Hello readers, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?

I’ve been thinking a little about music recently. Essentially, I love music. I like to listen to it a lot, and I’m certain many people are in the same boat. The thing is though, I prefer Australian music to music from overseas. That isn’t to say I listen to only Aussie music, or that I only listen to Midnight Oil or The Veronicas, oh no.

There’s a wealth of excellent Australian music that I believe many people are unaware of, mostly because many of the thousands of great small Aussie bands simply don’t have the advertising budget that all the mainstreamers do.

In the same vein as the classic “Australian-made” advertisement, I believe I’m doing my part to keep great musicians on our shores producing great music by buying Aussie albums.

For those of you who may already be scoffing, shaking your heads or saying something along the lines of “there’s no such thing as Australian made insert your genre of choice here“, have I got a shock for you!

Firstly, checkout triplejunearthed.com; the latest incarnation of TripleJ’s Unearthed competition allowing bands from all over the country to submit a few songs to be judged by the Australian public at large and TripleJ, with the winner being given a grant and some studio time to record a debut album, allowing them to prove their worth and go on to spread their musical talent across the globe.

There’s almost 10,000 songs on the website that you can listen to anywhere, anytime; picking your favourites and rating each track. The good thing is though, there’s almost every conceivable genre available on the site: dance, electronic, hip-hop, indie, metal, pop, punk, rock, roots, and no doubt their respective sub-genres are included too.

Aside from TripleJ, MySpace Music is also a great place to find acts — hit the music search page, select Australia as the country, and search to your hearts’ content by a combination of genre, sounds like, influences, and everything else!

To get you started, here are a few Australian bands I think are top shit:

• pnau, dance-music duo, listen to Wild Strawberries
• Muscles, dance-music, listen to Ice Cream
• The Dirty Secrets, rock, listen to Five Feet of Snow
• Dead Letter Circus, rock, listen to The Mile
• Bushido, prog/rock, listen to Original

There are so many more artists I could add to the above list — but then, I’d be taking all the fun away from you, wouldn’t I?

Of course, once you’ve found yourselves some good Aussie artists to love, you can head over to TripleJ’s Gig guide to find out where they’re playing next!

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1 comment

Woah!

Fucking top shit. It was excellent.

Firstly, on Friday afternoon after work, I made my way via public transport (two buses and a train to travel 7.8km from Aspley to Northgate - oh my!) to Northgate, whereupon I met with Soph, Brett, Kate and Annie, in preparation for one of my best weekends ever.

The plan was and happened as follows:

• Friday night - Midnight Juggernauts @ The Tivoli
• Saturday morning - recover, chill out
• Saturday night - Riverfire!
• Sunday - rest and relaxation

Good plan, eh? I thought so. I don’t think that’s an unfair self-assessment.

After arriving at the girls’ house Friday afternoon and getting changed into my new clothes, we hung out for a while and waited around for everyone to show. After much mucking about and waiting around and generally piss-farting about, we departed their house around 7.30PM; by the time we’d negotiated QRs Brunswick St Station refurbishments, Bruce and Ash’s hunger, and the streets of the Valley, it was around 9PM when we arrived finally at The Tivoli.

Unfortunately this meant that we missed the first support act, Young & Restless, who it seems would’ve been quite good live. Damn Arms were pretty good. Although initially, I didn’t particularly like any of their songs, as they basically sounded like tryhard Midnight Juggernauts impersonators, by the time they played through their headline track Homewrecker, I was jumpin’ and thumpin’ just as hard as the next indie-synth-rocker.

Indubitably, Midnight Juggernauts were the show stoppers, stealers, and wreckers. With their first LP, Dystopia just released, they have a veritable lengthy playlist to rock through.

We all went pretty crazy, me especially.

It was fucking awesome.

Not eating all day, combined with my drinking and few hours of non-stop jumping around makes for a fucked up Owen! Hell yeah!

We made to back to Northgate just fine, and hung out for a bit before people started to droop one-by-one like unwatered plants, only the strongest surviving into the early hours of the morning to keep the chattering and the good times rolling.

Saturday morning everyone woke late, except for Carly and I, who stupidly woke up around 8.30AM, after being asleep for at least four hours. We sorted ourselves out and a short few hours later, we all headed to the RE for a wholesome hearty lunch. I had the RE burger, which was awesome, and filled my empty, gurgling stomach just nicely. Bruce and Ash peeled off to go see The Bourne Ultimatum (which is pretty damn good), while Scott, Soph, Annie, Brett, Kate, Carly and myself headed to the Brisbane river, whereupon we happened across some ice cream and general mucking about.

Kate and Annie went to meet a friend of theirs at West End, Soph and Scotty went to meet Soph’s family somewhere else, and that left Brett, Carly and I to our own devices. We decided to head to our usual Riverfire enjoyment spot, and along the way we picked up a doughnut or two from Dreamy Doughnuts and enjoyed them thoroughly. I had a Lindt chocolate covered doughnut, and it was fucking awesome. Two thumbs up!

We arrived at our spot for Riverfire rather early, around 5PM. We had two hours to kill before much of anything happened, or so I thought. Fortunately for our sake, the RAAF Roulettes made some interesting flyovers; I never realised just how awesome the turboprop engines sound.

In between conversation, and entertainment provided by small kids and some helicopters, the time flew by, until Bruce and Ash arrived, and it was almost time for the main event. The first F1-11 flew over, rather high I thought. In years gone by, the dump and burn was executed at a lower altitude; one year, I swear I could feel the heat from the flame! This year, not so. However, the fireworks display was brilliant; they must have implemented some new techniques, or used different fireworks, because it seemed to be a lot more spectacular than last years’ display.

After Riverfire, we all headed awkwardly home, with QRs rail transport flailing under the strain of transporting the several-hundred-thousand-strong crowd out from the Brisbane CBD. Ash, Carly and I did eventually make it back to Northgate station, after which we bought ourselves some Maccas and chomped heartily while having a bit of a chin-wag. On account of our late-night-drinking-and-partying-then-trecking-around-Brisbane-induced-tiredness, Carly and I opted to get a lift home with Ashley, to save ourselves the walk from Petrie station. We said our farewells and headed back to my place.

Sunday, Carly and I hung out for a bit, and generally spent time relaxing. We had lunch with my family for fathers day, which was an excellent mixture of freshly cooked mackerel, fresh prawns, salads, breadrolls and softdrink. It was a good lunch, as my family don’t oft have time for each other these days. I thoroughly enjoyed myself today, despite the lack of action-packed-ness as compared to previous days this weekend.

All in all, I had a hella good time, and I have all my friends and family to thank for it! You guys fucking rock!

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