my two cents: i thought punch drunk love was okay, pretty decent perhaps, but that was about it. my main problem was that i really couldn’t take adam sandler seriously. i know that’s kind of lame, but you can only forgive the guy so much for making so many films that consist of nothing but silly voices and fart jokes. i thought the main redeeming factor was the appearance of phillip seymour hoffman who is undeniably an incredible actor, and who always brings something special to every film he’s in. hey, there’s a handy excuse to do my current favourite actors list:

01 vincent cassel (always)
02 phillip seymour hoffman
03 bill murray
04 william h. macy
05 steve buscemi

any one of those names are more than enough to make me see a film, and usually, in my opinion, enough to make the film great. hey, new blog idea; actors we like. go on.

ok, so it’s not that exciting, but i felt the need to say a few words about soulseek since it’s been so kind to me this year. i got out of the habit of file sharing about 2 years ago, but this year scarce funds and months of unemployment have thrown me right back into it. since the demise of napster and audiogalaxy, i never really found anything that had much i wanted to hear. i never got all the fuss over kazaa, seemed crap to me. soulseek on the other hand is wonderful and i’m sad i didn’t discover it earlier. as well as getting random stuff i wanted to hear but couldn’t afford to buy, i also managed to find a bunch of stuff that i would have had no other way of hearing ever. i’m talking old random demo tapes, stupid ‘limited edition of four’ 7″s and lots of other obscure live bits and pieces that have somehow surfaced on slsk, and thus made me very happy. here are some highlights:black dice and wolf eyes – chimes in black water vol. 1

caroliner – wine won’t do it, wife won’t do

the champs – triumph of the air elementals

earth – phase 3: thrones and dominions

the heads – relaxing with…

hella – 3 track demo cd-r

khanate – live on wfmu

neutral milk hotel – beauty

neutral milk hotel – hype city

neutral milk hotel – invent yourself a shortcake

sleep – demo

sleep – volume one

sleep – volume two

wolf eyes – strangled in filth

wolf eyes / emil beaulieau – split

i would have had no other way of hearing all stuff had some kind person not decided to share them. i heard yesterday that some record companies had lost a court case where they wanted to be given the names of file sharers, which made me quite happy. i’m sure slsk will go the way of all the others at some point, either shutting down or offering a subscription service, but i’m still thankful in the meantime for all the gems i’ve picked up. i’d be totally happy if the riaa made it so their cds couldn’t be shared, leaving the rest of us to hear the stuff we want. the stuff i would like to hear that’s covered by the riaa is all stuff i could just go out and buy if i ever get that desperate, so it wouldn’t make a huge difference to me and i’m sure countless others if their stuff wasn’t available to download anymore. i wish they could sort themselves out and leave things like slsk alone for those who are just interested in independent stuff.

some handy links:

soulseek

riaa radar

Its HOT as a bastard. And a mosquito bit my index finger yesterday and it’s swollen up so I can’t play guitar even.

Which brings me on nicely to a venture I have in mind for late January when i get back to good old cold Blighty. THE NICE GUITAR SHOP. A revolution in buying guitars. A shop THAT TREATS YOU WITH RESPECT and (get this) doesnt rip you off by ONLY SELLING GOOD STUFF. wow. You’d think someone would have though of it before. Small business advisors watch out, I’m after a loan.

This is how it works. I work from home and I buy and sell stuff. Its all online, with nice big photos so you can peruse. If you want to have a look come and have a cup of tea and spend as long as you like.

If you want a particular guitar or bass let me know and I’ll try and find it in your price range. You just pay me a little for finding it. And by find it I don’t mean “check EBay”, I mean get you what you want.

And if you have something that you don’t use, email me – hunniisfunni@aol.com – and either sell it to me, trade it with me or I can flog it for you for commission (a lot less than normal guitar shops charge).

At the moment I have a white Travis Bean Standard guitar that I should hopefully be selling on someone’s behalf. Its a museum piece. Its that good. So email me, this one’s not cheap, but it is good. Sorry for the pointless ad.

I have 2 columns on the go – one a review of the Michael Moore book “Dude, Where’s My Country?”, the other an article called “The Soledad Brothers are not a Band”.

My lack of posting is actually because of 2 things. First of all my pathetic computer is really up shit creek this time. It freezes all the time when I’m online (blue screen of death) so to combat this I hurled the keyboard at the screen in frustration as I tried to chat to my girlfriend on the other side of the world and it froze again. Luckily I only damaged the keys but for some reason it doesn’t register every key when I type in Blogger.

Also I started a new job which is notable only because I’ve managed to exceed all my previous efforts at finding the worst job ever. I am an archivist for 3 weeks on temporary assignment putting a huge companies files in alphanumerical order and devising a filing system for it after the boss wisely got his kids in over the 6 weeks holiday to do it and the fucked it up. I think the first requirement of filing is to know H comes before J. Anyway, I sit in a huge empty room, just me and my files, all day. No one talks to me. It is a piss poor state of affairs but I need the money. The only relief is burying myself in the files with a book, this week I’ve got through The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin and am 1/2 way through the Prison Letters Of George Jackson. Both books have the capacity to floor you, I’ll write more about them in the future.

But I need a new job. Does anyone know how you get to be a journalist apart from get some talent and stop swearing, using the “…” three dots at the end of every sentence and stop starting every paragraph with “Anyway”?

Anyway, fuck…

Aaaan another thing. A while back I started basically working as a guitar pimp on the side. If anyone sees Franz Ferdinand play then you’ll see one of “mine”. I looked through the NME last week and there was my old guitar. Lovely chap too.

So, if anyone wants a specific guitar drop me a line. Current peaches are a 1963 Mosrite bass and a Fender Mustang. For info and prices just email me.

I forgot to draw your attention (and your links pages) to the Lords website:

www.honeyisfunny.com/lords

New and improved…

I don’t know how bands go on tour anymore. I just played 2 gigs in 2 days and I smell like the underside of a racehorse. But we had a weird time, Elvis our drummer said that I would probably “post a load of rubbish about the weekend on some website somewhere” so I don’t want to disappoint.

We played Worthing on Saturday as part of our plan in Lords to only play places we haven’t been before and/or places by the sea. The gig was with Hey Colossus the new Stanton/Econoline/Yeast supergroup thing. They rocked hard, they sound like Isis and are nearly as loud. We had fun. Between songs I noticed Elv was rubbing his titties and Phil called everyone ‘FUCKING FARMFOODERS’ at one point. We played a new song that sounds like Santana. Guitar solos rule, especially when you’re as piss poor at them as me. The last band were really funny, they had really expensive guitars but no cases and they were all arseholed so were dropping these things about in the street. Stayed at promoter Colins house and sat up with him and his son talking rubbish, his whole family were super friendly generous people. Watched a great kids show on Sunday morning with 2 guys going into museums an quiet places and seeing who can shout “Bogeys” the loudest without gettin kicked out.

Which reminds me of a joke:

Q: “Why did Madonna feed her child dog food?”

Even the Lords wagon pissing diesel everywhere on Sunday morning was treated like a bit of a laugh. Dave Crofts was in tow but had already gone to the pub at 8am on Sunday to see the Rugby so we went to the beach and were seriously considering unloading the gear and doing a Magic Band style beach gig at one point. We fucked about all day then headed to Brixton where we were playing a squat with Cat On Form.

The squat was a really cool place, an old pub that can’t have closed too long ago as everything’s still set up for a pub or bar. It was pretty hectic as 5 bands played. Birds Of Paradise played first and were pretty ripping, they had a dude on drums who looked like Cee Cee Deville from Poison and his drumming style was well rock school. You kind of got the impression that some of the band had the option of horse riding or music as a hobby and opted for music, they seemed equine. Claque were grand, they had an awesome drummer who was pounding out really brittle clattering rhythms and a guy playing guitar through a bass amp and a girl on viola and vocals. It was really loose and at times gorgeous and at times really heavy. It reminded me of The Ex and also Ganger somehow. We quickly got pissed off, we played pretty badly too. There was a guy DJing who was playing fucking terrible music so we asked him to play a CD we had when we were setting up and he looked at it (John Coltrane) and asked us why so Welding told him we were a jazz band. By the time Hey Colossus had played and COF were playing I was so narked with the place. COF were really supportive of the squat onstage but I dunno, it seemed to me like the people squatting there did so because they could, not out of necessity or a out of a desire to remove themselves from something they find distasteful. Some squats I’ve been to have been set up in a way that’s really efficient and that works and is amazing but this one had the feel of a bunch of kids who could go home at any point living it rough for the feel of it. It was well organised and cool and the girl putting the gig on was really sound so I’m not getting on her case, the gig was great but something jars badly with me when you have tables full of Stop The War leaflets but there’s awful, commercial nightmare punk rock playing through the PA all night and you have these dickhead rich kids running around acting like students pissed on MD 20/20. OK, I’m pretty tired. I guess I liked the place and the people I met but there were some people there who were just really bizarre and not what I was expecting.

I did hear some awesome music at the weekend at peoples houses though – Lord Buckley is a new one on me. A spoken word artist who performed as early as the 30s and lived the life of a Lord in every way. New Nebula album is completely incredible too, not sure when or if its out as this was a CDR. Heard some recordings by Becomes The Water Of Death too that sounded great too.

A: “She couldn’t help it. Its what came out of her breast”

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

Most people’s response to me saying I was doing this (it’s a Wednesday today) was to say “why?”, and there was a remarkable amount of surprise to my response of “no reason, really”.

Taking the day off for no reason, really is a great thing. It has reminded me that I do not exist to get up, go to work, and come back from work feeling tired. It has reminded me that the weekends used to be about more than resting and recuperating before another week of work. Today I have done these things:

– get up late
– watch a movie
– watch some tv
– write some e-mails
– do some writing
– listen to records

And I’ve done them all at a relaxed pace. I feel richer deep within my soul for this. It’s good to do nothing much for a while – it’s not lazy, it’s not a waste of time. Give it a try!