Tegan

After a year and a half of a house that can't be heated, old timey sing alongs, big screen movies projected onto the walls, zero privacy, the American Office, Southpark, and one Sister act themed party... the church is no more.

You can only live with your girlfriends brother in a house with no walls for so long. A purpose built echo chamber designed for public speaking- before the days of microphones. A house where you can hear a doona ruffle at the slightest movement.




So I give thanks to my housemates who put up with me while I hijacked the lounge room for days at a time to record the music for this short film. Who, like all the other musicians on this project, played for nothing but sandwiches... but unlike the others, probably cleaned up the mess I made making the sandwiches, and then cooked me dinner.

Most people would've said that the time we could last in the church was roughly a year and a half shorter than we managed. But somehow we rocked it. So it is with fond farewells, I say 'Goodbye Church... Hello Moonlight Motel'.



Tegan The Vegan will be released late 2010...

Chimps are not Chumps, but we are

It's finally here...



I read an article last year explaining that since the global financial crisis, there is a trend for companies to cut costs in advertising. They now run competitions where you, the everyday punter, are given the chance to come up with the jingle/ ad/ slogan in exchange for a big prize (remember the i snack 2.0 debacle of 2009?). It's a brilliant marketing idea - it gets people talking about the brand, and can generate huge amounts of hype. Companies aren't claiming this idea is new - according to kraft - even the name Vegemite was chosen out of a hat in the 1920s!

Well, the Waif and I decided to enter one such competition, and ever since we lost it got me thinking...

The competition we entered was to make a 2 min short film, promoting corporate responsability to the enviroment. The combined prize pool for the top 3 entries was $25,500. That is a huge amount of money, but when you consider that the company got to choose from countless entries with different concepts and visual styles etc...and now has 3 professional films they can use as promo, it isn't that much money. I'm pretty sure that a advertising company would charge a fair bit more for such a huge task.

But lets try and be fair here. These competitions, as opposed to paying an advertising firm, does open the field up - giving people like us the opportunity to throw in our ideas and get them seen by people who would not take a meeting with us. It is democratising the industry, but in my mind, these competitions are still a cop out.

Ads is one of the last strongholds for artists to make money, and this practice of running 'competitions' is further devaluing artists by getting lots of talented people to work for free. No other industry would fall for such a trick. In fact, I'd like to see how many professional accountants would get involved in a competition to do a companies tax.

So to Ethical Investments Australia (which I do genuinely believe is a good company) I say, is your practice of running such a competition actually ethical, or have we indeed been ethical washed?

Heaven in Green

Quincy Jones says that 'A kind of Blue' is the greatest album ever. So I figure, if I mash up two Miles Davis tunes I'll have the new best song on my hands.
This is a picture of Miles ...
he's not so sure he likes where this is heading.
My good friend Mr Salmon Fish helped me out with the mix.
Werd.