music + art + fashion + literature + politics + fetish + high heels + retro porn + gonzo journalism + lingerie & corsetry + cinema + history + design art + bondage & domination + sewing + poetry + being slightly famous.
Music:
my bandhttp://www.sonsoflm.com/and jeezus where do i start..in the beginning my first memories of music were little richard, freddie mercury on a motorbike in leathers, and Bowie. start at the clash, the who, stones, rod stewart, beatles, and thanks to dad creedence, dylan, fleetwood mac (with peter green), zz top, thanks to mum aretha, roberta flack, dionne, peter paul & mary, beach boys, thanks to uncles for wayne & schuster, bill cosby, & allan sherman to sabbath, rush, deep purple, zeppelin et al, thanks to countdown split enz, models, psuedo echo, thompson twins, culture club, duran duran, then on to the stems, hoodoo gurus, cure...that was my start. then when i was eleven i discovered metal: maiden, dio, ac/dc, ozzy, thru to manowar, testament, napalm deth, cliff burton metallica, anthrax and so on. by a few years later i still loved metal but was discovering punk as well, from pistols to damned to dead kennedys, from exploited to black flag, from the vibrators to dayglo abortions. a branching off into two tone & ska lead me to some great bands too, madness, specials, uk beat et al.then in a bid not to disappear too far into distorto/double kick land i really got into brit alternatives like smiths, cure again, siouxsie, the fall, happy mondays, the pogues, lloyd cole, new order, jesus & mary chain, the primitives, housemartins & beautiful south, and anything paul weller ever did. good songwriting right there. and a love of the proto goth bands like the Mission, Sisters of Mercy, Fields of the Nephilim etc and a lasting love & respect for Zodiac Mindwarp. also i discovered one of the most brilliant bands ever conceived - THE CRAMPS!and this is about when i started playing guitar & bass & writing songs so some major influences were the ones that were easier to play, hence my grounding in zeppelin, hendrix, doors, beatles & stones again, old U2 & midnight oil, motorhead & ac/dc (malcolm lines) i was looking for an outlet and ended up playing in a hairband that wanted to be somewhere between bon jovi & motley crue. so although we played some bad songs, i also had to learn my chops for covers like hot for teacher and cult of personality. at the same time though i also fell in love with pot and always wanting to never identify with the guys in my band because of what i like to call the "Whitesnake Cringe Factor", i was listening to redd kross, chilli peppers (mothers milk era), nirvana, primus, janes addiction, smashing pumpkins, et al that were all releasing first albums. also at the time depeche mode, primal scream, blur and the stone roses were really starting to interest me and again i began a never ending love affair with guitar pop again - and the albums & bands that were making huge impressions on me were were most definitely husker du, the pixies, dinosaur junior, buffalo tom, urge overkill, butthole surfers, sonic youth, the matthew sweet "girlfriend" album, beck, billy bragg's Levi Stubbs Tears, swervedriver's "raise" and bands like shed seven, longpigs and suede. also australian ones like gurus, v spy v spy, nick cave, lime spiders, painters & dockers, even paul kelly.so i left that band after too long a time and started jamming & living with bunch of freaks in a house in warrandyte - we muralled the walls and had a copper chimney in the middle of the loungroom for the firepit - and got exposed again to sabbath, introduced to danzig & soundgarden, caught new anthrax album without joey belladonna, rollins, hard ons, L7, nursery crimes, cosmic psychos, meanies, uncle metal ken introducing me to bands from sepultura to surf nazis & boltthrower & beyond, Fear Factory, Ministry & KMFDM, Nailbomb, and to the background of the crow soundtrack, pop will eat itself and bladerunner we formed a band called Love that DRug - Public Image meets sabbath riffs meets Ministry industrial drums etc - that i still have a cd of somewhere, played a few gigs and a great Punters club show before drummer freaked out & keys player left yada yada yada...good times! it was the season for big day outs and getting incredible programming on rage. and this flriting with sequencing & sampling led me into electronic music for a while. next installment - my flirtation with the darkside...it started when industrial music led me into a slow bleed across to leftfield, kruder & dorfmeister, Morcheeba (tape loop period) everything but the girl, Massive attack (protection period), tricky, and the dubbier end of electro (don't blame me, i am a bass player) and then edgier stuff running the gamut from FSOL to Atari Teenage Riot. i used to run a mean chill out set from dopamine to disco feel, but live was always where it was at for me. so i started jamming with a couple of good buddies in their loungeroom and Fez Perez was born. we ended up shooting off down a rather psychobilly rocker track actually, and i was listening to Fireballs, Batmobile, Rev Horton Heat, etc thanks to Stu Manchu (who will always have a major place in my heart for introducing me to New Bomb Turks, Civ, and the Hives first album). it was a great band with some fun times, international supports & festivals with the likes of the Phantom Surfers, Royal Crown Revue (eddie you are a darling of a man) supersuckers, international noise conspiracy, the hives, to bands like reel big fish and dropkick murphys, to crazy awesome japanese bands like supersnazz & the 5678's. rest easy & then rise from the grave Basswolf, missed. not to mention some of the australian bands that were idols that i was lucky enough to play with, spencer p jones, rocket science, meanies, six foot hick, luxedo, tumbleweed, tism, the hard ons, the onyas, and warped to name a few. we played a big day out, a falls, a livid & offshore, a margaret river surf festival & got to meet a bunch of extremely generous and talented people, all of whom i'm sure rubbed off on me in some way.it was an education in a whole new field of music for me and i went thru a period of six months where i was listening exclusively to stuff like Gene Pitney, Link Wray, Hank Williams etc.so after my first experience of touring with some of these ace bands, i felt that australian girl bands (not pigeonholing) need a big shout out - notably nitocris, bitchcraft, the del-emmas, gazoonga attack, and the spazzys. all varied, all good - my darling international friends take note of these names.around the same time my youngest brother, colloqiually known to the Sons of Lee Marvin as Dr Ignacio Decibel, was a fantastic source of music to me. apart from his own bands avant hardcore & metal, he introduced me to fugazi (whom i missed completely first time round), nation of ulysses, at the drive in, the icarus line, hot water music, refused, international noise conspiracy, lightning bolt, and some again brilliant new stuff his various bands are doing.Meeting my partner was a blessing for my music taste & knowledge - she was djing & promoting in brisbane when i met her - and she got me reinvestigating stuff like chet baker, lee & nancy, roy orbison & patsy cline to the stooges & television, patti smith, rolling stones, the who, otis redding, sam cooke, the kinks, and elvis even. she introduced me to such brilliant gems as Tom Waits, the makers, the dirtbombs, the bellrays, nashville pussy, the afghan wigs, thee mighty ceasars, thee milkshakes, john spencer, boss hogg, rocket from the crypt, andre williams, the hellacopters, mike ness & social distortion, various stuff on nuggets compilations to things like the longpigs, pulp, ride & gene. bless her little heart! and special mention for introducing me to Grant Hart's first solo album on vinyl.the last couple of years i have in between writing and exploring a bit of classical and jazz and early blues been into things as diverse as idlewild, von bondies, the pattern, modey lemon, zeke, the glam resurgences of nancy boy, the toilet boys and the darkness, jimmy eat world, the bronx, tiger army, franz ferdinand, black rebel, trail of dead, the D4, the donnas, the datsuns, great australian bands like the nation blue, from hell, the blacklist, souls on board, legends of motorsport, mustang, kamikaze trio, devilrock four, the drones, and people have been telling me recently that spod would be right up my alley (so to speak). i have also been continuing my love affair with Bowie relistening and watching documentaries and reading. I like to approach creating music in the same way he did, and also the same way Oliver Reed approached life.So it begins and ends with Bowie really.
