Chalee's Soapbox

One small step for man, One giant leap for Zizzkind

2006-09-03T01:39:00.000-07:00

I would just like to point out to my everloyal readership (which as of some time ago seems to have started to include celestial beings such as Toni Sant, sallalahu alayhi wasallam) that Zizza Ensemble have finally embraced the cyberelectronicinternettamagotchimsn-age, and we have our own cosy corner over at the myspace place. Enjoy the insanity over at http://www.myspace.com/zizzaensemble

For now you will only be able to enjoy pics and yours truly's usual mastubatory verbosity, but soon enough I'll put up a couple of tunes for your annoyance, soon enough being as soon as we have a big enough pile to go a proper studio and shut ourselves in for long enough to lay down a decent tune with NO absolutely NO bum notes (got that guys?).

Oh and unless I find something interesting to do during this last month before the start of the university routine, some more blogs are going to skid merrily down into the pit. Quake oh Bigilla Blogdom, for thy hour is at hand! Cheerio.

Chalee's heroic singlehanded take on Blogdom

2006-08-28T03:05:00.000-07:00

A most unfortunate footballing accident involving yours truly, a vicious volley, and a hapless right hand has resulted in my being deprived of the use of said luckless limb for a few days. Hands are surprisingly useful gadgets, and my current lack of a functioning destro means that I will be unable to play bass, or blast through Half-Life, or hold a steering wheel with any degree of dexterity for the coming few days. Consequently, in the hope of finding an outlet for my mental juices, I am compelled to return to the land of ennui, Blogdom; patria of chronically bored intellectuals. (The neon tubes among you will by now have glanced back, with inevitably raised eyebrows, at the title of this Bloggata - pathetic). What follows is an exercise in merciless temporal extermination;

Summer has worked out fine so far. Having spent two months injecting liquid state English into somnolent, hung over Valkyries, and watching subtle linguistic distinctions float ineffectually over many an arched roman nose (courtesy of EF), I am currently enjoying a self-awarded one month break from all economic/academic activity. In order to keep the gray one from going all mushy I have been keeping my neurons in shape with the help of John Fowles and his devilish A Maggot (18th century. Epistolary novel. Satan. Aliens. Time Travel. Maggots.), and enjoying literary workouts in the company of a certain Salman Rushdie.

On the music front things are mixed. Fire has stepped up a gear, and there's a fair bit of excitement concerning the newly released album. Expect some heavy gigging in the coming weeks. Zizza Ensemble, on the other hand has ground to an almost halt. Travel, bad luck and the proverbial personal differenes have meant that our summer hasn't been a productive one. On a brighter semi-breve, the infamous Delli (of Issaffarx and Zarzett fame) has finally given in to popular demand, and will be performing his set of deliciously wicked songs, together with the rest of our band, sometime towards the end of september. Much hilarity and political incorrectness will naturally ensue.

This business of singlehanded typing is growing increasingly tiresome, so I will here make a highly dramatic exit. Au revoir!

N.B Comment about Valkyries should be interpreted in strictly non-sexual manner.

PS. Any fun activities that require just one hand? (not that, sicko.)

Bigilla Blogosphere, Beware!

2006-06-09T04:00:00.000-07:00

I hereby declare my belated return to Bigilla Blogdom. It suprising how effectively having something to do can keep you away from blogdom. Happily enough the exam season is now over with only very insubstantial parts of my brain having turned into marmalade and I can once again sate my everloyal readership's thirst for intellectual varieta with the silveryflowing fount of my wisdom (My more cultured readers will have noted the adverse influence of Joyce in the use of masturbatory over-adjectivisation in that last sentence).

Speaking of culture, its been a long time since I had a good dig at that monstrous growth on the left cheek (or is the right cheek?) of Malta's cultural organism, the Blog. So let me just produce my critical fork and knife and tuck in with gusto;

He asked for it once, the masochist, and now he gets it. A nice sojourn in my oven for Arcibald whose calls for help can be heard quite distinctly at http://ajjut.blogspot.com/. Of course help is the last thing the man is; my erstwhile band mate not only plays a mean guitar, but also wields one of the most viciously poisonous tongues in the whole of bigilla blogdom. Endlessly negative and cynical and deadly handy with the repartee, you've got to love him. His blog includes some remarks in very bad taste regarding Rev.Ratzinger and his curious links to Auschwitz as well as some truly enlightening revelations as to God's whereabouts. Ace.

I am called away from my blogging endeavours by a supremely compelling smell of curried chicken. Ah the mind is willing but the flesh is nicely curried and smelling excessively good, so my exit will be rather brusque. Tc guys gtg! B gud!

The Shameless Self-Promotion Post

2006-04-17T03:15:00.000-07:00

Seeing as it is that all the other bloggers shamelessly use their blogs to flog their wares (you know who you are Oh godless peddlers of mp3s and pop-literature) I am going to take some time out to brazenly advertise the musical endeavours that will employ yours truly during the coming week.

The coming week will see Chalee variously employed in the annual BJs musicorgy. Come friday, at around 11pm I'll face the arduous 4 inch climb onto the stage with geriatric retro-rockers Fire. The 'boys' will toss away their zimmer-frames and regale their audience with a solid hour of hard rock goodness - expect a set chock full of overdriven mayhem, guitar worship and obligatory bum notes.

On sunday, on the stroke of midnight, I will take to the stage with the infamous 'Zizza Ensemble'. These last few weeks have been very good for the ensemble, and hopefully you'll be listening to a band in top form next sunday. Our performance in the University students' festival was extremely well received, and invitations to perform in other gigs have poured in. Our gig at the MMSA ballu was similarly successful. Ditching the jazz standards and the jam numbers was a risk, but it has paid off quite handsomely - audiences seem to warm up quickly to our nutty funk style and cartoonish swagger. Do come over and enjoy the show :D

P.S We're playing right after the frighteningly good and chronically cool Carrie band. (prodigy drummer, virtuoso bass player, funktastic gutiarist, stage-owning singer. And geoffrey)

The Steely Dan Shrine

2006-04-12T04:26:00.000-07:00

Seeing the profusion of bigilla-blogs dedicated to band worship, and realizing that much bigilla-reverence is misdirected towards undeserving posers, I have decided to personally redress the situation. So here, for the benefit of my everloyal readership, is a blog entirely dedicated to that most fascinating of musical ventures, Steely Dan. Here you may post your hosannas, shame facedly-confess your ignorance, or mail heretical Dan-bashing posts (much as I would like to, I cannot bar you, heretical brainless one, from accessing this space). What follows now is a sort of feverish rant, enjoy.

There is a certain school of criticism within the music community that will never dig Steely Dan. It is a school that abhors sophistication in all its forms and deems it to be equivalent to pomposity. If you're an honest to God musician or music lover you have certainly encountered this type of critic. He normally inhabits magazines like NME and pseudo-artistic Blogs, and thinks Arctic Monkeys are the ultimate statement of what is 'happening'. The painstaking production which characterizes Steely Dan records is for him merely a glossy sheen, the literate lyrics pure pretence, the elaborate solos on sax and guitar overblown, and certainly passe. He is, of course, a dunce.

Today's generation of musically minded kids would do well to ignore the advice of these pretend-intellectuals. Coldplay, Arctic Monkeys, Kaiser Chiefs and the rest of the merry 'indie' brigade do surpass the likes of Britney and J-Lo hands down, but their musical achievements are still a far cry from the heady heights achieved by the truly alternative rock bands that emerged in the 70's.

Steely Dan were (and, since their 2000 reformation, are) one of the most daring and compelling of those legendary groups. The duo at the heart of Steely Dan, guitarist Walter Becker and keyboardist/vocalist Donald Fagen has written music that straddles with ease all the common modern musical idioms. Listen to 'Aja', with its magnificent blend of lounge-jazz and prog rock, or to the bossa nova nudges on 'Rikki Don't loose that Number', or to'My Rival' with its allusions to the music of Western movies, and you'll know what I mean. The Dan's music is an amazing concotion of rock, pop, country and funk, embellished by occassional forays into jazz territory and underscored by some fiendishly clever lyrics. Anyone who thinks Radiohead are clever (and, let me hasten to add, they are) should check out the bouncy 'Haitian Divorce' and its wicked lyrical twist, or the darkly humorous 'Everything you Did' before proclaiming them the cleverest band on earth. The Dan are swaggering grooves and snazzy solos, clever lyrics and sophisticated harmony. They're not shoddy 'rough around the edges production', they're not bum notes and off key singers, they're not three-chord mayhem. And for that they're reviled. Go figure.

I must call upon you, bigilla-blogdom, all you tech savvy thick speccy geeks, all you brussels translators with too much time on their hands, all you misguided alt-rockers, to give these guys a listen, for you own sake, and for that of sheer fairness towards one of the most intriguing musical experiments ever. Throw that U2, REM, Anonymous Electro Artist, out of the CD player now, and invest in a copy of 'Aja' and 'The Royal Scam'. Or just rip the whole thing off the internet. Don't miss the Dan.

And for your convenience I am included hereunder a list of 'must listen' tracks for you to plonk onto your limewire (nasty criminal you)

'Do it Again' - You must have heard this one at BJs
'Aja' - majestic lounge-jazz prog rock saga
'Gauco' - Morricone inflected instrumental bridge highlight
'Josie' - sweaty funk number
'Things I miss the most' - includes the word 'sex'
'With a Gun' - the Dan do country, the right way
'Kings' - glorious chorus
'Negative Girl' - dark, sexy groove
'Cousin Dupree' - cheerful ditty, theme; incest.
'The Caves of Altamira' - can you go wrong with a title like that?

Now that that is out of the way, you will we pleased to hear that my next post will be another of those lovely blog-bashing ones. Would Maltese blogosphere - Bigilla avec sushi be too much of a wanky title? Suggestions welcome.

Maltese Blogosphere - Stewed

2006-03-24T07:30:00.000-08:00

Any blog that includes a detailed description of the removal of a louse from its author's unhappy penis deserves a mention in this review. Surf over to http://mexxejhassieb.blogspot.com/ and enjoy the insanity. Just remember to ignore all the pretend-clever bits about Maltese society teetering on the edge of the racial war precipice (or something to that effect). You know its much more fun to read about that sort of thing at kenneth's place - where the apocalypse is being awaited with bathed breath - or at Mike's - who is probably stocking up on flamethrowers at this very moment.

During my now daily excursions into bigilla-blogdom I have noticed an alarming deficiency in our colelctive blogging experience; there is not, within the whole bigilla-collective, one single miserable blog which expresses religious fervour towards Steely Dan. Pink Floyd are all over the place, there are a couple of demifrogs who continually remind us of how great Miles was, and (blogdom being very much the ultimate hangout place for geeks) there are gazillions of Radiohead adoration posts. This alarming situation will soon be rectified.

Maltese Blogosphere - On toast

2006-03-23T02:45:00.000-08:00

Three cheers for Pawlu l-kant; he has finally realized that MySpaces is no place for real men. Pawlu's belated arrival is good news for the bigilla-blogosphere. The lad is clever, erudite, and verbose to the point of earning my admiration. He's also on a crusade to promote some obscure (and probably satanic/communist) term which he and his mate - sidekick? - Il-Magistrat recently coined i.e. Strampop, an umbrella term for straightahead pop-rock with weirdo bells and whistles (think Radiohead). Do surf over and enjoy his rants at http://kilbosh.blogspot.com/

I read through my last few entries yesterday and noticed that right-wing loony types are being given an unfair ammount of attention. This is probably justified by the fact that they are so entertaining, but in the interest of fairness I guess it is my duty to include a couple of commie types as well. So here you go; http://hgejjeg.blogspot.com/, by the cutely nicked 'L-Imzebbel', is extremely weird, extremely commie, and (consequently) extremely amusing. Be amazed at the artistic validity of sexual organs, be disgusted by the evils of capitalism, and be utterly blinded by the gothblack blog background.

Incidentally I've been thinking of posting something on the lines of 'You've been grilled' to each reviewee. But I'm havign scond thoughts; would this be too much of a publicity stunt for you, dearest everloyal readership? Please post your opinions, I can't take a decision without knowing that it will irk loads of people.

Maltese Blogosphere - Flame Grilled

2006-03-21T01:33:00.000-08:00

More blogs herded into Chalee's slaughterhouse to be mercylessly poked fun at;

http://rodmallia.blogspot.com/ Penned by that weird scientist-scribbler-socrates amalgam that is Rodrick Mallia, 'Hsibijiet...' is one of the most literate corners of the Bigilla-Blogosphere, and, inevitably, one of the quirkiest. Chock full of highly entertaining outpourings of existentialist frustration Rod's Blog is is the place to visit if you feel like being angry in a well-read manner. To top it all he even places the 'gh' in all the correct places! Can you get any more radical than that without wearing dreadlocks? Surf over, and be edified.

(Incidentally, does the use of the phrase 'surf over' sound too 1999, and therefore render me terminally unhip?)

http://wizgha.blogspot.com/, also known as Kenneth's Online Repository is yet another highly amusing blog from a right-wing loony type, complete with obligatory laments on the state of the Maltese armed forces and expressions of irration at commie activities such as strikes. The boy also salivates at the prospect of a West-Islam apocalypse and there's an effusively lyrical entry on guitarosexuality somewhere. Give me this insanity over 'The Independent' any day.

Maltese Blogosphere - Deep Fried

2006-03-17T07:49:00.000-08:00

In yesterday's blog I promised my everloyal readership that I would endeavour to present an in depth analysis of the Maltese blogosphere. Being the chivalric sort I find it is quite appropriate that I should first dedicate my attention to that rarest of the inhabitants of the ether; the girl. Maltagirl, whose diverse ramblings can be enjoyed at http://maltagirl.typepad.com/diverse_ramblings/ manages the unprecedented task of being both female and moderately witty. Such a singular phenomenon should not be missed. Surf over and enjoy her candid narration of failed cartwheels and kayaking trips.

Another fairly remarkable blog is http://allajafmeta.blogspot.com/, written by the infamous D. Since the man could outplay the rest of us with both of his hands tied round his back, I shall very discreetly not say anything about the fact that his blog contains purple prose passages on Led Zeppelin (shock!) claims that the bass is not meant to played like a guitar (horror!) and other faux pas. Pay D a visit and download a sample of the man's musical endeavours; yes it features samples of funny voices and sounds, and there isn't one single distortion pedal in sight, but it's extremely not bad.

Mike's http://enigmatikmike.blogspot.com/ is probably one of the least well-know places of interest in the Maltese blogosphere. This is a shame, as the man is refreshing unPC, and a right-wing loonie - a hugely entertaining combination. Of course if you're squeamish you're better off sticking with Tony Sant's place (perhaps I'll put the magnus dei of the Maltese blogosphere under the knife in some future episode). Click the link now, if only to confirm that you're not a communist (you aren't, are you?)

Next up....oh we'll see about that next time.

The Maltese Blogosphere, hacked to death for your amusement

2006-03-16T05:20:00.000-08:00

The Maltese Blogosphere is a strange environment. It is populated by a bizarre assortment of right(and left)-wing lunatics, expatriates with too much time on their hands, verbose bass players, writers of 'z' word novels, a couple of jazz snobs (DS), and, incredibly, a girl. Such an intricate ecosystem must, for the good of mankind, be subject to close inspection, in depth analysis, and, of course, ridicule. Therefore in the coming weeks, I shall endeavour to regale you, everloyal readers, with the most enlightening examples of bigilla-blogging that I encounter during my travels through the ether. Cheery - oh!

Chalee's Musical Meanderings

2006-02-10T03:00:00.000-08:00

A Grande richiesta here comes a post answering a question that seems to greatly preoccupy my everloyal readership; what musical endeavours are Chalee and his trusty Fender Jazz up to?

I guess it should be common knowledge by now that I am engaged as full-time E-string pumper with the geriatric rock band Fire. The local Jazz snobs may regard this as some sort of come-down; they are evidently unaware of the infinite amounts of fun to be had in the company of middle aged long haired rockers. Repeated exposures to the conversations of cock-rock gurus Pejxa and R.Longo have resulted in several 70's catchphrases being inculcated into my everyday speech, so that should you engage yours truly in conversation you're bound to be referred to as 'ras', urged to 'keep it pumpin' or told that I've been 'ego trippin' yeah'.

I've also been putting my fingers to the test with the funk/insanity crossover 'Zizza Ensemble'. We hastily recorded a new number gratis courtesy of the excellent fellows down at The Alley Studio, who did a very decent job of our tongue in cheek 'Funky Licks (for lonely chicks)' track, considering that they had less than two hours and one measly take to work with. Kudos. The Ensemble's wacky cartoon funk jazz insanity worked its magic over the St.James cavalier crowd a while back and hopefully our rather idiosynchratic style will gain acceptance with the local gig-granting aristocracy.

You will also be displeased to hear that I'm palying, on an on and off basis, with that most anal of critics and musicians, Mattazzo, with whom I have a whale of a time conjuring incomprehensibly sophistaced chords progressions (I vividly recall exploding in giddy laughter when we hit upon, what was it? C#H.Dim/F# ?)

I hope that this post has sated my everloyal readership's thirst. I will be back soonish with a blog addressing that other pressing issue; what is Chalee listening to? Au revoir.

Exorcising the Song for Europe Demons

2006-02-06T05:17:00.000-08:00

Every person with a modicum of musical nous accepts the fact that the annual Song for Europe is a celebration of gloss over substance. There is among the musically minded a certain fatalism about the whole affair; we dream of the day when contestants send populism to the blazes, and regale us with a cornucopia of clever song structures, biting lyrics and, why not, minblowing harmonica solos played over enio morricono inflected jazz vamps, but we know it won't happen. The earth rotates, eurovision stinks.

Still, I find it incredibly hard to accept that Fabrizio Faniello's inane 'I Do' could be voted 'best song' by the Maltese public, or any other conglomeration of sentient beings for that matter. It is not that I am a geek who finds solace only in 60's space jazz (I can groove to 'Rasputin' with the best), it's just that Faniello's number, even by the standards of bubble-gum pop, does not pass muster. Quite how the popster managed to manufacture a song that grows tiresome in the space of one hundred and eighty seconds is beyond me. I understand Ellingtonian harmonic sophistication and fusion-style virtuosity is not necessary in order to craft a pop-tune, but, for god's sake, even the most fecal of pop jingles needs an effective hook somewhere!

Of course the rest of the fare on show was not extraordinarily engaging either. Yet again the contest was replete with disco ditties and faceless ballads that excited the musical imagination as much as boiled water excites the taste buds. It is depressing to know that for the greater part of the population this dross represents the pinnacle of musical achievement.

Perhaps the Maltese listenership does not deserve any better than Fabrizio's inane ditty. The people were, after all, ruthless in their castigation of any song that made the slightest attempt at being any good. Pamela's outstanding, Enya inflected number was ignored, while Nadine Axisa's Waves was left to linger in the darkness of the lower reaches of the standings (proof if any was ever needed, that the Maltese public does not just scorn harmonic and melodic sophistication of any sort, but that it actually despises it). The shame.