Hi folks,

Just a note to say that this blog is going into a hiatus, for a while. There’s not been a great deal of action here anyway; a scheduled session with Jack Lewis on trumpet did not come off as planned, and I won’t be doing any more recording until I have completed the move back to Adelaide, Australia, and we’ll see how busy Lee is, what with her new baby and all.

Next year I’ll be coming back to put up final versions of the MASSIVE DAY tracks and doing another round of radio promotion.

Until then,

Steve.

Hi folks,

I have decided to move all my ‘other home studio music off here and put it on another site. It was too hard to promote the two aspects of the site simultaneously.

The other site is SOUTHERNSTEVE.WORDPRESS.COM.

So, come here for the blues / jazz with Lee’s vocals, and go there for the Steve muzak, including the Love Bunni Press theme and other punk ditties.

Cheers,

Steve McKenzie.

Mp3 link: Passenger Dreams.

Do you remember falling asleep in the back of a car, the sunlight flicking through your eyelids when the car went past trees, the radio on just above the hum of the engine, the driver silent? Best thing.

To me it seemed a good thing to write a song about, too. It’s another song built around a groovy bass riff and is the first track on our upcoming Massive Day CD (2009).

This mp3 is a recent acoustic mix down of the track, which is actually about three years old - the vocals were one of the first things Lee and I did together. It is supposed to be bassy and moody, but not quite so much as this mp3 would lead you to believe, as some of the definition has gone from the instruments in the rip process. All the more reason for you to contact me to ask for the CD.

There’s lot of weird stuff hidden in the deep background, as I wanted to give it a dreamy, subconscious feel. In particular I have inserted at various points an mp3 of a famous blooper from U.S. AM Radio stalwart Casey Kasem, in which he gets angry about being set up to give a dedication about someone’s dog dying (a little dog called Snuckles) right after having come out of a happy ‘up-tempo ‘number. Not realizing the mike is still on, Kasem totally loses his shit and berates the studio tech guys with all sorts of demands (and foul language).

It’s pretty good to hear, especially for those of us who grew up with his voice representing a kind of smug and distinctly American self-control.

Something we can all understand...

Seeing as it’s mixed so quietly in the song (it is in there, believe me…) you might want to listen to the mp3 on its own. It is here.

Keep your feet on the ground, Casey.

Heavyhead hit the airwaves on Friday night courtesy of Tim Ritchie at Sound Quality on ABC Radio National.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/soundquality/stories/2008/2301501.htm

It’s been ages since my last post. We’ve been away in Canberra, and when we have been here, the internet has been down, or the power has been off, one of the two. Can’t wait to get back to Australia in November, honestly.

A mailout of the Quicksand CD occurred last month to any ABC station that might give it a whirl. That includes Lucky Oceans, Sound Quality, both of the Jazz Track presenters, dig and digg Jazz, Triple J’s Home and Hosed and a few other places. Hopefully someone will give it some air. I also joined Triple J Unearthed, and re-organized everything on APRA.

In the meantime I’ve borrowed an acoustic and got to work on some of the tracks from the forthcoming MASSIVE DAY CD I’m putting together. As promised on the front page, some of these are going live, hopefully today, unless the power dies again.

Adios,

Steve.