14 Days in Melbourne ...

Yeah, OK, so I went to Melbourne a couple of weeks ago, for about two weeks. It's been about a week since I got back and I've only just gotten around to posting photos. But better late than never ... There aren't that many of them, and there's very few of people. I feel really self-concious pulling out my camera to take photos of random things and random people. That's something I need to work on, I think ... But enjoy what I've got ...

The Focal-Mobile ... I arrived on a Saturday in the late-afternoon and Cooper picked me up from the airport. We drove around for a bit, got some dinner and ate in a really nice park. We headed back to his place a little while after that, to meet the parents and get settled in.

The next day (Sunday) Cooper had planned to quickly take me into the City. We parked and the first place we went was MagNation (aka Magazine Heaven ... Two floors of magazines from all over the world) and then Missing Link Records. Missing Link is officially the best record store in the world, so I found it EASY to drop about $180 on DVDs and CDs in there. And that was only my first visit.

When Cooper was up in Sydney at New Years, I made him promise to take me to the Zoo while I was down there. So that was the next place on our trip. While we were driving there, some lady pulled up beside us to let us know that something was hanging from the underneath of the car. It was nice of her, but really random and hilarious. We then forgot about it, as you do. So the Zoo ... Cooper commandeered my camera for most of our visit. That photo down there is one of the rare times when he wasn't holding it ...

I liked the meerkats best. I was going to buy a meerkat doll ... Maybe next time!
Cooper really liked the giraffes! He was so psyched to see them. When I uploaded my photos onto the computer a few days ago, I noticed I had about 10-15 photos just of this one giraffe. *shrugs* My boyfriend is really strange. Scott's explanation is that giraffes are dorky, and Cooper is a dork, so the attraction was inevitable. Like attracts like I suppose ...

When we got back to the car (which had really disgusting, warm, melted apple and blackcurrant slurpees in it) Cooper remembered the lady stopping us at the lights so he had a look at what was under the car. It apparently wasn't anything important, because he pretty much just crawled under the car and ripped it off!

After the zoo, we picked up Cooper's friend, Goof (probably one of the funniest, friendliest and most awesome people I've met in a really long time!) and I tagged along as they went riding at some local spots.
Monday was spent riding as well. I met more of the FP crew (all really nice guys), watched Coop get salt at Flemington Banks as he tried for 2 hours to get a clip, ate/drank more slurpees, and rediscovered the awesomeness of Killer Pythons.

Tuesday I went into work with Cooper. He works at a BMX store about fifteen minutes from his house, and because he's the only one there he can pretty much do whatever he wants.

I had my first Blue Heaven milkshake that day. Way back many moons ago, I got a text message from Cooper one day telling me about how awesome this flavour of milkshake is. I had never even heard of it, and he was shocked and appalled. So it became a long-running joke that I would have to try one when I came down there (because I couldn't find the flavour here in Sydney, and believe me I looked because I didn't believe him that it was a real flavour!). It was delicious, and now I'm hooked! Hahahaha

This brand of strawberry milk is SERIOUSLY the best carton strawberry milk that I have ever had!

Nothing really exciting happened then until I went into the City on Thursday. I was meeting Jade, my editor at the Dwarf, for the first time so we decided to meet for coffee. It was a pretty miserable day, and I had to catch the train from Ringwood (where Cooper works). Cooper was so worried about me he walked me across the road to the station and waited with me until the train arrived.

Jade showed me this BANKSY (!!!) piece that is on the wall of the building where she works.

While I was waiting for my train back to Ringwood I went to Dangerfield on Flinders St. I bought this bag which is officially the best bag I have ever seen in my entire life!

Thursday night Cooper and I went and got ice cream at this amazing ice cream store near Goof's house. Seriously, it was so delicious and so many flavours. Their milkshakes are AWESOME! They use so much flavouring and so much ice cream that they come out really thick and fluffy.

We then drove up to Skyhigh at Mt Dandenong. On the way, we stopped at Upwey so Cooper could take some photos for an article he's working on. It's a shame how miserable the weather was, otherwise Skyhigh would have been amazing. You look out from the lookout and can see the whole of Melbourne stretched out for you.

Saturday afternoon started our weekend in the city.

We stayed at the Jasper Hotel, on Elizabeth St. As you can see, it's really nice and modern and clean. I was particularly impressed by the bathroom! Hahahaha

We had dinner on Saturday night at a little restaurant down this alley. There's restaurants the whole way down there. You walk through it and get attacked by eager waiters and waitresses trying to convince you to eat in their restaurant. It was fun looking out the window of the restaurant to the really interesting people that were walking past.

We got up on Sunday morning and had Maccas breakfast (mmmm ... hotcakes!). We went to the Queen Vic markets and spotted this awesome pancake place where we were planning to have breakfast the next morning. Then there was more riding, this time at all different street places around Melbourne. I got picked on so bad for playing on the swings at a playground right near where the guys were riding.

This is the whole FP crew chilling at the first spot: (L-R) Polly, Marnold, HT (short for High Tower, aka Rhys. He's really tall!), Goof, Jase, Flagz, Cooper.

At the second spot, Cooper wanted to get a clip in. I can't remember what he was doing, but Goof was filming and really wanted me to take a photo of him filming Coop because he didn't have anything like that. This photo is now on the front page of the FP website.

Obligatory stacking-it photo.

Marnold shredding ...

Sunday night was awesome ... Lissy met us in the City and we went for dinner on Lygon St where I had the BEST bowl of homemade gnocci in a long time. The gelato was REALLY good too.

We got up Monday morning. We REALLY didn't want to (neither of us had slept the night before because Cooper had a really bad toothache) but we had to be out of the hotel by 10am (stupid checkout ...). We checked out, and walked up to the pancake place we had spotted the previous day, and it was CLOSED! Oh well ...

One of the things I really wanted to do in Melbourne was go on a graffiti search. We spent the better part of the morning wandering around the city scoping out alleys and just checking out stores and stuff. Missing Link and MagNation got return visits!

On the way back to Kilsyth, Cooper took me into Richmond. We stopped in this side-street that had this AMAZING mural on one wall of it. It's unfinished at the moment, but it's basically a collage of images from Melbourne's history. Some of it is shown below ....

It IS really amazing that none of the mural has been touched by random taggers. In fact, there was A LOT of graffiti in Richmond and most of it was untouched. We wandered around the area around the station for about an hour scoping out some of the graff there.

This stencil is probably one of my favourite pieces.

Woke up Wednesday ... It was the day that I would be leaving Cooper's to go to Lissy's for two days, before heading back to Sydney. The REALLY shitty weather, really suited my mood. I didn't want to leave Kilsyth because I had loved it there so much. I didn't want to leave Melbourne at all, because I had been having so much fun! I decided to go into work with him that day as well so we could hang out one last time before he dropped me at Mel's that night.

This number plate I spotted on the way to Cooper's work cheered me up!

I helped him do some merchandising in the store as well.

BMX tees have some REALLY awesome designs!

We had fun writing and drawing on the glass windows outside his store with liquid chalk markers!

That was pretty much my trip. The day and a bit I had at Mel's it was raining and pretty miserable. We ate junkfood and watched DVDs so that was really cool. But I do really love Melbourne, and I can't wait to go back ... Hopefully at the end of March! =]

No more heroes anymore ...

I did an interview with Jim Ward of Sparta about his solo work. To be honest, the interview absolutely floored me! He was just such an honest, intelligent, insightful, cheerful, friendly and open person. He had some really interesting things to say. And as per usual, it is amazing when you get to interview one of your heroes, and Jim Ward is certainly one of mine. The material used here is only about two thirds of the actual interview, so maybe one day I'll post the entire transcript online because it really was one of the most interesting conversations I've had in a very long time.

Jim Ward - Bringing Some Quiet to Soundwave.

It is never easy interviewing someone with as impressive a resume as that of Jim Ward. This singer-songwriter boasts a career that was born out of his role as one of the main songwriters in possibly the most important and influential post-hardcore band of the early 2000's, At the Drive-In. Following their break up, he went on to found Sparta, a band that, on its own merit, is as good as The Mars Volta. Now he returns to Australia for the Soundwave Festival performing his own acoustic songs from his recently released EP, Quiet.

"After coming home from a long tour with my band, Sparta, I wanted to sit in my house and play acoustic guitar quietly," the bio on his MySpace says. "The tour had been loud and chaotic, and I was simply trying to level out. I liked how things were sounding, so I began recording them in my studio." The result of these sessions is the 5 track EP, Quiet, otherwise known as the beginning of what Ward hopes to be a continuing series of recordings. Far removed from his work with Sparta, these songs embrace an almost Americana-vibe. If you start thinking of Ryan Adams or a little bit of Death Cab for Cutie, then you are probably on the right track. But make no mistake, this is Jim Ward, and it is quietly perfect.

In listening to the EP and talking to Jim, it becomes apparent that the concept of "home" is a really important part of who he is. One of the track on the EP is called 'On My Way Back Home'. Ward's own home of El Paso, Texas, is a "huge" inspiration on his writing. "Early on it was about getting out and I think one of the reasons why we toured so much with At the Drive-In was because we didn't want to be here. It was boring," he remembers. "But the older I get, the more I love being here and I hate leaving." This about-face in thinking is the result of any of a number of factors, all of which are the inevitable results of growing older. "I have a house and a wife, and I have nieces and nephews running around," he says fondly. "And it's less exciting for me to be on a plane going to Germany than it used to be. Now it's more, well if this is what I have to do to play in Germany then I'll do it. But now there's less of that desire to leave and more of that desire to find inspiration here."

It's this affinity with his home that brings Ward back to Australia, with whichever of his projects, as often as he can. With Quiet, he has chosen the acoustic stage of the Soundwave Festival to present his solo work to his Australian fans. "It wasn't even a question when this came up," Ward laughs. "I think Australian people and especially West Texans are really similar." This seems like a strange, and very specific, connection to make however it is one that he makes fondly. "There's this openness and excitement about life. When people from other countries come to this part of the world, we're really excited about it. I think we are a pretty hospitable people, and I've always felt that way about Australia."

Despite this close affinity he feels for Australia, the prospect of playing shows here on his own is still something Jim Ward finds daunting. "It's me and a guitar. I'm not taking anyone with me," Ward says with a hint of regret in his voice. This is a guy that is used to touring with bands, with entourages of people (though they may only be two or three people) there to help him out. "I don't even have a tech," he explains. "I have a guitar tech who is one of my best friends in the world and has been with me for years. Now, every time I look at a guitar, he is usually handing it to me." It is also the first time in a long time that Ward has to handle the day-to-day aspects of touring. He laughs, saying "This will be the first time that I will be checking myself into hotels, and talking to promoters, and chatting to the sound guys. I have to do everything myself because I'm the only one there." I'm sure if he were face to face with me, I would see him grinning when he next says, "It's pretty exciting and it's fun. It reminds me of being a kid again, where I would go to these shows not knowing what I was doing and figure it out as I went along."

Even though the prospect of doing everything on his own, is daunting, Ward does not find it uncomfortable. "You know when there's something new and there's that moment before you find your comfort factor?" he asks by way of explanation. "I enjoy those to a certain degree. As long as it's not purgatory where it never goes bad or good, because that's the shit that really worries me. I wouldn't want to be on stage for two weeks and never really either totally love it or totally hate it. I want it to either go really great or get to a point where I decide that I probably shouldn't really do this anymore. But I think it will be fine."

This confidence is telling. Following the lack-lustre reception of Sparta's second album, Porcelain, Ward was ready to throw in the towel, if not just on Sparta, then on music in general. However, since then Sparta has released the brilliant, Threes, and Ward has produced this EP, which has turned into a form of therapy for the self-confessed doubts that plague him. He describes his work on Quiet as being, "Good for the confidence." "We have this joke, where instead of the glass being half empty or half full, I see the glass as being eventually shattered on the ground," he explains. "That's sort of my philosophical way of seeing that metaphor. I can see that even though I am a really cheerful, sociable person, the dark side to me is there and creeps out sometimes. I think being able to do this record was a sort of therapy in itself, like just relaxing and leveling out after this big, long, loud tour."

Perhaps the greatest irony of the whole Quiet project is the fact that recording it and having to do everything associated with it on his own, has made Ward more aware of the social connectivity of music. "I sat in my house, literally completely by myself, and made that record. But then I started having some people add some sprinkles on top," he says with a laugh. To Ward, there is something inherently social about making music, at least this was the path that he chose. "There's lots of people that can do this sort of stuff from home. But I made the conscious decision early on that I wanted to travel and sort of mingle with people and do this publicly." Ward explains further, "To me it's the social part that drives me to this. I mean, there have always been people who have sat around fires telling stories and being entertainers, and I think that is part of what I love."

But this social connectedness does not just lie in his attitude to other performers. "One of the thing that is really crucial to me," Ward says in a rare serious moment, "Is that I make sure that people, especially younger kids and younger fans, know that there is nothing more special about me than is special about them. They can do this just as easily as I did. It's just a level of commitment that has nothing to do with that 'I'm cooler than you' bullshit." This is a topic Ward obviously feels strongly about. "I hate how people sell records by making out that they're so much better than the person buying them. I don't think that anybody is more important that anybody else, and I'm a real firm believer in the equality of humanity, especially in art. I think it's so destructive to keep people away from art because you can destroy people's self-esteem."

Jim Ward brings his solo work to Australian audiences through touring with the Soundwave Festival in all major capitals through February.

I own a camera ...

Sometimes I take photos. I thought I would post a few of them up here.

The Amity Affliction
Hype Central - September 2007

Jungle Fever
Come Together Festival, Luna Park - June 2007

He Is Legend
Manning Bar - September 2007

The Matches
Easter Show - April 2007

Against Me
Come Together Festival, Luna Park - June 2007

The Amity Affliction
Boomtown Showdown, Manning Bar - November 2007

sleepmakeswaves
Manning Bar - October 2007

Me vs You
Bull and Bush - May 2007

Darkest Hour
Come Together Festival, Luna Park - June 2007

Every Time I Die
Come Together Festival, Luna Park - June 2007

Norma Jean
Come Together Festival, Luna Park - June 2007

Dear Life
Excelsior Hotel - August 2007

Mindsnare
Come Together Festival, Luna Park - June 2007

Pelican
Manning Bar - October 2007

The Falls End
Bull and Bush - August 2007

Nikki Kummerow
Hills Heist - September 2007

Verona
Empire Hotel - November 2007

Unearth
Manning Bar - July 2007

Me vs You
Gaelic Club - October 2007

Billy Talent
The Metro - May 2007

The Matches
Easter Show - April 2007

We want the airwaves back ...

I'm procrastinating.

I have exams this week that I should be studying for, but to be honest I would much rather be doing one of the twelve writing assignments I have due, organising stuff for my own magazine, and looking for a real job with a real magazine that will actually pay me for my work.

One day ...

In the meantime, I've decided to let you all get to know me a little better by posting a blog about some of my favourite music ever. Music is my life. These bands are my life. Read, enjoy, maybe learn something about me.

At the Drive-In: They are the band that changed the way that I listen to music and what I listen too. After Relationship of Command Came Out it was all I listened to for about four months after. Everything about it is completely perfect, honest and absolutely raw and emotional. Until that point I had never heard anything like it at all in my life. It opened the floodgate for me to a whole new world of music.

Glassjaw: I have so much respect for Darryl Palumbo as an artist and a person. I will never forget the first time that I heard Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Silence. That record is probably one of the most emotional and hateful albums I have ever heard. You can hear the disappointment, rage and hate dripping from his voice. I thank Ned every time I listen to this album for introducing me to it.

Converge: My introduction to punk and hardcore was from more of a metal background, so I had always been exposed to heavy music. But the first time that I heard a Converge album (I believe it was You Fail Me) was a completely different type of heavy. They challenge you and repulse you while you listen, yet at the same time draw you in as you try and sit there and decipher the layers within their music.

Refused: This band is EASILY in my top 5 bands of all time, and basically because of one album. The Shape of Punk to Come revolutionised the way that the post-hardcore scene and its music developed. Considering that this album was released in 1997, it was incredibly ahead of its time. If you haven't heard it you need to crawl out from under your rock, go to your nearest record store and buy it. In 1997 they were very much overlooked as a hardcore band because they made an album that was a giant "Fuck You!" to the hardcore establishment. I mean, who puts samples in hardcore? Seriously! "New Noise" will be played at every single momentous occasion in my life ... Just so you know.

The Dillinger Escape Plan: This is a group of incredibly accomplished musicians and incredible entertainers. They are insane in terms of both their skill, the music they produce and just their general personalities. I mean, their lead singer thinks nothing of running over the heads of a crowd, breathing fire, punching kids in the head ... They will drive continuously from New Jersey to L.A. ... And I love them for each and every one of these reasons. There is no band like them on earth. I look forward to the day when I will get to interview them and pick their brains to pieces to find out what makes them tick. They intrigue me and repulse me and I love them. Ire Works is the BEST album to come out in 2007. It is the perfect combination of classic Dillinger and something new and interesting that they're possibly evolving into.

Alexisonfire: Is perhaps the most beautiful sounding band ever. And no, it is not just because I want to marry Dallas Green. Their albums are layered. There is the perfect mixture of heavy riffs and gorgeous meandering melodies. The balance between George's screams, Wade's rough edged singing, and Dallas' amazing voice that croons and floats along makes every single hair on my body stand on end and it just makes me incredibly happy! =]

Radiohead: Are my favourite band ever! No seriously ... they are. From the first time that I heard OK Computer right up until today and the weird release of inRainbows, everything they have done has been completely perfect to me. They have been there for every momentous occasion in my teen/adult life and probably will continue to be. No song sounds the same. No album sounds entirely the same. They are the masters of reinvention. They are probably the smartest musicians alive. I love them.