happy old year! start the next one fresh…
Here’s a push in a direction..

xx aa

There will be more on this later, but please, please, please (sorry, had to) understand that ONE MAN is responsible for every singe piece of hip hop you’ve ever heard. Every bit of disco, every bit of soul.

He WAS the hardest working man in showbusiness.
He was the Godfather of soul.

He is the reason we have music the way we have it now.

He was James Brown. He was 73.
When we heard the news last night, we turned up “Say it Loud, I’m black and I’m Proud” and danced around for hours.

When American radio refused to play black music, James bought radio stations so that people could hear it.
He played the runble in the jungle.
He went on air for 24hrs straight in Boston after MLK was shot and sang songs to try and quell the rioting.
He is the very reason for almost all the music you hear today.

Dig~~!! his AMAZING way of being on stage – and his un-fuckin’-real moustache.

Or Click this and roll around in the astonishing funky-mid 80′s Japan goodness of James Live in Japan with one of the best intros any performer has ever had.

I’m so blessed to have seen him play live.

To get a clue how incredibly important this man was to music, behold this remarkable footage of both Michael Jackson AND Prince getting up on stage with him back in the 80′s.

These two guys were going one for one in the charts, battling each other and the GODS of popular music at the time, and when James Brown says “come on up on stage” they both fucking JUMP up there, because he’s Soul Brother #1.

I think Prince may have been tired and emotional about being up on stage with James and Michael.
Please overlook his trashiness and just wallow in James’ amazingness.
I will miss you James.
Thanks for the music.

xx aa

Dear God I Just Can’t stop..

For my thoughts on the family value of this time of year, please refer to my post made around same time last year.
I’m off to brave Westfield yet again.
I think this time, I will take the iPod to drown out that carolling.

Something very interesting to look at, if you’ve got 45 minutes up your sleeve.
Just watch it, doesn’t matter if you agree or disagree.
The important thing is to be open to debate.

Merry Chrismukkwanzaa

xx aa

So I’m working on this project at the moment, and there’s all these super-hot production girls that are on the team.
I’m talking 23ish year old brunette super spunks who are dynamos at doing their job.
The other day one of them (who was looking super hot on the day I may add) mentioned that she “looked stupid in her boots”.
I turned to her and said, “Yeah I was going to mention that.”
“What where you going to mention?” she asked.
“That you look stupid in those boots”.
She looked rather shocked, understandably, until I mentioned to her that she obviously does not allow anyone else to talk to her that way, so why should she talk to herself that way?
She looked hot in those boots, and I wasn’t having any poppycock to the contrary.

When we put ourselves down, the negative energy is there just as much, if not more, than when someone else puts us down.
If our friends said to us the things that we say to ourselves, would we still have them as friends?

Too often when going about our day we can get bogged down with how much is wrong with our lives.
We can send ourselves into a tailspin and see the worst in every scenario, and that bad feeling permeates our whole mood, feeding off of itself and sending us further down.
We look at everything and see the downside, the possiblity of failure, the reason it won’t work.
Well guess what.
We’re humans and we’ll see anything in anything if we want to.
Shit, some people see Jesus in a cheese toastie they want to see it so bad.
So if you’re feeling full of said feelings, in a funk, you heart full of down vibes, here’s a trick I learned this week.

Fill your brain with feelings of thankfulness.
The smile that comes to your face as you list through the things that you’re grateful for builds and builds, and soon you feel it warming your heart, until that thing that shitty feeling deep down is pushed to one side, and what was getting you down is now just a simple problem that can be solved.

With each statement, really feel the thankfulness inside you, allow the grateful feelings you have bring a smile to you, then keep going.

I’ll go first, then you.

Some of the things I am thankful for at 6pm on Saturday, the 16th of December 2006.

Thanks for the tase of Avocado on a rice cracker with some salt on it. Yum!
Thanks for my ten fingers and toes, and that my eyes work well and my family is healthy.
Thanks for the sound of fresh steel strings on the Maton.
Thanks for the waves.
Thanks for the clean air.
Thanks for the drinkable water out of my tap, that I don’t have to go to a well.
Thanks for playing Sega Mega Drives with Josh.
Thanks for the great scrabble letters today.
Thanks for making Yumi so hot.
Thanks for playing poker with my friends tonight.
Thanks for my photo of the Pass at Byron Bay.
Thanks for my fridge full of food.
Thanks for getting me to work with such cool people.
Thanks for the great book I’m reading.
Thanks for Soundgarden.
Thanks for Black Sabbath.
Thanks for a lazy Saturday afternoon.
Thanks for the guys in the line up who call me on to waves.
Thanks for my brothers.
Thanks for the taste of a fresh Kiwi Fruit.
Thanks for being able to know what the air smells like in Japan.
Thanks to my Dad for teaching me who Miles Davis is.
Thanks for the way Erin McNaught looks in the photo that G and my Bro got with her.
Thanks for Angelina Jolie’s lips.
Thanks for my beautiful surfboards.
Thanks for the time to surf them!
Thanks for the tickets to Noel Gallagher the other night.
Thanks for George Miller for making a great movie about penguins.
Thanks for my brothers for being my heroes.
Thanks for knowing the taste of the beer in Prague.
Thanks to the person who taught me to say thanks.

Ah. I feel better already.
Your turn.

xx aa

PS: And now for the hymn…

Great to see in this time of compassion and goodwill to all, this sort of thing can still happen in my sunburnt country.

Bwahahahha. Someone wake me up and tell me I’m dreaming, and a bad one – like the time I dreamed I wasn’t let in past the velvet rope at a Punisherz after party.

“Don’t want them drinking our water supply?”.

I have Lego Men with more brains that that person.

Grow up Australia.
Isolationism leads to trouble – just look around!

xx aa

I love Dee Snider.

He and his fat Twisted Sister mates have done a Christmas album..
Oh yeah baby.

It’s super awesome and full of about as much reverence Christmas has lately.

So strap a fake mistletoe above the door, spray some fake snow in your window, watch out for the pooing santas (if you’re in regional NSW, they’re on every shop awning) and spell it XMAS as much as you like, because it stopped being about a prophet’s birthday a long time ago.

Come all ye faithful!

xx aa

PS: Dig the Hava Nagila moment at the end to appease the demographically different US audience…

One of the greats.
He was shorter than you think, he had an Ace Frehley tattoo and he walked up to me in a club I was playing in once and asked me if it was O.K. if his band could borrow my band’s gear to play an impromptu set of KISS covers on a night off in Brisbane back in 1996. I said “yes”. They were amazing.

Thanks Dimebag.
You died, along with your friends, in a really horrible and quite fucked way, in front of your brother.
I hope you’re resting well, and that the man who killed you and your friends has found peace, too.
Thanks for all the great dancing and air guitar that I got to do to your music.

xx aandrew