australian rozie

Pretty awesome interactive web stuff here. One of favourite brands, the only trainers I wear. Join my party, I’d love to win a trip to LA and maybe I’ll take you with me. Check out my Last FM playlists to see what I play at home…

March is a special month in Australian Rozie world. My birthday is on the 2nd so I always have that to look forward to. Although I have been saying for years that I am “old”, I still look forward to my birthday. I’m not one to have a meltdown on my special day. It also officially marks the beginning of autumn, my favourite season. There’s the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras as well. I’ve been doing quite a lot this month so far, and of course taking lots of photos of everything I do. There were 3 different birthday celebrations, Mad Racket starring HMC on Mardi Gras night, Pivot‘s secret gig at the Hopetoun, various meals of Sydney and Piper & Kris‘ 30th party. The majority of my photos go on my Flickr, but occasionally some will go on Facebook. The bad thing about March is it marks the anniversary of when my mum (Chinese Betty) passed away, so next week will kind of suck for me.

in a hurry before I went to bed last night. I went to iTunes and this was all I could come up with:
Hurricane – the new Grace Jones album
Situation (Hercules and Love Affair) – Yazoo
Blind (Full Album Version) – Hercules and Love Affair – I really love this track!
Dave advised me to use my Last.fm to find more of the music I like. What a good idea!

Matthew Herbert Big Band

Originally uploaded by Australian Rozie

I always mean to blog about all the great gigs I go to but never get around to it. So here’s a quick post about Matthew Herbert Big Band at the Sydney Opera House. The crowd was very mixed, lots of “young” Mad Racket type folks as well as older ladies like my Aunty Gladys! After a massive round of applause and cheering when Mathhew Herbert came onto the stage, I heard the guy behind me say something like, “he seems to be some sort of god-like figure for some of these people”. The performance and music was fantastic, so entertaining. The vocalist was amazing (I wish I could sing – so do my neighbours). For some weird reason even though the music was really loud, I didn’t need to use my musician’s earplugs at all! Maybe the Opera House acoustics suit my special volume needs??? Glad we spent the $$$ on this special event, was a shame we missed The Bug/ Rhythm & Sound night at Beck’s Bar though. Actually we did see R&S, because while on the bus on the way to the Opera House, we saw Sub Bass Snarl walking down the road with Mark Ernestus and Tikiman!

I had a great time at the Days Like This! Festival at the Entertainment Quarter on January 4. The event doesn’t have the same pressure as a New Year’s Eve or NYD event, but close enough that everyone still feels festive. I have to say that the line-up was quite tremendous and much suited to my current taste in music. Before the day, I had been telling people that it was the older clubbers or retired raver‘s festival. The variety of artists and the crowd made it really great compared to some festivals I’ve been to in the last few years. Also, the crap, gurning crowds have been a major factor in why I hardly ever go to music festivals any more.
I most enjoyed Flying Lotus in the Forum (hey airconditioning at a summer festival – different, unusual). It was the cross-over of live techno and instrumental electronic hip hop I’ve been looking for. I also enjoyed briefly seeing DJ Vadim, Recloose, Fat Freddy’s Drop, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, A Guy called Gerald, Carl Craig and of course Public Enemy. After all these years PE still have an awesome presence and hearing nearly all of It takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back live was awesome.
The only bad thing about Days Like This! was there was not enough food stalls and there were no pass outs, so you couldn’t go into EQ to get something to eat. Sure I understand that promoters probably have some deal with the stallholders that they are going to have a captive audience but the lines at dinner time had hundreds of people in them. Could do better with the food.
See my Days Like This! photos here

You can read the Disco Dissertation review here

I have just discovered DJ Havana Brown, not like discovered an awesome new musical diversion but discovered that she exists. Apparantly, she is Australia’s number one female DJ, but I’d like to say Australia’s number one Pussycat Doll impersonator who can mix (tbc). I’ve always thought it was tough to make it in the man’s world of DJing, but obviously she took the easy route and dressed like a ho to get there. I’m jealous.
Well, it’s NYE and I was perusing the parties on in Sydney when I came across The Bongo Virus NYE Event “hosted” by Paris Hilton. Havana Brown is one of the DJs playing at the event. I was wondering what all the young folk were doing tonight.
Happy New Year’s Eve – hope it’s it an above average night. How’s this for a theory: If you have average expectations of this night of nights, you will not to be too greatly disappointed.

Kanye West: Glow in the Dark tour, Sydney 2008.

Originally uploaded by Australian Rozie

On Saturday night, I finally got to see the ego himself Kanye West in concert. I have been a fan of his production work for Jay-Z, John Legend, Alicia Keys etc etc as well as his solo releases. He has great showmanship and style. He’s performed in Australia quite a few times, there was the one at the Sydney Opera House with the symphony, Good Vibrations etc but when the Glow in the Dark tour of Australia was announced, I decided Kanye was going to happen for me finally. I bought a ticket for my bro for Xmas, Honka Princess and Dave (with paintball injuries) came along too.
Unfortunately, we missed Scribe, I had seen him before supporting the Beastie Boys. Next up was Nas (it was his first time in Oz, there seemed like a lot of people who were there for him). He did a really great set with some crazy backing musicians especially the guitarists. I couldn’t work out if they were male or female. Nas reminds me of Jay-Z a bit.
Then it was time for the big man, I noticed there was no hype/MC action which you usually get at hip-hop gigs, he just suddenly appeared. To be honest, I thought it was going to be better than it was. I think I had seen snippets from other performances Kanye has done this year and thought I was getting a huge spectacular, which it wasn’t. I was also surprised to see that the top section of Acer Arena was not used. (unlike Stevie Wonder, oops forgot to blog about that). When he did his old stuff, it was great, there are many great tracks (Heard ‘Em Say, Gold Digger, Diamonds from Sierra Leone, Jesus Walks, Flashing Lights, the one with Chris Martin from Coldplay). When he did his well know stuff everyone had their hands in the air! The young Asians in front were screaming and videoing everything, the posse of boys behind were dancing and whooping! For me, the best songs were Through the Wire, Touch the Sky, Stronger and Good Life. When he did his new stuff from 808s and Heartbreak he started to waffle on (in auto tune) in the middle of the songs, there was a part where he was talking about Britney and why people were hammering him for not sticking to rapping. Well, I think he should stick with rapping, producing records and not singing. Kanye, you’re no Marvin Gaye or even Lionel Richie (though the hair is coming close). Overall I had a good time seeing Kanye in concert but was disappointed that he didn’t actually glow in the dark!

One of my (many) favourite tv shows, Australian Idol, has finished for another year. I am happy that Wes won the “crown”, the recording contract, the money and the car. Any guy who unashamedly impersonates Michael Jackson in front of a Jackson (Jermaine) and has no shame about idolising the “King of Pop” deserves to win this musical cheese-fest! Hello, cousin Peter – owner of Michael Jackson Live in Bucharest DVD.
This year, the final was held entirely outside of the Sydney Opera House… was it double booked? This usually is an ideal location for such special events except for the fact that it rained all night. I was worried someone might slip over while singing and dancing. Summer? Anyone… anyone…?
Anyway, I enjoyed seeing all the top 12 singing together again, there was lots of back slapping and hugging.
• The female finalists sang I’m Every Woman (getting a bit bored of this song).
• I hated what Roshani Priddis wore on stage (sorry can’t find a pic at the moment), but it was a hidaecious black & white strapless dress with long gloves ensemble, very similar to what she wore on one of her finals performance that Kyle said was a bad look.
• I still think that Madam Parker has got something going for her – hope she gets some work out of this.
• Jess Mauboy (Idol runner up in 2006) performed her new single and she looks and sounds pretty hot, I think they are trying to make her the Australian RiRi.
• Casey Chambers performed her special country music with the two finalists – Wes & Luke, she looked pretty bad, the poor thing.
• It was interesting to see how the tally room works and finding out that every second, two hundred and something votes were being recorded (ka-ching). What the hell was going on with Tim Bailey’s hair!!! It was not a good look on him.
• Must give an honourable mention to the hosts Andrew G and James Mathison. I think they do a really good job of hosting a live tv show where anything can go wrong (and it often does throughout the season). They manage to fill dead air or make a quick joke to cover someone else’s lame comment. It was gold when they made fun of Jermaine Jackson saying “Touchdown”. I hope they came up with that themselves… I don’t know, maybe someone writes their jokes for them…
So, a fairly enjoyable season of Idol in 2008, but not the greatest. I think that Season One was the best.

Book of Longing

Originally uploaded by Australian Rozie

Dave and I went to this quite a while ago. I’m catching up on things that I wanted to blog about now that I’ve handed in my Cert IV TAA work in.
I wanted to see Philip Glass before he died. When I saw that he was performing the Book of Longing at the Sydney Opera House, I decided that tickets to this show would make a great present for Dave’s birthday. The show consisted of the poems of Leonard Cohen – he is not my man but I thought it would be interesting anyway.
After birthday drinks at the “perfect Sydney” Opera Bar, we headed over to the concert hall. We had great seats – in the third row from the front! Melody tagged along too in the last minute seats, but she’d seen him before (I think). We all received a little copy of The Book of Longing which was a nice touch, it was s bit like a wedding program, where you could follow along and see where we were up to in the performance.
Philip Glass came out and the crowd went wild. Then, the ensemble of musicians and vocalists came out and did their thing. It was – different, unusual. Dave even mentions, “daggy”. I think that I just wanted to see Glass perform The Hours soundtrack, instead I got nutty songs about love, loss and some rude words. Philip Glass sat on the stage, tinkled a few bars and would then wander off stage letting the other musicians do their thing, then he’d come back, tinkle a bit more, then wander off again. It wasn’t really what I imagined it was going to be. Oh well, I know how brilliant he is, if you haven’t seen Glass: a Portrait of Philip Glass in Twelve Parts, you definitely should check it out. And I got to see him before he… you know what.
Here are some other reviews:
http://www.australianstage.com.au/reviews/miaf/book-of-longing–philip-glass-1974.html
http://www.artshub.com.au/au/news.asp?sc=&sId=174548&sType=review

because…Major World Tour Begins May 2009, New Album Due April 2009
Their official website is under construction right now.
Speaking of concerts, here are a few gigs I’ve got coming up:
Oct 22: Stevie Wonder Now being the “old” legend that he is, this could go either way (bad like Barry White or awesome like err Prince). I saw him performing at the Democratic National Convention, so hopefully it will be good.
Dec 6: Kanye West I don’t care what you think. It’s going to be cool. He’s come to Australia about 4 times and I’ve really wanted to check him out, so this time it’s going to happen.
Other concerts I would like to go to but “wallet says no” are Kylie X Tour and Alicia Keys