Here are The Pinholes! heard them play at night fest a few weeks ago.

I love live music, but it has to be /good/ live music. The Pinholes are a local band which plays mostly tribute music of the 60s, but they also have a few originals of their own. I really liked their set, and when you're watching a band live, the atmosphere is totally different. What venue the band plays in affects the experience as well.

At night fest they put The Pinholes at the Peranakan Museum, and the museum has 3 floors, and the band plays on the first floor. The lobby space is really tiny, so some people stood on the 2nd and 3rd floors to watch them play. I stood on the 2nd floor, and it was awesome because the bass and the drums were so loud that I could feel the music vibrating through the banisters. I really really like it when the music engulfs you and takes you somewhere and fills your head-- it's a feeling you can't get from listening to music through your headphones or through speakers at home. And when you see a band live, you see the different ways the artist can interpret a song, and see the take he does on it. It's like how different actors take the same script but are able to have unique interpretations of it through the inflictions and emphasis on dramatic significance.

It's not the best place to play in because some of your audience is in the rafters and there isn't much space for people to stand in front where you can see them, but the great thing was that the band made the most of it. In between songs there was some banter with the audience, and the lead singer tried to talk to the people watching directly above, and chat with random people in the crowd.

The energy and the intimacy of the gig was great, too, because some people were dancing in the front on the first floor, and band was surrounded on both sides by people watching from the staircases. So for the last song, the lead singer carried his wireless mic stand through the audience in the front, up one set of staircases, through the second floor, and down the the other set of stairs, rockstar style :) And they responded to an encore!

If you have a chance, you have to listen to live bands-- even if you don't know them ;) You may think local bands aren't that great (and yes, some of them are kind of crappy) but part of the experience is allowing the artist to have a few minutes of your attention and time, and if you like, you can lend them your soul for a while, and then afterwards you can make your judgement. Sometimes I there's a slight risk with seeing a band you don't know for the first time- like a blind date- but that't the whole thrill of it. I like that at live gigs it feels like I'm giving permission to the artist to have a little bit of my time; that the whole experience is a shared agreement between listener and artist, and in return you... give yourself to the music.

Both parties know that they're taking a risk: the band doesn't know if it will be well-received, and the listener doesn't know if he'll like the music or not, but in that short space of time, a contract is being made. A sort of mutual lending, if you wish- an understood agreement, that if I'm giving my soul to you, I want to trust you to take me on a journey-- and you let yourself be taken away for that short set. Judgement can be reserved for later.

Today was an icky day. But I don't want to talk about it.

I mean I can choose to:

a) wallow on my own- not a good idea, will only make things worse

b) wallow with someone else-- not a good idea either

c) distract myself with work and things

So I'm choosing option c)!

Recent Good News:

1. My Demon's Lexicon review will be in the paper sometime SOON :D

2. I've been inducted to style council!

mm yes and if any of you are interested, this is more articulate than I am, and very precise as well, if you want to understand.

Connor Goodwin

We’d head west, no set destination, just a direction. Chasing the sun, making the day last for all its worth. Hopefully the car would break down. We’d have to walk for ages to the next town. We’d stay with a family, do chores in exchange for meals. Once the car was fixed we’d barter with whatever we had, and continue on our way. We might head north next, wanting the only warmth to be each other’s bodies. It would be a road trip to discover that other person more than anything.

I think you'd like that quote :) it's from the morning news.

I'm waiting for a video to upload. I should be sleeping, but I can't sleep. Tomorrow's going to be a long day; I end school at 5 :( but with breaks in between. I'll probably use them to finish up on homework.

Sometimes I think the youtube uploader/ imovie rendering thing lies to me. It's a lot less painful than editing/ trying to upload on windows XP, though. I remember leaving my substitute video for bestwishesfromNL to upload for the whole freaking day-- 8 to 9 hours, and it still wouldn't be done. And then I would edit on the laptop with wmm, with a ridiculously small trackpad, and the stupid thing would crash every hour, so I had to remember to save the edits or resort to redoing them. So I'm grateful for the smooth editing/ uploading experience.

I don't know what to say on here.

I'm pretending to sound very musing and philosophical but really there are just plastic bags billowing about in the emptiness that is my brain. *billows*

umm hmm so the other day I got kind of ish rejected by the international book tours people. (international book tours is this blog-thing which sends out Advance Reader's Copies or donated books for people to review. Once you're done reviewing the book, you send it to the next person on the list. And so forth. The whole point is that they want books to have international exposure, so they're more likely to pick you for a tour if you live somewhere not in the UK/US.) They said it was because my book blog is inactive, since the last review I had written was in nov 2009. I'm not mad or anything, I'm just surprised that I stupidly put my name in for reviewing, because really no one knows about the existence of the book blog. As in, why would they send me books to review if no one reads the reviews, right? It's not like there isn't anything on there; I've put up my portfolio of sorts, but it just hasn't been publicised yet. But I was thinking it's going to be so weird to publicise it when it don't have anything recent up, and when I don't have time to write new reviews :( so I was caught in this dilemma.

For the next 5 months, I have a choice of 1. working on my book blog, talking to people about plugging it, writing reviews, so that I'll be all set to receive books to review next january or 2. making youtube videos. I don't have time to do both. I shouldn't even be making videos. But at the rate I'm putting them up, it's like an average of 2 hours a week spent on them? Which is all spread out; 15 minutes here, a 1/2 hour there. So it isn't much, and it's a cheap way of keeping me sane. (self-justification in play here) So obviously I'm choosing the latter, which will be a pain for the book blog when I finish exams in december, because it will take time for it to get revved up and get people to follow again, and the sending of ARCs will be delayed.

I don't know why I'm so impatient to get this done, though, but the fact that the book tour people favor international bloggers is a big factor. I'll probably be moving away to somewhere not as exotic as singapore by september next year, so they might not send me stuff. Then again, it's not like a lot of singaporeans will read the blog, because I don't have as many contacts here as compared to other countries. I could do a collab with, oh I don't know, the writers group whom I'm friends with, or review stuff from booksactually and their publishing arm, but sigh they'll only send anything if there are people *actually* reading my blog. The numbers, I realise, aren't really important to me, but they're important to the people who might want to send me stuff, you know? who will send you anything if there isn't anybody to read it? Who will read you if you don't have a bunch of followers? Who will _care_ if you don't have a following?

I don't do videos with the aim of getting more subscribers; I do them to keep contact with pooky and my other friends, and it's an outlet for creative expression. I'm proud of myself when I'm done editing and I have a coherent video, but I can't bring myself to watch it again after I've uploaded. I look at myself when it's live on youtube and become so disgusted and vow to make a better video next time, much better than the one before, something I won't be disgusted to watch, but you know, the cycle continues. I'm really crap at making videos. They suck, technically, because I haven't given myself enough practice. I don't like it, but more practice is not something the A levels allows at the moment. I hate it.

I can't make money from videos. They won't give me a living in the future. What will give me a living, my mother argues (along with a shitload of student debt) is a medical career. I don't know. As in, it's not worth it to spend so much time on them when they can't give you a living, you know? My A level certificate has a much better chance of doing that. I don't really like the A levels. (does anybody?) I don't want to make a living from videos in the future either. It's not because film making or anything related pays little, it's because that I think if I start out with the aim of making money, it'll cheapen the whole enterprise. I'll become one of those shane dawson types. Ick. The youtube equivalent of Nora Roberts.

I think I'll take a nap now.