Tuesday, March 27, 2007

So, Stef's birthday last night :)

Last night was great, really really enjoyable. I mentioned the pinata already, but it was a small part of the evening. I got there early to do Stef's hair and play hairdresser/stylist/makeup artist:

The hairdresser

and the end result:

Stef

and a couple of the rest of us:

The schoolgirls

the Botticelli girls

Sorry, but I'm too tire to think about writing. I did wake up hungover and 'irritabel' this morning, and actually had to check the blog because I had a feeling that I'd written something, but wasn't entirely sure whether I'd managed to post it. So there you go. We're doing our usual tuesday night thing tonight but I won't be drinking because I feel like a zombie.

-R

druk bkig

i just got backfrom stefs 21st and wante dto post hptoso, but i thinki had too much fro drink and tis a bit beyong me right now.we had a rakly good night, it was catered with food and ther were waiters and a pinata. isumi wore a kimono which toojk half and hour to put on and she was ecited by the pinata. i did stefs hair and it looked really nice, ther will be potos tomorro when i am hungover and irritabel. i alo habe to write a gofdamn song. tpuing with me eyes shut now because i can't kee them opoen. ime to sleep now. click lcik.

-r

Monday, March 26, 2007

Brilliant!

Oh, today was such an awesome day.

This morning, Brendan took me out to Elsternwick for brekkie. It's always good to see him, for some reason we hardly seem to be seeing each other at the moment. We had a bit of time to kill after so we ended up going to Southland to get his mum a present, some nice earrings (don't anyone tell her though).

I decided to drive to Alana's today, because I was bringing my macbook because we were *meant* to record something. Yes, sorry, we didn't quite get around to it, because I spent too much time fooling about with the Gretsch, and suddenly came up with what I think is a pretty brilliant chord progression. Here's me with the baby, learning how to use the bigsby (at the time I was playing another song of Alana's):

Me with the Gretsch

Anyway today we cut rehearsal short so we could go see Adam Hills do the last of his trial shows at 6 Links. I've waited five years to see him live and two weeks ago (only two weeks!?) he was sold out (which is when we formed The Little Ones), so this time we were extra early and the first ones there. We made our first true fans in the line - that is, people we didn't already know and who therefore were not obliged to like our music (despite the fact that they of course have not heard anything yet). Below we have from left to right Britt, Adele, Lizzy and Alice, with me peeking over the top:

Our first fans!

there were quite a few flashes going off with lots of people taking photos, and I joked that the people at the back of the queue were probably wondering whih famous person was up the front. Quite a surreal experience.

So when we got inside, much to our dismay, Britt couldn't get in as she was underage and they were checking IDs for the first time (she had gone pervious weeks with no problem). This is where the already good evening became an experience I'm unlikely to forget for quite a while. Someone jokingly suggested going up to Adam Hills and asking him to try and get Britt in. Well someone did actually go and ask him, and while he couldn't get her in, what he did do was persuade the staff to leave the foor open and set up a stool for Britt, so she could sit just outside the bar and still see the stage:

The comedic exile

Throughout the evening he kept coming out to her (and us when we were hanging with her in the breaks) to make sure she was ok.

Now, this is where I make people jealous that they weren't there. This was meant to be a trial for Adam to try his new stuff out on an audience, and he's been doing it for the past eight weeks. However, over the past eight weeks, the same 'regulars' have kept coming back, and Adam's been getting their stories out, and it's turned into 'some kind of weird cult' in his words. So instead of havign any of his new material, tonight all the loose ends of the past eight weeks were tied up. It was truly remarkable, all sorts of objects were onstage from audience members coming back and being asked to bring things in (if I were to go into detail I would be typing all night) and he seemed to remember a remarkable amount of names and stories. It's become such a big thing, that in a few week's time there will be a 'reunion' show for all the people who went to his trial shows (which I will definitely be going to - by the end of the night I felt I was among friends). Of course there were heaps of laughs, and Adam proved himself to be a pretty aweosme performer, able to turn any situation that was presented to him into some pure comic gold. At the end of the show, when I had a massive headache from laughing so much, we headed out the door and waited with Britt. In due course he came round to us to say hi, and Alana and I got to tell him our story of forming because his gig was sold out. He was duly impressed, and I'm gagged by my bandmate from saying anything further, suffice to say The Little Ones seem to be getting a remarkable number of lucky breaks given our two week existence. Anyway we did get a photo with him:

The Little Ones with Hillsy!

I think we all have sore faces from smiling, but how can you not. I will have to go to his show now because I didn't actually see any of it tonight, but it was such an experience, and I'm glad we got to go.

-R

PS two weeks!? I can't believe it's only been two weeks! And today was only the fifth time Alana and I have met in person, and I feel like I've known her all my life. The others couldn't believe it when I told them how recently we'd actually met.
PPS the other photos from the day are on my flickr, and at some point I have a couple of videos of Hillsy to put up somewhere too.

Sunday, March 25, 2007

She's Love

She's a Gretsch Electromatic Duojet with Bigsby, and her name is Love. The guy dropped her off on Wednesday to Alana's house, where she currently resides. Can't even remember if I've written about the wonderful experience of playing her for the first time, but she plays like a dream, thanks to her being set up properly. I'm playing her again tomorrow and can't wait, although my Epi (which still needs a name - suggestions, please!) has no need to be jealous because she's still my primary guitar - Love's living at Alana's for a while.

Love

playing Love

-R

Sunday, March 18, 2007

We Are The Little Ones...

..that is, Alana and I and our yet-to-be-determined-but-possibly-related-to-me rhythm section are The Little Ones. I'm still at her place, she's cooking dinner (she can cook! hurrah)and blogging and taking a break from guitar because I played non stop for nearly three hours and my fingers hurt, but I'm gonna go after this and practice the song we wrote this afternoon before I forget how it goes. We have a myspace now (www.myspace.com/thelittleonesmusic) but there's nothing up there yet. Alana's going to make it look pretty and hopefully we'll get round to recording something to chuck up on there soon. Today we worked on two of her songs, All I Could Wish For and Don't Let Go, and the one we wrote which is still missing a title, and I tried to play her the one I wrote last week, but I of course forgot to bring the lyrics and chords with me. It's looking pretty good, the songs are sounding good, and we write together pretty well. I decided to buy the Gretsch, so it's being delivered to Alana's next week and will probably live there for a while.

-R

Friday, March 16, 2007

can't sleep

I'm meant to be sleeping right now but I just had a strong cup of tea and I'm contemplating buying another guitar so I'm a little freaking out over here right now and I can't sleep.

So yes, this whole band thing. Last sunday I was meant to go with my friend Alana to see Adam Hills in the city, but he ended up being sold out, so we went to a pub for dinner then her place to watch some DVDs. She's a songwriter/guitarist and has written some pretty awesome stuff, so we decided to have a bit of a jam as she hasn't been able to find anyone to play with. As it turns out, we jammed together pretty well, so we decided to form a band. She happens to know a lot of very very helpful people in the music industry who are keen to help her out, which is good, and we ended up writing some stuff together as well, which is also good. Although I think I may have stolen her mojo because she was telling me that she hasn't written a thing this week and I've gone from not having written a song to having written two and a bit in five days. So we were chatting on msn again tonight and she pointed me to an ebay auction. This guy bought Gretsch Electromatic Duojet with Bigsby (in a sparkly silver finish) for over $1,000 and doesn't need it any more, so he's selling it, and the buy now price is $650. This is why I can't sleep. Do I buy another guitar already??? It is a truly awesome deal. But it's also a fair bit of money (although to be fair, I did set up an ING account for things like this, and I can afford it). I just don't know whether I can justify buying my second electric so soon. Aaaaaaagh. Anyway I'm meeting her tomorrow to look at keyboards, and hopefully they'll have a gretsch that we can have a play around on. It would sound truly awesome, and the Bigsby is a big selling point. But I'm thinking maybe I should buy a single coil first, like a strat or something, cos I already have the LP. God, this is a nice dilemma to have. And I do lust after those Gretsches like nothing else.

We'll see. I'm sure my mum would be thrilled to see me with another guitar to clutter up her living room. Although it must be said, she's being awesome about the band thing. I thought she'd freak but instead she offered to do the catering if and when we toured. My mum is so cool.

-R

Monday, March 12, 2007

Too much to blog about

I'm really tires, having not had any sleep the past few nights, and events have been ocurring like crazy, and I really want to write a detailed blog about them but I'm about to fall asleep right now so for the time being, dot points will suffice.
1. The Whitlams were awesome. There's a set of photos on my flickr (link on the left hand side of the page) with captions explaining the best bits of the evening so no more needs to be said.
2. I'm in a band.
3. I wrote another song.

I promise I'll write more about 2 and 3 because it's really freaking exciting, but right now I need sleep.

-R

Friday, March 09, 2007

OMG I am so so pumped

So tonight Kat and I were fooling around with guitars and basses in the music room, and she said 'oh, by the way, I wrote some lyrics today in english,' and went and grabbed them, then gave them to me and said 'you do the music' and went and heated up apple pie. So I sat down at the piano, noodled around a bunch of chords, plucked a few likely sounding ones out of the mass and suddenly we have a song. A song with words, verses, chorus and a bridge, and *music*. Considering I've been trying for more than a year to write music with very little success, it was a little annoying how easily everything came tonight. And to top it all off, when Kathryn learnt the bass notes, I did my first successful bit of piano soloing over the top of it. I'm a little astounded right now. So hopefully we'll record this sucker and put it up some time. I think it's actually a nice little song so I'm curious to see what other people think.

-R

Sunday, March 04, 2007

Had a good day

Steve came over for a jam today which was a lot of fun. We looked at a couple of Crowdies songs, but lots of them have rather...esoteric chords, so we kind of gave up on them. I think in the end we played Opportunity by Pete Murray, Under The Milky Way by The Church, and arsed around a lot on various other instruments. Oh and Don't Dream It's Over. I played the Hammond organ solo on my melodica, which perhaps lost some of the dreamy quality, but it was kind of funny. We also had a go at Heard It On The Grapevine, and I'm thinking that Byron Kathryn and I could make a pretty good go of that.

And this evening I had a proper go at Photoshop, and changed that dodgy looking photo of Brendan and I from this:
Er...

To this:
no hands

Friday, March 02, 2007

Umm

I'm listening to the Fiery Furnaces, and it just occured to me how similar they are to the early Split Enz stuff. Not obviously in terms of visuals and that, but more in the sense that their songs seem a bit schizophrenic, changing moods and time signatures and keys mid-way, flying off on musical tangents, with strange instruments and synthesizers making up the bulk of the sound. However even with all the weirdness, the songs are filled with beautiful little melodic hooks and ideas.

Just thought I'd share.

-R