Stop the votes

We spent some hours on Survival Day re-recording a vocal on our new album, ‘The Last Waterhole’, which we just got back from a mastering studio in Melbourne. Recording in a studio has its advantages – you can go back and re-do as little or as much of it as you want (or can afford).  As Brian Wilson (Smile), Guns n’ Roses (Chinese Democracy), Metallica, Portishead and others can attest, this process can last for…

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Be alert, but not alarmed

A couple of weeks ago, our local newspaper somehow invaded my Facebook page, wanting to know if I felt safe on the Sunshine Coast after the “recent spate of terrorist attacks”. Excuse me? Actually, I’d feel less safe if I had a reason to be on the Mooloolaba Esplanade after dark, given that night club strip’s record of serious and even fatal assaults. And what in the hell is a spate, anyway? The word fits…

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Hear, Hear – What?

Let’s start with a famous pangram (a phrase using all letters of the alphabet) – The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. We’ll get back to that later. When I went to the bedside cabinet drawer on Monday to change my hearing aid batteries, I had just two left (they last about 7 days). Next day I rang my service provider who said they would post some to me, as per the terms…

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Catching the crowd funding wave

There was a time when impecunious musicians and artists wanting to make a CD or mount an exhibition went through a tedious year of applying for grants (and waiting another year to hear if they were successful). Some did succeed, were awarded grants, made CDs, exhibited, and/or went on tour at the expense of State or Federal government or local Councils. Maverick South Australian songwriter Soursob Bob has a song about that – “Grant got…

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