You Wanna Be The Gimp, Get In The Gimp Suit

A week of studyless days can almost be excused when they are punctuated by a series of timewasting, but nonetheless enjoyable, outings, as well as two of the funnest gigs of the year -- Electric Six at the End of Daze festival on Friday the twenty-first, and a superb birthday gig on the same day last week. Happy birthday Hanharrr and Hayden! The party took a while to get going, but once it took off, it really did take off. The two bands both provided great performances and reinforced an ever-building positive and good-natured atmosphere.

Two-piece act Johnny Lightning and the Thunderbolts (thanks for the link Hanharr) treated the audience to a series of slick, sharp and catchy numbers that proved to be delectably danceable. It's performances like that that help me remember just how enjoyable simple can music be. After having listened to so much complicated material laced with time signature changes and challenging lyrical concepts in my free time, it's almost refreshing to get back to the basics and enjoy some straight-up rock. The fact that Johnny Lightning and the Thunderbolts -- featuring Rebecca on the drums and Hannah on the guitar, with both putting in awesome vocal efforts -- are a two-piece band, only serves to accentuate the numerous merits of the performance. They produced a very impressive sound indeed. As their experience builds they're bound to evolve into a great, polished act. I'd be very keen to hear them play again.

Hayden's band Alphajazz also put on a great show in the latter half of the night, providing the audience, for the most substantial part, with a much-needed and thoroughly welcome sprinkling of soothing rhythms. Not only was it pretty much my kind of music, but Hayden was the lead singer. A number of Alphajazz's members are also part of a band called Inverse Order, and my friend Eric is quite familiar with them. He even texted me asking me to get something off of one of the musicians for him; unfortunately I had already headed home. Nonetheless the aforementioned factors established within me a weird sense of connection and affinity with the band. The excellent music sure helped too, being skankable in the sheerly salivatory sense.

Studyless days, however, cannot by any stretch of the imagination be excused when they are taking place outside of the time period between the two gigs that I have cited. Having spent the weekend watching Air New Zealand's new Boeing 777 arrive, driving around the South Auckland country backroads relatively aimlessly, making a row at a Halloween party -- also for no apparent reason -- and riding the first Sunday train to have travelled the Western Line in forty years or so, it is not very good that I have just spent virtually the whole of today visiting the construction site of the largest house in New Zealand (which I had access to because my dad's company is one of the contractors). Without a doubt, seeing that place was one heck of an experience, but the fact that I have done exactly one hour's study so far for my anthropology exam that is scheduled for Wednesday has the effect of putting a slight dampener on things at the moment.