Monthly Archives: December 2003

Beach Day Out

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I went to the Beach Day Out concert in Raglan. It was held on the playing fields at Raglan Area School. This might not sound very impressive, but the fields are on a finger of land that juts out into the estuary, with splendid views of the surrounding water and hills. Much more grand and scenic than, say, Ericson Stadium.

I wasn’t sure when it was starting, so I showed up a bit late and ended up missing some local Raglan band that was the opening act, and then the WBC. But I did catch up with Stu and got plenty of tales from the road.

The first band I saw was Augustino. They never seem to impress me much when I see them in music videos (except for the “Into the Grain” video, which is brilliant), but live they always come across as a dirty ol’ rock band. Even their slower songs, which have never really done much for me, today ended up dragging me along with them.

Next was Goldenhorse. I’m not a huge Goldenhorse fan. I don’t like them, I don’t hate them. They’re just this other band that other people like. But they played “Wake Up Brother”, and I like that song, so I was happy. (P.S. Ben King has a big arse, a la Lopez.)

Brooke Fraser (or Brooke Frasier, as the Edge DJ called her) was playing with Eight being her backing band. She looked very ordinary on stage with a big jacket (borrowed from Augustino, she said), and sunglasses. Her songs, which all seemed to be centered around her voice and her acoustic guitar, felt like they were dragging the atmosphere into a mellow, sincere, girly spiral of niceness. I found myself wishing that someone, anyone, would come on stage with an electric guitar and up the tempo a little. Oh, but her two singles went off and saved her set from sinking into acoustic quicksand.

Pretty boy pop-rock band Zep were next. I was ready to dismiss them as being a pretty boy pop-rock band, but then they started playing and were charming (and by that I actually mean charming, not disgusting). Not only that, but they managed to do what few punk bands are capable of doing these days – they pissed off audience members just by being themselves. A guy standing near me kept muttering about how Zed were faggots and how he was going to smash them. Yes, it’s fun to hate bands who are better looking and more successful than you. I was surprised at how their older songs like “Daisy” and “Glorafilia” now have a darker, more menacing tone. “Renegade Fighter” was dedicated to New Zealand bands, which was a nice touch. They finished their set with a cover of Radiohead’s “Creep”. It was unexpectedly touching, as if there really was a feeling of being a creep.

Next was Nesian Mystik. Most of their set was really clunky. They didn’t seem to do any songs longer than a minute. Tunes would seem to suddenly stop short, with the guys pacing around the stage like they were impatiently filling in time. Their set plunged to new depths with another short song – a horrible version of “Ten guitars”. But then, suddenly, unexpectedly, they stopped sucking. Along came “Unity”, and then a massive, magnificent “It’s On”, which got the crowd going.

Stu had warned me about Scribe. He’s so popular right now that when the Beach Day Out tour bus would leave the various concert venues, it would have to slowly drive away because of all the teenage girls hanging around it. Stu also revealed that the bands would get on the piss and various people would start drunkenly reciting Scribe lyrics, proving for sure that not many, if any, dudes can roll like Scribe.

Scribe slunk on stage, simultaneously anonymous in his cap, hoodie and casual clothing not unlike most of the audience, but also instantly recognisable as Scribe, huge New Zealand hip hop star. He has charisma. Even though it was just him, P Money, (and a cool backing track, complete with backing vocals), he seemed to be bigger than just one guy and a microphone. Interestingly, when he performed “Stand Up”, he self-censored it, saying “New Zealand hip hop, stand the wheeeee! up”. Of course, the audience knew the original lyrics and loudly sang along.

I had a good time. There was a good selection of bands, a cool crowd, a lovely location, fine weather, and a bloody good time. Chur.

Distantly unfashionable, unfashionably distant.

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There’s an interesting piece in The Observer where Zoe Lazarus, a trend analyst, talks about stuff. The bit that stood out for me was this paragraph:

“The Germans are quite stylish now, but the Austrians and Kiwis are generally the last to pick up on stuff.”

Well, how about that? (OMG, how embarrassing!)

I’ve always thought that even though New Zealand is incredibly geographically distant, that modern technology, communication and transport would keep us close enough to the rest of the world to keep up with what’s hot and cool.

But now that I think about it, New Zealand does seem a little slow to latch onto trends.

Take the mullet, if you will.

I remember in 1995 when the second issue of the Beastie Boys’ “Grand Royal” magazine had an extensive feature article on mullets. This is thought of by many as sparking the mullet revival. It was very cool to mock mullets. Then once mocking mullets became passe, mullets then became fashionable and the ironic mullet was born. In 2001 when I was in Melbourne I saw a photographer sporting an ironic mullet. It seemed strange, yet cool.

Last year, on Space, Hugh Sundae let his hair grow into a mullet. This caused much merriment and confusion on the Space forums. Because, um, weren’t mullets meant to be uncool and wasn’t Hugh meant to be cool?!!??!?!

This year the Mint Chicks released a video for their song “Licking Letters” that included their drummer with an ironic mullet nestled on his shoulders. This also caused confusion amongst people who weren’t sure if it was hot or not.

Oh, poor, distant, backwards Aotearoa!

I think this slowness to latch onto new trends and ideas has to do with population. I reckon that for most of us we don’t try new things until a certain number of other people have adopted them before us. For example, when I was 17 and living in Hamilton I wore a pair of Levi’s 505s to school. I was the first in the whole of the non-uniform wearing six and seventh form to wear a pair of baggy trousers (and a friend told me that they were too baggy and obviously needed to be taken in), but I wore the 505s knowing that all the cool kids in Auckland had 505s on their arses.

Ok, so let’s say that an average person won’t adopt a new trend until, say 100 other people have done it first. In New Zealand that’s 0.000025% of the population (which is a pretty small percentage), however, in the UK 100 people is a piddly 0.0000017% of the population (tiny!), so a in country with a larger population, new trends and idea are adopted much faster than countries with smaller populations.

Meanwhile, Zoe the trend analyst says, “Flat tops will replace mullets – we’ve taken the mullet as far as it can go.”

Ok, so we should see the death of the mullet finally reach New Zealand in 2007. But by then I will be in Berlin, as it is one of the “new centres of creative and forward-thinking people.”

A bit… metro’

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I got two (2) Christmas presents, and they were both things I wanted.

- A 10 gig iPod.
- A George Foreman grill.

I’m very excited about getting the George Foreman grill (or the “Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine”). I’ve heard they’re very versatile, and will surely do a better job than my difficult gas powered oven grill.

My iPod rules. I have it filled up with all my mp3s, and I’ve acquired a whole lot of new ones from my brother. It’s brilliant.

Oh, speaking of brilliance, I noticed that the Queen used “brilliant” in her Christmas message. That’s not as in “extremely intelligent” or “incredibly bright and shiny”, but is the slangy brilliant, as in “quite good, really.” See, her majesty is down with the common people.

Ho ho ho

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Last night, while hangin’ with my homies in my favourite IRC channel, I commented:

I’m waiting for the news item reporting a local low-income family who has their house broken into (under mysterious circumstances) and has all their Christmas presents stolen, then a variety store chain gives them hundreds of dollars worth of cheap shit presents.

Well, it happened, but with a slightly different reaction.

The mother seems almost embarrassed at the swag that’s come her way from seasonally generous retailers. The article notes that she’d saved up all year long for the presents and food, but she says she plans on giving away much of the stuff to people less off than her. Now that’s the Christmas spirit!

—

My dad got a gift hamper from one of his work associates. There was a bunch of food packed in a wooden box filled with wood shavings. One of my parents’ cats likes sitting in boxes, so after the food had been taken out, my brother put the box on a chair and showed it to her. She got in it, but instead of hanging out in it, she scratched at the wood shavings, then sat down and went wees.

But I don’t have any Bacardi

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Today was very ordinary. I returned some videos, checked my post office box, went to the gym. I went to the German cafe down the road and had coffee and a vanilla slice, because I thought I ought to do something sweet and celebratory for my birthday.

I also explored the scrapbooking supplies shop, which has intrigued me for the last year. It was disgusting and appealed to me, so I must never venture there again.

I had cashew chicken Otto Woo udon noodles for dinner, because that’s one of my favourite things. There was a fortune cookie in the bag. I cracked it open and my fortune read:

This insert has a protective coating

Oh wait. Wrong side. Sorry.

You will advance the careers of your friends in your climb for success.

So when I become a famous R&B singer, I’ll have an entourage of all my homeboys and -girls. Cool.

I have no present tally to report. The package my mother sent on Wednesday hasn’t arrived yet, and I don’t appear to have been given anything else by anyone else.

A couple of my international interweb hizoz PayPal’d me some spare change, though, and that was nice.

Only one year until I’m 30. This is good, because I thought 30 would be all scary and grown-up and mature. It looks like it’ll be like 18, but with more wrinkles and a bit more wisdom and street skillz.

And thank you to everyone who wished me happy birthday in the comments of my last post. That was really lovely!