the new issue of the chimpanzee is out! or at least you can view it online. follow the “links” on the right hand side to the pdf archive, and the chimpanzee 3 (lo res ver) is what you want! shiina ringo obsessed is me!
(*except for issue 2 when i decided to get very sick and just wrote some record reviews instead)
still working on a fifth issue, but i’m just excited that you can see my zine in the userpic for spine distro.
i bought these. i canna help myself! i too want to be in japan wearing jay striped sleeve shirts! even though the palais royale is in toronto. and, you know, money city maniacs is my favourite video clip evarrrrr, and i dig the chopped up album cover idea stolen from polish artwork. or was that czech?
and so for the unintiated, may i present my favourite band…
worried now from 1994’s ‘twice removed’
it’s relatively cold and detached, that’s why i like it
everything you’ve done wrong from 1997’s ‘one chord to another’
my favourite song from my favourite band?
on the horizon from 1998’s ‘navy blues’
the breakdown/buildup & spastic solo
summer’s my season ‘don’t you believe a word’ b-side
man singing a spoof about effeminate things. also good to sing at the top of your lungs
false alarm from 2003’s ‘action pact’
the surprise package from that album
aye, so stupid (lit. meaning) man is still pissing me off by turning up at the library more regularly than i care for, and asking if i want to do something (’i'm pretty busy the next few days’). he’s a doctor for crying out loud, surely should have enough brains; but emotional intelligence, zip.
as other people working here have told me, and as i have witnessed myself, there are more than a few people who visit the library who are mentally deficient. you know, people who come up to the desk and babble on about shipbuilding, even though you never said a word to them to initiate; or the one who thinks ‘the people upstairs’ are stopping him from accessing the betting website…
i was joking the other day about the subject shelf marker for ’social issues’ in the library supplies catalogue, saying we should stick one permanently on the front desk instead. which could be interpreted in two ways: a) old people who come to talk to librarians at the issues desk; b) general weird people.
so as a general rule, working in a library is not going to find you love, it looks for loons for you. although if i worked in a library in a higher socio-economic area, i would bitch less about the appalling state of the stock (found cigarette burns in a book the other day) and the people, and we would get nice donations of middlebrow and highbrow titles that would otherwise go to one of those elizabeth’s secondhand bookshops.
after i get out of here at eight, it will take me forty-five minutes to drive home or thereabouts, afterwards i eat the pasta i prepared the night before, maybe change clothes if i feel my librarian duds today aren’t good enough for the amplifier, rush over to the eight dollar carpark and catch ash naylor playing solo. i’m really excited about it, opposite to the way i’m shitted about work lately (i love my work, but this old man is really bothering me). ash is playing three times in town, and i’m secretly aiming to go to all of them. maybe, cos i kinda stick out due to my ethnicity and i’m embarassingly in the front all the time.
looks like someone actually agrees with me (see my comments in the pk14 review thing). from jon campbell’s foreign devil column in popmatters:
Chinese punk got a lot of attention in the late ’90s, and into this millennium, based on — as in the case of most punk — the completely visceral nature of it and the implications of revolution that it signalled for anyone whose experience with China did not extend past the local takeout joint. Children of communism and Tiananmen in leather, studs, and Mohawks, screaming bloody murder . . . or something, who could tell (whether it was English or Chinese)? What foreign correspondent could resist? But they seemed to overlook one small detail: With a few exceptions, the music was crap.
and in other crap music, china has discovered what reality television does for music sales. the winner makes me wonder if the girls of china are secretly gay but won’t admit it, because her vocal skills and interpretation are really quite average (hearing her sing bryan adams kills me). what else are they going for? the new york times thinks it’s rebellion, but like that stinker of punk, i think he’s got the wrong idea.
in the archives of the local history section of the library - no actually, the postcards had been sitting around since 1994… i couldn’t help myself but help myself to them…
the one on the top reminds me of old government ads, and the other one is unconvincing hippy shit.
despite the archaic hardware pictured, the one on top is still applicable - people want answers to questions but they still don’t know what they are looking for. how can they search if they don’t know the basic concepts? “google is good, but a librarian is better!”
the worst is when people expect you to find all the answers for them (aka do an assignment) without thinking out the question or bothering to do any legwork. or looking up stupid crap like american indian tribes or names (uh, we have a great section on aboriginal history and culture, we don’t have books on that).
and this has nothing to do with it, but it’s really fucking annoying when people think they can ask you out because they see you all the time working at the library. a drink after work is a drink only, and if you are old enough to be my father, you should know your limits! sheez!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatowns_in_Oceania
so perth is off the map for most people, including the person who wrote the wiki entry. no really, i don’t blame them, because as long as shopkeepers keep storing their rubbish bins at the gate of chinatown, it’s total trash. or is that “chinatown”? because if you ask the (white) councillors at the city of perth council, chinatown is in fact the other section of northbridge, the long stretch of francis st, where i suppose rent is cheaper and the flow of traffic means there are always people passing by.
chinatown is pretty archaic concept anyway, since it often includes businesses that aren’t necessarily chinese; nor should it be exclusive. why chinese dominance? what is it a symbol of ? success in the new land? did chinatowns originate because chinese businessmen were the ones who had enough money to build the structures and the signifying gates?
of course there’s a greater historical significance in the chinatowns in the eastern states, but perth’s one seems so arbitrary. correct me if i’m wrong though.
yesterday i brought home from the op shop a black floral shirt (thick cotton, reminds me of 80s shirts?) which looked new except there were no buttons. i thought i’d try because i liked the pattern so much, even though i sew nothing. when i got to it there were blue marker dots where the buttons should’ve been, so the previous owner had thought about putting buttons on, but had probably given up and shuffled it off instead. just small things like these, similar to finding homemade 60s clothing, the stitches giving it away.
i got complimented by a tiny old lady whilst wearing one of those, the blue and green polyester peasant top. maybe it’s the familiarity of the costume paired with someone younger. she was my idea of a cool old lady; i often think i would be one too, but first i have to get through the next forty years of my life.
“if i were a drag queen i would be ruth fisher.”
i wonder if my op shopping habits are leading me that way.
i have the day off tomorrow AND i have a car to use. i’m thinking about going to ikea and getting a huge lamp, or maybe scouring some (ripoff) vintage stores for one, since my room is like a cave that only gets light from the front. i wouldn’t mind just op-shopping, and i love patterns, but polyester and australian summer don’t go well together; how did they do it back then? i would also really like a chair to have next to my fake fig tree for reading but that’ll probably have to wait until next payday, since i spent a bit on audio technica headphones (red ones like the one yoppy was wearing in cutie) and a tascam us-122.
and i wanna go sit in that big old rose garden near my old uni.
now all i have to do is wake up at an appropriate hour (six feet under is still depriving me of sleep).
it makes it even more awesome that capote is written by dan futterman. i think when i was twenty-one i wrote something along the lines of ‘dan futterman plays my ideal brother in judging amy‘ because when you’re that age, you still get annoyed when your brother is an ass.
that has little bearing on the quality of writing, but until it opens here on feb 16…
i really love old shaw brothers films, which i usually catch in passing on cable tv. i don’t mind the odd david chiang/ti lung bust up either. weirdly enough, my father thinks they’re old hat and changes the channel, but everything old is new for me anyway.
i only saw the end of hong kong nocturne, but old fashioned songs about hong kong (the place that erases your troubles in the mist?) given a beat twist? and of course the saturated colour and lavish sets…
more pictures here and a little about musicals in hong kong
about hong kong nocturne
yeah, today is friday, so i do things like catalogue local history maps until lunchtime and then spend the rest of the day doing crap all on the computer if nothing is really pressing.
if you haven’t noticed already, most of the entries have turned into music-related posts, cos that’s my specialty, yeah?
because what am i going to talk about except ramble inanely about popular culture and general things that shit me? for that kind of thing, i’m surprised that krista is still keeping a journal at the same tripod site, with exactly the same design (i don’t mind, cos i’m over redesigns anyway, too much like work).
and i find myself rereading isabelle’s old entries (i was listening to similar music at that time, when the halifax scene was at its peak, so if joel plaskett, the super friendz, sloan, gaven dianda i mean flashing lights…).
anyway, i’ve been watching a lot of six feet under (hooray for interlibrary loan), since i never got into it when it was on tv (but i do remember thinking, ‘who is that handsome cast member’ when i saw them win an emmy). life and death run concentric circles around each other (death in the family who run a funeral home, who help people in their time of grief).
ketchup - in love again
so here you are, a couple of tracks from ketchup’s 2005 release:
i think it’s time for a mailorder for me…
a very interesting look at the indie scene (or lack thereof) in malaysia (i read this kind of stuff for fun, you know!). some of his points i certainly recognise, even though i don’t spend much time in malaysia, not being the place of my birth etc.
found it while looking up photos of streetroar, held recently in kuala lumpur. while you already know i love false alarm, word is that subs is amazing.
long overdue post, especially for K
alok - 29 minutes from the end
a series of collaborations music and visual wise (dvd included in the foldout packaging). dark and psychedelic, i’ve been playing this a lot.
cheer chen - adventure
on my last day in hk, i finally found a copy of the limited edition booklet version. i used to run a mile away from this music, mostly because it was not rock enough! sentimental kills convinced me that cheer could have enough bite if she wanted to though.
there are also now three versions of the album - regular (bright blue cover), stab bound book (my one), and a box set with bonus dvd. it’s enough to drive you crazy, and the trend in general, as i contemplate ending up with more than one copy of several albums.
endy chow - light
he’s not obtuse rock at all, and i find myself apologising for liking something so straight. but endy writes some catchy songs, although i would prefer to scrub the ballads. he seems to have learnt a lot from joannes lam (black box), taking on more of the arrangement and production on this album.
he lists silverchair as an influence from the time he spent in new zealand, and it does come out in his singing style. also in his past two albums, he has done covers of hong kong indie bands, namely amk and anodize. there’s touches of the underground in his major label music, and his teenage band zarahn plans to release a cd in the future. i don’t know if he will be the first “hong kong rock artist to suceed” (whatever that means) since beyond but i’m glad for his presence on an otherwise band-less stage.
denise ho - butterfly lovers
the album is made up of the songs from the musical, loosely based on the butterfly lovers legend, but with a more modern interpretation (love exists in all forms).
in his review of the cd in esquire, pong nan gives credit to denise’s songwriting abilities, but also hopes that she uses less mainstream means to flesh out her songs. i would have to agree, although it’s hard to argue against the way she’s managed to put together an album that can do well commercially without being reductive, as well as being able to link up her artistic ambitions in the musical.
ketchup - in love again
acoustic tunes all sung in english, really quite lovely. i should’ve bought all the ketchup cds i saw while i was there, cos i sure can’t find them online either.
krusty - hello krusty
i can’t help but think of puffy when i see this duo. a lot of fun and the songs and production (courtesy of ho shan from pixeltoy and carl wong) are top notch. their first ep is a bit too short, but that’s because the new wave tunes and cute pop songs leave me wanting more.
my little airport - because i was too nervous at the time
the artwork and some of the songs make me think of nervous young love, naturally. nicole sings songs like gigi leung is dead, a pop idol used as a euphenism for the death of innocence (though fans of the real gigi leung were chucking a shit about the songtitle). i couldn’t really stomach the cutesiness of their debut album (the ok thing to do on sunday afternoon is to toddle in the zoo) but have found the guitars and drum machine of this one much more to my liking.
oliver - freddy and king
sorry, haven’t really been able to listen to this much. intense.
pixel toy - science of love
one thing that the artists in people mountain people sea and their signings (at17, pixeltoy) is that they’ve created their own signature sound while still managing to be commercially viable (the reality of the music business in hong kong). i’ve heard pixeltoy used to be less commercial before their debut album, and i have to wonder if it’s true.
nethertheless, their electronic pop is so fresh in the current musical climate, and their only real missteps are the vocal-less tracks where some of the cliched samples get tired.
pk14 - who and who
i was unable to find somewhere to buy this online (not even modern sky seem to have it), so was surprised when i spotted a copy in the panic. beijing punk is hackneyed, as if it’s either the sign of oppression or a new freedom. hang on the box has moved onto new wave. pk14 is somewhat unexpected then, as they look more to mission of burma and gang of four than nofx and the sex pistols.
yumiko cheng - yumiko’s space
produced and written mostly by eric kwok and carl wong, this album has been quite surprising coming from a cantopop singer. it would be interesting to see the sales, if the public used to their dosage of ballads and an occasional fast song could stomach it. it’s not revolutionary - akin to kylie minogue, though on a much smaller budget. no amount of production could hide yumiko’s thin voice though…
hey hey, the silents have their own page on rubber records now… (although i’m still a bit annoyed at whatever went down with even last time) and finally the long overdue ep will be released in march. fingers crossed.
but i’m pretty happy with this one. (they know he’s no remedy to chris rock, right? just cos he’s white doesn’t mean he isn’t nasteee)
all i want to do right now is watch films. yesterday was spacked out, and i guess i will add it to the five films (and albums) from hong kong that i want to write about for my zine. (zine schmene)
i need another set of earplugs cos i lost them again. thank god they only cost a dollar. if i buy the nicer ones, which are probably better for my hearing, i would probably lose them as well. because tonight i’m going to see the sabre tooth tigers again and then i’ll probably just go home or something.
cos i’m tired from staying up to watch movies and listen to music. speaking of which the sony headphones i bought on impulse the other day are shit. they retail for about eighty dollars, but on certain things the bass is distorted, and last night listening to pong nan, on a song with little discernable bass, the midsection vocal was distorted. so uggghhh. i know i’m a picky ass shit anyway.
it’s friday and i’m bored and i’m looking through these, and i have officially uploaded/destroyed the library website (big fonts are for old people, literally).
it’s that time of year again, when the flurry of award shows in quick succession happens. last night stayed up ’til two to watch the cr903 awards. the awards are based on airplay on the radio station and fans votes, with the station generally aimed at the younger market. they also have the coolest djs (i love you boyz, sammy, mini etc). i’d sooner watch this than the upcoming tvb jade solid gold awards, which kinda stink of nepotism for me.
notable things:
pictures are from here.
i saw broken flowers at the theatre the other day, and am trying to get through garden state on dvd at the moment, though my computer and guitars seem more interesting and the player seems to be on eternal pause. anyway, i have a big problem with the musical scoring in garden state. it’s so intrusive the way the shins enter the film, which is good publicity for the band, but doesn’t help with the way the editing seems rushed between scenes.
on the other hand, holly golightly’s big plugs in broken flowers seem to be a good fit, and the music in general drives action, instead of being some jarring track over the top of the picture, which subjectively affects my judgement of the film itself, depending on whether i detest the particular song or not.
maybe i have been spoilt by jon brion and mark mothersbaugh.
(unrelated, but if jason falkner has such a pretty mug, why isn’t there a picture here?)
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