Pirates vs. Ninjas
So in every city, there are always people who are stupid and misguided and wrong. That’s how we got Kerry Prendeghastly for a mayor, after all, and the bypass too. In another classic example of people who are backing the wrong team, these people are planning on dressing like ninjas to attend the first screening of Pirates of the Caribbean 3. Yo me hearties, rise up and fight off the evil ninja threat! Everyone knows that pirates are cooler. Thinking otherwise is like saying robots could win in a fight against tigers. As if!
Charity Dinner & Dance, June 16
Get your glad rags ready, and pay a bit more attention to Dancing With the Stars over the next few weeks.
The Asia & Pacific Ladies Association are hosting an authentic Indian & Continental food evening with live entertainment!
- Enjoy the music & excellent company
- Win great door prizes (win a door?)
- Bring friends & reserve a table for 10
Saturday 16 June
(I know this is early, but you need time to find that perfect outfit right?)
From 6pm
Indian Association Hall
48 Kemp Street
Kilbirnie
Drinks BYO or available for purchase at venue.
Tickets $50
Contact (021) 855 789 or (04) 477 0628
And the charity? You’ll be helping keep the “FREE” in Wellington Free Ambulance.
Entertainment book: 88
Having recently purchased an entertainment book through the social club at work, I am determined to get more than my money’s worth out of it, so I’m going to try and work my way through it systematically.
First up I wanted a quick dinner before bowling, and since I didn’t have the book with me, only the gold card, it had to be somewhere in the ‘fine dining’ section, and it had to be somewhere in the Courtenay Quarter to be near The Lanes. A quick search on their website led me to 88 on Tory Street.
Wellington Music Month 4: Gettin’ Serious
Some favourites:
The Avengers
For a time in the late sixties The Avengers were one of the highest profile rock bands on the New Zealand scene. Their song Waterpipe is one of the greatest songs to ever glorify the joys of using water in your bong. The 1968 debut LP Electric Recording has possibly my favourite album cover art ever — look how cool they are — as well as being a damn good record. They went to try their luck in Australia and broke up in ’69.
Bailter Space
Look — we have to let Christchurch have The Gordons, and The Skeptics were undoubtedly from Palmerston North, but I’m going to have to insist despite them beginning in Christchurch and ending up in New York, that Wellington be allowed to claim shoe-gazey atmospheric noise rockers Bailter Space as its own. They were an incredible live band, known for being one of the loudest of their era. Their gigs were few and far between, and many people still speak in hushed, reverential tones about the week in 1993 when there were TWO Bailter Space gigs. And their albums still stand up as being some of the best music to ever come out of New Zealand.
Birchville Cat Motel
a.k.a. Campbell Kneale. As Wikipedia sez,
although largely unknown in his home country, Kneale has toured many times throughout Asia, America, Europe, and Australia.
Daft name, and yet this one-man trancendental drone/noise act is surely the closest thing Wellington and New Zealand has ever had to a global music superstar.
Eight more, after this…
Wellington music month 3: getting noizy
Skallander – The Camels
Take the welly dub ethic, mix it up with some guitar and ambient noise, and you end up with this brilliant slab of aural inventiveness. One of the many projects to come from the musical mind of the very talented and massively under-rated Bevan Smith.
Shihad – Killjoy
Best NZ rock album. Ever. Nuff said.
The Bilge Festival – Cape Goat
The good side of Wellington wacky rock. Two mad singer/songwriters and a super-tight rhythm section, create an opus of bizarre yet funky songs. Wildebeest a go-go!!
Over the Atlantic – Junica
Another Bevan Smith collaboration – this is like a Wellingtonian take on what the definitive New Order album might sound like. The noise wig-out on the last track ‘Fly to the States’ is the best bit of distortion you’ll ever hear. (Video below is the track ’35 Black & White’)…
Debris – She’s the Bomb
Yeah, I played on it. And technically we’re all from Christchurch. But we were living here at the time, it was recorded at the infamous Church on Frederick St., and it’s f**kin’ awesome.
Wellington music month 2: favourite songs for the forlorn
If you ever talk to me and I can’t hear you, these bands and these songs are probably to blame for the condition of my ears.
- ‘Deb’s night out’ – Shihad. They might turn the noise up to 11 on other numbers, but this is quieter, more contemplative and all the more powerful and bitter for it.
- ‘The Lover’ – Fur Patrol. Is there any line more gutting than “This is the lover you left me for and I hope you’re happy now”? I don’t think so. Find it on their first EP Starlifter.
- ‘The Drinker’ – The Phoenix Foundation. “At the bottom of the bottle you can wipe your conscience clean” – and lord knows the Wellingtonista try that, although for us it should be “At the bottom of the pineapple…”
- ‘And the truth faded into dust’ – The Dukes of Leisure. Get your sonic noise on. Best heard at the planeterium for maximum impact.
- ‘I’m on fire’ – Head like a Hole. Normally it’s the Phoenix Foundation who get all The Boss up on us, but this cover is just perfect, from Booga’s sleaze, to the wig-out at the end, and the video that featured them playing on the roof ala U2, with the old Channel Z Carhoona driving around below.
Wellington music month 1: guaranteed Emo-free
We thought that we’d celebrate NZ Music month by highlighting some of our favourite Wellington music. Here’s my top 5, veering between the obscure and the downright mainstream.
Aspen, Are you that retail snob?. This was the album that got me back into making music. It’s somewhere between ambient, glitch and early 90s IDM, but all you need to know is that it’s dripping with gorgeous textures and melodies.
Rhian Sheehan, Tiny Blue Biosphere. I know, I know: it’s over-produced coffee table music for yuppies, but hell, maybe that’s what I am (even though I don’t own a coffee table). And any album that samples Carl Sagan not once but twice has to get bonus geek points.
Disasteradio, Synthtease. Damn, this guy’s ransacked my childhood! Yazoo with a VIC 20, Kraftwerk playing Asteroids, 8-bit beats and viral melodies.
Rhombus, Future Reference. Yep, it’s a Welly list, so there had to be some dub somewhere. But Rhombus’ influences range far wider than most, and touches of funk, hip-hop, electronica and jazz give their sound an infectious enthusiasm. “Scorching Bay” has to be an instant Wellington classic.
Twinset and friends, Christmas Puddin’. The only Christmas album that doesn’t make me want to stick Rudolph’s antlers where the sun don’t shine. They know that you can’t take carols too seriously, but while Benj Berryman injects some swingin’ cheese into ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’, there are some surprisingly straight jazz treatments and delicate moments. As you can probably tell, I’m still hanging out for the lounge revival revival.
Flight of the Conchords: Albi the racist dragon
Wellington’s favourite comedy export aren’t here for the NZ International Comedy Festival (lots of good acts are though, click through for more info), so you’ll just have to make do with our weekly wednesday Flight of the Conchords clip…
“It’s better now.”
WBL: Results Round Four
So tonight I messed up with giving people their lane assignments, which probably means that it’s possible that ClickSuite might have thought that they’d won their round, and Clemenger might have thought that they’d lost theirs (oh who are we kidding, Clemenger would never think that, and that’s why we love them), but as it turns out, it was Bowltron who were the winners on the night. The random point was awarded to the slowest bowler, who happened to be me, on 2.34km. If Silverstripe’s ball had actually made it to the end instead of getting stuck in the gutter, it might have been them, but it wasn’t, and so I totally got myself a happy ending, complete with two strikes after that. But I’m sure if you wanted to read only about me, you’d head straight to Hubris, so the scores are after the jump.
Vic Books sale
On a stunning day like today, what could be a better way to use your lunch hour than taking the cable car up the hill to Victoria University and checking out the sale at Vic Books? With books starting at 50 cents, this is how I keep my bookshelves overloaded.
There’s only a week and a half more to go, but new stock is constantly added, there’s 25% off fiction not already reduced on 17th May; and 25% off non-fiction not already reduced on the 24th. The sale finishes Friday 25th May and the shop’s open daily from 8am-6pm. Oh, and due to a terrible mishap with suppliers, they have 100 copies of Ann Coulter’s Slander for 50 cents each, which is perfect if you’re in the mood for a good old-fashioned book burning to warm the autumn nights. Hurrah!