For some reason or another I have been fascintated this week by the phenomenon of the nickname.
I have one, you have one, my Mum has one.

Everyone has a nickname.

Some people have nicknames based on a variation on their name, others have a nickname based on an aspect of their appearance, or people have nicknames based on something that they have done.

All of these can be very flattering, or very humiliating.

I for one have had many nicknames.

As a kid, I believe the first nickname I had at school was ‘Porky’. Now – you may think this was cruel and horrid, as I was a SOLIDLY fat-arsed kid, however I gave the nickname to myself. Mainly because the post ‘Animal-House’ high school soft porn film ‘Porky’s’ had just come out, I had seen it, got a hard on, and thought – “WOW that Porky guy was cool. He has a bar full of hot chicks (hookers), I wanna be like him!”

Whatever, I was ten years old. Soon enough, I realised the crushing influence that this name had on my self esteem and self worth, and decided to stop calling myself that.

After that I was Andrew again, and then became Günz (Pronouned Ginz). I was ‘The Günz’ for a while, and there were plenty of exercise book covers around to prove it, but soon enough, I realised the wank factor involved in putting ‘The’ before your name and stayed as Günz. That stuck for pretty much all of high school, and I’m still referred to like that by mates from that era (of which there are a few and I’m very happy about that).

Once out of High School, I became a lighting roadie. Someone who rigs and operates a light show for a band.
At the time, (remember that is was the olden days of the early nineties) Nintendo Game Boys were brand new, and I had one that I played almost constantly. The guys in the band were all a lot older than me and dubbed me ‘Game Boy’, as if I wasn’t rigging or operating the lights, I was playing Tetris. Pretty much why my social life as shit at the time, I was too busy with the nintendo..

After Game Boy wore off, I was Andrew again until about the age of twenty.

It was then that I worked at B105FM in Brisbane, driving those promo trucks around.
Whevever we had to get on air and say “Come grab your icy cold cans of coke at Cleveland Rd Capalaba” (I always liked alliteration), we had to sign off with a ‘10-4 Big Buddy’ style nickname, or ‘handle’. At the time it was rather fashionable for young men in bands (me) to have giant manes of long hair. It was also a trend of the time, (it was 1994) to have a hair wrap in there – Byron markets style. On the end of my hair wrap I had a glow in the dark spider. I also had a glow in the dark bass, and a few other things, but shit – like I said, it was the early 90’s. Either way when it came time for a nickname, JJ (yes everyone had one) nicknamed me ‘Spidey’.

That name stuck like shit to shag pile, and I still get called that when I’m dropping in to B105 to say hi, ten years later.

Radio was also responsible for the next, and most current nickname, Andrew G.
It was December 1998, and upon arriving in Adelaide at SAFM to do the drive shift and afternoons, I was perplexed as to what to call myself on air. I sure as hell didn’t want to call myself ‘Spidey’ for another moment, and ‘Günsberg’ was a little too weird for those shallow-graves-in-the-hills types in Adelaide, so Craig Bruce, my program director at the time suggested ‘Andrew G’.
Fair enough I thought, My Mum had been known as ‘Dr. G’ around the military hospital where she worked since 1986 and I figured it would work for me too.

In the true Australian tradition of shortening every word to mono syllabic forms, soon enough, I was just G.

Through this entire transition of names, I’ve never been known as Andy. You’d think that would pretty much be the name people would go for, however it never sat right with me, and I’ve never been comfortable being called Andy.
In fact, I’m quite a pedant when it comes to nicknames because of this, and will always only refer to people by the name they introduce themselves to me as, until I am given permission to do otherwise.

I’m also fairly fuckwitty when people call me Andy without asking, and will then refer to them as a sarcastic contraction of their name until the pick up on it. I should so get over myself.

I’m not mentioning of course the names girlfriends gave me –
Pumpkin, baby, love chunks, possum chops, etc.
Names you get called when you’re being asked to take out the rubbish, basically..

All in all, I’ve had it pretty good with nicknames, and I know, and know of people who’ve been dubbed with some corkers.

There’s the standard Australian ways of turning an R into a ZZ – (Dazza, Bazza, Gazza, Wazza, Jezza, Jozza), the contraction –
Suze for Susan, Kel for Kelly, Hoff for The Hoff, and then the “o” – Benno, Steve-o, Johnno etc

Then there’s the extra Australian casual referrence to others (usually strangers) in terms of authority,
Captain, Digger, Sport, Muscles, Tiger, Chief, Ace, Boss, Squire etc.

I also know
“The Money” – Steve, because he’s Soooooo Money
“Doc” – a guy I used to roadie with in 1992 (where do you go for drugs? The doctor)
“Dingo” – Because he was just feral, but a lovely man and great drummer.
“Hasslehefflehoff” – Because he knows his water.
“Golf Golf” – when he was in America, they couldn’t understand his accent when booking into hotels, so he had to phonetically spell it out, and when he got to the double g in his last name, would have to say “Golf Golf”.
“Magic” – Mick could make things appear out of thin air, amps, PA’s, lifts to gigs etc.
“Bubble” – when he was a kid he was always grumpy, so he was called grumples, and that became bubbles, which became Bubble.
“Plymouth Slim” – he’s from Plymuff, tall ‘n skinny.
“Tomato” – Because his name is Grant, and for a while was Tnarg (grant backwards) and shared a house with a Mum and her Daughter who was too little to pronounce Tnarg, and so the little one called him the next big word she knew starting with T, Tomato.

Never a good thing when your Nickname is reminiscent of your drug use,
I have met in my time,
Stoner Mike, Speedy Steve and Peaking Pete.

Even worse when your nickname involves a horrific misdeed of your drunken past -
I know of a man who goes by the name of “Drippy”, so named after the disease he acquired from a lovely Thai lady of the night in Bangkok.

Either way, it’s a term of endearment that’s bestowed upon you by people whom you love/hate/work with.
Sometimes they stick, sometimes they don’t.

Sometimes you’re lucky, sometimes you’re not, yet you’ll always answer to it.

xx a

When I was a chubby fifteen year old, in the true tradition of musical generation hopping, my dear friend Damian introduced me to the wonders of Van Halen.

They were a band from Milwaukee, USA and had the best front man in the world at the time a guitar player that changed the world.

There’s probably about five guitar players that fundamentally changed the way people play the instrument.
Their playing created a massive paradigm shift in the way people viewed the instrument.

In my humble opinion, these five musicians are :

Robert Johnson
Jimi Hendrix
Jimmy Page
Eddie Van Halen
Tom Morello

Sure, others came after them and developed on their styles, often surpassing them in terms of skill, however the invention and creation of the style was all theirs and took true inspired genius to accomplish.

So the other night when my surfing mate Kevin calls up and says “Dude, wanna come see Eddie Van Halen jam for a bit at a private gig?” it took me about ten nanoseconds to be in the car and down the street.

Eddie Van Halen completely altered the way people look at guitars. By a great knowledge of the fretboard, super-fast picking and a technique he pioneered, “finger tapping”, Eddie made every guitar player on earth thing about how they play differently.
Listen to albums of the time, you can hear his influence on many other bands’ records, all of them playing catch up, because Van Halen were the band of the moment. Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath are prime examples.

Van Halen were like a modern Led Zeppelin, true gods of rock. They flew in private jets, charged a million dollars a show, and refused to play if there were brown M&M’s backstage.
(Here’s why: Every band has what’s called a “rider” that the venue gets sent to them when the band confirms a booking. It outlines things that are required for the band to put on a show, power supplies, security standards, transport issues, stage height, stage construction, number of hotel rooms required, backstage catering, pass policy etc. It’s usually a very long and complex document. In Van Halen’s rider, they insisted on NO brown M&M’s backstage. If they found Brown M&M’s it meant that the promoter had just skimmed over the document, and may have missed other important safety information. A cool move if you ask me.)

Trust me, pretty much every guitar player you like now had a Van Halen phase.

Anyhow, we got inside and my mate Kevin starts chatting with the keyboard player who’s about to jump on stage .
The guy’s name is Patrick Leonard. Ok so, you may not know his name, but you know his songs.
Fella wrote pretty much all of the ‘Like a Prayer’ album with Madonna, played with Pink Floyd, worked on a million UnPlugged albums and played in Zappa’s band arounf the time of Zoot Allures.

I was so stoked to be talking to this guy, he was super friendly and didn’t mind telling me about his first gig in LA (Michael Jackson’s MD on THRILLER, bitches!) and was happy to tell me about his audition for Zappa’s band – when he was 17.

Turns out he went to drop a guitar off at the Zappa rehearsal, one keyboard player couldn’t make it so Frank said “Sit down and let’s see what you’ve got.” Frank then proceeded to tell him to play C to C# blues (!). And counted the band in. Away he went and was in the band. Holy shit. The guy can really play, which is good because about three minutes later he jumps on stage with Eddie Van Halen.

I sat down and dead set, my mouth was agasp the whole hour.

I was no less than four metres from my teenage GOD of guitar.
He walks on stage, shirtless, smoking, grinning from ear to ear and throws his axe into a blistering version of ‘Eruption’.
I pretty much shat right then and there.

Rather overwhelming to see someone you’ve idolised as a musician for nearly twenty years, throwing down, right in front of you.

There were no Van Halen riffs, no songs to speak of, in fact he kept reiterating that he’d never done this before and that it was all just a free form jam.

For a guy who’s usually playing massive riffs and blistering solos on songs about girls and fast cars, he has an incredible chordal and harmonic knowledge.
They just kept vamping over chord changes, and traded solos while a drummer kept the whole thing together.

Eddie Van Halen, is a guy who’s been treated for tounge and throat cancer a few times, still seems to love a cigarette. He loves to drink red wine straight from the bottle on stage and, for a guy who has had a hip replaced, can still pull rock shapes like I’ve never seen.

Now I’m not talking the emo “thrown the guitar down from my shoulder as I strum because I’m in so much agony” kind of shapes, I’m talking SHAPES. Shapes from the future, out there shapes that look like you need years in a mountian-top monastery to accomplish.

And then there’s his tone – everything I ever dreamed it would sound like live, and yes – it was INCREDIBLE..

He can play that guitar with about as much effort it takes me to breathe.
It was like a natural extension of his body.
He was making sounds and tones and chords and harmonies come out of his instrument that I’ve never heard before, with skill and intelligence and flavour that truly showed he is one of the masters.

No-one sang, however occasionally he jumped on the mic and introduced the band again, refferring to himself as, “Ed ,I’m just Ed. Fuck Eddie Van Halen”.

This guy has had an incredible life, the high point obviously being one of the most infulential guitar players of all time, and the lowlight perhaps the time when the zeitgeist turned away from his music and Eddie allegedly ended up side of stage at a Nirvana show, a little worse for wear and in tears, begging Kurt to let him jump up on stage, as they were what was hot now, and he was nothing anymore.

I don’t know how he got through a time like that, but let me tell you, I can cross one more thing off of my list now.

I have seen one of the true GODS of guitar in full flight, barely four metres from my face.

He grinned from start to finish, and when he stepped off stage, had HOT chicks just dripping off of him.

It may be hard to be Eddie Van Halen, with everyone wanting a piece of you, wishing you could just do that riff that they got laid to back in ‘91 – but I was stoked to see him live, free of all of that and in great form.

Thanks Kevin.
Thanks Patrick.
Thanks Eddie.

xx a

(If you want to explore more of what I’m talking about, track down Van Halen I, Van Halen II and 1984)

Ok.

If there’s one thing the current situation in the middle east has proven to me beyond a shadow of the doubt, it’s that TV news is not ‘news’. It’s a press release.

A story with a spin..

Don’t believe a word of it.

Do a google search on left wing and right wing media bias.

Who owns the TV station? What do they have to gain by telling the story the way they are telling it? Who is talking on the TV, and what do they have to gain by telling the story from their angle?

Get informed, read a story from Al Jazeera, the Guardain UK, Reuters and Washington Post, then draw your own conclusions.

No single news source will ever tell you the real story.

Remember, the first casualty of war is always the truth.

There’s some crazy bullshit happening in the world this week, I believe the scientific term is ‘a Clusterfuck’.

Take care of the people you love.

xx

Ok.

Last retro post for a little while.

Syd Barrett died this week.

He was sixty.

He was one of the guys who made me want to be a musician.
He also suffered from mental illness.

A sad tale.

He created Pink Floyd, and then took too much acid on top of his already fraglie mental state and sent him in to a permanent purple haze.

I will never forget the first time I heard “Interstellar Overdrive”, or the album “Piper at the gates of Dawn”.
Blokes these days with long hair and lovely scarves around their necks playing paisley Fenders and Rickenbackers through echo-plex pedals? Thank you Syd.

He was the original Pete Doherty, the original Ozzy, the original genius who got too wasted and had to be kicked out of the band he created.

He lived with his mum until the end I think.

I’m off to ride my Bike, and sing the Bike song that he wrote, (as I do every time I ride it) in tribute.

xx

Last night I went to the movies.

After a bit of a discussion about the benefits of seeing Jack Black in Wrestling tights versus seeing Meryl Streep being Cruella DeVille again in Prada, with a side topic of how great it would be to see Superman, I ended up conceding to the chick flick.

I booked on line, I drove us to the theatre, picked up the tickets from the talking card swiping machine, bought a $4.50 bottle of water from another card swiping, suggestive selling, ARE YOU SURE YOU DON’T WANT A COMBO MEAL?? talking mahcine, and we finally got inside, only to find the ‘Devil Wears Prada’ session packed to the rafters.
I paced up and down the aisles trying to find two seats together. Finally I spotted some, and they were front row, extreme left, ten feet from the three-story high googleplex screen.

We walked back out.

Much to my chagrin, I was not going to see a chick flick. We swapped the tickets over for another film, and ended up seeing ‘Click’.

Have you seen this film?

Christopher Walken is my hero.
Always has been since seeing him as ‘Max Zorin’ in ‘A View to a Kill’. Loved him. He’s such a bad ass and a great dancer, too.
Remember that Fatboy Slim video, weapon of choice? He’s awesome. He makes the movie.

Adam Sandler movies to me are like Celine Dion songs. In the same way that I am repulsed by her music yet I still get goosebumps when I hear her voice, I am generally repulsed by Adam Sandler’s films but hate myself for laughing at them anyway.

An interesting film.

Not in a ‘Three colours’ way or even a ‘Life is Beautiful’ kind of way, but more in a ‘Oh, so THAT’s how land tortises have sex’ kind of interesting..

Anyway.

I now owe one chick flick.

x andrewg

PS: SPEAKING of movies, yesterday, BACK TO THE FUTURE was on the telly. This is the one film that profoundly influenced the culture of my era more than anything else. I even remember the date I saw the movie, August 11th, 1986. One week, we were all hanging out playing handball in the school quadrangle at lunchtimes, still trying to breakdance like the guys in ‘Beat Street’. The next weekend, all anyone wanted was a skateboard, a time machine, and an electric guitar. Well most people got a skateboard, I got an electric guitar and no one got a time machine.

Almost overnight, fashions changed, hair changed, skating went from something wierd old guys did down at the Jindalee Bowl to something every kid was ditching his BMX for, and all I wanted to do was have a hero moment in front of my school with an electric guitar strapped around my neck just like little Michael J.

I begged my mum for an electric, so I could learn how to play Johnny B Goode at the school dance and have chicks want to pash me, too. It all started there. Yes, I love music, but always wanted to play music to get girls. (You know what? In the end, it worked too..)

I guess what I’m trying to say was that I grew up in a time when there were very, very few cultural outlets. Because it was the olden days, and there were only four channels (no SBS yet) only three teen magazines, not many video stores, only two real cinema complexes and one FM station in Brisbane, if something happend that applied to my demographic, EVERYONE knew about it.

You never missed ‘that cool show’ or ‘that awesome song’ because it was the only thing to read or see, or listen to.
In a way, I loved it, because everyone was part of the same gang, everyone was in the know. Everyone watched Countdown on a Sunday arvo because there was NOTHING ELSE TO WATCH.

So everyone came to school Monday morning, completely up to speed on what everyone else saw too, and everyone felt included.

It would be hard to be eleven today. With seven billion media outlets jamming marketing in your face every frame of your life, there’s many confusing decisions to be made.

I liked the binary existence of my youth. You liked Culture Club, or you didn’t. You liked the Cure or you didn’t. There were people to be your friend either way, so you always had someone to hang around.

You existed like this, of course, until you discovered the second hand record store on Albert St., where all your wierd uncle’s old records went to die, and you could now own them for a tiny sum of two Australian mid-eighties dollars. Of course by then, you were old enough to get the bus into the city alone, and had cash to buy vinyl, so that’s another story.

PPS. Back to the Future would never be made as a movie today because the premise of the film was that the Doc was stealing PLUTONIUM for TERRORISTS. How very Un-American. So he made them a bomb of used pinball parts but hey, it’s still not crash hot. Funny thing is though, back then the bad guys were Libyan. Interesting how far back the demonising of the Arab goes isn’t it?

PPPS: I never did learn how to play Johnny B Goode on the guitar. Guess it’s over to Olga for me. Today’s the day, eighteen years too late, but today’s the day..

xxx

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI6TSXGWy00

Damn.

xx

Recently, on completing the idol Auditions, I was led in to a discussion with my dear friend Grant.
I was talking about the recent batch of hopeful singers, and how impressed I was with their quest for musical knowledge and appreciation of music, over contestants from other years.

We spoke about the importance of knowing who built the road that you walk on, and paying respect to their labours.

You can bet that anyone who considers themselves a painter will have studied the romantic era, the impressionist era, abstract era, etc. They will study these styles so that they know what the rules are before they break them.

You can bet that any actor on camera will have stuied the work of the greats, Meisner, Stanislavsky etc, so that they know what the rules are before they break them.

So, it always flummoxes me when I come upon singers who say they love R & B, but don’t know who Sam Cooke or Bobby Womack are.
Folks who say they love the classic female soul singers, but have never heard an Ike and Tina album. (She was much more than “Beyond Thunderdome” y’know.)
People who love their hip hop, but have never heard an Eric B & Rakim Record, or know who Digital Underground are.

Just by being in this industry, it’s almost a given that you become a musicologist. There are folks who work in the Australian music industry that wouldn’t know their Kurtis Blow from their Curtis Mayfield, but thankfully they’re small in number.
Hell, the guy that produces Take 40 Australia, the most pop of all radio shows in this country, comes to work in a Tom Waits shirt.
Tom fucking Waits! It warms my heart that behind this glorious celebration of all things pop and mainstream (we do it better than anyone else!) is a man who appreciates both a great pop song but also knows what it’s like to put your picture in a frame.

It’s a delight to meet other people who also care about the bass sound on that Kool and the Gang Record, or who exactly was Prince Paul referencing on that De La Soul record. It’s great to meet someone to geek out with.
Therefore, when I met this current batch of Idol singers, I was super happy to find a bunch of people already deep into their musical legacy, and if not, hungry to learn.

For example, I asked one of the contestants what kind of music she was into, and she replied, “Oh, funk music. I like old Chili Peppers and Primus – have you heard of Primus?”. I stopped myself from recoilling with a self concious reply about the fact that I was moshing at Primus concerts when she was still in primary school, but instead chastised myself for being such a cock, and took her question as more of a reference to my youthful appearance, and decided not to.

She talked about liking the bass playing, that Flea and Les Claypool were both heroes of hers.
I gingerly asked if she’d heard any of the musicians that made those guys want to be bass players, to which she replied no, and that she’d love to. That eagerness to hear the infulences of her favourite musicians was all I needed, and the next day, like a drug dealer giving out a fix, I hooked her up with a cd full of George Clinton, P-Funk, Sly and The Family Stone and Stanley Clarke.

Every one of your favourite musicians has had infulences. Finding and listening to those influences not only helps you understand their music better, but gives you more of a clue about what kind of people they are as well. It also turns you on to music you otherwise may never have heard. Read interviews, find out who made them want to be musicians, check liner notes, find out what that sample is in your favourite hip-hop track, anything to start getting deeper into your favourite music.

Knowing who built the road that you walk on, and paying respect to them, is very important in every aspect of life.
Your parents for working hard to put a roof over your head so that you may sit in warmth and with a full belly while you read this, for example.
It happens all around you, not just with music..

Take care, happy listening!

xx aa