Gig with Superstyle Deluxe (Fri 31 Aug)

Marble Bar, Friday 31 August

Free Entry before 10pm and half price cocktails 9-11!



SuperStyleDeluxe (Dan Holmes & Neil Simons) are responsible for many of the floor rocking Breakbeats and midtempo hits that keep the booty shaking. "Making music you can dance too" has been the aim and moto since the whole concept began.

It started with the mass production of mix tapes titled SuperStyleDeluxe and adventuring into the realms of hip hop- Breaks Disco etc. All laden with a sprinkle of Turntableism this became the trademark for the young superstyedeluxe and selling them at the local legendary club Stump Juice based in Wolverhampton UK where Dan (the DJ) up held his residency with those heavy weight Latinos The Capoeira Twins. Population and demand for the mixes snow bald, gaining magazine reviews and reaching as far off as Europe & Canada.

Production and tunes soon started flowing and a record contract was secured with Hamburg's Lounge Records. A barrow load of releases followed all gaining props from the Plump Dj's Krafty Kuts- Mr Scruff for their unique sound and diverse approach to making dance records. Remixes have seen Dido, Bent, Venus Hum, Reno, Pink, Stabilizer, Circuit Breaker & The Strike Boys to name but a few to receive the SuperStyleDeluxe treatment.

The pair have achieved great praise with Breaks poll nominations, number one chartings and worldwide exposure with their releases. This has resulted in a SuperStyleDeluxe record sitting in many a dj's box. The pair are now coming off Brighton's" Heavy Weight" breaks label "SuperCharged/Against The Grain" with the long awaited debut album sitting nicely in the Pipeline. And if that wasnt enough they have just started a brand new label called The Payback Project which is making all the right moves The clubbing circuit has seen the introduction of Mc Chickaboo to the SuperStyleDeluxe DJ show. Recent releases with Chickaboo and heavy touring has placed them among the top DJ/ Mc acts. With tours from Europe, Canada,Australia & Asisa. Their acclaimed shows have been one of the hottest things coming out of the UK.

Locals are: Leezee, Halogen & Funky J

Luna Eclipse

Admittedly I had to use a bit of photoshoppery to bring the moon out clearer, but this is a nice shot of it through the vines on my house...

Long Time No Blog

Hey all, sorry, long time no blog.

Been buzy* lately and haven't had much to write to be honest.

Everything is simply kicking along nicely, nothing much to say about anything except videogames but you can read that over on my ign.blog

I've succumbed to facebook. But you all knew I would no doubt.

I took some photos of the Lunar Eclipse which I'll put on ringo later.



*buzy means "busy and/or lazy". It's a term I just made up. It's good. You should use it.

RIP Tony Wilson

Tony Wilson, founder of Factory records and the Hacienda, discoverer of Joy Division/New Order and Happy Mondays, passed away on Friday 10 August, 2007.

He was a true legend, a funny but dodgy geezer, the epitome of the "Madchester" mentality.

Bands I've seen

These are the ones I remember seeing... There's probably more... And this list doesn't include DJs who essentially just played records...

1200 Techniques
Acyalone
Afro Celt Sound System
Alien Ant Farm
Aphex Twin
Ash
Atari Teenage Riot
Basement Jaxx
Beastie Boys
Beasts of Bourbon
Beth Orton
Black Eyed Peas
Blackalicious
blink-182
Bliss
Blue King Brown
Body Count
Butterfingers
Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine
Coldcut
Corduroy
Cosmic Psychos
Def FX
Depeche Mode
DJ Shadow
Downsyde
Faith No More
Fat Freddy's Drop
Fear Factory
Femi Kuti
Foo Fighters
Franz Ferdinand
Freestylers
Fundamental
Garbage
Gerling
Gnarls Barkley
Gotan Project
Grinspoon
Handsome Boy Modeling School
Happy Mondays
Headless Chickens
Helmet
Hexstatic
Hilltop Hoods
Hole
Hoodoo Gurus
Hunters and Collectors
Ice T
Iggy Pop
Infusion
Inspiral Carpets
Itch-E & Scratch-E
James Brown
Jamiroquai
Jarvis Cocker
Jebediah
Jet
John Butler Trio
Jurassic 5
Kosheen
KoЯn
L7
Leningrad Cowboys
Live
Lou Reed
Luke Slater Freek Funk
Lyrics Born
Machine Gun Fellatio
Magic Dirt
Massive Attack
Metallica
Midnight Oil
Ministry
Mudhoney
Muse
My Chemical Romance
Mylo
New Order
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Nightmares On Wax
Nine Inch Nails
Paul McCartney
Pavement
Peaches
Pennywise
Pet Shop Boys
Peter Gabriel
Phoenix
Pixies
Placebo
Pop Will Eat Itself
Porno for Pyros
Powderfinger
Primal Scream
Primus
Prodigy
Queens of the Stone Age
Rage Against The Machine
Rammstein
Rancid
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Regurgitator
Resin Dogs
Roni Size’s Raprezent
Roots Manuva
Salmonella Dub
Scissor Sisters
Shihad
Silverchair
Skunkhour
Slipknot
Snoop Dog
Sonic Animation
Sonic Youth
Soulwax/2 Many DJs
Soundgarden
Spank Rock
Spiderbait
St. Germain
Stereo MCs
Stone Roses
Supergroove
Superjesus
The Avalanches
The Breeders
The Cat Empire
The Chemical Brothers
The Clouds
The Cruel Sea
The Crystal Method
The Cult
The Cure
The Dandy Warhols
The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy
The Donnas
The Flaming Lips
The Hard Ons
The Herd
The Killers
The Living End
The Offspring
The Presets
The Rapture
The Smashing Pumpkins
The Streets
The Strokes
The Tea Party
The White Stripes
TISM
Tool
Tricky
U2
Ugly Duckling
Urge Overkill
Violent Femmes
Ween
Wolfmother
You Am I

PC dead again!

FUCK!!!!

My PC at home is dead again.

This time it appears to be my fault.

Hopefully the power supply has just gone, but it's still annoying because I had a heap of stuff to put online as well as a heap of work to do!

FunkyJ.com now online!

Finally, after upgrades and roll backs of FunkyJ.com for the last 6 months, all of my 2006 interviews from Twenty4Seven Magazine, dB Magazine and inthemix are online!

So please visit FunkyJ.com, read them and then tell your friends! =)

I will work at getting the 2007 interviews online over the next week.

Apologies for the lack of formatting on the new articles - the solution to my problem has been to shut off the TinyMCE section of my website, so now I have to write everything in HTML... and I can't be bothered, so no bold or italics in the news stories for the moment.

At least there's line breaks! =)

Zombie Walk

News Flash:

Headline: Hordes of Zombies roam city streets

Dateline: Adelaide Sat 26 May

Hordes of the undead rose from the Adelaide Parklands to traverse the streets of Adelaide.

Whilst most were docile, some moved incredible fast and demonstrated rudimentary motor skills suchs as operating cameras and other technological devices.


No one is sure what their purpose was, but as the shambolic mass stumbled down Rundle Street, Rundle Mall and Hindley Street, the chant of brains could be heard continually, making this reporter suspect they were protesting the lack of intellectual stimulation that Adelaide has to offer the denizens of the underworld. (or the populous at large - Ed.)

As far as we know, no one was injured or turned into a Zombie during the walk, although there was one weird zombie preaching the word of the Lord to the others in an apocalyptic manner.

Unfortunately that zombie was obviously more braindead than the others, as he kept trying to cite the scriptures but clearly had no proper understanding of them. One choice quote was "Jesus died on the Cross for our Sins, that should have been you" which is a clear misrepresentation of the meaning of the Cruxifiction.

Unfortunately this reporter was too busy staring at the raver zombie's cute ass and considering if sex with the undead would be considered necrophilia to take a photo of preacher zombie.

Video footage of the event follows, where you can hear a little of the preaching of the braindead zombie ...



More Photos and Videos at Ringo.com

The Most Poweful Person in the World

This is beautiful.

Updated Podcast

Hey all,

Finally updated my interview podcast!

I've got the following interviews up:

Kid Koala
Breakfastaz
Plump DJs
Stereo MCs
Roots Manuva
DJ Z-Trip
Coldcut
DJ Craze
The Roots

Unfortunately quite a few of them couldn't be put online (like my Andy C interview) because the recording quality was too bad.

I've got recording sorted now though and shouldn't have that problem again, and will start updating this much more regularly - interviews will go online 2 months after I publish them.

Subscribe Here

You can download individual episodes too.

If you want to subscribe via iTunes just click here
(or open the podcast menu in iTunes and search for FunkyJ)

As Promised... Hilltop Hood & the ASO Photos!

Pressure

Suffa

Debris

7000 people going off!

More at Ringo

Hilltop Hoods with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra

I just saw the Hilltop Hoods with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra.

Simply amazing!

They've always been top performers - I played at a gig with them about 7 years ago and even back then they were awesome, but to a home crowd of over 7000 people (which is some kind of record for a home crowd at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre) and with a 32 piece orchestra they were something else.

Also, as far as anyone is aware, hiphop has never been attempted with an orchestra outside of Springfield during the Lollapalooza tour

I did an interview with them the other week, and took some great pictures tonight, which I'll put online later.

I seriously reckon these guys are one of Australia's greatest bands, up there with AC/DC, Chisel, Midnight Oil, INXS, Crowded House...

Sure, it's totally different music, but the impact these guys are having on Australia is just as great as those other bands; they're selling shitloads of records, they're doing wonders for live music, they're inspiring so many others, and made Australian hiphop a legitimate art form.

If only they can make it overseas... They will do ok in Europe and the UK, but the US is really hard to break into, especially with hiphop...

FunkyJ.com temporarily down

You may have noticed that funkyj.com is "under construction".

This is so I can do some work on it like get my some interviews online and organise it all a little nicer. This will involve using a better CMS and figuring how how to use it...

Hopefully it will be all complete over the weekend, but this could be a week long job...

Utterly exhausted

Last night I was up until midnight playing LOTRO. Nothing unusual about that, that's my usual 'bedtime'.

But I woke up at 3am and went to the toilet, and as I walked into the bathroom the floor was all wet. At first I thought the cat had gone mental and peed there. It was a totally out of character thing for the cat to do, but hey, it was 3am and my brain wasn't fully switched on.

After I got out of the toilet I realised that the cat wouldn't have done that, so turned on the light to find my whole entire kitchen flooded, with water snaking across the floor making it's way towards my records and turntables.

I opened up the cupboard where the hot water heater is, and water was pissing torrents out the valves and along the top.

I searched frantically around the house for towels and buckets, and then began searching for the water mains. I live in an old 19th Century converted barn, and I assumed the mains would be on one of the properties we were linked to. I found a water mains tap, and turned it off, but that did nothing.

So I ring the land agent and then their after hours emergency service number and no body answers.

I ring Rheem and they tell me it will be about $200 for the first 40 minutes and a stupid amount thereafter. Meanwhile my kitchen is looking like an indoor swimming pool. I now know why they are called Rheem...

So, I try to twist a few knobs on the water heater, nothing budges. It's all wet and slippery and I'm not the world's strongest guy.

I find the release valve and think "A ha! I'll turn this on and just let the water empty down the drain. It's a waste, sure, but at least it's not going to flood the house!"

So I squeeze the valve and watch hot water pour out of the valve and go straight against the wall, run down the wall and join the other water from the leak, further exasperating the problem.

So, I think "---- this" and call Water SA - maybe they can help. The lady tells me that usually they could tell me where my mains water meter is connected, but the program they use to look that up has been down all weekend and won't be fixed until the morning.

So I call back Rheem and ask if I'll have to pay up front, and they tell me yes, which is impossible for me to do because I don't have that much money, not even on my credit card. So I ask if the lady can give me advice - I know there must be some kind of shut off valve, but she tells me she can't provide me with that information.

It's now 6am, I'm utterly exhausted, sleep deprived, soaked to the bone, and so worried about the water damage this massive leak is doing, I can't even swear at the bitch.

I basically pass out for an hour, wake up when my flatmate sms's me telling me she doesn't know where the water mains is either. She gets home, sees me and the house and starts laughing, then offers to help.

Then, at about 8:30 the plumber calls, and he tells me how to turn the water off on the water heater. But, as I mentioned before, I tried all the valves and couldn't budge any. I work at the one he told me to, and nothing.

So my flatmate goes to the mechanics around the corner, uses her wily womanly ways and gets a spanner. After about 10 minutes of trying to get between the valve and the wall, I get the water shut off.

The plumber arrives, takes one look at it, and says it needs replacing and they need to ask the house owner for permission.

Thankfully he said yes.

But now I am so exhausted. Physically from mopping and sponging and carrying buckets outside, and mentally because I've only had about 4 hours sleep...

In retrospect it's pretty funny, and if my brain wasn't so frazzled from so little sleep I would have taken pictures...

Seven Nation Army

This was on J-TV a few weeks ago, but I think this is amazing!

I find this guy's voice to be absolutely enchanting. He sounds like he was plucked straight out of the cornfields along the Mississippi in the 1920s...

C W Stoneking's cover of Seven Nation Army

50 Reasons why Star Wars is better than Star Trek

Ok, I know I may be biased, after all, I am working on a Star Wars game after all, but this list of 50 Reasons why Star Wars is better than Star Trek is a tremendously funny and accurate list.

But really, you only need one reason why Star Wars is better, and that's this:

The Advertiser Editors have some bloody nerve!

I had to laugh at the editorial entitled “Free people must be allowed a free press” that was on the AdelaideNow website on April 28, 2007.

The gall of the Advertiser editors to claim that they are some kind of bastion of democracy is phenomenal. If they actually think that they need to stop smoking the crack they are obviously are on and come down from their ivory tower and actually participate in the local community, because it's obvious they have an over inflated perception of them selves and their newspaper.

I couldn't help myself - I had to write in:

You claim that “A free media, the freedom of speech and expression of opinion, is the heartland of any democracy”.

The moment News.Corp appropriated all of Adelaide's papers into one was the moment the “press” ceased to resemble anything remotely associated with the word “free”. Murdoch's constant and consistent meddling in political affairs in Australia, the UK and USA stripped his media of any claim to the democratic process. Add to that the Federal Government's recent relaxing of media ownership laws to allow Murdoch more control and your entire diatribe at the government and lawmakers becomes fallacious at best, diabolical at worse.

You claim that parliaments are “the epitome of half-truth and obfuscation” yet in the last few months the Advertiser has shown itself to be more than equal to that task.

You claim that we are “fed a diet of misleading and shrewdly crafted press releases” but who publishes these releases? Who constantly publishes unresearched feeds from PR people and foreign newspapers?

The story about Knut the polar bear still has not been corrected in ANY news corporation publications, although the ABC's mediawatch showed that elements of the story were completely false and the animal rights activists involved now fear for their life because you “copy and pasted” the article from AP's news feed.

Examples of this sloppy journalism on corrections has increased phenomenally in recent years and yet your responses to such places as mediawatch when queried on it are unapologetic in most cases, and downright rude in others.

I have a challenge for you – you research and report the truth properly according to the MEAA's code of ethics, and when you do screw up the truth of the story you print a prominently positioned apology, and we, the public, will help to fight to stop your freedoms being eroded.

But until that time to ask that we support you would be laughable if it wasn't such a disturbing and disingenuous use of the Advertiser's editorial.

My weeked...

Pretty laid back weekend. To wet to go anywhere really.

The rain is good for the farmers though I suppose.

My weekend pretty much consisted of going through my music collection and burning a heap of CDs to my hard drive and copying them to my iPod.

I discovered quite a few CDs were missing unfortunately =(

But I did re-discover some old music, as well as grabbed a heap of stuff I have on vinyl in digital form.

I also bid on a heap of cheap CDs on ebay.

Also played a shitload of Luxor2 on my Xbox360.

It's like a breakout clone but a million times better and more addictive.

OK... so it's *almost* done

OK, so my page has been re-arranged and made more readable and "user friendly".

I've added some cool things like my LAST.FM player, so you can listen to the music I listen to!

I've added the feed from MySpace and IGN where I blog about games and music respectively. I sometimes double up, but deal with it ;)

I've also got a Skype Button so you can see if I'm available for a chat.

I'm eventually going to rearrange FunkyJ.com and update it with my latest interviews as soon as I can. That takes a little more work as the CMS and Word don't play well together, and I've got to convert all my word docs to text, then cut and paste, then format them all... Yes, icky I know!

I'm thinking of changing to a whole new CMS, so if you've got any suggestions post them in the comments!

Ch..ch...ch...changes!

OK, I'm finally changing a few things about my blog and website over the easter break!

Hopefully everything happens without trouble!