Wednesday, March 31, 2004

Tread softly.
Yesterday I bought a copy of a book by Michael King to send to my Mum for her birthday. Today I read that Michael King and his wife Maria Jungowska died in a car crash yesterday. My thoughts are with his family. Its such sad news.

Monday, March 29, 2004

Heavy.

Kevin Eastman is the publisher of Heavy Metal magazine - he wrote this on their website, about Martin Emond.

"I dare to call Martin Emond a friend of mine.
I first met him in the early 90's when he brought me the concept of the "White Trash" graphic novel to me through "Tundra UK, and Dave Elliot. Dave had the insight to see Martins work was of the "Best of the Best" and needed to be out there for all of us to embrace. At that time, agreed 100%,funded the project soup to nuts, and have never looked back.
"Marty Fuck" as he liked to be called by his friends, moved to Los Angeles three years ago, and worked out of a studio in the back of "MeltDown Comics" on Sunset Blvd, due to the genius insite of my pal Gastone, the owner of the shop, who loved Marty's talents times ten.
Once week I'd make my trip there for my comic fix, and was always thrilled to go hang out with Marty in his back room studio, and see the latest work of brillance he was chest deep in.
He always had 20 things going on at once, and all of them in true Marty style--all amazing. Marty recently began to work with another close friend of mine, Brice, (The artist who did all of my tattoo's) to start a career in Tattoo's and one of the first he did was on Brice. Brice was the one who called me today (Monday) to tell me Marty had passed away.
Sad, yes I am, pissed, yes I am--Marty was simply one of the most beautiful fucking humans I ever met. Honest, genuine, original, true blue, sincere, a guy that was always quick with a smile and a laugh, and always said what he meant, and meant what he said.
To me the person far out weights the insane talent he had, and if he couldn't even draw a stick figure, you and I, would have loved to have been around him just the same.
Marty, you know how much we already miss you. I hate you for not giving me more time to hang with you, I hate myself for not making more time to hang with you.
Christ--I wish I could turn back the hands of time. You promised to tattoo me, I want that time with you--I can't believe I'm writing this--I miss you, I love you, I am so sad that I can't see you again.
You will be SSSSOOOOOOO FUCKING MISSED.
Kevin


UPDATE
I've scanned the flyer from Martins memorial service, and posted it here. NOTE; images are quite big, so this page may be slow to load.

Wednesday, March 24, 2004

Wednesday, 1.04PM
Listening to Russell Brown on BFM, hosting the Wire. He's on the phone to Judith Tizard. She's just admitted that she has just got an iPod. Russell asks her whats on it - has she copied some of her cds onto it, even though its illegal? No, she hasn't even got it out of the box yet.

Russell tells her that he has it on good authority that several of the heads of the major record companies here own iPods,namely Michael Glading (head of Sony) and Adam Holt, (head of Universal). He asks what does she think they might have on their iPods? She replies that maybe they have recorded their kids singing, and downloaded that from their computers - surely they wouldn't be breaking the law by copying music? Especially as they are making such a fuss about proposed law changes to allow format shifting.
If the RIAA in the US goes after filesharers, maybe RIANZ should go after iPod users. Remember "Home taping is killing music"?

Lil Donny Rumsfeld is a Joker....
"....After the president returned to the White House on Sept. 11, he and his top advisers, including Clarke, began holding meetings about how to respond and retaliate. As Clarke writes in his book, he expected the administration to focus its military response on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. He says he was surprised that the talk quickly turned to Iraq.
"Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said to Stahl. "And we all said ... no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan.
And Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.
"Initially, I thought when he said, 'There aren't enough targets in-- in Afghanistan,' I thought he was joking..."
Richard Clarke, former White House terrorism adviser, on CBS 60 Minutes.


But wait, there's more!!!
"WASHINGTON - The credibility of President George Bush and his platform of fighting terrorism was again undermined yesterday when a commission probing the September 11 attacks confirmed claims by a former White House anti-terrorism aide [Richard Clarke] that warnings he gave in early 2001 regarding al Qaeda were ignored..." from NZ Herald.

Wednesday, March 17, 2004




Rest in peace, Martin F Emond.




More here. Original Google cache story here




Update: from Illicit (thanks drift); A memorial ceremony will be held at on Sunday March 28 at 4.44PM at Alleluya Cafe, St Kevins Arcade, K Rd Auckland. All welcome.
"The Illicit Family mourns the loss of our brother/son and best friend Martin "Fuckin" Emond, AKA Mickey Martin, AKA Switch Blade. Who passed away in Los Angeles on Sunday the 14th of March 2004. An inspiration to so many, words cannot express our grief, we love you and we'll see you again on the other side."

NZ Herald obituary here.

Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Seen the new Channel 4 promo?
Check this link....
Copped this from Dubber over at the Wireless - he says "If you scroll down on that page, you'll notice that there's a webcounter. Fairly hefty numbers too. Since Channel 4 are not actually promoting this, just storing it on an unlinked page on their website, it's actually completely viral.
In other words, you've just been part of a marketing campaign distributed at no cost to Channel 4 - and they're counting the impressions."
WARNING - promo contains excessive and unabated swearing. Don't watch it if you don't like rude words.

Tuesday, March 02, 2004

Hope for a generation...
The Cuba St Carnival happened in Wellington over the weekend - I was lucky enough to be invited down to play, with Dub Asylum, and Bassteppa Sound System. Despite the constant rain all day saturday, heaps of Wellingtonians braved the weather to stroll up and down Cuba St checking out the music on the numerous stages and the stalls selling food, clothes and little coloured balls with smiley faces painted on them - only $2 a pop. I had a recurring conversation with several Auckland folk I ran into during the day, saying that if this event was in Auckland, everyone would stay home cos it was raining, whereas Wellingtonians don't care, its just a little rain. Good on em!
We did our Dub Asylum set mid afternoon on saturday, about 30 folks dancing in the rain, good on them too. Even had a few cops walk past, and my MC Word Perfect managed to get them to do a little boogie - he told the crowd "Do you know why the police can dance? Cos they're walking the beat!" Great pun.

We did a Bassteppa set at Bodega in the evening, then Fat Freddys Drop rounded out my saturday night, playing to a hometown crowd down at a jam-packed club on Courtney Place. Its been several years since I've seen them, and they have honed down their approach into something truly amazing. While they used to cruise on jamming til the cows come home, now they seem to effortlessly groove thru their tunes, thanks to some tightening up of their arrangements. Sure, they still cut loose and extend a tune as they see fit, but they are just so soulful; its unbelievably good. They are very talented cats, who understand the importance of underplaying, rather than showing off on their instruments.

While many folk trumpeted endlessly about 2003 being the best year for NZ music ever, that's really only true if you were making pop, garage rock or hiphop. If you fell outside those strict genres, forget it. Fat Freddys don't fit easily into any tidy genre description, but I hope the public appetite for local sounds will embrace them when their album drops later this year. If Fat Freddys hit the top of the local album charts, then perhaps there's some hope for this generation.

Sunday at the Carnival was fine weather, lots of good music, and a late breakfast sitting outside at Fidels watching the crowd stroll by - Fidels vegetarian feast is so good, I would consider moving to Wellington just for that. Their hash browns are the bomb.

Bob Mould is a DJ
He used to be an alt rock god, but now he's at the wheels of steel. His dj sets sound like a lot of fun - there's a playlist here. And he's got a blog. How thoroughly modern. Background article here.
Mould
djs weekly at a clubnight called Blowoff alongside Richard Morel - they met when Mould and his boyfriend moved to Washington DC a few years ago.