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GFR NEWS | 6th AUGUST ’24 | TAKE 33
2 NEW SOLO RE-RELEASES • I DON’T HATE COVER BANDS OK • NETFLIX IS THE REAL VIRUS • OFFLINE TIPS • SHITLOADS MORE SPAM
Hi Max,
Out this week on GUILTFILTER RECORDS are two solo re-releases from Guiltfilter songwriter Magnus M. Remastered for streaming and available on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, Google, Amazon and iTunes and also available in Asia on MELON & Tencent and in Europe on Deezer & UMA. If you don’t have access to these services just contact us via the website and we’ll get you one.
2 NEW SOLO RE-RELEASES
First up is the piano laden 5-Track EP Programmed By Weather This dark introspection on losing a child and coping with the aftershock was recorded at Soundpark studios in Northcote, Australia in the winter of 2019. The EP was engineered and produced by Andrew ‘Idge‘ Hehir (Paul Kelly, Hugo Race, Beast Of Bourbon) and mastered by Richard Stoltz at Woodstock studios in East St Kilda, Australia. All songs, vocals, piano, keyboards, bass and guitars by Magnus M and all drums and percussion by Guiltfilter’s Adrian B.
Programmed By Weather also has an accompanying book of poetry that can be found on our website or on Amazon as a paperback or on any of the digital book stores like Kindle as an e-book. WARNING! THIS BOOK CONTAINS BLOODY FUCKN POETRY! BEWARE, THERE IS NO SHOPPING OR PORN OR SPORT IN THIS ITEM!
Secondly we have the acoustic 4 Track Stella EP originally released way back in 1999 and recorded at HotHouse Studio in St Kilda, Australia. The quality of recording and production are fantastic and I often listen to it to this day. Recorded and produced by Craig Harnath and mastered by Cameron McKenzie. Personnel for this recording was Magnus’s live band at the time featuring the dearly missed Celia Opie on vocals and Ben Healy on bass. All songs, lead vocals and guitars by Magnus M.
I DON’T HATE COVER BANDS OK
Last week we released a Fuck Cover Bands T-Shirt.
People like cover bands.
I like cover bands.
I play covers in my solo shows and busking all the time.
I once put together a Master Of Reality tribute band!
Let me explain.
I do like cover bands and one of my faves The Peptides are one of the best bands around Melbourne town. And The Tonalists are one of the best live blues/soul/boogie bands in Melbourne and they play a few covers. The thing is these bands, unlike most cover bands, re-interpret the songs and all the members have played in original bands for most of there careers, they have contributed a fuck load of awesome original ozzie* music. Currently that is not the case for a gazillion cover bands playing around town; they are just cashing in on the oppressive fear created by the rich to fool the rest we need to worry about money constantly. OMG the economy is tanking better shit my pants and buy more plastic AAAAAAHHHHH OMG now I‘m homeless on the street.. of wait hold on.. how bloody peaceful is this, no nagging, hit the turps, fuck this is great, got a smoke?
*side-note: I am thinking now that ozzie is a better colloquial term for Australian and much preferred spelling over the bogan aussie, a bit more heavy metal at any rate. Please take note Oxford Dictionary employees and, side-note on this side-note, that reminds me: I purchased Sabbatth’s Paranoid this week and what a mighty album it is to listen to on vinyl! I also found the debut self-titled Iron Maiden album on vinyl with Eddie on the cover, what a ground breaking album and yes I am a Di’Anno fan, he was way better than Bruce as lead singer I reckon and way more punk y‘know? And somewhat tragic him getting kicked off a bit like Lemmy and Hawkwind really.
Back to the covers, you see pre-lockdown when we were working at a rehearsal studios there would be 5 original bands to 1 cover band and that cover band I would say most of the members had an original band that they played in as well. Now days it is the opposite, around 5 cover bands fine tuning their perfect reproductions of top 40 songs I have heard a million times and that is their only band, and then maybe 1 original heavy metal band plugging away writing their own songs. I know this because most days a week that lone original band is us, working away at originals day after day for the last 9 years non stop and 15 years non stop before that (in the middle I had a breakdown and joined this cult called working for corporate companies and swore off music for a number of years, I call them my zombie years, but not wasted years as continued to write songs and saved every cent to help pay for the very legendary producer Mark Opitz to produce our La Bandera album - actually, side-note again, if your in the mood for some ozzie ™ rock then might I suggest you put on one of the many great albums he has engineered or produced, here are just a few:
▪ Outlaw (Rose Tattoo)
▪ Face To Face/No Exit (The Angels)
▪ Powerage/Let There Be Rock (ACDC)
▪ East (Cold Chisel)
▪ The Great Escape (Richard Clapton)*
▪ Monkey Grip EP (The Divinyls)
▪ Shabooh Shabaah (INXS)
*A side-side-note on the side-note is that The Great Escape is one of the most criminally underrated albums of all time and I swear one of these days Richard Clapton is going to get some of the recognition he deserves I mean Girls on the Avenue right?
Back to the cover band situ: What has frustrated me is the lack of support for original bands. Besides the handful of venues that fully support originals, and we know these venues because they are the only places you can see original acts on a regular basis, besides these I mean seriously most venues are just paying lip service to original bands and playing it safe with cover bands, mostly because of the constant financial pressures created by mega greed power central Governments that closed down 80% of small businesses during covid and racked up 3 trillion dollars in debt to pay their good mate multi-billionaire corporate drug manufactures and coal energy companies and that crippled the middle class and now 80% of the country’s wealth is concentrated into a tiny cabal of billionaires and living is nearly untenable, but hey yeah lets just call it an abstract name like “inflation” so no-one in power has to do anything. Cmon wake up (or alternatively eat some coffee sugar and get back to the Olympics)!
The result of this is that no young original bands are forming, no young original bands are learning how to write, no young original bands are learning how to market themselves and no young original bands are getting decent live experience playing unknown songs to an audience - because you can play covers to a delighted audience all day long but it is nothing like the effort and reward of playing originals and winning over an audience - and cover bands don’t learn any of that. And no young original bands forming means a decade of no original music scenes upcoming people so yeah I’m pissed because I think it is critical we support unknown original bands. So that is the inspiration for the Fuck Cover Bands T-Shirt, there is a crisis of mega greed that is killing creativity and more importantly killing off any good times and any fun.
NETFLIX ETC. MAKES COVID LOOK A COMMON COLD
This section is self explanatory is it not?
OFFLINE TIPS
With the Offline album nearing fruition I thought to share some tips on how to survive offline in twenty twenty four, I have been doing it for some time so here ya go:
▪ Put on like Killing In The Name Of or Rise and turn it up.
▪ Call up your ISP and cancel obviously.
▪ Get a crappy phone from the porn shop.
▪ Better get a LightPhone.
▪ Get a cheap calls and sms plan with shit all data.
▪ If you need to do some admin online go down the library, it’s free.
▪ Oh and the library has shitloads of DVDs, talking books and computer games so there is your entertainment right there.
▪ If you do go online do not login to anything, see Gumtree (shopping), AccuRadio (music) etc. etc.
▪ YES THAT MEANS DITCH FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM.
▪ If you do need to watch some sport porn shopping search for it with an encrypted search engine like OneSearch and use a VPN, Firefox, Ghostery and an Ad Blocker for YouTube for shits sake.
▪ Buy a newspaper, you don’t need to read the headlines every 4 hours dude..
▪ Get a record player and a CD player for cheap and buy some vinyl and CDs, the quality is so much better and it won’t destroy your hearing like those bloody ear buds bud.
▪ Connect your TV arial again if you want watch the footy, its free.
▪ Need to catch up the gossip or find out what bands are playing? Head down your local venues/pubs and invite your friends down for a chat.
I shall do more of these soon, for today that is all I could think of.
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