Winter has hit Hobart at last. Thirteen degrees outside and it’s plenty chilly.
Of course you didn’t really need me to tell you that. If you’re at all interested in Tasmanian weather you can get it right from the source. Presumably that’s not why you came here, at any rate.
So what’s new and exciting in Nick-land? Well, it looks like I’ve been asked to provide the singing (and possibly speaking) voice for a cartoon character on a nationally broadcast show. That’s pretty cool, although of course no chickens being counted just yet. T3E writing plods merrily along as usual, as do my own personal musical & lyrical scrawlings. Also, T3E might be heading to the mainland to play a couple of gigs in support of another Aussie group, which would be mucho funno. And in “everyone’s a critic” land, we’ve had a comment on Youtube that says “the singing sounds like karaokee” (whatever that is) and that I sound like I should be singing “Bon Jovi or any bad 80s rock”. Good stuff!
So yeah… probably should have stuck with the weather, really.
It hit me a couple of days ago – I decided to put some prog stuff into my MP3 player to listen to on the bus this week. A few songs from the new DT and an assortment of other tunes from various artists.
My bus trip went like this:
“Hey cool, haven’t heard this for a while”
chugga chugga chugga meedly meedly dum dum grrrrrrr
“… hrmm, skip”
laaaaaaaaaaaa swords and fighting shields clashing metaaallll
“Ok, skip”
War is very bad and so are terrorists, although I’m sure some middle eastern people are really rather nice…. meedly meedly meedly meeeee
“… good god. Skip”
drab drab drab depressing soundscape and pre-adolescent pseudo-poetry
“Yawn… skip”
chugga chugga meedly meee, radio or television sample played through a telephone filter… soar soar
“Skip… oh, that’s all I have on my player because all of these songs are at least 19 minutes long!”
I’m just so very very very over it. I can’t remember the last time I heard a prog song that actually had something to say.
Maybe its just a phase…
I’ve been listening to Aimee Mann’s “The Forgotten Arm” the last few days, and it’s making me depressed. Not “cut my wrists and bleed out into a warm bath” depressed, but that almost pleasant self-indulgent melancholy that some music can provoke. This is actually a glowing endorsement for the album by the way. It’s really very good.
Songwriting-wise I don’t seem to do “happy” very well. It’s not that I’m not a reasonably happy person (at least sometimes) but rather that I don’t much like happy music. I think Steven Wilson from Porcupine Tree has a quote along those lines – sad music can actually be uplifting because it’s so honest and visceral. Happy, jaunty tunes always seem to come off sounding so… contrived.
La de daa, roses and fluffy bunnies and lace, oh me oh my!
Please.
I was recently informed by my esteemed musical colleague Andrew that my blog was extremely fatiguing to read. Ordinarily my response to such a statement would be “fuck off won’t you, there’s a good chap”. However, as he’s also rather a good graphic designer and I am, as it were, colour blind, I thought I probably should pay him some attention. So I have switched to this (hopefully) far more legible colour scheme.
In other news, my office chair appears to have broken. I’ve swapped it for one in the lunch room, so it’s all good. Nobody saw a thing. It’s the perfect crime.
It’s 5pm and I long for a beer.
This is not an interesting entry.
This is a beer.
