it has been a significant time for invisible boy – we are expressionless with sorrow, celebratory and proud of our past and optimistic yet uncertain about the future.. whilst no one is sure what the future holds, we want to thank the entire creative friends and family collective who have journeyed with us this far.. watch this space!

But enough with that metaphor… Let’s try another one.

In many ways it felt more like a landing than a launch. We’d already flown the rocket across the Bass Ditch, over the City of Rain and the City of Churches, way down south and back again.

Recorded, re-recorded and re-recorded again, this thing looked for a long time as if it was going to rust itself to the launch platform. (Ground Control to Major iBoy… are you guys still alive?)

So, we landed the rocket to a full house. And we were glad to have our land legs back.

And I’ve been thinking about lyrical themes on this record.

Strangely, there are three songs that refer to the absence of lights in the sky at night. “I thought that I would see pin-prick holes in heaven’s silken floor / but the lights shone no more” (On My Death and Resurrection), “Someone stole the colours dancing in the night” (Grey Blue), “I can see no stars tonight / I could believe that they have fallen from the sky / So the world is upside-down” (Up Above is Nothing Forever).

Make of that what you will.

It sounds to me like a whole lot of disillusionment. We’re fine with that. Better to lose an illusion than live with it and think it’s real. Too bad if you lose a lot of them at the same time. Too bad if your bandmate does the same thing at the same time.

But it makes for great songs.

Thanks to Mrs Pickering (above) for his performance poetry. I heard one punter describe this guy as “prophetic”. We want to hear more.

Thanks also to Ange Pugh (below) for learning the songs and bringing the music to life. Let’s do it again.

More recently, we played Selby Folk Club. We also stayed at the house of the club president, drank his coffee, ate his ice cream and were treated like little kings for a night. Thanks to David and Lyn, Tom and Will for your hospitality, and for taking us to the train station twice so that we had that iPhone the second time.

We are happy writing new songs, swapping things around (I sing Ben’s songs, he sings mine) and singing on trains.

Get above the groove of a lonely life. And buy the album.

DT

Not to mention:
Three drumkits
Four drummers
Six guitar amps
Seven free-to-cheap accommodation arrangements
And a partridge etc etc

We had full houses, empty-as-a-church houses, gigs that left us awed and gigs that were a bucket of terribility, but there were always positives. (For example, The Revolver Upstairs [below] wasn’t nearly as expensive to play at as it could have been.)

Certainly the weirdest was Ruby’s Lounge in Belgrave, Victoria. With a four band bill, three from interstate and one international group, I’ve never seen an emptier room. The first band played to the second band, the second band played to the first band, the third band promised to make ears bleed and cleared the place. Then it was our turn to play. Ben and I took our acoustic guitars out to the footpath and played to actual people, told them we’d play three songs on the stage inside and found ourselves all Pied Piper like as they followed us in. People got happy, danced and loved it. Easy.

Our most rewarding show was Cygnet Folk Festival. We’d applied five years in a row and finally got in. Strangely enough, we did our thing and people did their happy and dancing thing. It’s pretty easy, really. Love to all the Cygnet folkies. It was very special to be there.

We’ll be putting on a Tasmanian launch real soon, then heading back to Victoria for a spell.

It’s funny being Tasmanian. Apart from being related to half our audience (and to each other), a lot of people just tend to swim around this heart-shaped state like sharks born into a fish tank.

Or sparrows in a kitchen, for that matter.

We started mixing in August last year. We were almost finished for a while then too, then we were finished.

Now, we’re almost finished again.

Two new songs, one song completely re-recorded twice, all other songs tinkered with until their awesomeness bursts forth like giggles repressed from one’s tickler.

But studio talk is boring for most people. Yeah, we used an NT2 mic and beanbag baffling etc etc.

Most music interviews end up being about the studio adventures.

I think this is like asking a photographer to talk about the experience of buying Blu-Tac with which to stick their photograph to the wall. Even the photograph is not that interesting to me. I like what’s in the photograph.

So, the mixing is almost finished but, best of all, the picture is beautiful.

It’s a boy. In shorts. Drawing a picture of a horse.

Do you call yourself spiritual? Lots of people tell me they are, but everyone seems to mean something different when they use the word.

In Selling Spirituality (Carrette and King), they say there is a modern kind of spirituality which is all about keeping people focused on themselves, staying stress-free and committed to the company. (Why do thousands of office workers do yoga in their lunch break? Because it calms them down so they can get back to work.)

It’s a bit heady, but it’s a stunning read. See what you think:

“Since the Enlightenment and the birth of modern political liberalism, we have seen the privatisation of religion. This combined with the emergence of a modern capitalist system has allowed the contemporary notion of consumer-oriented and individualised spiritualities to emerge[...] We are now seeing the corporatisation of spirituality, that is the tailoring of those individualised spiritualities to fit the needs of corporate business culture in its demand for an efficient, productive and pacified workforce.”

Thus…

“The ‘spiritual’ becomes instrumental to the market rather than oriented towards a wider social and ethical framework, and its primary function becomes the perpetuation of the consumerist status quo rather than a critical reflection upon it.”

So…

“The secularist critique of religion, most famously represented by Marx’s claim that religion is the opiate of the masses, now needs to be applied to the ideological institutions and practices of corporate capitalism itself.”

There’s a lot in there.

They reckon that if your ‘spirituality’ doesn’t get you out changing the world and helping to fix things up, then it’s probably just a kind of sedative; a bit like putting your hand in the fire and then chewing on painkillers. They reckon there’s a reason you don’t like your job and they say it’s spiritual.

An unusual conclusion for such an academic read.

It got me thinking, anyway.

Daniel

PS: The album comes out soon.

Welcome to another iboy news edition with all the important stuff stolen from wikipedia and packaged to look intelligent, band news, gossip, information and misinformation. i hope it finds you well, alive, kicking, itching and scratching. please feel free to reply with anything randomly complementary. this edition features an invisible boy gold, silver and bronze song list so that you can be up to date with songs that you can expect to be hearing at an invisible boy gig and those you are least likely to hear. plz feel free to suggest amendments. i hope it this latest edition is helpful to you. smile.

The Invisible Boy (1957) is a science fiction film, directed by Herman Hoffman, and starring Richard Eyer and Philip Abbott. The Invisible Boy is a curious mixture of lighthearted playfulness and menacing evil. As it begins, ten-year-old Timmie Merinoe (Eyer) seems only to want a playmate. After he is mysteriously invested with superior intelligence, he reassembles a robot that his father and other scientists have been ready to discard as unrepairable junk. No one pays much attention to the robot after Timmie gets it going, until Timmie’s mother becomes angry when Timmie is taken aloft by a huge kite that the robot builds. When Timmie expresses a wish to be able to play without being observed by his parents, the robot—with the aid of an evil Supercomputer–makes him invisible. At first Timmie uses his invisibility to play simple pranks on his parents and others, but the mood of the film soon changes, when it becomes clear that the super computer intends to take over the world through a satellite. One of the most remarkable things about this film is the near-indifference of Timmie’s parents to his invisibility. His scientist father expresses no curiosity about how Timmie has achieved his invisibility and seems to be concerned mostly about the difficulty of disciplining him when he can’t be seen.

Cole Clark is an Australian manufacturer of guitars and other fretted instruments. The director of Cole Clark is Brad Clark. His experience includes eleven years at Maton, first as factory manager and then as CEO. Some notable artists that use and endorse Cole Clark guitars include Pete Murray, Eskimo Joe, Alex Lloyd, Tex Perkins, Ben Harper, John Butler, Tim Rogers, Jack Johnson and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez.

Tabula rasa (Latin: blank slate) is the epistemological thesis that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that their knowledge comes from experience and perception. Generally proponents of the tabula rasa thesis favour the “nurture” side of the nature versus nurture debate, when it comes to aspects of one’s personality, social and emotional behaviour, and intelligence.

Innatism is a philosophical doctrine that holds that the mind is born with ideas/knowledge, and that therefore the mind is not a ‘blank slate’ at birth, as early empiricists such as John Locke claimed. It asserts therefore that not all knowledge is obtained from experience and the senses.

Enlightenment: The Age of Enlightenment (or simply the Enlightenment) is the era in Western philosophy and intellectual, scientific and cultural life, centered upon the eighteenth century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source for legitimacy and authority.

Paris Whitney Hilton (born February 17, 1981) is an American socialite, heiress, media personality, model, singer, author, fashion designer and actress. She is a great-granddaughter of Conrad Hilton (founder of Hilton Hotels). In December 2007, Hilton’s grandfather Barron Hilton pledged 97 percent of his estate to a charitable organization founded by his father, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. An immediate pledge of $1.2 billion was made, with a further $1.1 billion due after his death. He cited his father’s actions as the motivation for his pledge. According to reports, the potential inheritance of his grandchildren is sharply diminished. Hilton is best known for her controversial appearance in a sex tape in 2003, and appearance on the television series The Simple Life alongside fellow socialite and childhood best friend Nicole Richie. She attended Convent of the Sacred Heart school for a short time with Lady Gaga. She was then transferred to the Canterbury Boarding School, in New Milford, Connecticut where she was a member of the ice hockey team. Hilton loves small dogs, and lives with a Yorkshire Terrier and a female Chihuahua named Tinkerbell among many other pets.

2010setlists

GOLDsongs:

1. such a time as this
2. fear of heights
3. grey blue (+ cello, viola)
4. up above is nothing forever (+ keys)
5. dandelions
6. boy who couldn’t change the world
7. you, me, everyone (+ keys, cello, viola)
8. on my death and resurrection
9. little hawk [NEW]
10. all the streets are filled [NEW]

SILVERsongs:

1. some days
2. if people could put rainbows in zoos they would
3. to fall away
4. with my hands
5. willow rain
6. sometimes I feel like there are two of me
7. sparrow in the kitchen

BRONZEsongs:

1. mother daughter
2. half true
3. hand-me-down
4. invisible boy

Love from Ben

Twelve months ago we were told we were “not rowdy enough” to perform at Launceston’s live music venue.

Shortly after that we were told by a Tasmanian folk music leader that we were “not really folk,” and hence not welcome among the fiddlers and Morris Dancers. (The National Folk Festival, which featured music from Tasmania this year, wouldn’t let us play either!)

Shortly after that, we decided to play Living Room Concerts.

Shortly after that, our bassist left to play in a church band and reassess his life direction. We wished him well and recruited a friend to fill his place.

Shortly after that, our drummer left. No church bands for our atheist political anarchist percussionist, though, and we wished him well too.

Shortly after that, our only female band member left to live and work in Sydney. She said God told her to. We wished we could wish her well.

Shortly after that we embarked on our Living Room Tour throughout Tasmania, Victoria and South Australia.

Shortly after flying over the Bass Strait, Ben was diagnosed with Hepatitis A and hung out in an Adelaide hospital for a week. Daniel and Kris played on their own while Ben got better.

The moral of the story?

I come to life when I see others who are alive. I love it when people say they will do something, be somewhere, and they follow through. I love it when people say they won’t do something and they stay true to their word. I love it when people listen, when people give feedback, when people ask questions. I love it when people enjoy our music, when they enjoy the experience of a night with Invisible Boy.

We don’t invite people to our shows because we need them. We invite them because we think they will enjoy it. Honest.

We don’t go for spamming and mass texts and millions of promo posters. Ninety five Invisible Boy fans out of one hundred will come because they have been invited personally, because they know us, because they loved the last show. It’s always been true for us.

Thank you to the ninety five, and to the curious strangers. Thank you to those who said they would come, and came. Thank you to those who said they would not come, and didn’t.

And thank you to the dance party on the second floor. There’s always a dance party on the second floor somewhere…