This is my opinion, if you don't agree I've got big brothers
HAPPY BIRTHDAY BEN!!
I know that comes too late for your actual birthday and a bit early for the party tonight, but I’m bridging the gap – we’ll keep the birthday vibe going as long as we can.
Just bought the new Darren Hanlon album. It’s very cute, lots of little unexpected bits of wordplay that make you look up from your book and go hey what? And there’s a whole song about squash! Yes, the game – it’s great. My only fear is that this is like buying an album by the Streets or Eminem, that once you’ve got all the funny lines the appeal wears off, but the music itself is very pretty – dreamy bedtime guitar music.
He’s also flying the flag for singers with Aussie accents. Scott and I have differing opinions about this, but I can’t stand hearing Australian singers who rhyme can’t with stand. It’s just so artificial. I heard a Triple R presenter the other day saying that the Aussie accent worked for hip-hop but not for rock. Wtf?? It’s like before people like Skyhooks and Paul Kelly came along Australian bands used to set their songs in American cities, because Australian place names “just don’t sound right”. And now that attitude seems prehistoric. Doesn’t it? It’s just the same as how people said that white guys can’t rap or sing the blues or whatever – it’s not about what the music can be, it’s about people’s limited view of how far the boundaries stretch. I think we’re going to see a shift in this though. There’s already the momentum from all those Aussie-accented hip-hop groups that Triple J love playing, and it’ll just take one or two really influential bands to carry that over into rock.
What muddies the issue a bit is that there are Australian accents and then there are Australian accents. It’s all very well to do the laconic country boy act and rap about buying fish and chips and going skating if that’s who you are, but bands like Something For Kate are never going to pull that off. They live in South Yarra or Prahran or somewhere and write songs about German physicists – they’re a middle class band, basically. Paul Dempsey has probably never called anything “heaps good” in his life. So I sympathise with them if they want to just keep things simple by going the American route, even if I think they overdo it. People from other countries say that I don’t have a very noticeable Australian accent, and when I try to sing with one it feels almost as false as making myself sound American. So I’m working on a kind of mutant accent which at times lets my Australianness poke through but without making a big song and dance about it. Which is a very Australian attitude, when you think about it.
I know that comes too late for your actual birthday and a bit early for the party tonight, but I’m bridging the gap – we’ll keep the birthday vibe going as long as we can.
Just bought the new Darren Hanlon album. It’s very cute, lots of little unexpected bits of wordplay that make you look up from your book and go hey what? And there’s a whole song about squash! Yes, the game – it’s great. My only fear is that this is like buying an album by the Streets or Eminem, that once you’ve got all the funny lines the appeal wears off, but the music itself is very pretty – dreamy bedtime guitar music.
He’s also flying the flag for singers with Aussie accents. Scott and I have differing opinions about this, but I can’t stand hearing Australian singers who rhyme can’t with stand. It’s just so artificial. I heard a Triple R presenter the other day saying that the Aussie accent worked for hip-hop but not for rock. Wtf?? It’s like before people like Skyhooks and Paul Kelly came along Australian bands used to set their songs in American cities, because Australian place names “just don’t sound right”. And now that attitude seems prehistoric. Doesn’t it? It’s just the same as how people said that white guys can’t rap or sing the blues or whatever – it’s not about what the music can be, it’s about people’s limited view of how far the boundaries stretch. I think we’re going to see a shift in this though. There’s already the momentum from all those Aussie-accented hip-hop groups that Triple J love playing, and it’ll just take one or two really influential bands to carry that over into rock.
What muddies the issue a bit is that there are Australian accents and then there are Australian accents. It’s all very well to do the laconic country boy act and rap about buying fish and chips and going skating if that’s who you are, but bands like Something For Kate are never going to pull that off. They live in South Yarra or Prahran or somewhere and write songs about German physicists – they’re a middle class band, basically. Paul Dempsey has probably never called anything “heaps good” in his life. So I sympathise with them if they want to just keep things simple by going the American route, even if I think they overdo it. People from other countries say that I don’t have a very noticeable Australian accent, and when I try to sing with one it feels almost as false as making myself sound American. So I’m working on a kind of mutant accent which at times lets my Australianness poke through but without making a big song and dance about it. Which is a very Australian attitude, when you think about it.
posted by tim at 13:28
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