blog

Aug
30
2010

Hello friends. Here is my new meditation/self help/ rock video. I made it with Joey Rashid who is a lovely chap and quite handy on the old super 8 camera.
I am the ZEN EAGLE WARRIOR on the road to nowhere.

We went for a big walk up a mountain and i fell over  a lot. But i edited most of that out!

Hold On, I’m Coming On

I stole some sayings from Buddhist stuff and some from Rumi and made some up myself

The hardest bit was turning into an eagle . It was cold but eventually i did… Read more…

Aug
05
2010

The Decommissioner

This blog will attempt to explain some of the thought processes behind track one on the record, The Decommissioner. Which is essentially about blowing up Hazelwood power station with a  hard on.

Hard Ons! Not the ones i mean but this is a family blog

this baby is powering my macbook sadly

So Hazelwood is this monstrously polluting coal fire power station in Gippsland. It is the worst in the southern hemisphere. Really old technology and subsidised like crazy. There is so much money in digging up the… Read more…

Jul
12
2010

Catch Ups, Fruition and Sewerage Pipes

Wow the record is actually finished and out this Friday

It seemed to take a long time

I think the next one will be simple Haikus with Jews Harp accompaniment

My new look

I fell off the blog the last couple of months coz i’ve been touring the Bindi single. It’s a blessing and a curse having a song so linked in with celebrity culture. On one hand you can get bogans to sing it in far flung places who wouldn’t usually even look at me without beating me up. And i got John Brumby… Read more…

Apr
05
2010

The Mystical Art of Track Listing

Getting the running order of your songs right on an album is an arcane process.

There are so many factors to pay attention to.

Is the balance of ballads to up beat numbers right?
Do you start with a party and mellow it out during the record? Or vice Versa?
What about the keys of the songs? Can you have more than three songs in a row in the key of E if it’s not a Chicago blues record?
What about the general theme of the record, does it tell a story or is it just a… Read more…

Apr
02
2010

fast forward blog # 1. What just happened to the last 4 months? Who am i?

It’s April all of a sudden.

On completing my retro blog of the recording with the band i figured i could continue retro blogging and never catch up with my own life.

Or hit the MONTAGE button and bring us up to date in a series of mini montage blogs.

I think this is a better option.

What was meant to be 8 more days tracking in Daylesford followed by two weeks mixing in Sydney followed by a blissful christmas period off resting on my laurels turned into a three and a half month trip to the bottom of my… Read more…

Feb
21
2010

End of Tracking: Dreams, Snow panic and Stuff

It’s the last two days of the band side of things. After a mega day trying to redo West Coast fishing incident which was too slow originally, we head up to see Joan and Russel and stay for a lentil pie and a chat about art and stuff. It is an incredible house stuffed with fabulous sculpture, photos and paintings. Designed like the captains quarters of a Spanish galleon but with light coming in all the right places. The Pie is to die for and the conversation warm and fascinating, Russel talks a lot about negative space in his work.… Read more…

Feb
11
2010

RETRO BLOG: BINDI IRWIN SPECIAL

Bindi Irwin Apocalypse Jam

We are into the last two days of band recording and it’s time to try a new composition i’ve been working on entitled ‘ Bindi Irwin Undersea Apocalypse Jam’.
I’ve always been a fan of underwater theme songs and underwater tv shows. ‘The Man from Atlantis’ blew my mind as i’d sit in our hot tv room in Port Lincoln as a young lad.

That show was a long way from the desert of 1970′s  South Australia, even tho it was a fishing town i was in. That Port Lincoln house provided the earliest… Read more…

Feb
01
2010

Monkey Horse

The Band has returned, all rested up and bringing  stories of their gigs, apps and children to entertain myself and Burke with. We are hungry for city news. Burke’s beard is thickening and my Dan Kelly ™ hairstyle is starting to dread.  We greet the band twith the good news that some of the tracks sound great, then the bad news the a couple are gonna have to be re -done. They are stoic about it. I seem to be the only one mildly panicking, and i think that has more to do with my general demeanour at the moment,… Read more…

Dec
28
2009

Week two in the the epic ‘Wire’ like series continues….

The band have all gone back to Melbourne for a day to look after their respective businesses, children and girlfriends and regain sanity and sanitation. Indra has developed an awesome iphone app called gig guide me  which he needs to go back and work on. It’s the whole scene at yr fingertips! http://www.gigguideme.com/
Burke and I spend the day planning listening back to what we’ve achieved. Some stuff sounds great, some not right. It turns out West Coast was the wrong tempo after all and we’ll have to have another crack This wasn’t really a shock to me as… Read more…

Dec
28
2009

CONFESSIONS OF A RETRO BLOGGER

EPISODE 6
Hi folks. At a point in making the record ‘Dan Kelly’s Dream’ i got too involved and stopped any semblance of real time blogging and just took pictures and notes for later on to jog my memory.. So from now on this is a serialised retro blog covering what happened with the album, the initial aborted mixing debacle and other stuff all leading up to my upcoming journey to London to finish it off with Legendary home producer A.Ron Cupples.

A RON AS A YOUNG PRODUCER OF GIPPSLAND SURF BANDS

A RON AS A YOUNG PRODUCER OF GIPPSLAND SURF BANDS

He lives… Read more…