Arthur Russell

Thanks to Declan for the Arthur Russell documentary now available to download from the r-n-d site. Untill listening to this, I only knew of Arthur for his disco productions under Loose Joints and Dinosaur L. While I always thought it was great music, I was unaware of the greater body of Arthurs work (and, as declan points out, the music he was more interested in making) which is an almost minimal, acoustic sound, consisting of just cello and voice, a musical myriad of such disparate worlds (or words) as disco, avant garde jazz and classical.

Like so many great artists it seems Arthur was vastly overlooked during his lifetime (he died of Aid related illness in 1992) apart from a small band of fans among new yorks downtown DJ's and musicians (among them Larry Levan, Steve DAquisto, Phillip Glass and David Byrne from Talking heads who supposedly wanted Arthur to join his group). This sad reality is highlighted all to clearly in one of the few known radio interviews with Arthur in which the College radio Disc Jockey who sounds like he knows very liittle about the music is merely enduring his guests presence. Meanwhile Arthur is quite forthcoming and candid (if a little quiet) however none of this seems to register on the other side of the desk.

One of the first things i read about Arthur that grabbed my attention was a quote from Rolling Stone magazine in 2004 that read "If NIck Drake had lived long enough to make records with New Order, they might have sounded something like this" While being a little reductionist if not innaccurate (Elvis Costello i think said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture" and comparisons such as this make rolling stone seem plain lazy) it offers some clue as to just what an original sound and musical vision it is.

Anyway, dont take my word for it, listen to the documentary yourself. Youd be hard pressed to find music filled with us as much sadness and joy in tracks like See through love, this is how we walk on the moon and little lost. If your ears could thank you, you would probably go "holly shit my ears can talk" but once youd calmed down a bit they'd thank you for finding something new.

So yes I dont always talk about things i dislike here. Occasionally I like to praise something. Or at lease praise someone else for praising something before me. Ladies and gentleman I'd like you all to raise your glass in honor of praising things! Also while your over at r-n-d check out P-Moderns Scene watch its amusing and they have some anonymous ginger contributing now.

Def Tech

I watched Brokeback mountain today. Afterwards I read a few reviews for no reason at all really except i was bored and i thought that if people ask me what i thought about it one day perhaps i could sound smart and they could compliment me on my cleverness and want to sleep with me.

Every review started with something like "People are calling Brokeback mountain a gay western" and would then proceed to point out that it is not a western at all. I tried but i couldnt find the original reveiw, the one that said Brokeback mountain IS a gay western. There seems to be very little originality in review writing,



Speaking of lack of originality im going to steal one of p-moderns tricks and laugh at how dumb some hiphop lyrics are and then feel clever about myself for the rest of the day. This comes from Def Tech, purveyors of a new musical hybrid called Jawaiian style (thats a combination of Japan and Hawaii, i think youll find). Rather than give you a description myself ill just copy the profile from the website

Def Tech
Def Tech is a Jawaiian Reggae vocal unit with SHEN, from Hawaii and MICRO, from Japan.
The contrasting aspects of these two, such as 'Hawaii vs Japan''English vs Japanese' and different music views characterize their three-dimensional music. They also possess unique talents with Shen being fluent in Japanese, and Micro, being a natural surfer which makes their live performances all the more special.


Im going to ignore the fact that what you just read is hilarious, to go on a tangent here. Speaking a language is not "a unique talent" ; a unique talent is like being able to raise one eyebrow or do that thing where your eyes are open but only the whites are there, a unique talent implies that it is a rare occurance and cannot be taught. Consider if a press release about japanese pop star read "Yuki is exceptionally talented in that, he can speak english."

I would also like to know how being being a natural surfer could enhance a live musical performance. but i suppose they just wanted to mention something about the band performing live and had to link it somewhere.

By the way i realise this is like shooting fish in a barrel but im too lazy to write anything and i do like shooting fish.

This is an introduction two Pacific Island Music

Jump up and down, together get wild and loose it (ok)

We got Pacific Island flava commin’ at ya’ (great!)

Ya might not feel it first but the beat will attack ya (i dont like the sound of that one)

So get up out your seat and dance along

We got that ragga rasta gunpowder feelin’ song (a what song?)

6-5-4-3-2-1 bringin’ the heat up all night long

Hawaii and Tokyo bringin’ a feel good stoney song (what happened to the ragga rasta gunpowder song?)

From a Pacific Island to another Rising Sun

We got that vibe, we gonna try to get ya’ll to cry

You hear that sigh? You askin’ why? Everybody get high

Forget about your worries and have a good time

We’re hear to rhyme and flow with a lyrical stroll (ooo a walk sounds nice)

So grab that girl and block out the world

Take your mind to the sky take a chance don’t even ask why ( ive made it this far )

Come on and bounce along to our Pacific Island Music song, come on

This is an introduction to Pacific Island Music

Jump up and down, together get wild and loose it

This is Def Tech coming from the streets of Tokyo

Saturday afternoon in Kawasaki

Been a few days since i put a blog up. Ive been sick with pharangytis for the last few days; coughing up blood, throwing up stomach acids and getting very little sleep. Its been great. Today i felt a little better and since grant was hungover and looking for something to do we decided to walk around in a direction we had never been before. This ended happily as our chance expedition saw us spending most of the afternoon in the spectator stands of a high school girls sports day. Truly a splendid time was had by all.

Meanwhile its Annas birthday today. Obviously I would like to be in Melbourne for that and the Northcote music festival tommorow however I realise I am coming back very soon so it makes it alot easier than this time last year. I am looking forward to coming back to Melbourne, it is a great city.

Over here the humidity is dropping and being replaced by a rare thing for Tokyo...some nice weather. No doubt this helped our enjoyment of the all girl fraternity grudge match this afternoon. Tommorow there may be a drinks in yoyogi park and going to the room in shibuya for some rare groove night in the evening.

Thought id write a what im doing blog for a change.

I was asking for it

Thanks to Casey who all though she was ineligible to win any of the non existent prizes deserves an honourable mention for this entry.



personally I think I almost get away with it.

Godawful Rubbish

Found this in Metropolis, the free english street mag, most of it is devoted to this kind of stuff

"Designers Eva Paster and Michael Geldmacher thought a bookshelf should break patterns and expand the mind - the same way books do"

Perhaps if i ripped off one of the fiberboards with my bare arms and broke it over your head it might. The only people dumb enough to think what you just said makes sense can't read, so it looks like you missed your target market.

another article asks the question

"How does your sake cup rate from a fun or humor standpoint?"

lets see....what was the question again. wait a minute it was rhetorical, the author goes on

"Well, perhaps it's time to add a bit of personality to your drinkware!"

I am not questioning the merit of good design, I like things to look nice as much as the next person, but if i ever find myself questioning a piece of drinkwares personality, I would like whoever is nearest to me to talk me gently into a car and drive me to the nearest hostpital where they have nice plastic cups that cant conspire against anyone.

And the winner is...

Congragulations to Anna who is the winner of find the best dj wanker photo competition. Just so I dont get charged with Nepotism, Anna was the only contestent and this is because i made her go in in case no-one entered and I would risk looking like a little Grammy no friends. Thankfully I can breathe a large sigh of relief knowing that I avoided that one. No crying into my pillow for me. no sir.

The other week I recieved a post card from a Department store that I havnt been sure what to do with. It reads

Hello

Thank you very much. Will you come the day before. Succeed to hot day, but please care of your body. Always come a recreation in shop.

Issey Miyake.

What a nice guy..I can imagine this poor man slaving over it, carefully copying out the words from his electronic dictionary, just so i could come a recreation in his shop.

By the way Ive changed it so anyone can post on this site whether or not they have a blogger account. This means people can abuse me anonymously and spam people can make offers to increase your load by 500%. Yipee!

Ive also been told that there should be more pictures for people to look at so even though this has nothing to do with what ive been talking about, this is for the visually literate.

Dear....

To the mum that brings in her 4 year old half an hour before her class begins. The fact that your child does not stop talking does not make her endearing. When she was two perhaps her first words were worthy of some careful and reserved praise, however there comes a time in every childs life when they need to recognize that they are but another prop in the theatre of existence. Do you know how many souls are born every second? neither do i but ill bet its alot. Yet you persist with the idea that she is .... special. In fact not only do you laugh when she is downright annoying, you laugh with her as if you were old girlfriends giggling about the boy you used to have a crush on. Heres a tip, yelling "nani yo" (what?) while pushing your baby sibling back and forth does not the quipster make. Do you know what kind of psychological damage you are inflicting by teaching your child that they are special? Did it occur to you that the people around her have work to do. That person on the computer over there? See how theyre not making eye contact with you and have brought their face to within centimeters of the screen? Thats because they were working before you brought your hell bound banshee into our personal space. the only reason you havnt been told about your complete lack of social hygiene is that alas, you are the customer and said person is too nice to say anything. I on the other hand know that I can go home and yell at the internet.

Today one of my infinitly cuter students was wearing a tshirt that read

I FEEL NOTHING BUT HAPPINESS WHEN I EAT A POTATO.

Posting on websites is much more fun

Find the best DJ Wanker Competition

Competion closes at the end of this week, Friday 12 pm Melbourne time. You can enter as many times as you like. Since I realised no-one can post on this blog unless they have a blogger account themselves, and none of you do (all three of you!) that means you have to email me grammorris@hotmail.com to be in the running for nothing whatsoever. Dont miss out.

In the mean time weve had our first and i suspect only entry so far. This competition is heating up, quite literally since these contestents are all the way from miami! give a warm round of applause for....

DJ Abel....



Some say this mans arms are so powerful he goes through 3 crossfaders a week. The Spa says....i might get in it coz i like spas.


Dj Manny




as every dj knows sometimes records at the back are hard to reach and this guy has the added flexibility needed to get that copy of the weather girls without breaking a sweat

DJ Tony Moran




"I only turned around for a second, officer. I could of sworn he was wearing a tshirt." I didnt know men could give birth let alone have a caesarian.

DJ Victor Calderone



Noones ever been able to get a photo of victor wanking. This is because the human eye can only catch one picture every .05 of a second (not sure about this, made it up, but the rest is true) and victor hands are so fast that he is actually wanking all the time, its just we cant see it. Even as he looks at you silently, with those deep unblinking eyes.....

Nation brought to its knees as Brad calls a Wedding Strike!

I was trying to click on a link about the new united 93 movie and the ramifications september 11 is likely to have on Popular culture when by some bug on the age website i found myself reading that Brad wont marry Angelena untill gay marriage is legal. So Angelina Jolie's a man, I thought, thats surprising.

It turns out they're having a wedding strike as a form of political protest. Then i thought oh i get it.....then i thought, wait.....no i dont. This has got to be a first. A Wedding strike? are they threatening us? What sort of blackmail is that. They must be joking. They are right? Theyre being frivilous and im just a little bit slow to get the punchline. A Wedding strike, haha good one fellas. Please let them be joking.

Tell you what, untill they legalise Gay marriage in America, Im not going to marry Angelina Jolie either. What other threats could i make.

"Untill Israel moves out of Lebanon, Im not going to circus Oz"

"Unless we free the Asylum seekers, Im giving up potato salad."

This is fun. if ever i discover a land where wanking is the national sport i will call it Bradonia.

A Competition!

An idea emerged from the new blog.

I am having a competition to see who can find the wankiest, most pretentious deejay photo in the world.

There will be no prizes but you will know youll have looked at alot of wankers and perhaps be able to differentiate between your "garden variety house wanker" and someone who worked in PR for the perfecto label.

This will achieve two things. One. We can bag Paul Oakenfold some more. Two. I'll find out if anyone actually reads this blog.

I may as well get the ball rolling. Im not sure why but it occured to me to put the words "Roger" and "Sanchez" into a google image search and see what came up.



I think its the white that does it to me.

"New Blog"

Ive been reading a book of Fitzgerald's short stories and I realised that every year i read some things that I think are great, potentially life changing, things that put a voice to thoughts that I've had but never expressed. Then I wonder what it would be like to put cheese and salami in an omelet and spend of the rest of the night having strange cheese dreams.

So I figured that starting a blog of quotes might go some way to making me the smarter, focused, well groomed and sexy person that i some day hope to be.

Be here to love me

This comes out on DVD in Australia this week. It was over a year ago i saw this at the melbourne film festival. Time goes very fast indeed.

Last week was supposed to be the mount fuji post

No post for two weeks. I quit smoking two weeks ago. Conclusion: nicotine = motivation.

I sent the photos of the kites to metropolis for their photo of the week section. I will inevitably recieve no reply just like every other time i have tried to submit something, like say i dunno, a piece of writing to some small scale melbourne media publication thats been into hiphop since "back in the day" (somewhere between jurassic 5s' first and second LP). Who don't bother to reply when i send a nice email offering an article that would have been a shining voice of insight amongst the otherwise vacuous dribble they publish about what sneakers best compliment a new $150 coffee table book about Ugandan hiphop.

Speaking of living in a wank pit (what would it be like to live inside a rea life wank pit? I wonder if anyones written a book about it? perhaps we could ask the editor of opulent magazine), its hard to say youlr really feeling ethiopian funk without simultaneously wiping the coke from your nose but thats exactly what im listening to at the moment. If youve seen Jim Jarmuschs Broken Flowers then youve heard Mulatu from Ethiopia which is the jazzier side of 70s ethiopian music. The mix from Quantic and Miles Claret is the funkier side of the coin. Unfortunatly i havnt turned up anything about any of the artists featured in the mix, though for an introduction you could do worse than check out the interview with Mulatu in wax poetics 14.

Anyway. Mount Fuji.... I climbed up it...it was great. We got to the top. We got lost on the way down and ended up on the wrong side of the mountain luckily id quit smoking so i was able to deal with the situation calmly and rationally by crying and rolling around in the mud.




Heres the kite photo. Its late and I cant be bothered doing a mount fuji post right now...so its probably not going to happen. If your at all interested check out the photos i posted on flickr. Tommorow I am going to an exhibition celebrating 40 years of Ultraman. I will try and post more often.