sw’as

I’ve always felt as if I’m missing out on something when it comes to music. I feel like I was late to the game, and I’m still catching up. I’m certain I didn’t really know anything at all about music until I was in high school and even though there are songs from before then that will bring back memories - good and bad - I couldn’t name them. Even well into high school I don’t think my interest in being a music fan had reached tipping point and my music taste certainly hadn’t matured to a point where I could be proud of it. Part way through senior I was starting to get the hang of it, but by then I’d missed so much music of my own time that it hurts to think about it, and I still had to catch up on all of history^[1].

Without further ado, here they are - in no particular order^[2]:

Ween - Chocolate and Cheese

Which Ween album to include was a real toss up. Gene (Aaron Freeman) and Dean (Mickey Melchiondo) make some crazy music, and each album has both highlights and moments of boredom, but the variety and experimentation truly make up for any boring bits. In the end I choose Chocolate and Cheese mostly because of the Ween albums I like most, its the oldest so it gives me more Ween loving cred. Also it has boobs on the cover.

Highlights:

• Roes are Free
• Baby Bitch

Eels - Daisies of the Galaxy

I discovered Daisies, and the Eels in general, about 2000 when Mr. E’s Beautiful Blues was on high rotation on Triple J. I must have come to school listening to it at least a quarter of the school days that year. By this time my music taste was starting to mature, and I was fairly certain I could never actually have a favourite band because I liked such a wide variety of music (and in some ways I still feel that way). However, over the next couple of years - and albums discovered - the Eels took that mantle.

Highlights:

• Mr. E’s Beautiful Blues
• I like birds
• Tiger in my tank

Eels (with strings) - Live at Town Hall

This album makes me deeply sad I’m not a New Yorker because, then being there might have been a possibility. It’s a live album recorded at a one off concert performed at New York’s Town Hall. They were accompanied by four strings artists playing various percussion parts, two violins, one viola, one cello and one vibrator. This is essentially a ‘best of’ album but better. There’s no doubt in my mind that this brought Mark Oliver Everett’s music to its glorious best. I can only hope that he manages to top it. There’s also a DVD of the concert. I don’t even know where to start with highlights on this one. There are only about three tracks I’d even consider leaving out of the highlights list.

Cat Stevens - Greatest Hits

Although I knew many of the songs, I didn’t really discover this album until about 2001 when I discovered it in my Aunty and Uncle’s collection and gave it a spin. One of my earliest memories is of my mother (kind of annoyingly) singing Morning Has Broken on a fairly regular basis. I’ve kept the list of highlights on this album to one, but I could easily have listed six or seven as genuine highlights. This is my hippy blood shining through.

Highlight:

• Morning Has Broken

Cody ChesnuTT - The Headphone Masterpiece

A 36 track epic double album (and his only album to date), this really is a masterpiece. If you take music as a window into the moral character of the artists who write and perform it, then Cody ChesnuTT is close enough to being the antithesis of Cat Stevens. It’s rude, egotastic and off-the-scale misogynistic, but damn is it good music. I think I discovered this through the Js again. Look Good in Leather was on high roatation some time about 2001/2 I think, and I bought the album based on that one song.

Highlights:

• The World Is Coming To My Party
• Somebody’s Parent
• Look Good in Leather
• 6 Seconds

The Decemberists - Picaresque

Yet again, I more than likely discovered these guys through JJJ, and it was probably 16 Military Wives that piqued my interest. Fairly folksy and at times moving strongly into the surprisingly robust category of the modern sea shanty, this music isn’t going to be for everyone. What keeps me coming back to this album is the story telling. 16 Military Wives is a poetic, if somewhat obvious, political comment which I wholeheartedly agree with and like hearing. The storyline in the Mariner’s Revenge Song feels like it could be a classic. Mariner’s Revenge is also the closest you’ll get to a title track on this album. If you don’t know what picaresque means, you should look it up. Great word.

Highlights:

• 16 Military Wives
• Mariner’s Revenge Song

Green Day - International Superhits

I know, I know, another best of. Well, that’s just the way it is. This is my highschool punk rock band of choice. I clearly remember hanging around outside some dance music stage at Livid one year (turns out it was 2000 on investigation) and convincing Aidan we should head over to the main stage to catch Green Day. About 20 meters from the entrance to the main stage area I heard the start of Hitchin’ a Ride, turned to Aidan and gave some no doubt stupid indication of how excited I was and promptly lost him in the crowd while making my way, unstoppably, to the front. I managed to find him about an hour later not far from where I left him and, as I remember it, having spent the time buying a drink for some random girl no doubt hoping for some kind of tongue action. And here I find myself at number seven with at least six more albums on my short list. Bummer.

Highlights:

• Longview
• When I Come Around
• Hitchin’ A Ride
• Good Riddance (unfortunately this is border line cliché)
• Minority

John Lennon - Lennon Legend

This album is on the list for two reasons. First, I think it probably deserves to be, and second it’s here representing all the Beatles albums that should be on the list but I don’t know well enough. The only Beatles album I know really well is Sgt. Pepper’s, which I like a great deal (and upon further reflection, maybe should be taking this album’s spot in the top ten). Unfortunately I couldn’t bring myself to put it on the list ahead of the others I don’t know well enough.

Highlights:

• Stand By Me

The Avalanches - Since I Left You

Well, thank fuck there’s finally some Australian music in the list. This album seems to be fairly widely considered a masterpiece of the electronic music genre, and so it should be. As far as I’m aware, it was created exclusively from samples. It has an energetic flow that’s difficult to describe. There’s enough depth in most of the tracks to keep you interested if you want to listen intently, and at the same time you could probably have it playing for hours in the background of a good conversation and not really notice it. The conversation would have to be good though, or you’d no doubt end up wanting to listen intently.

Highlight:

• Frontier Psychiatrist

White Stripes - Elephant

I remain unsure that some of the albums I’ve selected for this top ten really deserve their slot. They’re all albums I love, there’s no question of that. However the title ‘top albums of all time’ makes me feel that unless love for the album has a real depth - like the Eels albums - each album selected should define a critical moment in the history of music, and most of mine probably don’t. This album is one that I feel can’t be denied it’s spot. I love it, and feel as though it really has made a permanent mark on the history of music.

Highlights:

• Seven Nation Army (obviously)
• Well it’s True That We Love One Another

Finally

There are some things I think are unfortunately missing from this list, and over time, could easily become glaring omissions. I fully expect to be embarrassed by some of my choices once I unpack my still boxed CD collection, and once the passing of time has provided more clarity. Some of the things I think are missing (and possibly mistakenly so) are as follows. Australian music, notably Powderfinger and (early) Silverchair. The Shins. Somehow the Decemberists edged them out of the list, but Shutes Too Narrow should be there. Anything from the 80s. Queen. Muse. I never really understood Muse until seeing them live last year. They blew me away. But, alas, I am yet to listen to a whole muse album so I couldn’t select one for this list. I fully expect they would be on this list a year or so from now.

1. Part of this I’m going to blame on my growing up where only there was very little radio reception. The only even vaguely music oriented station I got listenable reception for was, the banal and poppy B105. [↩]
2. For anyone reading this who isn’t in the know. I spent a glorious three weeks over the Christmas-New Year period of 2008 in a small Italian town called Pitigliano. The desire to compile this list came from some great conversation had with some great friends during that time. [↩]

Flicking through my feeds this morning, I discovered (via skipp.net) that today is International Day of Awesomeness. Looking through Scott’s list of things that are awesome, I realised I too have a bunch of things and people in my life that I think are awesome and/or regularly perform feats of awesomeness. While this realisation seems pretty obvious in retrospect, it’s one of those things that just needs pointing out before you take the time to think about it.

Reading a little further, I discover that the day is at least partly inspired by The Show with Ze Frank, probably the most awesome vodcast ever. This post is obviously not that awesome, and I haven’t performed any feats of awesomeness in posting it (or at all today, in fact), so to remedy that situation at least a little bit, I’ll end it with a list of things I think are awesome. This list is not exhaustive.

• family
• friends
• music (especially modern sea shanties)
• summer storms
• reason
• Merlo coffee
• time
• Stichelton
• classical sculpture
• lazy friend filled days
• health
• books
• freedom
• Scrubs

Don’t be afraid, embrace your awesomeness, even if you think it’s kind of stupid.

Recently Skippy asked, ‘why do you blog?’ I was commenting on that and it got kind of long, so I thought I’d record it here. The short answer is, I don’t know, and I’m not sure I need to know. But since this is all about figuring out the answer, I guess I’ll play along.

A good place to start with figuring out why I blog is probably to look at the content and see where that leads me, and the answer is that it’s mostly personal - Laura and Aidan, my wife and best friend respectively seem to be two of the most used tags around here). There’s some tech stuff in there (I have a less than totally obscure WP plugin that people seem to like)^[1]. I rant in a fairly banal way about things that shit me (technical, social and political things in approximately equal measures). I also occasionally use it as a diary, and to post things that are only likely to be of interest to my close friends and family.

From time to time, I think about getting focused with my blog (or with another purpose built blog). Trying to really craft my desired online identity/reputation. I also from time to time think about the possibilities of monetising it. Building a real audience and focusing on SEO. Then I think about how much work all that would be and I decide I’ve got more interesting (and probably rewarding) things to devote my time to.

Having said all that, I think the real answer is simply that I love the internet and the possibilities it presents in all kinds of different ways. I love things like XFN, micro-formats, APIs and aggregation. I love programming (which came as kind of a surprise to me) and am passionate about things like web standards and elegance in all kinds of code.

This was originally a comment on Skippy’s post, but since I usually turn any comment I’m going to make that’s longer than a paragraph or so into a post/trackback, it’s been put here as well. And that leaves me a nice segue into a post/comment on ‘Why do you comment?‘ But I’m going to leave that for another day.

1. I plan on releasing a version for Habari when I get around to switching this blog over. [↩]

After recently arriving back home from a year in the UK, I’ve been increasingly frustrated with the lack of availability and high price of books here in Australia. More than that, I didn’t understand why there are no good online book retailers in Australia, even the good physical retailers don’t have good online stores - none of them^[1]. That was, until I read an article today by Chris Berg which flicked the light switch for me - even if it didn’t solve the problem.

It had bewildered me before I left that there were no good online book sellers in Australia^[2], and since I’ve been back it’s actually been making me kind of angry that there isn’t an Amazon.com.au. I had no idea there was a ban on parallel importation of books, but there’s the answer.

Amazon in the UK (and I assume the US) is one of the most fabulous things. You can get any book, new or old, at a competitive price into your mail box within a day or two. Mid way through last year I was out one morning, and having forgotten about a friend’s birthday, went in search of a present knowing I’d be seeing him later that day. Before long I had decided on a book; specifically, An Acre of Barren Ground by Justin Cartwright which I had read a couple of years earlier and felt would be perfect^[3]. Despite calling in at more than half a dozen book stores I couldn’t get it. None had it in stock, though all offered to order it in for me - it would only take a few days (read 4-8 working days) and they all put the price at around about £15 (which I would have paid had they had it in stock). In the end I decided to turn up empty handed and order it from Amazon; I knew they would, as always, have what I was looking for. I picked up a brand new copy for about £1 more than the £1.26 a used copy would have set me back. The postage ended up being more expensive than the book and it was through my mail slot in 3 days.

It’s not only online retail being affected. Why, for example does a classic like Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway cost more than twice as much in an Australian Borders than it does in a UK Borders? I’m sure the publishers have it figured out, but at that price point, they’re losing at least me as a customer. I thought nothing of picking up another classic for £2 to read on my London commute, but at $10, I’m going to need to really want to read it.

We are, as Chris points out, far from having an open market in literature. I hope that changes.

1. I really mean that, there are none. The best I’ve found is Booktopia, and I don’t rate it highly. If you know of any better ones, please let me know I’ll be forever grateful. [↩]
2. Yes, all the big overseas ones will ship here, but it’ll double the cost of your book. [↩]
3. This is a wonderful book about the East End of London (specifically, Brick Lane) which I highly recommend. [↩]