Rantage

2001-07-02T23:04:00.000-07:00

Get your tickets for Travis from the State Theatre or http://www.ticketmaster7.com from Friday July 6 9:00AM. The support band will be Waikiki, not that I'm sure if that is worth mentioning. I have trouble watching support bands.. when they're playing I seem to be distracted as I look at the stage and constantly think "oh man,

are gonna be on this stage!they're gonna be right there! like in the flesh! playing!". Despite that there I have seen some amazing supports in my time, such as Bic Runga and Leonardo's Bride (for Neil Finn), and Doves (for Alex Lloyd). Oh, and the Avalanches when they supported the Beastie Boys :)

2001-07-01T19:45:00.000-07:00

It's official! Travis are coming back, once again at a "first in best dressed" venue, the State Theatre. The date is the 4th of August and tickets go on sale on the 6th of July (this Friday). Upon obtaining this information, I scoured many websites of ticket agencies and venues to no avail, only to find this morning that the State Theatre have a link, upon things like "Home", "Map", "History", one called "Travis" :D

2001-06-28T21:56:00.000-07:00

Let it be known that I have gone absolutely crazy about Weezer. The latest single Hash Pipe has been receiving a fair flogging on Triple J, and since then I've been listening to the rest of the album, where there are some priceless gems that have sucked me in, such as Don't Let Go and Island In the Sun. But my definite favourite would have to be Simple Pages. Indeed I shouldn't be surprised that the whole cute power/pop nerd rock ballad sound doesn't appeal to me. Fingers crossed for a tour!

2001-06-28T21:48:00.000-07:00

Travis will be coming to Sydney in the first week of August, but strictly for promotional purposes. Negotations are currently underway as to whether the visit will include any gigs. Fingers crossed. The latest album, The Invisible Band is an absolute pearler and shall not fail to impress if you are a fan of The Man Who. The sound remains mostly the same, but it's a formula that works, and if it ain't broke... the highlight of the album is undoubtedly Flowers In The Window. If this song goes single it's gotta be Top 5, the chorus is ridicolously infectious.

2001-02-20T05:19:00.000-08:00

This article at NME reveals that Eddie Vedder and Phil Selway and Ed O'Brien could well be joining Neil Finn on stage when Neil tours New Zealand later this month. There are auditions being held as it is for anyone to come up on stage and play with him for an addition to his catalogue of musical adventures, and if those blokes from Radiohead make an appearance it could be quite the moment. Although it would be hard pressed to top the Tibetan Freedom Concert gig when Tim Rogersof You Am I joined Neil on acoustic and vocals for a shot at She Will Have Her Way. Two excellent songwriters were ripping it up together, that was something :) Thanks to Pabby for this pearler of info.

2001-02-19T06:14:00.000-08:00

Why the dickens haven't The Superjesus released Second Sun as a single? Hopefully they will because it's an absolute gem. Oh and Sarah McLeod is such a fox as well. If BeXta is the queen of trance then Sarah is definitely the queen of rock. They should have a Cold - Live At The Chapel session coming up too (unless I've already missed it) because there's a webcast of it available for viewing at Scape.
Last week when I asked someone at HMV to cut the batch of 3dWorld's loose, she complimented my shirt, which was the Superjesus one I got for Christmas, and told me that she saw them SEVEN times when they toured Sydney ^o^ I should go see them at least once.. I mean it's all I'd need to propose to her o^_^o

2001-02-13T05:46:00.000-08:00

Test.

2001-02-12T08:01:00.000-08:00

Coldplay played on Cold - Live At The Chapel last Saturday, which I taped so if anyone wants to borrow let me know.

And now onto the real news.. there's going to be a Crowded House reunion on telly in two weeks!!! The date being Saturday February 24th, my 21st birthday :) Coincidence or a favourable twist of fate? Yes, the boys have gotten back together for a few songs for what was essentially supposed to be a Neil Finn performance on Cold - Live At The Chapel. So get your recording equipment ready, it's been a while.. !

2001-02-11T07:55:00.000-08:00

The song Spooky by Dusty Springfield from the Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels soundtrack has a melody that sounds very much like Why Is Everybody Always Pickin' On Me by the Bloodhound Gang. There's also a song by the Happy Mondays that I once saw on Rage that ripped off Ticket To Ride like there was no tommorrow, even the "wayyyyyyyy, yeah!" parts at the end of the lines of the verses! Absolutely disgraceful.. I can't help thinking it was intentional, I may have to look into it sometime.

2001-02-11T07:52:00.000-08:00

Some day last week whilst at work, I was literally fading out despite having had roughly the recommended eight hours of sleep on the night previous. I had a coke and two cappucinos in the space of about 45 mins and wasn't able to get to sleep until about 3:30 that morning. A heavy knock on the door at 8 woke me up as someone handed a huge parcel exclaiming 'Australia Post!'. Too early for such enthusiasm I thought, but then I realised what was within the parcel - the Crowded House Fan Club cds I ordered like three months ago!

Sweet. Here's a joke from one of the cd's that Paul says :-

"A typical Australian man went up to a typical Australian woman and said 'Sheila, do you feel like a fuck?' and she said 'I do now, ya smooth talkin' bastard!'."

2001-01-24T03:03:00.000-08:00

Coldplay - The Metro, Monday 22/01/01

I don't remember enough to write a proper review or anything however..

I had a spare ticket to scalp so I was a bit worried, but it was dead easy. It's also a great way to meet poms, of which you'll be garaunteed will be floating around looking for spares whenever a major UK band comes down :)
The crowd were top notch, they were really enthusiastic when appropriate, including their favourite parts of their songs. It was also good to know some hardcore fans were there, trying to shout out a request for Bigger Stronger off the Blue Room EP, unfortunately drowned out by Chris Martin's banter. Strong singalongs throughout as well.
Speaking of which the banter was not in frequent doses but was still solid when present.
Shiver came and went way too quickly :(

Overall a great gig, although lyrically they are quite weak, it still sounds good to sing and rolls off the tongue well to superb melodies, so why complain. Go see them at the Big Day Out if you can !

2001-01-24T02:49:00.000-08:00

From the pen of juice..

According to Tommy Boy Records (and they`d know), Radiohead's Thom Yorke and Blur's Damon Albarn are set to guest on the second Handsome Boy Modeling School LP ... Speaking about the collaboration with Yorke, a Tommy Boy spokesperson said, "It should be really great. Can you imagine Thom Yorke on a really good hip-hop track? We're really excited about the collaboration."

Unreal! What has OkC done to Mr Yorke? First PJ Harvey gets him to sing lines like "Everyday / I dream of making love / To you my baby" and now he's going to be bustin' whack rhymes with his flyboy Damon. Next thing you know Jonny is going to perform with a clock hanging from his neck.

2001-01-24T02:35:00.000-08:00

Happy (Chinese) New Year !!! Hope those of you who received your little red envelopes of goodness use them wisely. In other news, there are these Belgian chocolates called Guylian. They are shaped liked seashells and come in a package similiar to that of Whitman's Sampler or a Cadbury Milk Tray. They are dead amazing, I think they're expensive though. I'm eating one now. Just finished it. Highly recommended.

2001-01-18T03:38:00.000-08:00

My job is some good. There's this test that I have to do that actually requires me to sit and do nothing for 4 and a half hours. On top of that, they were selling off spare keyboards ($5) and mice ($2), so I got the Dell version of both :D

2001-01-18T03:33:00.000-08:00

Kudos to juice.net for this :-

Green Day -- Plagiarists?

Punk-pop group Green Day has been accused of plagiarism by the front man of UK band Other Garden.
The stir is all over the signature track from Green Day`s new record, "Warning," which Other Garden vocalist Colin Merry claims is a direct rip-off of their minor 1997 UK hit, "Never Got The Chance."

Merry said that he believes "Warning" is little more than a reworking of their track and plans to file suit against the US punk three-piece, having contacted Green Day's publisher, Warner Chappell, and asked that all royalties from the track be frozen. "People started coming up to us saying, 'Have you heard this Green Day song?'," said Merry. "They said, 'You should look into this legally.'"

Perhaps, though, Merry should not look too closely -- or get too smug. Some have said that Merry's song is in turn a rip-off to begin with, being highly derivative of The Kinks' 1968 single, "Picture Book." The two songs share a similar bassline, though Merry claims to never have heard "Picture Book" before. He agrees that there is a likeness between his song and The Kinks', but says it's nothing like the similarity between his track and Green Day's.

I don't know about the Kinks song but that other song is definitely intriguing. I've also found another striking match of melody in Alex Lloyd - Lucky Star, if you hear that little bit that he murmurs on the last rendition of the chorus you may find it's similar to the chorus of Pulp - Help The Aged. Have YOU found any blatant ripoff amongst your journeys of musical discovery? Tell me all about it at neilfinn@rocketmail.com to have your name on this page in lights !

2001-01-18T03:04:00.000-08:00

Grandaddy - Hewlett's Daughter would have to be a song that is in good running for the Top 10 for this year.

2001-01-17T04:19:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of juice.net..

A storm has erupted at the ABC with the revelation that Rage, the ever-popular all-night video clip show, will now be interrupted by promotional ads. A source at Auntie told juice.net today that the majority of staff are up in arms over the decision to screen ABC promos during Rage on Saturday morning.

In an order handed down by the network`s Head of Programming, Sue Lester, the first promo for the station`s new series, Love Is A Four Letter Word, will be on the air at 9am tomorrow (Saturday, January 12), during Rage's run through the national Top 50.

Love Is A Four Letter Word is a new drama series centred around one of the last pubs in Sydney still dealing in live music, with lashings of sex, drugs and rock & roll. Described as "a cross between This Life and Sweet & Sour," the show will also feature loads of cameos from the likes of Sunk Loto, Cordrazine, Machine Gun Fellatio and Daniel Johns...

"Placing promotional material between programs at least makes it clear that the promotional material is not necessarily endorsed by the program," he continued. "Slipping the promotions into the middle of programs will make it difficult to draw this distinction, especially given the young age of the target audience at this hour. The staff all hate it [the idea to run promos during Rage] and the audience will hate it -- especially at that time of the morning."

For Rage fans it's the end of an era. Gone are the days when you can crawl home on a Friday or Saturday night, fall down in front of the box with a bowlful of hot ones and be guaranteed nothing but music videos until you pass out or go get some lunch, whichever comes first.

If you'd like to complain -- and don't we all? -- tap some bile and go to comments@yourabc.net.au and remind them whose bloody ABC it is.

Well it's not really THAT bad if it's during the Top 40 right?

2001-01-12T08:49:00.000-08:00

Went to Dendy Quays to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon last Tuesday. I'd heard many good things about it and apparently the critics have said it's one of the best martial arts films to come out in a long time. Well I don't know about that but it was definitely solid, some great fight scenes (especially the one in the forest). What I was most impressed with was Zhang Yi Yi (the governor's daughter), she did at most if not all her own fights and was brilliant at acting too.

2001-01-12T08:21:00.000-08:00

From this week's 3D World..

Britain's oldest music magazine Melody Maker has shut down one week after monthly rock publication Select closed, with publishers blaming the demise of indie rock for the latest magazine casualty. "We are ceasing the magazine's publication because, unfortunately, market conditions made continued publishing impossible," IPC MD Mike saud on sister title NME's website. "This magazine was doing exactly what it should have been doing but the readers were just not there in sufficient numbers to keep it open." ...

Melody Maker's decline began many years ago through their failure to embrace dance music undoubtedly added new nails in their coffin as each year passed from the late 80s. A letter in their penultimate issue, when circulation was just 32,000 (down from highs of 200,000+ in the late 70s) summed up the magazine's eventually fatal attitude.

Now I don't mind electronic music but there is no way that I find it as compulsive as rock, especially the whole singer/songwriter/storyteller thing, it makes life that much more worth living. I must confess the listening experience of electronic music can be exponentially heightened in relation to the improvement of the sound system being used to project it, whereas with rock, headphones are preferred for the intimacy of it all. Either way, this is a significant blow in favour of electronica that really has me raising my eyebrow and taking notice.

2001-01-12T07:41:00.000-08:00

And of course the top 10 albums :-

10. Doves - Lost Souls
9. Green Day - Warning
8. Radiohead - Kid A
7. Cibo Matto - Stereotype A
6. James Iha - Let It Come Down
5. The Avalanches - Since I Left You
4. Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds - Live At Luther College
3. Fiona Apple - When The Pawn...
2. Elliott Smith - Figure 8
1. Travis - The Man Who

I tend to assess albums that are consistent as better than albums which are more a case of extremes, i.e. has stronger 'good' songs but weaker 'bad' ones. This may be because I only really got hooked on music using a walkman and cassette. Without the flexibility of a CD, it's more important to have a smooth run rather than a bumpy one. It also makes me envision an era of the artist(s) in the studio and being incapable of a writing an average song.. how good would that be !

2001-01-12T06:59:00.000-08:00

The top 10 songs that I discovered in 2000 :-

10. Bic Runga - Lonely Lola Cherry Cola Girl
9. Muse - Sunburn
8. Muse - Muscle Museum
7. Embrace - I Wouldn't Wanna Happen To You
6. Supergrass - Moving
5. Aimee Mann - That's Just What You Are
4. Green Day - Macy's Day Parade
3. Eminem - Stan
2. Coldplay - Shiver
1. Travis - Writing To Reach You

2000-11-08T01:30:00.000-08:00

Test postage..