Thee Argyles - tomorrowe knighte!!! (March 1)
Current mood: how dare you ask sir!
Category: how dare you ask sir! Music

I'm throwing extra letters everywhere because I am in a tizz - Princess plays bass tomorrow night at Thee Argyles gig at the Blue Tile Lounge in Smith St, Collingwood...

The Duchess D of B presents her compliments and apologies as she has been called away on secret state business - very hush hush.

But it is with steely determination (and no few gastric lepidoptera) that the band approach what will be a very trying night for them.

Personally, I think it will be a doddle.

So come and enjoy the blazing trainwreck of satire where wit, punk and cabaret collide.

Fondest regards,

Prinny xox

1:27 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Check out this video: Thee Argyles, "All Thee Times" (copyright m beard 2005)
Category: Music

Thee Argyles, "All Thee Times" (copyright m beard 2005)



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4:04 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

sons of lee marvin new album

Dear Friend of the Marvins

It's all been going spectacularly as we record our second album (untitled as yet) in at Mr Stockley's Fatsounds studio over the last couple of weeks. We recorded what was presumably our last tracks today and all is sounding good to mine ears, especially the mystery lady guest artiste's vocals (!).

It has been an interesting process this time around; more instrumentation, more attention to vocals, and more than three takes being done on any particular track. Add to that much coffee, car accidents, cigarettes, mystery lady guest artists, mandolins, rhodes piano, Stu Manchu's kit theramin and Loco's monosynth, not to mention Cousin Trouble dropping in for a whirlwind visit, superbabies in the control room and Knuckles preparing to head off to the land of the rising sun and the panty-vending machines...

...it's a definite opus. And this work of beauty also includes THREE BRAND NEW SONGS, written two days before we set sail for the studio.

But the subject of album titles is one fraught with danger. As we have no definite one as yet, please feel free to mail any ideas to me care of this address.

We hope this finds you well my darlings.

Regards,

PMoK aka Butch Midway

2:15 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

why solo gigs are quite delightful: in list form
Current mood: well chuffed
Category: well chuffed Music

From the point of the performer and in no particular order:

1. The money is all yours, and does not have to be plowed back into the band/project.
2. The drink rider is all yours, and does not have to be plowed back into the band/project.
3. You only need to take one guitar and a small amp to the gig.
4. You can walk to gig if it is close to home.
5. It is easier to convince your partner to drive you to gig when you are running late (even though gig is close to home and you could have easily walked) with only one guitar and a small amp.
6. If the performance is a success the responsibility and accolades are yours.
7. If the performance is most definitely not a success then it was just an "off night".
8. You get to ramble on the microphone after consuming half of your (personal and exclusive) drink rider.
9. You get to be selfish with your choice of the odd cover song.
10. You feel like a 20 foot high, gold-covered cross between Billy Bragg and Paul Weller at the end of the show (see comments re drink rider).

many thanks to everyone there and the lovely hotties Michelle and Dave and Jo @ the IDGAFF bar.

1:38 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

solo gigs in general suck but...

Blue Princess .. Press Release

Blue Princess is Mick Beard, the singer songwriter behind Fez Perez, Sons of Lee Marvin, and Thee Argyles. Influenced by love, poverty, addiction, and the holy trinity of Matthew Sweet, Paul Weller and Dave Faulkner these songs never fit anywhere else but it..s time they got an airing. Political and personal, confronting yet comfortable, and classy looking but affordable; Blue Princess is at the IDGAFF bar Sunday October 29 (160 Hoddle St Abbotsford).
roundabouts 5:30 ish.

1:50 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Sexual Liberation: Ladies and Gents, we're going backwards...
Current mood: quixotic
Category: Blogging

So what do we have now, and are we sexually liberated?

One can have as many partners as one wants without fear of recrimination or judgement as long as the sex is safe and responsible, but people still have affairs in secret. Women are empowered and able to be sexually free as men traditionally are held to be, but the word slut still is usually an insult to a woman and joshing banter to a man. It is illegal to hurt or harass gay/lesbian/bi/trans people, but there are still ads in gay personals placed by straight acting men.

The law protects us from persecution based on our gender, orientation and most sexual predilections and fetishes at the moment. But the mores which are now manufactured for society by way of Neighbours, Disney, and the Sky channel news (instead of society dictating the morals to the media) are still forcing people to hide their sexual identity for fear of mockery or violence.

It is a short step from having a candidate from the Family First party getting into the Senate to the repealing or changing of the Discrimination Act. It is a short step from having a borderline Christian fundamentalist in the Oval Office to the re-criminalisation of abortions. It is a short step from having a cricket obsessed baby boomer simpering and pining for a conservative 1950s style society running the country to a reintroduction of a McCarthyesque witch-hunt via our brand spanking new sedition laws.

Oh wait, thats already happened.

Well ladies and gentlemen we are going backwards, or rather being dragged there by certain people in power. It is our duty to resist and not let our brothers and sisters be marginalized ever again. AIDS has never gone away even if is out of fashion with the media when Eltons parties end; daterape and druggings are becoming more common. The way forward is most definitely not to go backwards and pretend these sexual expressions, differences, and kinks are sinful aberrations.

And its one of the major reasons I am appearing in a new wave adult erotic film (made by Hungry Films, see friends page) as a transvestite drummer.

The price of the sexual freedom we have is eternal vigilance; apathy and disinterest are helping the moral fascists grasp for power.

It is time for a new sexual revolution, and the people will be fucking in the streets.

5:59 AM - 4 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Sexual Liberation
Current mood: determined
Category: Blogging

Its a phrase trotted out ofttimes in reference to the sixties, which like most baby-boomer inspired things has been stripped of any relevance by countless rose tinted nostalgic telemovies.

According to a large section of the populace it was something to do with the pill and the Rolling Stones. Quite a turnabout when one considers these two icons in the cold light of 2006: mention pills and Rolling Stones in the same sentence and one expects to also hear the words viagra or angina.

But what was it and what is its legacy? As a child whose formative years came in the seventies, to me it meant my uncle could bring the girlfriend with whom he had been living in sin with for five years to a family Sunday roast. Thus:

The sexual revolution dispelled the notion that one had to get married to either move out of home or have sex without parents & god frowning.

The climate became such that the sex act was able to be seen as a thing absolved of responsibility: notions of love and long term fidelity were held to be not as necessary as had been previously thought. So:

Sex as mating for life and love was no longer an imperative

It is important to remember that the sexual revolution people talk about was not the original one: these had been happening all over the world in different periods of history. Remember the odd story of Roman decadence, anyone?

It was not a new concept!

It certainly had nothing however to do with Feminism, Gay Rights or the prevention of STDs; these were all separate fights fought well after the baby boomers had gotten their mortgages and become conservative stakeholders. Some will credit the sexual revolution for allowing these issues to be discussed and battled out: some would say that the sexual revolution created more problems to be solved.

But it happened, and in true sixties fashion it became an appropriation of a right with the absolution of responsibility. And it certainly was sexual liberation: the point is it had unforeseen and not necessarily good consequences.

It certainly wasnt the unalloyed boon to society it has been made out to be by those present at the time. Except the contraceptive pill: but that was science not the hippies.

Next: and this leaves us where?

5:25 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Peace and Happiness
Category: Music

PEACE AND HAPPINESS all rights M. BEARD 05/06

Oh sister sister it still hurts
Supposed to fade with time but I'm still not over her
Like a plastic bag flapping on a fence
Furious and impotent
When I should've been nailed to the cross instead

But I'm finding hope in lost places
I'm living on the strangest charity
Made it out from under the city
Stole a picture to sting my memory
There's a star that shines in the ocean
There's a road that leads to this address
I wish I had her forgiveness
I wish her peace and happiness

Oh my sister when will it end?
Cause it's still awkward when we see our mutual friends
We were suddenly in the same place
My mouth went dry when I saw her face
It all rushed back through time and space

And we brushed past each other
Like it was a fucking race...

But I'm finding hope in lost places
I'm living on the strangest charity
Made it out from under the city
Stole a picture to sting my memory
Still a star that shines in the ocean
Still a road that leads to this address
I wish I had her forgiveness
I wish her peace and happiness.

5:33 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The Hedonist vs the Baby Boomers
Category: Music

THE HEDONIST VS THE BABY BOOMERS - all rights M BEARD 5/06

You get off on people's faces
I dig sex in public places
We've a charming take on sleaze
It's de rigueur in times like these

The lost frontiers have all been found
Oil is up and the dollar's down
There is no more undiscovered ground

Go baby go when you've got to run
When you've had your fill, when you've had your fun
There's no fabled pot of gold
The baby boomers took it all

We have a right to what is left
We fight for scraps in a crowded nest
So take your pleasures every chance you get

Something blue to stay up late
Something white, my eyes dilate
I'm rock hard and feeling great
All schooled up and I want to play

It'll be gorgeous, it'll be fun:
It'll be safe otherwise it ain't on
And right here and now you're my only one

Right now you're my only one

5:27 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Ghost in the Radio
Category: Music

GHOST IN THE RADIO all rights M. BEARD 05/06

I hear a voice trapped in the static
It's in the gaps between the stations
Between the chatter and the traffic
It's my salvation

Past the racist DJ talkback
Past the brand whore's little bracket
Past the bunch of empty vessels
Who make the loudest racket

I know I hear a ghost
On my car radio
I just detune the dial
And listen close
It tells me things I want to hear
How all the stupid people
Will all soon die and disappear
And how to make it happen

The little voice trapped in the static
Chips away at its own prison
Because through me it finds expression
And we've got plans...

Soon we'll take over the airwaves
He'll be the brains, I'll be the muscle
An idea whose time has come
To pull down all your temples

I know I hear a ghost
On my car radio
I just detune the dial
And listen for a while
Your church and state will crumble
Your idle gods will fall
And when our day has come
You're first against the wall.

5:23 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

a 26 year old bottle of port.
Current mood: awed

Recently I inherited a bottle of Saltram Winery 1980 port from my father. Saltram is in Angaston in the Barossa Valley in South Australia, a region producing arguably the finest wines in Australia.

Father was involved in finance in the area in the early eighties a time when long boozy lunches on company money were the norm and business was done on a handshake. When millionaires sprouted and were held up as both celebrity and example. When high waists, baggy legs, tight ankles & cuffs, shoulderpads, lace bodysuits, and hairsprayed fringes abounded.

When Nik Kershaw and Duran Duran were gods.

At the same time that this port was just a collection of reds from a very good year being poured into a giant cask I was a very young boy beginning at a new school. The school was the first non-catholic institution I had attended (after a scary prep & grade 1 at Our Lady of the Blessed Succour, or Our Lady the Petrol Sucker as father liked to call it).

It had filmmaking as a subject taught to seven year olds and a giant adventure playground. Thus I began to equate government schools with having better facilities and resources than the seemingly impoverished Catholic school I had been to I wonder if this is still the case? But I digress

I was fed port in a teaspoon as a small baby to stop me from crying and to let me sleep through nasty bouts of whooping cough also to let my parents sleep I imagine. This was of course in the days when feeding infants alcohol and indeed leaving them in ones orange Volkswagen beetle overnight for some peace and quiet was considered de rigueur and not child abuse. However one argues the morality, I am quite comfortable with these practices as they have given me a lifelong affinity with and love of port.

When one fortifies a wine one is refining and making it more alcoholic, but ageing it for smoothness. Any muscat, sherry or port worth its salt has been sitting in a wooden barrel (cask) for some time. When one is a callow teenager, the lure of the cheap bottle of Penfolds Club on a cold winters night party is irresistible. It also goes well with pizza.

The other thing I liked about port may be a complete myth. My mother told me once that one could actually die from drinking a bottle of fortified wine in one night, something to do with either the alcohol level or some weird opiate effect brought on by the fortifying process. It way well be false, but owing to the Thanatos residing in everyone (especially teenage boys) it became a test of my male virility against the vintners. A no holds barred, ultimate fighter match in Bachusss arena.

Some I won, some the good men and women at Penfolds claimed the field.

And everyone surely has their port horror story: of vomiting port so as to get an airbrush effect in the shape of the toilet pan on the rear wall of said toilet perhaps...

So tonight I carefully inserted the corkscrew, gently prised the cork out and it promptly disintegrated. I was warned by a friend that I should strain the port into a decanter. Im glad because it had so much sediment in there I would have needed to use a spoon to drink it. But oh the sweet, sweet smell coming out of that 26 year old bottle was truly one to behold.

I hold this tiny glass to the light and see the deep ruby hues swirling mysteriously like a storm on Jupiter viewed from an impossible distance. It tastes like fruit and fire and silk and warms my belly and ears immediately. It strikes me that life should be a process of the fortification and refining of ones own intellect and character - same as the port save there is no omnipresent, omnipowerful vintner. That maybe some quiet cogitation and ferment is actually good for the mind

I did call father and thank him though. We are members of separate generations who even as adults need to find bridging subjects to talk about. The noble fermenters art is a social boon that brings gentlemen of all walks together, and occasionally that can be a good thing.

We know what they say about too much of a good thing however

But I raise my small glass and toast those men of 26 years ago - men in their prime then who put confidence and genius into their work and who even now should be resting soft on their laurels - and to the gentle art of the vintner as applied to the fortification of wine.

3:00 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

New SOLM lyrics - new album tracks
Current mood: melancholy
Category: Music

we are in preproduction!! this means we have to choose between a single or double album hahaha but here i will be posting some new songs & lyrics over the next few days.

but here's a rather appropriate one for the moment:

Schoolyard - MB 12/05

Oh no look at that stare -
somebody's talking in the schoolyard
What caused that evil glare?
somebody's talking in the schoolyard

My life is my own
You spend too much time alone...

Grow up and get over it
Grow up and get over it
Grow up and get over it
Grow up and get over it

Didn't even know didn't even see
somebody talking in the schoolyard
Now everybody's looking daggers at me
somebody spoke in the schoolyard

My life's still my own
You've spent too much time alone...

Grow up and get over it
Grow up and get over it
Grow up and get over it
Grow up and get over it

Get over it....

11:13 PM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment