Music Life

Joaquin Phoenix Quits Acting For Music

For some reason known only to the man himself, Joaquin Phoenix has announced he's quitting acting to take up Music.

Phoenix is apparently giving up acting to pursue music, a passion of his since he learned to play guitar to play the role of Johnny Cash in 2005's "Walk the Line." According to Billboard, Phoenix is working on an album with Tim Burgess, frontman for the UK group The Charlatans. Burgess said, "Once he learnt guitar he found that he had quite a lot of demons inside himself that he wanted to expel through music.

Phoenix appeared at the charity event on Monday with his brother-in-law, Casey Affleck. Affleck is married to Phoenix's younger sister, Summer. In explaining his retirement decision, Phoenix said, "It's Casey's time now."

Affleck confirmed for E! Online that Phoenix is telling the truth when he says he's leaving the acting profession, saying, "I guess he's getting into music. He's putting out an album." But both Affleck and Phoenix hurried away from the cameras without elaborating.

It's all a little nutty if you ask me, but what do I know?
Drummer Bill Bruford once said that if there is a choice between playing music for a career and something else, then there is no choice at all, you become a musician. That's probably what happened to Joaquin Phoenix, based on a bunch of guitar lessons so that he could play Johnny Cash.

What I'm In To Right Now
Tom Waits. Just send me more Tom Waits stuff.
I can't do that stuff, but I'd like to incorporate some of that vibe into my future work.

What I'm Looking For
There's a bit of cognitive dissonance in my own wanting-more-instruments thing. For a start, I don't know if the instruments I want necessarily dovetail with the music I'm playing.
For instance, I would like a fretless bass. Why? Because I'd like to seriously noodle around on a fretless bass and do some mellow stuff... I think.

The reality is that I'm more likely to get more use out of a grunty bass with round-wound strings than a fretless with tape-wound strings. I'm not really a jazzer, so why fake it?

Another instrument I'm more than passingly interested in is the Micro Korg with a vocoder. Why? Because I think I'd like to play around with some vocoder stuff. Of course, when I stop to think about it, I could do that stuff within Logic because it has a vocoder tucked away somewhere in its many little nooks. The thing is, I'd just like to play with a vocoder. Not necessarily turn myself into a late 1970s techno outfit.

I mean realistically, I'd probably end up doing a version of "Machine Messiah"'s vocoder section and never use it again. So why get it? - But I still would like one.

Then there are the constant sirens inviting me to the sea of indulgence... guitars. Wont go there today, but the call is eternal. Would like a Double Humbucker Fender Jaguar, I keep thinking... but I just can't justify it to myself.

Ditto with the digital piano. Would like one, but then where do I put it? And I might end up just doing a bunch of covers of things like 'Hey Jude' and 'Let it Be' with it', and what would be the point of that. But a digital Piano is something I'd like to have. You can never have enough good instruments with which to make noise.

Another thing I'd like to get is a really good electronic drum set. Why? because I'd like to play drums. Yes. At this point in my life, I want to learn to play drums. I've even bought a book on how to do basic stuff like paradiddles. Yet, it seems like a distant goal. Do I really want to be taking up drums at this point in my life? Yes I do. Can I afford it? Not yet.

This is why I...

Bought Another iPod
When I bought my 60GB iPod in Jan 2006, I thought it would last me a long time. I guess 2 months short of 3 years is a lifetime in technology terms. I began to reach capacity a little while ago and decided I needed to get the 160GB iPod classic. What is this need for capacity? I don't know. My own music tallies up to 17GBs of information because I carry it around as .AIF files, which is sort of unwieldy-huge enough that all my stuff won't fit on a 16GB iPod Touch. Bummer.

Recently Walk-Off HBP handed me another 19GBs of music, which just doesn't sit on my iPod with the rest of the stuff I want to have at hand, so I've been listening to that 19GB in piecemeal. It's not much fun. So the need for capacity has grown exponentially in the 3 years, as Moore's Law implies. besides which, Brew's Law says nothing succeeds like excess and 160GB is nice and excessive... until they come out with a 250GB iPod, one would think.

Then of course Apple updated their latest series of iPods and the largest-capcity iPod classic in the new range only goes to 120GB. The Apple shop in Chatswood said they'd sold out the 160GBs.
"No-no-no-no-Nooooooooooh!"

That's me screaming in my own head as I checked out the new 120GB iPods. Yeah, it's got new features and stuff, but being short-changed 40GB is no mean thing. Do the maths! It's a 32GB iPod Touch plus a 8GB iPod Touch's worth of capacity they're short-changing you. Yeah, that's 40GB all right, and it's more than the 30GB that was the second biggest iPod when I bought my iPod Video back in Jan 2006. Nobody's going to sit quiet at that 40GB of capacity not being there.
The guy in the shop shrugged and said, "Yeah well, these are slimmer."
Slimmer? What's he talking about slimmer, like it's some selling point? Who gives a shit about them being slimmer? This isn't exactly super-models or starlets or hookers, it's iPods! They still weigh like bricks!

Thus I thought the 160GB models were all gone, and felt further bummed out.
Then by accident I found out there were still four of them lying around at Dick Smith at Macquarie Centre, so it was time to go and score one for myself. By the time I arrived at the DS Power House, there was just one black one left. They had sold 3 of them that very afternoon. All of which goes to show that other people were on my wavelength and scrambled to score the left-over 160GB iPod classics over the new, slimmer 120GB models.

Of course I found out today that Tony Fadell, the dude in charge of iPod development has left the firm. He probably got shoved out of the door for coming up with the 120GB model after the 160GB model, and then claiming it was a good idea. It's not, dude.

BTW I got my new car, a Mazda2. It's hardly musical, but it's still pretty cool.