I’d always known about Japan. From a very young age, I saw the Japanese characters on the back of soy milk cartons, along with Astro Boy on television. In 1988, I learned Japanese. My dad’s good friend had a Japanese wife. Also, we had some Japanese neighbours in the apartment building in 1987 whereby Mikito Fujimoto and a bunch of us would go to the Fun Factory and blow our coins on Double Dragon and Dragon Ninja.
Mikito was an only child and his dad was a hairdresser. I’m pretty sure their visa application was rejected and they returned to Japan. He brought over his Famicom and used it here and that was amazing to me. He struggled with English but we all made it work somehow and he was a lot of fun.
Back then, we had a Honda Accord and on my way to learning Karate in 1995, I learned Tae Kwon Do at the time too.
Yet mostly I dreaded Thursday’s Tae Kwon Do class because at 2 – 2.5 hours, it was so tiring and stressful. It was also a fair drive to reach the Camberwell Civic Centre. One time, the car ran out of petrol and literally rolled into the servo next door. And that’s the way the class made me feel so often.
But, under the guidance of Jack Rozinsky, I ended up with a yellow belt and two stripes before stopping. Karate in 1995 was with Sensei Joe, which I preferred.
I won an award “Most Spirited Senior” that year and was somewhat sad to give it up due to study commitments and a desire to change my physicality.
I threw away the trophy recently (late ’22) due to it dropping, but should have a photo of it somewhere. I remember sparring competitively with another Jewish guy double my age (Jonathan?) at the second-floor venue in Cato Street.
One of my school friends Peter was doing Chikara style Karate at the time but at a different association and when he found out about the commonality on a lunch break, he played me Pantera in his walkman. He was into the game Street Fighter II a few years earlier and used to emulate the moves he saw and take on the whole theatrical effect.
I went to Japan in December that year too and for the first and only time, I bleached my hair with Tina in Greville Street for the school holidays.
He slept in the bed next to mine and in fact, on about 3 occasions in the middle of the night I heard (and saw) him sit up and speak a completely alien language to me.
[ At the interstellar departure gate. ]
No one else witnessed it, and he knew nothing of it personally. At the time, he was on the top bunk, not bottom. So Song and Jun must’ve switched.
[ Song and Andy ]
It wasn’t just a few words either, the monologues would go on for 2-5 minutes and were very fluent. They really should’ve woken up other people but did not.
And Jun was very often the last person to make the breakfast line-up, right after me. Re-orienting with illusion?
The lingo used for sleeping back then was “spine-bashing” and “departured” and it was a favourite pastime for many.
Today, very rarely I might hear music in my dreams – if only I could access it in waking life, like Lenny Kravitz. Perhaps people access past lives too: and languages. I had a massive download in a sleep in Jerusalem in 2005 – maybe that was Jun’s?
I should’ve tried sleeping on the roof.
Another school friend Sascha (brown jacket below) and Jun’s cousin (pink jacket) also made it over to Japan as Jun is Australian/Japanese.
There was a lot to take in including skiing at Tenjindaira with incredible amounts of snow (compared to Mount Buller) and at one point Jun and I spent 45 minutes looking for a ski. I took a fall in the powder and somersaulted and the ski was at the top of landing spot, not down the hill where I stopped. I also recorded a video of me skiing to the base of the mountain, but the camera was on full zoom so it came out poorly.
Anyhow, in Tokyo, January 1996, I checked out the the Elvin Jones Special Quartet with Wynton Marsalis at the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan. I missed Jamiroquai by a few weeks light years.
But, by chance Prince came through a night-club that I was at with his massive entourage. I had last seen him in concert in April 1992 for Diamonds and Pearls. He played a number of shows in Japan also in January 1996. I’m not sure if he came through after his concert but I did see him from about 10 meters away despite me not trying to get a glimpse as he strutted across the dance floor to his next destination.
After starting drums in 1991 with teacher Andrew Smith, right after quitting many years of piano lessons, I played in the awesome Wesley Big Band from mid-1994 until early 1996 when I left due to time pressures. Big Band people also had to play in the Concert Band as a rule.
Simon played drums before me and set a really “nasty” precedent for me to follow after himself and a number of members left after the band’s Montreux performance in mid-1994. I also saw him play at a Battle of the Bands at the Lauriston Fair and he would’ve been best off playing under Maurice White than anyone else. That was in 1997 (although it could’ve been a year or two earlier – I doubt it) and I played in the 1997 BotB regardless and ended up dropping a stick after cramping up, and it was a shameful moment for me… wow, that had never happened before or after, but I think I didn’t like the band anyway. We’d rehearsed at my house too and I was doing a lot of the schlepping and all the carrying of amps took its toll. It was for first-time rockstar vocalist Hezza and in front of a lot of girls – I apologised but it wasn’t enough.
It was such a failure on my part, I think I ended up playing with one cramped forearm for two songs (the other arm was incapacitated) and Hezza had all his rock moves going. I barely even knew what a cramp was. It’s like “What the fuck is wrong with my arms!?” For Hezza, this was at a time when being on stage with a rock band was the equivalent in ego-saturation of having a new IG account with thousands of new followers. I think they wanted a new drummer but the guys weren’t up to par to get one so they all disbanded – not quite sure. Once bitten, twice shy!
Hezza had such high hopes and it all ended up a train wreck of emotion. I saw him years later in the city at night with his girlfriend of some sort and things weren’t the same. We were once such jovial pals.
Anyway, as mentioned in the article above, we won equal first at a music festival (my drums can be seen below) and if that’s still me below right, it must’ve been one of my last shows, otherwise it’s Ollie Clark.
He played alto sax and I once lent him a Sinatra CD that I purchased from Greville Records but I never saw it again – perhaps it flew away!
Interestingly, Andrew left me a heap of jazz records and I still have them to this day. The beats never die!
But I never really dialled into the importance of “double stroke roll triplets” until many years later. It’s a type of poly-rhythm that can really free-up the player to put all rudiments into a triplet feel. And that’s what life is all about – seeing normal things through new lenses! Also, the “Rock and Roll” style is actually about switching from straight-ahead grooves to swung fills. Think Bonham. And Angus Young has said he likes the drummer to even slightly swing the beats too! Interestingly, around 1996 I saw Julian Joseph at The Continental Cafe in Greville Street with Charlie (see below.) After the show, the drummer Mark told me that to be a good funk player it really helps to be a good jazz player in order to free up the left hand.
My goal is to have it to the point where it almost needs to be attached with a leash!
Full set of #Coronation portraits 1. King Charles, Queen Camilla in the Throne Room 2. The King with Imperial State Crown, Sovereign’s Orb, Sovereign’s Sceptre with Cross 3. The Queen with Queen Mary’s Crown in The Green Drawing Room 4. Members of the Royal Family 📷 Hugo Bernand pic.twitter.com/TGqirhOZ3s
pic compositioninredblueandyellow.art palette.fm ✓ 2 years ago
1994: Toby is Dead. Long live Toby.
I never saw him in his final days but I did get a last good-bye.
(last updated: 30 January 2023)
In 1994, I made the film “Toby is dead” with our Border Collie for media class and it was shown to the class for inspiration.
I used all the tricks he knew and completed the film without editing as a string of one-shot takes where he walks around Como park, swims in the Yarra River, crosses the road, passes a beer bottle and cruises around until he finally makes it home to be greeted by my mum at the end of the hallway!
While that film is now lost, there is a short snippet of Toby here (at 0.13) that I filmed in 1989:
Toby did die within a year when we were on a trip to Bali in early 1995.
I must’ve had a premonition about it as he looked to be slowing down and seemed more tired, and that’s why I called the film ‘Toby is Dead.’ But perhaps I was mentally preparing for him dying, due to my memory of Cocoa. He was in the same litter.
In Bali, he was being looked after by my grandparents by the sea and he was sick when we left him.
So it was a bittersweet holiday, that’s for sure, with the regular phone updates from my grandfather.
Prior to us leaving, we thought he would recover. The diagnosis was vague.
Like with Desmond, I never saw him in his final hours. Perhaps he would have wanted it that way.
However, the local vet kept the corpse and after arriving home from Bali, Toby M (the musician, not the dog) and I dug a grave for him in the front garden behind the fence. The vet came over and put the corpse into the grave and the pair covered him in lime. (see T below)
At that moment, I was waiting near the house because I didn’t want to see the dead body due to my distress. When the vet left, Toby M and I filled the grave. The vet said he probably had stomach cancer and at the time we put it down to him drinking Yarra River water when he went for a swim as he splashed around. He looked to be snapping away at the splashes he made.
And Last Good-bye came out around that time too. But it never made it onto the soundtrack.
Perception creates reality but I think reality eventually creates perception.
last update: 26 April 2024
I heard Lenny Kravitz for the first time with Let Love Rule on the car radio, probably around 1990 on PBS. I think my brother was sitting next to me and my dad was driving. Our car was passing a cemetery.
Really, LK should put acoustic guitar to bass/drums/organ more often.
I was thrilled no one changed the station during the song and thought it was one of the coolest tracks I’d ever heard. Very unique. Then I recognised the music again at a friend’s place a number of months later and it all clicked and I bought the album.
In 1992 (above left) I owned the Digipak edition of LK’s 2nd album (middle) and in 1993 I owned the Digipak of album 3 (right.)
My dad’s first reaction was to his name – okay so he must be Jewish!
However, one of my cherished Kravitz CDs ended up severely scratched after I lent it out to a buddy in 1993.
He later said that the CD was passed around in the unit without him knowing and he mentioned some other people. It ended up on the wood floor somehow. Or were the scratches done on purpose? But I must’ve won social points for lending it out though and people return favours in different ways.
That said, speaking of messups, I took the woodshed 2 steps forward and 1 step back by making it bigger and higher in the rear but with a little less overhang in the front so it was more work to stack it out of the way from the rain. I think it was an improvement, but not by much.
[ the original boiler woodshed ]
Later one of the teachers suggested I should’ve done more planning and there was nothing wrong with the original shed – unless you were worried about spiders! That was done towards the end of the year and no one really complained. At least the new one looked a lot better, in my opinion, and didn’t have stacked layers of metal sheeting.
With Jun by my side, a bunch of guys stood around as I drove in nails – it wasn’t like I did it without any sort of tacit approval either, or formality.
Interestingly, in 2024, I have built a steam extractor, compost shed and humidified mushroom enclosure for testing and further implementation.
This comes after inventing and using my own outdoor boiler and roasting devices.
The unit would be proud! Just Advance!
Anyway, during this time LK wasn’t really hard, manly or grungy enough to be universally accepted, at least at my school. It could have been the falsetto, who knows? I just liked his music. Image was secondary to me, if not completely irrelevant.
Anyway, on 12 Feb 1994 I saw LK in concert and I even bought a long-sleeved t-shirt – but that’s over now.
At school, it was strange because I think a bunch of girls liked me (as they liked Lenny) but I didn’t really know that – female competition and jealousy was probably a deterrence. In that respect, single-sex schools were better because they had wilder parties, it seemed.
At one of those parties, I had a skateboard taken that I had carefully constructed in 1994 during woodwork (in the Deaf School) and many years later it appeared at someone’s place with serious mileage on it. A chap I knew quite well, Rikka, (Mark) mentioned some other names that gave it to him and they were my buddies anyway. Strange situation, we were both stressed, and I let him keep it as it was so banged up and possession is 9/10 of the law.
Also, I thought deep down that having the board disappear meant it might well have saved me from having an accident on it. I was more into skiing and blading and I did design a pair of skis that were built in late 2012 for carving (but very strangely ended up great in powder too.)
2013 (Zermatt)
I found these skis to be extremely safe – I only took one fall in ~20 days of skiing and that’s because I was testing their limits. So these Heartcarve skis are for endorphins, not adrenaline. And due to the lack of pain and fear, skiing becomes a much more social experience and I ended up talking to many more people on the chairlift and simply overall. The biggest challenge was finding a pair of boots that fit well, because so much g-force is taken by the tongue.
Note, like downhill mountain-biking, my upper body is facing in the same direction as my skis.
Back in 2008, on off-the-shelf slalom skis after having worked on Heartcarving since 2002:
Today, the style could be comparable to an e-unicycle.
The whole “always keep upper body facing downhill” thing is a paradigm to me that causes tension and pain in the body. Even today’s modern carvers still do it to a large extent.
I suppose no matter what the skis or technique, one can always numb it all down later apres-ski. I’m playing with gravity and centripetal force, and centred in my heart.
So all boots have a pain point when fitting in the shop and that has to be on the front of the shin because after a few days of skiing, the front of the shin develops a muscle to counteract that force. No other pain points decreasscreenshote over time. For me that was the Garmont G2 – a miracle find because it was for bony, narrow feet.
Anyway, in one way I was happy for Rikka because he was a really good skater and I hold no grudges. In the news, there are so many stories about small disputes escalating into serious offences, it’s important to keep things in perspective and this is why condemnation as a mental device (also mentioned here and here) is problematic as it leads to disproportional, emotive responses and also one’s own provocation. I should have kept a closer watch on the board. But it also shows I made a good deck because he said a number of people had used it.
It was a Magnusson deck (~1988) that I cut down, and the trucks were maybe re-drilled and pushed apart – can’t recall. I may have also used trucks that I bought second-hand from the skate shop. I got the biggest wheels I could find, tightened the trucks, loosened the wheel nuts and this made it fast, stable and intoxicating transport. Ollies were hard, though.
No wonder it was stolen. And I thought people would think I was a weirdo.
It’s worth noting that that board had nose-to-tail, hell concave and I initially bought the whole thing second-hand at Huntingfield Road for about $25 from Rich – my good friend’s older-brother’s good friend.
He didn’t like the concave, and it was still in pretty good condition. It was my first “professional” board.
I removed the rail and tail sliders and would stop by rolling onto the pavement side-grass or big s-bending on the road. Like my skiing, I didn’t care about tricks and wasn’t too good at them either, I just wanted to cover distance in style – as with life.
To this day, I think it was a great design because my feet could stay over the trucks and this kept the board parallel to the ground rather than bending as with a longboard.
I didn’t want to slide it, and I also didn’t want it to speed wobble. Also, by being narrow, I could keep downward force along the midline. It may have resembled one of today’s “cruisers” but with a wider wheel footprint. So it was for snowboard carving on the road.
Perhaps I should see it as me having “lost” it rather than having had it “stolen.” Maybe I lent it out, it was passed around like my Kravitz CD, and I just forgot about it long-term because it was so new to me and I was so focused on school work. Thus, the whole time it had a “borrowed” status among some of my school friends. But I never did tell anyone “here, that’s yours now to keep.”
On the other hand, maybe it was straight up stolen or taken as “ownerless” one night and then dumped or kept. And Rikka was most probably right, I did last see someone using the board at full pelt up and down the street one night when I turned to a couple at one point and said “love is a beautiful thing” and they both laughed.
And I have no recall of Rikka ever being there that night in Toorak in late ’94 or early ’95. Eden was there, though. And that’s probably it right there:
So at least it got good use! The whole thing has a sexual connotation too.
Anyhow, I really wanted to go to my school formal with someone I had met at a party that had been at my house, P, whereby Luke met her randomly shortly before it (with her friend S also coming to the party.) Luke thought they were hot and I chatted with both of them in the back garden with Mike around where Desmond is below.
So then in 1996 out of the blue P appeared outside South Yarra train station as if waiting to speak to me, and I spoke to her for a bit, but being into my walkman and schoolwork, my mind was too linear for me to pop the question. Well spoken, she had been on an ABC television show that year too. Frustrating.
Some months later we spoke again by chance at nearby Funkies, funnily enough where Tim’s good friend Sarah worked who I also knew quite well from school, and I later had that pair in the back of the Nissan at some point as we went clubbing in early 1997. So to P, I said “there’s no sign I’m not compatible with” (Prince – Kiss) and she said “bull.” She was with a friend and that was the end. I should’ve just said, “hey, let’s all meet at Silvers tonight” as it was in the same building, and come to think of it, I did see P once at Silvers in I think early 1997 but we never spoke. She either ignored me or I ignored her, who really knows in those chaotic places? So a few weeks or months later Lucy (and Noah,) who Luke knew, would’ve been over with her upright bass.
Right about that time I started delivering pizzas for Giardino which became Vintage Cellars and was a few doors up from Fuji where Toby was dognapped.
Michael Todd of the Australian Ballet (1978) (above-right, bare legs) was a waiter and said he felt I had a shielded or guarded personality and should loosen up … something like that anyway. I didn’t really agree with him – but he may have had a point – I don’t know – I was serious a lot of the time. Perhaps I should’ve popped on a clown suit. Good guy though, and we had some interesting discussions. He looked at my hair, touched a few strands and said in a professional tone that I should cut it really short, which I eventually did (but only years later) or else grow it long. He was at the tail-end of his career and had trouble finding work in ballet in his late 30’s – he had to move into choreography at that point. It must’ve been tough for him to transition from an acclaimed dancer into someone who some people would treat condescendingly.
But looking back, I think I should have given my hair a career at that point, however I only grew it really long decades later. Perhaps I could’ve gone from pizza delivery into modelling but that wasn’t in the realm of my thinking. One rare regret I have from the years 1997-2001 is the lack of photos I took of myself and the fashion choices of the day. All my clothes were thrown away from that time too. My biggest tip was a $20 bill for a $13 pizza and to “keep the change.” That was from Brian Blythe (1939 – 2022) of Spotless at the doorstep of Coonac, Melbourne’s most expensive home.
I wasn’t just grateful, but also in awe. But how would modelling get me there permanently? I did take some shots outside Coonac in 2020.
So I disliked deliveries because it put taxi mileage on the Nissan as I felt pressured to deliver a hot pizza, caused pizza odours within it and the pay was bad especially taking into account fuel costs. I also finished late and occasionally lost time trying to find a place. Tips were okay and meeting people was cool – when they were still sober. I did some additional delivery runs for a pizza shop in the Balwyn area in place for Zoltak.
Interestingly, during my time at uni, but I’m not sure when – most likely 2001 – I had the idea to run a meditation class. But it wasn’t really a meditation class. It was just about getting a whole heap of people in the same room.
The idea never moved beyond the image above, I had no qualifications, and people could get the same feeling at a cinema just as the lights dimmed. Maybe it’s something people will do in 2050 for whoever remains. A meetup in its purest form. I still think it has potential: expect nothing, receive everything. Maybe a group sleep could work like in kindergarten but for adults in a retreat setting.
But I never slept during nap time. A very cultish demand unless on an aeroplane.
So in early ’97 at uni I momentarily met P’s younger sister P2 (and her friend E) on the tram who later brushed passed me after she saw me laughing out loud in front of the commerce building – during my conversation with Robbie about clubbing. Kind of gnarly to think about it all now. It must be quite common, a person is friends or even an item with someone, and really they should be with the sibling… it’s happened to me a few times.
So Robbie lived around the corner from me and Jun met him one night and Robbie said Jun was a “top bloke.” Jun, Robbie, myself and I think Peck were in a taxi going to Crown Casino, and we passed the Arcadia Hotel and I saw a homeless/derelict person outside and I said “Can I have a dollar?” to him and we all cracked up laughing. I highly doubt the guy heard over the window, moving car and traffic, and I said it facetiously to take the piss out of us all – not him. These days I’d have to wonder who are the real parasites – the super poor or the super rich? But if he gave me a dollar, I could’ve tried to turn it into 10 for him at Crown minus the carried interest!
Speaking of which, Peter Thiel recently alluded to the notion that to lift billions out of poverty would require whole new energy sources. Interestingly, that may end up lowering birth rates. Also, perhaps those futuristic energy devices exist but are purposely hidden through a lack of love. It’s interesting to note how restrained Thiel is in pushing the envelope. According to one theory, JFK wanted to use his platform to rein in the Federal Reserve and look what happened to him.
I read about a very wealthy guy that started to buy up radio stations in the USA and he was “put to sleep” as well. But at some point you’ve gotta fight the good fight, but if you hit people in the wallet they tend to swing back. Prince sung “What’s the use of money if you ain’t gonna break the mould? … All that glitters ain’t gold.”
So another girl at school told me I looked like Joaquin Phoenix or Daniel Day-Lewis.
Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix in ‘To Die For’ (1995). The film was based on the real-life case of Pamela Smart, who allegedly seduced her teenage lover into murdering her husband. ➡️ via https://t.co/UJJ8RuDFKhpic.twitter.com/YEZ19CmJEs
So, I read an interview in the 90’s about Lenny re-recording Tony Breit’s basslines from jam session tapes and not giving him songwriting credits and that caused a lot of tension. Unfortunately, I don’t have the exact quote on hand. This was from 1993, however:
Chad Smith got writing credits on Blood Sugar Sex Magik and he was “just” the drummer. But they’re a “band” so it’s different, right?
Has Breit written anything with Lenny? He plays guitar too. Maybe I’m over-reaching but I lost some of my innocence at the time.
Best of luck to them anyway. I think it was Me’shell Ndegéocello that said she wouldn’t even step into the same studio with someone with her instrument unless there was a contract in place. Might’ve been someone else, though.
Re-recording parts is nothing new. On Guns ‘n Roses’ 2008 Chinese Democracy:
"According to Ferrer, he is the only drummer on the title track; the rest of the album features drums by Brain and Ferrer, using Freese's arrangements. Bassist Tommy Stinson stated he had to rerecord his bass parts with each change in drummer." - src
Brain said Freese played on 30 songs before he split with the band. While Axl Rose admired Brain's feel, he was set on the patterns that Freese had played, so he had Brain replicate Freese's parts note for note. - src
This made it the most expensive rock album ever produced – $13 million.
And Coco Chanel said that creativity is the art of concealing your sources, non? But it shouldn’t have to be this way and what goes around comes around.
So back to 2020, and today a rainbow literally appeared in front of me through the trees as I started playing this on drums, and it dissipated by the end.
It’s in my squint at 0:29 … It Ain’t Over Til It’s Over… yeah… tell that to the Social Goofs who stare at the rainbows that no one else are yet to see!
