rarities CD
Category: Music

Just letting you all know there's a rarities CD on its way....available to purchase this or next week here at Myspace.....a great Throw Your Arms Around Me with Neil,recorded around Woodface days...other odds and bits...I SEe Red with Australian band regurgitator.. interesting and special...live tracks from the last US tour,incl the reworked Shark Attack....some unreworked demos....liner notes will explain....a real typwritten recycled handmade artifact....strictly one for the fans...otherwise things are good....riding out the winter....

5:13 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Jackie O RIP
Category: Life

First two ENZ shows done and pure pleasure...just wanted to explain the new music Funeral Vale....Jackie was a friend and one of the greatest musicians/arrangers I have ever met...he passed away recently,and I remembered this piece of music that he had arranged for a TV series called Kangaroo Palace that I was doing the soundtrack for....we used some Irish Pipes,played by the master Davy Spillane,and I had asked Davy to improvise a section....Jackie heard it and suggested he write a brass band arrangement for it....I was staggered by the result,which was harmonically so rich,and far removed from my expectations...those mournful eastern European chords,shifting elegantly beneath the exquisite pipes....he is missed by many people,esp his family....I salute him,Tim.

3:54 PM - 5 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

back home/songs
Current mood: blessed
Category: Life

....arrived back in Auckland to a storm....big winds mainly,out of the Nth East...kind of soothing to a jet-lagged/gig-addled mind....what a tour...I loved every show,and found US audiences as generous and enthusiastic as ever...and had great inspiration from them all,and from different things I experienced along the way...next new song up will be Who Own's the Song....a pertinent question perhaps for these times....so many different ways of looking at it....from copyright to purchase to a listener's deep love to performance(as in "the singer really owned it").....the new songs I'm floating are not definitely for the album....they might be done again by the chamber group waiting in the wings...but we now have a lot of choices...anyway,they are for your entertainment,and more to follow....I'm heading off to Melbourne in a couple of weeks to workshop the Musical "Poor Boy"....should be very interesting....with Eddie Rayner as Musical Director....otherwise loving playing silly buggers with the kids and having the occasional(read:every half hr) jam.....bye....

10:39 PM - 15 Comments - 24 Kudos - Add Comment

Pittsburgh cancelled
Current mood: bummed
Category: Music

again!......there's nothing more dispiriting than driving through the wind and the rain(as the song goes),and then the promoter calls and tells you "no show tonight"...I am so sorry to any fans who are out there reading this....extreme weather has derailed us...very frustrating...we now have a night off in Pittsburgh that we didn't want....and too icy to venture out anywhere....Part of me couldn't help feeling they should still hold the gig,but I was told that the promoter won't take the risk,that someone travels to the show,and then has an accident afterwards....the human cost,and the legals.....we just don't live somewhere where this happens,so it's hard to relate....but of course I would hate it if someone got hurt....so.......here we are....tomorrow,Boston/Cambridge....hopefully......Tim.

4:07 PM - 15 Comments - 17 Kudos - Add Comment

Milwaukee cancelled
Current mood: disappointed
Category: Music

big sorry to all the fans in Milwaukee....what a bummer....I don't remember weather being a reason to cancel in 36 years of playing shows....it sounded like a great hall too....an old German beer hall....Brett and I are very disappointed,and here at the airport hoping to get to Toronto...we are coming back in the Fall at this stage,and Milwaukee will be definitely included...apparently Split Enz played here once,but me solo never...Ash Wednesday too....ashes to ashes indeed....sorry.....Tim.

8:51 AM - 12 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

musing in Utah
Category: Life

munching on a crisp apple here at Sundance...below zero outside,a flurry of snow descending...we began our US tour here yesterday and played as part of ASCAP's music cafe in Park City...we do it again this afternoon and will be previewing a new song,The Saw and the Tree...there are rumours around that Neil Young will be there to play guitar with Josh "Someone" who is signed to his label and is an ex Marine who now espouses peace and apparently sings great songs...meanwhile back home in Auckland,summer is a -raging,and the pool glistening and calling...but nary a tunesmith to break its surface...see you out there on the road somewhere....thank you to all those folks flying in,or driving cross country etc...I appreciate it...bye....

2:06 PM - 18 Comments - 29 Kudos - Add Comment

songs,summer,Split Enz
Category: Music

been enjoying putting up some new songs for you....I See Redabilly seems to have struck a chord...it's the way that Brett and I have been playing it live....what I love about touring as two people is the way songs can change so easily from night to night....take on whole new guises...the way we played So Precious for example....looking forward to the upcoming dates in the US....I am foregoing the best of summer here to criss-cross the winter lands...but it will be grand...we finally started filling our new pool today,a dream of mine to have a lap-pool in the front yard...isn't there a Badly Drawn Boy song about swimming pools...I bet he has one....and I do love that REM song,Night Swimming...it's so beautiful and one of their best...makes you remember swimming with friends as a very young person,how charged it all is,loaded with eros and the illicit....slippery skin and lithe limbs abounding....someone said recently that anyone who uses "methinks" should break out the pantaloons....I have been guilty thereof,and verily have spake thus....Split Enz are playing tomorrow,the line-up that will be doing the NZ tour in March,with Rotorua drummer Michael Barker....two songs for the current affairs show,Campbell Live...it goes to air next Thursday and is their last show of the year...good chance for us all to regroup and play for friends and family and the nation...Dad will be there.....I will put up more songs soon....I have a 1981 demo of a song called "They Won't Let My Girlfriend Talk To Me" which Jimmy and the Boys took to No5 in Australia in 1982.....and a demo of a song called Secret Heart which may get on the next album....OK,bye for now....

11:48 PM - 30 Comments - 39 Kudos - Add Comment

musical afternoon
Current mood: cheerful
Category: Music

recorded a song yesterday with Miles Golding(original SE member/violinist for those who aren't familiar),and Eddie Rayner(SE keys,ditto),and Brett Adams,my guitar player from recent touring....it was so great....song called More Fool Me which I've tried a number of different ways,but it all finally gelled...suggesting direction for new album....Miles lives in England,and has played in many different orchestras and chamber groups over there since he left SE in 1973...it is hugely enjoyable having him around,not least because he taught my kids how to play French Cricket on the beach...gearing up for a big party in Sydney on Sat night...best friend's 60th....had a good sing with CH last weekend...it's funny,when Neil announced their reformation I was being constantly asked if I would be involved,and I always gave the same answer that I was sure our paths would cross....well they finally did...in our home town...it's Guy Fawkes night,and there will be sputterings and boomings for hours to come...

10:18 PM - 17 Comments - 18 Kudos - Add Comment

spam
Current mood: grumpy

sorry about all the spam.....it's kind of disgusting,like my site is made of flypaper...I have someone working on it....

8:25 PM - 11 Comments - 16 Kudos - Add Comment

goings on

hey it's been a while...was listening to Frank Black solo stuff today...something about it I really liked...a song called 7days...and others...what else have we been listening to?New White Stripes...really like it,not as much as the last one but still great...Rag and Bone is one stand out...and Jack still triple rhyming up a storm...Meg's drumming reminds me of me,and Jack's voice uncannily like early Phil Judd...don't you think?Otherwise,in discussion for a Jan/Feb US tour,and two new theatre projects in development...one called Poor Boy will be on in Syd and Melb early 09...today is a 10th anniversary of our wedding...best thing I ever did.....new songs starting to come again...also been listening to early ENZ... remixed Rootin' Tootin" Luton Tapes...soon to be released and brilliantly brought to life by Eddie Rayner...demos of a band on fire in 1978...and Liam Finn's great album...the lineage goes on...bye...

9:51 PM - 30 Comments - 43 Kudos - Add Comment