CHRISTCHURCH BELONGS TO US

I'm writing several posts today because Ronan and I are flying to Melbourne tomorrow to stay with Rosa "The" Borg and then the three of us are heading to Sydney on Sunday to catch up with Michael "Jazz Machine" Gordon and my dad before Ronan and I come back to Christchurch on Wednesday the 11th.

Ronan and I had some sweet stress because neither of us remembered to check our passports until a few days ago. Luckily my passport was still valid but Ronan's had expired 2 months ago so he went to the Department of Internal Affairs out at the airport at 8.30am this morning to try and sort a new one asap (our flight leaves at 6am tomorrow morning so things were looking pretty grim for getting a new passport in time). Luckily it turned out that the Christchurch office can print them but it cost extra to speed up the process and Ronan's card declined him since the money he had transferred to pay for it hadn't gone through fast enough. So Ronan called me at 8.50am begging me to drive to the airport and lend him the money so I did and now he has a new passport and everything is roses! 

Here is ronan dressed as myself and myself undressed as Randy from Trailer Park Boys at the second Spag Junx flatwarming held a few months ago.
This is what we will look at the airport in 16 hours time and realise that we both left our passports at home.

So, this means that it is up to all of the other poster kids to keep this blog up and running for the 8 days that I am away! Because it will surely crumble and die if is left to its own devices for a week. It is still an infant blog and has a tendency to choke on small food items. Incidentally, here is a great music video that teaches you how to save someone from choking (you should apply it to this blog if necessary):

Back to the whole point of this post: great free music compilations. Here a few good ones:

These Shaky Isles is from Aotearoa's own Lil' Chief Records. It's filled with excellent and catchy indie pop/rock songs and has a great variety of New Zealand bands on it. Listen/Free Download here

Recommended tracks:
The Emersons - Could it ever get better?
Wet Wings - You're Not (A Christchurch band, yay! Someone told me that the girl in this band was a few years above us at our high school)
The Gladeyes - Honey Pie
The Brunettes - The Record Store


If you njoyed that, Now We Are Three!!! is another free Lil' Chief compilation released in 2005. It has one of the best Brunettes songs (Holding Hands, Feeding Ducks) on it so is worth downloading for that alone. Listen/Free Download here






Stockholm Belongs To Us is from Sweden's Labrador Records. Laura played it to me as we drove to Dunedin a few months ago and I downloaded it a few days ago. Filled with lots of happy and catchy indie pop music. Also has what is possibly the best name of any compilation I have heard of. Listen/Free Download here

Recommended tracks:
The Mary Onettes - Puzzles
The Radio Dept. - Heaven's On Fire
Acid House Kings - Are we lovers or are we friends?
Club 8 - Western Hospitality  (I originally heard this in a sweet skate video which I will post below):

I'll post up some punk/noise/garage compilations next time for anyone who thinks the above are a bit soft, but I thoroughly recommend them all the same!