i caught my first glimpse of this spring's first purple blossoms about a week ago:
jacaranda!

at this time of year much of brisbane glimmers in the purple haze of jacaranda, and it's a sight to behold.
seeing purple-leafed trees all around the place is some small consolation against the reticent thoughts about the fact that for much of the next 5-6 months, the heat & humidity will be such that we'll be wiping the sweat off our brows just moments after getting out of the shower in the morning ...
and when all the blossoms drop off the trees in a few more weeks, there are circular purple carpets everywhere.

ps - the pic of a long-haired, 19-year-old andy has been posted today on his blog andrewmacrae.livejounral.com (see link on right)

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a break from the music stuff for a wee while.
my mate andy (see link on right) celebrated a birthday yesterday and, to cut a long story short, his birthday blog post & comments resulted in an invitation for me to post some pics here of andy as a cocky (perhaps for want of a better adjective) young 18 year old lad. so here goes, rewind to MCMXC:

check him out folks - barely legal to consume alcohol, but doing so with gay abandon (again, other adjective[s] may be more appropriate here but what the heck!) ... ;-D


also, i'd made a comment about andy's haircuts of that era. unfortunately i do not appear to have a happy snap of the kind of short-back-and-sides-with-longer-fringe-and-top he was sporting when i first met him (a few months before he did the shave); however i do have another quite amusing pic of andy from that period, sporting yet another style ... that one is to follow in the near future

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the albums which haven't quite made my top ten, and which are thus probably numbers 11 & 12 on my list at present, are:
* nick cave & thge bad seeds: henry's dream
* the brand new heavies: shelter (or brother sister? i dunno!)
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and now for the contents of the 4th & final pile of cds on top of my record player & stereo. no more waiting in vain. in general the albums in this pile have typically been played least recently (by myself), relative to those in the other 3 piles. quite a mixed bag here too.

anyhow without any further ado (about nothing), and 'warts & all', i give to you the contents of the rear right pile, bottom to top:
* bob the builder: happy birthday
* hoodoo gurus: kinky
* sunnyboys: play the best (borrowed)
* u2: how to dismantle an atomic bomb
* hoodoo gurus: magnum cum louder
* neil young: zuma
* the police: regatta de blanc
* tom waits: nighthawks at the diner
* augie march: sunset studies (burned)
* augie march: strange bird (burned)
* fisher price: classical music for growing minds (burned, i think)
* wicked beat sound system: music from the core
* various artists: classical baby / beautiful melodies to soothe & calm
* macy gray: on how life is

that's it. now i may return them all to their 'proper' places and watch 4 new piles evolve over the coming weeks/months ...
outlandish

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here's another pic from a mri scan of my head & brain - this one being of a 'slice' through the middle of my head. check out the tongue muscles, the upper vertebrae, the space under my frontal lobe & between my eyes ... freaky!

the main reason i'm posting this here is so that i can then add it to my 'signature' pic in my profile ('cos this seems to be the only way to do so). i wanted to sue the other, more colourful & psychedelic pic (below) but it was over the 50kb limit ...

i always knew i'd eventually get around to figuring out how to post pics on here ... it just took until i came back to work from paternity leave, and was looking for ways to procrastinate from actually doing work! ;-D

anyhow, back to my list of fave albums once again - i'm getting there - i've narrowed it down to a list of about 16 or so and then further have a working 'top' list of about 11 or 12. that's not to say i won't think of or recall another one - although i think that if i was going to do so, and the album really warranted inclusion in my list, i'd probably have recalled it by now!? however since my post on monday i have made another addition:

* died pretty: 'doughboy hollow' (1991) ... a fantastic album by this australian band, without a bad track in my opinion. certainly this was their most commercially-oriented album to date at the time of its release and i have to say that some of their previous albums - especially 'lost' (1989) (and to a lesser extent 'every brilliant eye' [1990]) - must come very close to making the list, but i've gone for 'doughboy hollow' for its consistency & strength across the entire album (including throughout 'side 2') and also, probably on a related note, its production and (umm) 'clean yet kick-a$$' sound. the realtively mellow opening track 'doused' is brilliant as are the following 5 tracks (virtually as strong a list of 6 consecutive tracks as u'll find on any album i reckon!) and as i said, the second half holds up really well and isn't a let-down even after many, many listens. finally, a bit of trivia: i'd been quite curious about the album title and then in 1999 while in the hunter valley (north-west of sydeny, australia) i discovered that is is a creek, or more a gully (or hollow!), there - the new england highway crosses it just south of one of the larger towns (singleton i think).

so - the 4th pile of albums on my stereo, and my near-final top 10 or 12 or so albums, to follow soon-ish ...

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back to the 4 piles of cds sitting on top of my record player & stereo. i promised i'd tell u the truth, and not leave any out ...

rear left pile, bottom to top:
* various artists: soundtrack to the french film ‘diva’ (which is great, by the way)
* the brand new heavies: shelter
* annie lennox: diva
* bach: orchester-suiten nr. 1 und nr. 2
* the brand new heavies: brother sister
* crowded house: woodface
* crowded house: together alone
* various artists: coastal chill
* guns n’ roses: appetite for destruction (burned)
* lior: autumn flow (burned)
* tom waits: closing time (burned)
* mozart: piano concertos nos. 22 & 25
* tuck & patti: tears of joy (burned)
* brooklyn funk essentials: cool and steady and easy
* john coltrane: blue train
* marcel kayath: guitar classics from latin america
* the black crowes: the southern harmony and blues companion (borrowed)

there u go. i love that 'diva' soundtrack - it probably comes close to making my list of favourite albums actually - it could could go close to making say my top 20. the operatic 'aria from la wally' which opens & closes the album is brilliant, as are other tracks like 'sentimental walk'. as i recall, the film is very good too - but it's been a loong time since i saw it, and i'd love to see it again sometime.
on reflection, this pile's contents are probably more varied than those of the other two piles i've already listed. there are some great albums in there, i think, but also probably at least 1 or 2 mediocre ones ... in fact there are a couple in there with which i am not fully familiar (which ones?).
what albums are contained in the 4th pile? watch this space ... ;-D
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this is a pic of my head and brain, taken using a MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scanner. i don't think my brain is really that colour - at least not usually; i added those colours using fancy software. the MRI scanner doesn't 'detect' hair - actually it doesn't really detect skin either - but it does i believe show the (thin) layer of fat underneath the skin.

today is my first day back at work after essentially having the last 4 weeks off on paternity & recreational leave. works sucks - i'd rather be at home pottering around the house, trimming branches off trees, playing knights or superheroes with my son, etc, etc. anyhow, i am not doing any 'real' work here today - just catching up on emails, and doing things like this ... ;-D

back, after a wee break, to my list of favourite albums - i'm thinking of adding one or more of the following:
* nick cave & the bad seeds: 'the good son' or 'henry's dream'. not sure which one - possibly 'henry's dream' if only for the slightly better or more explicit storytelling afforded by the lyrics. it's generally dark tales of woe & damnation on both these albums, of course, with a few exceptions such as the love songs 'the ship song', 'lucy', 'straight to you'. i'll have to have another listen to each album before making a final decision.

* the stone roses' self-titled debut album, which i believe was a rather brilliant effort, particularly for a first album. it's a pity in many ways that they didn't ever properly extend upon this solid foundation - i have their second album ('second coming') which was realeased some years later and it has it's moments, but isn't in the same league as their debut which contains numerous gems such as 'she bangs the drums', 'waterfall', 'elephant stone' and of course 'fools gold'. stop press: i just did a bit of research with the aid of wikipedia and in fact, depending on the precise version & release of this album, either or both of the last two tracks (both of which were earlier singles) may not be included. e.g. the original 1989 u.k. release appears to include neither song, two u.s. releases contain one or the other, whereas the 1999 10th anniversary release contains both (plus a couple more) and a 2nd disc. anyhow ... i guess i had both of these tracks in mind when 'reviewing' the album, but it is still very good even without them.

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front right pile, bottom to top:

* directions in groove: curvystrasse
* jamiroquai: the return of the space cowboy
* kids music box: kids music box
* weddings parties anything: best of (borrowed)
* clare bowditch and the feeding set: what was left
* the smashing pumpkins: mellon collie and the infinite sadness
* kiss: double platinum
* brad leaver with swing central: just one of those things (andy’s brother’s band)
* ry cooder & v.m. bhatt: a meeting by the river
* mozart: piano concerto no. 21 symphony no. 40
* various artists (compiled by jose padilla): café del mar volumen dos
* talvin singh: ha
* the band: the collection (burned)

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i'm gonna b honest with u all. no hiding the truth here (if indeed it were possibly warranted).
on top of my stereo (i.e. on top of my record plaer which sits at top of my stereo) are 4 piles of cds. i am going to share with u what cds are contained in these piles. i'll start with the front left pile, and list them in stacked order from bootom to top:

* the go-betweens: 1978-1990
* hayseed dixie: a hillbilly tribute to ac/dc
* the church: el momento descuidado
* queen: a night at the opera
* santana: III
* nick cave & the bad seeds: abattoir blues / the lyre of orpheus
* neil young: comes a time
* 4 burned cds in home-made folded paper cases - i think they are all or mostly by the band tortoise (will check later)
* you am i: dress me slowly
* you am i: deliverance
* jack johnson: in between dreams
* bernard fanning: tea & sympathy
* nuyorican soul: nuyorian soul
* various artist: when baby comes home
* various artists (collated by jose padilla): cafe del mar volumen seis

there u have it. the rest later ...
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on the album 'brother sister' mentioned in my previous post, there is an instrumental track called 'snake hips'.
and on a post on this blog in april this year, i wrote about a rather large python that was hanging around our house.
well, a few nights ago i am very sure i heard a rather large python sliding about in our roof or, in not in the (shallow) roof, then on top of it. it was on the first full moon night in spring, after a few days of warmish spring-like weather. has that reptile been hibernating in our roof and just awoken after the winter? it's freakin me out a little - or perhaps a little more than a little, especially with a <4 week old baby in the house. and i've heard snakes are attracted to milk. i keep listening for it, especially late at night. i am alerted (more than usual) by 'little' sounds. our house often creaks, as it is made predominatly of red cedar. the creaks are freaky now. and that freak could be creeky now ... i hope it is - i hope it's out of the roof if indeed it was in there. we had blocked up (or attemtped to) some possible 'access by python' points at various times in the past ... did we in fact lock a python in there? we have a couple of opaque sky lights in the roof - one with a fluoro light inside. once when i took down the opaque perspex in the ceiling to change the light tube, i found a squashed-up tube of python hide in the roof near the side of the sky light hole.
i hope it's not up there. i am having irrational thoughts about tilting its head and it lifting up & dislodging the perspex with one of its large fangs and dropping down onto our floor and slithering up the hallway ... there are a couple of other possible (if quite unlikely?) access points into our house. i've got to take a deep breath & count to ten; give myself a rational talking-to. there are plenty of possums around - surely it is more interested in continuing to devour those? (not that i like the thought of that, either.) but what if it is trapped inside the roof, and getting hungrier & hungrier? admittedly i haven't heard it again since that night, although my sister who stayed over a few nights ago said she thought she did.
i just heard another little sound - but i think it was only a gecko on the window catching an insect. why can't snakes be more like their gecko cousins? in terms of diet, behaviour, etc.
i don't like snakes ... i'll happily pay someone to take this or other pythonms away if the opportunity presents itself ... i was i could call upon saint patrick to drive all the snakes out of my yard (if not australia) for good ...
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i think that an album from the brand new heavies must come close to making my list of favourite albums - partly depending on just how long that list is, i suppose.
and it'd be quite a close race between 'brother sister' (their 2nd) and 'shelter' ( their 3rd & final album) ... but i think 'shelter' would take the honours in the end.
these albums kind of represent (for want of a better term) some phases of my life (about a decade or more ago) and also they reflect an aspect of my album collection ... but over & above these factors, the brand new heavies' funky / jazzy sounds in their own right warrant inclusion in my fave albums list. for some reason(s) i'm kind of reticent to use the term 'acid jazz' in this context although i'm sure some may not hesitate to do so.
either way u look at it, the bnh do know how to get a groove going i reckon !
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