I’ve been a Jack Conte fan for a while now. I first discovered this wonderful musician as part of Pomplamoose, where he collaborates with his partner, Nataly Dawn. Initially, I was awestruck with Dawn’s beautiful singing, and the enchanting way she stares down the camera whilst singing. I remember thinking that Pomplamoose must be the pinnacle of musicianship. Then I discovered Jack Conte’s solo work.

Now, I haven’t bought any of his albums before this one (largely because I am poor), but I had some iTunes credit from my birthday, so I thought this one of the best uses I could put it to. Boy, am I glad I made that decision. Since buying it, I’ve been listening to it almost non-stop, because it’s just that good. Anyway, enough about me, this is s review, so I should get reviewing.

VS4 is, a you might have guessed, the fourth offering from Conte, part of a series of albums named “Videosongs”. His older albums (from what I’ve listened to on YouTube) are very reminiscent of Radiohead. Not badly so, but there’s an energy there that wouldn’t be out of place on albums like Kid A and OK Computer. This new album, though, changes up the tempo a bit. Conte himself mentioned he felt there was a lot of Beatles influence in it, but I can’t help but wonder if there is some weird simultaneous development between Conte and Liam Finn in New Zealand. Admittedly, I haven’t heard much of Finn’s latest album, but VS4 and Finn’s first solo album, I’ll Be Lightning, are strikingly similar. Again, not in a bad way, both albums are unique and wonderful in there own right, but the similarities are remarkable. Musically, there are similar influences present, but add to that the fact that both Conte and Finn are multi-instrumentalists, and both recorded their albums by themselves, and you are left wondering whether they are actually the same person. (They both grow remarkably good beards too)

VS4 is so wonderfully constructed. The opener, ”Make The Grade”, starts off with a simple piano riff, accompanied by self-deprecating lyrics that makes you really want him to actually make the grade. The song is laden with instruments and complex arrangements, and shows you just how talented Conte is. All in the first track. It only gets better – “Sinking Feeling” has a similar multitude of instruments, but the arrangement seems subtler. Conte continues with multiple vocal tracks – it’s hard to tell exactly how many voices there are, but my guess would be somewhere around 5. This technique gives his voice such a rich depth, and really fills out the songs.

“The Time Has Come” changes things up a bit, with an almost polka like verse (complete with pulsing piano-accordion), before launching into a wave of vocal harmonies, and the simple request, “Wouldn’t it be nice/to have a bit more time”. This is followed by “Off With His Head”, a much simpler piece backed with an orchestral arrangement which harks back to The Beatles. The song feels almost English, too, and makes me yearn for a good cup of tea.

Other favourites are “Long Long Time Ago”, which is more of a story than a song, and “Mercenary” which could be the softest call to arms I’ve ever heard. These two lot nicely into the middle of the album, where I feel a lot of albums lose impetus. Conte manages to keep interest  by changing the style, from the layered-vocal, almost chanting feel of “Away”, to the loud, driving beat of “Only Dreaming”.

The absolute stand-out of VS4, though, is ”Get It Out”. The song starts off with a drum beat very similar to that of Blur’s “Song Two”, but it shakes off those shackles immediately, and launches into what could almost be described as a 3-minute symphony. The song is such a good piece, in fact, that I often find myself returning to it after the end of the album.

I can’t help but feel that the album starts to trail off at this point. “I Would Be Happy” and “I Wonder Where The Moments Go” feel a little weaker to me, and I do wonder whether it might have been better to make it 11 or 12 tracks long, as opposed to 15. Still, the album picks up again with the off-beat “Mister Money Bags”, where Conte appeals to this mythical fat-cat for a little pocket change (a feeling which I know too well). “Push It” is yet another expertly constructed track, starting with simple guitar picking and echo-ey vocals, before bashing your ear drums with another punching chorus.

All in all, this is a hugely enjoyable album. The odd weaker track, but that certainly doesn’t hold VS4 back. The opening 5 songs are really almost perfect as a combo, and there are some absolute crackers dispersed throughout. And at only US$10 (about NZ$12), it truly is a bargain for such a good album. Click on the picture up the top, and you’ll find the links to download the album.

I just watched this video from Penn Jillette, talking about the US government cutting funding to NPR, a public service radio station in the US. Now, I’ve never had much of a chance to listen to NPR, but from what I hear, they have a lot of valid programming, and do a very good service. Penn, himself, agrees with this fact. Now, I’ve you’ve watched the above video (which I recommend you do), you’ll find he’s unhappy with the government funding any sort of broadcasting. In his words, he says “What. The. Fuck.” Oddly enough, my response to his opinion was similar. Penn has every right to say his point of view, and I agree with him on a number of issues, despite him being a hardcore libertarian. However, there is so much wrong with his point of view that I felt it necessary to make a response.

Here in little ol’ New Zealand, we face similar issues of cuts to public broadcasting. TVNZ7 is on it’s way out, and Radio New Zealand is constantly under threat. The situation is probably quite different, to be fair. In NZ, we can’t really afford not to have government funded broadcasting, because there probably wouldn’t be enough variety if we didn’t. Further, any news or media would come from private interests, which really is far worse than having the government involved. Penn disagrees with that in the video, but let me explain.

Private interests are just that – private. They have no need to provide content that the public may find helpful, and can broadcast anything that provides them with more money, more attention, more publicity, more whatever. The government, however, exists purely to serve the people. The people vote representatives into office, and if you’re ruling, it’s because the majority wants you there (this is disputable, but in most democracy’s, this is true). It’s the job of the government to serve those people. Not to make more money, not to gain publicity. If they are there to do that, they should be (and usually are) voted out. In this case, regardless of how corrupt you feel the government is, I would rather have a conglomerate of numerous elected officials who could be voted out for doing a poor job, than one media mogul like Rupert Murdoch, who has no one threatening to remove him from his position. What this boils down to is a huge lack of faith in the role of the government, which I feel is wholly unfair.

Penn also says he’s happy to pay more, and have the government not involved in the funding of a public broadcaster. Fine. You can pay that $10 million, Penn. Oh wait, you can’t? Of course you can’t. And you know what, some people CAN’T FUCKING AFFORD TO PAY FOR THEIR NEWS CONTENT! Surely every person has a right to access information, and public broadcasters like NPR help spread that information. That’s why things like the pay wall on the New York Times is so incredibly wrong. If every broadcaster is suddenly charging you hundreds of dollars a month to access their content, then first of all, that’s a very expensive way of staying informed. Further, you would probably only pay for access to one or two outlets, meaning you have no variety in your content. Once again, the masses stay uninformed. It sickens me to think of a society where people have to pay money to get news sent or broadcasted to them.

Frankly, public service broadcasters, and their public funding, is really the best way to ensure people are remaining informed, and not ignorant. Problems of government influence on the news can be avoided. I know how much you hate government legislating, but legislation could prove hugely important in ensuring full access to information. Why not make it compulsory for the government to make a level of funding available for public service broadcasters, and at the same time, legislate against the government having any involvement in what content goes to press or air? It seems like legislation legislating legislation, but it works.

And for the New Zealand case. TVNZ7 was a fantastic broadcaster. The fact that they are being forced to close is incredibly sad. RNZ is one of the best radio stations in New Zealand, and needs to stay alive. If it was to ever die, it would be a dark day for this country. Let’s hope the National government doesn’t do anything else stupid.

1. Fuck yes. Finally someone who deserves to win a music award actually wins.
2. Really, though? For The Suburbs? Funeral and Neon Bible were better albums, but The Suburbs is the one to actually win?

It seems that my sense of shock paled in comparison to others, though, as cries of “Who the fuck is Arcade Fire?” or even “Who the fuck is The Suburbs” could be seen across Twitter and Facebook. These comments even inspired someone to create this website.

“OK,” I thought, “So people haven’t heard of them. That’s fair.” To me, Arcade Fire were never going to get any kind of mainstream recognition, so for them to win Album of the fucking Year, I was amazed. Yes, this was a shock, but the album was great, and deserves to be heard by more people. Moreover, if it was a shock to me, then I could entirely understand the lack of knowledge surrounding the band.

Still, what really struck me was that people weren’t upset because Arcade Fire’s album was bad (most hadn’t actually heard the album at all). Rather, people seemed to be upset that the most popular artist didn’t win. It stuns me that people don’t understand the concept of awards. Awards do not go to the most popular artist, actor, sportsman, or whatever. Awards (should) go to the most deserving person, regardless of how much recognition they’ve gained from media or the public. If awards were popularity contests, then Toy Story 3 should win Best Picture at the Oscars. Will it? No.

Obviously my opinion counts for very little, and I’m not going to be preaching to anyone in particular, but what really needs to happen here is recognition of what awards truly are. No disrespect to Eminem, or Katy Perry, or Lady Gaga, or whoever, but for mine, it’s about fucking time somebody recognised that there is good music out there that not everyone knows about. The Suburbs is definitive proof of that.

Oh, and if you haven’t heard it yet, do. It’s bloody good.

“I’m so fucking bored”, he said before taking another drag on a cigarette that should have been put out 5 minutes ago. The cool midnight breeze sent a chill through him, but he didn’t care. If he felt cold, at least he knew he was awake and alive. “I mean, here I am, just another 20 something, stuck doing a degree that I hate, that leads me nowhere in life, with no direction or desire at all. It’s not that I don’t care, I do, I really do, it’s just that I don’t have anyone to care for. Except you, that is.” He looked over to his right, where Porsche the cat had already made her way to the bushes to take care of her business. “Good to see that someone cares”, he remarked, with sarcasm dripping off every word.

Hayden had always been good at sarcasm, if that was something you could be good at. He knew he had a way with words, that he could write and speak well enough. He also knew, though, that he wasn’t clever enough to do anything with that skill. It was the same with a lot of his so-called ‘skills’. He could play a bit of guitar, he could use a hammer or a screwdriver every now and then, he wasn’t too bad with a football or a cricket bat either. He knew he could do lots of things, but always thought he wasn’t good enough to pursue any of them further. Perhaps more importantly, though, he didn’t want to pursue any of them. Self-reflection definitely wasn’t one of his strongest points, and he could never put the time or effort into figuring out exactly what he wanted to do with his life. Ultimately, Hayden was a wanderer. “I’m just so fucking bored!”, this time yelling at the top of his lungs.

So there you have it. I’ll post a bit more later, I think, but I’m wary of plot stealers around this time of the year, so it’ll largely be secretive, I guess.

Number One:

I’ve been spending a lot of my time lately at this wonderful wee radio station, and that either means a) staying up all night and not really feeling like doing much the next day, or b) feeling rather newsed out, and not bothering to blog for the sake of sounding repetitive and boring.

Number Two:

I’ve recently rediscovered my love of simple video games, including this one, Bejeweled Blitz, and others like Tekken 2, or FIFA 10. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as beating someone half to death or putting 5 or 6 goals past someone playing on the other side of the world.

Long story short, I haven’t lived up to my promises of weekly, relevant blogging. Fuck it, it’s my blog, and I’ll do what I like. It’s not like anyone reads this anyway.

I might post a music review or two up here soon. For now, listen to J Biebz sounding like Sigur Ros.

Anyway, there’s heaps of shit happening at the moment, but I want to go back in time about a week. Should have blogged this last week, but it seems almost as pertinent to do so now, and it actually lends more weight to my point. You’ll see what I mean.

You’ll remember that a couple of weekends ago, the National Party held their national conference. At that conference, Mr Key in his infinite wisdom announced that since the 90-Day Probation law was working so well, he was gonna extend it to all businesses. If you’re unfamiliar, the scheme was set up so that small businesses could hire new employees, and fire them within 90 days without giving a reason. The idea was that businesses would be more ready to hire people, as long as they knew they wouldn’t be tied down to an incompetent or inefficient employee. “Great!”, some people said, “There’ll be lots more jobs out there now!”. Well, they weren’t wrong. Part of the reason there were more jobs is because people were fired after 90 days. OK, as fucked up as this law was, I was kind of willing to let it slide as typical National Party stuff.

That was until last week. Suddenly, any business can implement this scheme. FUCK! The whole idea is dumb. Let’s create more jobs by having more people fired for no fucking reason! GRAAAWGH! “Surely,” I thought, “Surely people won’t just let this go”. How wrong I was.

See, the next day the National Party announced that they would not be mining any of the Schedule Four Conservation land. Great. Seriously. I’m actually stoked about this. I knew it was going to happen, but it’s nice to see Gerry Brownlee shoved off his high-horse. The problem for me lies in the timing. One day they’re extending this bullshit probation law, and the next day, John Key is the fucking saviour, rescuing all the Conservation land from mining.

Now, I said before that I should have blogged about this last week, but in a way, I’m glad I didn’t. Look around the news and opinion pages now. You won’t see a single thing mentioned about the employment law. We’re all too busy jumping in celebration over something National was probably going to do anyway. FUCK. How is it that the little guy always gets screwed over by a National government?! Thanks to the highly clever spin doctors in the National Party set-up, they’ve got away with introducing a law which really has no place in New Zealand.

Now I know there’s a recession going on and the job market is a little thin. Believe me, I know first hand. Still, we can’t let ourselves be suckered in by this shit. Lets think back to when unemployment was at its lowest. Guess who was in power? Go on, bet you can’t guess… In case you’ve been living under a rock for 10 years or so, it was Labour. Since they got it right at one point in time, maybe we should give them another go. Hey, wasn’t “give them another go” a major reason for people voting National? Fuckwits.

Anyway, ’till next week.

Also, I’ve been rather forgetful when it comes to blogging, so haven’t really had my ear to the ground in terms of finding news to rant about. So, this blog may end up being kind of wishy-washy, and really having no major point to it. We’ll see how it goes.

It seems like all the news in this country at the moment revolves around crime, the Rugby World Cup fiasco, and a dolphin. I mean, what the shit? First off, crime is not only depressing, it’s also fucking boring, and leaves me wanting to turn off the news after 10 minutes, because frankly, I don’t want to be told how scary our country is. Try living in LA or Baghdad for fuck’s sake. Yes, I do feel sorry for those affected, and I don’t mean any personal offence to those involved. The problem lies with the media. The media has decided that crime is what is really interesting and “hard-hitting” news, so it gets run all the fucking time. That’s part of the reason bFM doesn’t really report crime stories, because we want to do something different. I could sit here and rant on and on about the state of news media in New Zealand, but I don’t want to. For one, it’s boring too, and I’m not really in the mood to get angry at something I can’t fix.

Should we talk about the dolphin? Nah, let’s not. And I have to be honest. I feel the same way about the RWC debacle. Just put up some tents, and there’s your party central. Also, just make Moko our new ambassador. Wait…

Overseas there’s some stuff happening. Everyone is jumping for joy that the oil in the Gulf of Mexico has stopped spewing out of the gaping hole. Yes. Finally. After pretty much 3 months of fucking around, BP managed to plug the gap. Granted, it’s progress. You have to be pleased that something has happened. Still, we’re in the danger zone. This plan could still fail. And even if it doesn’t, there’s still fuckloads of oil out in the Gulf. OK, so I’m happy there’s at least been a start, but people should start instantly forgiving BP and act like it’s water under the bridge. Let’s wait before we start celebrating.

Is that enough for a blog? Should I talk about how Patrick Gower looks like a rat crossed with a parrot? Nah, lets leave it at that.

‘Till next week.

See, we were working with kids, a lot of whom really had no idea what was really going on. It was a shocking sight to say the least, and working there probably had the single biggest impact on my attitude to life that I’ve ever had. I struggled with it, I really did. The routine there was pretty strict, and there were a whole lot of activities that we had to get through with the kids, but there was always an hour or two of just free time, where we would look after the seriously disabled kids, the ones who couldn’t go to school. I say go to school, but school was just a room upstairs.

Anyway, during this free time, there was one kid who latched on to me. He was mute, deaf, and blind. He didn’t do a whole lot, but during free time, I would just sit there and hold his hand, just so he knew there was someone there. I would even sing to him. I don’t know if he knew that I was singing, but he seemed to like it, so I did it anyway. I began to get a little attached, which was probably a mistake. All I knew is that no matter what he did, how tightly he squeezed and hurt my hand, how much he peed on me, no matter what he did, I just wanted him to know that I was there.

When you go to India, people often talk about a concept of ‘hitting the wall’. For me that happened on Christmas Day. I was sick, and basically stuck in the hotel room until someone got back and took the key from me. I was stuck for hours, and all I wanted to do was go down the street to a phone booth and call my family. By this point I was physically exhausted, and the mental hammering I’d been getting for the past week was taking it’s toll, so I did the only thing I could do – I cried. I bawled for hours. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to fly back home, and just end it all. Eventually someone came back, I called my parents, and I felt so much better for it. Still, that really was the lowest of the low.

One day I’ll go back. There were so many other volunteers there who had been working there for months, or years even. This devastated me too. We were supposed to work for two weeks, have a life changing experience, and then go to Goa and party it up for the rest of the trip. Meanwhile, these people dedicated a huge portion of their lives to helping the poor, sick and dying. That’s fucked up. Still, it gave me hope. Hope that at least some people cared enough. I’ll definitely do the same one day. Go back, disappear for a few years in Kolkata, and do my bit to pay back what life has given me. For now though, all I have is the memory of that little boy’s face. And it is just that, just a memory. We were allowed to take photo’s of the kids on our last day, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It felt too exploitative. Hell, even just writing about it does.

I’ll leave you with one last thought: the one thing I know for sure about Daya Dan and those kids living there is that almost all of them are either now dead, or left to fend for themselves. That’s just so fucked up, and something I still can’t deal with.

If you want to know more, then drop me a line. I’m always happy to chat about it.

‘Till next week.

I’ll jump into the news shortly, but first, a little housekeeping. As the name implies, I’ll be posting sometime midweek. Sometimes I may stray closer to the beginning, sometimes closer to the end, but I’m going to be blogging every week. If I don’t, feel free to slaughter me in the comments. Also, I realise the current header is rather cliche, and maybe that’s because it’s the default header. Don’t worry. When I have some time, I’ll make a proper header to fit more readily with what this blog is all about.

RIGHT. This week, there’s really only one thing that’s been on my mind, and that is football. With the World Cup on currently in South Africa, the media is inundated with sports coverage, particularly after New Zealand’s heroics in managing to remain unbeaten in the group stage. Earlier this week, I talked to James Coe from Editing the Herald about the game, and you can hear that here. After that little discussion, I felt like I could have added my two cents to the debate.

See, whenever New Zealand does something unexpectedly well, we seem to blow it way out of proportion. The media have loved the All Whites’ success on the world stage, and you could be forgiven for thinking we’d won a game. I’m guilty of this too. I even caught myself tweeting that we’d won the World Cup after drawing (yes that’s right, drawing) with Italy. Sure, New Zealand did really well for a team that was the second-lowest ranked team coming into the competition. In fact, if you told me that we would go unbeaten in the group stage, I would have slapped you and told you to wake up from this crazy fantasy. Still, this surely needs a little perspective.

We went unbeaten, yes, but we didn’t win a game. We drew with first-timers Slovakia, and an old, decrepit, and frankly very average Italy. Everyone says we beat the world champions, and that’s true, but that was four years ago. That doesn’t mean they’re good today. Further, if we had beaten Paraguay (and we had chances to do so), we would have qualified for the last 16, and a juicy encounter with the Netherlands. That would have been an incredible achievement. And, if you think about it, Australia still beat us. They had 4 points, we had 3. So before we starts getting all jingoistic and brag about how awesome our football team is, just remember that there is a hell of a lot of work to do before we can really call ourselves contenders.

Still, I’m a football lover, and love the All Whites with all my heart. I told an old guy outside a pub before the Paraguay game that I thought they were going to dick us. He took great offense, and to be honest, I like that. It’s the kind of blind faith that football fans in the UK and Europe have, and we need more of that here. The true test of how successful this World Cup venture has been is what happens in four years time. If we’ve got fans just as faithful as that old guy, and if we’re drawing our way through the World Cup group stage again, then that’s a success. Better than waiting another 28 years.

See you next week.