At the week's end

I used to pride myself on having a stupendously awesome memory, but I have found that stress and advancing age (I am 21) have made it distinctly sucky of late. To compensate, I have resolved to try to take more photos of my doings. This has the added benefit of having something to show my parents (who've moved to the other side of the country) and mostly house-bound grandmother.

Here's a few snaps from this week:


This is Sticky Insitute, which I'm writing about for school. It's literally underground; in an arcade that leads from Platform 1 of Melbourne's busiest train station, Flinders St Station, to the other side of road so that train passengers can by-pass traffic.


I took this shot of my reflection in the mirror behind an art installation in Campbell Arcade where Sticky is. It was a slightly disturbing display of what looked like bodily organs among other things mounted on sticks in dirt.


I spy with my little eye...


Truant teenagers sitting on the roof of the shopping centre drinking! I'm assuming they were truant teenagers because anyone else would have been allowed into a pub to drink and wouldn't be stupid enough to drunkenly hang out that high up! The one in brown fell and took the bottles with him!


I sampled this choc-vanilla cupcake on Wednesday at Melbourne's latest cupcake bakery...The Cupcake Bakery...I must say that I was pretty disappointed- dry, bland-tasting cake and oddly textured frosting that either indicated the presence of a large amount of preservatives and additives (and/or was made from powder) and perhaps some crazy mixing. It definitely paled in comparison to...


This awesome cookies'n'cream creation from Little Cupcakes, which I had for the first time on Tuesday and then again on Friday (sheer gluttony, I know!). The cake was moist and rich without being overpowering and the frosting was lovely and buttery, though not too sweet despite the chunks of biscuit.


Frankie is one of my (and everyone else in the blogosphere, I think) favourite Australian magazines. There is an awesome 'road test' of meat substitutes and some great stuff from Marieke Hardy in this issue.


I bought this, along with Frankie, at the airport when I was dropping my brothers off. I can't resist anything to do with Iggy Pop and this was no exception, but it turned out to be a really good mag (I don't know if it's this issue or this magazine) with a new and intriguing manner of interviewing 'the greats'. The obituaries were rather cool, too.


This is the top corner of the 'Word' cover, which may seem rather dull, but I found the placement of the price tag (over Moz's head) fascinating symbolically and wondered what he'd make of it.

Rock 'n' Roll Evolution

One of my favourite aspects of rock 'n' roll and its offspring is that it's cannabalistic- every new song is influenced by an older one and will undoubtedly inspire future songs. Sometimes, I like to track the progression of certain ideas and stylistic elements through the generations of songs; almost like a '6 degrees of separation project', except often there's not 6 conduits ;)

I can successfully navigate from Gary Glitter to Nine Inch Nails, for example; though that probably sounds abhorrent to some. I shall demonstrate with YouTube videos below:



Step 1- Gary Glitter's 'Rock 'N' Roll Part 1'- the less popular older sister of what most people know as 'The Hey Song' a.k.a 'Rock 'N' Roll Part 2'. Glitter's classics are all obviously influenced by the early rock 'n' roll hits in terms of ideas and lyrics and to a degree, r'n'b through the use of repetitive beats and rhythms, though he brings his own unique seedy edge to things ;)



Step 2- Iggy Pop's 'Nightclubing', which vaguely samples the 'Rock 'N' Roll' riff: the Wikipedia article for Pop's album 'The Idiot' refers to a source as describing the 'Nightclubbing' sound as "a mischievous quote" of the Glitter song, in fact. On an unrelated note, this is one of my favourite YouTube videos ever; those drag queens are gorgeous and the deliberate crudity of the editing is mesmerising.



Step 3- Nine Inch Nail's 'Closer'; which takes its beat from 'Nightclubbing' (according to the 'The Idiot' Wiki). By this point in the string, the shared sound has been sped up a bit, but the relationship with the two earlier songs is clear.

And for a nice, neat end,



One of the best mash-ups on YouTube and an interesting diversion from the path.