Cat Wearing a Scarf playing a Cello

I Got A Fresh Ass Ho!
Thundercats!

All I'm Trying to Do is Get Back to You

After all my time in New Zealand (over two years now), I've come to discover some super sweet-as music over here. In May of every year for the last 10 years, they put on what is known as "NZ Music Month", and put out some cool swag like t-shirts and compilation cds to help spread the word of NZ Music (duh!). One of my favourite bands from Kiwi-Land is called Shapeshifter. They are sort of a live drum and bass band, which I know sounds kinda sketchy, but follow me on this one. They don't use any buttons or prerecorded bleeps and bloops on their albums or live. I usually don't even really listen to this kind of music, but I heard a live recording of this band in Real Groovy (the best records store in this country) once and I fell in love with them. I had the opportunity to go see them at the Mangawhai Tavern about an hour outside of Auckland at Christmas time. The Tavern is in the middle of nowhere on a beach, which makes for fantastic times. The front of the tavern looks like an old-timey hotel, but to get to the venue you walk through to the other side to an open area and is basically an old shed with one wall missing for the stage, and a field sort of enclosed by old wooden fences. It was an incredible place to see the live band, with the stars out on a cloudless night. Will never forget that show and it is definitly one of the many great memories I will keep with this country with me for a long time.

This is one of my favourite songs by Shapeshifter, as it features both one of my favourite local Auckland artists Ladi 6 (who I am sure will be featured on a future post) and an appearance by the most magical of magical instruments, the FLUTE!!! Mayu, you know this one goes out to you and your flute playing skills of 2006! "It was working last night" hahahah an absolute classic line by the big german hahaha I am laughing myself to sleep thinking about you trying to play "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" on Sarah's flute, and then Johnno trying to play the recorder after like it was a jazz flute! "

Check out Shapeshifter - In The Rain (Featuring Ladi 6)

Like a Rolling Stoner

Alright, so two weeks ago I went to Melbourne to visit my sister Shelley at her house there. See, Shelley moved to Australia in October of 2009 to 'get away from it all', and to have a sort of extended vacation. She came to visit Auckland first and then we both went together to tackle Melbourne for the first few days. After that she's taken it upon herself to start a new life and to just have fun without having any second thoughts. Now that's how Shelley always lives her life, but imagine the idea of going to a foreign country where no one knows you, you can be anyone you want to be and no one knows your past. You pretty much get to make your own identity. Sounds pretty gnarly if you ask me. So anyways I was in Melbourne visiting and we had tons of fun, smoked some weed and went to see Kelly Clarkson at the Rod Laver Arena (not the same night). The visit was looking to be perfect and then I got the WORST PAIN OF MY LIFE! At first I thought it was gas, so I went for a little walk around her apartment, but then it got quite intense and I could hardly breathe. I thought it might be a good idea to go to the emergency room in Melbourne.

Shelley took me to the hospital which is quite nice as it was 5 in the morning, and she was working on an afternoon shift...so I pretty much interrupted her sleep halfway in. We went and the doctors gave me a tag with my name on it and told me I had kidney stones symptoms. I was pretty disappointed. My dad has them, and both my older and younger sisters have them, but I thought I had gotten away without them! No such luck. They put me in that big CAT scan circle machine that they usually use to scan people's brains and scanned me back and forth a few times. It was fun and weird all at the same time. After all the shenanigans and hanging out in the hospital for 5 hours watching NOFX's backstage passport on my iPod, I was given some codeine pills and told to drink lots of water. A week had passed and I still felt odd so I went to the walk in clinic here in Auckland, and they told me to look my symptoms up on google! Those dicks! I finally went to a specialist today, and they made me take all these x-rays and tests again... the X-Ray shows a tiny little dot which the doctor said was the stone, so its still traveling around inside of me. He said drink enough water to make 2 litres of pee a day and after a month if it still hurts then contact him again! Damn! I thought they might laser it out or something, but apparently I am just being a pussy about it. The doctor also said the best way to measure my pee is to use the family juice jug for 24 hours. Is that weird?

Alright so from pain to awesomeness, a buddy of mine Saurab (who likes to go by the name of Sean for some reason) lets me know that he has an extra Russel Peters ticket to the sold out Auckland Show! Sweet! I will definitely be laughing all the way to the racist bank. Check out some of his stuff here, its pretty awesome to say the least!

Be right back, gotta drink about 300 litres of water at the moment.

PS watch this shit! it's scary as but is the sweeeeeetest song!

Vampires are not Cool on Weekdays

Last night was a good night. After months of searching for the concert tickets I lost about 3 days after getting them in the mail, I finally broke down and called Ticketmaster New Zealand to see if there was any chance of me getting some new tickets for the sold out Vampire Weekend show at the Bruce Mason Centre in Takapuna, Auckland (which is usually a ballet theater). They were like "of course, there will be a $10 surcharge and you can pick them up at the door." Man I felt like a loser worrying about it for almost two months and then it took about 2 minutes and no hassle at all to get them back.

Well the show was pretty sweet, the band sounds EXACTLY like they do on CD so if you were expecting some sweet hippie jam-out sessions you were definitely shit out of luck. But aside from that the crowd was a sweet mix of ugly hipster-type kids, and there were a lot of unloved-mothers (see:Milfs) and a huge portion of the crowd also had 'the disease'. Which was awesome.

The opening band were called Knives at Noon (from Dunedin) and they were not so bad. They reminded me of Interpol if they had more keyboards, or the Killers if they wrote songs that actual killers would want to listen to. Not bad, but decided to have a few Heinekens and creep on the crowd hanging out in the lobby by the merch booth instead of watching most of their set. You can check out their shizzit here if you want...

The headliners came on next which was odd that there was only one opening band, but I guess that's how the world works and I should just get on with it. Vampire weekend played White Sky and Holiday from their new album "Contra" as the first two songs of the night, which are my two favourites from the new album (that I listened to the first time through two days before). The rest of the set was pretty much every song they have, and the encore was Horchata, Mansard Roof and Walcott... good on them for playing their best songs first and last. The worst part of the set was an even sloooooowwwwwwweeeeeerrrrrr version of Taxi Cab that they played with a Viola and a glockenspiel with the lights turned down low. I couldn't see shit and I thought that was going to be lights out for me... I actually thought I was going to pass out and start a domino effect taking down of all the skinny indie kids in our general vicinity.

IN the middle of the show I noticed I was pretty drunk after drinking two cans of heiny. Which is strange as I am a pretty big guy and can usually handle more than 2 cans. Then I remembered the codeine I had earlier in the day (FOR KIDNEY STONES!!!) mixed with 3 hours sleep and not eating dinner. I was pretty messed up and was spilling my half drank beer somehow on the floor... was pretty awesome though. The only problem I had was with the strobe lights; I think they make the show at a VW gig, and would be pretty boring otherwise, but if you are messed up it just makes you want to lay down and take a nap... I was 'This" close to doing it! I definitely recommend the no sleep/no food/codeine/concert/beer mixture when or wherever you have the opportunity. No regrets.

Cameron enjoyed the gig.

Shit. Today is the first blog and it's about the 'beib'. Probably the best thing about New Zealand is that JB is coming tomorrow to this tiny country at some point. Yesterday in Sydney at his one appearance at a mall 10 girls got crushed, and not just their hearts, but their entire bodies. This kid is like what Hanson was in the late 90's, but all rolled up into one dood. He has the power to make little girls kill each other. I never saw Hanson kill no girls, so he's probably considered a level above those 3 sisters. You gotta admit this guy's got his shit together, he's got a sweet casio watch, a purple cardi and he's dating Demi Moore from what I hear. Man this kid gets around.

I was going to take this opportunity to talk about some shit that matters but fuck man its the bieb!

Check out this sweet Bieb remix involving MSTRKRFT. You'll love it.