Hi all,
just wanted to bring your attentions to this. I met this Argentinian guy, Christian in Indonesia 6 years ago.
He has now set up a website for his photography.....i gotta say, it is nothing short of outstanding!!
take 15 minutes of your life and check it out.
www.ostroskyphotos.com
cheers,
tony
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
War Vets, Communism, Anarchists and Easter Eggs
Hi again,
You know I end up at some of the strangest-amazing-bizarro events and parties here, especially when I happen to be on my bike (for some strange reason).
After the gig I just wrote about, I met another couple of cyclists, Darren and Wendy, who happened to have been at the Low gig, and were cycling home in the same general direction as I. "Hey man, do you wanna come to a party tonight?". 'Sure". I was only planning on heading home anyways, and it was only 9.30pm.
Now what happened over the next 6 hours or so is kinda hard to explain in an email, but i'll do my best. First of all we had to make a pit-stop for a beer, and so we stopped at, of all the places in the world, the local Army and Navy Legion Club on Main Street, East Vancouver!!??!! (same as the ol' Returned Soldiers League - RSL pubs back home in Oz). Darren and Wendy were both students, and therefore had sussed out all the places in town for cheap beer, and here it was about $3 for a bottle. Better than the $5.50 I was paying at the gig! Now, I'm all about experiencing the cultural side of society, and here was an insight into the Saturday nights of Vancouver's senior Ladies and Gents - shuffleboard games and Old Timers doing waaaaaayy-out-of-tune karaoke renditions of old Tom Petty tunes and 40's country ditties. It was great!!
Then to the party itself, which turned out to be a theme party of, get this, "Communist Party Easter Egg Hunt Preparation Party"!! And apparently this was the 5th such party, and annual event every Easter! (PB, you would have loved this - right after a Low gig too!!)
So, it was all get dressed up as a Commie, with people wearing red arm bands with the Hammer and Syckle and painted on Lenin beards, all painting hard boiled eggs with the same motifs, and even photocopied flyers advertising the event that was to follow the following Sunday morning! Not to mention Vodka shots being generously shouted at every opportune moment.
Ironically, this was attended by a rabble of anarchist-lefty bikey-arty types, some of whom I had previously met at the Critical Mass rally and Butchershop event back in Feb. As one of the guys mentioned "The alternative community in Vancouver is pretty small".
Okay, so come Midnight, we all leave the house, Smirnoff bottles in hand, singing a hideously out-of-tune version of The Internationale (Communism's unofficial anthem) at the top of our lungs, and venture to a nearby park with a kiddies playground and proceed to hide all the eggs, and with staple guns and tape (they were well prepared!) stuck up all the flyers on poles and lamp-posts within a 3-block radius. Things got out of hand when we started sticky-taping empty vodka bottles with boiled eggs in the opening to Canada Post mailboxes, but goddamn it was funny!....and fun!!
Back at the house, more vodka shots (they had a LOT of vodka), and even red-dyed cookies in the shape of the Hammer and Sickle (!!) were dished out to all and sundry. By about 2am, I'd pretty much had my fill of free vodka (i don't handle that spirit very well), and was shaping up to go home, when the heavens opened and it started lashing down with rain - kinda nipping my idea of cycling home right there in the bud.
Incredibly tho, there was one guy at the party who was sober (!), and had a pick-up truck, AND lived about 5 blocks from me....hows that for getting the trifecta! So i got a ride home with him, my bike in the back. Needless to say my Easter Sunday was a write off.
Talk soon,
tony
You know I end up at some of the strangest-amazing-bizarro events and parties here, especially when I happen to be on my bike (for some strange reason).
After the gig I just wrote about, I met another couple of cyclists, Darren and Wendy, who happened to have been at the Low gig, and were cycling home in the same general direction as I. "Hey man, do you wanna come to a party tonight?". 'Sure". I was only planning on heading home anyways, and it was only 9.30pm.
Now what happened over the next 6 hours or so is kinda hard to explain in an email, but i'll do my best. First of all we had to make a pit-stop for a beer, and so we stopped at, of all the places in the world, the local Army and Navy Legion Club on Main Street, East Vancouver!!??!! (same as the ol' Returned Soldiers League - RSL pubs back home in Oz). Darren and Wendy were both students, and therefore had sussed out all the places in town for cheap beer, and here it was about $3 for a bottle. Better than the $5.50 I was paying at the gig! Now, I'm all about experiencing the cultural side of society, and here was an insight into the Saturday nights of Vancouver's senior Ladies and Gents - shuffleboard games and Old Timers doing waaaaaayy-out-of-tune karaoke renditions of old Tom Petty tunes and 40's country ditties. It was great!!
Then to the party itself, which turned out to be a theme party of, get this, "Communist Party Easter Egg Hunt Preparation Party"!! And apparently this was the 5th such party, and annual event every Easter! (PB, you would have loved this - right after a Low gig too!!)
So, it was all get dressed up as a Commie, with people wearing red arm bands with the Hammer and Syckle and painted on Lenin beards, all painting hard boiled eggs with the same motifs, and even photocopied flyers advertising the event that was to follow the following Sunday morning! Not to mention Vodka shots being generously shouted at every opportune moment.
Ironically, this was attended by a rabble of anarchist-lefty bikey-arty types, some of whom I had previously met at the Critical Mass rally and Butchershop event back in Feb. As one of the guys mentioned "The alternative community in Vancouver is pretty small".
Okay, so come Midnight, we all leave the house, Smirnoff bottles in hand, singing a hideously out-of-tune version of The Internationale (Communism's unofficial anthem) at the top of our lungs, and venture to a nearby park with a kiddies playground and proceed to hide all the eggs, and with staple guns and tape (they were well prepared!) stuck up all the flyers on poles and lamp-posts within a 3-block radius. Things got out of hand when we started sticky-taping empty vodka bottles with boiled eggs in the opening to Canada Post mailboxes, but goddamn it was funny!....and fun!!
Back at the house, more vodka shots (they had a LOT of vodka), and even red-dyed cookies in the shape of the Hammer and Sickle (!!) were dished out to all and sundry. By about 2am, I'd pretty much had my fill of free vodka (i don't handle that spirit very well), and was shaping up to go home, when the heavens opened and it started lashing down with rain - kinda nipping my idea of cycling home right there in the bud.
Incredibly tho, there was one guy at the party who was sober (!), and had a pick-up truck, AND lived about 5 blocks from me....hows that for getting the trifecta! So i got a ride home with him, my bike in the back. Needless to say my Easter Sunday was a write off.
Talk soon,
tony
U2 Tickets and Vegemite/Happy Easter/Low Mono
hey,
Happer Easter to y'all.
What News!!
Two essential items for an Aussie on tour, and I got 'em both recently!! And to be honest, i'm not sure which I was more excited about!!
U2 are touring thru Vancouver on April 28th/29th, and when the tix went on sale in February, both concerts sold out in something like 16 minutes!! I was thinking it'd be pretty cool to catch them here, seeing as I missed both of the last two tours, PopMart and Elevation, but then discounted the idea when i heard they'd sold out so quickly.
But then a friend pointed me to 'ebay'....there were something like 200 or more auctions going on for Vancouver U2 tix!! So much for the officials trying to stop scalping! Anyway, I put down bids for at least 40 auctions, figuring I had to win at least one. I was right! And I didn't pay much above the retail price either - C$62 for a regular priced C$50 ticket. Woo-hoo!!
And last week I was doing my usual Safeway shopping, when what did I spy out of the corner of my eye?......the Aussie backpacker's Holy Grail - VEGEMITE!! Mind you, around C$5 for a 100gram jar was a bit steep, but I didn't care. I got VEGEMITE!!
This Easter weekend I was planning to go away somewhere in British Columbia, but I had to cancel those plans when my work contract was cut short by 10days and therefore I would be a little short on cashflow. I figured I'd be spending around C$200-250 over the 3-4day break, but didn't want to have a totally wasted long weekend, so as compensation for myself, I bought tickets to a couple of international touring bands for $40, one i'd never heard of before, Mono, from Japan, and one who I was a huge fan of, and was pretty excited about seeing, Low, from Minnesota, USA.
I also got away on Good Friday for another 1/2 day trip with the hiking club, at a local spot called the Burnaby Mountain Conservation Area just out in the 'burbs, next to the Simon Fraser University. Not nearly as extensive or physically demanding as the Squamish hike (and even that was pretty easy), but still nice to get out into the bush for a 8Km walk. At the end of the hike we ended up in this open park at the top of the hill with some pretty speccy views over Van City and the Howe Sound, and with spring well and truly in full swing, the trees and flowers were in full bloom - can anyone guess that I had my camera out for some more nature snaps!!! ;-)
That night was the Mono gig at a small, intimate venue called The Media Club. Mono (www.mono-44.com) are a relatively famous in their own land, post-rock art-noise completely instrumental guitar band, kind of in the same vein as God Speed You Black Emperor, Mogwai, Hope Of The States, and Sigur Ros etc. In short, they're awesome.
I've taken the liberty of pasting in a review of one of their gigs here (courtesy of their website) - this author describes them in ways i could never begin to imagine.
"Mono's epic sound-scaping is on another level. It's in the pin drop quiet that accompanies their performance, allowing them to play quieter than a whisper and hold an awestruck audience's attention with apparent ease. It's in buildups that sweep you up, dragging you along in an atmospheric and apocalyptic undertow before spitting you out into a ball of furious rage, of brutal noise and ear-shattering distortion. There's violence, but it's a brutality that's shaped by music, a reflection of the world in aching guitars and warped noise, each note plucked or thrashed for a purpose. Importantly, it's not done purely for the sake of noise, but for poetry and beauty."
"Mono look anything but rock behemonths, yet it takes a mere five minute for this facade to be utterly destroyed by an unstoppable torrent of cataclysmic noise. When they reach the eye of the storm, the lull is inviting, but those that stray from earplug safety are swifty blown away by the return to earth-shaking bombast of a 15minute epic that truly tests the buildings foundations. They make 90 per cent bands you've ever seen look like woeful pretenders in the atmosphere stakes, giving a performance as heart-tugging as it was entertaining.And then they're gone, back to quiet normality, leaving only bewilderment and bleeding ears behind them."
"The Japanese foursome - bassist Tamaki, drummer Yasunori Takada and guitarists Taka Goto and Yoda - don't say a word and the songs are similary mute. Vocally, thats is, although the dynamics of just a couple of guitars, a set of drums and some occasional piano are exploited completely throughout. They're a cool-looking band - like refugees from a gritty Manga cartoon - and it's a pleasure just to stand, watch and listen. Raging from loud to quiet and back again, every moment was a highlight, but A Thousand Paper Cranes deserves posthumous mention. It's inspired by the tale of a girl who contracted leukaemia at Hiroshima and then proceeded to fold 1000 paper cranes in acoordance with an old legend that the gods would grant her wishes."
There you go.
Saturday night was the Low (http://www.chairkickers.com) gig. Now I know of one particular mate back in Melbourne who'd be supremely jealous of me now (g'day PB). This is a band that we've been following for a while now, and given that a) they are a relentless touring band, and b) they hail from the not-so-far-away city of Minnesota, it was a better-then-even chance they'd be touring thru Vancouver some time this year. I had tix the day after I found out they were coming!! The gig was at Richard's on Richards, the same venue I saw The Frames in, and is fast becoming my fave place to see bands in.
For some reason or another, it was an early show, with doors at 7pm, and first band on at 7.30pm. Low were supported by Pedro The Lion (http://www.pedrothelion.com), a band who i since learned are a headline act in their own right, from Seattle. In fact there were punters who left the show after they finished, claiming they were only interested in seeing them (they don't know what they were missing out on). I found the bassist from Pedro at the merchandise stall after their set and had a good chat. Unfortunately, for some reason or other (import charges, taxes) they couldn't get their own merchandise past the police and over the border from the US, so just had to settle on signing ticket stubs and handing out adverts for their albums.
Low were amazing. I knew they would be. They've just changed record labels, moving over to the seminal Sub Pop Records stable - former home of Nirvana among others. I'm guessing as a result of this, they have actually amped up their sound quite a bit, and have gone from a slow, intense, moody, spacey-brooding aesthetic, to a sometimes quite rocky and even poppy sound, creating a magnificent fury of noise, a new sonic territory even, all with their same trademark moody intensity maintained, of course. No more sadcore, they have clearly abandoned the 'play everything as slowly as possible' ethic from when they formed in 1994. At one early point in the show, the singer-guitarist, Alan Sparhawk, even briefly played a solo with his teeth!! I think he may have been venting some frustration as they seemed to be having some serious technical sound problems with the amps and mic's, ie they weren't loud enough! Alan looks like a rocker tho, he even has that rockabilly quiff - actually he looks remarkably like an older version of Danny Zuko's Greased Lightnin' sidekick (characters name escapes me) in Grease. The other two members are a female drummer, Mimi Parker, who maintains a hypnotic beat on the tom-drum, and the suave, quiet and mysterious looking Zak Sally on bass.
I'd bought their new release, The Great Destroyer at the merchandise stall, and after the show while i was milling about, soaking in what i had just witnessed, I spied the singer chatting with members of the audience. Emboldened by the sheer revelatory emotions I was feeling, I approached him to see if he could sign my Cdee. "Sure, you gotta pen?". I didn't. "Don't worry, come backstage with me, we've got a texta there I'm sure"....!!!!!!!!!!!!
I met the whole band, and got them all to sign it!! Talk about having a WOW moment! And the reason he was in the audience was that he was scoping for dope, so if only I'd had some of my meagre stash with me that night, I could've been havin' a puff with them all....Damn. Still, what a great night.
Anyway, that's it fer now.
Enjoy your choco binges this weekend,
Tony
Happer Easter to y'all.
What News!!
Two essential items for an Aussie on tour, and I got 'em both recently!! And to be honest, i'm not sure which I was more excited about!!
U2 are touring thru Vancouver on April 28th/29th, and when the tix went on sale in February, both concerts sold out in something like 16 minutes!! I was thinking it'd be pretty cool to catch them here, seeing as I missed both of the last two tours, PopMart and Elevation, but then discounted the idea when i heard they'd sold out so quickly.
But then a friend pointed me to 'ebay'....there were something like 200 or more auctions going on for Vancouver U2 tix!! So much for the officials trying to stop scalping! Anyway, I put down bids for at least 40 auctions, figuring I had to win at least one. I was right! And I didn't pay much above the retail price either - C$62 for a regular priced C$50 ticket. Woo-hoo!!
And last week I was doing my usual Safeway shopping, when what did I spy out of the corner of my eye?......the Aussie backpacker's Holy Grail - VEGEMITE!! Mind you, around C$5 for a 100gram jar was a bit steep, but I didn't care. I got VEGEMITE!!
This Easter weekend I was planning to go away somewhere in British Columbia, but I had to cancel those plans when my work contract was cut short by 10days and therefore I would be a little short on cashflow. I figured I'd be spending around C$200-250 over the 3-4day break, but didn't want to have a totally wasted long weekend, so as compensation for myself, I bought tickets to a couple of international touring bands for $40, one i'd never heard of before, Mono, from Japan, and one who I was a huge fan of, and was pretty excited about seeing, Low, from Minnesota, USA.
I also got away on Good Friday for another 1/2 day trip with the hiking club, at a local spot called the Burnaby Mountain Conservation Area just out in the 'burbs, next to the Simon Fraser University. Not nearly as extensive or physically demanding as the Squamish hike (and even that was pretty easy), but still nice to get out into the bush for a 8Km walk. At the end of the hike we ended up in this open park at the top of the hill with some pretty speccy views over Van City and the Howe Sound, and with spring well and truly in full swing, the trees and flowers were in full bloom - can anyone guess that I had my camera out for some more nature snaps!!! ;-)
That night was the Mono gig at a small, intimate venue called The Media Club. Mono (www.mono-44.com) are a relatively famous in their own land, post-rock art-noise completely instrumental guitar band, kind of in the same vein as God Speed You Black Emperor, Mogwai, Hope Of The States, and Sigur Ros etc. In short, they're awesome.
I've taken the liberty of pasting in a review of one of their gigs here (courtesy of their website) - this author describes them in ways i could never begin to imagine.
"Mono's epic sound-scaping is on another level. It's in the pin drop quiet that accompanies their performance, allowing them to play quieter than a whisper and hold an awestruck audience's attention with apparent ease. It's in buildups that sweep you up, dragging you along in an atmospheric and apocalyptic undertow before spitting you out into a ball of furious rage, of brutal noise and ear-shattering distortion. There's violence, but it's a brutality that's shaped by music, a reflection of the world in aching guitars and warped noise, each note plucked or thrashed for a purpose. Importantly, it's not done purely for the sake of noise, but for poetry and beauty."
"Mono look anything but rock behemonths, yet it takes a mere five minute for this facade to be utterly destroyed by an unstoppable torrent of cataclysmic noise. When they reach the eye of the storm, the lull is inviting, but those that stray from earplug safety are swifty blown away by the return to earth-shaking bombast of a 15minute epic that truly tests the buildings foundations. They make 90 per cent bands you've ever seen look like woeful pretenders in the atmosphere stakes, giving a performance as heart-tugging as it was entertaining.And then they're gone, back to quiet normality, leaving only bewilderment and bleeding ears behind them."
"The Japanese foursome - bassist Tamaki, drummer Yasunori Takada and guitarists Taka Goto and Yoda - don't say a word and the songs are similary mute. Vocally, thats is, although the dynamics of just a couple of guitars, a set of drums and some occasional piano are exploited completely throughout. They're a cool-looking band - like refugees from a gritty Manga cartoon - and it's a pleasure just to stand, watch and listen. Raging from loud to quiet and back again, every moment was a highlight, but A Thousand Paper Cranes deserves posthumous mention. It's inspired by the tale of a girl who contracted leukaemia at Hiroshima and then proceeded to fold 1000 paper cranes in acoordance with an old legend that the gods would grant her wishes."
There you go.
Saturday night was the Low (http://www.chairkickers.com) gig. Now I know of one particular mate back in Melbourne who'd be supremely jealous of me now (g'day PB). This is a band that we've been following for a while now, and given that a) they are a relentless touring band, and b) they hail from the not-so-far-away city of Minnesota, it was a better-then-even chance they'd be touring thru Vancouver some time this year. I had tix the day after I found out they were coming!! The gig was at Richard's on Richards, the same venue I saw The Frames in, and is fast becoming my fave place to see bands in.
For some reason or another, it was an early show, with doors at 7pm, and first band on at 7.30pm. Low were supported by Pedro The Lion (http://www.pedrothelion.com), a band who i since learned are a headline act in their own right, from Seattle. In fact there were punters who left the show after they finished, claiming they were only interested in seeing them (they don't know what they were missing out on). I found the bassist from Pedro at the merchandise stall after their set and had a good chat. Unfortunately, for some reason or other (import charges, taxes) they couldn't get their own merchandise past the police and over the border from the US, so just had to settle on signing ticket stubs and handing out adverts for their albums.
Low were amazing. I knew they would be. They've just changed record labels, moving over to the seminal Sub Pop Records stable - former home of Nirvana among others. I'm guessing as a result of this, they have actually amped up their sound quite a bit, and have gone from a slow, intense, moody, spacey-brooding aesthetic, to a sometimes quite rocky and even poppy sound, creating a magnificent fury of noise, a new sonic territory even, all with their same trademark moody intensity maintained, of course. No more sadcore, they have clearly abandoned the 'play everything as slowly as possible' ethic from when they formed in 1994. At one early point in the show, the singer-guitarist, Alan Sparhawk, even briefly played a solo with his teeth!! I think he may have been venting some frustration as they seemed to be having some serious technical sound problems with the amps and mic's, ie they weren't loud enough! Alan looks like a rocker tho, he even has that rockabilly quiff - actually he looks remarkably like an older version of Danny Zuko's Greased Lightnin' sidekick (characters name escapes me) in Grease. The other two members are a female drummer, Mimi Parker, who maintains a hypnotic beat on the tom-drum, and the suave, quiet and mysterious looking Zak Sally on bass.
I'd bought their new release, The Great Destroyer at the merchandise stall, and after the show while i was milling about, soaking in what i had just witnessed, I spied the singer chatting with members of the audience. Emboldened by the sheer revelatory emotions I was feeling, I approached him to see if he could sign my Cdee. "Sure, you gotta pen?". I didn't. "Don't worry, come backstage with me, we've got a texta there I'm sure"....!!!!!!!!!!!!
I met the whole band, and got them all to sign it!! Talk about having a WOW moment! And the reason he was in the audience was that he was scoping for dope, so if only I'd had some of my meagre stash with me that night, I could've been havin' a puff with them all....Damn. Still, what a great night.
Anyway, that's it fer now.
Enjoy your choco binges this weekend,
Tony
Monday, March 28, 2005
R.I.P. Paul Hester
Paul Hester, drummer of Crowded House, committed suicide in Melbourne over the past weekend. He was dearly loved by thousands of music fans, for all of the wonderful tunes that this masterful Aussie/Kiwi band produced over 20 years or so, and will be sorely missed by us all.
More tributes, eulogys and analysis:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2005/04/01/1112302235511.html
by Brian Nakervis
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2005/04/01/1112302233875.html
by Martin Flanagan
http://www.theage.com.au/photogallery/2005/03/28/1111862291153.html
photo gallery from The Age, Melbourne's daily broadsheet
http://www.theage.com.au/news/Music/The-show-goes-on-in-memory-of-Hester/2005/03/29/1111862390124.html
By James Button, Europe correspondent, London, March 30, 2005
http://www.theage.com.au/news/Opinion/Vale-Paul-Hester/2005/03/29/1111862387248.html
by Alan Attwood
http://www.theage.com.au/news/People/Friends-sing-to-Hesters-spirit/2005/03/28/1111862322895.html
By Patrick Donovan, Nassim Khadem
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2005/04/02/1112302282135.html
'Something so wrong' By Peter Ellingsen
More tributes, eulogys and analysis:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2005/04/01/1112302235511.html
by Brian Nakervis
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2005/04/01/1112302233875.html
by Martin Flanagan
http://www.theage.com.au/photogallery/2005/03/28/1111862291153.html
photo gallery from The Age, Melbourne's daily broadsheet
http://www.theage.com.au/news/Music/The-show-goes-on-in-memory-of-Hester/2005/03/29/1111862390124.html
By James Button, Europe correspondent, London, March 30, 2005
http://www.theage.com.au/news/Opinion/Vale-Paul-Hester/2005/03/29/1111862387248.html
by Alan Attwood
http://www.theage.com.au/news/People/Friends-sing-to-Hesters-spirit/2005/03/28/1111862322895.html
By Patrick Donovan, Nassim Khadem
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2005/04/02/1112302282135.html
'Something so wrong' By Peter Ellingsen
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