SYN

My friend Emily and I are doing the graveyard shift on Melbourne's SYN radio station tomorrow night, you should tune in! We're on from 2-6am so you can listen in (if you're in the Melbourne region) on 90.7 fm or you can stream it online on SYN's website.

We'll be playing a bunch of our favourite tunes; some new ones, some old ones and generally just having a really good time and hopefully you'll like the music we play too, or maybe discover some new music to fall in love with? I must warn you though, this is our first time doing it so we may be a bit rubbish, but hey, who's really going to be listening other than insomniacs? If you're listening while we're on air, give us a call.

P.S. How fantastic is The Boat that Rocked? It's one of my favourite films to be released this year.

too erotic for the bus!

L-R: Sean, Ash, Eammon, Ellen. Photo by Liam.

This is my favourite photo from last summer, taken at Camp A Low Hum. It reminds me of beers in the sun, watching good music with good friends, warm summer breezes and mid-afternoon naps (a.k.a. The Power Nap) under a tree. You can tell it's summer because my legs have some semblance of a tan (my face doesn't because I always put sunblock on my face, though my nose is a bit pink in this photo). When the polaroid developed, we realised how much it looks like a band photo. Thus, too erotic for the bus! was born. I can't remember who came up with the name, but I have a sneaking suspicion it was Eammon.

Though I've learnt a bunch of instruments throughout the years, I can't play anything more than 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' on any of them. I can't sing for peanuts either, so I think I was given tambourine duties. The other three are all talented musicians in their own right, and they clearly have more experience with band photos than I do. I look like a loon, grinning away in the corner there. They've got the 'cool' thing down better than I do. Each of them have a couple of musical projects on the go, and they're all so lovely and modest about it you wouldn't really know it unless you happened to stumble across one of their gigs.

Sean and Eammon (along with another one of our friends, Chris) join forces to make sweet music in Seth & Merle (download here), Sean's solo project is Seth Frightening, Eammon also plays under the moniker Basketball Nightmare (download here) and Ash plays bass for Over the Atlantic (easily one of my favourite bands to come out of NZ these last few years) as well as creating music as Secret Knives (download here).

As I understand it, Ash has only played a couple of gigs (the first of which was at Rhythm and Vines last year) because he's so shy about it. There's a funny story that I've heard about Ash, I'm not sure exactly how accurate it is, since I wasn't actually there and this might be a case of Chinese Whispers, but apparently at a party his friends put on a Secret Knives song, which Ash didn't recognise at first and said something along the lines of "Is this Interpol? I like it." and it was only when he heard his own voice coming through the speakers that he realised his mistake. I wouldn't really say that Secret Knives sounds like Interpol, but I can maybe hear some elements of them in there, in some of the guitar parts.

Every time I see Sean, Eammon and Ash I bug them to come play a gig in Melbourne. Maybe if I nag them enough it'll happen.

One song I can see myself trashing this summer is 'The Community Service Announcement' by Jonathan Boulet, Modular's latest signing. You can download the song here. I'd heard the song a lot on Triple J, but it was only when Modular announced the new signing that I was able to figure out who the song was by. I love the whimsical feeling of it. There's something about the song that reminds me of all those wonderful things about summer that I mentioned at the top of this post. Do you have any songs that you like to listen to because they remind you of summer?

A friend and I are doing the graveyard shift on Melbourne's SYN, the place where I did the radio course last month. We're doing it on Thursday 8 October 2-6am. I'll be playing a lot of the music I have mentioned on this here blog, including Jonathan Boulet, and some other sweet tunes that I'm loving at the moment. I have no idea how we're going to stay awake, any tips?

XOXO, Gossip Girl

I'm doing a radio course at the moment, at SYN in Melbourne. While print media will always be my favourite medium and I can see myself writing for print and online my entire career, I'm also keen to try a bit of radio and maybe some television too. Anyone who knows me knows how crazy I am about music, so I love the idea of having my own radio show. I get to play the tunes I like and force them on listeners, hopefully they will like what I play too, and maybe discover a new band to love in the process. 

I'm not very confident about speaking on air yet, but I hope that practice will help me overcome that and I can pretend that I'm not shy. 

At the end of our four-week course, we're encouraged to put together a demo as an audition to have our own radio show for ten weeks. I already have an idea about what kind of music I want to play and what topics I want to discuss, but I don't have a name for it and I think I need a catchy sign-off too. All my favourite journalists have one. I need a signature phrase, or maybe I'll have a theme and do something like having the last song from my show always being from a certain year, or country. Or maybe I could just end it by saying my name over and over again, in various vocoder tones. Yeah, that'd be real cool. 

Walter Cronkite "And that's the way it is."

Edward R. Murrow (As portrayed by David Strathairn in Good night and Good Luck) "Good night, and good luck."

Ron Burgundy, "You stay classy San Diego."

I'm currently listening to Tame Impala's live set on Triple J. It sounds lovely, I can't wait to see them in October! I love the way they're blending their songs into one another, going from Forty-One Mosquitoes Flying in Formation directly into Half Glass Full of Wine. It's like one long jam sesh. I'm sure there is a technical term for it, but clearly, I know nothing about music.