Five gigs in seven days and i'm not name dropping or trying to be cool though its nice to pretend there's some holy exhuastion in this. Johnny Casino at the Lansdowne last Saturday. dancing old school rockabilly/r&b played by a fat man with more tats then god. man in a chicken suit danced. much energy. the sort of gig i'd write essays on if i was still trying to be Lester Bangs (or anything at all)

Perry Keyes at the Vanguard on Sunday. He's Sydney's best singer-songwriter. He puts mini-narratives about rugby players and Joe Strummer to a Springsteen/Hold Steady backbeat and throws in insistant, obvious/profound choruses like 'I WANNA LAY IN THE ARMS OF THE ONE THAT I LOVE FOREVER AND EVER'. He's exhilerating and redemptive and fucking GOOD.  He's also a fuckin great guy....

Loudon Wainwright III at the Basement on Monday. $70 is a bit too much to hear a funny, bitter old man sing snarky songs about death, kids, and groupies but at his best he's sublime. who else could write a family saga that doubles as a pisstake on Rufus Wainwright's piano playing and a meditation on death? Nobody... 'cause nobody else was teaching Rufus piano as a kid, i guess. His daugher, Lucy Wainwright Roche, isn't going to give Martha and Rufus any competition... but i'm mentioning her here in case she did

Loudon was... hard to pin down. I liked his show but songs about fucking up your kids' lives are easier to take from people who don't have kids you 'know' in any sense. Even one TV interview with them takes Rufus and Martha from the fictional conceits they used to be to real people. Still.. fuck it. Good show

Tuesday i did slam poetry and insulted alot of people and was a cockhead and flubbed up my best line: "you can trace my trachea and press points to make me scream but i still turn away so you don't see my dream". the subject probably isn't reading this, since she's not on myspace, but if she is...hey, i'd rather force a confrontation then suffer this silence

wednesday i rested

thursday was jay reatard at the annandale. he played for 20 minutes. i felt gypped. we all moshed. 'gypped' is a racist term and i apologize to any Egyptians or Roma reading this. gig was good while  it lasted

friday was The Pigs at Bridge Road Hotel, Rozelle. hillbillysplotation. country covers  of pop and rap songs. good stuff

today was a party

throughout it all was the usual awkwardness and emoness and acute awareness of my faults. lots of hurling myself into the night, alone like Odysseus but not wily or well-favored. lots of glares from people i offended. lots of pointles drinks. Sydney's a shiny, seedy city and i really have nothing new to say...

 

So i was asked why I haven't update this in awhile and its pretty simple: i've been too busy living to write and when i do 'write' its straight spit out improvised poetry and its a bigger rush then sex (and i can make that  comparison from experiance now which is pretty weird) total pure spit out rap bragging beat ragging running up ladders that fall away as i construct them - metaphor tumbling upon metaphor gasping for more air as i scan the room and there! a candle and i spin a standard 'burn myself on wax' into a 'waxing eloquent' into a 'waxing moon' into wow the moon in Okami is so cool you make it come out of the sky by drawing a semicircle and wow it rocks

so new years started with a bang but it settles back in the usual - gigs and missed connections and games. big day out was worth it - arcade fire and lcd soundsytem were the obvious highlights but aussies augie march and belles will ring can hold up with the best of them

and she traces my trachea and the lines of my ribs but i turn away so she dosen't see me dream...

beat okami and its amazing - games as art in the most simple sense - zelda gameplay plus gorgeous japanese brushstrokes. way too easy and way too long but relaxing - meditative and good for a guy who's caffinne keyed up all the time

i want to make it all rhyme

so

this is me and its too hot to think. thought for the day: some music is sociopathic. it betrays no trace of personality, no connection. functional dance music. walls of electronic noise. some music is empathetic - it engages with you. lyrical ballads. country. emo. pleading rock. i'm a bit lonely so i want the empathetic type - pretending craig finn or bob dylan are my friends talking narratives in my ear. trend is toward robot music and i don't dig that...

might expand this into a new theory

new photos up. stay cool and stay alive

new year's resolution: sing songs, right wrongs, and live in this world when i can

So.
Its been a long time since I've done this. Stared straight into the electron blue void. Undergone my shamanistic ritual with the whitness, the glowing antithesis to death.

In prosaic terms: i'm up at 5am on the computer. I was going to go out and go to a gig but I got sucked into random pointless websites and internet conversations what went nowhere.

Half the entries on my old blog are about this. I was boring then. Now? I have a Life, and I don't do this anymore.

A Life just means the same blankness, only better backdrops and better bands and spending $60 on booze.

Its comforting, in the White. Everything just... shuts off and you can almost follow the machine intelligence flow. Click between windows. Chat. Become the machine. I get to do it 8 hours a day at work but I'm on break now.

Hullo

Testing
Testing
Is this thing on?
MySpace is dying; i'm not sure if anyone reads this anymore. I posted something on my old blog but I think even less people read that.
I want to be heard. Attention whore? Yeah. But when I'm just ME i'm all spastic and spazzy, moving in a million directions, hiding my emotions badly and always moving in the direction of the nearest pinball machine.
Online? On stage? Different story

I had a gig last week at Bar Me. A real, honest to goodness gig. Thirty minutes in Bar Me, a jazz club in Sydney's famous King's Cross. Thirty minutes improvising poetry with some amazing musicans behind me. I was so sick and nervous I could hardly get on stage - but once I got there it just... WORKED. Punk to soul to hiphop to standup to 'big upping'... mythology into videogame references into addressing my audience into puns... I was sweating and intense and it just... worked.

Every time I get in front of a microphone I feel that power, that energy... and I can project it to the crowd. I know I can... but when I try to explain it to people I'm just me again, twitchy little Chris Brimstone - another emo kid who dosen't listen to emo and has too much bullshit and earnestness to stand

So
I'm getting a band together. I'm going to get gigs. This WILL happen.

Like... Christmas happened. This is my first Christmas 'on my own', and there isn't much to say. Spent two days with the family, got some random presents, etc. Going a bit crazy in my room playing videogames (hence writing this) but I'll go out tommorow night and all will be well. I've come so far this year...

Saw the Grates, again. Didn't take pictures. Patience stage-dived, which was brave. Total sweating mosh pit insanity. They're a silly band on record but amazing live. Hung out with them, again. Worth it

So, yeah. If you're reading this toss me a comment. If you want to be in my banx just tell me. I'll be around

Got this press release in the e-mail today... I'm so proud! Everybody come along!

tuesday 18 December 2007

Tony Osborne

A masterly practitioner of improvisation and performance Tony, is one

of Sydney's leading improvisers with twenty years experience in

movement, theatre and vocal performance.

Chris Brimstone

Chris's influences steadfastly lie within the brim of the Beat

Generation, dauntless and keen to evoke a reaction he could be

Sydney's very own terrorist of words.  Chris is the producer of The

Naked City (FBI-FM), which airs Saturday mornings.

When:     8pm -

Where:    Bar Me, 

                185 brougham Street, Kings Cross

Dr:           $10.00

Food:      pizza available

So.
Been a long time since I've updated this.
I'm alive, barely. Home this weekend with a fever; missing some gigs I'd rather not miss but they're not international gigs - just GOOD PEOPLE, guys like Perry Keyes and Duncan Graham - dab hands with a lyric and a Springsteen riff but too old for the Operator Please crowd (not that they're not a fun band). Dead Letter Chorus and Cuthbert & The Nightwalkers too - again, good bands but more importantly GOOD PEOPLE, and i need all of those I can find.
I bought a Nintendo DS. There's some vague buyer's remorse but its a powerful little system and anything that includes Metroid Pinball in its game library must have asked me what I was thinking at some point in the design process. Meteos and new Zelda are heaps fun, too... i expect to acquire a ton of games soon, so send me your Friend Codes.
Might be an old PS2 as well
I'm on the edge- bad kind of fever in that I'm weak and sweating but not enough for full delirious fever-dreams, ghosts of my past attacking me and strange shapes that scream as their milk-wipe surface is marred. Just a very physical spider and the annoyance of missing the Chaser rerun

Gigs? I've seen a few. Nick Cave, again. Lots of local bands. I haven't bought any tickets to Syd Fest/Laneway/Big Day Out (tried, tho) or sideshows... just a Louden Wainwright III ticket for far off in the future - an 'intimate' Basement gig after his son Rufus plays the State Theatre. Does it gall? Probably, tho my dad would be proud of me for surpassing him I reckon....

Personal life? Same old, same old.... a few hopes dashed, a few more popped up. My lips are again attractive to drunken strangers; this means nothing. I've got a poetry gig on at Bar Me on December 18th - my first real gig. come along if you're in the area

So. Life. I'm around. Insight later, when the brain works

So I'm back out of my shell - back to the life i'm used to living Skipped Splendour last week after much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Random bands at the Lansdowne on Saturday were fun, including favorites the Men from U.N.C.L.E. Lots of uncool stuff - rockabilly, psychobilly, psych, country. After seeing Yacht/Panther last week I realized what I should have realized ages ago - i just don't dig modern indie music. Dance stuff felt like being raped by robots. I know its a shortcoming in taste or something but I don't give a fuck - i went to live music for the emotion, for the power, for the simple fact that I don't have many friends but just for a night you can join youself to the band and get power from whoever's onstage and the mass offstage and whether is the Horrors on Saturday or the Cure on Thursday that power is there

'course, i reckon lots of people got some more positive power from Yacht and Panther last week (including people who i hold up on stage, members of Yes Nukes i'm used to seeing howling and screaming and torturing sounds) and thats cool, but i need the ROCK AND ROLL

i learned that i'm 'a 15 year old boy' and 'a 45 year old rock critic for Rolling Stone' last week. i don't mind. i'm fucked up and spastic and messed - making a fool of myself Friday at the Gaelic twisting myself into impossible shapes as the Pink Fits played 40 minutes of howling scuzzy fuzzy noise and an hour later as headliners Mint Chicks made the place explode, breaking my camera grabbing gals hurling myself in the teeming mass of humanity...  for way too little time but i don't care. i don't fucking care anymore

5am at Purple Sneakers and crashing on a Redfern couch... two hours later producing the Naked City. got Miles Merril, local slam poet originally from Chicago on. great guy and on Tuesday i got up at the old Friend in Hand in Glebe... i used to treck there once a week to read when it was an hour both ways. now i live there and i started up improvising - "Glebe Point road i've talked you more then i've walked you' and went from there in fits and starts and stops. wasn't good like the others -polished like Bravo Child and Thomas Jack of Hearts, spinning a tale of boys going to space and lots of quick-wit idealism. i'm spitting, stuttering... an angry old man reckons i was like "Not P J Harvey... that other one, before here" "Patti Smith?" "yeah" but fuck that... i'm a guy who dosen't put in the effort, who's great with words but never writes them down first, says the wrong thing - vegan's on a messege board we're courting and i talk about the beauty of an impaled black dog i hear about on the news, magical ritual for depression-ending and they've been sacrificing for so long why stop now? thats the basis of the ancient Jewish convenent with God as set down in the Torah (and god i know that sounds anti-semetic, but it should be the basis of the Christian convenent too) but we've all stopped sacrificing

we've all stopped screaming

we've all stoped howling barbaric yawlps to the wild, all stopped jerking and screaming. pagan in the most boring sense - sex-worsip and the constant sound of electronic drugs and some shamens would have killed for Ectasy to unite the crowds as one, leading the tribe together... and i'm sure in the early rave scene it was like that, DJs massing crowds

fuck that. Rock and roll. Three chords and the truth and every other cliche. Pinball and the click clack snap of machinery. Girls and guys who look too old and too tired. Songs that make you put your fist in the air not just 'cause the music reaches a crescendo but because the words do

Cure on Thursday and the free tix dimishes it and it was so hard to find somebody to go with it hurt a bit and in the middle of a 3 hour set i drifited off to a bit of their droning but when they played the cliche songs - Boys Don't Cry, A Forest, Just Like Heaven i could glance around the Entertainment Centre and see others standing up in their seats, some girl with 'the cure' written on neon in her chest and the old energy, just a bit

i feel lonely in an abstract way eating ramen at home but in another way i just feel comfortable, feel the eyes on me that say 'hey, you're that creepy squirrely guy thats always alone at gigs' and the other eyes that don't... but fuck it. its a 100x said cliche but i need the fucking music so when you see me at a show spastic jerking going nuts fucking join in and bring some bloody life back to this little scene

So
Been out of circulation for 2 weeks; after the bullshit of the last blog all the 'mojo' disappeared. I hibernated, read, slept, dreamed. Starred in my friend's film - don't want to spoil anything 'cause it'll be up on YouTube (Porkland Harlow's the name) but it was fun. Lots of standing around and lots of acting crazy.
Thats what I need in life: direction. Somebody to say 'you've got all this talent and skill. Go here. Do this'.
Found out people still mock me behind my back, still think of me as 'strange' and 'weird'. Feels like high school, a bit, but I guess I can live with it. I don't go out in groups, since thats now how i feel comfortable. Being stuck in my room for 2 weeks made me realize i need a few closer friends.
Or maybe they were all just on vacation.
Anyway, thats life - sick, acting, reading. Phil Spector biography told me a bit i didn't know but no real insight. Mirroshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology charged me with that old energy, the streetwise rock and roll neon that dosen't exist except in books and old Springsteen songs. Made me want to start a band and smash things. Same old fantasies I've had for ages.
Tommorow its back to work, and eventually the nightlife and the cult movies. A bit of wondering who thinks I'm a freak, but I guess I need to find the right crowd.

Catch you in the multiplex

So a certain Pokemon master/zombie killer/S-Mart employee pointed out how emo these blogs have been getting and, as much as I hate to admit it, the washed up Britpop band touring soon is right.
Fuck that. Rock and roll saved my soul.

Friday night I'm walking down Oxford, feeling sorry for myself, whiny and headach. Preacher-man on the street, talking about how the world could end tonight. There's no hope, no choice but Jesus. I take out my camera. "If you can preach, then I can take photos of you". He heckles back, but his messege is right. I've got no Jesus-crutch, so I head to Spectrum. Kamikaze Trio, Peabody, Shooting at Unarmed Men. Loud music cures headaches. I'm the only one dancing but I don't care. Random Spectrum kisses photos dancing yelling new badge and the mojo is back. Life.

Next day morning, arguing on the radio and wandering around during the day. Spectrum's 3rd birthday. Scam my way in 'cause i plugged a band on the radio. Drink and dance and yell. Yes Nukes all shambolic, Regular John rock as always but nobody else is moshing. Bog Log III playing great slide guitar under an amplified helmet. Bands dances kisses stupid photos Wii and i'm back.

Its Spectrum's 3rd birthday and I feel like writing something all memorial about it but its a venue. Rainbow striped walls, pillers with mirrors and mirrored balls on the ceiling. Few places to sit and lousy acoustics so you're drowned in sound. Drinks don't cost too much and its right on Oxford Street, across from my bank's ATM and my fave fast food place.

I lived there for two years virtually, doing the 'alone in the crowd' thing. Met the Grates there; met Traditional Symbol of Mortality in Catholic Eulogies there; turned 20 there and gave up teenagehood by rocking to Ted Leo and having another drink. Rang in 2007 there. Drank danced kissed screamed jumped around threw up and made a fool of myself. Its not the best venue in the world, but it was where I cut my teeth on Aussie live music and met half my MySpazz friends.

So.
Drank, danced, rocked, kiss. It ain't much, but thank you rock and roll

So
Stillness. 10am. The train from Melbourne to Sydney is 40 minutes late; the boy has spent the time taking last photos of the station and sharing a crowded Krispy Kreme moment with an older man. No words, but a glance that seems to say 'your train is late. Mine is too. That sucks'.

There is a girl on the seat across from him read Nick Hornby's 'Long Way Down'. She is almost done. The boy is finishing Chuck Palahunick's 'Lullaby'. Easy nihilism; gross out images and sex that carry just a bit more than they should. Easy characterization and easy endings. Two trendy male authors known for films adapted from other books. The girl is his age. She's wearing Cons, black hair.


'Want to trade?' the boy says. "I'm almost done with my book and you're almost done with yours". "Yeah", she says. He'd say more, but he settles back in his chair, headphones and Belle & Sebastian and trees whipping by in the darkness. Long drives with the family in New England. Somebody else is driving. Somebody else is thinking and there is nothing he can do but sit and read for 12 hours.

The swap is made an hour later. A few words are spoken; the girl lives in Albury, 4 hours into the journey. No info is exchanged and no moves are made. She may find this. Its not that kind of story, though it could be. A chance meeting, a shared connection, a kiss and a cuddle and a phone number and a creeping creepiness and entanglements in lives not my own.

No.
He puts on the headphones and reads. Four people meet on a rooftop. They are going to jump; they do not. This is all on the back of the book. A washed up TV host. An American rock and roller. A crazy little rich girl. A middle aged woman. They listen to music that is not on my iPod, though it is in my collection. They meet and talk. I read for six hours; the girl gets off the train 4 hours in; I keep the book and tip my hat.

One book, one sitting. A satisfying ending and a little grin.

Trees, houses, train stations. Music. Sonic Youth's 'Diamond Sea' on repeat. Half an hour of noise between bits of pop; perhaps I talk to myself. Peace and a train ride and eventually work and anger and poetry and all that....too many places to go. False goals. Scrabble on my mobile and bullshit lines.

Thats where I belong. A train. A book. An iPod. Peace