Top 50 albums. (Dr Yobbo is wrong I tell you!)

After gritting my teeth at Faifax medias' stupid bloody online experience to view their greatest Australian albums of all time, I then started yelling, both at the screen and on twitter. This led to my usual musical sparring partner Dr Yobbo and I to decide to put up duelling posts on our top 50 albums of all time. He has a good run down on the conditions he screwed me on in his post, so I'll just begin with the honourable mentions and some omissions.

The new album I've been listening to from Laneway could definitely make the cut, but i've only owned the album for two weeks and I don't think it will qualify on those grounds. Powderfinger. I just couldn't find space for them. The album I like the most is Double Allergic but i just don't listen to them anymore. Reef - Glow is another album that i like, but i've only just forked out the cash for it, so it missed the cut. Couldn't find room for Norah Jones or any jazz or KT Tunstall or Coldplay (thank god).

I am going to string this out a bit more so lets get started with the first ten.

No 50. Dire Straits - Dire Straits.
This was the band that I grew up with through primary school and early high school and I own all the albums but this is the album that holds up the best. Without any of the MTV pop it just showcases what a good guitarist Knopfler is. Six Blade Knife is just a killer song.


No 49. Good Gracious - M-phazes
This spot was going to go to Brisbane band George's first effort, but it is an EP so I'm going to give the spot to a new hip hop producer, M-Phazes, who had a stellar cast of MCs for his first album. It's tight, funky hip hop, in other words, Australian!


No 48. Achtung Baby - U2
These guys almost didn't make the cut, but unlike Powderfinger I can still listen to this album without dying of boredom. Another big one in the early teen years but has great songs.


No 47. Manipulating Agent - Katalyst
Party music. Katalyst would never make a live album list cause he's crap live but he is a fantastic producer and this record never misses a beat.


No 46. Stone Broke - Brothers Stoney
I don't love every song, but this is old school Aussie hip hop, rough and raw and full of booze, drugs and wit.

No 45. Based on a True Story - Fat Freddys Drop
Great kiwi grooves, beautiful instrumentation and layer upon layer, fat freddies are unlike any dub or groove band I've ever seen, just so tight yet appearing to be laid back and loose. If you love a bit of brass you'll love this.


No 44. Unit - Regurgitator
My arch nemesis Dr Yobbo reckons this was one the forerunners of the acceptance of hip hop in main stream Australia, which goes to show that the prescription drugs are better in NZ. What the gurge did was mine the eighties long before it was cool to do so for this rocking techno sound. Played a million times at least in one of my sharehouses.


No 43. Apocalypso - The Presets
Or as I like to call them, Sonic Animation II. All the JJJ presenters going nuts about their sound being new had obviously missed S in the music library, but that doesn't make this album any less great, electronic party music at it's best.


No 42. Signs of a Struggle - Mattafix
Bit of an unusual one, a mix of grooves and hip hop, but it really works. Sounds like it should be the soundtrack to a London gangster movie not made by Guy Ritchie.




No 41. Grand Theft Audio - Resin Dogs
Easily their best studio album ever, with Lazy Grey still the MC and the beats keeping you dancing and dancing. And then they throw a cool little number like Jazz Crime in just to mess with your head.


That's the first ten. Unless I change my mind overnight and completely rewrite it all.



- Lantanaland from my iPhone

Location:Lantanaland

Paul Kelly writing an album for Mazzy Star

In another time, in a land far away, I ran a music venue. At that mythical and magical place I saw so many indie pop, singer songwriter, acoustic, hippie bands that any music that starts with the gentle strum of a guitar usually sends me heading for the hills. I am incredibly, stupidly picky about the music from that rough genre (which to be fair, The Wife and I had trouble defining) and one of the incredibly sad things about The Alley is that the best bands didn't always pull the crowds, get the airplay or sell the albums.

Take Alex Oliver, a long time muso around Brisbane and a legend at 4ZZZ radio, he had this incredible storytelling style and an unbelievable way of picking an acoustic guitar, but he never seemed to finish a lot of songs. He never got his shit together to make that next level.

Sometimes a band like Angus and Julia Stone will pop up and shine through the dross but how many great bands just slip through the cracks? In OZ hip hop, the genre I champion above all others, the good stuff tends to pop up, simply because there are just not that many acts and the good ones get noticed and promoted by the bands that do have the media profile.

When I was at The Alley I probably got fifteen indie pop/acoustic demos a week! And I was the smallest original live venue in Brisbane. How can you push through so many acts? How do you get noticed?

Recently through a set of unfortunate circumstances I was having an email exchange with some old mates from my home town and it was mentioned that Louise had an album out. This family have always been incredibly talented in the arts so I wasn't particularly surprised. Louise was kind enough to give me a promo code to download the album and to be honest I was blown away.

Imagine if Mazzy Star came to Paul Kelly and asked him to write her some songs. (just a side note, Paul Kelly is the bomb. You can keep your Tom Waits, your Neil Diamond, your Bob Dylan, I'll take Paul any day of the week). This is what that record would sound like. I love the way Louise's voice sounds.

So please go to laneway and have a listen. Buy the record. For me, I'll be going to my first live show since I quit the live venues, it's going to be great.


- Lantanaland from my iPhone

Location:Ten years ago

If the fire dies, who would you want to hang out with.

One of my favourite books is by SM Stirling, an examination of what might happen if the "fire" goes out of the world, electricity, gunpowder, in fact anything that goes bang. The REASON I like it is it makes me see the world differently. That big rain recently? Imagine if you had to try and keep up all that infrastructure without power, or cars. How long would the roads last before they would simply disappear. You only have to see the grass beside the road grow a metre while it's still too wet to mow to realize that our ordered world needs a lot to keep it that way.

Now I could fool myself and think if the impossible happened and all the power went away that I'd be better off than most. By about one week I reckon. I have a cow and bees and chooks, but my garden is pretty poor and the fruit trees are a few years off truly producing and the tanks don't have gravity feed yet.

Stirling really looked at the way people reacted though. Some started little dictatorships. One group banded together and formed a clan. It truly was just pitching in and helping each other till things got back on keel. It only worked because of the attitudes of the people made it work. A different bunch trying the same thing might have torn themselves apart in a week. This is what I love about his writing, it makes a filter for your brain that can just drop in at unexpected times.

We've just come back from a weeks holiday at my parents beach shack at Curtis Island. It's a fibro open house and has solar power, tanks and home made solar hot water. It's not for everyone. There is bugger all privacy and you have to moderate your lifestyle for the resources. For the last six years a group of our mates have been joining us on and off for a week at The Island. I do all the cooking and we go fishing and play lots of cards. There is a mountain of washing up and little jobs but things just get done. There is no TV. A fair bit of drinking. But halfway through the week it struck me, if the fire died and I had to band together with a group of people, this would be them.

Unselfish, thoughtful, funny, willing to learn and always there when a job needed doing, that's the sort of people I'd want if my life depended on it. Luckily it doesn't, so we can still just go fishing, eat, play cards and drink beer.



- Lantanaland from my iPhone

Location:In Bed

Butter Makes Me Batty

I like butter. A lot. Margarine has not passed my lips in probably ten years and butter was one of the main reasons that I wanted cows so badly here in Lantanaland. Most of my cooking knowledge comes from either a French or Italian background and there is nothing better than a sauce made from a reduction of pig trotter stock, with a dash of white wine and finished off with a big knob of butter. Preferably with a small mountain of mashed potatoes on the side. With butter.

Now I'm hungry.

The dairy industry is still getting my coin, because despite the large amounts of cream at my disposal, I have failed miserably to make any butter. I've tried leaving the cream out, the blender, the food processor, the stem blender, a whisk, the egg beaters, shaking it in a bottle, but nothing. Do I have some sort of anti butter field that prevents cream molecules bonding in my presence?

What makes it more vexing is that I am having moderate success with the cheese making, turning out reasonable haloumi and mozzarella and learning every time from my mistakes.

But no butter. It's making me a bit batty.


- Lantanaland from my iPhone

Location:Windy, Windy Lantanaland

Raw deal

Having now invested in a herd share of three cows I am following the raw milk debate with some interest. Mainly because I have zero trust in the government to get these things right. I have a parallel in my current industry where there was a big push on lysteria that would have made it almost economically impossible for a butcher to do their own smallgoods.

Now food standards and various state bodies claim that they are trying to protect the consumer. But regulations like this, that remove production from the small butcher and put it all in the hands of the big factory producers means that soon you will be having maybe five very similar hams and bacons in Australia. The ability of a butcher to be able to make their own ham or salami or kransky gives them a point of difference from the Coles and Woolies of the world. It gives our palates a testing point, to find out what we like in a food.

The thing is, the big producers mission statement would read like this, profit, profit, profit, taste. Our suppliers make cures and premixes that allow the big guys to make more money. Sliceable water was one of the phrases I heard at my last technical conference.

So when I see the big dairy producers in Oz telling me that raw milk is dangerous and that pasteurized cheese is just as good, I get the feeling that they are looking at their mission statement dreading the small producer that might force them to change to taste before profit.


-- Post From My iPhone

PS. One of the twitterati pointed out that if governments were that worried about raw cheese affecting our health, they might remove cigarettes from sale, something that is proven to kill more people than any food product available anywhere.

Mates

Lantanaland can be a lot like my cows. If I go away for a few days, or their feed drops off, I get rewarded with piddly little streams of milk. Green grass, some fruit waste from the fruit shop, a brush and de ticking and I get multiple litres of creamy goodness.

Likewise lantanaland seems to like a bit of attention. Following the big Feastin N Fencin weekend in July the cows have gone to work, eating and smashing and bashing their way through the tough long grass. I thought that that paddock might last them a bit longer, but in the last month in has become apparent that while there looked like there was enough to feed them for the rest of the year, there wasn't that much edible food.






This time I planned ahead. In front of the house would be the next paddock, using one of the fence lines from the existing paddock then winding its way up the boundary to finish right in front of the spa. I'd planted some pasture improvement and started it off with the grey water and I had a nice patch of lush green carpet for the cows to start on.

What I really needed was a few helping hands. The fencing weekend taught me how much easier it is to get a fence built with even just one more set of hands, so I put the call out. Not to too many people, I'm always a bit worried about abusing peoples goodwill and it was about a days work for two or three of us.

Helping hands from mates really are the lifeblood of this place. I can toil away as much as I try, but the affect just having a few helpers can have is simply amazing. By lunchtime Simon and I had carved out the path with a big petrol hedge trimmer and bashed in all the poles. Do you realize HO little you use those muscles in your forearms? A beer and cob loaf with bacon, corn, herbs and five types of dairy went down extremely well.

In the afternoon Ryano and The Wife joined in and we had the fence lines strung and clipped, a new gateway put in and the energizer turned on and tested. Laf just about bowled me over when she saw the gap to that lush new grass and she must have enjoyed it because we got 3L of milk this morning, which is good even for a weekend.

As we sat in the spa enjoying an icy beer I reflected on how long that would have taken me. A month certainly and the hedge trimmer hire would have not been used as well, you can't really tell the bits you've missed until the fence is up. I then reflected that I'd left the bloody gate open and the cow was coming up the hill and if I didn't move quick smart there might be one more in the spa.

So thanks to everyone who's ever put even a minute in here helping at Lantanaland. I couldn't even contemplate this grand adventure without you.


- MF from my iPad

Location:Needham Rd,Luscombe,Australia

Three Years in lantanaland

Well it's been almost three years since the delivery truck backed down the slightly washed out and steep driveway and dumped our meagre possessions onto the deck in a crazy race against a developing thunderstorm. I'm going to do a few video pieces of the different bits of the farm so I thought it'd be good to do a bit of a breakdown of what I expected to have done and what I wanted from the farm.

CHICKENS - the big plan for the chooks was to be breeding my own and eating them. Well I've done that but not exactly like I planned. I've only just raised the first batch of my crossbreed chickens up. I've eaten a few meat birds that I've raised up and a few ducks. When the guinea fowl are numerous enough I'll definitely be having a kcrack at them as well.






I've lost a lot of chicks and young birds to carpet snakes, who view my pathetic attempts at coop building as a sort of drive through takeaway. Add in a fox attack or two and I've learnt the hard way that if you want your birds to free range then you'll lose some birds. The next stage is a large fully everything proof pen with a straw bale house. Spend the time and the money to make sure they are safe at night and when we are away.

The guinea fowl experiment continues. I have a lot of ticks and long grass and only six ranging birds so I guess it is a bit early to call on that experiment.

DOG AND SPA - we have both these things, so The Wife is happy.

FRUIT AND VEG - I am going to be honest, I have failed, almost miserably in this department. Lack of infrastructure, poor soil, poor management has meant that I have had sporadic results at best. Bananas and mulberries have been the biggest success in the fruit tree department. I've killed a lot of trees through too much/too little water, overtaking by weeds and animals eating them. The best plan is to put the tree where you see it all the time. This is real basic stuff in permaculture but for some reason I thought I could put trees half way down a hill in six foot high grass and still remember to water them every couple of days. Yeah right.

Now just about all my trees are on my walk to the cows every morning and I ensure that they are looked after. Well rotted cow manure on tap doesn't hurt either.

I must have lost about 20 artichoke plants to the chickens, ducks and goats. My herb garden is nothing to write home about, but I have discovered sorrel in a big way this year. My dreams of big bunches of thyme are only realized when asleep. I've had some good pumpkins and tomatoes, but never enough to make the excess into tomato sauce or jam.

Again, the soil improvement you can make with manure is beyond belief. The new garden beds between the sugarcane bales with the manure from the holding yard for milking has been one of the best I've done. Thanks to Twitter mate Tammy I finally have a horseradish plant that is growing and I have five, FIVE artichoke plants that have survived. So I think things are on the improve there. I am planting tomatoes all over the place, in the hope that they will go a bit wild and provide me all year round. The litmus test for me is carrots and potatoes. And that has yet to be achieved.

BEES - last year was a bad year, too wet all summer. But that rain should mean good flowers this year and if we get on a good flow I will try and split the hive to get a second one. The hive is fairly strong, I have a bit of hive beetle but not enough to threaten the health of the hive. I never have enough honey to go around so two hives would be handy.

THE HOUSE - other than the spa, which was a condition of buying the house from The Wife, the house has been pretty much unchanged in the last three years. This year will see the deck done, not before time, I have to get my guests to sign release forms before they walk up the front steps. Once that's done we'll replace the carpet downstairs with something cheap and that will do for a good decade or so.

THE LAND - the cows have done an amazing amount of work clearing out the land. We have walked though bits of the land we had not seen in the three years. I am now on a pasture improvement program to try and get more value out of feeding the cows. The next big purchase for the herdshare will be a hedge trimmer. It will go thought the thin lantana like something hot through something else that melts easily.




THE COWS! - one of the big reasons I moved to Lantanaland was to have cows. All the traditional methods of smallholding revolve around the the house cow. I cannot thank my herd sharers enough for giving me the chance to get these beautiful animals. Like everything I attempt, it's never turns out exactly as planned. Milking is relatively easy, now that I have a technique down pat. Making butter has proven beyond me, much to my huge frustration. How hard can it be! The dairy products made have been of varying quality, as to be expected.




So what's left? Pigs are the other big small holder staple, but they might be next year, judging by The Wife rolling her eyes every time I mention them. I need another paddock for the cows so I can start rotating and spelling. Get more fruit trees in. Write more about the fantastic, beautiful place in which we live. Shoot some video. Stay happy.

That's pretty easy here.


- Lantanaland from my iPad

Location:Adelaide St,Tweed Heads,Australia