RAW Sampler

Here's a RAW video sample of the music documentary stuff I do.



It contains the Fiery Furnaces, the Hard Ons , Buck 65, Rogers Sisters and loads of others

Down and Out in Berlin

Berlin ist sehr kuhl -

As you can see I've been learning deutsch. It's going well, but sometimes it feels like I'm forcing my mouth into weird shapes, like I'm making it do yoga moves without stretching. Can you say, 'The Lotus Position?' Oh God, I think I pulled my tongue.

Berlin's cool, we're renting a nice furnished apartment and I'm searching like mad for a job. The city seems to be built on unemployment. There's no money here. You particularly notice it when going for job interviews. It's like you're the only one in the whole city dressed in a suit. You feel like an alien from Mars.

People on the train point their fingers, while saying, "Hey! Look at the freak, everyone!"
All the heads turn. I'm thinking, 'Keep your head down they're not staring at you.' Everybody is staring. It's a national pastime.

I might as well have dressed in my birthday suit. Nobody wears a suit. Nobody has a job.

An interview I had last week I wore the 'said clothing' and the job was an editing position at a tourism mag. I pressed the bell at the entrance. Dark clouds loomed over this massive warehouse. It was like something out of Scooby Doo. A punk kid with a hundred piercings opened the door a crack. He was gawking at me like I looked freaky.

"Um..." I coughed to break our silence. 'I'm here to see Chris.'

'Cool.' He let me in.

Moments later, I was in a small office with Chris. He's one of the those young dynamic Americans who talk in catch phrases, went to some ivy league breeding house, and his major goal in life is to be listed in Forbes before he's 30. He seems like the only dude making money in this city and he's making a tonne of it from tourism. We talked for an hour. One of the kids had called me to come in, but he didn't have any editing jobs. Hell, he didn't even know why I was there.

I was all dressed up with no where to work.

His magazine is a free rag for tourists which has the same content reprinted in it each month with loads of advertising. The punk kids hand it out for him. Sure, there's more to it, but it's long and boring.

He did offer me a job though. It'll be writing for an upcoming guidebook in the future. That's not really helpful for now though, is it? So dressed like the New York banker, I said my good byes to him and his punks kids and went out into the wilderness of Berlin.

So tourism is rampant in Berlin. The art scene is amazing. Loads of artists seem to have flocked here. No, I'm not about to sign up as another arty types who sells his wares along the Spree every weekend. What would i sell? The pic above? It's hardly great. Or perhaps another visual interpretation on poverty and hunger. No i reckon those guys might have that covered.

So I'm trying to get some other writing work sorted out in London and other places where i can telecommute and I've got a few other things in the pipes, but things have certainly slowed down. I might admit defeat soon and take up some teaching work.

John Howard - Election Sedition Spoof

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Buddies overseas part.1

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Buddies overseas part.2

So Roadtripping has been great.

I can’t tell you how many times Sandy and I have gone somewhere, places we’ve planned to visit and had to save a bundle to get there then when we’ve arrive, said, “Wow! This place is cool, but wouldn’t it be rad to come here with your mates?’

Now we have. We’ve been road-tripping through Spain with our buddies, and there’s nothing better than hooking up with your buddies overseas.

On our first night in Valencia we wandered dark streets, dodging crowds and ducking up alleys with graffiti over walls where we found a bar which had traditional music flooding from it. We sat on the street, bought a round of drinks and talked through the hours, telling stories and catching up.

I got curious about the music coming from the upstairs though, so naturally I checked it out. I’d like to point out old wooden stairs aren’t ideal for creeping up to take subtle peeks. So when I poked my head up, a room full of about thirty old blokes were staring at me. Cigars were hanging out their mouths and they were sitting around a massive table like it was a boardroom meeting, except they all were holding guitars, some big, some little, and some mandolins. I had stumbled up at the end of one of their songs.

‘Bravo,’ I said, clapped, and felt lame, but said it again.

The nearest bloke smiled. The others looked at each other, shrugged and began talking about which song they’d like to play next. So I asked the guy if he’d mind if I invited my amigos up. He shrugged. Good enough.

We spent the next hour watching in awe. At one point I got jealous because Mook, Arnie and Erin got to sing with them and I didn’t, but then I got the opportunity to use the clapping sticks, which is not quite the same because you might say being given clapping sticks is a bit like the musical equivalent of being put in remedial class, but then when I was twelve I was given the prestigious job of playing the triangle at the Sydney Opera House for my school so I was happily at home..

The old bloke who’d lent me his sticks told me, “We play together since university. Every week on Wednesday.” I looked at him. He was old, but some of his buddies looked like they could’ve retired twice. These guys had been playing together longer than the Stones.

The first time I got an inkling of how good travelling overseas with friends could be was when Sandy and I hooked up with my friend Gus in India. He was arriving after us and I’d told him that at Mumbai airport a bloke with a limo would be meeting him. I know a limo sounds a little far fetched, but at the time when I told him, I honestly had every intention of doing it. Really. It would’ve happened too, had we not used up our free Marriot hotel points at the bar.

He arrived at the airport expecting to see a well dressed Indian gentleman holding a cardboard sign with his name on it. Instead, he got a zillion screaming Indians. Hands outstretched as they tried to grab his clothing. He stood safely behind the last barrier of airport arrivals gob-smacked. His eyes searching the crowd for his name. Every one of them wanted his money and his bags in their taxi.

Sandy and I were sitting on top of an old wall behind this, in the car park, watching, and giggling as he walked up and down the line of screamers searching franticly.

When he finally found us, he wanted to kill us. Then hug us. Then kill us. It set the tone for a great holiday. We were a force to be reckoned with, no Indian tout felt capable of ripping us off, because together we would argue, scream, dance, and occasionally sing to get a fair price on things.

Seeing Europe with your buddies is just as good. It’s perfect because it’s the road trip which I love, and it’s also completely foreign, sometimes it seems so far removed from what I know it feels like another planet, just like outback Australia.

Think rural highway restaurants, an experience everywhere and in Spain don’t expect those folk to speak a word of English, like you can imagine it isn’t at the forefront of people’s minds out the back of Wagga Wagga, Australia. Fair enough too. So we try our little phrases, like, ‘Aola. Como estas?’ This often goes completely spastic on me though, because I did Spanish lessons but never really practised, so I guess I’m a little falsely confident. I once asked if I could have the three waitresses instead of three beers. Sandy’s Spanish is tops and often saves me.

It doesn’t always work out her way though. In Tuscany, Italy, Sandy and I hooked up with my parents. This was very special. They were renting an apartment in the countryside where we stayed on their couch for a few days. This was during my birthday so Dad treated us to some lovely provincial Italian food in the local town where Sandy impressed my parents by chatting to the waitress in Spanish, apparently Italian is similar. Personally, I think the waitress looked a little confused.

My Mum and Dad were impressed though and Dad took it upon himself to educate us about Italy. He drove us to Florence to see the Uffizi Gallery.

Let me just say, my old man he loves technology. He loves the new gadgets, computers, video cameras, etc. So of course when he and Mum were renting their car, you can imagine his delight when the girl behind the counter offered them a GPS mapping system.

Sandy and I were a little blown away it. We’ve travelled all of Europe with this tatty map book that has several pages stuck together with sticky tape. Its great and we love it, but not many libraries or bookstores would stock it because A-, it’s out of date and B-, it’s in German.

Dad’s GPS had a cutesy American girl’s voice which told him when to turn, a TV screen showed a map which moved with the car. But then Sandy and I get by with our book because surprisingly enough Europeans have road signs.

So getting to Florence seemed a little more difficult than necessary. We drove around a park six times because of Miss Cutesy’s directions. Dad’s neck went red. Admittedly I didn’t help the old man’s frustration by making smart arse comments from the backseat. When he did finally park the car he frog marched Mum, Sandy and me through the streets of Florence to the Gallery.

To his credit though, if he hadn’t hurried us we would’ve missed our booking because the gallery lets people in at allotted times and we would’ve missed the whole thing. It was well worth it - think Da Vinci’s, Michelangelo’s, Caravaggio’s and Botticelli’s (he did The Birth of Venus, it’s of that naked lady who’s standing in a clam with her hands covering her naughty bits).

Europe’s got loads of amazing art and architecture. It’s easy to understand why it’s on most people’s “to do list”. We’ve been road tripping for only a few months and we have seen loads, but I think its losing its edge for me. Can it be that an old building is starting to look like just another old building?

I wanna feel awed again. It’s only been a few months and I don’t wanna be de-sensitised. Not yet.

We’ve just got to Berlin. “Wow, look at that!”

So many People!

In Australia it’s easy to get away from people. If you want a quiet beach all you gotta do is drive up or down the coast a little and suddenly you’re there. Admittedly, during summer city beaches are packed, but if you go outside those zones it’ll be quiet. Sure, on those beaches there will be people, but they’ll be scattered. Everyone seems to respect each other’s need for space and keeps their distance.

August in southern Europe is mental. Everyone has gone on holidays here. The beaches are packed. This is not an exaggeration either.

When we were travelling through France from north to south, four out five shops would be closed for the entire month of August with a French note to say gone swimming back next month. Trying to organise bands to film at gigs has also been a bit of a pain. I’ve received dozens of emails from really blunt people in bands saying, ‘Why are you coming to Zagreb, Rome, Ljubljana> in August. Nothing is happening!”

As if this hadn’t already become painfully obvious to me, I reply with, ‘Thanks for the tip, buddy. Anyone else you can recommend?’

Everyone is on holidays. And the bands that aren’t, they’re doing the big festival circuits.

So what can you do? You do as they do. When in Rome, you go to the beach.

We have and it’s beautiful.

In Croatia the water is ultra clear and it has that tropical turquoise colour you always see in postcards. The bottom is totally visible too with little fish swimming about. Apparently because there hasn’t been much heavy industry in this country the coastline has remained pristine. That’s if you don’t count war or ethnic cleansing as heavy industry.

And there’s no sand either, the mountains go right into the seas creating these rocky beaches and cliffs, so there’s not that old problem of getting sand in your underpants. Personally, I reckon that’s a good thing. And by having big rock faces to jump from into the sea it increases your chances of looking really good in front of your girl.

At the beaches though I can’t help wondering if I’m looking at any war criminals? How can you recognise one? Do they wear their hats differently? Do their boobs wobble strangely? It seems the EU is on the look out for them too. With Croatia’s EU membership coming up, it’s not likely they’ll get complete acceptance until they pick up their toys and hand over their war criminals to The Hague.

So we’re at the beach and we have our Aussie need for space. Admittedly, there are a millions of women lying around topless, but strangely enough you learn to turn a blind eye to them. It’s not because I’ve become desensitised to boobies, I don’t think that’s possible, but most of the girls who seem to get them out and jiggle them free are a few of generations older than me.

But then we did stumble onto a nudist beach. Well we stumbled upon the gate, that is, where a man told us, ‘Hold on there. This is a nudist beach.’

‘So can we go down there?’ I was keen. Sandy open to the idea. But the bloke standing there wanted to charge us to go onto the beach.

‘10 Euro to get your bits out?’ I repeated his price.

He nodded.

‘That’s outrageous!’

No way. We’re on a budget.

So we’ve been beach hopping for about week, cruising down the coastal roads and stopping to swim whenever we want. A couple of days ago we stopped at this old ruined barracks that was right on the beach, it looked about 300 years old.

Of course there were people everywhere, except on this one spot. It was on top of this little building that jutted out of the old fort into the water. It only had one girl on top of it.

I said to Sandy, ‘If we go up there we’ll probably scare her away and have the whole space to ourselves.’

I could tell she didn’t like my tactics, but said, ‘Cool, whatever. I just wanna swim.’

We picked our way over the rocks, mumbling ‘excuse mes’ and ‘pardons’ till we reached the building.

It’s only one story high, jutting out into the sea with big rocks surrounding it. Getting on the top is easy because where there had once been an empty doorway big rocks had been piled up into it which left only a small hole in the top of the doorway. It was almost a perfect way to climb up.

Next to the building is a family staring at us.

I looked on top. The girl sitting up there was glaring back at me. She looked mean.

‘You go first,’ I said to Sandy.

‘Why me?’

‘Because it’ll be easier for you if I give you a boost.’

She agrees and scrambled on top with no problem. Set down her towel on one corner and began to bake. I climbed after her.

On top the view is great. The other girl has turned around and you can see everyone swimming on the beach in both directions. I knew this would be a good idea. I go to set my towel down in the middle of the roof.

It’s then I hear a creaking noise. It starts soft and gets louder.

Cracks started to form around where I was standing, a crumbling square in the middle around me. Luckily for Sandy and the girl, they’re both on the sides in safety. Big slabs of rock are shifting under me. Time felt like it was slowing and speeding within the same second. You might say my brain had flipped a gear because as I watched the effect of my weight stretch across the roof in sharp jagged splinters, it felt like the moment that had stretched across a thousand years inside a second. I won’t say my life flashed before me because it didn’t, but the smell of dust and sea spice were acute. The sounds of people talking and laughing in Croatian in the background were clear while the sound of the cracking roof was roaring in my ears. I can still picture the dust puffing out of the cracks as they formed around me. Sandy’s look of surprise turn to shock. Her fear to horror. But while this slow motion effect occurred my body felt like it’d been emersed in honey as I watched, moving sluggish the earthquake happened beneath my feet. I wanted to jump, but where? If I leapt to the edge where Sandy was sitting I would most likely go over and into the rocks of the sea below. In Hollywood the protagonist would always make that leap to safety.

Sadly, I can’t afford a stunt double.

So like a ship’s captain I went down. I fell. Rocks tumbled. I got rumbled. I don’t what went after that, maybe instinct took over maybe luck. I’d like to think that my inner ninja took over and helped me land safely because the next thing I remember is Sandy’s face looking down at me, through the swirling clouds of dust. She was saying, ‘Oh my God! Is anything broken? No, don’t move! Can you move?’

I checked.

All was good. A few cuts and scrapes. One seriously sore foot and a sore hand, but nothing broken.

I whispered to my inner ninja. ‘Way to go, buddy.’

So as I’m crawling out of the hole where the rocks had been piled up into the doorway, this fat topless mamma, who I assume is the mother of the girl who was on top, starts blabbering at me in Croatian.

‘No Croatian.’ I mumble while I’m on my hands and knees covered in dust and blood.

She doesn’t care. She’s on a roll. Her boobs are wobbling and her mouth is moving, but that’s not flying with me because my inner medic has taken over. I’m stumbling away into the sea to wash my cuts.

Believe me, it hasn’t gone unnoticed that this is the second roof that has fallen on me since I got to Europe. The first fell on top of me at Reg’s when his kitchen ceiling fell on my head, while we were playing Yahtzee and now I fall through one. I’m trying not to think in terms of omens, warnings or curses.

But if there is something out in that mystic never never place who wants to say something to me, send me a God damn note!

So other than a few rumble tumbles things are good. Not good, awesome.

We’ve been to Milan, where we hooked up with some anti-fashion punksters. A couple of bands called Morkobot and Ufomamut (translating to UFO Mammoth), plus this psychedelic poster designing outfit called Malleus, who have made posters for the likes of Iggy Pop, Sonic Youth, Dresden Dolls, and loads of others.

We’ve seen Venice.

Tonight we’re in Zadar, Croatia, to hook up with a US band called Kulture Shock, they hail from the US but most of the band members are immigrants there, some them are originally from this way (Bosnia) and their sound is gypsy punk with a political edge.

!!! Bastards !!!

So we’ve had some serious problems.

We were in Amsterdam filming our last interview with a coffee shop owner. Everything was going great. Our chubby British proprietor, with his glassy red eyes, was opening up, getting all meaningful by looking directly into the camera and telling us how he had to flee Birmingham so he could get stoned perpetually. It was a heart moving story. Really.

For us, this interview was a fact hunt, we’d already found out what the Dutch thought about smoking pot (most of them don’t), about how much you should pay for a joint (3-4 euro), and all the other silly questions you can think of like, ‘Can you die from it?’ (Um….no) and ‘Which nationality do you see vomiting the most?’ (English and Italians are on par)

For this interview we just needed a little more info about the ‘grey import market,’ as opposed to the black market, for importing marijuana from Nepal, Morocco and Afghanistan. Personally, after discovering (to my horror) that none of the pot-farmers were receiving a decent cut from these sales, i.e. it wasn’t fair-trade, I thought they were all a little dodgy. We also wanted some more info on how much a ‘hooch shop’ can legally hold on its premises. (It’s no more than half a kilo, if you’re interested, otherwise when the cops come in, which they do, they can take it if the shops over the limit).

You might say, everything was going too perfect. This guy was giving us everything we needed. And with emotion too.

When two young lads walked into the shop and pretended to be interested in the interview, I paid them no mind. Sandy was too busy filming to notice. Soon the lads left. So did one of our bags!

It had our passports in it.

Oh god, the Anguish. We screamed. At each other. At the Brit. At God.

On the street, millions of tourists were wandering.

The little bastards were nowhere in sight.

So I bolted around the alleys glaring down every little fucker that might or might not have looked like them. Everyone looks guilty when you’re bloods pumping faster than a race car in the formula one. I guess I might have appeared pretty messed up because most people avoided me, I would’ve too if I saw someone like me coming. You might say this method of sleuth investigation wasn’t the best, but what can you do in a situation like this? And if did I find them, what then? I haven’t been in a fight since my early years of high school so I’d be hard pressed using my powers of persuasion to ask for it back.

But I tell you, it was horrible. If someone had given me the choice between having our passports stolen or having my balls shaved with big rusty knife, I would’ve taken the later.

You can imagine us at the police station saying, ‘Our bag has been stolen!’

‘Where were you?’ The cop asked, grabbing a pen.

‘At a coffee shop.’

The police officer’s eyes look at the ceiling, you can tell he’s thinking we’re another pair of silly stoners. He probably has to deal with hundreds of intoxicated backpackers everyday.

‘We were filming an interview,’ Sandy says before going onto explain the legitimate nature of what we were doing.

The cop opened up after that, telling us how bag snatching is major problem in Amsterdam and a major racket is working the area. While we were making our statement, another woman came in to report her bag stolen. A pair of young lads (possibly the same ones!) had stopped her to ask directions and when she had turned around – that special magic happened again – her bag had vanished.

Anyway long story short is that we high-tailed it to the Australian Embassy in The Hague, where we got emergency passports issued. Apparently if you lose two passports within five years the replacement price goes up - so keep them safe kids.

We’re in Lyon, France, now, taking it easy in the sunshine. I can’t speak French so I’m talking to the locals in English with a French accent. I think they really appreciate it.

Things are getting better and better.