Howdy. Went to see some bands last night. Little Girl With Cherries are instrumental math rock of the top drawer and last night Katys guitar was overboard loud too. Made for good listening but I still reckon they need to sing. I suspect Katy is hiding a singing voice like Paul Gascoigne or something. Army Of Flying Robots are friends from way back but I haven’t seen them much since Chris left and they went back to one vocalist (Henry). Seems to me like they discovered tunes, the sound could have been better but it was still pretty ripping. Cat On Form impressed too though the scope of influences is pretty slim (Fugazi) to my ears anyway. But it seems like most bands at the moment are about posturing and style so its good to see COF wear their hearts on their sleeves. I don’t think the world of independant music is quite as black and white as they may think though. If you’re going to call people out for selling out or not being independant then how far do you go? Fugazi have a press agent and a booking agent. Southern records use marketing techniques and target audiences for particular releases. You can stretch this to suggest that even having T shirts constitutes pulling away from the purpose of a band and drawing towards commodity. I’m not laying this on COF, I’m just saying that sometimes the argument can’t be summed up neatly into “us” and “them”. But then again at least COF are interested in the argument more than their hairstyles.

Anyway, changing the subject I’m going back to school next year hopefully. Primary school that is. I’m doing teacher training if I’m accepted. Wow. Career direction, you got to love it.

But I just bought the new PW Long record “Remembered”. It’s truly amazing. If you saw him at ATP last year then most of the crackers from his set are on it, recorded with a full band (who you’d think were Crazy Horse if you didn’t read the sleeve). Its more like Mule than his other solo records due to the heaviness of the band but the songs are so consistently memorable – especially Fish & Wine which I remember from the ATP set so well I could hum it. Its great to finally have a recorded version of it. He may have called me a faggot once but he’s the man.

Just a quick update to my previous message – the Wolves! (of Greece) 10 incher is coming out on Gringo Records. All done and dusted and going to be pressed and another 3 songs recorded for a seven inch afterwards too. Hurrah!

I’m back in the UK and its fucking freezing. Everyone in our street got burgled last week apart from us for some reason. I suspect my housemate Amelia is the culprit.

And I don’t have a job. But I do have a stereo again and my records.

Currently listening to:

“Bad Reputation” Thin Lizzy

“Fire Music” Archie Shepp

“Natural Boogie” Hound Dog Taylor & The Houserockers

“Keep Your Lamp Trimmed And Burning” Mississippi Fred McDowell

“Hearts Of Oak” Ted Leo / Pharmacists

1993 Peel Session by PJ Harvey

“Rio Grande Mud” ZZ Top

Live bootleg of Unit Ama with Lungfish

“Who Put Out The Fire?” Monorchid

Rye Coalition, Ted Leo, Arab On Radar and Hot Snakes from MichiganFest DVD

Reading:

“Vampire Vultures” John Fahey

“Look Out Whitey, Black Power’s Gon’ Get Yo’ Mama!” Julius Lester

Doing:

Building another FX pedal board

Wanking

Finishing last bunch of Reynolds recordings, sorting out Last Of The Real Hard Men recordings (note this is below wanking in the list)

Wearing:

A T shirt with a Koala on it saying “G’day from Australia”

About 2 extra stones of body weight

A glum expression

xx

After about 1000 attempts I finally got Blogger to accept me. The bad news is the “interesting” segment of my life comes to an end on Friday when I leave Australia so I won’t actually have anything interesting to say after that.

But yesterday I swam in the ocean. It ruled. I haven’t done it since I was about 5. After about 5 minutes my arms were killing me but it was cool. Actually it was fucking FREEZING. Even Australia is cold in the shade at 5pm in the sea.

Then to top it off I saw a Ferrari Testarossa. Parked right next to to the beach where I was swimming. Australia has re-tweaked my interest in cars big time and I felt 12 again. Then I noticed my penis was hanging out of my boxer shorts (I don’t own swimming shorts).

I’m going to write more about Australia for the diskant column but yeah, its been weird but fun.

But I missed some great things back home. Firstly my fellow Wolf Of Greece Simons wedding. What a killer, I hate myself for missing that one.

Talking of wolves, the rest of them went to ABBEY FUCKING ROAD to master our recordings we did a year ago to release on a 10″ (one sided) before the year is out. They even met Paul McCartneys band. But the record: honestly, this time they’re coming out. The man responsible hasn’t updated his site with the info so I don’t know if he’s planning a surprise so I won’t say who’s doing it. But it’s cool. For me especially, it feels good.

And shameless plug coming up:

I am playing in a new band called LORDS (no “The”!). Its me and Phil from Wolves and Elvis from Twinkie. Its two guitars and drums and Phil sings, rather well too. We have some gigs when I get back to Blighty:

NOVEMBER

14 WORTHING VINTNERS PARROT (with Hey Colossus)

15 LONDON BRIXTON SECRET VENUE (with Cat On Form, hey Colossus)

19 NOTTINGHAM SOCIAL (with PW Long)

21 LEEDS PACKHORSE (with Macrocosmica and Bilge Pump)

Sweet!

new website too:

www.honeyisfunny.com

Sorry for the plug but I’m excited.

Elvis has been sending me bootlegs of all the gigs I missed at home. How good are the UNIT AMA? I haven’t been so excited about a band for a long while. Wow…

anyway, more lengthy rambles coming I am sure

xxxx