firstly, a recent & exciting development in my life over the past 10 days is that now i am going to the 'splendour in the grass' music festival in byron bay next weekend!!! ;-D i am very happy about this, as many of my friends have been going for several years (and are going again) and i have never been (due mainly to fatherly/hunsabndly duties & the like). also it is in a very lovely part of the world, about 2-2.5 hours drive south of where i live. actually, having thought about - and i kinda can't believe this myself in a way - i don't think i've ever been to any substantial music festival at all! certainly not a large, 2-day event such as this. i'm very excited - it's a rare treat for me nowadays ... and i'm looking forward to hearing/seeing a large number of the bands playing there, as well as soaking up the whole vibe.

yes - men at work. i don't have any of their albums; in fact there are only 3 studio albums by them! but i've always liked most of their singles & i've been getting into them a bit on u-toob recently. quite a few of their songs have a signifcant reggae element to them - e.g. "it's a mistake" has an upbeat reggae beat, as does "down under".

but what's even more interesting, upon closer inspection, are some of their lyrics; quite a few of the singles at least (most written or co-written by colin hay) explore topics around mental health and/or disturbances in that. "overkill" (a brilliant pop song incidentally) discusses insomnia, probably resulting from obsessive-compulsive thought patterns. "who can it be now" deals with paranoia. "be good johnny" is perhaps a 1980s take on chuck berry's less sophisticated, guitar-playing protagonist (johnny b. goode), and the 1980s johnny probably has what some would now diagnose as (the often over-used) attention deficit / hyperactivity disorder. "dr heckyll & mr jive" seems to cover biploar disorder and/or what some call multiple personality disorder. even in "down under" the narrator seems paranoid when he says that a strange lady made him nervous (although perhaps that's a consequence of smoking pot if he indeed was "in a fried-out kombi on a hippy trail, head full of zombie"). other titles on the "cargo" albuim such as "blue for you" (and "high wire") point to depression (and maybe mania).

am i reading too much into these lyrics? probably not. either way, these lyrics & topics are more interesting than those in your average, top-40 pop song!

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it was 1983; i was being driven by my father to a mid-week, night-time, pre-season soccer game. the radio was on (as it almost always is with my father). this song came on

i don't have time right now to work out a fancy tv-linky thing, so click HERE to check out the song & clip on u-toob

overkill

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i picked up a 2nd-hand copy of the following album this morning on my way to work.

listening to this one takes me back exactly 20 years, to a high school camp where we were rehearsing our school musical ('fiddler on the roof' - i played the drunkard innkeeper!). specifically, i can distinctly remember lying on the lower bed of a double-bunk bed in the dormitory & listening to a taped cassette copy of this on my walkman ...

funny how the mind operates 8^D

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hi,

i've been quiet for a while. had a good - but brief - break with my family the weekend before last. but ... otherwise ... it's business as usual ... the daily grind, the numbing routine of it all ... i'm a bit over it; need a holiday, and i know i've got one coming in 8 week's time, but it's been 6 months since my last real time off and i'm a bit over this working routine bullsh!t.

it's not even really the work itself that annoys me right now - just the mundane same-ness of it all; the get-up-have-breakfast-shower-shave-dress-prepare-drive routine in the morning ... then a similar kind of routine in the afternoon/evening ... phah! :-P

there's more to life than this

whatever ... i can't complain really ... i've got it good, all things considered. one thing i should bear in mind is that i've only got about 100 working days left in this present routine; then there are significant changes planned to happen! come next january i should be establishing a different routine, in dublin .... ;-D

~

this pic is taken (thru a windscreen) in the small-ish regional city where i spent 12 years of my life, from age 5 to 17 (my school years).

we lived (and my parents still live) and i went to school & grew up near the base of that mountain in the pic. looking at it & nearby hills now always triggers a lot of memories from my childhood - mostly good memories. those hills are always there, and were a backdrop to a lot of my life; and they remain that for my family.

i'll be back there again this weekend, to celebrate my dad's birthday & catch up with family & some school friends. no doubt more memories will be triggered too ;-D

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