Discovering a love of home

[Daniel]

I'm as annoyed as anyone about this expletive of a virus, but there are certain aspects to it which have actually proven to be the difference between not realizing something I wish I had earlier and now seeing something which used to be just absent from my life : in the words of one all time movie, 'There's no place like home' - when I went to China and fell ill there the first time with Gillian Barre, that was piss poor luck and I should have learned my lesson, come home to New Zealand and appreciated this fine country for all it is : a great place to live in.

Instead, I left and went back to LanZhou a second time in the following year, and I distinctly recall listening to my mp3 player, which blared out song after song of music not from this nation. Don't get me wrong, I love foreign bands, but this came at the cost of thinking ones from here were inferior or substandard.

When I began to recover from encephalitis, I eventually began to listen to music from this nation and I bought one or two cds and it grew and spread through my psyche as my music collection diminished in music abroad (except for the stuff I'll always love like Metallica and Pink Floyd) and the homegrown stuff took over - more and more local music which had been right under my nose for so long, yet which I had ignored because of my own arrogant misconceptions that it was incomparable to foreign music.

I recently thought upon this point and realized that this musical discovery was simply the tip of the iceberg : who I was, the person who I used to be, wasn't living right - he was seeing things on tv and hearing them on the radio and chosing them as his personality, rather than experiencing other things, most notably those of local creation, and forming his own identity based on what he saw around.

This song, 'All on Our own' by New Zealand band 'Midnight Youth', was one of the songs which began the change for me, and one which got stuck in my head and would not leave. Sometimes all that is great and personal to someone is right under their nose all along and not found abroad.

In this regard, I'm almost grateful for encephalitis : it cut off my attempt to flee this nation in an attempt to live some sort of grandiose life abroad, and taught me to appreciate home the way I always should have - god bless NZ!

[Daniel]

Just to continue my patriotic blitherings for a moment - here is a very famous local female artist, Brooke Fraser (who I very secretly have an enormous crush on but shhh), singing her song 'Arithmatic' - used to *loathe* soft music and pop music but, although I still detest boybands and teenfads, I've discovered an appreciation for musicians who prefer to keep their music at a respectable volume and try to say something aswell : It's just an added bonus that Brooke's a beautiful lady (dang, she purty)

[Daniel]

'For a While' by kiwi group Stellar, is one which is interesting to me : obvious messages of disaster and calamity and so forth, culminating in Boh Runga (lady singer) and the Pommy guy in England (who's name I forget at the moment) meeting up despite the situation - great song.

[Daniel]

'Pacifier' by Shihad is a song which I'm under the impression was inspired by the Stanley Kubrick movie, 'Clockwork Orange' (imagery contained within) - this was perhaps the one and only homegrown song I liked before I got my a into g and tried other New Zealand bands - whenever I hear it I think of walking through the large, metal green security door in my apartment block in China, being stung as the ridiculous summer heat made it stinging-hot, and having the air sucked out of my lungs by the dryness of the place - if you know degrees celsius (and not farenheit), then you'll know how hot it felt when I say it averaged 40 degrees of dry heat everyday in the summertime, while the apartment was an un airconditioned (aside from 1x fan but powercuts were frequent) concrete box - ouch.

[Daniel]

Here's another one I recently (today) discovered I'd just bought on a compilation cd without realizing I really, really loved : 'Walking in the Rain' by 'The Valves' has this brilliant opening piano segment (they're an NZ band also, BTW) and for a long time, until today that is, I thought these guys were American, or Aussies - just not homegrown, so I like it even more (patriotic urge....sorry about that) - anyway, this is just one of those songs which the intro of just lingers in your mind and will not leave : you hunt and search for the song title in the hope of finding the correct cd, but fail and still the intro is in your head until one day....there it is, found and finally yours (yay!) :

[Daniel]

...........I gotta plonk another Brooke Fraser song in here, 'Deciphering Me' is a song I posted on the New Zealand section but, my goodness she purty and an extremely talented musician. I like this song not only because she sings it or the cool video it has, but to me it's a song about being out of ones own element and desiring a return to somewhere which resembles home : a subject which was so completely personal to me as I can still recall wanting home more than ever when I was in Hong Kong and uncertain of what was wrong with my health. This song reminds me of that whenever I hear it :

[Daniel]

RIGHT! That's it, I've been sitting here in good old New Zealand with my thumb squarely up my butt listening to bands from anywhere else, fleeing to Asia in order to do.....something else, and now I've stumbled upon the backbreaker of my formerly exclusive love of foreign music....Brooke Fraser is a hunny, Shihad are the local franchise, Opshop are a wee pearler of a band, Midnight Youth kick proverbial butt, but today I've discovered another great kiwi band : The Valves. Oh sure, calling yourself a valve is a little odd, but when you play music like 'Walking in the Rain', *and then* like the following, you can call yourselves the backside omissions for all I care - these guys are a fantastic New Zealand band!

[Daniel]

I'm gonna plonk a couple of silly songs in here : my Brooke Fraser fetish/appreciation has been dwelled upon enough, I've posted the hard rock icons which are Shihad/Midnight Youth/The Valves, and mentioned also the fine band 'Stellar' - who wrote an absolute pearler above. This band, Deja Voodoo, are a silly rock band, but also a catchy kiwi rock band, and they really hammer home the stupid side of New Zealands dopey personality it often projects, enjoy :