There was a minor fuss across the musical blogoshere last week when Elvis Costello’s label, Universal, seemingly announced that his new album, Momofuku, would be only released on vinyl and via digital download, not CD (a format which, despite everything, still accounts for 80-90% of all sales).

It was a minor fuss mostly because the man who has changed direction so many, many times, and once enjoyed being described as a genre tourist, is now a minor artist. The days when Elvis Costello was, to quote the title of his first hits collection, The Man, have long since passed.

The other reason it was a minor fuss was because it simply wasn’t true. Lost amongst the noise was the fact that the CD was to be released two weeks later in a normal way, and, indeed, if anyone had cared to look, was listed on Amazon as a pre-order.

I’m guessing Universal had a Radiohead moment and tried to do a ‘look how radical and modern we all are’. Instead they simply came off looking a little bit sad.

Or perhaps it was some strange reaction to the very negative fan response to the new double repackagings of some of his earlier catalogue. Who knows.

However, what does complicate this is the announcement made by the artist a couple of months back, in Mojo, that he would no longer be releasing albums, just tracks online. That would have been said when he knew this was in the pipeline.

All very strange.

Aren’t famous people odd?

Who’d be a bunny in Bali?

We tried to be good parents this weekend but things came together and plotted to confound us.

Brigid decided that an Easter egg was the right to thing give Bella, our teenager, and so went into the local deli and noting that the eggs were about $10 opted to buy a chocolate Easter bunny.

As you do.

We arrived back from dinner in Ubud last night to find two very satisfied dogs, licking the tinfoil and then going utterly spare around the property and across the furniture as the sugar hit.

Our friend Sarah had also bought Bella (and her kids) a choccy bunny. The same night she went to a school play and sat on her bag…bunnies inside..mashing said rabbits in her bag.

Messy.

In desperation I went into the local Hardy’s Supermarket this evening and found the very last little chocolate bunny on the shelves. It was Rp38.000 and I took it to the young girl at the check out. It can be quite a wait there. The concept of a queue for less than a dozen items is still alien in Bali, so I waited for 15 minutes patiently whilst the lady buying 40 serves of pot noodles was processed. The checkout girl, quite young, had also not mastered the art of entering the item once then changing the quantity to 40 and was running each one past the scanner individually. After a while you don’t blink at such things here.

Then it was my turn and she tried to run the bar code across the scanner a couple of times…to no avail as it was on the tinfoil wrapped around the bunny. She then smiled at me and decided to make the code more readable and, putting the bunny down, put her hand on it and pushed it flat. Chocolate oozed out the side of the now flattened foil and she smiled again as the reader responded. Cok!, I said, sekerang ini tidak bagus, Saya tak mau. Which roughly translated is what in gods name have you done..I don’t want it now. You must take it said she, no said I. She then rushed off without a word and the young guy behind me started laughing. Ten minutes later she returned, flat bunny, now with part of the foil missing, in hand. Ma’af Bapak, Mungkin Habis (sorry sir, it looks like it’s out of stock) she said with a grin and started to put the chocolate roadkill into my plastic bag and punched the total key.

No…I don’t want it.

You must take now, broken.

Yes, but you broke it.

Sorry mister, you must pay.

No…..

And she decided that I was a lost cause and demurred. I guess it went back on the shelf.

As Brigid said…this island can be very Harry Enfield.

Bella got a chocolate bar.

Just another day in paradise…well almost.

I just about side swiped a motorbike the night before last night blatting along the bypass in the newish car (SUV…sorry…but you try wending your way through those-far-from-the-tourist-path forest tracks looking for obscure lava pot manufacturers as we did yesterday, in a Toyota Avanza…I make no, ok few, apologies). They, the close calls, happen more often than I care to think about it simply because of the mayhem on the roads.

The difference this time was that it was uniformed policeman on his Honda. He didn’t blink. That’s an odd thing here, when you almost clip someone on a bike as they swerve unlooking into a road, often under the age of ten or with their whole family on board, there is never a moment of shock, surprise, or a thought given to future safety it seems. No the bike swerves and carries on without a glance. And so it was with the plod on the bike.

But I, on the other hand, was a bundle of sweaty nerves. Imagine bowling a policeman here. Aside from the physical damage I might do to him, imagine the cost, the grinning opportunity that would have presented itself to his comrades. I was shaken and stirred..

It really doesn’t bear dwelling on, so I won’t…

Aside from that moment for pause, yesterday was pretty normal. We drove, as I said, into the hills, sourcing bits and pieces, headed down back roads, some flooded, some rather rusak, others tidak ada jalan, just a winding track…

We saw several men sitting on a crane, seemingly just hanging out, with no safety restraints anywhere…

We saw a man taking balloons to a party..

And we realised it was Easter….

*oh and the lyrics above? Today I’m listening exclusively to nosebleed techno…

This was a Sunday chuckle for me..maybe I’m easily amused

There is a rich, deep kind of irony that must be shared. I’m blogging this from the Apple store in the Mall of America, because I’m too amused to want to wait until I get back to my hotel room.

I went to attend a screening of the creationist propaganda movie, Expelled, a few minutes ago. Well, I tried … but I was Expelled! It was kind of weird — I was standing in line, hadn’t even gotten to the point where I had to sign in and show ID, and a policeman pulled me out of line and told me I could not go in. I asked why, of course, and he said that a producer of the film had specifically instructed him that I was not to be allowed to attend. The officer also told me that if I tried to go in, I would be arrested. I assured him that I wasn’t going to cause any trouble…..

read on….

Pharyngula: EXPELLED!

And the comments say a whole lot more, especially further down.

One must ask, why….

I’ve been meaning to scribble something about popstars past their creative prime for a while, perhaps this gruesome beast could give me a little push along.

Why do they do these things…surely they don’t need the money?? I’m told the record is worse than the cover.

There is no excuse for not having written anything in recent days, beyond lazy. Indeed, yesterday was Nyepi here in Bali, the day of tranquillity, of cleansing, when nothing is supposed to happen and nobody is to leave your property, show a light or use any technology. Of course reality intervenes sometimes and I noted that my internet connection was the slowest it’s ever been here..a crawl…and that is saying a lot….so clearly someone was online.

But it is an incredible day to be in Bali. On the night before, all hell breaks loose as the Oga-Ogas are paraded and then destroyed, and much Arak is consumed. On the day however, the silence is, to use a much overdone cliché, deafening. In a most pleasant way of course.

Sitting in the garden without the hum of 100cc Sepeda Motors and horns coming from the road is quite something and I can’t help but feel that removal of all vehicles from the road for a day has to have an, at least short term, positive effect on the air in the urban areas. The traffic in Kota Denpasar of recent has ground pretty much to a halt throughout the day and seems only to be getting worse as the roads struggle to cope…like much of this macet plagued country.

Last night we sat and ate our Chilli Pakoras in almost complete darkness..it’s a great way to let the senses concentrate on the heat.

I did the almost impossible and didn’t listen to a CD, MP3 or anything else (although to be absolutely truthful I did, very, very quietly, so the banjar enforcement squad wouldn’t hear, sit through a couple of my teach yourself Adobe Illustrator movies that I’m studying daily in the vague hope I can get my head around it).

But today of course I’m firing, craving, again and am continuing my ongoing love affair with the Matthew Dear album, Asa Breed.

This one has lasted for a while, since late last year, but it creeps up again over and over. Texan, Dear’s techno mixes, under the Audion moniker, have been both critical and popular, albeit niche popular, successes over the past couple of years, but it’s his twisted electronic pop, under his own name, which has really fascinated me. I love this record, and, another cliché, its so modern. But it truly is, it’s a truly radical record mashed with a truly conservative record and it all sounds rather like what will be, prophetic in the same way that odd German stuff that arrived circa 1972-4 was. Its Lee Hazlewood meets Can meets Lee Perry meets Carl Craig meets Lennon ’67 meets Kevin Ayers with a bunch of intriguing stop-offs along the way. The reference points are worn rather obviously but this, often, stunningly gorgeous record is its own master. It’s the perfect contemporary pop record.

In my opinion of course.

With that in mind..it does piss one off when, having been an early adopter, the artist / label thinks its perfectly reasonable to release a second edition of an album with extra tracks……and then complains when some feel the need to borrow a copy off the net.