re: a band I was in .....The Kiwi Animal (1982-1986)

I came across Brent's resume on the net. Actually, it was a website article/interview - made up of bits and pieces of interviews edited together - about The Kiwi Animal music. At the end of it, there was a contact address for me and a link to 'Brent's Resume', which consists of categorised lists of projects and products associated with him - all the things that Brent S. Hayward has made. But these lists are riddled with inaccuracies, as well as more than a few exaggerations and evasions.

For example, in his synopsis of some of the work of The Kiwi Animal, he neglects to even mention my name (despite flaunting the names of more famous/infamous people he maybe played a couple of times with once). This really is thoroughly crap of him. I have been way too generous in putting up with his rudeness for too long a time! But then, what would I expect? Brent can only be Brent.

The Kiwi Animal music is still a very big part of me. It is a place of communication - sensations, collisions and the places where things come together or blow apart. About something that might emerge out of the ashes of ruins. It is sometimes hopeful, sometimes fragile, sometimes hopeless. Whatever! .... It's MUSIC. It was the project of Brent Stephen Hayward and Julie Cooper. Guest musicians included Patrick Waller (who became a member in 1985), Caroline Sommerville, Simon Alcorn, Gavin Buxton and Sara Westwood.

Just for the record (and the music!), OK.

Just A Thought

It's pretty hard meeting new people in Sydney (especially for a freelance worker like myself) and I think it's getting even harder. People are so obsessed with looking cool. I'm sick of cool. I like warm.

It's a Mercenary World

I knew things were getting nastier, but I wasn't prepared for this little media piece. Apparently, a very old lady living alone in the Sydney 'burbs has been regularly - and trustingly - handing over the $30 monthly payments, as a matter of routine, for a broken-down TV she has rented for 22 years.

Now she is receiving threatening 'repossession' letters from the rental company, after ceasing to make the payments she is no longer able to make, due largely to the fact that she has been diagnosed with multiple myeloma.

$30 per month - for 22 years - for an old TV that does't even work - meaning she's paid around $8000 to date. Wouldn't she well and truly own it by now? Makes me wonder how many more people are being exploited in this way. The company, unsurprisingly, says they've done nothing wrong, according to the original contract. How fucked up is this?

Oh well, that's capitalism for ya!

Can't get this song off my mind

I'll be your mirror
Reflect what you are, in case you don't know
I'll be the wind, the rain and the sunset
The light on your door to show that you're home

When you think the night has seen your mind
That inside you're twisted and unkind
Let me stand to show that you are blind
Please put down your hands
cause I see you

I find it hard to believe you don't know
The beauty that you are
But if you don't let me be your eyes
A hand in your darkness, so you won't be afraid

When you think the night has seen your mind
That inside you're twisted and unkind
Let me stand to show that you are blind
Please put down your hands
cause I see you

I'll be your mirror

- The Velvet Underground (1967) -

iPod Rant

iPods. Mobile phones. Tomorrow's garbage. Here we are in 2006 - a gadget-obsessed world, especially (it would appear) amidst Generation Y, who almost always appear to be turned on, tuned in and out of reach. Never has Marshall McCluhan's famous phrase - 'the medium is the message' - been so relevant, because what are we talking about here? iPods are actually only mediums through which music/audio works are transmitted. But are we really listening to the music? Seems to me that being seen to possess these gadgets is what's most important, due to the intense marketing campaigns of 'Apple', that relentlessly push the 'cool image' factor. Mobile music is hardly anything new anyway and, in terms of sound quality, good cassette walkmans and MD players can hold a key advantage, when considering the compression ratios people often use to get the desired (advertised) number of tracks onto their iPods. The quality is often no better than bad AM radio!

Of course, mobile music has its place (as with mobile phones) but - perhaps with the exception of long solo plane/train/bus trips - it doesn't work for me. I simply find music - and the audio world in general - too interesting and absorbing. Listening commands my attention and is therefore distracting, so that, plugged in and walking around, with the sound not relating to my surroundings, I find myself in an ever-present danger of being run over by moving vehicles. And anyway, what's the point of leaving the house, except to be immersed in a different sensory environment from the one you have built for yourself?

Yeah, baby. It's the medium that rules. As I see it, a sort of fetishism of objects and technology, where users can shut themselves inside their own micro-world and non-users out. 'Being on our own together', as the catchphrase (apparently) goes. Participants are fond of asserting that this is a new type of community and I'm aware that kids like to fit into their peer groups. But perhaps it's just another form of social eliticism, based around an apparent 'need' to own expensive products. Also, sometimes I'm concerned that humans are progressively merging their individual identites into cultures (or even celebrities) identified with - already conveniently pre-packaged for them. The scariest thing is that we do this so readily and willingly.

Another concept in human engineering? I guess I should just lighten up.