Playing at 6pm Sunday 11th March at 14 Todd Plaza, New Lynn at the Great Indian Festival with Basant Madhur and other guests. See Poster with more details – PDF
All posts by Luke
Music and passion and blockchain
Got invited to play five songs live on my fav station* with Steve Upston engineering and Jessie asking me a few questions. And my New Years resolution is to answer emails and show great-attitude regarding support from all of you. Thank you again.
* was played at 2:30pm on Dec 15th afternoons on RNZ. See NZlive link or direct podcast here if the player below isn’t visible.
The first song played was “The Sound”. John Renbourn of Pentangle was name-checked as an early influence. New unrecorded song “Before the War“ from a poem by an Iranian refugee. “Japanese Overdrive” and“Albatross“and “Kings Cross” on Steve Barkman 12 string, Fender Strat and a 6 string ( Tacoma.)
I get to play a few songs any requests? Preliminary to the show i was asked a few questions
Q: Do I make a living?
A: Well – it’s by the grace of God I survive at all and I have had big help from family and friends
Just read a book called ECO MAN by Malcolm Rands. In it he says some key things like … stay close to the ones who helped you get there and invite them along for the ride. Be passionate about what you are doing and it will stick out a mile coz passion is lacking in the corporate dominated world.
Condense what you do into a short statement. In his case it was to make cleaning products WITHOUT THE NASTY CHEMICALS.
VOILA!
When I read that a little light turned on in my head. THAT’S WHAT WE NEED IN THE MEDIA. We need a media with no nasty viruses.
Isn’t that what the world needs in entertainment as well? To be able to watch a movie with your loved ones and be assured that it isn’t going to be full of spiritually hazardous materials? From things that make you feel alienated from love and kindness.
IT’S AMAZING WHAT WE TOLERATE
The excuse is the worn out cliche that it’s what we want.
SURE IT IS
It’s what sells?
Believing in me is hard sometimes coz I fluctuate between over confident to downright “what is the point” and am decidedly stubborn sticking to something that is in a cloud of unknowing than on solid ground. However it might be our time i.e. those of us who trust the clouds.
Take blockchain. For instance. Don’t worry. I don’t have any tips but here is a lead from an expert who said “A good place to start to learn about blockchain and crypto .. it is important that you educate yourself to avoid FOMO which the world seems to be experiencing at the moment.”
Problem is I don’t know what FOMO Is (Ed: Fear of missing out.)
What about blockchain blogs?and music streaming? Jason wrote in 2015 “in the case of music it could mean that Apple, Spotify and the others who add little value to the music web will be removed from the equation.”” about the Imogen Heap experiment.
For an update on that have a look at Mycelia for Music or Blockchain Could Help Musicians Make Money Again.
It’s such a pain putting sooooooooooooooooooooooooo much energy into writing and recording songs and to discover that a the system is setup for a small elite. It’s probably time for little guys like me to disaffiliate from the industry gate keepers and find our own way thru and be part of an indie blockchain system.
Anything would be better than the current revenue gathering merchants as they only focus on pleasing their favourite Ponzi Bands. Ha ha
The BC will change the whole world and musicians will have a viable system to get a fair deal. Let’s try it. If you want to use my music just write to me and I will give you a place in my blockchain. Early subscribers will get a super deal.
Seriously
Let’s do it!i am happy to be the white mouse in the chain. Want to be in the gang? Let’s talk!
Write to me here. lukehurleymusic @ gmail com. We need programmers and supporters.
A perfect day in leafy over privileged inner suburbia
Casting my mind back to the days prior to making HIGH RISK late last century in fact.
The day it happened was a perfect day in leafy over privileged inner suburbia”.
There was the father in law loading up the trailer with the few things needed from the old life;
And in a moment they will get in his car.
The wife and the kids and just about everything of any meaning,
Will cruise sedately down the driveway and out of my life FOREVER.
And the home you had will turn into a museum,
Things will remind you of moments and moments will remind you of things.
You just know that your are the worst boy in the school of life and that the headmaster is gonna expel you;
And all the things you could have done and didn’t will haunt you FOREVER.
Not only that but you won’t even have ashamed parents to return to.
And where you live was a home and is now just a house you can barely afford to rent;
You will have only yourself to blame.
Only yourself to console yourself…
So there it was
Knowing myself to be a miserable failure. Feeling deeply hurt and terrified but……..
Also knowing a deep peace.
The deep peace of Reha (the feeling of knowing that you live forever and that you are loved by your creator.)
It didn’t come from me.
Why does it take twenty years for me to be able to recognise it?
Because at the time and for many years after it was way too painful to really think about.
My own sense of failure was too great to allow any acknowledgement of the absolute
But the thing I did do is start working on an album.
It was possible thanks to a friend who put up the money.
He never turns up these days but perhaps he doesn’t need to.
Perhaps he felt he needed to at least help me get my confidence in writing back.
And I discovered one thing for sure. When you are in despair that is the time to express yourself.
As Malcolm says IMPRESSION WITH0UT EXPRESSION = DEPRESSION
The song – Small Town starts off at this point. Have a listen by clicking play below. You may download this song for free or pay more as you wish. The full ‘High Risk’ album is $10 or more if you want to.
Am I doing alright
To settle down
In a small town
I don’t want to leave the city
& make me blue
thinking of the pity
of doing it like you
you know you don’t care now
what it is that I do
you’re a fashion designer
I see the labelling
you do
“I don’t want to leave the city”
you say
“It would make me blue”
if I ever left the city
until I make
a million or two
“Things will remind you of moments and moments will remind you of things.”
Have you heard of Pop Up Shows?
Dan the pilot affirmed that CDs are far superior. His life depends on checks. Have you checked yet? Listen to your fav track on Cleptofy and then on cd. One will sound like a goat crapping into a tin can and the other will sound vaguely like music. Better still vinyl. But that’s another story.
Taylor Swift hasn’t suffered from withdrawing from Cleptofy. Her latest album is just shy of 5 million in sales. Not bad! 5 million listens on Cleptofy would have earned her squat. She’s real smart. Have to confess I am not familiar with her music though as I don’t plug into mainstream at all at all.
Have you heard of Pop Up Shows?is this a concept unique to New Plymouth? It’s a great idea. You host a show in your own living room Check it out. If you are interested I can ask Anand to explain his idea to you. Get in touch if you are into hosting Pop Ups and I will refer you to him and we can have a rave about it on my next blog. Makes sense to use your house (if you have one) as a venue seeing as it cost a fortune to buy/rent.
It’s rare for a cafe to go the extra distance and offer live music to the people. You are invited to:
The Meeting Room*, 366 Rangatira Rd, Beach Haven, North Shore this Sunday from noon to 2pm to have a cuppa and listen to me play. Few cafes invest in live original music
Please come. All details below. * Justin past the old blue dairy building by the intersection.
Google map link here https://goo.gl/maps/Khq63x5EZFy
See you on Sunday afternoon?
Taranaki tomorrow – live is way better than a stream
Had a great chat with Murray at Stebbing Recording. We were discussing CDs and how sales have plummeted by 70% but are starting to rise again. We agreed that a track off Spotify sounds thin compared to the same track played on a CD player.
CDs are significantly better would you not agree? If you can be bothered try listening to your fav track on cleptofy …..correction Spotify. And then play the same track on the cd album it was stolen from. Can you spot the difference? please let us know. It’s an interesting exercise. If you don’t have a CD player let me know. I can find one for you cheap as chips.
Ok. So let’s assume we are right and the quality of a cd track is significantly more involving and musical how come we are not told about this by our kind friendly and extremely helpful multinational record companies?
Could it be for the same reason that they took vinyl pressing plants out to sea and dumped them rather than risk selling them to anyone of a thousand enthusiasts who would have happily kept pressing albums to meet a strong demand.
Do you get that? This wonderful music industry destroyed the real music business Ie the business of making er RECORDS in favour of easier to manufacture CDs and now the same demolition crew wants to destroy the cd business in favour of virtually giving away our hard won songs on massive media machines and reap huge revenue from advertising. Gambling. Gaming. Lurid videos. Etc etc. CDs are inconvenient so we are swamped instead with quantity at the expense of quality.
They want to amuse us to death. It’s freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
The end result in my world is this. I have been writing recording and releasing songs most of my life. For my pains APRAs royalty payout to me for this year was a stunning 3 dollars.
It’s the last straw. I have had enough.
It’s time to appeal to you the reader. Support me. Come to my shows. Buy my records. Do the same for other sorry wrecks out there who are trying to survive off their art. Don’t support the multinational copulations. They don’t deserve our support. They pay virtually nothing to their suppliers and exploit shareholders and the quality of new music is gonna take a dive.
Anyway. Listen to my ‘Best of on Spotify’. Then listen to it on a replicated cd. Spot the difference
By the way. It wasn’t my decision to Spotifyise. No one asked me if I wanted to sup with that devil
I am playing tomorrow. If you are within striking distance try to make it. I won’t bite you.
Gig in Taranaki tomorrow – live is way better than a stream.
People of the streets not on the guest list
Played at an exhibition opening the other day that featured photos of street people. Awesome work as you can see. The guests really wanna help these guys. But none were on the guest list.
The place was crowded out and high rollers turned up and the general vibe was authentic. Bit like when Beethoven was all the rage but no one wanted him to do a house concert coz he would wreck the piano.
There’s the artist with the gallery boss and the artist with his associates.
Likewise these guys inspire great art but are themselves excluded from the opening.
It’s one thing thinking it’s good to be there for the down and out but it’s the too hard basket to give significant time to them. If time is money the time it would take to bring real hope is just way way way over budget.
But it’s a magnificent exhibition and it was literally an overnight sensation at the high profile gallery hosting it. They didn’t even mention it on their website. I thought “funny”.
But like most artistic enterprises in Auckland it’s not important unless it comes from overseas.
Let Me Take You By The Hand And Lead You Thru The Streets Of Auckland
You have to visit the Auckland CBD to witness the exponential increase in homeless people
Property investors have had their fun in creating the biggest bubble in history.
While some wait for the bubble to burst with a slump in property values.
Others are experiencing the burst already in terms of not being able to afford a place to live.
And where do many of them head?
Into town or head for the hills.
The hills are better but if they end up in town where do they go?
Well.
The busiest corners and outside supermarkets of course
The giant supers in town have become streetpeoplecentral
Not for one or two but for three or twenty at a time hovering round the main entrances
And you know what?
It’s not my problem
It’s probably not your problem
It’s not the governments problem
Or the banks
Or the landlords
Or the vagrants themselves
You know what
It’s OUR problem
Yes!
It affects everybody who arrives in our 100% clean green commercial capital delusion.
It’s beyond belief that a country that hosts some of the richest people and corporates in the world is happy to tolerate this situation. The rich have a duty to offer real support as only they can afford to build for the poor. And create a building industry concerned with the equitable and not just about equity and instant returns.
No one else can afford to.
One time I was playing outside a super and the manager and assistant manager told me I couldn’t play. I told them I could. See some of that story below and earlier.
That was back in the good old days when all they had to do was shoo away one street musician.
Now they need to move tuneless multitudes.
People with nothing to lose tend to stick around.
And people who can do concerts don’t need to play where they are not wanted.
Anyway. Speaking of concerts – there is one coming up and I am happy to report that Dave Alley has agreed to be wingman.
Check out the this video from Dave.
Dave is dynamic and down to earth and puts on a performance not to be missed.
“Dave Alley is influenced chiefly by Dylan, Bowie, Bukowski et al, Fry, Hendrix, Buddy Guy, Richard Thompson, Waits and the tones of Santana, Dave Alley isn’t sure who or what, musically & lyrically, he is. Ending up being a heavily refracted version of himself most of the time. Dave is a spiritually sonic cluster fuzz of atoms whizzing around and around and around, perhaps a little more so after good fresh-ground morning coffee..”
We have other guests and will keep you posted. Please come to the show and even consider sponsoring others to come in your place if you can’t come!
All the best for now
Luke. Call me if you want to help with the show. Its only a week away 021 0259 2919
