World Spending Your Tax Dollars To Advertise Our Religion Day
19 Jun 08
Kindly sent to me via the Reverend.
Land of the Free
15 Jun 08
Update: Excuse me while I wipe the egg off my face–I’ve since been informed that this is not in fact an American government conspiracy, but a setting in Microsoft Outlook my father must have hit by accident. I don’t know if I’m more embarrassed that I jumped to a conspiracy theory conclusion (though let’s face it, call it a terrorist surveillance program and you can do whatever you want), or admitting my father uses Outlook!
My father, who is Australian, has lived in the States for more than 20 years, and has gone from being pro-American in most things to disgusted with the way the country has been run into the ground by Bush and his minions. Here’s a little example of how the Land of the Free treats its citizens these days.
He recently sent an email to my brother and I which contained this paragraph:
“… of course we have this stupid election process to elect a president and that has gone on for about 10 months and has still months to go! I can’t believe how any intelligent country can have such process that is so long it gets boring and and costs millions and millions–Hillary Clinton is already 20 million in debt. Everyone I speak to agrees the process in Oz makes so much more common sense.”
He was checking his ‘Sent’ folder to make sure the email had gone through when he noticed a line written in red at the top of his message that he hadn’t put there. It read:
“This message is being watched.”
I kid you not.
Feist, Metro Theatre, Sydney
14 Jun 08
I meant to post this ages ago but didn’t get around it, along with reviews of Suzanne Vega and Joe Jackson …
Enraptured, like many others I suppose, by Feist’s cheerful ditty 1234 when I saw it advertising the iPod, I went online and checked out some of her videos and was pleasantly surprised to discover a very individual and interesting singer songwriter. They’re becoming a rare breed in this age of cookie-cutter copycat American Idol alumni.
On my birthday my gorgeous girlfriend gave me her latest album and tickets to her Sydney show; a rare opportunity to see an artist live without knowing her material inside and out. It can be a refreshing thing to do, as then the artist’s music immediately takes on that extra dimension of the live experience, though of course it can be risky too.
Thankfully, Feist didn’t disappoint. From the opening bit of shadowplay projection where a lantern is plucked from a tree branch and she came tiptoeing on stage with the lantern in hand like a guilty elf, we were in for something just that little bit different. The show started with an interesting layered vocal track, a technique used effectively several times during the show where Feist sang into a microphone which then looped the vocal lines for instant three and four part harmony accompaniment.
Despite the twin distractions of a bunch of stupid noisy girls playing with their frackin’ mobile phones, and a strangely arctic temperature within the usually comfortable Metro, we enjoyed the show a lot. Though I would like to see her breaking out from the nice ballads a bit more with tracks like Sea Lion, which rocked with the help of scratchy, raw guitar work which brought the Velvet Underground to mind.
Here’s hoping she doesn’t disappear into obscurity. I think she’s been around for a while though and by the sound of the last album has plenty of ideas left yet.
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