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Runaway Love

A couple of weeks ago Kanye tweeted, “An I’m honored that you like my Music @JustinBieber!!! You gotta hear the album. Maybe we can do something together. Me, You and Raekwon”. A couple of days ago Yeezy dropped a remix. Justin Beiber’s Runaway Love, feat. Kanye West & Raekwon. It’s awesome, but I really hope it’s not the future of hip-hop.

Even These May Forget

עֲזָבַ֣נִי יְהוָ֑ה וַאדֹנָ֖י שְׁכֵחָֽנִי׃

“Adonai has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me.”

הֲתִשְׁכַּ֤ח אִשָּׁה֙ עוּלָ֔הּ מֵרַחֵ֖ם בֶּן־בִּטְנָ֑הּ גַּם־אֵ֣לֶּה תִשְׁכַּ֔חְנָה וְאָנֹכִ֖י לֹ֥א אֶשְׁכָּחֵֽךְ׃ הֵ֥ן עַל־כַּפַּ֖יִם חַקֹּתִ֑יךְ

“Can a woman forget her nursing child, have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget–yet I will not forget you. Lo, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands…”

–Isaiah son of Amoz, 8th century BCE

We Want to Give You God, but God is Not Ours to Give Away

What’s not to like about Clare Bowditch, really? Her 2004 album, Autumn Bone went hugely under appreciated, and even though to this day she is often seen as being a bit bland, she’s always been refreshingly real and very down-to-earth. And her most recent album will probably get rid of the bland tag (not that she ever was), as she has followed the pattern so many bands have recently, not least her husband’s other band Art of Fighting whose front man Ollie Browne did the side project thing, and came up with a much more electronic pop album with… drum loops and stuff (failure to hide actual musical ignorance, right here). The world needs more mums who can still write great songs and great music, are funny but not overblown idiots, and do things like caring enough to interview our prime minister.

The album is ace. The opening track is produced by Mick Harvey. Good start. Followed by songs about modern addictions, a guy who can’t get his fiancée to stop running around the park in an effort to lose weight, having children, girls with magazine sickness, and her dad. Some is funny, some is serious, but none of it is tired or clichéd. Plus the music is fun. Casio. Drum loops. ‘Political disco’ she called it.

Listen to it here, buy it at her online store.

We want to give you a lucky life
Not just ice-cream cones
Shoes, and mobile phones
As nice as they are

I cannot stop the world
But I’ll be the tigress behind you
I’ll help you build your armour
But you’ll have to wear it for yourself
Of course I worry too much
How can I not?
You’re my walking hearts
Just beware the masquerade
The circus that shines
But will not stay

I Want Your Psycho, Your Vertigo Shtick

Bad Romance > Umbrella. It’s taken a long time, but I feel I can say it now.

Some days, like today, I wake up and feel the need to play Bad Romance and Telephone over and over again until the neighbours complain.

I saw Lady GaGa in concert earlier in the year. It was awesome. There were far too many people on the stage, dancers and all sorts, but I suppose I should have expected that, but I’m not used to that sort of show. And I sat next to a guy from Los Angeles who looked exactly like Ron Hyatt’s character in The Boondock Saints. Seedy. Which leads me to the question: Rihanna is coming to Australia next year, do I want tickets?

Ah! God! Life!

I just finished reading Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. My neighbour Megan had a combined birthday party with her friend at a Mexican restaurant and Megan’s friend reminded me of Terry, the Mexican girlfriend that Sal Paradise lives with for a while on his journey, so I read the book again. The way it picks up on the mundane, the hopeless, and the atmosphere of places is great. You read it and feel like you’re breathing in the place Sal is describing. It’s a Kierkegaardian search for something worth living for.

Dean and I sat alone in the back seat and left it up to them and talked. ‘Now, man, that alto man last night had IT – he held it once he found it; I’ve never seen a guy who could hold so long.’ I wanted to know what ‘IT’ meant. ‘Ah well’ – Dean laughed – ‘now you’re asking me impon-de-rables – ahem! Here’s a guy and everybody’s there right? Up to him to put down what’s on everybody’s mind. He starts the first chorus, then lines up his ideas, people, yeah, yeah, but get it, and then he rises to his fate and has to blow equal to it. All of a sudden somewhere in the middle of the chorus he gets it – everybody looks up and knows; they listen; he picks it up and carries. Time stops. He’s filling empty space with the substance of our lives, confessions of his bellybottom strain, remembrance of ideas, rehashes of old blowing. He has to blow across bridges and come back and do it with such infinite feeling soul-exploratory for the tune of the moment that everybody knows it’s not the same tune that counts but IT -’ Dean could go no further; he was sweating telling me about it.

At lilac evening I walked with every single muscle aching among the lights of 27th and Welton in the Denver coloured section, wishing I were a Negro, feeling that the best the white world had offered was not enough ecstasy for me, not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness, music, not enough night.

Also, I’ll just throw it out there, I think that Dean Moriarty is Sal’s alter ego.

Yeah, I remember Waiting For You

Le Tour de France the night before last was so good. So good in fact that I went and pulled my broken bicycle apart and put it back together again like some kind of bicycle mechanic, and then went cycling up and down the gentle slopes of the inner suburbs, screaming out, “I’m Andy Schleck!” to nobody in particular.

Last night’s stage however, was terrible. Contador was jeered off the podium for his lack of sportsmanship. Doubly hoping Saxo-Bank ride Astana into the ground in the coming stages now. In the meantime, I’m practising my Spanish. Contador es un bastardo.

Superfast Jellyfish

And then we woke up one morning and discovered we had a new Prime Minister.

Easily my favourite, and probably least favourite also, part of this story is that Julia Gillard is living in sin with her hairdresser husband. I am eagerly anticipating the effect of a hairdresser who has such influence over the government of a country. We call him her ‘partner’, because it sounds so grown up and therefore somehow legitimate, but lets out it for what it is…

Australia’s Prime Minister lives with her boyfie. Heh.

Mikelangelo & The Black Sea Gentlemen at The Opera House

On the weekend I went to the Opera House and saw Mikelangelo & The Black Sea Gentlemen. I first heard about them when Unkle Ho (of The Herd) remixed their track A Formidable Marinade on an Elefant Traks remix album. It turns out that Mikelangelo & The Black Sea Gentlemen are a kind of cabaret troupe, who profess to sing songs and tell stories about death and comic tragedy and tell tales from far away places such as Transylvania, the Balkans, and the Adriatic.

Mikelangelo is a beefy man (and you get to see most of him, as by the end of the show he was in his underwear), who sings baritone. He started in some kind of ruffled shirt, looking like he was an Elvis impersonator (from a time long before Elvis was around), before switching shirts once, and then appearing in his underwear, which also kept the old-style aesthetic going. The Black Sea Gentlemen are Rufino the Catalan Casanova on violin, Little Ivan (pronounced ‘Ee-vahn’) on double bass, Guido Libido on piano-accordion, and The Great Muldavio on clarinet. They all switched instruments when necessary, and each member got a turn at the spotlight to sing a little ditty or tell a tale. Between cracking jokes at the expense of the others, and pulling a comb out of his pocket to fix his hair, Mikelangelo strutted around like nobody’s business, sometimes piggybacking his bandmates around, sometimes harassing audience members, sometimes even jumping up on the tables to dance and tip people’s wine glasses over his own head.

The best parts of the show were the humour, which is maintained throughout; the aesthetic, which is never broken–they all look the part down to the last detail; and the clever songs and storytelling. Even seeing Little Ivan walk out of the Opera House after the show with a beer in his hand and three more shoved into his jacket pockets (classy) didn’t make me any less impressed with them.

Their MySpace profile has an unfortunately limited number of songs you can listen to, but it’s worth a few minutes of your time.