Everything happens for a reason. Everyone that crosses our paths is on the same spiritual journey that we are. It is up to us to identify what it is that we are supposed to take away from each encounter.

I am particularly interested in the nature of what we call reality, the etherical universe. I have dedicated my music, and thus life, to breaking down the bonds of social conditioning that make us fear our fellow man, such as religion, privitisation, corrupt and centralised government, fear of speaking out and censorship, as well as exposing the Illuminati’s New World Order agenda. Not one to just point out the problems, rather trying to offer alternative points of view and solutions to ideologies and polices that dehumanise us every day.

History judges all, just make sure you win so you can write it!

The Kings Fool is the musical vessel of journalist Kieran Wicks. Wicksy has been active in the print and broadcast media, both locally and nationally for nearly 10 years. He has worked with Triple J and the Austereo Network, cutting his teeth in community radio, creating documentaries and helping concieve and run award winning street press publications including U-Turn and Reverb.

The Herd Interview

Circa 2006

In 2001 the core members of Elefant Traks decided that they would do something different for the labels compilation release. Instead of getting everyone to submit individual tracks of their own, they decided to collaborate and write an album together. The result was Australia’s most potent musical party of social pundits. Bassist Rok Poshtya recalls the conception of this brainchild, today known as The Herd.

“There were a few people, some of which aren’t a part of the label anymore, who all went to school together and early uni, including Traksewt (producer) and Bezerkatron (vox), who decided to start this label and put out a compilation called Cursive Writing, after about a year of talking about it all. That had one of the first Ozi Batla (vox) tracks and one of the first tracks that Urthboy (vox) did as well. If you listen to it now it’s kind of funny. It was home studio recording stuff. All of the levels were strange, abstract I suppose” he shares joyfully. Unkle Ho (producer) and Sulo (producer/guitar) were doing Drum n Bass stuff, it kind of goes all over the place”.

“Green, naïve and burn it,” are the first thoughts that pop into Urthboy’s head when probed on the Cursive Writing compilation. After the giggles subside the deeper answer gives way. “I think these things are always the result of a bunch of people coming together and trying to do something, cause you know it’s fun working as a solo artist or working in your own capacity, but when you are able to bounce of people that actually have a vested interest in creating something, shit happens that you never would have expected, and generally the unexpected results are the most satisfying,” he assures me.

“This last album was the first album that we did not as just a bunch of tracks,” Poshtya informs me. “Some of the tracks on the previous album were collaborations between, if you look at the album, some of the tracks have eight or nine symbols on it. But The Sun Never Sets was an album we wrote from start to finish as a band. That’s why there is a lot of singing on it,” he explains, continuing that, “rather than a producer go off to just make a beat, they’d make the bones of a beat, then we would add bass lines and guitar lines, and so forth, everyone added their layers, as we moved towards a more cohesive song writing formula.

“Each song has a particular theme to it, it’s ‘proper song writing’, which is kind of funny because this was never a proper band, the first album just got to a point from, a bunch of guys mucking around at a holiday house on the Central Coast, to when Scallops got on the radio and all of a sudden we were like ‘oh wow there is this thing called The Herd that people know about, lets go play in Melbourne’. We all of a sudden had to make a band out of the people that wanted to play”.

Not the conventional way to start a band but an interesting construction none the less I remark to Postya.

“That’s why it has been such an interesting ride, it’s just been a matter of slowly, slowly. It’s almost like you’ve taken a step in a direction and then you realise what direction you’re going in, rather than it being directed. But offcourse as we go along there’s things like your music-craft, the way you do things and how you do them gets better, you don’t always realise how much your music craft improves. You don’t necessarily become a better musician, it’s like the difference between lyrics, mic control, and projection. Your lyrics can always be amazing but the better you get on stage the more your message shines through”.

The story telling aspect of their music is what sets The Herd apart from mere posers. All three MCs do a fantastic job of creating a perspective for the listener of their subject matter’s existence. I asked Urthboy how he puts himself in other people’s shoes and what he actually envisages in his third eye when he writes and performs.

“I think it’s a bit dangerous when you try and assume another character,” he poses before continuing, “I think there is a great amount of exploration there, and you can kind of come up with a unique take on things, but you also really skirt that fine line of pretentiousness, because it is very hard to understand what it is like in somebody else’s shoes unless you’ve lived it. I guess we try and draw from our own personal experiences as much as we can. I think that everybody’s take on a given issue is pretty unique, and it kind of validates everyone being able to speak on things they care about, because their take on it is different to everyone else. So it’s a combination of trying to be as honest and genuine as you can on a given issue, and that’s why I guess as an artist you don’t always present answers, you more often throw up questions, because it is not the role of the artist to be the therapist for people and to give people resolution, it’s the role of the artist to stimulate thought and hopefully make people either enjoy themselves or start thinking about something”.

That was a statement that has been rolling around in my head ever since Urthboy presented it to me, and I think it is a great philosophy for all artists to aspire to, as these ideals go a long way into attracting groups of likeminded individuals. Having faith in oneself and ones ideals, attracts the faith of others that can see your true worth. In a way this is a form of marketing, as it can gain peoples attention and hold it.

It all comes down to whom has the best marketing, in order for a society and or individual to choose a prevailing ideology. Music, by definition, is an ideological tool. Why else would it be used in advertising jingles? Anyone remember Joe Cocker’s Unchain My Heart being used to flog government reforms last election?

Most of these songs were not created to hit the top of the charts; they were created to sell something (the aforementioned excluded offcourse). In The Herd’s case, no flashy gimmick was needed to sell the band. Their music alone was all the marketing they needed.

“It’s kind of funny to be in this position we’re doing what we always did,” reflects Poshtya. “Over the last five years there has been this gradual increase. I don’t know what would have happened if we just had been signed to a major music label after a playing a handful of gigs, or maybe a hundred gigs around the traps, and then get signed and all of a sudden have an album on a major label, and then have sold maybe five or ten thousand records or whatever. I don’t know how that would have sat with us, and I don’t know if we would have been the same band if that had ever happened, not that it has ever been close to happening. And that is the thing, I guess that’s why it feels like it hasn’t been marketed even though it has, I mean we advertise and put up posters letting people know about shows and new releases, which is one of the reasons that we have had good shows and fairly good sales on our releases. The way that it has organically happened everything has grown slowly, slowly… every release we put out just sells that little bit more and every tour attracts just a few more people and I don’t know, I wish it could have had a plan from the start, because that way we could sit people down and teach them that, but it has just been a matter of us learning on the way. Sometimes folks send us a demo and say “sign us up”, but our approach has always been, ‘put it out yourselves, that’s what we did!’

Sideboards

Some members have come and gone since the groups inception, but this nine piece posse who aren’t backward in coming forward, have managed to not only get people to put their hands in the air, but also care about putting their hands up for a greater cause, which is essentially telling the truth, something that Poshtya touched on during a bit of word association.

Truth

“Justice, it is similar to what I said about music. You have to passion about music. I think it’s a matter of living an ethical life. A living right, I don’t think that anyone is perfect,” he says honestly. “That’s why I have always had a problem with morality based systems of thought because there is no, I mean there is rules, but there are rules that are so strict that they become constricting. Whereas an ethical system is one where you’re always doing the right thing, and you know what right and wrong is. So that’s where I think truth comes in”.

Australian Hip Hop’s Evolution

“Hiphop is a bunch of tools that you use that is why its an entire culture. I prefer to think of it as different elements other than the four elements that usually get talked about. Elements such as a sense of community, and a sense of where you’re from, and representing that place, and a sense of doing it yourself as well. So I think we have this thing where hip-hop is within Australian culture and that’s why I think it is so powerful and so many people are getting into it at the moment is because it is like a breath of fresh air. Most of the people who are doing hip hop in Australia, at the moment are telling Australian stories and are telling them in such a way that Australians can understand and I think that’s why there has been a real shift. You know five years ago I remember, Battla and I used to work together, and there would be a lot of people that used to say, “hey I really like hip hop, but I hate just don’t like Australian stuff because it has that really stupid accent. And now we have this situation of kids growing up saying that they really dig Australian stuff but don’t really like anything else. And that’s a real shift and that’s the really exciting thing for me.

“And I think that there is a great tradition, a great Australian bush tradition of telling, tall stories particularly, and story telling around a campfire and on the other hand of passing down of knowledge, which is more the indigenous peoples influence. I don’t think that your average kid is sitting there going, “yeah man, that’s what I am doing, we’re passing down oral traditions but there is still that kind of element to it”.

-Rok Poshtya

“I think that hip-hop is like most cultural pursuits in society, you have physical traits of the hip hop scene here, there is heaps of white people involved in it, and I don’t feel for one second that the hip hop industry should not be as proud of itself because of things like that. You have so many refugee communities who are springing up and getting involved and a lot of indigenous youths are really getting into hiphop, so all the time hip hop is changing as well. But at the same time hip hop here is the same as anything. It is going to reflect the good and bad parts of society and things that you will be disgusted at, that other people find as a reason to relate, and sometimes that’s a good thing too. Sometimes it’s racist, sometimes it’s political and righteous. I think that people look into hip hop to much sometimes. It’s just another expression of Australian people”.

- Urthboy

War

Urthboy’s great grandfather and Ozi batla’s grandfather served in the World Wars, whilst Rok Poshtya’s father served in the Malayan emergency, a history that helps stand them in good stead, when discussing such ethical issues.

“From a moralistic standpoint you’re either for or against war,” starts Poshtya, “That said there are times when war is justifiable, it’s just not now”.

“I have some great conversations with my grandmother about the World Wars,” offers Urthboy, one of the groups three MCs. “She told me that in WWI my great grandfather bobbed his head over the trenches one day and he got shot between his ear and his head, so he didn’t have any hair growing in that spot, he just had it graze his head. I find it really interesting just thinking about it. I mean there were just thousands, upon thousands upon thousands of senseless deaths in that war, but the fact that my grandfather, by the skin of his teeth, got through, it made me really interested, and Grandma told me a little bit more about what life was like back then with the white feathers, which woman used to mail to those who avoided serving, the shirkers. And that was as much of a dis as you dish out, during that time of war”.

Politics

“A lot of the time folks ask me about politics and what The Herd’s political persuasions are. I see the way that we do things is just as much as the politics that we talk about. For instance we are sourcing some non-sweatshop t-shirts at the moment. You know just stuff like that. As we are able to make those decisions we’re making them. The way the label is run is completely collective. It is an informal structure even though it is a company structure but it’s informally a collective. For example if we ever decided to hate each other tomorrow, which is never going to happen, then it would all be dissolved equitably. We all own a bit of the label but it is not actually written down anywhere who owns what bit, and that’s the way the decisions are made, they’re all made on a collective basis, that means that it is as political as anything else we do. We try to be nice guys, but that is a political decision as well. You can’t be standing on stage going this is what you should be doing and thinking, and then come off stage and be a complete arsehole”.

1 Rok Postya

Trampled - Elefant Traks remix compilation

Ahh the remix album, a metaphor for our spiritual life cycle. Feelings of De Jé vu, absorb your body as you hear and feel the familiar high and low dynamics and personal stories of triumph and tragedy, as the song evolves from one generation to the next, as new bodies do their thing with the old souls, essentially making this new life their own, as they open their own world of possibilities. Here is Urthboy’s take on the New Elefant Traks compilation, Trampled, which sees The Herd and a bunch of their mates getting the remix treatment.

“This is a project that we had been looking at for a little while, and it’s one of those things where you sow the seed of enthusiasm into the project, and just hope that it sprouts around. You talk to certain artists that you’ve been hanging with or have wanted to deal with for quite a while, and ask them if they’re up for it and sometimes those things happen really quickly and other times it takes longer but the results are just amazing. You find that a lot of people who are, maybe even intimidating artists that you wouldn’t necessarily want to get in touch with, are really open and happy to get involved in the project.

“There were some songs that people just brought a whole other element to, but at the same time it was a really true remix where they have managed to match the vibe of the track, or the idea of the track, or the mood, with a whole new set of instruments, or the backdrop is a real reinterpretation of the song. That’s awesome because you have a tendency to just have a track finished, you just leave it and move on and sometimes the revisiting of it breathes a whole new lung of life into the project, which I found was a lot of fun”.

- Urthboy

Fourplay Interview

Circa 2006

Now to the Future opens with a cover of Radiohead’s 2+2=5, which is somewhat of analogy for the album itself. You see Fourplay are a string quartet who for the last eleven years have made a name for themselves with an array of classical arrangements of some modern masterpieces. I spoke to the violinist Lara Goodridge about the evolution of the band’s sound over the past decade.

The second track on the album is an original called Evolve or Decay. Did it actually feel like that for you guys that if you didn’t evolve you would decay?

“Well indeed, the whole message is that if you don’t grow, the only way you can go is backwards. So you have to push yourself grow, go forward and evolve. I wrote that song from a very personal point of view but you can look at it in absolutely any way. For the band, the same as the title track, which is called Now to the Future, it is exactly how we felt. About two and a half years ago we had a member change and it was either going to be ‘this is the end’ or ‘let’s go hard, let’s go forward’. It feels like a very good evolution.

What I really picked up from listening to this album is that it transverses the whole gamut of human emotion. It was as both as sad and depressing as music can be (in a good way) as well as, as triumphantly happy and blissful as one can feel. I was interested as to Lara’s perceptions on the power of music

“The power of music for us is obviously very strong. Certainly I do find it very therapeutic to play and I know our audiences find our music very exciting, as it is very passionate and very emotional. We all play our music with honesty. I think it’s good that we cover the whole gamut of emotions, because it means that the show is interesting. We don’t take ourselves to seriously, so there is a lot of fun and lightness to the show and the album, but at the same time there is a lot of heartfelt emotion, a lot of depth to it as well. I think that strings in particular are very human like and they are very organic and they can portray emotion far better than any other instrument, so there are a lot emotive elements to Fourplay”.

The violin has the closest range to the human voice so how daunting is it to actually start singing?

“I have been singing for a long time. I guess in Fourplay I got the confidence to sing more and more. I find that it is a really great, comfortable outlet for me and so the songs that I wrote on the new album. I specifically wrote for fourplay. They are a bit more dramatic compared to other more folky stuff that I have written in the past. I love singing with the band, it feels really good and it’s really challenging and even more exposing than usual”.

I was thinking how well this album was put together from start to finish. It plays as more of a soundtrack, and not a soundtrack to a movie, more like a soundtrack to your life.

“Oh lovely Kieran, we wanted exactly that. We wanted an album that you could put on and play the entire album and enjoy the journey. And we felt that possibly our last album, although we love it, I don’t think it entirely reached our goal to do that. And so I think the fact that we brought in a great producer for this album helped us make it really homogenous and a nice journey and one that flows smoothly.

Sleight of Hand Interview

Circa 2006

“It means you’re shifty bastards” I playfully tease the boys, as I ask the unavoidable question of how the band’s name conceptualised. “The initial idea came from an art teacher in high school who had a band called Bubble Juggler, who had a song called Sleight of Hand on their EP. At first I didn’t know what it meant, just like quite a few of our fans that ask us the question,” singer/guitarist Benj Axewell divulges.

“What it means to me is that it is all to do with cards tricks and hiding, and that kind of thing. It’s like, just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean that it’s not really there. It’s this underlying passion that you have for writing music and performing it for people, and creating, if you will, and that isn’t always a visual thing. Music is an audible thing, but just because you cant see it doesn’t mean it’s not there”.

After seeing Sleight of Hand in the flesh many a fan has invested in their debut EP Breathe (into its third pressing), which, apart from the fact that they can pen a mighty fine hard-rock song, can be put down to the fact that the boys gig like dogs. This strong work ethic and dogged self-belief is the reason that the guns these boys have stuck to have developed into some very heavy artillery.

In this scribe’s humble opinion, Sleight is one of if not the, best live performing band in the city. Even if you don’t like their music your attention is drawn to the energy pulsating from the front of the room. Singer/guitarist Benj Axewell especially, exudes a stage finesse as magnetic, energetic and genuine as INXS’s Michael Hutchence, or the Mars Volta’s Cedric Bixler-Bavala. If he could play his guitar and sing whist operating a pogo-stick I’m sure he’d jump at it. The rest of his motley crew tear up the stage as well, bassist Corey Porter is infamously renowned for a bit of impromptu instrument demolition as he flings himself around the stage, like paint splattered randomly about a canvas.

The Sleight boys are huge fans of our strong local scene of musicians and are doing their part to build upon the genuine sense of community that seems to be reappearing in our city, with more and more bands adopting the myspace.com friend networking philosophy. The guys have started their own little commune where they and half a dozen other bands rehearse and record each week. Tucked away in a light industrial estate in Mayfield, the boys ‘renovated’ a couple of adjoining storage sheds, constructing themselves their very own soundproof music temple, where they and their friends go to blow of steam. A home away from home of sorts.

“You can put us on the record; we all work in shitty job,” Benj disclaims. “We know we’re capable of so much more intellectually and some of us have taken the measures to pursue that in the future, but we just have such a good time in the rehearsal studio, and we have really started to get into this zone now, where we have got our song-writing chops down, where a song would take us the better part of a year to write, now we go in and whack one down and just go, ‘there we go, there is one from start to finish’ and we can work on that or we can just leave it but at least we’ve got something down and since we left the studio we have probably written the better part of 40 new songs”

That’s a lot of new material, some of which got its inaugural airing recently at The Queens Wharf Brewery, where the boys got to perform an unheard of double shift of new material. It is a testament to their shit hot stage personas. This group of individuals are obviously in the moment for being in the moment, and it is this passion for their craft that has allowed them to move to the next level; touring on the national circuit.

Sleight met their tour companions Brisbane’s This Collision, on the Myspace network. Myspace it proving the best way for aspiring hopefuls to team up on the road making it easier to line up gigs about the place. The Hands Collide tour is a three week sabbatical of the east coast snaking its way down from our Northern most capital to the Southern tip, stopping in at the Cambridge Hotel Friday the 11^th of August, whilst the new breed are not forgotten with an ALL AGES extravaganza at the Black-box on the 13^th.

Malthusian nightmare,

Neo-con wet dream.

If it walks and talks like it,

Call it by its name!

Machiavellian ideals,

Facist regime.

If it walks and talks like it,

Call it by its name!

Do you know it when you see,

The propaganda of a Nazi?

All around us tyranny,

Tell us we need it to be free.

They prey on your emotion,

rather than your reason.

But if we all knew the truth,

They’d be tried for treason.

Do you know it when you see

Propaganda on your t.v?

We hear it weekly

on the news, inconceivably!

They prey on your emotion,

rather than your reason.

But if we all knew the truth,

They’d be tried for treason.

I’m from a nation that was born of a police state.

Shrouded in secrecy,

Ruled by aristocracy.

We don’t even know our own history.

Call it by its name!

Fool For You

Kieran Wicks and Aaron Mahoric are two names that have been synonymous with the Newcastle Music scene since the late 90’s.

Wicksy is well known for his work as a music journalist and musician, whilst Mahoric is considered by many to be a guitar genius, a reputation he earned as a member of Newcastle’s most infamous and innovative funk rock trio Strength to Strength.

The pair moved in together earlier this year and commenced jamming on material that Wicksy had been writing for the last few years and performing live under the moniker The Kings Fool.

“People find out that Aaron and I are house mates and they ask me what he is up to musically and what’s happening with Strength to Strength and I tell them that he is as active as ever, playing with me in The Kings Fool,” Wicksy explains.

“Strength are on an extended hiatus as Adam (Waugh – Drummer) travels round Europe. Aaron still plays with Sean (McGinty Bassist) and Sean’s elder brother Mick, in their band Puppy Dog, but they are also on a short hiatus as Mick fractured his wrist recently in a real “rock and roll” moment, ie/ he was drunk.

“I had a car accident a couple of years back and couldn’t do much else other than play my guitar, and concentrate on my songwriting.

“But I have always thought that everything happens for a reason, as it should, when it should, so I see it as being time well spent, time to hone my craft, and know myself, and bring to you all these conversations with consciousness.

“I’m lucky enough to know a lot of the region’s finest musicians and call many of them my close friends. I’ve even gotten to write with a few of them, including a song each with Mark Wells and Bob Corbett.

“It’s music that stimulates the body, soul and mind. I am a child of the 90’s, so the grunge sound is prominent, but i have written nearly everything on an acoustic guitar, which gives it a progressive folk feel, oh and there is definitely some western flavored country thrown in for good measure. It’s music for people that want to learn something about themselves and the world around them”.

The pair will be doing some rare duo performances as they piece together their muso’s muso ensemble. Catch The Kings Fool at Queens Wharf Brewery Thursday June 19^th and The Northern Star Hotel Tuesday July 8^{th .}

The Final Salute

Sleight of Hand
Myspace Blog
05 Feb 2008

The Final Salute
Sleight of Hand are playing their final shows in Newcastle on May 3 at The Loft in the Hunter street mall and the 9th May at the Cambridge Hotel. We’ll be playing a lot of songs from both releases, some new stuff we were working on and some really old songs that are embarrassing but guilty pleasures never-the-less. Thank you to those that supported what we loved to do as a band over our 8 years together and we hope to see you for our final salute… breathe.

Sleight of Hand
Myspace Blog
09 Feb 2008

Some Further Explanation
Hey everyone.. as so many of you are wondering we thought might give you some more insight..
Yes it’s true.. we boys in Sleight are calling it a day.. and it is with great pride that we have decided to do this on a good note. (excuse the pun!)
Having played hundreds of shows.. traveled thousands of kilometers again and again..and with two studio releases, we as a band still remain very close but feel this is as far as we are willing to go..
With so many great moments and the success we have achieved it has been a tough decision but all of us are happy to move to the the next chapter in our lives knowing that we went out strong, so rather than the possibility of letting the band slide into oblivion, why not just go out with a huge bang (as you all know S.O.H. have never done anything quietly!)
We would like to express our gratitude to all of you who have shown support at this time, and during our whole career in Sleight of Hand.
So please come and celebrate our last shows with us, as we are excited to show our appreciation to all our friends, fans and peers, when we hit the stage for the last time..
thank you,
slice of ham
N.B Corey I just want to say that your execution of the English language is something that is envied and admired by myself, if I had tear ducts I’d be weeping. Well put Benj

The Kings Fool spoke with vocalist / guitarist Ben Leek, better known to fans as Benj Axewel, about the bands career and how they have grown.

Eight years is a long time for a band to be together, what do you put it down to, what are the secrets of your success?

“What do i put the longevity of our band down to? Well it has a lot to do with the people who really cared about our music, people who say to us that this song really meant a lot to them and it had touched them and helped get them through something tough in their life. You know, those comments are usually reserved for acts that i look up to, you know what I mean, so to have someone retort back to you is a really good inspiration and can basically override any financial compensation that you’re not receiving.

“And just the intrinsic value of writing a song. Last night we had our last rehearsal, and the last song that we have ever written we are going to be playing at our last gig, and Haff made the comment that ‘it is the song that we have never been able to write’, and I found that really odd because the song is called Step Into The Future, and it is about moving forward and moving on, and the next phase, and sort of looking positively to what could happen next. And to have those intrinsic factors and to have somebody, even if they are in your own band, validating the fact that what you’re doing has a purpose and feels good.

“Whereas everyone is caught up in their day to day 9-5 drawl, there is this life out there if you will, and i guess that is what you’re chasing when you’re in a band, that you’re really pushing and pursuing, and you want to inspire others the same way you have been inspired”.

So how did you manage to keep inspiring one another? Do you think is it because you’re such good friends and the music is just a side relationship to that, or did you become such good friends because of the music that you shared?

“Well, early on we used to have constant arguments, so i think its just a matter of compromise like in any relationship but not in any way a compromise that you sacrificing anything that you want, its more about how to understand others. For example i would come to a rehearsal and have an idea and then the next week someone else would have an idea for that idea. Whereas we used to arc up and go ‘no, no, no, no, no’! Now its, ‘alright well we will try it’, and nine times out of ten, with the ideas combined, the sum was better than the parts that made it.

“In order to stay constantly inspired I think it had a lot to do with finding ourselves. When you start a band everyone has their own individual influences, and after being together for so long and writing the sheer volume that we did, and you know a lot of them will never see the light of day, there is a stage where everything starts to sound like “our band”, and I guess, more so than anything, we were inspired by each other and our own music. We were constantly looking for new ways to develop our sound, a sound that became us. Everyone will go through their dull patches, everyone goes through their lulls. But I guess that constant source of inspiration comes from always maintaining that openness to other peoples ideas, not just within your band, but within opinions not just music”.

So those things that the band taught you about interacting with people, how have you put that into practice in your wider life?

“Well, you have to treat your band like a business as well as a recreational artistic endevour. The amount of stories that you hear about bands getting fucked on, by record labels, signing shitty record deals and getting fucked over on tour. But I mean with anything that you want to do in life, it’s worth doing well. If you’re prepared to work through the hard stuff you come out the other side stronger, and there is nothing more true to that than being in a band, because there is nothing harder in this world than trying to get into something that is almost impossible to get into to start with. I mean, with all the problems in music at the moment as an industry, not necessarily as an art form, you know, its already really tough!

“You have to callous the mind. It hardens you up. I find that I take a lot less bullshit from people. Anything you pursue as part of a passion you’re going to develop some kind of skill, Now that might not always be clearly evident to everyone around you, but its boiling under the surface; it’s something that you can feel within, about yourself”.

High-lights and Low-lights of your career?

“My favorite moments haven’t been from gigs or recordings they have actually been moments on the road with the boys in the car. I guess what i really like about being in a band is being able to make friends all over the country. We have friends from Brisbane and Adelaide coming down for our final show. That’s the best feeling, the friendships and relationships that you make along the way. In terms of gigs, touring with Blindside was the highlight and we were all over it. We rehearsed our arses off and it was probably the best we have ever played on that tour.

“Worst gig moments their have been a few of those, but by no means at any time have we ever tried to be clinical about things. Umm, I tend to talk a lot as you have probably gathered from this interview, I tend to get up there in between songs and have a bit of a yarn. Sometimes I mouth off and I offend people, so probably the worst gig moments are more in relation to that. Corey slamming into my amp and knocking it over, when it was brand new, like $5000 worth of equipment that was a scary moment. Playing in front of a few thousand people in Toowoomba that was pretty amazing and playing in front of two people in Wollongong. You know we have done it all, apart from your Acer arena type stuff. No one moment, but the best moments are not usually music related, they are usually band related, being around your mates”.

So its all about the journey not the destination!

“Definitely!”

And finally a closing statement for everyone…

“I’d like to share my appreciation for all of your support over the years, and to all of those people who didn’t show your support over the years and let us know rather vocally that they didn’t support us either. Both of those provide inspiration and we really relished in the reaction that our band could garner within the music community. At least it gave people something to talk about!

“And to those who are considering pursuing music as an endevour, regardless of what people tell you, with the lack of financial rewards that it usually renders, the hard work and the time, and the sacrifices, the social sacrifices that you make, is COMPLETLEY worth it, because you’re not going to take money and cars and houses away with you when you die, you know what i mean? It’s the “Rocking Chair Syndrome”.

“I’m really thankful that my band has had, and i will call it the success that we have had, because to have even a handful of people who have come to every gig and buy everything that we have put out, is just such an amazing, intrinsic high. I can look back at it and say that “we did a good thing and we don’t have any regrets”. Actually thank you to everyone positive or negative who had an impact on Sleight of Hand!”

The Final Details

Sleight of Hand
Myspace Blog
21 Apr 2008

Update on recording and last shows
Cambridge Hotel 18+
8.30 - 9.00pm: Galileo’s Ghost
9.15 - 9.45pm: This Collision
10.00 - 10.30pm: Level 8
10.45 - 12.00pm: SOH
Entry is $10, get there early for Rookie’s band GG, he’s been talking it up and reckons their shit hot, only time will tell (talk about pressure haha).
Our mates in TC are coming from QLD just to play, and are animals so get amongst it.
L8 will no doubt make you shit your pants and will drink you under the table.

MERCH - is going keep, like $10 a tee and $30 a hoodie cheap, you can also get our EP and SOMP single together at a ‘cheap cheap good quality’ price.

I think thats everything, Haff wants to play Promised land but I conveniently forgot the lyrics!
Hope to see you give the final salute!
SOH

Sleight of Hand
Myspace Blog
12 Mar 2008
What’s up in Camp SOH
Then on April 12th and 13th we are recording some demos in Newcastle that we wrote for the album, in a nutshell we can’t afford to record them the way we wished and were hoping to get a publishing deal and we will still be sending them out to various industry reps to see if we get any nibbles around winter. We put a lot of hard work into these songs and fingers crossed a company would like to help fund our venture however if this doesn’t happen we will put up a demo song to download every few weeks so you our friends can have them for your collection. Our goal is to get 10 solid tunes done to join the single tracks with our long time engineer Sean Brown.
Apart from that we are looking forward to playing extended sets in May pulling out some really obscure songs from our past and test our memories and getting reeeeaaaaaal drunk haha.
If you have requests best get them in now because we are sifting through the tunes and no Promised Land will not be getting a run, the song blows, the verse and chorus don’t even fit, if you want to listen to it pull out ’First Demonstration’ haha.
Poice Benj.
Tracks include:
- Give in forgiving^ - Education - Running with the flesh - I swore - Neighbour - Confidence man - Running with the flesh - King among kings - Internal Affairs - Broken heroes - Step into the future

This video is a Neal Adams animation about his theory that the Earth is growing. This collides with the Pangea theory. Watch it, you will be amazed.

Source Article

Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything

An impoverished surfer has drawn up a new theory of the universe, seen by some as the Holy Grail of physics, which has received rave reviews from scientists.

Garrett Lisi, 39, has a doctorate but no university affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii, where he has also been a hiking guide and bridge builder (when he slept in a jungle yurt).

In winter, he heads to the mountains near Lake Tahoe, Nevada, where he snowboards. “Being poor sucks,” Lisi says. “It’s hard to figure out the secrets of the universe when you’re trying to figure out where you and your girlfriend are going to sleep next month.”

Despite this unusual career path, his proposal is remarkable because, by the arcane standards of particle physics, it does not require highly complex mathematics.

Even better, it does not require more than one dimension of time and three of space, when some rival theories need ten or even more spatial dimensions and other bizarre concepts. And it may even be possible to test his theory, which predicts a host of new particles, perhaps even using the new Large Hadron Collider atom smasher that will go into action near Geneva next year.

Although the work of 39 year old Garrett Lisi still has a way to go to convince the establishment, let alone match the achievements of Albert Einstein, the two do have one thing in common: Einstein also began his great adventure in theoretical physics while outside the mainstream scientific establishment, working as a patent officer, though failed to achieve the Holy Grail, an overarching explanation to unite all the particles and forces of the cosmos.

Now Lisi, currently in Nevada, has come up with a proposal to do this. Lee Smolin at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, describes Lisi’s work as “fabulous”. “It is one of the most compelling unification models I’ve seen in many, many years,” he says.

“Although he cultivates a bit of a surfer-guy image its clear he has put enormous effort and time into working the complexities of this structure out over several years,” Prof Smolin tells The Telegraph.

“Some incredibly beautiful stuff falls out of Lisi’s theory,” adds David Ritz Finkelstein at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. “This must be more than coincidence and he really is touching on something profound.”

The new theory reported today in New Scientist has been laid out in an online paper entitled “An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything” by Lisi, who completed his doctorate in theoretical physics in 1999 at the University of California, San Diego.

He has high hopes that his new theory could provide what he says is a “radical new explanation” for the three decade old Standard Model, which weaves together three of the four fundamental forces of nature: the electromagnetic force; the strong force, which binds quarks together in atomic nuclei; and the weak force, which controls radioactive decay.

The reason for the excitement is that Lisi’s model also takes account of gravity, a force that has only successfully been included by a rival and highly fashionable idea called string theory, one that proposes particles are made up of minute strings, which is highly complex and elegant but has lacked predictions by which to do experiments to see if it works.

But some are taking a cooler view. Prof Marcus du Sautoy, of Oxford University and author of Finding Moonshine, told the Telegraph: “The proposal in this paper looks a long shot and there seem to be a lot things still to fill in.”

And a colleague Eric Weinstein in America added: “Lisi seems like a hell of a guy. I’d love to meet him. But my friend Lee Smolin is betting on a very very long shot.”

Lisi’s inspiration lies in the most elegant and intricate shape known to mathematics, called E8 - a complex, eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points first found in 1887, but only fully understood by mathematicians this year after workings, that, if written out in tiny print, would cover an area the size of Manhattan.

E8 encapsulates the symmetries of a geometric object that is 57-dimensional and is itself is 248-dimensional. Lisi says “I think our universe is this beautiful shape.”

What makes E8 so exciting is that Nature also seems to have embedded it at the heart of many bits of physics. One interpretation of why we have such a quirky list of fundamental particles is because they all result from different facets of the strange symmetries of E8.

Lisi’s breakthrough came when he noticed that some of the equations describing E8’s structure matched his own. “My brain exploded with the implications and the beauty of the thing,” he tells New Scientist. “I thought: ‘Holy crap, that’s it!’”

What Lisi had realised was that he could find a way to place the various elementary particles and forces on E8’s 248 points. What remained was 20 gaps which he filled with notional particles, for example those that some physicists predict to be associated with gravity.

Physicists have long puzzled over why elementary particles appear to belong to families, but this arises naturally from the geometry of E8, he says. So far, all the interactions predicted by the complex geometrical relationships inside E8 match with observations in the real world. “How cool is that?” he says.

The crucial test of Lisi’s work will come only when he has made testable predictions. Lisi is now calculating the masses that the 20 new particles should have, in the hope that they may be spotted when the Large Hadron Collider starts up.

“The theory is very young, and still in development,” he told the Telegraph. “Right now, I’d assign a low (but not tiny) likelyhood to this prediction.

“For comparison, I think the chances are higher that LHC will see some of these particles than it is that the LHC will see superparticles, extra dimensions, or micro black holes as predicted by string theory. I hope to get more (and different) predictions, with more confidence, out of this E8 Theory over the next year, before the LHC comes online.”

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VOTE RON PAUL IN 2008! Mark “The Peso”
passive consumer,,
alex t

SafetyJoe ( Ron Paul 2008 )

Freedom Academy

Jesus †J.

RadicalJusticeMan
From: The Rev. Doktor Crash

History judges all,
Just make sure you win so you can write it.
Your propaganda
What is freedom in a facist state?
Divided states…

Prior to WWII the Nazis set the German parliament building alight, blaming the communists, so that they could overturn seven of the countries constitutional rights (1).

Reichstag Fires
911

Amend the constitution,
Ignorance is their strength.

50 countries bombed since WWII
Grandpa bankrolled the Nazis in WWII (2).
Now “Jnr’s King of the retards” (3),
waving their flags in freedoms name.

They’re waving it in your face.
Your lady of liberty.
What is freedom in a facist state?
Divided States
History judges all
Just make sure you win so you can write it.

This is not a conspiracy theory, this is a high profile document known as the Project for a New American Century (4).

Reichstag Fires
911

New World Order puppet master,
Freemason “Animal Farm” (5).

50 countries bombed since WWII
Grandpa bankrolled the Nazis in WWII (2)
Now “Jnr’s King of the retards” (3)
waving their flags in freedoms name.

Guilty till proven innocent.
the Land of the Free,
under martial law.
“The World is Not Enough”(6)
as we play out “1984″(7)

I wont stand idley by
I see through your lies
And i wont abide
Look me in the eyes
No words known to justify!

Oaklahoma,
911 too,
The Reign of Terror,
of the French Revolution.

“Evil triumphs when good men do nothing at all”(8)

References

1 - http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/911_reichstag.html - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire
2 - Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin - George Bush: The Unauthorised Biography.
3 - Maynard James Keenan - Triple J Interview 2006.
4 - http://www.newamericancentury.org/index.html
5 - George Orwell - Animal Farm
6 - Ian Flemming - The World is Not Enough [James Bond]
7 - George Orwell - 1984
8 - Edmund Burke

Project for a New American Century - Iran and Iraq

Waving it in you face

It’s nice to know I’m not the only one,
Who feels this way,
And hungers for the day,
That we all awake from this dismay.

A wise man once said that,
“All matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration.
That we are all one consciousness, experiencing itself subjectively.
There is no such thing as death,
Life is only a dream and we are the imagination of ourselves” (1).

Material,
Or Spiritual?
The body dies but soul lives on.
Transmigration
Material,
Or Spiritual?
The body dies but soul lives on.
4th dimension.

“The power they have is the power we give them each day” (2).
“It’s time to evolve
Ideas”(3), to resolve
Conflict between love and fear.

A wise man once said that,
“The reason the world is so fucked up is that we are undergoing evolution,
And the reasons our institutions, our traditional religions are all crumbling is that they are no longer relevant.
So it’s time for us to create a new philosophy and perhaps even a new religion.
And that’s ok, because that..s our right as free children of god, whose minds can imagine anything,
And that’s kind of our role”(4).

Material,
Or Spiritual?
The body dies but soul lives on.
Transmigration
Material,
Or Spiritual?
The body dies but soul lives on.
4th dimension.

“My exoteric revelation
does not support,
my esoteric revelation.. (5).
It Just don’t add up.

The Perennial philosophy
“Rudiments can be found among the traditional lore of primitive people in every region of the world” (6).

Reference:

1. Bill Hicks - Sane Man
2. David Icke - The Secrets of the Matrix
3. Bill Hicks - Rant In E-Minor
4. Bill Hicks - Rant In E-Minor
5. Suffi Niffari
6. Aldouse Huxley - The Perennial Philosophy