The Christmas Breakdown…

Only 8 more sleeps till Christmas…

Let’s just say this time of year is when, like most people I am at my craziest. Today itself is not such a bad day. But the past three weeks were less than desirable. Moody, snappy, flustered, baffled, bamboozled are just a few words to describe me at this time of year.What’s funny is it is the exact same cycle year in, year out.

At the start of December I realise I need to start thinking about the 30 or so gifts I need to buy. What did they get last year? What are they into this year? Have I already given them that? That’s all before we leave the house to do the shopping. Over the next two to three weeks there are several days of heavy shopping that usually end with me close to tears because I never find exactly what I’m looking for & I always forget something!

Then there’s the theme for the wrapping, what color will it be this year? Ribbon, gift tags, christmas cards… (yes I’m a lil anal) *EEK!!*. All this time I’m stomping around miserable, thinking of all the things I FAILED to achieve ths year. Not so much fun

3 Weeks into December almost all the gifts are bought. Soon I will devote two days to wrapping, that’s when the Christmas spirit kicks in. I will think less of being miserable & more of how nice it will be to show my appreciation for my loved ones with the wonderful gifts I so meticulously picked out.

Come Christmas day everyone will ooh & ahhh & gush at how pretty the gifts are wrapped. Followed by violent ripping & shredding of all my hard work. Many will wonder why I spent money on that gift they will never use & a few will be genuinely gleeful. I’ll just be waiting to hit the Christmas lunch table to indulge in all the treats I have denied myself all year long in the hope I could wear a bikini to the beach this summer.

And then there is Boxing Day….. *YIKES*

http://www.rifunit.com

It pays to be crazy

It pays to be crazy…

You know it’s true. It seems there is nothing more entertaining than watching the freak parade, even if the freaks are in fact human beings falling to pieces in front of our eyes.

Take poor lil Amy Winehouse for example. Now I’ve bitched about her before only because it irritates me that someone with such obvious talent has no respect for her own life. Then there are those who are supposed to be looking after her (Island records/Universal records). If you ask me these people are monsters allowing her to deteriorate the way she is & then selling it all over the world like it’s cute. Well it aint!!

People are not laughing with you Amy, they are laughing at you. Yes people are buying your albums but you are also notorious!! Whatever happened to artists wanting to be taken seriously? Whatever happened to credibility? Whatever happened to letting your talent speak for itself? I guess that must all be bullsh*t if we are to believe that paper trade that seems to be running the world, the tabloids!! If you ask me it’s way too much to sell your credibility & your soul for the 15 minutes of fame you get these days. Let’s face it, we will never see the likes of The Beatles or Michael Jackson again because talent is no longer the indicator of a star. It’s all bad habits, bad hair-do’s & bad behaviour. I’m tired of all these twisted little brats. Let’s give some airtime to people who actually learn their craft.

Unsatisfied

So many packages tied up in bows
Pretty to look at until they unfold
Hollow & empty, nothing inside
Left with a feeling, UNSATISFIED

- It’s what’s on the inside that counts –

Why so crabby?

It’s a fact that if you put a bunch of crabs in a bucket & one gets the idea that he can climb out the others will pull him back down. Now I can’t claim to know how a crab thinks so maybe they just don’t like to be separated from their friends. I know us humans certainly don’t like to be too far separated from our friends & loved ones. Then again, those crabs in a bucket all clinging to each other so longingly are most likely going to get cooked together & end up on a dinner plate.  So is there perhaps something more sinister behind the crab syndrome?

As a struggling musician you get very few pats on the back. Most people will assume you’re unemployed living off their taxes. Many will give you advice on alternative career options or jobs they’ve seen in the paper. Some will feign interest & ask you how things are coming along, all the time feeling smug that they are doing better than you. Although this may not appear to be the dreaded “crab syndrome” on face value I have come to the conclusion it is, in its most dangerous form!

Unfortunately most of this negativity usually comes from the people closest to you. It is something we all experience when we decide to do something remotely different to that “expected” of us. Now I don’t think this is because people are unkind or wish bad things for us I think it’s simply because like the crabs people want to keep others in the same place they are. After all, if we all work mundane 9 to 5’s that we hate we can sit around together complaining about how bad our lives are. The fact is that if someone manages to scurry away those others may well be expected to lift their game & try to achieve more. Or worse still, maybe they will no longer be able to complain about their choices because it is now obvious that something can be done about it.

Personally, I sometimes wish I could scream at these people who cut me down & shake them a little. The best I can do however is put them on my ever – growing list of people I WILL prove wrong. So my course of treatment for the dreaded “crab syndrome” is a lil bit of “I don’t give a sh*t what you think about me, I’ll do it anyway”, plus a whole lot of angst fuelled drive & dash of self belief.

Something for nothing – Gimme, Gimme, Gimme

I guess I’m a lil late on the whole discussion about Radioheads “pay what you want for our album” but to be honest I really didn’t see what all the hoopla was about. I think Radiohead are cool but I have to be honest & say that even the thought of an album costing next to nothing was not enticing enough for me to go & get it. I think it was a brilliant strategy for an established band to get attention without spending money on marketing. I also think this was something first & foremost for die hard fans. Sure some nosey parkers & cheap ass bastards (no offence!) probably swung by to get their copy but does that really mean every other Tom, Dick & Harry band should be trying this approach?

Although this was a brilliant approach on behalf of Radiohead I don’t think it is necessarily the way to go for new artists or bands trying to break in the market. There is most definitely something to be said for doing the hard yards, ultimately it will pay off. Radiohead have already done this. Let’s be honest they could have sold this album based purely on the fact that Radiohead is releasing a new album. For the Joe Blow band like you & me what will giving away our music achieve?

First of all if no-one knows who you are you won’t even be able to give your music away if you try anyway. Secondly, people tend to treat free gifts with some speculation. They could assume you’re giving it away because it’s rubbish. Thirdly, if you have a genuinely good product people will be happy to pay for it so why sell yourself short?

At the end of the day consumers are not that easily fooled & artists should stop acting foolishly. In every other occupation you are paid for the hours you put in, not so for music. Making music is a labour of love but we cannot continue to grow & make better music if we are always out there working “other” jobs to support the habit. That’s why we have to ask people to support us by buying our music or paying to come to our shows & there is no shame in that if the product is good. Keep in mind that time is money & a lot of time gets put into music & as musicians we also have to put a lot of our hard earned cash on the table to fund our passions. Be proud of your work & don’t sell yourself short, there are enough people out there that will do that for you for free.

Good Bush / Bad Bush

GOOD BUSH

 

BAD BUSH

 

 

Vote for a tree, it makes a positive difference!!

Oil equals life

These are excerpts from an article from the observer. A little bit of education.Greenspan admits Iraq was about oil, as deaths put at 1.2m

Peter Beaumont and Joanna Walters in New York
Sunday September 16, 2007
The Observer
The man once regarded as the world’s most powerful banker has bluntly declared that the Iraq war was ‘largely’ about oil.Appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1987 and retired last year after serving four presidents, Alan Greenspan has been the leading Republican economist for a generation and his utterings instantly moved world markets.

In his long-awaited memoir – out tomorrow in the US – Greenspan, 81, who served as chairman of the US Federal Reserve for almost two decades, writes: ‘I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.’

Greenspan’s damning comments about the war come as a survey of Iraqis, which was released last week, claims that up to 1.2 million people may have died because of the conflict in Iraq – lending weight to a 2006 survey in the Lancet that reported similarly high levels.

More than one million deaths were already being suggested by anti-war campaigners, but such high counts have consistently been rejected by US and UK officials. The estimates, extrapolated from a sample of 1,461 adults around the country, were collected by a British polling agency, ORB, which asked a random selection of Iraqis how many people living in their household had died as a result of the violence rather than from natural causes.

Previous estimates gave a range between 390,000 and 940,000, the most prominent of which – collected by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and reported in the Lancet in October 2006 – suggested 654,965 deaths.

The ORB survey follows an earlier report by the organisation which suggested that one in four Iraqi adults had lost a family member to violence. The latest survey suggests that in Baghdad that number is as high as one in two. If true, these latest figures would suggest the death toll in Iraq now exceeds that of the Rwandan genocide in which about 800,000 died.

Climate of Fear

We talk alot about climate change these days, in the sense of the world hotting up, the melting of the polar ice caps & our draining of resources & it’s effects on the environment. I cannot say I go out & hug a tree but I have a sincere concern for the environment & what’s happening to the world. I do however have another concern that I believe is being overlooked.

I call it the “Climate of Fear”….

I am aware that the whole world does not have democratic freedom but for those of us who do it seems we have taken a step back & are living in fear. Democracy has become a “safe” word that has made us complacent. We have all these tools to make our opinions heard, every man & his dog has a website & a blog yet we rarely take a moment to get real & make a point of what’s not ok with us. If we in fact take a look around us we will see alot is not right with the world.

People will only do to you what you allow them to. We all have voices but if we don’t speak how can we expect to heard?

For those of you who do not agree with our ideals we say … THAT’S OK!! If we all thought the same it would make for very boring conversation. Ignorance is the mother of all fear but being open-minded lends itself to learning new things.

Sex sells

We are all familiar with the saying “Sex sells”. What does that mean though? What exactly does sex sell? Obviously people still pay for sex, prostitution is the oldest profession & still a very lucrative one so I totally get the saying in that context. However, I wonder, it seems “sex sells” is used for EVERYTHING these days. Be it music, movies, curtains, chocolate bars. You name they’ll try to sell it with sex. Do marketing execs really believe I’m going to buy a chocolate bar because a hot woman in a barely there dress is eating one? As a woman all I’m thinking is how many calories is in that? I’m sure she didn’t keep her lithe figure sucking down chocolate bars.

Then there are music video clips. We all know they are trying to sell an image & a lifestyle but who’s buying it?? Dozens of stunning, half naked women falling over themselves to be in a shot with 50 Cent…they’re called models ya’ll… & Fiddy still had to pay em to prance around.

How does this guarantee a sale? At the end of the day regardless of how they present something to us we make our buying choices based on what we are interested in & what we need. Advertising is only a way of making us aware.

Has it occurred to marketing execs that if you have a great product that gives people what they want you can probably use a nanna to sell it? At the end of the day.. SEX sells SEX… a great product sells itself, regardless of whether or not it is accompanied by a sexy campaign. It’s time to grow up. 100 million people may be “looking” at your “sexy” ads but you’re still only going to sell to those who actually want your product. After all … it’s free to look! “Kerching”

All ass – No class

So what Vanessa Hudgens sent nudie pics of herself around. Disney said it was ok… & that’s all that matters. After all these days it’s not enough to be pretty or popular you’re only someone when you take your clothes off like the MILLIONS of other girls out there. It’s really the only way you can stand out & separate yourself from the pack. Hopefully Vanessa will go down that well worn path of so many of todays starlets & spiral out of control, get caught driving under the influence, end up in rehab or go to jail. It worked for Lindsay Lohan. Maybe she will totally lose the plot, shave her head & end up opening the VMA’s. Wow, what a time we live in. There is no such thing as bad publicity.