The Music

My listening lately has been expanding even MORE lately. Here's what has been pervading my days.

The Boxer Rebellion - MySpace



I found these dudes as the free single of the week on iTunes. This particular song, Evacuate, blew me away - the melodies, the passion behind the voice, the thumping beat of the drums, it hooked me straight away. Bought the album (Union) very shortly after.

Buy Union on



The Temper Trap - MySpace





Sophie Benjamin showed me these guys from Melbourne. They are on Modular and returned from recording their debut in the UK early last year. From what I have heard, it's fantastic, though probably a little too U2 in places. Don't own the EP yet, but will next pay day. Guitar work is phenomenal.

Buy their tracks on



Dead Letter Circus - MySpace





This clip is one of DLC's old songs, but they are absolutely 100%, my most loved band in the world. Genuinely, they don't sound like any other band I have ever heard, they are creative, heartfelt, stadium rock tunes that don't lack in technical proficiency. Their new single, Next in Line's drumming is some of the most frantic, tight drumming I have ever heard in a song, short of crazy bullshit death metal 64th notes with their feet. I have had the privilege of running 2 of their shows and Kim, Rob, Stew and Licka are four of the nicest dudes I have ever met.

Definitely buy their music on



Drawn from Bees - MySpace





Drawn from Bees are the same four dudes who used to be in Glasshouse, one of my favourite bands from Brisbane. I saw their show at Ric's last night and it was fantastic. Moving, ambient, melody-soaked and passionate, all four members of the band provide layers of harmonies and incorporate numerous different instruments into their tunes.

Check out their music on




The John Steel Singers - MySpace




One of the best party bands I have ever seen and certainly the darlings of Triple J at the moment, The John Steel Singers are the band that I equate most with the "sound" of Brisbane. They just seem to encapsulate fun, sunshine, and drunken times dancing to music in their songs. Their track Evolution never EVER fails to make me want to jump around like a fuckwit.

Got to buy their shit on



Honourable mentions go to:

Quan the Amateur

Hungry Kids of Hungary

Melodyssey

Here Come the Birds

Redux

To begin, it's been a while since I have done any earnest personal blogging.

I had a blog, that I forgot the friggin' password for, more importantly, the email address associated with it.

It's okay, I would much rather leave that blog where it was, a frozen history of words, a capturing of my life in blog circa 2001 to 2003, when no-one else was blogging. It's interesting, coming BACK to blogger, now that EVERYONE is blogging and it's a hell of a lot easier to make it look nice and arty. I remember actually coding my blog's look back in the day.

So what does this mean I have been doing in the meantime?

Well, to chart the difference, you have to remember what I was doing at the time.

When I posted the last post on the old blog, it was about Maddox being born. I distinctly remember sitting at my desk at Liam Schneider's house in Hogan st, North Rockhampton.

Since then, I have moved 6 times (living in Yeppoon, numerous places in Rockhampton, now to Brisbane) and had numerous jobs (finished up as a Woolies servo dude, IT Teacher, Ergon Employee writing reports, Bartender at O'Dowd's, Musician, A-Venue officer, O'Dowd's Booking Agent/Promoter, administrator for Hoist Rocky Online forum, substitute teacher, special ed teacher's aide, stockroom dude at Rush, taught homeless kids at a Record Label's office and now Promotion and Development Manager at Musicadium, a digital music distributor in Brisbane.)

Music really does now consume my life. It has always been there, but I made a conscious decision to follow my heart and not simply tread an easy path of a career I wasn't interested in and "do music on the side" as though it could only ever be a hobby.

I have even been engaged - it recently ended, but that's fine, Sara and I are still good friends. It was an amazing experience I wouldn't change for anything in the world, but now it's time for new things for both of us.

So now, I am a single dude who lives in Newstead, Brisbane. Like I said, I work for Musicadium, a business getting independent artists up for sale through the world's leading online outlets, iTunes, eMusic and Amazon MP3. I intend on being in the music industry for the rest of my life, so working for such a groundbreaking company in Australia really is a dream come true for me.

I will soon be playing drums in a new band, a dance act, not unlike The Presets or Grafton Primary. I am excited to be getting back into playing music again. When I was in the thick of the last band I was in, I regretted not having the time to really sink my teeth into managing it and promoting us, as I was kind of doing it for a lot of bands in Rockhampton at the time, I only had enough time to promote us in between promoting shows for everyone else, including some of the raddest bands in Australia.

The subject of my final blog, Maddox, is now five years old. A real little guy, who plays, laughs, runs, feels, yells, talks, reads, spells and is generally an amazing young child.

So right now, my career, my family, my friends and music, TV shows and movies make me happy.

I still don't know what the "feel" of this blog will be.