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My Pal Foot Foot
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DEPENDING on whom you ask, the Shaggs were either the best band of all time or the worst. Frank Zappa is said to have proclaimed that the Shaggs were “better than the Beatles.” More recently, though, a music fan who claimed to be in “the fetal position, writhing in pain,” declared on the Internet that the Shaggs were “hauntingly bad,” and added, “I would walk across the desert while eating charcoal briquettes soaked in Tobasco for forty days and forty nights not to ever have to listen to anything Shagg-related ever again.”

Read more here.. 

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Kitchen Diaries
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The Crazy J is made up of mechanical parts, electronic components and software control. The mechanical parts can be seen in the picture above and include a fingering module (on the left) and a plucking module (on the right).

The device built in this project is a MIDI controlled guitar using the HC11 Motorola Micro-controller.  The guitar is solely controlled through the MIDI interface.  The guitar can play the first four frets on all six strings plus all open strings.  This gives the guitar a range of approximately an two and a half octaves. Read More

by Andrew Fowle

A lot of gigs these days consist of a bunch of bands, content with merely playing their music and buggering off, with “in house music” being played off a CD over the PA while everyone sits� and watches them lug their shit off/on stage.

Once upon a time, things weren’t quite so dull. “Going out to a show” meant non-stop entertainment all night. The Odyssey Christmas show at The Globe was a nice reminder of how things used to be.

All thanks to a decent sized stage and a curtain, they managed to have a magic act, a ventriloquist, a burlesque pantomime show, a yodeller, short films, animations etc, all going on while bands set up behind the curtain. Some of the acts were a little cheesy and predictable, but there was a real focus on keeping the audience entertained from start to finish. Where quality material was lacking a little, the overall fun vibe more than carried the night.

Of the bands playing, I only managed to catch The Royal Engineers and The Kidney Thieves, both of which were extremely good at what they did. Royal Engineers had a Brit rock kind of sound ( reminded me a little of stone roses etc) and look. Kidney Thieves were a lot more chaotic and experimental, but didn’t take themselves too seriously.

Nights like these take the emphasis off musicians being rockstars or scenesters, everyone’s an entertainer. It also offers something for everyone, and could be a sneaky way to introduce the uninitiated to original live bands�
Two thumbs up!! Odyssey take note: more of these shows NEED to happen!! On a regular basis!!

>>From News.com.au 

MUSIC capital of Australia? Once maligned as a hick country town, Brisbane is now challenging Melbourne for the title of Australian rock’s centre.

US industry bible Billboard magazine has crowned Brisbane one of its five international music hot spots spawning exciting new sounds for this year, alongside Beijing, Birmingham, Berlin and Marseille.

The magazine - which tracks the most popular songs and albums internationally - insists the city’s rich vein of current talent looks set to “threaten Melbourne’s traditional role as Australia’s main music city”.

This assessment is bolstered by Brisbane’s long legacy of hugely successful acts.

There’s been the singing Gibb brothers the Bee Gees in the 60s and infectious pop duo Savage Garden in the 90s, who have globally sold more than 180 million and 40 million records, respectively.

Brisbane’s more recent successes have included rockers Powderfinger, solo sensation Pete Murray and pop princesses The Veronicas - who clinched a $2 million record deal with US label Sire Records.

Read the full story here