Guerrilla Welfare (and other student pastimes)

We Shall Return You To Your Regularly Scheduled Programming After This Short Musical Interlude

Whats up all those people out there in radio land, its George Clinton and his afroamerican based superfly legislature (parliment funkaldelic). yes, bored and at work. anyway, i have been realibly infromed that people are still frequenting the site,altho i havent had a comment in like 2 weeks. and i thought it was time for a new post.

when i used to hear the term muscial side project, i used to think of a well known artisit who had one to my hits from the bong one night and thought their real calling is in some really abstract hindu chanting. they put out an ep that will circulat the underground for two weeks, then the artist will either return to their main gig...or kill themselves. but recently i have started to notice that side project bands and supergroups are actually kicking out some decent jams, some even better than their main and better know base bands.

im going to look at 4 bands in detail, the have stood out to me as bands that are able to put out there on thing, there on sound without sevreing ties and often doing one album with one band and then the next with the other. this will also give me a chance to see if i can figure out how to put links and photos on.

The Dissociatives - one of two bands that have come from the silverchair hiatus.

Started in a london in flat in the summer of 03. Daniel Johns (lead singer silverchair) and Paul Mac (Mix Guru) had been friends for about 6years and had done minor collaboartions such as the "i cant believe its not record" ep. but due to Johns' conditions over the years, and more recently, chairs crazy tour schedule, the have never had time to sit down and put down anything solid.

The first obstical was to get Johns to start play gutair again as the gruling tour had made taken some of the spirit out of it. but in the space of a 4weeks with nothing but a gutair and a piano and a butt load of inspiration, all the songs were done in essense. the last 20% of the album seemed to be alittle bit more of international affair. Johns flew to NY to be with his wife (model/singer/actress nataile imbruglia), and while she was off at photo shoots etc, Johns wondered around, hanging out at random bars under some serious influences.....nice. the final mixes were done in sydney, which is where the band were later launched.

What has happened since, no one could have predicted. the album recieve critical acclaime. rolling stone said it wasnt one of those albums you have to get this year, but one that should have a proud place in your life time collection. its been labelled retro-pop which is hard to explain, but some have compared it to good vibrations or sgt peppers....but really its uniquely itself.

A Perfect Circle - supergroup of the alternative. band members for this band are complicated to explain, but lets start with the lead singer and founder. Maynard James Keenan , lead singer for the band tool was looking for an outlet of a more melodic and daring sound to conteract the dark and almost self apocaliptic stylings of tool. take any band of the late 90s who were big in the alt depressing rock scene and one of their members at one time will have been in APC. ill show you like this

Current Lineup
Billy Howerdel: Composer, Guitar, Vocals (Tool)
Maynard James Keenan: Lyrics, Lead Vocals (Tool)
Josh Freese: Drums (Devo)
Jeordie White: Bass Guitar, Vocals (Marilyn Manson)
James Iha: Guitar, Keyboards (Smashing Pumpkins)

Former Members
Troy Van Leeuwen: Guitar, Vocals (Failure)
Paz Lenchantin: Bass Guitar, Vocals ( Jackie's band, now Zwan)
Tim Alexander: Drums (Primus, Laundry)
Danny Lohner: Guitar

Pretty confusing huh? but to all intensive purposes, APC is known as tool's side project. they have made 3 albums, (Mer De Noms, 13 Step and eMOTIVE) with the tool album "Lateralus" in between. the have a sound that is eeirly atmosphric and dangerously mood altering. Ironically the have become a far bigger band than any of the members previous bands, but the would never leave them to be in APC. you got to view like the UN, well a UN that works..they come together as seperate enterties, bring their unique styles to the table to try and create something that benefits all, but the style belong to those "countries". APC have recently released eMOTIVE, and overtly politcal album of covers and their own track documenting the world as it is now and how mess up it is.

Tambalane - the second band to come out of silverchairs break. this time in the form of drummer Ben Gillies. Most people are not aware that on the first to Chair albums, Ben co-wrote most of the tracks with Johns. and altho he enjoyed playing Johns' later stuff on Neon Ballroom and Diorama, he always missed his outlet of creativity. so when one night Gilles and friend/keyboardist Wesley Carr were getting quite drunk on a few bottles of red wine at Gillies home in early 05, they just started playing assorted makeshift instruments around the kitchen and by the next bottle of wine, the had written the first single on the self titled album. the rest of the album was written during frequent trips to byron bay. silvchair is such an amazing band because each members own personal taste and their understanding of music is varied and rich. Gilles has gone with his roots, trying to get some soul back in music. hes has tried to achieve the vibe of the 60s in this band and on the album. he wanted a 'real and raw' feel to the sessions with the group laying down most of the basic tracks live. they show a funkier edge on "Skywalk" and a gentler approach on "Sail" which suggests their broad musical range.

Echobrain - I choose echobrain as my last group as a bit of an odd one out. most people know the band Metallica, but most people dont know that they had a strict no side project rule. this was something bassist Jason Newsted couldnt put up with and left the band 2001. he quit to persus a more varied range of music rather than thrash metal. Over the years Newsted had become increasingly interested in the production side of music. And so starting from scratch, he took it open himself to nuture the local kids from next door Dylan Donkin and Brian Sagrafena. They where honoured to have the experience of Newsted and quickly went to work on an album, with bass duities being shared between Newsted and Dylan's brother Adam. the first album incapsluated the northern california attitude in 10 striaght ahead rock songs. echobrain, to me, shows that a love of music should always come first over the money and the fame. not many people have heard of Echobrain, and they didnt really venture outside of california, but their music is solid and a complete statement of individuallty, there is no one who sounds like them. this is partly why i choose echobrain. firstly it shows that famous rock stars are wanting to go back to something pure, and unadulterated by the mass market. and, my main point, that side project are often a necessary and health for any band to go through. Metallica gave up a great musician in finding this out.

Conservative Theory

So the British General electon has come and gone. and what have we learnt? well exit polls occasionally get it spot on. and first past the post does not work! over 60% of the country voted against a blair govt yet the got over a 100 majority in the house. admittidly it was a drop for last time, but you cant justify the lib dems getting 22% of the vote and only getting 50odd seats out of 560.

anyway, not the point of my post. what i do want to talk about is party leaders, and in particualar, conservative leaders. as you may be aware, as soon as the torries has lost, howard annouced his stepping down as leader. this will make 4 leaders in 7 years...none of them memorable. there was no way that the torries were going to get in, no matter how pissed off the public were with labour. the best the could have hoped for was an increase in seats...which the achieved. but i dont understand why he annouced this. people will vote for stabilty, seeing leaders come and go all the time doesnt not instill confidence. but here were it gets really strange. howard said that he would stay until a subitable replacement is found, which is the stand practice. but just the other day he did a huge shadow cabient re shuffle...many of which were of young, or slightly more conterverisal mps. but why would you do this knowing your not got to be the one in control of the cabinet, and that the new leader could just come in and change everything. it seems to be waste of time, but that is if we take it at face value. who said this is howard choices. the conservative party is set up a bit like an old gents club, the more senior patrons wield all the power, but are rarely seen. so could it be that howard was told to change the cabinet in a prempt to the appointed of a new young charasmatic puppet, that will be able to unite a torn part, but will be controlled by those heard but never seen? was howard a scapegoat..a visual marker to signal the end of the old torries party, and the movement into a new younger, more in touch party.

i know this may seem all abit conspirosy theroyish...but the most messed up and distorted theroies are ussual the true ones in british politics lol

DON'T PANIC

Bank Holidays, the uniquely British affair where we got monday off for no good reason at all. Anyway, the country has a few typical pastimes on these glorious 3 days weekends: caravanning, rambling (walking that is), going to london, or visiting family. and im glad to say that i achieved two of these in one go by going to london and hanging out with andrew on saturday.

but lets go back to the start...of the weekend. Friday night, i was hand selected to play for our dept football team in a 5 a side indoor tournament. we lost our first two games, but once I was put my in goal, it made all the difference. the other teams were calling me "the cat". but im afraid my efforts came to late, we ended up third overall. but i challenge any one of any fitness to not feel like your going to throw up a lung after 5 games of indoor football...the ball never goes out and there is no half time! i mean loki got it right in dogma when he said "that divine mass genocide is the most physically strenuous things you can do...that and soccer". anyway, i got home at 9 and was shattered. lucky i had a lie in the next day.

so i caught the 1.30 train up to london and met andrew and other assorted in hung over friends in covent garden (and yes dan we went to the maple leaf). after some lunch, andrew and i tried to figure out what to do...we got it down to 3 options. movie, comdey club, or a random gig somewhere. so we walked to Leicester sq, to see when hitchhikers guide to the galaxy was on, great 6pm, so walking back to find some where to watch the football we saw a comedy club..maybe that would be s better thing to do..so we lined up for half an hour to be told tickets were sold, so back to covent garden to use the internet and look for live music.....nothing! so back to the movies, but we had missed the 6pm showing, so 9pm then. anyway, we probably walked between covent garden and Leicester sq about 7 times. but about the movie..i love hitchhikers guide..i thought douglus adams was a genius and made some amzing passing comments about society in such a satirical way in the the trilogy, so i was interested to see how this would come across on screen. im glad to say that it did not disappoint. it was so good..and so random..take hunter s thompson mets the 70s version of willy wonka. i think it was so good as douglas adams wrote the script before he died in 2001, and requested certain actors for certain roles. altho all the moive was great, the bit that came across, for me, best to the big screen where marvin the manically depressed robot..who brought something very british to the whole thing. the whole moive crosses both american and british humour well, and i recommended it to anyone.

well we had to catch the last train back down to slinfold. and for those who dont know, the last train for london comes with a certain amount of givens...ie you will have a group of drunk, singing football supports. you will have some people on a stag/hen night. and you will have some one throw up. this last one happened within 6metres from where we were sitting. andrew just leans over and goes "do you smell chicken kebab". sure enough, when we got to our stop, the door was nicely decorated in " a heroic" amount of semi digested turkish cuisine. everyone you met in england will have a last train story, this is mine, well my most recent.

the rest of the weekend was spent doing family things at burnt house and granny's famous roast chicken lunch.

well, i have a shorter week this week. Which is a blessing.

people of earth, thanks for the beer...love to stay and chat, but your world is about to be demolished to make way for a intergalactic by-pass. Its not good acting surprised, the plans have been on display for 50 of you earth years at the local planning office