Old Album Diaries

A love letter to Perth

Back to Sydney, in my little apartment planning to take over the world

Perth was great. What can i say? I missed the way the air smells and the people that dwell. Ever had a place reach out, grab you and call you home? (or is it the other way round?) Perth’s a lot like that to me. I guess I missed my friends.

The show was brilliant, actually, the minions were. Virgin sacrifices, bloodshed and Satan’s minions going gaga. Much thanks to Mish (me loyal zombie queen) for being the photographer of the night because Spidey has, in her infinite wisdom, forgotten her camera. so yes, please mail me pics and bootlegs. Or put them up on youtube and send me a link.

Did I mention offerings? My goat also received a bell kindly bestowed upon by Elizabathory, who’s real life name i now know. It’s good to travel I think, and unravel the mysteries behind the minions’ online handles that remain unknown little things until we meet.

It’s great that the bell bestowed has a long chain. Now spidey can yank the bell out of the chewing goat by the chain before it completes it’s esophagal trip down Satan’s throat.

Much thanks to Adrian, who manned the door for the night at no notice.

Much thanks to Minions, who hailed Satan’s greatness and wished us happy Easter soon after.

Off stage, I got to visit a very old piano who understands how to make my fingers happy. My muses are at peace. (Gracias Flic!)

Again, thanks for the welcome to Perth, minions old and new. It was a great welcome home which meant heaps. Now back at my matchbox apartment in Sydney, I contemplate my memories, something yells at me to return. I might heed that voice when the time is right.

The rest of the year pretty much looks like this:
May17th: Sydney, Vic at the Park
1-3rd June: Singapore, Esplanade Outdoors
Melbourne: Somewhere in the mess of all this
June: Mongolia, Chilling out and writing new shit, visiting
End of the year: Still writing new shit and waiting for minions to holler. Would so love a trip to the Nothern Hemispheres.

They make me sing.

In Perth.
Just did a mock rehearsal. Glad I brought all my wires and leads…I am a scatterbrain so I am eternally paranoid about forgetting

In other news, looking forward to the gig in April 5th. A rather well-loved radio in Perth called RTR wants to interview me.

I’m on on 4th April 2007, 8.30am Perth, Australia Time. Apparently, you can stream me here. to find out what time it is on your end of the world go here

Yeah…and they are making me sing…in every sense of the word. And yes, if you can physically transport yourself, come to my gig the day after.

The best way to get a computer, a gig, and pretty much anything you want etc…

This week’s lesson in life and anime. If you need something, there’s always blackmail.
Ingredients needed:

. A bijin (beauty)
. Preferably male targets
and…
. a total utter lack of compassion or sense of guilt
. oh…and a camera

Much as the cute geek boy in the Anime didn’t deserve THAT, I’ve just of course realised that I can pretty much execute this on many deserving booking agents who consequentially happen to be male. And of course, I’ve also realised that many of my she-minions… are rather fetching creatures. Any volunteers? (Beautiful cross-dressers are also welcomed…even more so actually) You have, after all asked me to perform in your neck of the woods.

Now where is my camera?

Yes booking people, if you are reading this, consider this a warning…. quit dicking around with me. I will make you offers you cannot ..ahem…refuse

As you can guess, there are some pretty horrifying booking tales I can offer to the table today, but eh…I’m off to write more murderous songs to cull my anger. It is a much preferred mode of activity this morning.

How to summon spiders ( a pictorial illustration)

I’ve been hearing all too many requests to play in your neck of the woods dear minions. It makes me happy, very happy, but it also makes me feel like a dancing chicken with a discarded neck.

Here’s an illustrated answer as to why, and how you can help us get to play where you are , muses and all.

Thing is…alot of this happens when I try and book a show….

It peeves me a little, this geographical thing. So near yet so far…All of you minions combined in the interweb number in the thousands, but at in any localised situation, well, the dismal numbers are surreptiously listed in the comic of sorts above.

But I guess what I think I may have come up with a way to solve the “How many can your gig bring ?” problem and how I can definitely come to your neck of the woods if not to catch up, at least to bite off your neck for the incessant gig requests and the resulting headaches.

No worries though, my minions, I think I might have solved the problem. With this

 

Go here. It’s an events demand place. Use it to summon me. Steps are as follows :

1) Go to this link
2) Scroll to the bottom to see if a demand for the city you live in has already been created
3) If not, create it, else add to the existing demand.
4) When you tell your friends about your royal madness, and they are excited about the music, hypnotise/scare/bewitch them into joining in the demand in your area
5) If you have an online altar, go

I’d be waiting for you to summon me minions….

Till then, I shall be entertaining you from spidey’s lair and keeping an eye and a ear out to your summoning….

Coming up: Gigs in Singapore, Sydney, random tales and more….

PS: Apologies to the booking agents who have booked many of my previous shows. Thanks for hearing me out and letting me play.

Your Royal madness is back.

Long Absence. My new year has begun. You see, the Chinese draw their calendars by the moon.

The moon has just recently decided to finish up the year. So Happy New Year. Join me in my howls of joy at the moon.

I know u will bug me about what I’ve been up to the last couple of weeks I’ve gone…well…missing so here it is. As u can see Singapore has been an out of body experience for your royal madness.

Here’s a short report of it anyways.

Subject : Yunyu
Species: Arachnid Humanoid
Term of Hibernation: 4 weeks
Location of Hibernation: Singapore
Reason for Hibernation: Chinese New Year Celebrations.
Observations:

Subject set up alternate nest which she calls a “studio” upon arrival in Singapore. “Much to do” she declares. However, this was closely followed by interruptions from family and strange looking acquaintances who are intrigued or just curious about the resident musician.

Disturbances in the subject’s nest was observed every 5-15 minutes where visitor/s would

1) fiddle with the musical equipment in the subject’s nest,
2) sing boisterously, to subject’s dismay,mostly out of tune,
3) Lick the mic
4) ask the subject about the joys of the music industry, and of course,
5) ask why she refuses to sign up to Australian Idol/ Singapore Idol for the matter.

Upon repeated interruptions and questions of identical or similar variety, the subject was observed to have given up any attempt to consort with her muses or engage in minion talk.

Unable to cope with a music-less existence, Subject was last seen spending an hour per day learning how to play the Tabla from musical gurus to stave off her madness.

Friday 7/3/06

Subject has been returned to Australia. Observed to have spent the last 3 days rather frantically answering unanswered emails and finally cutting up some home filmed gigs that she promised said minions eons ago.

Subject also has gig confirmed in Perth, Australia. And some news for long lost minions, which she will announce personally shortly.

Observation ends.

ps: no footage of tabla playing available from subject yet who simply refuses to be filmed as a beginner. As a reference, here’s some real tabla playing while subject practices some basic moves. (It’s a lot harder than it looks)

Flight homeward and setting up the lair

Hola minions
Hailing from Singapore at the moment. here till the start of march. Apparently we have run out of plane tickets so I’m marooned for a couple more days after the Chinese New Year.

If u ask, the flight home was “interesting”, I was stuck between snot kid and flab man (who really should have been put on a double seat despite a full plane). Post an 8 hour flight from Sydney to Singapore I had one squashed left boob and had a bio hazardous right trouser leg full of toddler snot and puke. Much interestingness. That should put me off breeding or eating anything greasy for the next couple of months.

Other highlights, sent my kid brother to the army this Friday. Getting hauled off to the army is what is known as a mandatory “rite of passage” on the glorious island of Singapore. Good for people watching when there are families crying more than the entire cast of the “Bold and Beautiful”. Not much condolences for my brother, Dad’s an army freak and his only sister is fiendishly excited about the fact that her brother is about to be shaved balder than a turkey.

All good though, I don’t see many things fazing my brother.

Hopefully I’ll still be getting some work done. Families are awesome things, they are also distracting things. Mostly, it’s about getting them to understand that once I whip out my powerbook and am either drawing or writing or talking to meself, it’s time to steer clear.

I’m strolling through some footage of the house gigs at the moment, cutting through them and contemplating which ones to throw out…

Meanwhile if u think I’m hopelessly in love with my powerbook I see someone comfortably worse.

Packing panicking and some globby bits of joy!

Hola Minions,

how’s your world these days?
I’m busy packing for my yearly trip back to Singapore to visit folks, scare the natives and stock up on pretty electronic supplies….and writing, writing writing.

Then I poke out once again from my studios, just learnt that MacLife’s interview with us re: Lenore’s Song is now out. Though I have been prematurely aged (not 27…yet) I am utterly utterly joyous. MacLife is a fav mag subscription on mine so I feel I have come full circle, in a teeny tiny way. Oh and I’m very glad my minions get a mention on there too. The only thing left out was my editor’s credits Adam Van Roojen, who was the real hero when it came to the painful world of editing but u guys already knew that.

98 KUPD on the lopsided world of L has featured your royal madness on the 50 bands discovered on myspace….quiet quiet vindication.

Joy o joy o joy.

Yesterday Sofie Loizou and I finally got all the tetchy tech issues resolved and buckled down to film some gigs from the house, it was an experience let’s just say, so expect more visual offerings on youtube soon. Let me just figure out which country I’m in first. 🙂

See u soon, in more sense than one.

2 geisha girls (of sorts) and a pet goat.

Peats Ridge was a rainy rainy festival with happy happy people who took genuine holidays because mobile signals just didn’t work. So I was pretty glad to find my bandmate Sofie Loizou when we did. (I did remember doing bog laps round the campsite screaming at my mobile in vile attempts to get the ocassional precious precious signal)

So post finding bandmates and setting up virgin tent, the rest of the day was pretty much spent feeling rather wired about the gig.

And all things considered, this was probably the best gig we’ve played for a long, long while now — which pretty much went like this…

first song – *jitters* 5 curious onlookers (to put it nicely, no one really knows who the hell Yunyu is :))
mid third song – half a tent packed
last 5 minutes – tent overflowing with people pushing in (also had a pterodactyl dancing amongst the crowd…amidst standing ovations)
post last song – encores, yells and more encores

For those who were there, much apologies, the festival had a strict schedule to keep for the stage. So we pretty much weren’t allowed to do encores. 😛

My only regret is that I never got to make the full tent of patrons say “hail satan” to my pet goat who also made it on stage, which hopefully would have looked something like this.

To the organisers, if u are reading this, thanks for letting us play. We don’t really get opportunities to scare hundreds of people at a time and we enjoy it very much.

To the new minions who found us, Welcome. And if u have taken pics of the show, send us some. I’d love to put the little suckers up.
To the rest of yous, we shall be back with more offerings for in this new year, all shall be served. So stay tuned.

ps: To adventureboi, (Alex…We waited for your wine supplies at the drum media tent for 15mins but had to run off amidst gear issues…sorry Alex! Sorry sorry wine!)

It’s funny now, I’m knowing your internet handles far better than your real world IDs. Here u go, enjoy the festival pics! My pet goat sends its greetings. Spidey will be back in a wee bit!

So near…so smeggin’ far.

How’s All?

Well it’s still sort of a win I guess…for us in the Sunscreen film fest. Lenore ended up being up on the top 5 but missed out on the top prizes. I think it still means that she gets an airing on the SBA network, meaning most pub TVs / Cafes and stuff.

Tis all good I guess. But we needed the cash. So the journey for Tahnee and I goes on as we go around sourcing the cash to film Fireflies with. Maybe if I offered myself up as a medical specimen I’d have the time to write new material (almost undisturbed) and the cash on hand.

Still liked to thank those who voted if u are reading this :). I just wish there were more of you. 🙁

A congrats to those who won though, as can be seen here and on the sunscreen festival’s myspace site. Make something beautiful with the cash or I’ll be sending evil eeevil thoughts your way for disrespecting the beautiful cash and opportunities sent your way.

Been neglecting the blog for a bit except with news but I really need to get this year’s remaining projects out the way first…which includes playing in the festival next week (Sat). More excitement post christmas and new year’s I promise 🙂

Meanwhile, amidst mild bouts of sulking , I’m busy building myself a theremin, and hoping to put it into some decent use.. A good dose of geekiness should keep my me sulks at bay for today. 🙁

And in case u wondered what set my theremin obsessions off… (Although the instrument here is described as a Matryomin…a variation by Masami Takeuchi)

You have all been tagged

How’s all? I’ve been busy. Between writing and sorting out festival details and cold running more shots for gigs to be broadcasted to youtube, I am wishing I am this deity.

For those who happen to be going to going to Peats Ridge Festival I play 30/12/06 at 2115hrs at the underworld stage. For the rest of u, one moment, your royal madness is busy sorting this out with the help of trusty camera and the interweb.

Just discovered that I have been tagged by

colettes_grave

To do the following.

“Name ten of life’s simple pleasures that you like most, and then pick ten people to do the same. Try to be original and creative and not to use things that someone else has already used.
Also, try not to list “porn” for every answer. *eyeroll*”

10 life’s simple pleasures? (in no particular order)

1)watching those who called u a freak grow up to be accountants and…hate it.
2)smell of toast bread in the morning
3)mammoth sized coffee mugs filled with nuclear strength coffee
4)epiphanies that come at the convenient hour of 4am
5)writing spells that devour sleep and sanity
6)talking to my minions and realising that they are quite positively more twisted than I can ever hope to be.
7)Beer…lotsa beer with good friends. and Sake and peanuts and a good old movie marathon
8)Convincing the tax man that I am indeed a religion and thus should not pay tax.
9) Convincing nuns that god loves porn and desires war. I so have proof! — Darwin is my friend.
10) Successfully Convincing priests that I am indeed possessed by the devil and need to be blessed continuously by holy beer.

Now that I’m done. Guess what I tag  A L L of you. (no I can’t count and don’t read instructions and I don’t understand the number 10)

Your royal madness
Yunyu