Nightwatchman Picks Fight With Meredith Scalper

As reported earlier, scalpers are getting away with selling Meredith Music Festival tickets for over three times their face value.

I found a scalper on Ebay and decided to email him. Here's what happened. (me non italics)

Stop scalping.
Been to the last 13 Merediths and I missed out on a ticket because of scumbags like you.
MMF organisers are being alerted to this as we speak.

Hi there,

I bought these (and other tickets recently) with the full intention of going - I have been to a number of Meredith shows. If you want a real answer, I have personal issues at the moment (with my wife) and after buying tickets for mates who can't afford to pay, I have to sell them.... Don't complain about not getting a ticket, they were available for weeks to buy.... Please, if you have concerns, then attempt to reasonable and communicate in a friendly manner and wait for a response before just unleashing at people.

thank you

Steve

And the same problems happened with your previous auctions for tickets to NRL Footy Show, AFL Footy Show, Foo Fighters Melb AND Sydney (over 10 tickets each show!!!) and The Falls Festival?

There's no need to lie about the tickets. Revise the prices down to face value. Ask for anything more and you are a scalper. It's that easy.

Mate,

I am the sucker who buys the tickets (as the guy who works) and have learnt my lesson about buying for non-paying friends.....
Have you emailed every person who is selling Greenday tickets for $300 or NRL Grand Final tix for $500.... or Wiggles tickets etc etc.... No, I guess not...

If you want a ticket, I'll sell you one just so you stop emailing me....

"I am the sucker who buys the tickets (as the guy who works) and have learnt my lesson about buying for non-paying friends....."
If I was to believe you here (I don't), your friends have 3 months before the festival's on and you're already scalping their tickets on ebay. What a crap mate you would be.

"Have you emailed every person who is selling Greenday tickets for $300 or NRL Grand Final tix for $500.... or Wiggles tickets etc etc.... No, I guess not..."
Warped logic. Other scalpers have nothing to do with you scalping MMF tickets.

Scalping tickets is a low act. Especially for local community events like Meredith.

Read Chris Nolan's (it's his family farm the MMF takes place) story here and then justify it to yourself that scalping MMF tickets is an honorable way to make cash.

As I said before, sell for higher than face value and you're a scalper.

Tell a lie and you're a liar.

You're both.

If you want to keep up the fight against this scumbag his Ebay name is denvergift, his auction page is here and his email address is dg_1977@yahoo.com.

Meredith Music Festival Completely Sold Out

Shit.

And I've got it written on my hand to go out to The Glen and buy a ticket tomorrow.

Imagine if Big Star do play Meredith and I miss out.

That would cap off a pretty fucking shithouse 2005.

Read more here.

STOP PRESS!!!

This scumbag's scalping tickets on Ebay. He wants almost 3 times the asking price for them. Find him and burn his house down, kids!

Big Star's New Album Out Today

And most importantly, this is what it looks like.

Haven't heard it yet. Allmusic reckons Alex Chilton's songs are much like stuff from his mid to late 80's solo records, (I liked High Priest, so ner!) sweeter sounds come from Jody Stephens' songs and Stringfellow & Auer wrote a few jangly ditties for those who want something #1 Record-ish.

New Big Star album. They need to tour. Merideth mystery band perhaps? I know they've almost come several times. Please, Mr High. Please, say I'm not dreaming.

Rock's Rigmorole Of Faux Innocence

In his Guardian review of Martin Scorsese's new Bob Dylan doco, Simon Schama (the bloke who wrote and hosted the BBC's History of Britain series) nails it to how eloquent rock stars deliberately seem stupid in interviews.

Cut to archive; Dylan reads a newspaper; the headline yells "War Declared" (it's 1962). Cut to Dylan introducing a performance of Masters of War at the Town Hall in New York that same November (a few weeks after the Cuban missile crisis) by saying to the audience, "I got to sing you a song about something." Strum strum ... "I hope you die and your death will come soon." But hey, he insists he was never ever a political singer. Yeah, right. Look, Dylan, there you are, in a field in Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1963 with black civil rights workers, singing, "He's only a pawn in the game" about the man who killed civil rights pioneer Medgar Evers. Well, he shrugs, "To be on the side of people who are struggling doesn't necessarily mean you're political." Huh?

Rock'n'roll singers love this rigmarole of faux innocence, baiting some solemnly obtuse questioner who wants to shoehorn their subtleties into some sort of editorial. John Lennon used to have a field day with the ritual, turning his killer rabbit's face and scouser lilt on a hapless decoder of his lyrics: "I dunno, you tell me. They're just words, aren't they?"

Voice of America: Simon Schama on why Bob Dylan still matters

My Grand Final Joke

I was in the bank today and there were footy streamers and flags all over the place.

While cashing a cheque I ask the teller, "So, what are you doing for the Granny?"

Teller replies, "Dunno. If she doesn't leave soon, we're calling in Social Services."


I crack me up.

Aurgasm, An Eclectic Menagerie Of Aural Pleasures

Aurgasm is a flippin' brilliant music blogsite. The beautifully designed site is dedicated to finding the most "curiously different, yet simply enjoyable" music out there.

At the moment Aurgasm's running a special on the music of New Orleans.

Like...

Dixie Cups - Iko Iko
Although they're best known for "Chapel of Love", the Dixie Cups wrote 'Iko Iko' quite accidentally. After the musicians had gone home from a recording session, the women were doing some overdubbing and started singing "Iko Iko" among themselves, using only a chair, drumstick, Coke bottle, ashtray, and drums as accompaniment. And although its roots are identified with New Orleans celebratory rituals, the song emerged as a quirky pop hit.

aurgasm :: your favorite music you've never heard

Just Say It's A Bunch Of Arse, Damnammit

Imagine you were an editor of an art magazine and one of your unhinged contributors pitches a controversial article.

Well, it's not really an article.

It's just a fresh turd smeared on the page.

Other than stupid, boring, poorly researched and a bunch of arse, there's many reasons to cite for refusing to publish the article.

Deakin University's decision not to publish Macquarie University Professor Andrew Fraser's Rethinking the White Australia Policy in their law journal was based on entirely on fears of the University getting done for racial vilification.

The University's Vice Chancellor, Professor Sally Walker told the ABC,

"Universities are not exempt from the law, nor should they should be, and I have sought legal advice regarding Associate Professor Fraser's article."

"The legal advice is that by publishing the article the university would contravene certain laws and I'm not prepared to put the university in that position."

Soft.

Try stupid, boring, poorly researched and a bunch of arse as reasons not to publish.

Professor Fraser defended his article, saying it was approved by two other academics,

"Two academics not known to me looked at the article, suggested some changes which I made and then they agreed that it ought to be published."

Would these two academics possibly be the Deakin Law Journal's Editorial Board member, Professor Mirko Bagaric and senior lecturer Julie Clarke?

Yes, they were the reprobates who argued in a paper that torture is "morally defensible", should be made legal and when many lives are in imminent danger, "all forms of harm" may be inflicted on a suspect, even if this resulted in "annihilation".

Maybe Bagaric and Clarke are Deakin University's real problem. If they are the academics who approved Rethinking The White Australia Policy they should be sacked from the university.

Not sacked for their crackpot views or anything like that, but sacked as incompetent editors who were about to let such a stupid, boring, poorly researched, bunch of arse go to print.

Lester Bangs Meets Brian Eno In A Park

From a previously unpublished bunch of Brian Eno articles by rock critic/addict savant Lester Bangs.

My friend and I were sitting there discussing the comparative merits of various current purveyors of sonic aggravation, when suddenly I looked up and said, "Hey, isn't that Brian Eno walking this way?"

Sure enough it was: blonde hair already balding at thirty, alert blue eyes, sensual mouth, and functionally simple but expensive clothes. He came and sat down, cheery as ever with that bemused expression whose innocence can make him seem at various moments the seraphic artiste or cherubically childlike. Every time a pretty girl walked by, his head would swivel and he would comment admiringly, like either a kid at a parade or a guy who'd just got out of prison. I mentioned that I was getting ready to do a story on prostitution, interviewing call girls from a midtown agency that advertised in Screw, and he said: "I called for a girl in response to one of those ads once. It said 'Unusual black girls.' So I phoned and said, 'Just what do you mean by unusual?' They said, 'Just what did you have in mind?' I said, 'Well, I'd like one that was bald with an astigmatism.' 'Well, we'll see what we can do,' they said. They found the astigmatism but no the baldness."

"Why astigmatism?" I wondered.

"I'm terribly attracted to women with ocular damage."

Lester Bangs- Brian Eno: A Sandbox In Alphaville

The Caribbean Gardens Experience

Far off in a land they call Scoresby, there's a magical place called Carribbean Gardens.

Most people go there to buy counterfeit apparel and cheap cigarrete lighters at the trash'n'treasure market.

I go for there to wander about the park's 1970's space-age architecture kitsch, concrete wildlife and securely caged exotic bird collection.

The Caribbean Gardens Experience is an online exhibition of photos I've taken at this wonderous land.

Ah, Caribbean Gardens. More rubbish bins per square meter than any other public garden in the Southern Hemisphere!

The Caribbean Gardens Experience - a photoset on Flickr

Don't Let Your Mistakes Go Pubic

My fave bit in Harry Shearer's weekly radio show, Le Show is when, in his super duper deep voice, he reads the apologies bit in his local newspapers. Deadpan at its panniest.

Regret The Error is a site dedicated to reporting on and ANALysing the world's newspaper corrections, retractions and apologies.

Here's a few from this week.

An article on Aug. 28 about Jay-Z's transition from performer to recording executive misspelled part of the name of a hip-hop artist with whom Jay-Z had a meeting. He is Ghostface Killah, not Killer. New York Times

Contrary to a note published with Tuesday's Point of View article "RTP must be reworked," the writer, Yonah Freemark, is male. NewsObserver

An article in Business Day about Brendon Loy, the Notre Dame student who was one of the earliest to sound the alarm about the potential threat to New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina, misstated the name of Mr. Loy's dog. It is Robbie, not Becky (which is his fiance's name). New York Times

A front-page Political Memo article on Sunday about efforts by President Bush to head off a political crisis over his administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina misstated the city where he said he enjoyed himself "occasionally too much," a comment that was criticized as being insensitive. It was New Orleans, not Houston. New York Times

IMDB? Two Stars, Margaret

As a source for reliable movie reviews, IMDB bombs.

The 'user submitted' reviews often suck ten times as hard as the movie they're reviewing.

Here's a review of Michael Caine's classic (sic) 1981 horror, The Hand by user, stephanebordeauxmarseille.

"This is one of the most terrific movie of M Caïne. The music & noises are excellent. The cast is perfect, secondary actors and rednecks are really ugly. The story is a variation on the theme of the lizard tail. See this movie if you find it !"

Pauline Kael he aint.

I haven't yet found a movie review site that comes close to replacing my clapped out copies of Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide and Pauline Kael's 5001 Nights at the Movies.

Here's a few that try.

If you use iTunes and you know how to use the podcast thingy, Ebert and Roeper present a weekly radio show. I like Roger Ebert because he was the genius who wrote the screenplay to Russ Meyer's Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls.

Leonard Maltin does have a website called Movie Crazy, where he not only reviews the movies but also DVDs, movie books and soundtracks. The book reviews are especially tasty.

I thought The Muppets' Statler & Waldorf reviewing the movies would be piss funny. It's not.

And Rotten Tomatoes, a busy looking site which links to hundreds of newspaper reviews already on the net, is the best review site I've found so far.

Do you have a favorite? Click the comment thing below and tell me about it.

2005's De La Tomatina Massacre

No, this isn't the new Blood Duster record cover.

De La Tomatina is an tomato fight which takes place in Spain every year. There's no religious or ancient cultural meaning to the festival. It's just a lovely way to get rid of over 100 tonnes of overripe tomatoes.

This year, Pablo Argente took a few kilos of photos of the carnage with his tomato-proof camera.

The original Boing Boing post I found the photos through
De La Tomatina's official website
The Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes!

Antony Obvious Winner Of Mercury Prize

Why wouldn't Antony and the Johnsons win this year's Mercury and Chris Bailey lookalike prizes. As I gushed earlier, I Am A Girl Now is a "very dramatic, very gay" masterpiece.

But watch it. Antony's record is so good, it can stuff up your Ipod.

To win, Antony beat pedestrian acts like Kaiser Chiefs, Coldplay and The Magic Numbers and according to the BBC, was apologetic about his triumph. "I am completely overwhelmed," he admitted. "I think it's insane, kind of a crazy contest between an orange, a space ship and a potted plant. Which one did you like better?"

More like a contest between a lemon, some space junk and a bunch of weeds.

BBC NEWS: Antony and Johnsons win Mercury
My previous post about Antony and the Johnsons

Phew, Alex Chilton's Okay

From the Posies/Big Star forum:

I talked to a sibling of Alex today on the phone, and she too heard from him last night on the phone and tells me he is officially safe. She said she has "no details" about the coast guard being involved..

If he did get rescued by the Coast Guard, I'm glad because I called the coast guard's St. Louis national line twice starting Tuesday night to report his address (checking back Wed.), wrote a coast guard Homeport online report friday & got a case number, and saturday called the state police to check his house again.

However I have no information that leads me to think that my doing this caused him to get found because for all I know he was ok and just chose to go to the coast guard on his own. If I did help him, then great. It is horrible to think that they waited several days to get to his house when they told me Wed. they likely checked his house within hours of my first phone call. But maybe that is not the case since I have no details on the coast guard aspect of this at all and can't confirm that part that some are reporting to people about a rescue yesterday, but I hear it may be true.

One other little notation about the Coast Guard. When I phoned them at the St. Louis national center number on Tuesday night, the guy answering told me he knew alex's name and he mentioned the Replacements song.

-lisa

The Posies ~ View topic - Alex Chilton

Spring Cleaning My Music Bookmarks

Bookmarks are like socks. There's nothing better than throwing them all out and starting new.

Every few months I delete all my bookmarks.

Here's my music folder from the past few months.

Ace Records
African Music: Salif Keita
All Music Guide
Big Star Reference
Olga Guitar Tabs
Otha Turner
Mac Streams
The Velvet Underground Webpage
UK Radio Stations on the Internet
All Ways Thinking

Bye.

A Grown Man Cries. You Will Too

President of Jefferson Parish, New Orleans, Aaron Broussard is one of the strongest television interviewees you will ever see.

Jefferson Parish President in Tears Begs for FEMA Help"

While Mr President's Guitar Gently Weeps

Country music star gives President guitar.

President attempts G-chord.

Country music star panics.

"Wrong fret, Mr President! Wrong fret! Everyone will think you're stupid. Don't strum! It will sound WEIRD! Don't strum!"

Picture from Yahoo originally found on Boing Boing. Yes, that is a presidential seal on the guitar.