Attwood. Have a read yourself:

In the beginning there was an eerie quiet. Before dawn on April 25, 1915, Australian troops packed into boats rowing towards the murky Gallipoli Peninsula were struck by the oppressive stillness. An engineer wrote later they expected, even hoped for, “all hell to be let loose every second, machine-guns, shrapnel, anything but this nerve-racking silence”.

The first Anzac Day services, which began within the following decade, made a feature of silence. Many of these events were simple affairs, often open only to veterans; the first official dawn service was conducted at Sydney’s Cenotaph in 1927. Services big or small followed a familiar pattern. In the pre-dawn darkness veterans would be ordered to “stand-to”. Then came two minutes of silence, broken by a lone bugler.

It was simple; effective; replete with symbolism. So why have we allowed ceremonies to mark the nearest thing we have to an Australian national day to become tacky travesties of what they were meant to be? Modern Anzac Day services are in danger of succumbing to the Major Event syndrome, tricked up with scripts and soundtracks and special effects. Early on Tuesday afternoon, for example, ABC TV will telecast the dawn service from Anzac Cove along with a feature, Spirit Of Place, that, according to one program guide, includes “a musical performance and evocative lighting of the cliffs and gullies, set against images of the Gallipoli landing 91 years ago”. What, no spouting fish?

The good news is that this time, unlike last year, there has been no brouhaha about John Farnham singing (or not) at Gallipoli. The bad news is that the swing towards showbiz spectaculars continues unabated. And, of course, there are the souvenirs. An establishment in the ACT has been advertising a “Sands of Gallipoli” plaque – “antique nickel finish metal plate on a wooden base featuring authentic sand collected from the beaches of Gallipoli”. So now we know what all those trenching tools were for.

In recent times, there has been controversy about the impact of roadworks and the swelling tourist tide on the former battlefields. One positive aspect of last year’s Farnham fuss was that it raised the question of what was, or wasn’t, appropriate on the peninsula – even in a concert separate from the official commemorative service. New Zealand’s PM put the kybosh on Whispering Jack but made it clear that her home-grown Finn brothers would also not be appropriate.

In the flood of letters and talkback calls debating this issue, two struck me as especially poignant. The first recalled a lone pilgrim to the peninsula starting to sing the Eric Bogle song And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda in the pre-dawn silence then, slowly, thousands participating in an improvised, and very moving, singalong. The second, rejecting the Disneyfication of the site, described the impact of “the grim sadness of the place; its silent melancholy”.

The place is its own memorial. It doesn’t need slick ceremonies. Nine years ahead of the centenary of the Gallipoli landings – an anniversary to send major event planners into a frenzy – is not too early to suggest that perhaps the peninsula should be given the Uluru treatment. Just as climbing the Rock, once practically compulsory for visitors, is now deemed to be disrespectful, so too could the Gallipoli site benefit from more reverence and simplicity, less sound and lights and PA systems. The story is so strong it does not need artificial aids.

As for Melbourne’s official service at the Shrine, I have wished for years that they would do away with the sepulchral, rather banal commentary that precedes the unseen bugler. The immense power of the occasion comes from the gathering of strangers in the gloom; the flickering light of the flame, surrounded by pensive faces; and, above all, the enveloping darkness and silence that recall the conditions of the original heroic and tragically botched military operation.

The day and the way it is remembered has evolved over the past 91 years. The veterans of the first landing have all gone now. Technology has changed everything. No doubt there are computer whizzes around who reckon they could produce a powerful big-screen simulation of the events on Anzac Cove if given half a chance. They should politely be told to keep their memory sticks to themselves. And any major-eventer with plans for massed choirs or Russell Crowe reading some poetry should be reminded that this is a service, not an opening or closing ceremony. Silence can be the most powerful sound; also the hardest to achieve.

Early in the afternoon on Anzac Day there will be a call for silence at the MCG. A huge crowd is expected to witness the annual game between Essendon and Collingwood, which, in its way, has become an important part of the ritual of the day. This doesn’t strike me as inappropriate – much less so, certainly, than showbiz presentations or souvenir plaques, complete with pilfered sand. After all, those early Anzacs loved a game of cards or cricket or footy. Any diversion would do. Anything to help them forget what followed that first nerve-stretching silence.

I don’t know about you, but that sums up quite tidily how I’ve felt about the day for some time now.

Lest We Forget.

For a bit of background, feel free to read a bit on the First World War (1914-18), or if you are looking for more topical and specific history, the Gallipoli campaign should suffice. I’d also like to apologise for any grossly incorrect history I have provided – it’s mainly off the top of my head, and we all know what that’s full of!

Pete

After deciding this afternoon what I would blog about today I was gripped with an irrational fear. I feared that this blog was becoming simply a music blog, and it scared me to my core. Then I remembered that music is so awesomely coolish that this becoming a music blog is the least of my concerns and perhaps I should spend as much time worrying about the unstarted anatomy essay that is due next week. Anyway on with the post.

I went and saw an Indian film today with Tashi. Making our merry way back home I was dragged into a clothes shop so Tash could try on big leather boots, but managed to bide my time trawling through a copy of this weeks Inpress magazine, which was released today. For those outside of Melbourne, Inpress is one of the city’s free street press magazines, published each Wednesday and focusing on music and the arts, generally of the underground nature. Although I don’t read the magazine religiously, it’s nice to catch up on every now and again, so I flipped through album reviews and looked at upcoming gigs, until a mammoth, full page ad hit me in the face, letting me know in no uncertain terms what I had heard for weeks – that Wolfmother are touring the country midyear and tickets go on sale tomorrow.

Now although the band are pretty bloody good, and I’d even go as far as to say exceptional live (both times I’ve seen them they have been unbelievable) I don’t think I’ll be going to see them this time around. There’s no new material, I’ve seen them before, I don’t really like Festival Hall as a music venue and I’m dirt poor at the moment, but if I suddenly did decide to go, it would be simply for the support band – a wickedly cool Swedish rock group called Dungen (doon-yen).

I’ve been listening to Dungen’s ‘Panda’ on the radio for weeks now without realising, thinking little of the ridiculously catchy song in some odd European language that is overplayed on the J’s. Watching Rage last week I saw the same song as a videoclip, and at that point decided I’d set out to find a little about the song and the band. Unfortunately, as with most of my best intentions I completely forgot, and it took today’s discovery of a support slot for Wolfmother to actually make me remember to look into the band a little. Long story short, I would now consider the concert, but if the ticket sale goes like the Arctic Monkey’s did a couple of weeks ago (5 minutes, all gone) I’d have a snowball’s chance in hell of nabbing tickets in the first place, so maybe I’ll wait and hope for a Dungen sideshow, or not bother at all.

Anyway it wouldn’t be a post on music if there weren’t some music involved, so here’s Panda by Dungen, as always provided thanks to the great people working behind grannytunes. Just click on the player up the top of this page to get the balls rolling.

Oh check out the lyrics. If anyone speaks Swedish (and especially if you are a chef) and could translate for me, it would be much appreciated.

Dungen – Panda

Vägen bort är lång,
Längre bort än hem
Känner mer och mer
för allt jag kring mig ser

Alla har det inte lika bra som du
Jag tror du förstår, för jag gillar henne med
Hur hon är, ibland så blir hon arg
Hon var min, men det skiter du väl i?

Vår musik är död
Pop behöver stöd
Mamma, pappa, barn
har ingenstans å va

Alla har det inte lika bra som du
Jag tror du förstår, för jag gillar henne med
Hur hon är, ibland så blir hon arg
Hon var min, men det skiter du väl i?

Alla har det inte lika bra som du
Jag tror du förstår, för jag gillar henne med
Hur hon är, ibland så blir hon arg
Hon var min, men det skiter du väl i?

Alla har det inte lika bra som du
Jag tror du förstår, för jag gillar henne med
Hur hon är, ibland så blir hon arg
Hon var min, men det skiter du väl i?

Pete

When I was a wee lad, I was part of the Scout Association. Truth be told I actually stayed with them for some time, and along with learning bush survival skills and knot tying I got to skydive, white water raft, rebuild engines and let off military flares, so really it was actually quite a fun way to spend a couple of hours a week.

Anyway one of my earliest memories of scouts was the trials and tribulations of taking part in the big annual competition camp (funnily enough run over the easter weekend each year) at Gilwell Park, an hour or two east of Melbourne in the Dandenong ranges. Over the weekend, apart from being assessed on having straight tents, tidy living areas, level cooking tables and a certain level of cleanliness around the camp, each group has to complete a number of generally fun games and activities. These range from archery to radio tracking, rogaining to learning about computers. Anyway one of the activities that we took part in was bottle rockets – not the explosive ones but the type you can make yourself using old 2L coke bottles with bike valves stuck into their tops. After adding a little water into a bottle and pumping as much air as possible into the little bugger, you release the valve, and the bottle goes shooting up 10m or so into the air, spraying water in its wake, usually to the collective glee of small children. Although this wasn’t my first (or last) experience with these ‘bottle rockets’, it was my most memorable, because unfortunately for our troop, that particular day happened to be one of the wettest I can remember camping through, and as such the novelty of water spraying out of a flying coke bottle was somewhat lost on us 11 year olds, considering we were soaking wet anyway as well as being generally cold and miserable. I seem to remember one of our troop getting shot in the face with one of our coke bottle missiles as well, which I’m sure put a cherry on his cake.

Ever since that day, standing miserably in the rain, firing stupid bottles into the air, I have always wondered if you could harness several of these propulsive devices to fire an object a certain distance. I had visions of cruel, water based jetpacks for cats, or a more refined version for the mass market, intended so that busy workers could forget about traffic in the morning and fly to work with water as the only by-product of this groundbreaking transportation system. For some odd reason I never got to any sort of experimental stage, due to ethical concerns, funding problems and general laziness. However, it never stopped me wondering if it could be done at all. Well, now that niggling query has been answered in the only way fitting such a ridiculous fantasy – Japanese Game Show footage. Sit back and get ready to grin stupidly.

PetePete

When I woke up this morning and headed downstairs to make myself some coffee, the first greeting I received was from the smallest and youngest member of our family, our slightly neurotic cat Mildred (yes not the greatest name, she rocks though). Usually she’s not so affectionate (after spending your first 3 weeks of life under a dishwasher in some horrible house you’d be fucked up too), but recently I’ve built quite a good rapport with her and as a result we’re now bosom buddies – at least until she gets a feed out of me. Anyway after giving her a bit of meat and settling down to read the paper, I discovered from Richard that it is supposedly her 3rd birthday tomorrow (we rescued her from the vet so we’re not sure of the exact date but for the last couple of years the 10th of April has been for all intents and purposes THE day). As a result, and out of honour of my own Milly, this post is going to be all about cats – the largely misunderstood family of pets that beat the hell out of dogs.

So, as with many of the great minds of the world, I do some of my best thinking in the shower. This morning, I was lamenting why cats get such a bad wrap in popular media – in cartoons, film and fairytales cats are always conniving, nasty creatures that invariably get scared away, outsmarted and beaten by the clearly less intelligent, more rubbishy canines (or the even more rubbish mice). In ‘An American Tail’ – one of the earliest films I can remember seeing, a group of Russian mice immigrate to New York, where they are hounded by evil cats and forced to pay tributes, as an alternative to being eaten. Although I didn’t realise at the time (according to imdb I was only two when the film was released), the film was an allegory for the Jewish migration to the states at the start of the 20th century. The cats are apparently anti-sematic mobsters and get their comeuppance at the end of the film, when they are chased away from New York in a predictable climax. What upset me most about this film when I first saw it was not that the mice might get eaten, but that according to this film, my cat Gemma was a gangster, and probably about to eat ME. I went home distraught, and it was several weeks before I realised that the movie was clearly wrong. Mice in the real world were not nearly as cool as the mice in the film – mice are generally unable to speak, wear clothing or stage citywide cat cleansing operations, so it was equally likely that cats weren’t as bad as the movie made them out to be.

However, even after that fairly impressive bit of rationalisation, doubts persisted in my mind. I was constantly harassed in almost every medium with the theme of evil cats. There are literally hundreds of cases where a cat is an antagonist in a story: there is of course the famous Sylvester from the Warner Brothers cartoons; Tom from Tom & Jerry; Mad Cat – Claw’s pet from Inspector Gadget; Blofield’s cat in the Bond movies; Scarface Claw in the Hairy Maclary books; Mrs Norris from Harry Potter; and the hateable cats in the movie ‘Cats and Dogs’. Then there are less evil but still unpleasant cat’s like Garfield and the original ‘Puss in Boots’ – the only fairytale I know where the moral of the story reinforces pretty bad social behaviour regarding lying and deceit. And then, if that wasn’t bad enough there are cats that just have bloody bad luck, like Schrödinger’s cat, which is forever trapped in semi-existence. I bet that cat hating bastard Schrödinger never even entertained the thought of gassing a poor helpless ickle puppy. Fucker.

Anyway I was mulling over this predicament in the shower this morning, mourning the fact that cat’s will likely never shake the image that they’ve been typecast – I found that even fundamental Christians have had a go at how cat’s are the work of the devil – when I realised that I do have one hell of an ally on my side. It isn’t Jesus, and it isn’t nuclear weaponry, but it’s almost as powerful. I have science on my side!

Irrefutable claims that have been proven to the nth degree by all manner of science include:

I could go on forever – this list is truly longer than the list of evil cats in movies.

Anyway I was going to go on and draw up graphs illustrating my point further but I can’t be arsed. The fact of the matter is that cats are several orders of magnitude better than dogs, and the only reason that anyone could possibly believe otherwise is because they have been brainwashed by the Nazi’s. That’s not just some crackpot baseless theory either – I’m a scientist. I have all the proof I could possibly need.

Happy Birthday Milly.

Pete

Now theres a national holiday everyone can get manically depressed about. 12 years ago today, Kurt Cobain blew his brains out with a shotgun (interestingly, not before supposedly injecting 3 times the lethal dose of heroin) ending, rather sadly a fairly significant chapter in punk/grunge/alt.rock history.

Like them or loathe them, Nirvana wrote and played some pretty incredible music. To have a song so ingrained in pop culture to be named the ‘song of a generation’, yet remain almost incomprehensible is quite an acheivement. Similarly (although I have no proof of this beyond my own assumption) to have cover art among the most recognisable ever, and to be popular enough to support several spinoff bands seems to me to be good evidence to suggest that Nirvana were not just another grungey garage band. However, I must admit that music is highly subjective – I suppose you’ll have to make your own mind up.

Oh it couldn’t be KC Day without some music, so here’s that song that Myf Warhurst can’t remember – understandable really – considering it’s only, as previously mentioned the ‘song of a generation’. As always, click on grannytunes to get it pumping.

Pete

For some reason I’ve always liked bassy music. It shows in my love of reggae – although arguably that is more influenced by… other factors surrounding the reggae/island subculture. Anyway although I’ve never been a massive fan of dance, I’ve always had at least a little time for ‘drum & bass’, a ten year old sub-genre of the broader and largely rubbish electronic genre. For those left wondering what exactly I’m talking about, move to England, or failing that read the next few lines. Drum and bass, like most electronic music came into existence in English clubs sometime in the early to mid 1990′s, and is suprisingly quite self explanatory – consisting notably of frantic drums and a booming, usually bloody quick bassline. If you want to take me out for a night on the town and actually want me to dance (an increasingly rare occurrence), make sure dnb is on, and none of this urban shit.

Anyway to demonstrate the wonders of dnb, let me introduce you to Pendulum, a trio from Perth who formed in 2002, only to immigrate to England a year later. Wankers. Anyway after two years of playing club sets and releasing EP’s, they released their debut album last year to critical acclaim and commercial success both in the UK and here, smashing dnb sales records and amassing a large following. They are in Australia currently, and although I won’t be seeing them, if you are interested they will be playing the HiFi bar this Saturday, the 8th of April.

So without any further ado, may I present the phenomenally popular track, ‘Fasten Your Seatbelt’. Just clickaroo on grannytunes up the top, and it’ll start streaming. However, some warnings are in order: Firstly, you really need some bass coverage for this to sound any good (even more so than the dub track a few weeks ago), and a subwoofer just makes it great. However, because this is compressed music, the bass suffers (to my ears moreso than the rest of the tonal range) so if you like what you hear, it might be a good idea to go out and actually buy the CD from a record store. I couldn’t find the band on iTunes, but I suppose it’s only a matter of time.

One more thing – similarly to Prodigy’s big dnb hit ‘Smack My Bitch Up’, this really gets pumping after the one minute mark. Patience is a virtue.

EDIT 27/08/06: The track ‘Fasten your Seatbelt’ is no longer hosted at dialagranny.com. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Pete

This time of year is the very definition of bittersweet. Autumn is a beautiful time, when huge changes in the world happen as everything gears down for the winter months, and there’s the added bonus tonight as Eastern Australia gains an extra hour of sleep as we all come off daylight savings. But then of course there’s the flipside. Today’s top of 18C meant that the heaters at home turned on for the first time for months and months, and the miserable weather meant that the F1 qualifying on the racetrack only a stones throw away was rubbishy, wet and slow.

Really though, the mild weather that Melbourne has been experiencing is hardly whingeable – three separate cyclones have devastated Northern Australia in the last fortnight. Compared to that (apparently 90% of the country’s banana’s have been destroyed), it’s rainbows and warm sunny days down here.

Well, I suppose I should start pulling out my winter clothes, or more to the point go shopping for some. Maybe a flu jab is in order this year too – one of my mates told me he got one for $4. You’d spend more on Codral if you were to get the flu.

Pete