[If I were to write for The Punch, this is what I'd write about.]

As a father of one daughter, and potentially another on the way, I’m concerned about the sexualisation of our youth. Music, movies, TV and celebrities are influencing our youth much more than ever before, with sexually explicit (or at least suggestive) messages.

Take for example the work of recent pop music sensation Lady Gaga. Here’s a line from her top 40 hit “LoveGame”:

I’m educated in sex, yes
and now I want it bad, want it bad

The chorus of that same song goes:

Don’t think too much, just bust that stick
I wanna take a ride on your disco stick

I’m sorry, but what a tramp! Sure you could excuse this as using sex to sell records or to distract you from her lack of talent, but when you take into account that this kind of material is being beemed straight into our kids field of view, it’s a lot more serious.

Here’s another example from Gaga’s “Poker Face”:

And baby when it’s love, if it’s not rough it isn’t fun

What message do you think this sends girls and young women?

And there’s more, other masterpieces from this tart include “I Like It Rough”, “Shake Ur Kitty” and “Beautiful, Dirty, Rich”. Seriously. I don’t mean to pick on this one individual, she’s nothing unique or original, she’s following in the footsteps of The Pussycat Dolls, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears etc. But this latest example is pushing the boundaries of suggestive and wandering into dangerous territory, in my opinion.

I’m no prude, if you’re into this sort of thing then I’m happy for you, but children shouldn’t be exposed to it. Whether she likes it or not Lady Gaga is a role model for young girls and they will hear these lyrics and see the slutty clothes she wears and think that this is the way they should be talking and behaving. And it’s going to get them into trouble.

Some would argue that everyone has to make up their own mind and choose to follow the lead of “celebrities”. Fair enough, but when you’re young it’s often only once it’s too late that you are able to make up your mind and choose to do the sensible thing. It makes me sick that even one young girl might get into a world of hurt because some no-talent pop star and her idiot record company think they’ll sell a ton of records by lathering on the dirty lyrics. These people are so desperate to be famous they will compromise everything, and jeopardise anyone, to get get it.

Compare this then to another current popular artist, Lilly Allen. Her lyrics are also quite explicit, but the tone is very different. Laden with sarcasm, Allen takes a swipe at modern pop culture with her own form of social commentary. Take this line from her hit single “The Fear”:

I’ll take my clothes off and it will be shameless
Cuz everyone knows thats how you get famous
…
Life’s about film stars and less about mothers
It’s all about fast cars and passing each other
But it doesn’t matter cause I’m packing plastic
and that’s what makes my life so f***ing fantastic
…
And I am a weapon of massive consumption
and it’s not my fault its how I’m program to function

I quite like this song, because by my interpretation this is a much more positive message. It’s not ok to do whatever it takes to be famous, it’s not ok to just spend money and float through life with no purpose. The dry British sarcasm is subtle, but I think (ok, I hope) the audience can pick up on this.

Her latest single “Not Fair” is much more saucy, dealing with inequality within relationships:

There’s just one thing
that’s getting in the way
When we go up to bed
you’re just no good
Its such a shame
I look into your eyes
I want to get to know you
And then you make this noise
and its apparent it’s all over

It’s not fair
And I think you’re really mean
I think you’re really mean
I think you’re really mean
Oh you’re supposed to care
But you never make me scream
You never make me scream

Sure, it might be a bit of fun, but Miss Allen is standing up for the rights of women. The setting for the song is similar to that of Lady Gaga’s songs, young women engaging in sexual activity, but the attitudes of the two are light-years apart.

There’s no point trying to hide from the fact that young adults are going to do what young adults do, and that’s not what I’m suggesting. What I’m suggesting is that A) children shouldn’t be exposed to the same content as adults and young adults, and B) the messages we allow those in the media to send out need to be positive. For girls this means encouraging them to respect themselves and others, and to aspire to more than just buying clothes, flashing their undies and telling the boys they “want it bad”.

Let’s let kids be kids and stop those that would attempt to turn them into adults before they’re ready. I found this initiative recently, whilst reading about an unrelated topic. It’s a blog called Shaping Youth, a “forum about media and marketing’s influence on kids”, that aims to tackle the kinds of issues I raise here. I took some comfort in the knowledge that there are people out there trying to do something about the Lady Gaga’s of this world.

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A couple of weeks ago, Jenn took me away for the weekend (for my birthday) and also threw in a full Swedish massage. Whilst laying there on the creaky table, getting the ol’ chop-suey from some buff guy, I started to realise the music they play works really well. We’re talking rain, rainforests, rivers, wind, waves, birds, more rain, pan flutes and celtic harps. And thunder is also quite common, which I kinda like, but I know some people wouldn’t find it relaxing at all (yes Jenn I mean you).

So I’ve acquired a selection of soundtracks. If you actually listen to it, it’s pretty boring, and you can really notice where they have played with it by adding sound effects etc. But if you just have it playing in the background while you work it’s quite nice. Very relaxing. Give it a try.

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And the subject is the most successful Australian hip-hop group ever. I remember getting teased for having a Resin Dogs CD many years ago (yes, you scarred me Ots!) but it seems like times have changed and the local sound has come of age.

I think it’s good that urban music and culture is escaping it’s American roots and that groups such as the Hoods can gain popularity (and more importantly in their own society) without having to fake an American accent. Just look at the urban music scene in the UK, it’s massive now, and places like Leeds and Birmingham are dripping with talented artists making a name and a career for themselves.

Whilst at the moment it still seems that the success of UK urban music stops at the border, there are a few pioneers breaking into Europe and the US. So I’m sure it won’t be long before you here rapping in proper loiner or cockney accents as much as those of D-town and the LBC. Some day some Aussie accents should join the party.

See what people are blogging about: Hilltop Hoods, urban music, hip-hop, UK urban music

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Apple announces it’s new iPhone (iPod, mobile phone, palm-top). Too bad I’ve just recently got a new phone and new iPod.

It does look pretty darn nifty, especially the touch screen interface. It’s interesting that this final (?) version is quite different to the many different prototypes or suggestions that have been floating around for years.

The video demos on the site show the interface in action, but I wonder how well this would work in practice. That’s a hell of a lot of fairly complex functionality to squish into one device without any buttons. Most of their devices are quite usable, but lately the usability of Apple products has slipped a bit.

For example, my new 80GB iPod has a few surprises. Firstly the search functionality is new (or at least it wasn’t on my old one) and seems OK, but it might be pushing the limits of the controls (scroll ‘wheel’ and buttons) available.

Then there’s the fact you need to wake it up by pushing ‘menu’, on my old iPod you could just press play and keep going where you left off. The extra step is annoying, especially as the Apple logo that appears whilst it’s waking up is hard to spot and at first I thought it wasn’t doing anything at all.

Oh and then there’s this little gem: if a track has an artist but not an album, browsing by ‘artists’ doesn’t show the track! You can get to it by browsing through ‘songs’ or by using the search though. For some reason I immediately started thinking this was because an SQL query buried in there somewhere joined the artist table with the album table in order to show the tracks for the artist in question. How geeky.

See what people are blogging about: iPhone, iPod, Apple

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Top 10 most played songs

1. No Other Way – Jack Johnson
2. The Dark End of the Street – The Commitments
3. Rescue Me – Fontella Bass
4. Better Together – Jack Johnson
5. I Love You More Than I Ever Had – Ray Charles
6. Banana Pancakes – Jack Johnson
7. (Sweet Sweet Baby) Since You’ve Been Gone – Aretha Franklin
8. Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours – Stevie Wonder
9. Never Know – Jack Johnson

Top 10 most played artists

1. Jack Johnson
2. Aretha Franklin
3. Diana Ross & The Supremes
4. The Commitments
5. U2
6. Elvis Presley
7. Craig David
8. Guns N’ Roses
9. Destiny’s Child
10. Michael Jackson

Top 5 most recently acquired albums

1. Back to Basics – Christina Aguilera
2. Chinese Democracy – Guns N’ Roses
3. Collision Course – Jay-Z/Linkin Park
4. Greatest Hits – Linda Ronstadt
5. Harley and Rose – The Black Sorrows

These stats really make me question how iTunes handles having two users sharing the same library, as this is clearly skewed towards Jenn’s listening habits (I mean, come on, Jack Johnson?!).

This is also a flaw with iPhoto etc in that they haven’t made it easy at all to share the one library across the multiple users of one machine, which you’re going to have happen in a home PC environment. As a matter of fact even getting it to chare the library involved too much mucking around (CHMOD and CHOWN have no place in a home PC!).

ps: I’m using Doug’s Scripts to extract stats now, rather than the overly complex way I use to. Even better would be SQLtunes which will export play stats into a mySQL database so you can analyse them properly (thank heavens for the GROUP BY clause!). Too bad the old mySQL database I have running is not accessible from my Mac :(

See what people are blogging about: iTunes, play stats, SQLtunes

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Some classic examples that have confused me in the past, are:

Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix: “excuse me while I kiss this guy” instead of “excuse me while I kiss the sky”.

Stand By My Woman by Lenny Kravitz: “I can’t go on without a ho” instead of “I can’t go on without her”.

Going Gets Tough by Billy Ocean: “Well go and get stuffed” instead of “When the going gets tough”.

Money For Nothin’ by Dire Straits “Money for nothing and chips for free” instead of “money for nothing and chicks for free” (hey, I was a school boy and going to Red Lea after school for hot chips was much more important than any girl!)

One more I thought for sure I was misunderstanding was What You Waitin For by Gwen Stefani, which I heard as “take a chance you stupid hoe”. But when I checked, that is the actual lyric! Guess that makes sense, considering the artist.

ps: yes I got my hearing tested last week, it’s almost perfect! :)

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I was recently reading a post regarding typewriter art, the grand-daddy of ASCII art. If you thought it was arduous in a word processor, imagine the patience you’d need to do that on a typewriter? That’s monk level dedication, either that or you’d die from liquid paper fumes.

This reminded me of my previous post on chalk art and some other unconventional media for art. Perhaps my most favourite is ‘fantasy art’: the hallmark or cheesy fantasy/action movies, heavy metal album covers and Sandman panel vans.

The three unholy pillars of this particular art form would have to be:

Barbarian art (aka cheesy action movie)

You know what I mean, think Arnie, cold steel and animal skins. There were a whole bunch of these movies in the late 70s and early 80s, including of course the Conan series of films. Since it’s taken off as an independent art form of it’s own, with many artists making a living from this!

There’s something strangely enticing about these images, but I just can’t put my finger on it.

So synonymous is this genre with some-what dodgy movies, that it’s often the subject of spoof—the films Army of Darkness and National Lampoon’s Vacation spring to mind.

Heavy metal album art

I can’t say which came first, the barbarian movies or the evil albums, but these are awesome. My personal favourites are albums by Iron Maiden (with that cute recurring skeletal chap!) and Dio. Excellent stuff. By the way, my thanks goes to Frankie Death for allowing me—or not as was more likely the case—to ‘backup’ his collection of Iron Maiden and Megadeth CDs :)

Of course you can’t discuss this genre without discussing the covers of albums by Cannibal Corpse, which are…disturbing.

Auto art

Imagine driving around Sydney in the early 80s with Conan and some nude chick on the side of your van? I remember seeing lots of these when I was growing up (yes, I’m a westie) but nothing seems to remain of this once proud Aussie institution of manhood.

Of course it’s not just Sandman panel vans any more, airbrushing is now a form of high art in hot rod and custom shops (think American Chopper or American Hot Rod). Whilst the late model car customisation scene is also big on elaborate airbrushing, it’s normally more ‘flames and stripes’ rather than ‘swords and skin’ variety.

I was surprised to find quite a few custom paint shops in Australia, such as Kreative Power, House of Kolor and Advanced Airbrush. How pissed would you be if a pigeon shat on that?!

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Oh those whacky Scandinavians. Rock on!

PS: Unfortunately Malta were at the bottom of the ladder with only “un pont”, but at least they made the final. And don’t forget their fantastic second place last year. Surely per capita that’s got to be the best showing ever. (My wife is Maltese, if you’re wondering why I might care)

See what people are blogging about: Eurovision, Finland, Lordi, heavy metal

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It was a fantastic night of Dublin Soul, blues and rock. Andrew has a fantastic voice and he’s quite a good guitarist too. There were lots of old favourites and a few of his new songs too. Of course he did “Mustang Sally” to perfection…there may well have been a riot if he didn’t :)

His sister Niamh was the support act, so it must run in the family, fairly similar stuff. For the finale Andrew pulled out some Hendrix and Steppenwolf, just to make sure the oldies woke up in time to leave! You may well think he’s all about soul but he definitely knows how to rock.

See what people are blogging about: Andrew Strong, the commitments, soul music

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1. Aretha Franklin
2. Diana Ross & The Supremes
3. Craig David
4. Destiny’s Child
5. Elvis Presley

Quite different from last time! But since then my library has been rebuilt several times, moved from PC to Mac, my iPod has been reformatted twice and my wife got a Shuffle…..her stats are skewing my data :)

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