I didn't even know they'd 'renuinted', but here's a Village Voice review of a recent Gang of Four show, with the original line up - proof positive of the postpunk revival. Will they come to NZ like Wire? Sounds pretty cool:

Gang of Four pioneered a critique of pop capitalism that reverberated in the mainstream like Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing." Mark Knopfler sang about installing microwave ovens; Jon King sings about riots and looting while demolishing a miked microwave oven with a baseball bat, crashing metallically on the beat.

Also - thanks to everyone for coming to may party on Saturday - it was way cool.

Is this for real? A blank keyboard. An expensive blank keyboard.

"Das Keybard places me at the pinnacle of the geekness. The nice perk is that it improved my typing speed and accuracy!"

- Daniel, Guermeur
Das Keyboard inventor and Uber Geek

Nice to see the word 'geek' has well and truly been 'taken back'.

Googling for info/images on David Byrne's PowerPoint art project, I stumbled across this useful summary, which linked this cool freesoundproject page, and David Byrne's streaming internet radio.

I've just put up a few old group emails I sent out five or six years ago when I was chronically bored and moved to Christchurch. Self indulgent? Yes. But they were fun at the time:

The Pool: the joy of swimming

Combination Bowl: second installment of pizza factory steez

The Factory: first installment of pizza factory steez

breathing deeply: fulfilment of longtime scuba dream

trails and rituals: atop the Tongariro crossing with good friends

5.6.7.8.s: great band from nippon

I've left some of the orginal email formatting for old time's sake.

I'm not by any means a Star Wars geek - in fact the new movies are clearly sh*t - but this readers' Q&A with Mark Hamill is worth a quick look. He may not be much of an actor, but he comes across pretty well - responding with grace to questions such as:

Luke Skywalker is a farm boy, a pilot, agrees with the right to bear arms and isn't shy of getting involved in large-scale wars. Does he share any other traits with George W Bush?

What do you say when people ask why you've never done anything else of note?

What's your reaction when people walk up behind you and boom: "I am your father"?

What does Han really think of Chewie? Sometimes he treats him like a human, and other times like a dog, patting him on the head.

Plus, he's a Simpsons fan. By rights that must be the equivalent of being a commie in the McCarthy era?

Right now, I wanna live in Malibu too...

Many thousands of commuters walking to work were treated to Wellington Central National Party candidate Mark Blumsky's smug face grinning from the front page of Fairfax's local rag The Wellingtonian this morning. He's kindly been gifted a 20 square cm colour photo on the front page of the tabloid size freebie newspaper - the kind of campaign exposure that money can't buy and politicians don't have to declare. But that wasn't the story, of course. The story was that someone has vandalised Blumsky's car ('A pair of eyes was drawn on it' - the horror...) and trailer billboard. Cue humongous photo of Blumsky cuddling a National Party balloon at his newly opened National Party campaign headquarters on Manners Street. Big stacks of The Wellingtonian sit in footpath news-stands throughout the CBD, and I presume it's distributed to suburban letterboxes too.

Remember people, when you buy the Dom Post, you're only encouraging this kind of electioneering bullsh*t. Why not cut out the middlemagnate and donate $1.20 to the direct to the National Party instead?

Internet pop quiz on the occasion of my thir...
Of my birthday.

1. Your houseplants are alive, and you can't smoke any of them.
Yes and yes - though that's only cos I chuck out the ones that die.
SCORE: 1/25

2. Having sex in a single bed is out of the question.
Never.
SCORE: 1/25

3. You keep more food than beer in the fridge.
Yes, mostly. During the week, certainly. Worse, I own my fridge. Almost. Bought it from Farmers on HP.
SCORE: 2/25

4. 6:00 am is when you get up, not when you go to bed.
Nope, but never did. More likely to get in at 4 or 5 from a decent night on the tiles with the trouble'n'strife, and I never get up before 7 if I can possibly help it.
SCORE: 2/25

5. You hear your favourite song in an elevator.
Hmm, on reflection, no. Not my favourite song(s). But with the caveat that I have long had a soft spot for piped softrock anyway.
SCORE: 2/25

6. You watch the Weather Channel.
Never heard of it. Is that American?
SCORE: 2/25

7. Your friends marry and divorce instead of "hook up" and "break up".
Yes, well... I can see this on the horizon, so I'll concede half a point here.
SCORE: 2.5/25

8. You go from 130 days of holidays to 20.
No. Jesus, I don't remembers ever having 130 days holiday. I get 20 now, but I had to fight to even get that...
SCORE: 2.5/25

9. Jeans and a jersey no longer qualify as "dressed up".
No. In fact, my most dressed up outfit is precisely that: jeans and a jersey. Except my Hallensteins suit. But that's strictly a work thing. And very infrequent at that.
SCORE: 2.5/25

10. You're the one calling the police because those %&@# kids next door won't turn down the stereo.
Okay, yes. Last time I was involved with noise control it was me calling them, not having them called on me... But that was cos we had a rat-infested junkie den downstairs, the inhabitants of which insisted on playing Jethro Tull and Manic Street Preachers so loud it shook our bedroom floor at 2am on a Tuesday. Plus, I've pretty much canned my plans for a birthday party this year cos I can't think of a venue that won't create noise problems for the neighbours. Considerate, me.
SCORE: 3.5/25

11. Older relatives feel comfortable telling sex jokes around you.
No, thankfully. Who wrote this thing?
SCORE: 3.5/25

13. Your car insurance goes down and your car payments go up.
Heh heh, no way. A car is not a status symbol, it's a form of transport, to be used as sparingly as possible. Only w*nkers would get into debt to buy a fancy car. But I do have insurance.
SCORE: 3.5/25

14. You feed your dog Science Diet instead of McDonald's leftovers.
No. No dog. No McDonalds. Science Diet? No, no. But dogs are cute.
SCORE: 3.5/25

15. Sleeping on the couch makes your back hurt.
Yes. But no fair - it always did... It also makes your head hurt, cos generally you only do it when you're well mashed and in a foreign city.
SCORE: 4.5/25

16. You take afternoon naps from noon to 6 pm.
No, but that does sound real nice.
SCORE: 4.5/25

17. Dinner and a movie is the whole date instead of the beginning of one.
Sometimes. Half a point.
SCORE: 5/25

18. Eating a basket of chicken wings at 3 am would severely upset, rather than settle, your stomach.
Yes. That sounds gross.
SCORE: 6/25

19. If you're a woman, you go to the chemist for ibuprofen and antacid, not
condoms and pregnancy tests.
Nope, not a woman... Anyway, I tend to buy my panadol and condoms from the supermarket.
SCORE: 6/25

20. A $4.00 bottle of wine is no longer "pretty good stuff."
Okay - let's assume this is an American quiz, written at some point before Dubya f*cked the greenback, so the $4 wine would equate to up to NZ$10 today. Hmm, I'd have to concede a point here. A $10 is drinkable, but not 'good'. Definitely spending more on quality alcohol these days.
SCORE: 7/25

21. You actually eat breakfast food at breakfast time.
Yep, always did.
SCORE: 8/25

22. "I just can't drink the way I used to" replaces "I'm never going to drink that much again."
No, on a technicality. I'll happily admit to using the first phrase, but I was never reckless or delusional enough to use the second anyway.
SCORE: 8/25

23. 90% of the time you spend in front of a computer is for real work.
Um, no.
SCORE: 8/25

24. You drink at home to save money before going to a bar.
Yes. Of course.
SCORE: 9/25

25. You read this entire list looking desperately for one sign that doesn't apply to you and can't find one to save your sorry old butt. SO TRUE! *&$#^$
No, you stupid lame-ass email quiz ending!
SCORE: 9/25

Actually, I just noticed there are only 24 questions here - there's no number 12. So, 9 out of 24, 37.5%, that's not so bad...

Grand Saloon, Hi-Aces, Sean O'Brien gig was a lot of fun on Friday.

Sean kept it nice'n'mellow to kick things off. We had an *okay* set, started out good. But as previously, the practicalities of amplifying acoustic instruments through a PA so they can be heard over bass and drums, and retain some of their natural character, and not feed back, kinda got in the way of just playing the songs.

I think next time we'll have to go a little more straight-up electric. Kinda more roots rock/country territory, like John Hiatt or something, but less MOR. Another thing could be to do some recording, produce something sounding as good as we can sound at practices. It'd probably be a useful exercise in lots of ways, and would allow us to make effective use of cool instruments, without worrying about the mutant sound you get when you combine acoustic with electric in a live setting.

Speaking of electric, Grand Saloon were great, took it up another notch in terms of loudness and aggression. Not so much rockabilly punk as rockabilly metal - maybe it was the bass FX pedals and hard out drumming. Anyway it was a great night, lots of people, and general good times.