July 30, 2004

The Radio Lobe

I'm convinced that I'm a mutant. My mutation being an extra lobe of the brain which I dub as the 'radio' lobe. Just as the rays of the early morning sun stimulates the pituitary gland, this lobe too, tunes into some obscure radio station or your old playlist (which no longer exists). The radio lobe just about defines your day. It may play an irritating song & make you feel helpless or stud music.

Today I woke up feeling like a Decadent, 70-year old Drag Queen. Yes! I woke up with 'Diamonds are Forever'-Shirley Bassey, ringing melodramatically in my head. FYI:its the title song to a James Bond flick of the same title.

Bad news.... Good News... & later a foursome D&D(Dinner & Drinks) ritual. High. Sleep.....ZZZ

July 26, 2004

A Rocking Playlist (Whats Good About It)



In no particular order:
song (artist)

1> Sex Type Thing (Stone Temple Pilots); The unplugged version of this song is great too. Loud & great.

2> Mother[Live] (Danzig); Live version is the best & its best sung to, when the gangs' drunk

3> In a Gadda Da Vida(Iron butterfly); Psychedellic rock at its best with a wicked riff (step aside prog rock!)

4> Starfuckers, Inc.(Nine Inch Nails); Nobody can program a pounding & crunching beat like NIN or Rob Zombie.

5> Wells Fargo(Babe Ruth); Initially it sounds like the music from a '70s porno flick, then it sounds like the soundtrack to a car chase scene from a '70s movie.

6> Blue Monday (Orgy); A nice hard cover of a song by 'New Order'. Sounds better than the original.

7> Inertiatic ESP [Live](The Mars Volta); A fresh sound. But It'd sound a lot less fresher if I told you that it reminds me of Led Zep.

8> Moonchild (King Crimson); Acid rock classic.

Whats good about it? well you've got to listen to it first. Adieu

An Apology & A Useful House Keeping Tip



Firstly I'd like to apologise to Jubilant- Dude your friend's software wasn't bogging down my system. It was something else (read on).

I have this favourite font called the '20th Century Poster' & I managed to lose it. I searched high & low for it. Gathered a lot of fonts from people around me. But it was useless & now I have around 11,400 fonts. Then I thought to myself (like a prick) now that I'm into graphic designing, I might want to use these fonts. So I installed all of them. Ever since then XP took about 4 minutes to boot up! Any attempt to uninstall them caused my PC to gag & hang (or is that hang & gag?)

Well it took me abt 4 days to figure it out. So there you have it,

House Keeping Tip- Don't install all your fonts i.e, if they number more than 150 & you are runnin Windows XP.

In case you don't wan't to install all your fonts & still want to see what they look like, use this freeware. It lets u look through fonts that are installed as well as uninstalled fonts (that exist on u hardisk). Nice.

July 20, 2004

Omen ( and I don't mean the movie)


While walking back home on Monday. I saw something weird : A large bark brownish toad just pops out of the gap between two granite slabs that cover the gutter. It was followed by an equally brown rat. The rat was trying to nibble the toad's behind & the toad just kept jumping away. The toad jumped on....the rat followed, untill they both disappeared down another gap. The whole episode lasted about 40 seconds.

Back in the old days, folks would have called this an omen. So I interpret the omen thusly:

1> If I were the toad, there is someone out there determined to get my ass.
2> If I were the rat, I'll never get any ass.
3> No matter what I am, I'm going down.

If you see something else? Warn us OH! PROPHET(/ESS) O' DOOM or whatever.

Navel



Sunday, I had been on a long walk with Anjalie. It has been a while since our last aimless walk. Just got me thinking about how busy I'm now (& how jobless I was, back then). Somewhere along the way I came to a conclusion that I will not die, instead I'd implode into my own navel. Maybe our navels are actually portals to another dimension!! All one has to do is 'implode' into one's navel and....

QUISSZZOOP!!! One is on 10" tall daisy covered hills that roll off to infinity. But something this good always has a catch. I figure that it woul'd be walking about with your insides out.

The Sunday evening sky was pretty clear & blue with scattered clouds. The clouds looked like white cotton (Lot of volume there). OR as we usually refer to it - the cotton transport truck just lost another load.

July 18, 2004

Being Boring

I have this peculiar thing going on. Whenever I listen to a good song & 'connect with it', the hair on the back of my head stands up, or I get goose bumps followed by going numb for 3 seconds. This is something I haven’t been able to explain. By ‘connect with it’ I’m referring to the phenomenon wherein music & lyrics go hand in hand with mood I’m in, and I experience some weird kind of epiphany. Quite a lot of Pet Shop Boys songs have had this effect on me.



I am a Pethead and for the uninitiated that’s a fan of the duo Pet Shop Boys. The following – powerfully orchestrated, pop, dance, witty, wry, absurd, profound, ironic, melodramatic at times, are some of the tags I would attach to their music. I ‘ve listened to most of their albums & can’t quite tell which one I’d swear by. Every album is as good as the other except for their first release (‘Please’). 'Please' sounds kind of dated, but the songs still retain their je ne sais quoi.

So its 4am & I just woke up with the strains of ‘Being Boring’ in my head. I still can’t put a finger on this one. I can’t figure out what these guys are talking about. It’s a haunting song. Got online to check out what it’s all about & then came across this very beautiful & minimal site. This site does a good job of trying to disect the song down but is still unsuccessful. The Black Holes of the Universe can be explained in time. But 'Being Boring' is as elusive as an intergalactic outlaw's cruiser that has managed to perfect the science of travelling through wormholes of the universe.

The uninitiated might wan't to buy a Pet Shop Boy's latest 2 CD compilation album called 'Pop Art'. You don't know what your missing out on.

July 11, 2004

Songs of Fela Anikulapo Kuti


The Devil only knew how many songs were being mixed into old school rap songs in the 80s. One fine day a singer decided to sue rapper Biz Markie. The sueing later screwed Biz Markie through & through. Since then then record labels have been scrupulous when it came to acknowledging artistes who were being sampled. Tapes & CDs came with inlay sleeves that were a mile long & contained crap loads of fine-print. Most people tend to overlook this part of the album. I personally found it to be a gold mine of info like no other. Using these sleeves I've been able to find unheard of (at least by me) sounds,singers & bands. Some of them suck & most don't.

One such artist I came across was Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Fela is to Nigeria what Bob Marley was to Jamaica. Together with his band - Africa 70, he generated hard hitting music which could be best defined as drum & horn driven jazz-funk explosions. It kind of sounds like a military band got a snort of coke & let lose their fury. It also reminded me of Eddy Grants own brand of reggae - Ringbang. In short its funk drenched with syncopated rythms, lavished horn blasts. Songs are sung by Fela in pidgin english and are all about military oppression of Nigerians & other Afrocentric issues. But like most good music about serious issues, the issues take a back seat when u listen to them.

Some must listen numbers include:

1>Zombie
2>Lady
3>Confusion
4>No Agreement
5>Original Suffer Head
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