Lok's Diary
18 April 2005THE TRUTH ABOUT WILL'S DEPARTURE
Hmm, yes, a controversial sounding heading that has hopefully got your
attention. Will and I first met each other in a café in Glebe about 10 years
ago. I was eating toast, he had his head buried in musical manuscripts for
some uber piece of music he'd been working on. It wasn't long before we'd
struck up a friendship because of our mutual love of music. Will got me
playing in a cover band he was part of, The Doors Experience. Mock if you
will, but the Doors are fucking cool, and if you're gonna etch out a
post-uni existence in some way, you could do much worse than a Doors cover
show. Anyway, the bones of the The Hive came together in those early days.
Neither of us had any responsibility to anyone else during those days, so
locking yourself away for 16 hours at a time playing music was the norm. But
life moves on, and relationships form, vaporize, and form again. And
interests and passions change. I doubt that Will has lost his passion for
music but I understand that he's found other things in his life that as just
as fulfilling. I wish him all the best in his future pursuits.
So as not to break with my tradition of putting together a top 5 in any
diary post, here are my top five memories / recollections / experiences of
Will throughout our musical careers and friendship:
1. Byron Bay Stonage scrabble: Will tried to convince us that 'slown' was a
word, as in "The car had slown down as it approached the intersection". A
well rounded Uni education.
2. Writing sessions for Eleven Stages: We went away to Diamond Dave's
Country Bunker, a holiday house in the Hunter Valley, to write and record
some basic tracks for Eleven Stages. When it came to be Will's turn on
cooking duties, he made a remarkably fruity Bolognese sauce. This probably
had something to do with the fact that whilst Will thought he was pouring
the juices from tinned olives into the sauce, it was actually the juice from
a tin of cherries
3. Driving to a gig out west: All my drums and Will's keyboards were packed
into his tiny little car on the way out to a gig. We literally had gear on
our laps and hanging out the windows. Will, being the ever-impatient driver
was tailgating a Falcon XR6 in front of us. I told him I thought it might be
an unmarked cop car. Anyway, we had to make a fast turn around because I'd
forgotten my cymbals (doh!) and as we pulled a U-turn (U-bolt if you're in
Melbourne) the XR6 spun around to chase us....with its blue light flashing.
Upon rolling down the window, to find two guys covered in musical
instruments, the cop asked us why we were speeding, tail gating and crossing
over a double yellow line? Will's calm response was "Sorry, we're musicians
and we're running late to a gig"...Honestly Will, why not just suggest to
the guy that we empty the entire car so he can search it for drugs? We did
make it to the gig and we rocked.
4. Dancing with the Stars Will: Imagine mine and Tony's shock when Will
jumped out from behind his keyboards and started dancing on the front of the
stage to gee-up a fairly innocuous crowd at a show in Jindabyne. That's not
the kind of behaviour we'd come to expect from the mild mannered Will. I
laughed a lot...still, it was something funny to keep me awake on the drive
home.
5. Short Circuit Will: When we sued to be on tour and we were sound
checking, I always found myself crossing my fingers and saying a little
prayer to the muses that Will's sampler would boot up and work properly. Too
often I looked up whilst getting up the kit to see Will with his hands on
his hips, staring at the LED display on the Kurzweil as though he was trying
to intimidate it into working. Frustrating at the time, but an endearing
memory."
15/12/03
Captain’s log, Star Date 151203 plus or minus 5% by 11 45 by zero two.
Dramatic changes have appeared in my patterns of socialisation, brought about by the arrival of my beautiful baby daughter, Astrid.
We had our first venture outside, as a family, yesterday to go and Yum Cha. Fortunately, Astrid slept through the entire meal and we got fantastic attention from the staff because they all wanted to see the baby. It should be noted that making friends with staff at Yum Cha restaurants should be a high priority for anyone with more than a passing interest in good food; otherwise, you’ll be getting prawn toast and Singapore noodles. Regardless of food though, yesterday was a key psychological victory for us because we were starting to feel that we’d be housebound for a while as a 3 week old baby can be quite unpredictable!
Next gig stop for me will be the Woodford Festival – I have already obtained a fresh stock of Doctor Who audio adventures for the drive north. We played up at Woodford last year and it was awesome. There’re just so many interesting events going on there, from all corners of the globe.
I’m also in the process of updating my computer so I can start demo-ing tracks at home. It’s a pain in the arse not having those facilities at my fingertips. Up until now, I’ve had a book full of loops and grooves that I’ve penciled on the train…..so by the time I get them to the studio they have generally changes quite a bit from the original. Hopefully this is going to lead to a much greater output of music in the New Year!
As science fiction is going to be a big part of my trip up to Woodford, this top 5 shall be : Lok’s Top 5 moments in Science Fiction
1. William Hartnell being replaced by Patrick Troughton as Doctor Who. Seriously, how innovative to come up with the concept of Time Lord regeneration in order to keep a series going after the lead actor decides to quit? It certainly worked as Doctor Who has regenerated 7 times now, with 8 actors playing the Doctor in the TV series (the 8th doctor being played by Paul McGann in the Dr Who movie in the mid 1990’s). This doesn’t count Peter Cushing playing Dr Who in the two Dalek movies in the 60’s.
2. Decker finding the origami unicorn in Bladerunner.
3. The appearance of the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
4. The first time that Russell Napier activates his miraculous machine in the 1949 film of H.G. Well’s The Time Machine. The time lapse stuff as he travels to the future looks awesome. The 2002 remake of this film was complete shite.
5. The appearance of Klaatu in the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still. A really powerful message on racial / religious conflict and aggressive nationalism – and 50 years later we still haven’t learnt a damn thing.
You’ll notice that none of these ‘moments’ occur any more recently than 1982. That’s not to say that I don’t think any Sci-Fi in the last 20 years has been any good, it’s just that I think some of the more important themes of Sci-Fi were explored and portrayed in really amazing ways by telling good stories rather than just be using kooky effects. I don’t think that Sci-Fi today is doing much to challenge our perceptions of the world we live in, or exemplify, by allegory, what a fucking horrible state we’ve created. I’m happy to be challenged on these points.
Anyhow, I have a gorgeous daughter, and here she is!
4/11/03
Captain’s Log Star Date 051103 to the 6th decimal point.
Allegedly 6 days to go (you’ll know what I mean when I post the photos here).
How good was the Gaelic Club gig? I felt fairly relaxed for that one actually. Maybe it was because I was hiding behind my drums and my Harry Potter wizard’s hat, getting into the Halloween spirit. Until we actually played it, I wasn’t sure if there was gonna be much correlation between Long Strong Diamond and California Uber Alles but it seemed to work – breaks and punk who’d have thought? Actually, I was inspired by a group I’ve been listening to the last couple of weeks called The Transplants (www.thetransplants.com) kinda ska/punk/d’n’b thing. I rate them.
This week’s top 5: Top 5 things that should be done before Christmas.
1. Sponsor a child: www.worldvision.com.au
2. Install ducted air conditioning: “No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater than central air.” (Azrael, played by Jason Lee from Dogma)
3. Get a digital camera: (again, you’ll know what I mean when I post photos here)
4. Buy this album:
5. Play through this cool game: http://nlp.fi.muni.cz/~xsvobod4/amanita/samorost/intro.html This some of the coolest, understated and addictive Flash stuff that I have seen
Oh, as a final thing to do….drink too much tequila, lay on the bathroom floor and then pash-on with a stranger in a University car park. Jake Stone……you are too much.
9/10/03
We have been away touring for the last three weekends. It’s been the most intensive period of gigs in a long while because we haven’t had an album to flog for ages. The tough thing about touring when you work all week is that you start to forget about little details that can actually be the most beautiful things in life – waking in your own bed on a Saturday morning and enjoying a cup of tea and some cartoons, not returning to work on Monday morning feeling as if you only just left the place 10 hours ago, not eating a steady diet of café food.
Prior to this tour, we were down at Winter Beats which was dope. It was very cool to see Def Wish Cast play. I hadn’t seen them live for about 10 years, when they used to jump up and rhyme on stage with hardcore bands like Toe to Toe down in the Sutherland Shire. I didn’t think we played that great a show and had the shits a little so I decided to drive straight home after the gig (at about 3:30am). Needless to say, it’s a fair hike from Jindabyne to Sydney, but armed with a fresh clip of Doctor Who audio CD’s and a choc malt drink I set out into the snowy darkness. Jindy to Cooma was pretty tough because the road isn’t all that good but when I made it to Canberra as dawn was breaking, I figured I was only an hour or so from Goulburn Macca’s which would be the ideal breakfast stop after a night like that. However, the sun was glaring right into my eyes and I missed the freeway exit….I haven’t been that pissed off about not getting MacDonald’s since I was about 6 years old and my mum denied me a Sesame Street Happy Meal.
Anyway, as this is my first diary entry on our new website, I would like to establish a tradition of finishing my entires with a Top 5 of some description:
Top 5 things that I’ve said on tour which I think are fairly insightful:
1. There’s nothing sexy about a penile catheter
2. I’m gonna call my first solo album “Sounds from the New Jack Lounge”
3. Tony: “Why do you think that Australian’s shorten everything they say?” Lok: “Dunno”
4. “beep beep beep. Hi, you’ve reached God. I’m everywhere at the moment so I can’t take your call”
5. To a punter at Revolver Upstairs (one of my favourite venues, but notorious for people who won’t get out of your way when you are trying to lug your gear out), “Get out of my fucking way, dicksplash!”
How exciting is it going to be to follow my web diary week to week?!