So, uni goes back tomorrow, putting a formal end to holidays and the fear of study back into the hearts of hundreds of thousands of students across the country after 3 months of relative bliss. Wish us all the best of luck.

For those interested, My major for this degree looks like being Human Pathology, with a Physiology minor. I think I might just have to pull the finger out this year if I want any prospect of a post-grad degree (ha… what a joke).

Pete

So. very. angry. One of the idiots is an aussie aswell…. It wouldn’t be so bad if these people spread their message to independent adults that have the capacity to think for themselves, but to preach to kids who I really doubt actually wanted to go to a brain washing seminar? That’s low, evangelical dickheads.

Pete

I consider myself (perhaps a bit pig-headedly) an intelligent person. I’d like to think of myself as well read, knowledgeable about the world and it’s workings etc etc. HOWEVER, like everyone I’m not at my best first thing in the morning. Example: Today’s headline of the Herald Scum:

Right. So guess what I envisaged for the split second before my brain actually started turning and I noticed the inverted commas?

Yep. A war, on ice. I am so SMRT. Oh, click on the image for the full size version. I promise it’s worth it – banners, a scoreboard and BLOOD. The Nazi’s are thumping the yanks though – perhaps I’m being swayed by the novel I’m reading at the moment, where the Axis won the second world war and the US was split up between the Japs on the West and the Germans on the east. stunning book by the way (Phillip K. Dick’s ‘Man in The High Castle‘)

Pete

jTV started broadcasting on the ABC mid last year, one of the weekends that I was stuck in hospital being paid to take drugs. I remember that because the hype machine was in overdrive for months beforehand trying to get people excited about the 3 hours of programming a week by triple j that would be broadcast on TV to complement the 20 year old radio station. Anyway the weekly format for the rest of last year (jTV returned last weekend, so I can’t comment on this year yet) was four shows a week – a largely rubbish Friday night show, a pre-recorded live gig on Sunday night, some extended show on Tuesday nights on ABC2, and 2 hours on Saturday morning was devoted to Rosie Beaton’s super request show, the only program I watched reasonably often. Anyway the program would play the 20 most requested songs from the last week of super request, interspersed with Rosie’s ramblings, band showcases, interviews and a couple of prerecorded sessions like the previous week’s ‘Like a Version’ or a ‘Hack’ report.

Anyway, to get to the point, it was during this show sometime last year that I became aquainted with the small, oddly attractive (and oddly talented) Russian-American Jew by the name of Regina Spektor. Her song ‘Fidelity’ (which polled at #20 in the recent Hottest 100) was at #1 on the weekly show for what seemed an eternity, and as soon as it disappeared, ‘On The Radio’ became successful, storming Rosie’s charts. At first I resisted the urge to like her VEEERY New Yorkian accent and direct lyrical style, but sure enough with enough sustained assault over the weeks I came to like her music. It was another few weeks before I went out and got her album, and even then it was a long time before I listened to it properly. However I am sorry I took so long to warm to her music – the album is a goldmine of odd little ditties, ranging from love songs to accounts of day-to-day life, all very prosaic and matter-of-fact. I can’t put my finger on it, but I have a certain fascination with her music. I think it might help that she appears to be a spitting image of another Jewish singer, one I went to school with at Wesley.

Anyway Spektor’s third (or fourth?) single is now doing to rounds of the radio, and although I haven’t seen the video yet, the song caught my ear a couple of weeks ago. ‘That Time’ is so unlike the rest of her album – the vocal style is much harsher, and the music and range is simpler – but it is still endearing, enough for it to become far too catchy for its own good. Anyway I’m losing my train of thought and need sleep. Instead of reading any further, just click on the grannytunes player up at the top of this page and see what I mean.

Pete

I’m off for a couple of days of sun (and if I’m lucky some surf) down at Phillip Island. Should be back for the weekend, and then only a week before uni goes back… oh dear.

Pete

Many of you may have noticed I’ve been strangely silent about my beloved Carlton Football Club for quite some time. We’ve had some fairly bad form since our last finals appearance in 2001, including three wooden spoons – the first ever in 2003, then back-to backs in 2005-6. On top of shitty on-field performance has been a well publicised complete and utter mismanagement of the clubs assets and costs. We were slapped with a $1M salary cap infringement fine in 2001 which also cost us draft picks, members, and undoubtedly games. I was not a member last year, but in 2005 of the 15 matches I attended in Melbourne, we lost 13 (I was out of the state for our win over Collingwood in round 20 and decided not to go to the 2nd Richmond match after losing by over 100 points in the first match – of course we won the rematch by over 5 goals). You really have no idea how angry you can become when $200 is spent to see two wins in a little over 4 months.

Anyway, those who have been following the news recently will know that the Blues have graced the front page of the sports section more than any other team in any other code this year. Firstly, the reaction after the sheer magnitude of our financial problems was revealed (over $7M in negative net assets (doesn’t that just mean debt?)), then when Sticks was made president – however temporary – with next to no experience in anything other than playing football, then most recently the swift removal of Kernahan and the timely arrival of Australia’s 3rd richest man, Dick Pratt at the helm.

Although the hype surrounding his arrival at the Blues has caused a feeding frenzy with the media and supporters alike (memberships spiked last week, unsuprisingly), its not a quick fix and although Pratt can pour money on the fires at Carlton much like Joe Gutnick did with Melbourne in the late 90′s, the on-field success of the team will still be the true test as to how the team will continue over the next ten years and further.

Anyway back to my own personal involvement in the team. I tell you what – I’m an easy person to please…. Players and coaches please take note: String a win together, either from the first round match against Essendon in the NAB cup in two weeks’ time, or in the first two weeks of the premiership season, and you can have one more member for ’07. Actually bugger that – find someone who’ll go to the matches with me, and I’ll sign up. A student 11 match membership is only a touch over $100 anyway… Still, if we’re looking at more woodware for the cabinet, I won’t bother – I don’t consider myself a fairweather supporter, but it’s difficult to stay positive when the club is collapsing around you.

Pete

OK, I think I’ve given this topic enough space to be both emotionally detached and fair, as well as enough time for Michaela to have fixed the situation before I publish it for the world to see.

People who know me personally or are frequent readers of this blog will know that I met a girl on the GVBR in November last year. Although the relationship was short, it was a hell of a ride and I fell pretty hard for her. I’ve never before developed such feelings in such a short time, and I dare say I won’t let myself be caught so badly again. We fluctuated from going great-guns to hanging on a knife edge for most of December (which is a lot more fun than it sounds), as she tried to sort out her own hangups from a previous relationship, and I tried to be as understanding as possible. The only thing I really asked from her was honesty, which I think is fair enough – I hadn’t known her long enough to get particularly upset if it all went down the drain, as long as she let me know instead of pretending things were alright, prolonging the inevitable.

Anyway we made it to Christmas, which within the blink of an eye came and went, and although I didn’t see her on the 25th, we shared a phonecall in the evening, and saw each other the next day. Then she came down with a nasty bout of tonsilitis, remaining bed-bound for a few days just before New Years. On the 29th, after calling in a sickie with her work, I took her to the doctor, brought her back to her place, put her to bed and excused myself – there was no way I was getting infected, and having some whinging bloke next to you while you try and get better probably doesn’t help much.

Then, early in the new year things took a turn for the worse. Micha came and spent the day with me on the 3rd and then again on the 7th of January, but something was up, and the 4 days of silence after then made that fact abundantly clear. I rang her on Saturday morning after the 4 days of silence, and was finally admitted to that she ‘didn’t really have her heart in it’ and that she was still hung up on the boyfriend before me. As I had always told her, we hadn’t known each other long enough to become particularly distraught about the whole situation, but she simply wasn’t allowed to dump me over the phone – apart from the fact that she had a whole bunch of my stuff, we owed each other a lunch or even just a coffee, to do it face-to-face and clear the air. Afterall, Michaela is a really wonderful person, and I’d love to be friends with her, even if a relationship didn’t work out (most people would see this as a big mistake, but I tend to make a very good ex / friend, and clearly not such a good boyfriend). She agreed to those terms, and promised me a phonecall within the next few days.

That evening, completely unexpectedly, I started to feel really miserable. I rang her and told her this – and that it would be in my interests if we saw each other sooner rather than later. A day went past… two…. three…… four? I rang again, but was told she was down with the parents in Mt Martha but would promise a meeting within the next couple of days. You can probably already see where this is going.

Although it only took me a couple of days to rationalise and get over the whole situation, I’ve been left in the lurch, not able to properly put this behind me for over a month now. Almost all my friends who I’ve asked advice from have told me to forget about her, and that someone not willing to find half an hour for someone over an entire month is not worth knowing. They all had a point – no-one, not even the amazing MickHead is that busy. Yes, she may be working whenever she can, as well as spending as much time as possible at her real home in Mt Martha due to the fact that during semester it becomes almost impossible. On top of this she had a supplementary exam for uni last week which needed some study. However, even with all this on, half an hour is not asking the world, and for someone that was supposedly fairly important in her life, I’d like to think she’d care enough to squeeze me in.

So anyway after Australia Day passed I resolved to let Michaela do the hard yards – I had been running around trying unsuccessfully to organise coffee until then. As well as simply being a pride thing, I wanted to prove to myself that she cared enough to actually bother seeing me, off her own steam. Although she didn’t ring me, forcing myself to not call her every other day proved quite effective at clearing my mind, but then last Friday, Elé and Ash went to a housewarming with Michaela, and, thanks largely to their messages the emotions came flooding back. Over the next 24 hours I (completely accidentally) sent two messages to Micha that were about her but intended for Ash (I don’t know how it happened – it seems that thinking about her while typing meant that I went to M in my address book without even thinking). I realised what I had done the first time and apologised, but I woke up on Monday morning to a hurt message about this whole thing taking a lot of courage (WHAT THE FUCK???), and if I didn’t appreciate her effort I should have the guts to tell her directly, not vaguely through purposely mis-addressed text messages. Not knowing to what she was referring, I rang her immediately, and after sorting that particular fuckup out, we got along reasonably amicably, even organising a coffee for the following weekend. I cleared my timetable, bailing on both Sorrento with Jake and Nowa Nowa for Jac’s 21st, only to be told this morning that this weekend doesn’t really suit afterall. She’s offered Monday as being an alternative, so in my quiet rage I’ve decided to grow some balls and develop an ultimatum.

For the last month I have been the one pursuing contact in order to ease the heartache of the breakup, and also to establish an ongoing platonic relationship. However, I’ve had enough. If Monday passes without the promised first meeting, then I will cease all efforts. If, after Monday I still haven’t seen Michaela, then quite honestly she either doesn’t want or doesn’t deserve my friendship. Simple as that.

The ball’s in your court, Michaela.

Pete

I went out on Thursday night with the gang to celebrate Kat’s 21st birthday at a little Tapas bar on Chapel St. The food (most of us chose the De-Gus-Da-Con (a new rage in extreme dining involving a robot and high velocity food particles) menu, which was very good, however I was a little perturbed at the cost of the drinks – namely the sangria that was ordered for the table. As far as I was aware sangria was invented in Spain as a quick, fun but most importantly CHEAP way of getting very drunk, much like punch in more anglo-centric society. Anyway the sangria at Basque was $40 a jug, which, although pleasant and certainly alcoholic, was a bit on the pricey side of things. After a bit of web sleuthing when I got home, I priced a sangria if I were to make it:

Cheap-arsed bottle of red wine: $6
Lemonade: $1.50
Fruit: Lying around
Brandy: Glass of cheap shit: $2
Cinnamon: Negligible

And really, that’s about it. $10 should get you a jug easily, and the restaurant was charging four times that. I vowed never to drink sangria at a bar again*.

Pete

*Vow null and void after midnight, 10/2/07.

Over the last twenty or thirty years it has become much easier to become a music lover – trade barriers have been lowered, the world has opened up to different forms of music, and probably most importantly the dawn of the digital age means music can be easily pirated traded online, with only a few clicks of a mouse, and then played in whichever order you want, wherever you want on personal MP3 players.

As great as all these developments in music are (in particular the digital age thingy), the move away from albums as the primary source of listening pleasure has meant that artists have (in my opinion) become lazy – lumping 3 or 4 good tracks at the start of every album and then filling the other 30-45 minutes with drivel. There are exceptions to this observation of course, but the age of stunning albums that are truly all killer, no filler seems to have really past us. The other drawback is that the only lyrical messages that modern musicians seem to convey to listeners are brief, 3 minute singles intended for maximum revenue, as opposed to the half-hour (or longer) musical trips of the old days, where tracks melted into each other, to deliver one massive track that extended the length of the album, and would have proven difficult to break into smaller parts. This aspect of older albums, the segue (pronounced segway, and defined as the transition to the next section of a piece of music without a pause) is one of my favourites, and modern songs that employ this tactic automatically pique my interest, as it demonstrates to me an artist interested more in the art of constructing a full length story and extending the joy for as long as possible, rather than a less gratifying 3 minutes of rocking your socks off. Maybe you can read into my bedroom antics by how I feel about music eh?

Anyway if I lost any of you there, let me provide you with some examples. Although it took me a long time to appreciate it, Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of The Moon’ is often considered one of the greatest albums ever recorded. 10 tracks stretching less than 45 minutes and released in 1973, five years after Syd Barrett had left the band. The album stayed in the US Billboard 200 chart for a for a record 741 continuous weeks, and in May this year recorded a cumulative 1500 weeks over 30 odd years. The album is believed to address the flaws of modern human life, and the pressures which can drive us creatures to madness – greed; the increased speed of life and passage of time; mortality; materialism; conflict etc. The songs by and large segue into each other incredibly, and I have often finished the CD unknowingly, thinking I was on track three of so – perhaps a purposeful and poignant reminder of the message in the song ‘Time’. Anyway the album is the only one I am aware of that is loved equally by my own father and I – he was only a few years older than I am now when it was released, and we have surprised each other in the past by listening to it. It also remains one of about 3 CD’s that my parents own that I am not forced to run screaming from the house when it is played.

- Final 15 seconds of ‘Breathe’, First 30 seconds of ‘On The Run’.

The Beatles similarly experimental album ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ also uses the segue, but not the the same extend as Floyd. The album itself is clearly the result of fame catching up with the band, as well as massive drug use. Most of the tracks are completely separate thematically from each other, but the flow through the album shows the markings of highly talented songwriting. The transition from the title track to ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’ is the best segue, and both songs are classics.

- Final 15 seconds of ‘Sgt. Peppers…’, first 30 seconds of ‘A Little Help…’.

More recently, The Flaming Lips from Oklahoma City have caried the torch for experimental music. They have released 11 albums over a 24 year career, one of them being Zaireeka – a 4-CD album, which is odd enough by itself, but even stranger when it is revealed that the CD’s are not intended for individual listening – you are supposed to be play them all at the same time for the full experience. Anyway I digress. Although 2002′s ‘Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots’ was the most poppy album of their 20 year old career until last year’s ‘At War With The Mystics’, Yoshimi proved to be a popular album that was musically stunning and difficult to turn off. Although the only real segue is between the two title tracks (Yoshimi Battles… Part I & Part II), the album is difficult to listen to if played out of order or incompletely. I can’t put my finger on why, but there is a certain beauty to the track arrangement. It’s also on sale at various stores for less than $10.

Finally, the album that I was listening to an hour ago, which provided me the initial seed of inspiration to post about this phenomenon of the segue is Eskimo Joe’s incomparable ‘A Song is a City’, and more specifically the transition between the first two tracks – ‘Come Down’ and ‘From The Sea’. I think it’s meant to be a ticking clock, and it’s a transition that gets me every time.

- Final 15 seconds of ‘Come Down’, first 30 seconds of ‘From The Sea’.

So, here is my plea. Musicians of the world, PLEASE for the sake of my eternal love, when writing your next album, write the songs together, and employ a decent audio engineer that can actually transition your songs flawlessly, like the classics. I know its a risk in today’s music business, but you’ll have at least one guaranteed sale, and surely that’s worth the thousands of dollars it costs to make an album?

Pete

[EDIT]: I now have a second plea – can you guys help me by suggesting other particularly nice segues between songs? Any comments left would be muchly appreciated. Cheers.

2 episodes in a row now that have been blog-worthy (either shows things are on the improve, or I have little to talk about). If the rest of the season steers this way then I’ll be so damn pleased I’ll personally fund a 7th season*. Take this short for example – classic scrubs:

On a completely separate note: it’s a hot one today, and as a result I’ve got the aircon on upstairs. For some odd reason the air coming out of the conditioner smells like a cross between Jarlsberg cheese and dirty socks. Legionnaire’s anyone?

Pete

* Not really. I might personally anticipate a 7th season, but that will be pretty much it.