Kdthestrange

The Sticks, Queensland, AUSTRALIA


Joined May 9th 2008

Number of Posts:
5

Number of Comments:
24

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It’s that time of year again. The time when come tomorrow, at 8.45, hundreds of eager idiots just like me will have called in sick to work, gone to their mate’s place with the fastest internet connection and will be sitting there refreshing the Splendor in the Grass tickets web page over and over.

(The actual web address is http://www.qjump.com.au/ if you want to start refreshing now.)

What is Splendor in the Grass?

Basically the annual HIGHLIGHT OF MY LIFE.

Not really. But it is an exceptionally rad music festival held in Byron Bay, Australia, that pulls some huge bands, huge crowds and a huge amount of the other kind of grass.

This year’s line up will include the fabulous Wolfmother, the hilarious Devo (Crack that whip!), The Wombats, The Grates, The Panics, Sigur Ros... and five billion other kickass bands.

Now if I got a ticket this event would be the highlight of my life. But sadly, I have never been to a Splendor in the Grass.

Last year, the tickets sold out in five hours. Or so the website says.

In reality, they sold out in four minutes. I know this because alongside about 40 other uni students packing out our campuses computer labs, I tired to buy tickets at 9am and couldn’t.

They were all gone.

So this is why I have come up with a foolproof plan to get tickets this year. Let me share it with you all.

1. Scalping at Splendor became so bad a few years ago that organisers had to put all ticket buyers names and date of birth on their ticket. And you can only buy four tickets at a time.

So make sure you have all your friends names and date of births tattooed onto your hand before you go to buy tickets.

This may seem extreme, but it’s Devo man! Just do it!

If you’re really stupid, tattoo your own name and date of birth too.

2. Familiarise your self with the site. Perhaps buy other tickets from it. Know the right buttons to click, the right fields to fill and wether you have to set up an account.

3. Get your credit card, your mum’s credit card and anybody else's credit card you can find and stick it next to your computer.

If one card falls in battle (damn credit limits, you only know your over until it’s too late) another must be ready to soldier on leaving it’s fallen comrade behind.

This is war people, remember Devo.

4. Strength in numbers. Get at least 10 of your mates to also try and buy tickets from their computers too.

Odds are one at least will make it through.

Last year I only had four people trying and I missed out.

5. Move fast! So many people are on this site trying to get the tix and your web will display that heart wrenching message - operation timed out - if you hesitate.

Didn’t follow my earlier advise of getting those names tattoed and now you can’t remember how to spell your mates last name?

Don’t freak out. Don’t call the mate. Just make up a new name and move on.

Later on your friend will have to legally change their name to whatever you picked to get into the festival but it will be worth it when you’re singing along to Devo.

Good luck people. We’ll all need it.

PS. There are no pictures. I’m sorry, I’ve failed. My hand was too sore from all the tattooing to go out and find some.
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ipods suck. Yeah, I said it!

May 17th 2008 08:28
The ipod is my natural enemy

Why you ask? Why is this woman blaspheming against music?

Let me tell you a few facts about the ipod and itunes.

Itunes has no automatic sensor of doubles. So if you accidentally add a CD twice, it won’t prompt you AS DOES ANY OTHER PIECE OF SOFTWARE IN THE WORLD warning you that you’re about to make doubles, it just goes ahead and adds it twice. And then when you try and get rid of those doubles by selecting the show all duplicates button, it doesn’t just show you the duplicates, it shows you the original too so you have to go through one by one deleting a track.

ipod
The offending article


The duplicates button also fails to see that songs with the same name, but by different artists are in fact different songs. It also doesn’t recognise that songs on different albums, like say a live album, are also different songs. I cannot get over the idiocy of this. This may not seem like a big deal, but if you’re into cover songs, or have a lot of live music, you’re essentially boned.

Unlike windows media player, itunes also seems to have a big issue with finding cover art. You can’t just say- go find cover art little itunes, there’s a good boy, there’ll be a treat for you at the end. Because the program is too dumb. It seems to find, instead of say the cover art for David Bowie’s Hunky Dory album, an obscure movie soundtrack the Bowie once sang on and uploads that instead.

To be honest, my hatred of itunes has several more reasons behind it. But right now I am getting so angry just thinking about it I can barely type.

I am a bonified music nerd. I am brilliant at music technology. But in the short 3 months I have had my ipod (bought only because it has 160GB drive which I really need) I have reset it about 90 times, had to redownload and update itunes at least 3 times a week, it has somehow managed to delete all my music except for Elton John and Phil Collins (you can only listen to Su Su Sudio so many times before suicidal thoughts occur), it’s copied my music 5 times over instead of once and has essentially found 40 other ways to piss me off.

So what should you buy instead?

visionw
It it was legal I would marry it.


The Creative Zen Vision W. It is a thing of beauty. I owned it’s predecessor, an old 20GB Zen for about 4 years and it WOULD NOT DIE. I dropped it, I back-packed through a third world country with it, I loaded Britney Spears on it and it still survived.

I also owned the Vision W for a few months, before selling it to buy the ipod. What a mistake. The Vision W only goes up to 60GB and I filled it within weeks, but we had some good times together. Easy to use, built in everything, beautiful large screen.

And it came with simple software, unlike this itunes crap which is the most poorly designed piece of crap the world has ever seen. You can find hundreds of itunes alternatives out there because so many people hate it, for example try yamipod, which begs the question: if a bunch of computer nerds can create, for free, a better version of itunes from their armchairs than why the hell did Apple pay millions for software specialists to create such a horrible program?

And if the ipod is so bad, why is it so popular? I think it’s due to clever marketing and branding, but hey prove me wrong. Tell me what’s right with the ipod.
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The Panics are rad. Enough said.

May 14th 2008 22:50
I am officially a bad person. Why, you may ask?

I didn’t know about the Panics until just a few weeks ago.

Now as a music nerd (and a music snob, I judge people by their CD collection and if there is even a whiff of the Veronica’s in there, then they are out of my life), I pride myself on knowing any decent band. I’ll even fake knowing them sometimes.

But with the Panics I was months, nay years late jumping on the bandwagon. And so to make up for it I encourage you all to jump on said bandwagon this instant.

The Panics are a fabulous band from Australia who’s latest single ‘Don’t Fight It’ is pretty much eating up airwaves.

They have a beautiful album released late last year called ‘Cruel Guards’ and from start to finish it is thoroughly enjoyable.

Cruel Guards
The Panics awesome CD


I recently had the pleasure of seeing them preform at St Jerome’s Laneway Festival in Brisbane and they were amazing (in other news there’s a rumour that Laneway will soon be expanding to take on cities over seas. Go Aussie GO!).

Panics 1
See how amazing they are?


That little Aussie band more than held their own amongst Canadian greats like Broken Social Scene, Manchester Orchestra and even Feist (who was rad).

They wailed, they drawled, they got the whole crowd attempting to dance even though they were plastered and sunburnt.

Drunken footy-short clad men swayed to the music, singing oddly in tune to the music.

Incredibly trendy girls in tight jeans, heels and berets but down their vodka cruisers and attempted to groove.

It was amazing to watch.

Panics 2
See, they swayed. I do not lie!


Kings of Leon (a fabulous hillbilly rock band soon to reviewed) also recently saw the Panics preform live and were instant fans.

“You know how normally when you hear a band you can list the bands that influenced them or that they ripped off straight away? We couldn't do it for them. They sounded like nothing I'd heard before – really melodic, almost atmospheric,” KOL drummer Nathan Followill told American Rolling Stone magazine.

Damn straight.

So, having now found out who this great band were, bought their latest album and played it constantly for the last month, I encourage you all to do the same.

Don’t skip a track, don’t put it on shuffle, just listen to a masterful album that’s smooth and enjoyable from start to finish.
639
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Being a huge fan of Californian rock band Phantom Planet, I was at JB Hi Fi the day their latest album came out waiting to trade my hard earned cash for what I was hoping would be another gem of a CD.

Raise the Dead
This is what Alex's fans did after hearing the album. Duct-taped the whiny a-hole to the wall.

[ Click here to read more ]
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This blog will review (sort of) CD’s, books, movies, games, your mum’s Sunday roast and anything else that tickles my fancy.
But mainly I will offer an opinion and update on the latest music news and trends, terrible genres (remember the time before Emo? Wasn't that a beautiful period?), and awesome tours.
How am I qualified to pass on my opinion


[ Click here to read more ]
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Recent Comments

Comment by Kdthestrange
on Phantom Planet are suddenly lame. Boo!

June 2nd 2008 09:13
Haha, excellent! I love debate!

So Jet, i admit I was overly harsh. After listening to it a few more times I've found I like it more. But the thing is, listening to and enjoying an album shouldn't be hard work (unless it's a pretty bloody amazing album). And this album just feels like hard work. You said it yourself: you have to get through the distortion to find the melody.

And about Alex's vocals- to me they just feel lazy. He's sluring, he's cracking and it's not adding to the piece. Remember 'Wishing Well' and 'The Guest' from the guest album? He was giving it his all, his voice was cracking, he was occasionally not quite getting notes and it sounded amazing. I agree he has to change his vocal style to suit the pieces- but why change it to crapness?

And Shwartzman - isn't Phantom Planet kind of huge? Wasn't he already ridiculously famous? And probably rich considering all the royalties he would have got from songwriting? Jason's released his own indie CD which I plan to review soon so I hope you read and post a rant.

Different opinions are great and it's good to be made to think. Thanks for commenting.

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Comment by Kdthestrange
on Engaged!!

June 2nd 2008 08:59
That is a pretty sweet ring. Do you now find you gesture more with that hand? Just you know, showing it off. I would.

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Comment by Kdthestrange
on Phwar... let's not get nasty shall we??

May 25th 2008 06:52
I'd like to say music has the power to inspire (not so people get killed but imagine of all the beautiful songs inspired people to do beautiful things)
But i just don't think it does. Otherwise We'd all be f-ed Think about all the shite people put out about drugs and violence and songs. It just doesn't reflect in the crime rate.

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Comment by Kdthestrange
on Wii Fit Review - Day one Play

May 22nd 2008 02:46
But do you feel like you're going to break the board everytime you move? I haven't tried it yet but this is my secret fear.

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Comment by Kdthestrange
on Give me music or give me death

May 21st 2008 04:24
Wow.
You could be me.
I too am currently living in a cultural wasteland due to taking a paying journalism job in the middle of freaking nowhere.
I too am so over crappy covers and Khe San that I refuse to visit any local venues for fear of hearing bad Cold Chisel.
I too cannot belive it when people here think someone famous and awesome is coming here and it's just Riki Lee from Aus idol getting married.
What is this crap people?
Buy a CD, invest in an ipod, move out of the eighties and discover some new music.

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Comment by Kdthestrange
on Yes, We All Look Like Celebs!

May 21st 2008 04:13
haha, I wonder how many people will now photoshop their facebook/ myspace/ orble profiles.

I'm going to say a lot.

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Comment by Kdthestrange
on ipods suck. Yeah, I said it!

May 19th 2008 06:14
You're right, Creative should have a bigger profile. And I can help them. Are you reading this Creative, send me free stuff!

For some odd reason the pictures have disappeared from this post. I'm not sure what happened there. Just imagine them.

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Comment by Kdthestrange
on Hello Hello

May 19th 2008 03:02
Sweet
I am terrible at picking wii games that don't suck, so the more reviews I read the better.

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Hey I have no readers either. Fear not, things will pick up. Just keep posting and remember comment, and you shall receive comment in kind. Old chinese proverb.

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Thanks for the excellent research.
I'd read about the scam on several news sites but they had little more than the bare essentials.
I really think ebay is shooting themselves in the foot- this may be better for buyers but will really hurt sellers unless they find a way to lower fees.
I read in one of the news articles that companies like paymate and buypal (or something like that) had requested that ebay state why their payment option were considered unsafe for buyers.
It'll be good to see a response.

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