The water debate rarely, if ever, reflects on the water to produce food on farm. A simple Big Mac needs at least 5000 litres of farm water (and the meals in Epicure take many times more). If we restrict Melbourne's citizens to two Big Macs per day, total on-farm water used to grow the ingredients would be 3,500,000 people times 10,000 litres. This is about 36 gigalitres on farm from rain and irrigation water, or around 13,000 gigalitres annually.
This year my awareness of water wastage has increased ten fold. Everything I do at home I think about the water cost. I feel wrong rinsing a glass out!
And yet, I'm also very aware that water usage at home is tiny compared to that in industry and farming.
How much water is used to create the electricity I use to boil a cup of tea? How much is used to create the packaging on the meat I just ate, to create, feed, slaughter, cut it up, transport it, cut it up some more, stick it in the shop. To power the shop, to pay the people to sell it to me, to drive to buy it, cook it, transport the waste created by it.
How much water does recycling use?
Recently I heard of an article (but cannot find it online) that described the "water cost" of various products. I don't remember the numbers but the water cost of a Big Mac was more than a reasonable length shower. That's worth thinking about. Big Macs (etc.) only exist because we (society) are so stinking rich. We can waste so much time, water, money, farming, people to create such a throw away, nutrition neutral food product.
My point to this article was going to be people complaining about having to drink recycled water but I seem to have lost it along the way.
I don't see why people are unhappy to drink water that has been treated to an inch of it's life so it's cleaner than bottled water when they're happy to drink water from what is these days barely a stagnant puddle with some chlorine chucked in it.
People really don't like poo do they?
From Australian Music Online:
"I began working on this album during writing sessions for the last Regurgitator album Mish Mash. I was coming up with tracks that didn't suit the Regurgitator sound and decided to release a separate album. Some of the songs also came about through playing guitar and singing with my 3 year-old daughter Anouk. She has a great mind for strange lyrics coming up with songs such as You Are My Friend and We Are In Fire and Goodbye My Dinosaur. I recorded the album over 2 to 3 months around April/May tracking the drums, piano, guitar and bass in the studio to 2 inch tape machine then had the rest of the sounds completed at home in my studio doing the vocals in a make shift vocal booth in a walk-in wardrobe."
I love this album.
It's filled with simple guitar riffs, lashes of toms, piles of rock. Almost every song on the 18 track album is catchy and fun.
There is none of the overbaring chord based Quan guitar, none of the over production of Regurgitator albums, only simple plinking riffs from both the guitar and keyboards, with most of the songs being driven by the rhythm section.
Unfortunately it really does sound like it was recorded, or at least mixed, in a home studio. At times this adds to the charm. On every track each instrument is clear and loud in the mix. Each track sounds like an excellent demo, capturing the song in the best moment, soon after creation, while it's still fresh. The recording captures the songs at their purest and doesn't smother them in production. Over production, string sections, millions of background riffs are usually a sign a band is bored with their songs, or is trying to hide something...
But Ben obviously has a problem with his own voice. On most tracks it's mixed very low in the mix and often covered in effects, smothered by the music. Ben doesn't have the most fantastic voice in the world, but it isn't so bad it must be so hidden.
The mix is also very bass heavy. Much like the recent Peeping Tom (Mike Patton) album, it may well only sound truely good when pumped up to insane volumes. A symptom of a solo artist mixing their own tracks while suffering a little from bass-level hearing damage, or am I reading too much into it?
A friend recently saw the band live at a CD launch at the Rob Roy in Melbourne. He says they were fantastic live, and I can hear how the simplicity and popiness of the songs would lead themselves to an excellent live show.
I'm also told Ben is a fan of Look Who's Toxic which prooves at least that he really does have the sense of fun you can hear in his music.
I'm already looking forward to a second album.
We visited a couple of Tower Records stores while in San Francisco in 2000.
Tower Records became popular due mostly to the large range they displayed in their stores. Certainly the one in Berkley we visited was massive. These days Amazon has a much larger range, and it's cheaper.
Personally I prefer browsing in a store. The internet is only good when I know what I want. Often I'll discover a new CD, look at Amazon, then decide to buy it for real in a store, only to find it's not in the store... nor ever likely to be.
I remember when I could go to JB HiFi, go to the Regurgitator section and see all their albums, EPs and their latest single. These days you're lucky to see Mish Mash, maybe a copy of Art... and an imported (IMPORTED???!) version of the New EP.
That may have more to do with the popularity and recent stagnant output of Regurgitator, but...
Why the hell do stores have to import copies of Australian band EPs? Are they deleted? Or is it simply price?
I've read a few articles which suggest that the easy access to music provided by the internet in it's many forms, has been one of the major causes of so many 70s and 80s band's comebacks. Not only that, but due to the easy access people have access to many more obscure bands, deleted and rare CDs.
You can imagine that far too often they'll decide they want to hear some, say, Europe or Survivor and find that these band's CDs just aren't available in the store.
The store has the latest Britney album and a best of the 80's compilation.
So they get online and buy it.
Eventually they just stop going to the store.
I also read recently about a secondhand/new bookstore that dumped most of his stock, put in a coffee shop and only kept about 10% of his stock displayed on the walls, face out. He sold just as many books as before, made 60% more profit from his coffee sales.
He also suggested that when people started ordering books through him, they discovered they'd have the book within a day or two, and could pick it up in person, without paying for postage. Something you can't get online...