Beaten to various punches.

There's nothing like being reminded of the fact that at the end of the day you're not only not particularly unique, but over a long enough period of time you're destined for cliche. Doing this on the internet is a bonus, purely because of the volume of other mundane actions that sits alongside yours.

Case in point; writing a blog post that is apologetic about not writing blog posts. Enter artist Cory Archangel. His most recent project is a blog entirely devoted to reposting blog entries written by other people apologising for not posting on their blogs. You can find it here. It's very clever, and makes me feel just a little bit silly.

This was brought to my attenion by Samuel Bruce, who is currently curating Electro_Online, a selection of net-based art works and curios. It's all tied up in this festival I've been working on for the last few years. Perhaps you've heard of it?

Current adventures in pop music: "Silence like the wind overtakes me..."

Dan Deacon is coming back to Australia, in support of his new album Bromst and that's pretty exciting. It's actually kind of amazing now that I think about it. Ever since being introduced to the video for his song The Crystal Cat (directed by Jimmy Joe Roche) by a friend of mine last year, I've been a tremendous fan of Deacon's warped electronics and squirrel vocal stylings. Should you be able to find a retailer in Sydney that stocks it, his album Spiderman of The Rings comes highly recommended as it is the ideal soundtrack for most things.

Whilst his recent live shows have incorporated many numbers of musicians, this run of Australian shows will apparently see Dan Deacon playing solo. As the above image by Mick Ø and this video show, this will not necessarily be a bad thing.

If you would like to hear Get Older from Dan Deacon's new album Bromst, you can do so here.
If you would like to download almost all of Dan Deacon's back catalogue, you can do that here.
If you would like to hear or download an interview with Dan Deacon on The Sound of Yound America, where he discusses things like his history in composition and the evolution of his performance style, well, you might want to do that here.

The inveitable post about 50 Cent in relation to what's wrong with the world today.

In the strange world that is entertainment, it’s not unusual for successful properties to be given unnecessary sequels or spin-offs of possibly dubious merit. Sometimes the original doesn’t even need to be any good for this to happen, it only need be bankable. This in itself could spawn quite the rant, but we'll save that for another day.

Thus we arrive at the newest videogame to feature to feature one Curtis James Jackson III, known to his friends as 50 Cent. For those unaware, 50’s last attempt at capturing the minds of Mario fans [and yes, I’m aware it never reached a Nintendo system, before you say it], 50 Cent: Bulletproof, was notorious for a lot of things, notably being banned in Australia [and later released in an edited form] and not being very good to begin with. This didn’t seem to matter, as the game has somehow enjoyed enough sales to justify a sequel, 50 Cent: Blood in the Sand.

Sounds epic doesn’t it? Like the eternal struggle between the east and west coast will finally be resolved… on a beach. Perhaps playing volleyball in a number of different outfits? Perhaps not, for you see intrepid reader the titular sand is Middle Eastern sand, of course. Aaron Blean, producer of Blood on the Sand, explains:

50 and G-Unit are putting on a sold-out performance somewhere in a fictional Middle Eastern setting. This is where the 'blood on the sand' comes in. They put on the performance; the people are pleased, but the concert promoter stiffs them and doesn't give 50 and G-Unit their payment… So, of course, 50 isn't going to leave until he gets paid, so he hassles the concert promoter, [saying] if he doesn't come up with the money now, there will be consequences. And instead, the promoter offers him a very valuable gift – something that's valuable to this particular country – a diamond encrusted skull...

So 50 gets the skull, and as he's about to leave this war-torn country, when they're ambushed and the skull is taken. They escape the ambush, but they're without the skull. So 50's motivated to get what belongs to him. So basically, throughout the game, he's trying to track these people down and find out who they are and why he was ambushed.

Of course he is. Now, I could proceed to describe how this particular entrant into cultural history is not going to do anyone any good, let alone the people who actually bother to play the game itself, but that much seems to be evident without needing anyone to point it out. But before anyone out there decides to jump to any conclusions accusing this potentially fine product of capitalising on sensitive political themes, rest assured, as the writer of the game “from Hollywood” is “one of the few Muslim writers in Hollywood”. I don’t know what mentioning that has to do with anything, but hey, now I can sleep at night.

It really annoys me that there are developers who are really trying to push the medium in interesting ways, and really try and make statements for right of decent [and heck, inoffensive] storytelling; putting forward that perhaps games aren’t just for kids mindless idiots, and this sort of thing slips through. Yet above else, the fictional setting, the crystal skull isn’t what annoys me most. I just want to see Fiddy actually put on a show in the middle east, fictitious nation or not. Going gun crazy afterwards, that’d just be a bonus.

Minor backtracking #1: Is beauseless is a word?

I don't know about other bloggers, but I find it difficult enough to keep up with the vast amounts of wonder and stupidity the world throws at me on a daily basis, let alone to then post it online in order to share said discoveries with all those out there in the internets. I try to keep track of various tidbits and webpages in the hope of going back to them at a later date, but this process has now blown out to four word documents and a large section of the to-do list in my diary from two weeks ago. I've decided that now is the time to combat this; that I will retread through my collection of abandoned data, if for no other reason than to finally realise that I really do spend too much time being fascinating by things that aren't really that interesting.

To begin proceedings, I offer you two gems from Wired.com. First of these is a guide to compiling a mix tape, courtesy of DJ Whoo Kid, which will surely come in handy at some point in your life. Secondly, from Wired's How-To-Wiki, is a guide to making a cake shaped like Nintendo's Wii console, which is beautiful. But you can't eat it, which is useless. This is quite annoying, but it's probably just as well; those motion-sensitive controllers would not be pleasant to digest.

Newcastle migratory season 2007.

The October long weekend means a number of things in New South Wales; like the AFL grand final on Saturday [alright, that might be more of a Victorian thing, but just go with it OK?], the NRL grand final on Sunday, and a day off on Monday to recover from the hang over. For a large group of artists, musicians, writers and other miscreants however, it means trying to find somewhere to sleep in Newcastle [and trying to work why you didn't learn from your mistakes last year and book accomodation earlier this year]. Now in its seventh year, the This Is Not Art Festival provides refuge to a number of oddballs and curiousities over four days and four smaller festivals - Electrofringe, The National Young Writers Festival, Sound Summit and Critical Animals.

I'll be running around town committing a number of acts of mischief in the name of Electrofringe. My video Ducks Should Be Free From Persecution will be showing as part of the Electroprojections screening series. On Thursday night I'll be stalking Newcastle's walls armed with a video projector and a power generator. Next Monday I'll be taking over TIN Radio with Ben Byrne to present two solid hours of something between 20:30 and 22:30 and this Friday I'll be presenting ElectroPopQuiz!, which may well just be my finest hour.

Taking place at the TINA Festival Club between 17:30 and 18:30, ElectroPopQuiz! will be your opporunity to flex your intellectual muscle over a range of topics that potentially you and most likely far less actually care about. Think of it as Wednesday night pub trivia hosted by your high school electronics club. It'll be sensational, I guarantee. And there's prizes too. All the trimmings.

If you're planning on entering, I suggest you bring a nerd along for back up. You have been warned.

Videogames... really.

Most nerds who were alive during the eighties would be aware of the notion of audio cassette tapes being used for the purposes of data storage. An odd concept perhaps, but at the time we all just went along with it. Fisher Price even developed a video camera, the PXL-2000 (more commonly known as Pixelvision), that recorded video to such cassettes and was famously used by video artist / filmmaker Sadie Benning in the production of her works. What I wasn't aware of was the application of VHS tapes for similar purposes. Stranger still, toy maker Hasbro sunk $20 million (US) into the development and production of a videogame system code-named NEMO (which stood for Never Ever [or Even, depending on who you ask] Mention Outside) that ran off specially designed VHS tapes. The system apparently worked by encoding multiple audio and video tracks on to the tape that could be accessed in any order necessary. Interesting perhaps, but possibly limited in what could actually be achieved by the format. The inherent nature of the system also meant that the games were extremely costly to produce, with productions costing millions, which was unheard of at the time.

The combination of this, it's potential $299 (US) price tag, and the dominant Nintendo Entertainment System, which retailed at $100 (US) and was infinitely cheaper to produce titles for, seemed to be enough to sink the system before its release in 1989. There's an article from Gamespy here about why the NEMO was a terrible idea and why we're better off without it if you're keen. Or you can go back to playing Night Trap; the choice is yours really.

Performance evidence.

Shannon O'Neill has posted some photos from the Sydney leg of the Liquid Architecture festival on his flickr page, including some of myself in various stages of silliness. I also have some pictures I took from the opening night extravaganza, which I'll one day get around to uploading, but these will do nicely in the meantime. Thanks Shannon!

Current adventures in pop music: "Don't make me hold your hand through the whole boring summer..."

Since first discovering them via their single Cry in 1998, I've been a very large fan of The Mavis's. I like to look at that particular era of my adolesence as the point where I began to realise that there may be interesting music on stations other than 2Day FM. At the same time, Cry was still very much pop enough that I still felt like I had a connection to my past as a someone with a more than mild appreciation for Roxette. Over the years I've somehow managed to acquire a number of their singles from the period between their second album Pink Pills [released in 1998] and their dispanding in 2001, but somehow never managed to buy any of their albums. Whilst sifting through a $10 rack in a music store in Newtown a few weeks ago I managed to come across a copy of their final album Rapture, which caused somewhat of a joygasm on my part. Aside from the fact that most of The Mavis's catalogue is difficult to come across in the first place [I'm pretty sure that most of, if not all of it has been deleted], Rapture is particularly notorious because it played a small role in the band's dispanding.

[At this point I'd like to note there may be some errors in my account of events, but while I can't back up anything here with specific examples, I'm pretty sure this is how things happened.]

Scheduled to be released in 2001, Rapture was preceded by two singles, Coming Home and Happiness [which was launched as backing track to a Coca Cola commercial, and would later be used in a series of promotions for Hyundai]. The Mavis's label, White [an imprint of Mushroom records] collapsed just before the album's release [This may have had something to do with the buyout of Mushroom records by Lachlan Murdoch's label Festival, thus becomming Festival Mushroom Records, or FMR, but I honestly can't remember exactly]. With the album pushed in to bureaucratic limbo and possibly never seeing a release, frustration (amongst other things most likely) led to the band calling it a day. A slapped together best-of called Throwing Little Stones was released soon after the split, and contained five tracks from Rapture. Protesting from fans saw the album given a proper release in 2002, though the cover art still states the original 2001 date.

So now you know. Despite being around for about ten years, it was the period between the release of Pink Pills and their split in 2001 in which they burned brightest, but never really succeeded in ascending to the outer reaches of the pop statosphere. More Daniel Kowalski than Kieren Perkins, so to speak. Following the break up, various members of the band emerged in other outfits [such as co-vocalist Becky Thomas's current outfit Beki and The Bullets], but pretty much all existence of The Mavis's has been relegated to second hand music stores and ebay. But that's where the social networking comes in. Some good soul has started a myspace page in honour of The Mavis's, and in true fashion it's badly laid out and not great to look at. But then maybe it's better that way. The page also links to video of Cry and Naughty Boy posted on you tube [and if you dig hard enough, you can even find Matt and Becky Thomas backing up Paul McDermott on a version of Lou Reed's Perfect Day (like how everything connects... I sure do) recorded for the first episode of the short lived Good News Weekend], along with two tracks from Pink Pills, a demo, and a version of Burt Bacharach's Walk On By, recorded for the all-Australian tribute album To Hal and Bacharach.

To channel Molly Meldrum for a moment [and believe me only a moment], do yourself a favour and allow yourself the opportunity to stream Cry through your speakers. You can't tell me it's a bad thing [there are about three people I can think of off the top of my head who may try and tell me it is... so they don't count]. In this humble little fanboy's opinion, your life will quite simply be better for it.

Current adventures in pop music: You're going to reap just what you sow... and you may not like what that is.

Aside from some interesting choices in hair and spectacle fashion [you may have realised I notice these things], Lou Reed is a pretty cool guy. Heck, I'll go so far as to say it's a given. If nothing else, he's earned his place amongst the list of rock stars who somehow managed to live through 70's. However, he does like to test the friendship it seems.

In 1997 Reed approved the use of his song Perfect Day for use in a campaign by the BBC to promote the diversity of their music programming across their various radio and television stations. This took shape in the form of a cover of said track with various musicans and performers being enlisted to perform various segments, with Lou opening and closing the number . Apparently it was quite successful, so much so that a single was released, which hit the number one spot in the UK for two weeks. The proceeds of the single were donated to the BBC charity event Children In Need [possibly in line with Reed's belief that the BBC requested to use the song for charity purposes, as opposed to self promotion].

As tends to be the case, my interest lies with the video. Originally designed to be screened in cinemas and on television, the clip became a music video in its own right due to the popularity of the advertisement. While the wikipedia article on Perfect Day contains the full list of who appears, the little details one may notice if they take the chance can provide minutes of amusements. Should you choose to look, you will find:

1. Lou Reed wearing a leather jacket that doesn't quite fit him.
2. Bono, circa U2's album Pop along with the well trimmed haircut that came with it, looking immensly soulful.
   
3. David Bowie in a white room, in a white suit, looking thin [get it, get it?] and experimenting with designer earings.
4. Boyzone playing the "we're what the kids are in to" card.
5. Opera singers performing the lines "I'm glad I spent it with you" and "You just keep me hanging on" with the intent of re-contextualising them to a level of contemporary relevance, but just looking humourously juxtaposed.
6. Huey from the Fun Lovin' Criminals being only trusted with two words, and being unable to contain the urge to stick the word "Yeah" on the end.
7. Brett Anderson from Suede doing what he once knew how to do really well and look sleazy, as opposed to just desperate.
8. Tom Jones putting in way too much effort. This might not seem like much of an oddity, but you kind of have to see it to get the true scope of it.

Use this list as merely a starting point. If the weather turns grey on you one dreary afternoon, formulate your own compilation of cynicism to pass the time. Much amusement to be had, I promise. The weird thing of it all is that somehow through all this the song is somehow strangely compelling, as big a car crash as it is. I'm going to credit Reed with this more than anything else, though maybe on some level it's because it reaffirms my theory that the 90's were worse than the 80's. I can't prove this of course; you're just going to have to go with me on that one.

It's all gone really bad

I was joking with someone I work with last Friday night about how things (ie, the world at large) had all gone a bit pear shaped of late. Nothing horrendous, just a little odd. The end result of this discussion was that the moon was full (or at least recently had been), and that must be the cause. Sure, I can handle that. Generally speaking, I know the world's weird. I even think that most people would agree without asking too many questions. Somehow though, over the last few days a series of head-scratchingly bizzare moments have occured in relatively quick succession that have caused me to question this. It's been kind of hard to keep up, so I offer you the following in evidence; in no particular order :

1. The Australia Council for the Arts (Art having a capital A, don't you know) is offering a $20 000 "collaborative artist residency" to be conducted within Second Life.
2. Universal Studios is building a Harry Pottter theme park, to be completed in 2009. And they're building it in Florida.
3. Mark Philippoussis is starring in a reality television dating show called Age of Love, where a group of contestants (half of whom are straight out of college, the other over 40) fight it out for his affections, Bachelor style.
4. A Dutch reality tv show, where a terminally ill woman was offering the public the chance to decide who would get her kidneys, was declared a hoax (re: "fantastic stunt").
5. The Wachowski Brothers are writing and directing a film based on the cartoon series Speed Racer, starring Charlie from Party of Five as villian Racer X. I don't even know if I watched Speed Racer a kid, but the word "sceptical" comes to mind. Still, they wrote and produced a film where the main character spends the entire narrative in a mask, I'm sure they can make this work.

It's not just me is it? This doesn't happen everyday, right?

Inexcusable behaviour.

I like Silverchair. Apparently this is a bit of a faux pas these days, but I'm ok with this. As far as Australian pop acts go, their ability to consistently reinvent themselves with each new release is more than admirable. Sure, their videos aren't all that great and Daniel Johns has conducted some interesting experiments in facial hair over the years, but I've still been willing to stick by them. Their current incarnation though, in support of their new album Young Modern has led them to some very bizzare territory. Having Peter Garrett recommend their song Straight Lines as being helpful to Australia's water crisis (perhaps a slight nod to John's campaigning for Garrett's political future) I can accept, but can someone tell me why the hell Daniel Johns is being interviewed by Richard Wilkins?