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bantan · 6 years

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JP FC Vol. 2 - My Biography with BTS: SUGA edition

BTS JAPAN OFFICIAL FANCLUB MAGAZINE VOL.2

Translation @kocchi Raws @szkvr For full images send me a follow request at @szkvr! DO NOT REPOST SCANS ANYWHERE

My Biography with BTS: SUGA edition

A corner to look back on how the members were raised. Volume 2 features the calm and fatherly presence, SUGA!

Growing from a cheeky child to a boy who loved books

I was born in Daegu, the third city of southern South Korea, and raised there until I moved to the capital. I was a very normal child when I was younger. I liked to fool around, so I don’t think my kindergarten teachers liked me very much. (laughs) I remember they’d scold me to “Be careful!” a lot. I liked sports and I was good at running. I was chosen as a relay athlete from primary school all the way to high school. Study-wise, I was above average.

I liked to play with my friends outside when I was young, but that changed as I grew older. You know how when most kids go out, they just gather in the park and don’t do anything in particular? I didn’t like that, so I stayed in my house on the weekends more often. My mother even told me “You should go outside with your friends once in a while.” (laughs)

I have an obsession for collecting things, and when I was young I used to collect tons of books. I wanted to become one of those refined, educated adults, and I was at that age for that kind of behaviour. I read novels, poems, essays, newspapers… mature genres that didn’t suit my age. Also, for some reason, up until middle school I had the habit of reading things from the last page backwards. Even now I read books on occasion. I can process lumps of text at once, so my reading speed is really fast.

My memory of my first love in primary school… doesn’t exist. I really don’t have one. The further you go from Seoul to the rural regions, the more conservative everything is. The boys and girls didn’t talk to each other in the school I went to. Just being near a girl was super embarrassing, so I really didn’t even talk to them.

Started making songs in middle school after meeting hip-hop

The first time I became interested in music was when I saw a Korean artist named Stony Skunk on TV. It was the era of ballads at that time, and on a music show of 18 groups you’d get maybe 10 ballads, 5 idols, and 3 other genres. They were one of those other 3. It was really cool how they were different from the others. I didn’t have any interest in music until then, but thanks to Stony Skunk I started listening to hip-hop and reggae music. I also received influence from Epik High. It was just around then that the MP3 player came out, but I listened to them on my Panasonic CD player.

At the same time I started listening to music like that, I also started to write lyrics. It wasn’t like anyone told me to, but for some reason I felt like I had to. I started making raps in primary school and started making music in middle school. Back then, there was no one around me that liked hip-hop… Now it’s really popular in South Korea again, but back when I started listening it was like an outdated genre from the past. I was probably the only one in the town that rapped. My friends would complain when I rapped at karaoke. You know how hip-hop has gestures where you move your hands? They teased me for that too.

But I’ve always liked hip-hop and I believe it was in my second year of middle school when I stood on the stage for the first time at the school festival. I performed Dynamic Duo’s “Go Back” with a friend. I didn’t like standing in front of other people, but for some reason I felt like I had to at the time. I wanted to show the rap I practiced too… even though I was really bad. (laughs)

I actually wanted to go to an arts high school, so I composed classic songs when I was in middle school. But the school fees were so expensive, I ended up going to a regular high school. I told my father “I’ve already done enough music, so I’ll study hard in high school,” but I didn’t end up doing that. (laughs)

Properly began rapper activities after joining a local crew

In middle school I only composed for my own benefit, as a hobby. I seriously started creating songs after changing my MIDI program. In my first year of high school, I gave my song to a person who was like a teacher to me to listen to, and they really liked it. That was when they introduced me to a hip-hop crew called D-town, which I joined. That song was like a new age beat, a hip-hop beat song like Nujabes. By the way, that teacher who praised me ended up going to Berklee College of Music and is now a music director for movies.

I started rapping properly once I entered the crew. While I had dabbled with rap from primary school, there was no one around me who rapped too so I thought I was the best. (laughs)

So that’s how I started activities in the Daegu underground. But even then I knew that I couldn’t feed myself by doing music underground. Many of the hyungs who did music with me back then were around 10 years older than me, some of them even in their thirties. The hyungs would do part-time jobs as they did music, and that looked really tiring to me. Even during our lives, it was difficult getting 100 people in the audience, and I hated that… I thought if I succeeded, I could be the bridge between the underground scene. There are so many cool people doing music in the underground, I wanted to become famous and put them in a better environment, I wanted the world to know about my hyungs music.

It was at this time that I found out Big Hit was holding an audition in Daegu. The only thing I knew about it was that it was a company the composer Bang Shihyuk had created, but I tried out anyway. The next day, I was immediately informed that I passed. From what I heard later on, he took one look at me and decided I passed right away. Even though I was really bad at rapping then too. (laughs)

An unexpected trainee life after first arriving at Seoul…?

I came to Seoul in my second year of high school on November 7, 2010. I remember it even now.

I joined the company not because I wanted to rap, but because I wanted to compose. That’s why I didn’t have to dance, could leave rapping to the people good at it, and just focus on becoming a producer myself. Yet it ended up completely different, huh? (laughs) Back then, the company planned to have a full rap group rather than an idol group, but that all changed. The members back then were RM, J-HOPE, and me. And also i11even and IRON. If we had debuted like that, I believe our rap would have been good but the group would have failed. (laughs)

The future SUGA aims for as a rapper and producer

The reason why I was able to pursue the path of music like this is hugely thanks to my brother, who is 4 years older than me. He started liking hip-hop because of my influence, but the only person in my family who didn’t oppose me taking the audition was my brother. They didn’t like the fact I was doing musical activities in the first place, and my relatives would say “You, doing music? Study more instead,” to me. That’s why the only one I let listen to the songs I made was my brother. I also told my brother first when I passed the audition. We really get along so well, like best friends. I normally don’t drink alcohol, but the only time I make the exception is to drink with my brother.

Of course, everyone in my family now supports me. The relatives who told me to study now ask for my signature. (laughs)

I still have a desire to do producing activities from here on out. I don’t have any greed towards the centre position, I just want to do music. I don’t have any interest towards the entertainment industry, so while everyone else wants to act or go on variety shows I don’t want to at all. (laughs) But first, I believe BTS has to become number 1 in both South Korea and Japan. And I want to aim to be the best in both rapping and producing. It may take some time, but we have to do it.

BTS JAPAN OFFICIAL FANCLUB MAGAZINE VOL.2

Translation @kocchi Raws @szkvr For full images send me a follow request at @szkvr! DO NOT REPOST SCANS ANYWHERE

#mine #bts #fc mag

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dazstormretro · 5 years

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My First Taste of Nintendo - Jan 1992

It was now January 1992 and yet another one of my mates had now joined the ranks of being a proud Mega Drive owner. As a surprise for Christmas his parents had bought him the console with a copy of Disney’s Quack Shot and ToeJam & Earl, Sega was starting to destroy the competition.

This was of course the time of the now famous console wars, Sega vs Nintendo. Back in the early 90’s you were either a Sega fan or a Nintendo fan, never both. Kids in the schoolyard took this very seriously and over the years I’ve heard of numerous fights breaking out over a persons loyalty to their particular console.

It was around this time that I started hanging out with another friend from my village called Ben. Ben and I had grown up together through primary school and now both attended the same secondary school. Unfortunately Ben had gone to the dark side, he was a Nintendo owner. Up until this point the only experience I’d had with a Nintendo product was Robs Game & Watch and my sisters Game Boy. Apart from Tetris the only other game she owned was Bart Simpson’s Escape from Camp Deadly. Obviously I would dabble with the Game Boy from time to time but I wasn’t a big fan of its monochromatic green screen plus it couldn’t possibly match up to a Sega product!

It was whilst hanging out at Bens house one evening that I first played on his Nintendo Entertainment System. I must admit I felt a little dirty at first, I was playing on the competitions hardware, no way could it come close to Sega’s greatness? But after only a few minutes of playing Mega Man 2 I was actually enjoying myself. Next we tried Chip ‘n’ Dale Rescue Rangers and once again I was surprised how good the game played, especially in two player mode. Finally Ben produced his latest game which he’d got that Christmas, Super Mario 3. Now I might have been a Sega Fanboy but even I knew what Super Mario 3 was. Magazines had been featuring this latest Mario title for ages as it had officially come out in Japan back in 1988 but for some reason we didn’t get it until three years later? But it wasn’t through reading magazines that I first saw Mario 3, it was from a certain film.

Back in the spring of the previous year my school had organised a history trip to the Tower of London. Early that spring morning a bunch of excitable school kids including me were bundled onto a coach and departed on the four hour trip down south to the big smoke.

To pass the time a VHS was shown on a small television at the front. I remember sitting next to Rob when a movie called the Wizard started playing. Apart from recognising Fred Savage from another film called Vice Versa I had no idea what this movie was about? I remember not really paying much attention until about ten minutes in when they featured Double Dragon, suddenly the three main characters were hitchhiking across America to compete in a video games competition. For the next ninety six minutes every teenage boys eyes on that coach were glued to the that poxy little tv. Mario 2, Contra, Ninja Gaiden, the Power Glove and then the big reveal at the end - Super Mario 3. Way before social media and the internet this was the way Nintendo had decided to reveal its hot new game to its western audience, through a movie! This was the first time most of us kids on that coach had even heard of this game but by the end of the film we all desperately wanted to play it.

Back at Bens house I was enthralled by this new platform game with its overhead map screen and many hidden secrets. Instantly I understood why this game was so hyped and so popular among NES owners. It might not have had the graphics and sound of Sonic but Mario 3 was so playable, so clever, so... addictive. We soon found ourselves searching for the warp whistles which we had previously seen in the Wizard. By the end of that night my mind had been changed, as much as I hated to admit Nintendo was actually pretty good, in fact they were bloody good and this was only an 8bit system!

Over the coming months I would continue to visit Bens house to play his Nintendo as his library of games slowly grew (and so did the difficulty). At one point Ben got so angry with a game he threw the console out of his second floor bedroom window. The crazy thing is the Nintendo actually survived the fall, those things were built like tanks.

Some memorable games included Duck Tales, Metroid and my first ever experience of a Point land Click adventure - Maniac Mansion. This game was unlike anything else I had ever played up until this point. All my previous gaming experience had been with instant gratification games, games you could dive right into without really thinking. Maniac Mansion was the complete opposite. You had to solve puzzles, read text and actually use your brain to progress. I think this was when my gaming habits started to mature.

With my new appreciation of Nintendo I started to pay more attention to the game reviews in Mean Machines and CVG. I would read up on the latest news and previews of the upcoming NES releases but It would be later that year that I would be truly convinced of Nintendo’s true power.

#retro gaming #video games #nostalgia #1990s #nintendo #sega megadrive #super mario #maniac mansion #the wizard

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dawnajaynes32 · 5 years

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James Paterson, Digital Frontiers

Developer, programmer, artist, designer. Mad scientist?

Call James Paterson what you want, but one thing’s for sure: his creativity knows no boundaries. Paterson started using Flash in early 1997, and made a career out of pushing the medium and his creations into new, exciting, and evocative territories.

He’s been a part of the web’s past and present, and will undoubtedly be a part of the digital future that’s yet to come, although it’ll happen without one of his favorite tools: Flash. In the very near future, the platform and web plugin will no longer be supported by Adobe. Like others who used Flash, Paterson has lamented the coming of the end. “I think because I grew up with it as my primary set of creative tools it was really a part of me. I had spent well over 10 years perfecting my craft with it, and had a setup that was like an extension of my mind and body. It took years to relearn everything and port as much of my world as possible to JavaScript.”

James Paterson, photo by Jonathan Chang.

Paterson’s studio, where the magic happens.

But he’s a realist too.

“Ultimately the switch to JavaScript was good and healthy… it’s a much broader medium and allowed me to take my craft to all sorts of new places.” And there’s no turning back, all for the better. Paterson has broken into new digital territories, pushing the boundaries of augmented reality (AR) with #normanvr and other digital platforms. He took time out of his busy schedule to answer some questions about AR, developer tools, the web, Flash, and a (possible) future for Flash.

VR (virtual reality) sculpting has become a major focus for Paterson. “It’s sort of a natural progression of my drawing process, popped into 3D, thanks to the hands-on-ness of VR.”

Q. Who were the Flash artists, designers, and developers you admired during the early days of Flash, and why?

In the very early days there wasn’t much going on that I could find made using Flash. There were some ultra-early Shockwave/Director sites, notably Antirom (Tomato Interactive) and Noodlebox (Danny Brown) which caught my attention in the late 90s. Then when Flash started to pick up in 1998-99 I saw a little piece of open source by praystation (Joshua Davis) that revealed how to create a “frame loop” where code could run across time. That was my very first introduction to code as a kind of living breathing thing. I’ve been thankful to Josh for that kickstart into code ever since. Some other characters from the early Flash days who influenced me hugely were Amit Pitaru, Yugo Nakamura & Erik Natzke.

Q. How would you describe what you called code as a living breathing thing and that frame loop that Joshua Davis made?

Up until that point I had only used very contained “actions” to perform a bit of control over my animations. Things like clicking buttons to stop, play and jump around through animations. The “frame loop” that I saw in Josh’s open-source showed some code sitting on frame 1, then an action on frame 2 saying “go back and play frame 1 again!” This was the first time I saw a game loop/tick/enter-frame in action and it blew my mind. Learning to code can be intimidating, and baby-stepping my way in as Flash slowly progressed to become a more full-powered development tool gave me a very comfortable on-ramp. Seeing Josh’s frame loop was where something shifted in my mind from being about simple actions triggered by discrete user events like mouse clicks, to being a fluid dynamic system that was constantly shifting and changing over time.

Q. As Flash became more and more popular, you’d see Flash used for expressive, experimental, and artistic purposes. Plenty of sites would also use Flash with the entire site needing the Flash plugin, or it would just have Flash components such as menus or images or animations. Where would you put yourself on that spectrum of Flash artwork versus Flash functional work, and why?

I primarily used flash as a personal art medium. Specifically, my area of interest was bringing drawings to life through a combination of animation and code. I would draw endlessly in my sketchbook, then pick my favorite drawings to expand into living, breathing pieces of interactive work using animation and code. This eventually matured into building custom creative tools (something I did a lot in collaboration with Amit Pitaru) and also getting into more game-like territory. The further I went down this path the more I had to study programming and take it seriously. I was continuously outgrowing my technical ability and having to pause (sometimes for years at a time) to learn more before I could continue.

The more comfortable I got with the medium and programming in general, the more I would take on contracts doing “functional” jobs as you put it. Basically I would spend as long as humanly possible making my own work, then when I was sufficiently broke I would take on commercial gigs doing more practical stuff with the skills I had developed in my personal endeavors. These commercial projects could sometimes be challenging and satisfying, but were usually just a way for me to pay the bills so I could get back to the main event: making weird personal work.

Chalk on chalkboard, from a wall in Paterson’s studio. “They are a combination of stream of consciousness/automatic drawing (a process I call psychic vomit) and plans/code for whatever I’m working on.”

A mural by Paterson in the parking lot of B-Reel Los Angeles.

Q. When you first heard about Flash being phased out, what was your reaction?

Flash was phased out slowly over a number of years, and while I could feel it happening I was still very much invested in it as a creative tool. The final blow was dealt by Steve Jobs in 2010, in his open letter Thoughts on Flash. My reaction was split down the middle. On one side, I agreed with Jobs about how inappropriate Flash was for making websites. I didn’t like Flash sites any more than the next person and was happy that they would be going the way of the Dodo.

But on the other hand, that was not what I used Flash for. For me it was my primary art tool. So with my own creative process, my reaction was one of deep sadness and loss. I had invested well over a decade developing workflows in Flash that were perfectly suited to me. I creatively grew up alongside Flash, so much so that it felt like a part of me. Once I read that letter by Jobs I knew it was totally over, and in some ways if felt like someone had come into my beloved studio, full of all my most intimate creative tools and processes, and burned the place down.

I know that sounds dramatic, but it really did feel that way at the time. I had to completely reinvent myself technically and creatively over the following half-decade, porting as much of my process to JavaScript as possible. This was a huge growth experience for me, facing that loss and then rebuilding.

Q. Are you still developing for Flash, in any way, be it with Adobe Animate CC or something else?

I occasionally animate using Adobe Animate, then drive those animations with JavaScript, but it is somewhat rare these days. It’s still a great animation tool, but I’ve moved on to other places and broadened my horizons in terms of tools and workflows.

Q. From curators I’ve spoken with, you’ve begun to work in AR and VR spaces. How are those platforms allowing you to push your visions and experiments further, and in what ways did Flash prepare you for the spaces you’re working in today?

AR and VR have been a fascinating to me ever since reading Neuromancer by William Gibson and other cyberpunk stuff as a kid. When it finally matured enough to really work, with Vive and Rift, I jumped right in. One of the main projects I’ve done in this area was to take my favorite parts of animating in Flash and create my own open source VR animation tool from scratch, called Norman. This was an incredible experience and such a fun way to carry some of the old school flash frame-by-frame lineage forward into the present. I used JavaScript to code Norman, and it runs on the web (WebVR) for Oculus Rift.

View this post on Instagram

Gonna miss you Gord #gorddownieforever

A post shared by James Paterson (@presstube) on Oct 18, 2017 at 1:05pm PDT

Q. At what point did you leave Halfempty, and when you decided to do so, what did working independently enable you to do that you had not done before?

I started Presstube in 1999 as a way to just get a fresh start after working on Halfempty for the previous few years. I had a wonderful experience working on Halfempty with Marty Spellerberg in 1997–98. He was the first person to turn me on to Flash actually! But in 1999 it felt like the right thing to do to break away and do my own thing. Halfempty was more of a magazine curating the work of many different people, and I just wanted to descend into my own creative rabbit hole.

vimeo

Q. What did getting published mean to you, especially being in such great company in the book New Masters of Flash?

It was a huge honor to be invited to contribute alongside all the amazing people in that book. Also just getting to share my process with others was a thrill.

Drawings by James Paterson

Q. What (possible) future do you see for Flash after 2020, when Adobe will end support of the plugin, and how would you want to be involved with Flash when it’s outmoded?

I’m not sure that Flash has any future to be honest, except to be remembered as a platform which acted as a catalyst for a sort of Cambrian explosion of creativity at the dawn of the internet. I will continue to draw on it to inform my workflows moving into the future, and try to rebuild my favorite old school Flash workflows from scratch.

Q. When the final nail goes into the coffin, how will you remember Flash?

Flash was at the heart of an open and switched on creative community in the early days of the web. It introduced a lot of non-technical creative people to the art of programming, and did so in an accidentally perfect gradual manner. It was the source of much frustration for users when it was used to build entire websites or aggressive banner ads, but for a small group of early creative technologists it was a profoundly inspiring and mind expanding technology. Thank you, Macromedia and Adobe, for that glorious ugly duckling of a creative platform!

Keep track of what James Paterson is up to on his Instagram.

Inspired by James Paterson and want to make contact with thousands of other creatives just like you? Attend HOW Design Live and you’ll be among the best and brightest in the industry. Register now!

Edited from a series of electronic interviews.

The post James Paterson, Digital Frontiers appeared first on HOW Design.

James Paterson, Digital Frontiers syndicated post

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savagegardenforever · 6 years

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TO THE MOON AND BACK Rolling Stones Magazine - Australia june 1998

All Darren Hayes could think was "This is not happening!" It was a mantra the Savage Garden vocalist kept chanting to himself, but it wasn't taking. The nascent pop star went to take a sip of his Powerade, but then the Edge cracked a joke and Hayes involuntarily laughed, spitting purple liquid all over himself. Supermodel Helena Christensen giggled as the singer coughed and spluttered. The rain clouds were clearing in the aftermath of the Sydeny leg of U2's PopMart tour, and Hayes had climbed the various levels of celebrity patronage - the shitkicker VIP tent; the serious VIP tent where Midnight Oil were rubbing shoulders with Keanu Reeves and Samuel L. Jackson - to here: U2's dressing room, "The Bunker". He was on his own. The other half of Savage Garden, the calm, assured keyboardist Daniel Jones, was back on level two. "This is not happening! This is not happening!" he told himself. When Bono's assistant bought Hayes in, he walked past Adam Clayton and had to remind himself to be cool. But f**k it, there he was, sitting there in the corner wearing a boxing hood and those black wraparound shades: Bono himself. The Fly, McPhisto, the man who wrote "One", the man who'd just left 50,000 people enthralled. Darren Hayes's goldstar was sitting a few metres away. It was happening. Hayes was dripping wet. The Powerade had simply added to the downpour he'd already stood through, dancing at the tip of the catwalk, alongside the other true believers, lost in the music. He'd had the chance to meet Bono the previous August, when PopMart was in Los Angeles. Hayes had been transfixed bu the show but decided not to go backstage. He didn't want to be the millionth hand Bono shaked, another beaming face to be forgotten. It was different now. Over the last year Savage Garden had sold approximatley four million albums around the world - they were on the course to double that - including a phenomenal 800,000 in Australia alone. They'd scooped the 1997 ARIA Awards and had a number one single in America with "Truly Madly Deeply", the first Australian act to do so since INXS with "Need You Tonight" in 1987. But Darren Hayes didn't want to meet Bono because he felt successful. He would never dare compare Savage Garden's achievements to U2. No, Darren Hayes wanted to meet Bono because he was starting to realise the baggage that came with the success. Savage Garden were in the midst of a sold-out national tour and he was starting to feel like he had nothing more to give, that he'd been stretched so thin he would either break in two or simply dissipate. A few nights before, in Tasmania, he'd been asking himself before a show if he could go on, if not tonight, then next week, or next month in New Zealand, or the month after that in Asia, or the looming months beyond that in Europe and America. He was wondering why they'd become a teen sensation, if he could keep his marriage out of the public eye. All of these thoughts were racing through Darren Hayes's mind. And then Bono was looking at him, gesturing for him to come over and talk ...

Let it be said again: Savage Garden are a phenomenon. Together with the Spice Girls they have spearheaded the return of pop music to the top of musical charts around the world, giving focus to the desires and needs of a generation of teenage, on the whole female, fans. But behind all this is two young men from suburban Brisbane. Polite, inquistive young men who worry a lot about what's happening to them, how they should handle success, how they can prove that their brand of pop is one which will mature and grow, which will reach for resonance and a sense of belief. When I first meet Savage Garden they are preparing to have thier photo taken. It is a Saturday afternoon and Savage Garden are standing in a Sydney hotel suite, looking at clothes, prior to shooting new press shots for America. On the Sunday and Monday, with a show also scheduled on Sunday night, they're to shoot a high-budget clip for the US release of "Break Me Shake Me". Hayes is wearing all black, most noticeably a pair of jeans armour-plated with PVC. With his locks now cropped, his dewy features have lost some of their femininity. He moves around constantly, even if he fights the flu, breaking into snatches of song, delving off into varied topics of conversation without warning. Now he's appraising outfits. "How much is this stuff?" he asks the stylist, who's lacing up Hayes's boots for him. "$290 for the top and $220 for the pants, less 10%," comes the reply. Hayes pauses, then snorts. "Tell 'em to get f**ked," he retorts. Sitting on a bed, patiently having his makeup done, Daniel Jones laughs. The keyboardist is tall and rangy, with blond, spiky hair. Up close, you can see the handful of acne scars which pit the right side of his face. When he smiles, which he does often for someone so observant and low-key, his angular face becomes quite disarming. He watched the PopMart show at the mixing desk, standing beside Helena Christensen. "I said hello and then spent the rest of the show trying to smell her," he notes, grinning broadly. Because they own their very successful records - they only lease them to Roadshow Music in Australia and New Zealand and Sony Music for the rest of the world - Savage Garden have a degree of control most bands can only dream of. "There's not one cent spent, not one colour used on a front cover that we don't approve," Hayes later explains. "It's very comforting." Right now, Savage Garden are working it for photographer Robin Sellick's camera. Hayes is a natural, staring off into the middle distance while standing in the foreground, masking his face in the very definition of broodiness. Jones stands behind him, biding his time for a practice he clearly doesn't place a great deal of faith in (although he's never less than professional). As the shoot moves from hallway to penthouse, Hayes takes front and centre in every shot. "I'm always aware that I'm in the front in every photograph, but it's not because I step in front of him," he says. "Daniel takes two steps back. People just assume I'm an egomaniac." The first album that both Hayes, age 25, and Jones, age 24, bought was Michael Jackson's Thriller. George Michael is a name they both mention with respect. Out in the suburbs of Brisbane both youngsters were pop fanatics, giving vent to their obsessions. Jones was so taken with the video for "Thriller" that he and a friend started digging graves behind his house so they could recreate the video; he even began work on making the famous red jacket. Hayes went one better: he built a paper maché ET and rode around with it in the basket of his bike. But the divergent paths the two took towards Savage Garden illustrate the differences between them. By the time he was 13, Jones was more interested in making music than listening to it. He'd started buying keyboards and sequencers, creating musical beds for songs. On the New Year's Eve of 1989, aged 15, he did his first two gigs back to back, with a covers band, and walked away with $400. He never went back to school after that. Financially astute, by the time he was 17 he owned his own PA, which he regularly loaded in and out of every pub and club in Queensland. "I kind of miss those moments," Jones recalls. "I enjoyed some of those innocent pressures more than these serious ones." Darren Hayes had far more trouble realising his dreams. "My whole life," he declares, "being a singer or performer was all I ever wanted to do." But growing up in one of Brisbane's rougher suburbs didn't make this easy. There's an undercurrent of anger in Hayes when he describes those years, as if he's still upset at how people tried to deny his dreams. "Most people I went to school with had two babies before they were 20. One guy is in jail for armed robbery. Another one died in a car crash while on cocaine. Another one is a pimp. That was the level of my peers. I didn't know a single person who was even a singer. My family weren't that encouraging - which is not a criticism - but my career choice was the most alien thing you could do in my family." Hayes started studying journalism at university, but then threw it in. "My mission was to be a star," he remembers, speaking with an earnestness which can easily veer into melodrama. With his then girlfriend, a fellow Madonna fanatic, the pair auditioned for theatre college. "I got in, she didn't, so I gave it all up for her. And three months later she dumped me. I was gutted." Hayes started a Bachelor of Education majoring in Primary School Teaching, "something I did not have a drop of passion about." Still obsessed with his dreams of fame, he was sitting in a lecture in 1992, reading a Brisbane street paper, when he saw a "Singer Wanted" ad for a local covers band, Red Edge. Replying to the ad he found himself in a band room, being stared down by Jones and the rest of the band. Red Edge didn't know any of Hayes's favourites, while the prospective vocalist ("I always knew I could sing, I knew I had soul") hated their Oz rock/top 40 repertoire. He sang a piece from Little Shop of Horrors, and even though his voice broke halfway through, he was in. It was not an easy adjustment. Hayes is not technically inclined, and he perversely refused to learn the words to the band's set, relying on lyrics sheets instead ("I still don't know the words to 'Khe Sanh'," he announces with pride). The experience, he concludes, was "hideous". Hayes is walking down a corridor to a meet and greet. In the lounge, Hayes is joined by Jones, fresh from dinner. Five girls - before some shows the number has been as high as 50 - appear breathless and nervous. There's nothing studied about teen hysteria, it has an immediacy which distances it from the adult world. Savage Garden are comfortable with it. "So, would you like us to sign some stuff?" asks Jones genially. Tickets, CDs and a stuffed bear are produced. Photographs are taken. One of the girls is red in the face because she's not taking in enough oxygen. "You all go to school, don't you?" asks Hayes. The girls indicate yes. "Well let me give you a lesson about school. All the kids that were popular end up on the dole with babies. All the nerds end up pop stars." "Hey!" retorts Jones. "I was never a nerd." "Darren is brutally honest, even to himself," answers Jones when asked to describe his bandmate. "Sometimes he's his own worst critic. He's so honest that anything he's feeling comes to the surface, which really helps clear the air in the type of intense relationship we have. He reminds me of a kid, not in a bad way, but in his naivity." Asked the same question, Hayes replies, "He's probably the most intelligent person I've ever met in my life. He doesn't say anything unless he's thought it through and it's right. It might take him two or three days, but he'll come to you and say, 'I think you look really insecure when you do that. I'm just being honest.' And you'll go red because he's absolutley right. Intelligent. Calm and confident. He's devoid of insecurity." When U2 brought the Zoo TV tour to Australia in 1993, Red Edge was scheduled to play a residency in Alice Springs. Darren Hayes didn't have to think for long. He left the band. But the other thing he was pondering was writing songs with Daniel Jones. The two had slowly developed a rapport, and Hayes was impressed that Jones and several other band members already had a music publishing deal. The actual songs, however, he hated. "They were watered down 1927," he laments. "It wasn't really my thing," says Jones. "But then I hooked up with Darren and left that band." The pair began to experiment. Happily working by himself at home, Jones would create the musical backing, Hayes would suggest refinements and then add his vocals. The fourth song they wrote together was their astral retooling of "She's Leaving Home", "To The Moon & Back," and afterwards they knew they were on to something. "I turned around," says Jones, "and said, 'This is as good as anything out there. It's as good as U2, or a Seal song - the benchmarks.' That's when we became really serious." Savage Garden's five song demo - the duo envisaged themselves as a studio project and were heavily influenced by U2's Atchung Baby - was well-recieved, although the pair were disheartened by the amount of music industry players whose first queries to them were, "What do you look like?" and "Can you dance?" The duo eventually signed with veteran manager John Woodruff (Baby Animals, Diesel, Icehouse) in 1995 and he remains the linchpin of the Savage Garden organisation and their business partner. It was a relationship forged in adversity. Because they couldn't get a record deal (whether because no one could see the band's potential or because no one was willing to give Woodruff a deal for his own record label is unclear), Woodruff self-financed the album, bringing the pair to Sydney for eight months to record at the home studio of veteran producer Charles Fisher )Hoodoo Gurus, 1927). Hayes first choice for a producer was George Michael. Living in a Kings Cross Hotel on a diet of noodles and missing their families, Savage Garden struggled to finish their album. Their doubts were constant, their aims shifting each month. Woodruff licensed the album to start-up label Roadshow Music, whose early signings had been anything but auspicious. Their first single, "I Want You" - a Hayes tale about an extraordinarily vivid dream where he met and fell in love with someone so deeply that when he lost them upon waking he became depressed - was released in June 1996. "What makes me laugh about our record is that we couldn't get a deal, so we signed to the joke of the industry, Roadshow," Hayes explains. "We had dodgy artwork, dodgy videos. We had trouble getting airplay at the start. Basically, we fulfilled every criteria to be unearthed by Triple J." [Triple J is an Australian youth radio station that plays alternative music] "The day I realised how commercial we were was the day I realised that Triple J didn't playlist 'I Want You'. I was thinking that it would be an indie-pop hit that they'd play. Then it was like, 'Actually, you're the most played band on the Austereo network.'" He pauses, then smiles. "And I'll take that any day." The band did their first in-store appearance as "I Want You" climbed to number three on the charts. "All these 13 and 14-year-olds turned up, screaming 'Darren! and 'Daniel!'" remembers Jones. "I was like, "Oh f**k!' I didn't want to go through that." By the time "Moon & Back" and then "Truly Madly Deeply" had gone to number one, to be followed by their self-titled debut album in March 1997, Savage Garden had acclimatised to their new surroundings. Hayes and Jones make no bones about making commercial music, but under that banner they see a world of subtle differences. "I think the best pop is the one that shoots from the hip," asserts Hayes. "What troubles me sometimes is that we've always wanted to be completely true to ourselves, but people always assume that since we make pop music it has to be calculated and all about marketing. It was never that. There are a lot of pop bands and vocal bands which just aren't real. They're not coming from a real place." "What's so magical about the record we made is that it's so innocent and earnest. It went out there and said this is what we want to be. We didn't care about hip or cool. It was unassuming. I think we write really good pop songs, we have a great ear for a melody and we have a directness when it comes to emotion." Savage Garden's show is mildly choreographed, well-designed and given to U2 homages (which Hayes happily admits to) that the young audience (seeded with the over-30s brought in by "Truly Madly Deeply") scream along to. With just one album and a handful of b-sides to draw on, there are noticeable low points. But live, Savage Garden are a guitar band. Jones plays more guitar than keyboards, while their stage sound is fleshed out by a rhythm section, extra guitarist and backing singers. "I think we're a pop band desperatley wanting to be a rock & roll band and I think that's what's funny about us," claims Hayes. The strangest moment is when Hayes, who has so much desire and extreme emotion projected at him from an audience he works relentlessly, dedicates a song to his wife, Colby. Fans want their pop stars to be free and magical, not married with a home in the Brisbane suburbs. Hayes is vocal on every topic bar one: his wife of three years. "I think it's strange to be young and married," he says, choosing his words carefully. "Imagine being young and married and a pop star. It's tough. We refuse to be an example pf a happy marriage to anyone. The reason I very rarely talk about Colby or do a Women's Weekly spread about our new glamour house is that it's hard enough being married without being a celebrity couple. When you're happy together they love you, but Jesus, when there's problems they don't care, they tear you to bits. And I'm not ready for that." Both Hayes and Jones (who is also in a long-term relationship) decided from the start not to discuss their private lives with the media. On their first tour in May 1997 a tabloid journalist who wanted to follow up his interview with Hayes with a quick phone chat was directed by Woodruff to call him on his mobile: "His wife Colby has it." "The next day he writes some article in the paper: 'Exclusive: Singer Tries to Hide Wife!'" spits Hayes, recalling the spectre of John Lennon, who really did keep his first marriage a secret under management orders. "When did I ever say I wasn't married? When did I ever say I wanted to talk about my private life? What the f**k does it matter? Is my music different because I have a wedding ring?"

For one second I knew what it was like to be Savage Garden. After their solf-out show I leave the Entertainment Centre. Their road manager directs me out the door to the car park. As soon as I open it the 500 fans awaiting the band's departure scream in anticipation. It is electrifying, even a little scary. But when they see it's only an anonymous figure, 500 fans go, "Ohhhhh." Pop music is a cruel, cruel mistress. Last October, the flight to Sydney for the ARIAs, where they would clean up 10 awards, Daniel Jones told Darren Hayes that he couldn't take it anymore and that he was ready to leave Savage Garden. The music, which is all Jones really cared about, had been overtaken by promotion. Instead of being allowed to hide away in a recording studio, Jones was giving 40 interviews a day in America, traipsing across Europe miming on TV shows in every country. "It was pissing me off. Music was becoming more about talking about it than actually making it. I had to get back to the studio. I enjoy it and I miss it. The whole moster size of this machine takes it away from you," he notes. "The whole pep talk I now give video directors and photographers is that I don't want to be up the front. I've drawn a line for myself, and that's the compromise I had to make to deal with being in this band. Now everyone understands what it is about these two people. One wants to be here, the other wants to be here." He holds up his hands to indicate the difference, the gap between them is a metre wide. "That's the deal we made around the time of the ARIAs, but to be honest I think I've always done it," claims Hayes later. "I've always been lumbered with it because everyone assumes I love it. And lately I'm the one saying I want out, I can't do this anymore. If we ever broke up it would be because one of us wanted to be George Michael and one of us wanted to be Dave Stewart." Right now though, the topic the pair are focusing on is their next album. "We matured faster than the album," Jones says. In their mid-20s now, they're not always comfortable playing the songs they wrote as 19 and 20-year-olds. At the end of their concert Hayes tells the cheering crowd, "We have to go away now and think it all up again." "It's seriously not about chart position," clarifies Hayes. "I want a career, so if it sells half as well as this one, thank you, I'll take that. I believe a career is about ups and downs. It shouldn't be a steady gradient. The next record has to be true to itself. It won't be a knee-jerk reaction to critics. To turn around and make a Portishead album would be a big mistake. We'll f**k around with technology, we'll f**k around with drumbeats. We're courting William Orbit at the moment, because we heard the new Madonna record and I thought, 'I like what you added to that record. You added spice and flavour without taking over.' And that's what we're looking for. We want to grow up a little bit. And we're prepared to do whatever it takes." Darren Hayes was thinking that Bono was a wise old man, a wizard. The icon was talking about life, how he searches every day for new inspiration, music, their show, and Hayes was rapt, once more the little boy in love with a mysterious extra-terrestrial. And then he started to tell Bono how he felt, like a rag doll that had been twisted around too much. How sometimes after a show he considered himself a prosititute because he had to give so much from his soul to every person in the room. Bono leaned closer to Hayes and grabbed his hand, putting it to his chest. Hayes could feel the pulmonary kick of the Irishman's heartbeat. And then he spoke: "As long as the music comes from here," he said, pushing Haye's hand harder against his chest, "then it's going to scream louder than any of the kids will." And for the few seconds that followed, Darren Hayes felt at peace with himself.

#interview #savage garden #darren hayes #daniel jones #1998 #rolling stone

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republicstandard · 6 years

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Liberals Have Stolen The Moral Right To Protest #MarchForOurLives

Protest is for me, but not for thee...

I recently wrote an article about political correctness and absolute moral authority and many of the ideas contained therein are relevant to this piece. I do encourage you to read that article also. As we proceed through the days following the recent anti-Second Amendment "March for our Lives" it imperative that we understand what is happening to our society.

This setup has been in process for at least 50 years. We have been ingrained from the earliest days in school and this has continued in businesses and even some churches. There are people, groups, and events which cannot and must not be questioned. They have either assumed or been granted absolute moral authority. Neither the Constitution nor the rule of law matter. Then come the calls that, “We must do something”.

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Of course, none of this is even vaguely possible without a willing and complicit media.

In the lead up to the big march in Washington California teacher Julianne Benzel posed a question for her students. “Are all protests equal?” I like to hear this because there is very little critical thinking taught in schools these days, and most certainly that is true in California. If students can decide to walk out of school for 17 minutes in support of gun control, can they do the same to protest abortion? Of course, her point was not only a valid one, it was one designed to make the kids think rather than act like sheep or lemmings.

She learned about absolute moral authority after class when she was placed on administrative leave after receiving a complaint about her comment in class. So the discussion now includes the First Amendment along with the Second. Understand this, absolute moral authority and political correctness are used to stifle speech and take away rights. They protect nothing but feelings and in so doing make us incapable of articulating a position or having a civil discussion.

Ohio senior Jacob Shoemaker refused to walk out of his classroom and was suspended. Now he was directed to go to a special study hall in lieu of the protest, but his point was that he and the other students AND the teacher belonged in class; divisive politics has no place in school. I admire his pluck, however, I believe schools should neither take sides nor ignore these things. Free speech is always a good thing, free thinking, and discussion; reason and critical thinking.

Every year there is a March For Life in DC, this year was the 45th, a pro-life march focused on abortion and the lives lost. This year an estimated 100,000 attended however in 2013 the crowd was put in the area of 650,000, roughly the same as this event that was put on by school kids (Really? More on that later.), but you did not know that, did you? In 2010 Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor march attracted an estimated 750,000. Yet if one is to look at media reports we are led to believe only "progressive" rallies capture these numbers, there is no mention of those by conservatives.

And to think this was organized by school children! The organizational skills of these young people are amazing; raising money to fund the facilities and equipment, obtain the necessary permits and everything to pull off this event was incredible. Please excuse my sarcasm.

Obviously, the kids did not put this on, they were used by seasoned operatives; community organizers. A number of well-known people spoke up and declared they would send money in support. A question. Who was the check made out to and to which address was it sent?

Our tax laws enable this darkness. The March For Our Lives Fund was organized as a 501(c)(4) organization. Donations to such an organization are not tax-deductible, but they DO NOT have to disclose their donor's identities. It is possible for a 501(c)(3) to give money to a (c)(4), thus money can be funneled to an event such as this and be deductible. I have no proof of this, but it is not out of the realm of possibilities. There was a suggestion made publicly that donations would be deductible if written to “March For Our Lives - Everytown Support Fund”, a Michael Bloomberg organization. Hmmm, high school kids. Right.

Front Page Magazine did a great job of following the money and I will not repeat it here, click on that link and see the trail that leads to the groups behind this “children’s march”. None of it comes from Florida.

What I felt was the most interesting was the aftermath of the event. While it is odd to me that people gathered demanding that their constitutionally protected right be taken away, one of the primary faces of the event (David Hogg) was furious when it touched him personally. One of the policies taken up by his Parkland school was to allow only clear plastic backpacks. It seems David views this as an infringement on his constitutional rights. Remember, David is the only one allowed to protest…

“It’s unnecessary, it’s embarrassing for a lot of the students and it makes them feel isolated and separated from the rest of American school culture where they’re having essentially their First Amendment rights infringed upon because they can’t freely wear whatever backpack they want regardless of what it is,” Hogg said.

“One of the other important things to realize is many students want their privacy. There are many, for example, females in our school that when they go through their menstrual cycle, they don’t want people to see their tampons and stuff,” he explained.

“What we should have is just more policies that make sure that these students are feeling safe and secure in their schools and not like they’re being fought against like it’s a prison,” according to Hogg.

Perhaps he didn’t think it through- that a government that can give you what you want can also take away what you want.

If you listen to what the protesters demanded and who they blamed, it seems it was the fault of politicians, the NRA, the gun, an outdated constitution (only certain parts I suppose)...but no one blamed the actual shooter, Nicholas Cruz. Cruz broke many laws, to think passing another law would matter does not make sense.

No one blamed the resource officer who refrained from entering the building or the initial deputies who also stayed outside. EMS personnel was prevented from entering (understandable since there was no law enforcement inside) to render aid to the ones who had been shot. No one blamed the collusion between the sheriff’s office and the school administration to under-report incidents in order to receive more federal funding. You see, none of those fit the agenda of gun control. Remember, never let a crisis go to waste.

Unheard was any vocalization against the proposed gun restrictions. Ben Shapiro gave some of them a voice, but the mainstream media will not. Ben makes some excellent points, such as a seventeen-year-old cannot buy a gun but is old enough and mature enough to set public policy and law. An 18-year-old must register for the draft and can volunteer to join the military, but would be denied the ability to buy a gun. Should we also restrict their right to speak out? Again, political correctness and absolute moral authority dictate who may speak and have a valid opinion and who may not.

And what of those who marched and carried signs at the event in Washington? Would it make any sense at all for those who march and demand gun control, specifically banning “Assault Rifles”, should they know what they are talking about? To have credibility, one should have a working knowledge of the subject. In this case, it seems not to be so. This video interviews some of the marchers. Are these the people who should be shaping public policy infringing our natural rights?

The reason they cannot define what an Assault Rifle is because the term was made up. The Germans used the term “Storm Rifle” (sturmgewehr), it seems in 1988 John Sugarmann of the anti-gun Violence Policy Center coined the term to apply to scary looking guns. An excerpt from his study “Assault Weapons and Accessories in America”:

"Assault weapons—just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms—are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons..." I think the confusion is the difference between the term "Assault Rifle" and "Assault Weapon". Assault rifles are any of various automatic or semiautomatic rifles with large capacity magazines designed for military use.”

It is simply taking advantage of the public’s ignorance. So, protesters who are ignorant and know nothing about what they are protesting have the absolute moral authority and those who understand the meaning of “Shall not be infringed” and that a semi-automatic sporting rifle is not a rifle designed for military use.

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The division in our society has been created intentionally. A divided society is easier to control. And many seem anxious to keep the division alive and well. The media plays it, politicians play it and many on social media. Many of the speeches given at the DC event and interviews since offer no inclination to understand the truth or the other side.

May we endeavor to educate those who are willing to learn and stand firm against those who would take or diminish our rights.

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