can you play slow life please

They drank beer and cordial instead of water, they conversed with single people in the audience, they blew the minds of Sydney-siders for the fourth time that year and will continue to do so for as long as they are here. Their music was amazing, their performance was outstanding and their whole being just wondrous.
I didn't know what to expect, were they gonna be as good as they were last time and are they gonna make me feel all funny inside?
They did it all plus some.
After a trek and a half in the rain to get there and prays to the working gods that Allya's friend was working there (which, by the way, she was and so was her other friend but just wait!) we got to the Enmore, showed our tickets and walked into the theatre.
There was one of the two support bands playing, I can't remember what they were called - sorry, no harm meant - and we stood around and waited for Allya's bossmanfriend to turn up. Which he did. And he took us to the barrier. Separating the people who didn't get tickets that would get them to the front. And looked at a guy. And we got stamped. Just like that. Needless to say, we got in and had front and a half row standing positions. BOO-YAH!
So yeah...standing there, waiting for the second band to finish. They were actually quote good, similar to the Dirty Projectors but not as good - again, sorry, no harm meant - but still good. I can't remember their name though, I think I'm having an early onset of memory loss.
Anyway, standing and swaying and then lights go dim and everyone screams and yells and woowoos and Grizzly bear comes on and oh my gosh I think that I may faint because in that three seconds that it takes for Christopher Bear to walk across the stage I have fallen even more and more in musician love with him! He had the cutest new haircut but thats not important. (It is kind of but shh, thats for me talk to myself about...)
Grizzly Bear's music has a way of numbing the mind and making one forget anything bad that has happened. I've been told that I need to say why. Why is their music amazing? Why are they all so awesome? Why is Chris Bear's new haircut so cute? So I will simpify and expand.
Their vocal chords are amahzing and their harmonies just make me wish I could do that. Each of them is doing their own thing on stage but they are still so in tune with eachother and seem to know whats gonna happen.
At one point, they had a backstage person headbanging to "Two Weeks".
People say that musicians who just stand still while performing are boring and lack the animosity needed to perform well but in this case I must say I disagree. Daniel Rossen, who sings and plays guitar/piano, moved only a little and I couldn't seem to stop looking at him. He looked so calm and collected, occasionally smiling and sharing a joke with Chris Bear (!!!!!!).
They all work so hard and to their full extent. I'm yet to see a band who makes me feel the way they do. They make me happy.
I'm scared I'm going to repeat myself, after all it is early, so maybe I'll quit now.
In a nutshell, Grizzly Bear kicked ass.

im cyber sorry

My gawsh what a horrid blogger I have been! I can't even begin apologise enough. I don't have an excuse except that I've been busy and had nothing to write about, but pfft that's not good enough.
I still don't have anything exciting that has come to my head and I haven't had some amazing realisation of what music does to you but I can say that next week beginning Sunday is going to be so flippin' hectic!In a good way, of course.
I'm seeing Grizzly Bear (eeeeeeeeeeepppppppp!!!!!!) on Sunday, then montueswed it's my school musical and I'm playing bass so thats two nights and one day and would be three nights but Thursday I'm seeing Band of Horses (double eeeeeeeeppppppp!!!!!!).
Apology enough? I need to grovel some more? Okay fine. How do I plead?



So, anyways, whats da gosss guuurrrlllfrrraaannn? Allya, my ever lovely music supplier has introdued me to the wonderful world that is mashups. Wu Tang Clan vs The Beatles, amahz, Gorillaz vs Marvin Gaye and SHEEWW MUUSHHH MOOORREE.
But my last post, that wasn't completely shitty, was about all my music from my old computer ?!? So yeah, it is the biggest blast from my past in a while. All this crazy stuff like Alicia Keyes and Jack Johnson and things I didn't even know I listened to like the Sugababes, makes me laugh a bit. Oh, and Jamelia's Superstar. Best. Song. Ever. I have a birthday card from a while ago and my friend drew a picture of me singing along to it. Looovee it.
Anyway, this is just a catch up.
I'll be better with posting I promise. If you wan't proper good normal less sporadtic posting go to my tumblr, yeah? Coolios.
Ohh, I've missed this. It's nice to be back.

hear it here, part 8

I've been a bit of a crappy blogger lately. And I am so sorry! Blogger block, it sucks, you don't want it.

I'll get back on track soon. Love xx

welcome home

I've got my old music back. Thirteen years of collected garbage on my laptop. This is like coming home after being at a boarding school for two years or eating a milk arrowroot biscuit dipped in milk and you suck all the milk out from the miniscule holes in the biscuit. This is like seeing your family laughing at something you said or did. This is like home.
Alicia Keyes, Bowling for Soup - I welcome you with open arms into my computer hardrive. Rufus Wainwright, pull up a chair by my cosy battery! You too, ZZ Top. I miss you guys.
I forgot all about so many bands. The Fugees, George, The Grates. Wowowowowowwww. Flippin' love The Fugees, I forgot how lovely they make me feel!
Have any of you heard their version of Killing Me Softly? Cause now you can. It's okay, thank me later :D

hear it here, part 7

war cry

I need help. Badly. I got a tumblr. and now I'm hooked and I don't know whether I should switch. I don't know who reads this and I don't know if they like it or not but I've already got about five followers on tumblr. and I only got it today. So, help is in order.
Keep blogger or move this whole thing to tumblr.? Never ever would I give up this blog, that would be like giving up a child. So please, for my sake, help me decide.
Please please pretty pretty pretty please comment or message me or something me and tell me what. to. do!!

But for my sake...heres the link :D and a song.






Love me xx

hear it here, part 6

compare and contrast

bobbidy dah macdaddy

This guy is amazing. I want to meet him and shake his hand and kiss him on the cheek and tell him that he is the Superman of Music and that, if he wants, we should drink tea and improvise together. Don't know if you remember, but a couple of posts ago I said I was terrible at improvising? Don't go getting your hopes up, still just as terrible, but watching Bobby McFerrin and listening to him makes me want to practise and practise and improvise and improvise.


Isn't this insane? Brilliant, genius. They don't know whats hit 'em. 
But then, he goes on to talk about expectations. And the pentatonic scale. This really shows how the brain works in expecting things to happen a certain way. I don't really know how to describe it. Watch!

Don't we just love the pentatonic scale? Neuro science, here we come...err

rawr

Reow! I've come to confess something, but thought I'd butter you up a bit with this amusing video. Bit of a role reversal, dontcha think? What with the King of the Jungle being behind the tigerrrrrrrr.

Anyway, my confession is this: I like Lady GaGa.

Not all of it. Only two songs. Alejandro and Telephone. Don't ask me why. I just do. I've already been shunned enough as it is, don't judge me please! Just those songs are so much fun. Oh me, oh my.

ffffffiiiiiifffffttttteeeeennnn !

I'm fifteen and have been for 10 days! I can see M15+ movies legally now! Not that I've been seeing them illegally or anything, abide by the law I do...sometimes...
Anyway, yes, I'm fifteen :D exciting? Not really except for the fact that I'm seeing Grizzly Bear and Band of Horses, anyone else extremely jealous?
I've been trying to think what I'm going to do and all I could think of was expand my music even more and try and not fail maths. I think they're good goals.
I've been trying to get myself into the more reggae scene now, and I've got some good Toots and the Maytals and some Bob Marley. The other day I was having a bass lesson and we decided to turn up Ray Charles' What a Wonderful World and turn it reggae, more difficult than I though. I had a bit of trouble keeping on beats 1 and 3 and always ended up on 2 and 4.
But with some practice, I'll improve.
Just want to say, sorry for being such a shoddy blogger. Exams and exams and assignments and blah, this is what high school does to you. *Sigh*.
But anyway, on a sadder note, my Insane Peacemaking Omniscient Delightful music maker is full. I've crammed so much music on it I don't have space enough for more Cake and Kirsty MacColl and The Generationals. Chin up, lads, things will get better!

"i was born in the back of a beat up old car in morocco" "what kind of car?" "it was a red volvo"

I recently got asked on my formspring.me account "yo coco who is your biggest musical influence and why?" and I honestly didn't know. I thought about it and then realised I knew exactly who it is.
Beethoven, The Beatles, my family and Cake are my biggest musical influences.
Beethoven because he was just amazing. He was almost completely deaf by the time he wrote his ninth symphony and he worked unbelievably hard without question. I probably look up to him because my work ethic isn't the greatest and I am constantly distracted and I know that if I became deaf, I would be insanely upset at knowing that I would never be able to hear things again.
Not only that, but I really, really like his stuff. Cliché'd, maybe but I really do. Almost as much as Bach but not really. Again, I repeat myself: his ninth symphony is amazing yet he was deaf. I think by the time he wrote it, he didn't even need his ears anymore he could just feel the music.
But The Beatles, oh you guys! They blow my mind. Each one of their songs kind of has it's own personality and has a certain depth to it. Can I even begin to explain? No, but I'll try.
With each chord and each strum and each note, it seems I begin to think about the work that was put into these songs. All their first hits, "I Want To Hold Your Hand" etc. don't talk about sex or swearing but something so much more simpler, just love. Thom from Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist says it all. Sure, there are probably some hidden inuendos in there but lets just look past them.
All four of them have some kind of manic power where their music hits you and makes you think "Oh. Oh wow. Oh wow, oh wow."
A couple of weeks ago my dad, knowing my love for this band, gave me a book called "A Hard Days Write" which has the story behind all of the songs. You know the rumor that Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds is about LSD? Wrong. Shut your gob, you know its wrong. John Lennon's son Julian came home with a drawing one day and said it was his friend Lucy and that she was in the sky with diamonds and bada bing you've got the hit that caused so much drama.
Also, I recently had to write a report on Michael Moore's 2002 Bowling For Columbine and, curious as the cat, I decided to look into the meaning of Happiness is a Warm Gun, seeing as Moore uses it in the most ironic way possible. Does it have anything to do with guns? No, Lennon just liked the saying.
The way they use their voices and orchestrate all their songs bewilders me. I want to be able to harmonise like them!
They have got to be one of the most ifluential groups, I think. I mean, who sings about little piggies? And who sings about a guy called Maxwell bludgering people? Not that many, unless their seriously disturbed or just kinda awesomely cool and no one cares if they do. Like The Beatles.
My third musical influence has got to be my household. Corny, I know, but I honestly don't care. I grew up listening to music and playing music and singing music. They know how to get my going, and at any given moment we can break into songs and harmony or put S Club 7 on and dance wildly around the kitchen.
Finally! Cake! No, not the food ya goof, the band. I love them. Enough said. They make me want to sing and write my own songs even more than SP00N. John McCrea has a voice that makes me melt. That is all.
This post took me ages to write, hence the lack of posting. I couldn't really get what I wanted to say right and all of it seemed so much the same and dull, but I'm hoping it didn't turn out that way.
Muso's for the win!!

hear it here, part 5

I might post a video of me playing this on uke, what do you think?

hear it here, part 4

"look at this amazing cover art!"

i can sing synesthesia

I've been thinking about this for a while and I even tried it out yesterday, but I don't understand. Synesthesia is the concept of hearing different musical tones in colours instead of what notes they are. Like, G minor would be turquoise or C major could be red. But then I thought, what if I just imagine a chord and see what colour it comes as? 

Now, I searched and searched for something to describe this to me in more detail and I came across an article written by a synesthesiac who says that he "believed that everybody 'saw' life this way, and it wa rather surprising to find out that those of us who make these kinds of addociations are actally in a very small minority." 

I can relate to this completely. I see my school toilets as days of the week and if I don't go into Thursday I feel all funny for the rest of the day, and I imagine the number 2 as being a stuck up old ponce who thinks he's better than anyone just because most numbers can be divided by it. J and K and L are all really close friends and have inside jokes, and M and N are fighting over who gets O. 

Now, this is just a self-diagnosis so don't go telling everyone that I see Friday as an evil green bunny and that the number 6 isn't too self-assured. 

But some really famous musicians were synesthesiacs, like Olivier Messian, a famous French composer. He associated the music with different colours, and he believed that musical terms like "tonal" and "modal" were incredibly misleading and that music either had the colour or it didn't. He also stated that the music by composers such as Mozart, Chopin and Wagner was all extremely coloured. 

I can't think of music as colours, but everything else has some kind of name. Imagine hearing an A flat and going "oh, that was blue!" or seeing an F chord and stroking your beard and saying "hmm, seems a bit like a browny-red to me..."

It all baffles me, but I love it. I've been reading things about synesthiacs all day and I can't get enough. Apparently John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix were synesthiacs aswell, so if it turns I am one then I'll two of my favourite musicians saw what I see.

frankie, my dear, you do give a damn!

Well, I finally got around to writing this post. It's been brewing in my mind for waay too long and it's been churning up all my thought and I just can't get it out of my mind so I thought what they hey and finally got around to writing it. 

Lets get right to it shall we? No dilly-dallying for us! You've all heard of frankie magazine, haven't you? Cause if you haven't, well boy oh boy are you missing out. frankie has a way of turning confusing political/world/peace/homophobic topics into really interesting articles in which I can actually grasp the concept of and I understand and I get and agree with!
But not only this, but they have cute little titbits at the beginning to ease us into the brilliance that frankie is!
In their most recent issue, they mentioned a band (or should I say orchestra??) that I'm sure I've mentioned before, and if I haven't then I'm shocked at myself!
WELLINGTON INTERNATIONAL UKULELE ORCHESTRA! UKULELES! ORCHESTRAS! INTERNATIONAL! WELLINGTON! UKULELES! UKULELES! Have I mentioned the ukes?
WIUO does covers of songs - good and bad, your choice - and makes them better. 'Sif you can't believe me, they are an orchestra of ukuleles! And you all know how I feel about those petite guitars, absolutely love 'em. Also, Bret McKenzie from Flight of the Conchords is in it? Just got cooler? Couldn't be possible, but it happened.
I'm going to let you rest now. Catch up on all the wonder that frankie is and somehow manage to remind yourself to go buy frankie and WIOU new cd right now if you aren't already getting your coat and hat and being on your way. As per usual, I leave you happy and content and listening to New Zealands Christmas Tree. Xx!

hear it here, part 3

its sunday pumpkin

I am so ridiculously bored you don't even understand. I've been browsing the internet for the past half hour trying to find a good concert or something that I would want to go to but its either all sold out or at an over eighteen venue. Damn you, 1995!
So, instead of doing my English like a good school girl I'm watching Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist and still surfing the web and making cookies. Procrastination, baby!
So, whats up in the muso world? Any goss? Any music? Any anything. I can't even get excited for Grizzly Bear, I'm that bored.
Thom and Dev found a drummer! Yey! Okay, um, lets just say:
Boredome equals brainless searching for music which equals in rediscovering lost artists like Alison Krauss? Um, yeah I though so too. Let's go find Where's Fluffy, shall we?

hear it here, part 2