Ah Lovely Auckland...

People who read this site, people who know me, and even those people who have only met me a few times, will tell you this: I LOVE music.

People may have mixed opinions about me, some may think I'm a straight up utter prick, but they'll all agree on one thing: I LOVE music.

Even my email signature reads: Without Music, Life is an Error.

I love DJing. I love playing people new music, making mix tapes, trading music...

I'll even listen to music I might usually hate in order to find something I like (like with Dubstep. I've found heaps of stuff I like through dubstep, but then it becomes labelled - by others - as "not really dubstep". Which confuses me even more... anyway...)

One thing I'm particularly known for is going out to see bands ands DJs.

Portishead played here in Auckland last Thursday night. I've wanted to see them for so long! I missed their last tour back in the 90s, and I was going to go to Sydney to see them and that all fell through, but then I found out they were playing here, and grabbed tickets.

And they were fabulous. Really, everything I was expecting, and still amazing. There's only a few other bands who've exceeded my often admittedly high expectations - Pop Will Eat Itself, DEVO, The Flaming Lips, Muse, and Pixies.

But you know what?

The gig wasn't sold out. Wasn't even chockers.

To me, that's insane. The very idea that Portishead didn't sell out somewhere is mindboggling. That's like... the Beatles performing in 1964 and people not screaming at them for the whole concert. That's like... something I can't think of, because philosophically I can't consider a thing I'd never think about!

To put this in even greater perspective: Adelaide sold out! Within days of announcement!

Adelaide!!!

So I find myself wondering, how the hell is it I find myself living in a place where Portishead didn't sell out?

five word reviews???

Remember how I said I was going to do five word reviews?

Well, that kind of bit the dust when I couldn't get access to any CDs and such.

But, I've got access to Shock, Fuse, and EMI plus a few other places, so will continue them forthwith.

Don't get angry at Google, get angry at the Government

So, a whole bunch of moronic dipshits are pissed at Google for not allowing Android Marketplace in Australia according to ZDNet. Guess what idiots - it's NOT Google's fault!

Do you think they deliberately want to hold back their market? Do you think they want to stop people in Australia watching things on their phones? Do you think they're sitting in their ivory towers, cackling with evil glee that they've fucked Australia over?

Of course not!

And do you have such short attention spans that you forget it took the Apple iTunes Store TWO YEARS to launch in Australia after the USA Launch? What's the difference here - you've learned to whinge more about more useless shit in the last 5 years?

This is SOLELY the Government's fault - both the current Labor Government and the former Liberal Government.

They have continued to bow to USA pressure to sign the DMCA, which restricts consumer rights and access to international content, and continue to bend over backwards to Sony, EMI, News Limited and other media and distribution companies to stop the free flow of content into Australia through price fixing and geo / region locking.

The governments claim it's to protect local industries... but we all know that's bullshit. How is getting to see Torchwood at the same time as the British and Yanks going to impact the filming of Neighbors?

If you want things like Google Android Market, Spotify, Turntable.FM, Hulu - you need to fight for it. You need to petition, protest, agitate, and defy the Government and Opposition and Greens on these matters, and let them know consumer rights are more important than protecting local companies profits.

We live in a democratic capitalist economy. If a local company can't complete with an international, especially when they're OWNED by another international company, they don't deserve protection.

EDIT:
And if you don't believe me that the Governments of the world are in collusion with copyright companies, the Wikileaks scandal proves that the the very least New Zealand has been: New Zealand's Three Strikes Paid by USA

Google Plus

OK, so I've got Google Plus.

http://gplus.to/funkyj is my site. Feel free to look me up and add me to your circles.

I've read that Blogger might be re-branded eventually, and so I'm hoping they integrate everything together nicely.

Falling Skies

Seriously, who keeps giving these people money to make these TV shows?

Sure, ok, if I were a deaf, blind mute who had just been living in a cave in Nowherekistan and just returned to full cognitive ability recently, I might possibly enjoy this show.

But because I'm 38 years old and have been exposed to a fair amount of pop- and not so pop-culture in these last 38 years, like most people in the Western world, the show has absolutely no merit at all.

What's the point stomping over trodden ground, using the same story and same stereotypes and same shit over and over again?

This makes me hate reality TV shows even more. Because we're so starved for anything not so incredibly vile and lame, we praise mediocrity as if it's the second coming.

I am just so disappointed after United States of Tara - a rich, unusual, funny, and touching series.

This is how it feels? Nah!

So, I woke up with this song in my head today...

This is How it Feels - by Inspiral Carpets covered by Carter USM.

I know, I know - J you miserable bastard! you're thinking... but if I may channel Andrew P Street here for a moment and pontificate brilliantly about music...

More importantly, I think, it was this version, by Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, in my head.

As they take what is a beautiful yet utterly miserable song about the depressive condition of modern life, and turn it into a sideshow of noise and a celebration of the absurd, which is utterly brilliant.

Because no matter how miserable life may seem, it's forever more absurd than miserable, and I for one love that about live.

And after getting excited about playing music again, this happens...

And after getting excited about playing music again, this happens...

A note on the turntable.fm website:

We're very sorry, but while we would love to let you in and rock out with us, we need to currently restrict turntable access to only the United States due to licensing constraints.

We are working very hard to try and get you in as soon as possible.

If you believe this is a mistake and you are located in the United States, please e-mail help [at sign] turntable dot fm

Again, sorry, and we hope to see you soon.

Billy Chasen
CEO

Fuck you music industry. Fuck you with a pole, sideways.

I was exposing this great music to people who can't even buy it on CD or on itunes because you're too fucking ignorant and scared to promote outside of Australia!

7 Years of LA Noire development hell

IGN have a great and disturbing article about Team Bondi's LA Noire 7 year development cycle.

It features responses by Brendan McNamara, who is the typical egotistical management type.

I'm sick of dealing with management fucktards like McNamara. I’m butting against it daily at the moment and I’m sick of it. There may be a bit of projection onto McNamara in this rant, but he’s not the only person who acts like he does in this industry… ;)

But if you ask me, “whatever it takes” means getting rid of egotistical arsehole pricks like him out of the games industry.

However you cut it, running your staff into the ground is NOT a good management plan, nor is it good for maintaining an industry.

I don't buy into the argument that it's due to the competitive nature of game development. I know people in the finance and defence software creating business - software which is worth billions of dollars and far more important than games ever could hope to be - and they positively baulked when I told them the crap hours for the crap pay we put up with.

How is this environment good for a competitive and sustainable industry? You can't develop and nurture creative skills in this kind of environment! How are you meant to have people who are strong leads if you burn everyone out and they leave after a year or two? People will leave for other studios overseas, where at least pay if not conditions are proven to be better. However, more often people leave the industry altogether, choosing to go into fields which pay better and are not as demanding on their time and sanity as games. All that talent, skill and knowledge has left the industry. Is it any wonder every bloody game is almost exactly the same now days?

And where is the industry left after this scenario, repeated time and time again? After the closure of studios and mass exodus due to McNamara and others “management skills”, a lot of casual / indie developers have popped up as a result, and yes, a few are making some great games, but is this really a sustainable industry? Will these startups be around in a year or two? Will they be around after Facebook dies (and it will die just like AOL and all those others died) and iPhone development costs increase with the continual revisions to the devices hardware?

I have a very strong suspicion these studios will vanish when the cashcow of iOS and Facebook games comes back to reality, and we'll lose even more talented people.

And lastly, this is directly to McNamara and anyone else who thinks the same way: it is not your game, you egotistical fuckstick; It’s every single person on that teams’ game! It belongs to everyone who works on it. And I don’t give a fuck who you are - Brendan McNamara, Sam Houser, Cliff Bleszinski, or Jesus Fucking Christ; if you’ve got a producer and leads, then help those people PRODUCE and LEAD - that's how a good producer/director should work.

Don’t give me this “I’m passionate about games” bullshit either – those people who are making $50,000 a year working 12 hour days plus weekends are passionate about games. Just because you’re on $200,000 jetsetting all over the world trying to get finance for the next game doesn’t make you any better, clever, or talented than the team you’re working with.

Funky J back on the airwaves!

So, I have finally found a way to get back on the airwaves!

There's this great new streaming service called Turntable.fm.

You sign up using your facebook log in, and you can select any number of rooms generally split into genres.

For those DJs amongst us, you can create a list of tunes from their databank (or upload your own if they're not in there) and spin tracks alongside 4 other DJs, taking it in turns.

You have avatars which you can level up through playing music, and can become fans of other DJs, subscribe to email lists which tell you when your favourite DJs are playing, can use Twitter and Facebook to announce what and when you're playing, and can use text based chat to mention where bands are from, talk about gigs, talk about boobs, whatever.

I've been playing in the Hiphop Jazz Funk room, which introduced me to some damn good music, and I introduced some Americans to some fine Aussie hiphop via Hilltop Hoods, Delta, Funkwig & Denorthwode, Funkoars, Katalyst and others.

It's lots of fun, and if you like sharing your music then give it a try!

comments on violence makes me want to punch something!

This "psychologist" talking about violence after the Stanley Cup;

Quote:

[PEOPLE] spend countless hours exposed to incredible violence through TV, video games and movies. "I'm not surprised at all that the very same people who've grown up on a steady diet of observing and playing violence are then intrigued to watch it when they see it in person. ... There was a large number of people for whom this was a spectacle, an event to be observed and maybe laughed at and to participate in very, very minor ways in these activities," he said. ... Their behaviour was "entirely consistent" with how they're expected to react to violence on TV or in video games, he said.

http://www.thenownews.com/technology/Stanley+riots+come+this/4962998/story.html

FOR FUCKS SAKE THEY WERE JUST WATCHING A GOD DAMN LIVE ICE HOCKEY MATCH AND HE BLAMES TV AND VIDEOGAMES!?!?!?

Seriously, people are going push their agendas despite all the overwhelming evidence against them, so what's the point in asking about anything, any more?

Every weekend, sports are played.

Every weekend, teams lose.

Every weekend, fights occur because of this. Often, these fights turn into riots.

And yet it's the first impulse of a psychologist when asked about how this can arise is to blame violent TV, movies and videogames?

Not the fact that people become so invested in that sport because they've got nothing else in their lives to be passionate about?

Not the fact that commercialism and competition have devolved so much that we can no longer enjoy a game of sport, but rather have to become so heavily invested in watching a team that we feel negatively when they lose - something we as fans and viewers have absolutely no control over - in other words the classic human dilemma of feeling hopeless in the face of an uncaring environment?

Did Stephen Fry just out Little Big Planet 3 on twitter?

I love Stephen Fry, and follow him on Twitter, and he just mentioned this:


Off to do some voicing for Little Big Planet. Then lunch and QI. Only three more recordings and the 16 of Series 9 will be done.

Has he just outed Little Big Planet 3? Or is this for the PS Vita?

Either way, I'd LOVE to do a game with someone of Stephen's talent!

It's been a while...

So, after about a week and a half where every morning it would be a different song, it's been a while since I woke up with a song my head... well, at least one I hadn't listened to the previous day.

But this morning, woke up with this... Oh one two!


Breakadawn - De La Soul

Wonder this morning...

Woke up with Happy Birthday by Stevie Wonder today in my head today...

it's not even my birthday!

Song I woke up with in my head this morning

So, I woke up at 6am with a coughing fit, and for some reason this was in my head:

Rick James - Super Freak

At least this time it was a fucking cool song, and not some lame arse soft rock song ;)

What the fuck? Billy Joel?? Honestly, subconscious!

OK, I must be channelling some kind of crap old 80s rock station or something...

Woke up with Billy Joel's "You May Be Right" in my head this morning.

Thing is, until I looked up song, I didn't even know it was Billy Joel! I thought it was some more obscure band like Toto or someone.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1xrlt_billy-joel-you-may-be-right_music

Also, youtube doesn't have this video clip. What dicks.

Song I woke up with in my head this morning

I always seem to be waking up with songs in my head, so I'm going to share with the interweb...

Today it was Howard Jones - No One is to Blame

Actually, make that Five Word Reviews...

Ok, after careful consideration, I've decided to make it Five Word Reviews, to keep along the theme of Five Minutes of Funk...

So, to reiterate: given the amount I watch and listen to, I thought you all might like to see more of my stuff but in smaller amounts, so I've created Five Minute Reviews on Twitter.

The rules are simple - Five words on games, films, music, television... maybe even other things.

The order will be Type: Name: Review, so for example:

Film: Black Swan: Great film I enjoyed thoroughly

Simply follow me on Twitter, or search for the #fivewordreviews

Four Word Reviews on Twitter

Considering the amount I watch and listen to, I thought you all might like to see more of my stuff but in smaller amounts, so I've created Four Minute Reviews on Twitter.

The rules are simple - Four words on games, films, music, television... maybe even other things.

The order will be Type: Name: Review, so for example:

Film: Black Swan: Great film enjoyed thoroughly

Simply follow me on Twitter, or search for the #fourwordreviews

Freedom of Speech and Andrew Bolt

Andrew Bolt is in court for defamation.

Numerous "journalists" are jumping up and down, crying crocodile tears for Bolt, claiming all kinds of outrageous nonsense about Freedom of Speech for the Press and Democracy and related bullshit.

Here's some rubbish from Brull the fool at the ABC

And from Bernard the Retard at Crikey

Thing is, Bolt has defamed these people, in their view. (And, to be honest, my view too)

Defamation works like this:
You can say "everybody in XCompany is a wanker". Perfectly legal, because it's a company and no individual is damaged by it. This applies to groups, even member of a race.

If you say "FunkyJ is a member of  Xcompany and therefore a wanker", and (this is the important bit) I take offence and believe it can damage my reputation, then I can sue. Then it's up to you to prove I'm a wanker and for me to prove I'm not (yeah, I'm boned! )

Andrew Bolt didn't say "Some Aboriginals are pretending to be blacker to get privileges" which is a perfectly abhorrent, but perfectly legal thing to say.

He named these specific individuals in specific circumstances where he believes this occurred.

Of Pat Eatock, a 79 year old Aboriginal Activist, he said: “Eatock only started to identify as Aboriginal when she was 19, after attending a political rally, so little did any racial difference matter to her before her awakening to far-Left causes... But she thrived as an Aboriginal bureaucrat, activist and academic…”
Eatock, with 8 decades of being aboriginal and all that it brings, obviously thinks otherwise.

Another, Larissa Behrendt, is upset that Bolt said her father was "German". In fact, her father is Aboriginal.

Bolt never sought response from those he named. News Limited hasn't offered any corrections. (Bolt's website has the words "German Father" with "father" crossed out and the word "name" put next to it - yet the implication is still very apparent)

These people have taken offence. And quite rightly in my opinion. Their professional and personal reputation has the potential to be damaged by these claims.

Free speech advocates like Bernard the Retard and Brull the Fool know that most people don't have a bloody clue about journalism and the law, what it can and what it can't do.

Every single ethical rule about journalism you can think of - Truth, balance, fair, unbiased, sources, etc - is a mere recommendation. The AJA and ACMA can give out fines to newspapers and journalists who break the rules, as long as they are members of those organisations.

However, there are no laws that cause these recommendations to be adhered to. There are no laws that say any journalist organisation needs to join any member organisation so punishments for breaches can be dealt out.

Now, if Freedom of Speech of the Press is so integral to Democracy, why is getting a response from people only a mere recommendation for journalists? Why is fact checking not enforcible by law? Why is the only recourse of someone wronged to sue for defamation?

It's so easy for Bernard and other journalists to jump up and down over this crap, but I said this on another of Bernard's pieces:

When the Press actually start being accountable for the words they print by firing people who report sensationalist bullshit; by printing corrections and errors on the front pages and running corrections as the first news story; by reporting on a story fully and not relying on readers and viewers to contribute; by not running advertising as stories; by not having advertising; by not being multinational; by not having links to organisations which create a conflict of interest; by taking responsibility for commentators on their websites; by fully fact checking even the most mundane story; by not relying on news wires; by not charging for content or subscriptions… Only THEN can the Press be truly considered a pillar of democracy, and only then can the imprisonment of journalists in a country like Australia truly be an outrage.


tldr?
Before the Press can claim to be a pillar of Democracy and have the right to Free Speech, they need to acknowledge their responsibilities through enactment of laws to make them act well in accordance to what is right and noble for Democracy.

30 Day Song Challenge

This is a neat little Facebook like & share game.

The rules are post one song a day, for 30 days, following these rules:

day 01 - your favourite song
day 02 - your least favourite song
day 03 - a song that makes you happy
day 04 - a song that makes you sad
day 05 - a song that reminds you of someone
day 06 - a song that reminds you of somewhere
day 07 - a song that reminds you of a certain event
day 08 - a song that you know all the words to
day 09 - a song that you can dance to
day 10 - a song that makes you fall asleep
day 11 - a song from your favourite band
day 12 - a song from a band you hate
day 13 - a song that is a guilty pleasure
day 14 - a song that no one would expect you to love
day 15 - a song that describes you
day 16 - a song that you used to love but now hate
day 17 - a song that you hear often on the radio
day 18 - a song that you wish you heard on the radio
day 19 - a song from your favourite album
day 20 - a song that you listen to when you’re angry
day 21 - a song that you listen to when you’re happy
day 22 - a song that you listen to when you’re sad
day 23 - a song that you want to play at your wedding
day 24 - a song that you want to play at your funeral
day 25 - a song that makes you laugh
day 26 - a song that you can play on an instrument
day 27 - a song that you wish you could play
day 28 - a song that makes you feel guilty
day 29 - a song from your childhood
day 30 - your favourite song at this time last year

So look out for my posts here and on facebook!