I think you asked me to do a diary entry for the betika site - is this ok?
The ends of my fingers have started to go hard again now. I've had a good 5 months of not having a guitar to play on and I got pretty rubbish. But now I've got one and things have started to look up a bit. I'm hoping to get some students soon which will be much better than a proper job. I can't tell you too much about betika as I've been in the wrong hemisphere for a while now. It seems like HSIBTBGT is getting re-issued with a couple of new tracks. Dave regularly forwards me the nice things that the press have had to say about it, and I would hope that some of the reviews would find their way onto this site before too long. I received a package from Mr Purse recently - he was kindly sending me copies of Belle & Sebastian/Max Tundra cd’s that cost a fortune in Australia. He also included a cd with some of his new demos that I found a little worrying, sometimes scary, but generally very promising as always. Also in the package was the new press release for “Heads Smashed in…” which alludes to Dave’s state of mind and the circumstances surrounding the recording. I never really thought about how fucked up that little bubble of time was, until now it just seemed normal – at least it proves that dysfunctional people make good music. That press release should be up here, or should go out with the cd or something – people deserve to know the truth! (see the archive!)
I’ve been reading lots of really bad books lately (see “The Death Dealers” by Mickey Spillane), but have also found some great ones like “Life of Pi” by Yann Martell and “The Art of Travel” by Alain de Botton. My favourite records of late have been Manitoba’s “Start Breaking my Heart” and Dntel’s “Life is Full of Possibilities”. I’ve been listening to a great radio station called Triple J that plays Cat Power all the time. New South Wales has a pretty active live music scene and so far I’ve seen - You Am I, Gelbison and Gersey amongst others. For proof of good music coming out of Australia check out Machine Translations, The Sleepy Jackson and Gerling (Who’s ya daddy?) See you soon Chris xx
