Mixtape 6# Bit of a Downer.

Ok bit of a downer of a post.

Lately I’ve been a in a bit of a mood, a mood that could only call for one kind of music, Sad music. The thing about Sad songs is that Whether it’s stress, sadness or just wanting to chill out listening to someone sing about their woes is pretty amazing. Therapeutic even. A song like these contains a lot of heart, it comes from real pain and sadness and it shows in the voice of the artist or the choice of instruments.

This isn’t a blog to say woe is me, this is more because of the love of the music itself. So if you’re feeling down about something or even just love a sad song here are a couple of my fav ones at the moment. Hope you get as much out of them as i have.

I Can’t Make You Love Me – Bonnie Raitt

This track has one of my favourite set of lyrics i’ve heard in a long time:
“I’ll close my eyes, then i wont see. The love you don’t feel when you’re holding me.
Give me till morn, and I’ll do what’s right. Just give me till then, to give up this fight.”




I should also mention this awesome cover by Bon Iver, so beautiful.

Goodbye to Love – The Carpenters

The Carpenters to me always seemed to me as the type of band who sung about happy fields with joy and love but this song is totally the opposite of that, not surprising with the issues Karen Carpenter dealt with. Also, talk about an awesome bit of guitar work at the end.

I Will Follow you Into the Dark – Death Cab for Cutie

This is a sweet yet very dark song, it’s about making sacrifices for love. When she dies he will follow her into the dark. Very Romeo and Juliet.

Both Sides Now – Joni Mitchell

I absolutely love this song, not so much the original 70′s version but this later introspective version. Joni’s voice is lower, Worn and soulful and the string accompaniment lifts this up so much. Beautifully sad.

Nothing compares 2 U – Sinead O’Connor

Prince originally penned this track for his side project “The family” but eventually it fell onto Sinead who has most certainly given it justice. A song about unrequited love and the pain it deals.

Gloomy Sunday Billie Holiday

This is a really depressing song, so depressing in fact that its created urban legends about it causing mass suicides in it’s original Hungarian form.

The world spins madly on -The Weepies

I’m very sure i’ve posted this song before on here but it’s just been on repeat a lot lately. I am a really big fan of the Weepies and this song is just perfect. The music video too for this just sums it up as well. A sad song about losing a loved one.

So thats it for this Mix Tape. Try not too read too much into it, even out of a mood i love these songs but something about feeling down when hearing them makes them all the more special. Right now i think i need some tea and a bit more Weepies.

Kangaroo Valley Writers Retreat

Ok so im not going to even explain my absence any more…

So last weekend and few creative friends and i rented a place in the breathtaking Kangaroo Valley NSW, the idea was to just get away from all the distractions and work on what we love doing, for some of us it was writing our novels for Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) and for others it was a more musical pursuit. I took a little from column A and B.

On the last morning i got up early (as usual) and the whole valley was thick with Fog, the Cows that surrounded the property looked more in place within the fog than they did otherwise. So i took lots of Photos on the trusty point and shoot.

Enjoy.

In other news i just watched the new clip from Missy Higgins that won the ARIA award for Best Music Video, it’s really kinda cool and nicely shot and edited. Here it is:

USA Trip Pt 3 – San Fran

So its been a while since i have had proper internets on this laptop so there will be some new blogs coming soon to catch up… at the moment i am in Vancouver after spending some amazing times in Portland and a killer 4th of July in Seattle but thats still to come.

So San Francisco… well after an 11 hr drive from Vegas through the Yosemite national forest we finally arrived, after a hard learning experience on how the roads in San Fran work, Lawrence going quiet and determined as we navigated through a complicated maze of one way streets we made it to the hostel, which in comparison to the luxury that was the hard rock left much to the imagination.
We needed food, so we took a walk outside only to be confronted with the homeless population of San Fran, keen to ask for dollars in return for obscure WW2 factoids. This was a little too overwhelming for us so we took refuge in the nearest Thai restaurant.

This was not a great first impression, we seemed to be in the dodgy end of San Fran, we fell asleep to the sound of homeless folk talking about how they wanted to kill damn white tourists.

Now at this point you probably feel like i am not a fan of San Francisco… this is where you would be wrong. For on day two, the town lit up with summer sunshine and showed itself to be the amazing place it is.

We took a trip to Alcatraz where i filled up on Rock references and actually learnt quite a bit about how horrible it would have been to occupy one of those cells, from there we had some lunch with some fellow road-trippers who loved our accents (apparently i sound like bruce the shark from Finding Nemo….?)
We then joined them later on for Karaoke, i Didnt sing but Lawrence belted out two tunes, including a Gotye number, i have videos but have been banned from releasing them to the public.

On the Third day we took a walk around China town and little Italy. This was really nice, there were some cool little alleyways, a shop where they made fortune cookies by hand and a whole crowd of screaming italian soccer fans. From there we decided to do the inevitable and tackle the hills of San Fran…

Now i am not a fit person and so this city wasnt built for me, but making my way up Coit tower and Lombard street was rewarding, and i guess so was the cycle ride across the golden gate bridge afterwards although i wish i hadn’t had those beers beforehand.

The day ended with a trip to this really amazing vintage arcade on Fishermans wharf where games dating back to the early 1900′s were restored and still able to be played

All in all San Fran is a really beautiful place, there are some sketchy areas but really not many cities can avoid that. I’d happily visit again.

USA Trip Pt 2 – Vegas Baby!

So right now i am sitting in a very old room in a very old hostel in a rather scary area of San Francisco… I’m sure it is fine during the day but the late night walk to the local Thai place had us fighting off the homeless population in hoards, and these guys were determined.

Anyways this is not about that, i wont make any judgement calls on San Fran until i at least have scoped it out in the daylight hours. This is about Vegas…

So First up, the hard rock hotel…well.. Rocked! The room looked like something out of the hangover which was funnily enough the main reason we had the room, for recovery and whatnot. I cant really say that Vegas is my scene, its very much aimed at douche bags from jersey shore.
The clubs play horrible tunes, you are constantly told to go to strip clubs and really unless you look like a model you are really no use to anyone. However, this being said, if you have the right people with you it can be a really cool place.

The first night we got there we left our room and went for a walk round the strip,we were very much unimpressed with the tackyness and overall wankery that it had to offer and so we went back to the hotel bar, there was a 2 for one drink special and so the drinking commenced. It wasn’t long till the group of people beside us decided to come over, buy us another round and just chat. these were some cool guys and one even has a radio show in nyc and ill try to catch up with him when i get there. Suddenly we noticed something, sitting not 2 meters away from us was Dave Chappelle! From what seemed like a crap night turned good!

The second morning we woke up late, we didn’t get to bed till 4 or so and so were trashed. Either way not much happens during the daylight hours in vegas and so we watched a film and then sat by the pool. Lawrence had some friends in the area so we went to dinner at the bellagio for buffet and then met them after to wander round, first checking out the bellagio fountain show… incredible.
From there we found a nightclub based around rock of ages where a hairmetallicly dressed man told us to get our drink on and we danced to hammer, we then found a party at the monte carlo and carried on till late.

I guess vegas works when you have a crowd. Especially some fine womentypes.

Ok im buggered, just did an 11 drive. Will out!

US Trip Part 1 – Los Angeles

Hey, sol for those of you who dont know, im overseas in the land of large portion sizes America!

Epilogue…sorta

Our trip over was to say the least, painful… there was no leg room, they didn’t bring enough headphones and the flight crew wasn’t very fun. I guess this is what you get when you book cheap flights. After that we stood in line for an hour and a half in immigration with the eventual shouts of “Can we get all the Australians over here” when they realised that out luggage was clogging up the baggage carousels.

But after that things began to look up! We immediately made our way over to the car rental place and got our new freind, sleek white and eco freindly! From there we needed to find a GPS… the directions to target  we got were cryptic and so with only one almost head on collision we found ourselves a Best Buy and bought our new Navigator, We named her Marissa and she sounds just as hot as mischa barton… if Mischa was a robot.

So our first stop… LA. I was really surprised by LA, after having been told it was tacky and heartless i didn’t find that at all, from a quick rush straight from the airport to be in the audience for Craig Ferguson which was hilarious, to a late night walk along the walk of fame to end up at a 50′s diner having way too potent long island ice teas we stumbled home to our historical hostel where apparently stars like Marilyn Monroe have spent time in. And that was only the first day.

On our second day we took a trip to Universal Studios to try out the new transformers ride, wow… i think this may have to be the only use of 3D that hasn’t disappointed me. The Jurrassic park ride got me soaked but was nonetheless amazing and the tour was kinda cool in itself especially the 360 degree king kong ride. That night we decided to go out for a drink or two, while at a local bar named “The woods” and looking like a hunting lodge we were suddenly introduced to a new friend, she invited us back to her friends place where we drank and ate pizza, we got home at 4am and then had to wake up 4 hrs later to go to gospel brunch and check out… so much for a small night out.

I had to say i felt a little religious for that moment, gospel music does that to me… as well as southern style comfort food buffet for breakfast… but now that its over god is put aside yet again. 
We have now driven our way to Vegas where we are staying in a room at the Hard Rock Hotel with strip views… so swish. I’m sorry this blog isnt well written or edited but i am rushing through it to go out and party… so i will leave you now and blog again when i reach San Fran.

 

oh and one more thing… first two songs heard on the radio… Savage Garden and gotye… Aussie Pride!!

Windy Bridge-Top Vividtimes

Recently I got the opportunity to walk up the top of the Harbour Bridge to view the lighting of Vivid Festival. This was a pretty awesome experience as its usually damn pricey and so although the winds were strong (60-70kmph) and it was cold (10 DegreesC) it was well worth it and definitely something to cross off the bucket list.
Photos were a bit of a struggle as it was pretty dark and hard to hold still when your camera becomes a sail, but with a bit of Photoshop magic I managed to clean them up. It was really beautiful up there and an amazing feat of engineering, so if you’re ever surprisingly rich and want something different to do I would highly recommend it.

A new Music blog post will be round soon as i have discovered a whole bunch of my Favourite artists have released new albums without informing me. But until then here’s something to listen to that i love.

Stop Motion Glory

I Love Music Videos,
They seem to be this perfect packaging for new ideas, experimental techniques and neat little stories set to a cool soundtrack. Of course like with everything there are duds, Clips cut uncreatively from performance footage or 4 minutes of sheer self indulgence and wankerism but in the most part they allow filmmakers to do what they love to do and have fun with it, just look at clips from bands like Weezer and OK GO as well as the collections of videos created by Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry.

The Reason for this rant is because Gotye has released his new video for “Easy Way Out” This is a cool video, one worthy of its own post. Directed by Darcy Prendergast who has created videos for Eskimo Joe, Art vs Science and also created Gotye’s “Eyes Wide Open” Video. The Stop Motion in it is incredible and well planned out, and in some ways gives the format a different feel almost to the point where you question if it is stop motion at all. The Set Design is detailed and allows for many watchings.

Bout time for some Feedback so tell me, whats your favorite music video?