merry christmas and a happy new year everyone

a revelation

it came to me this morning that perhaps the value of the ipod is not in the usefullnes of the product-- but in the allowal of the transferral of values. digital music is by it's nature cold and impersonal. normal cd's and records have a definite tie to the artist, and also visual and tactile cues that remind the user of certain things, like the day they bought the album. perhaps ipods allow the user to bond with the music in a way that other mp3 players don't, through the perception of value- no longer are the listeners participating in the act of making music with the artist, they are participating in the passive act of listening, with the ipod. instead of there being a tie between the artist and the listener, a bond is created between the listener and ipod.

think about this. it seems to me to be a start. a beginning of the end for ipods. if this is the reason, then there are ways of emulating this process.

i'm still so tired

i seem to have spent the whole week trying to get the broadband internet working in my house. it's been connected for 2 weeks now and i still copuldn't get it working. i was getting desperate because i was heading to the meredith music festival and i needed to download some songs to listen too in the car, so i actually knew some of the artists. so friday afternoon i finally got it working, and frantically started downloading songs. i took my sister to see the grates that night, one of my all time favourite bands, and they were good as always. i saw mark lee there. then i drove my sister home and went to work. i got home from work at 6:30 and went to sleep. i got up at 8 and started packing. when my mate arrived i was still packing. we left at 8:40 to drive to meredith. we stopped in geelong to buy food and alcohol- we would come to regret this stop. somehow we made it to meredith, where we had to wait in line for about 20 minutes to get through the gate. as we drove around trying to find a campsite we could hear the sounds of the grates playing. i know i had seen them the night before but i was still annoyed that i was missing out on them. we made it to the stage in time to see the last song of theirs, architecture in helsinki were up next and they are a very nice group, theres around 10 of them and they sound good- sloppy but good. the kills came onstage next. they play a kind of guitar dance music, which was ok but not great- they seemed to spend too much time looking at each other and not enough time interacting with the audience. the next group i saw was billy childish and the buff medways- billy was right in the midst of the punk movement when it began, and for a guy 49 years old, who's music i'd never heard till the night before, he left a very good impression. stephen malkmus and the jicks were up next- it was good because i could get right up the front easily at this time of day, in fact i spent most of the day three rows or less from the front. as with billy childish, malkmus was very new to me, and agian i was most impressed. i saw airbourne who were fairly bad- basically ac/dc with less style, i guess there's a place for them though. next band up was sons and daughters out of glasgow- the band had got their image sorted out nicely. with a few great songs and some good ones they were a good show. wolfmother were the last headline act i saw saturday- really good, they deserve every bit of praise they get. after them they had the meredith special mystery act- it was revealed to be bob log the third, an insane solo guy from austin TX or somewhere similar. he sings through an airforce helmet' and therefore sounds like a top gun pilot. he played a thumping blues guitar and drum kit. there is really one good word to describe him--debauched. he is most well known for a song called boob scotch, and he introduced this song by getting an audience volunteer to dip her breast in his scotch. bizarre as this may sound he ended the set by getting two girls from the audience to come up onstage and clap their tits to the song of the same name.
i went to bed then cause i needed to sleep. i was covered in sunburn and my neck and feet were sore. i missed out on the avalanches- which i have come to regret.
on sunday i woke up and saw Matt walker and Ash davies, Clare Bowditch and The Feeding Set and Blackalicious(who were crap) before finishing it off by watching the meredith gift- a footrace run annually where the contestants run naked. this year corporate sponsorship had entered the game and they were sponsored by the ubiquitous crumpler messenger bags. i was most suprised to find myself standing next to Loc our studies teacher, as we watched a herd of naked men and women charge down a 3 metre wide passage to be the first to cross the line and get the coveted golden jocks. bizzzzzare!!!