onthebeatntrack

If you read my last post ‘from Talib to Tokyo’ in its entirety, you’ll know by now that I am the fortunate recipient of a round trip to each of Tokyo, Hungary and Belgium in August to review three music festivals as My Career & Nova’s CEO (Chief Entertainment Officer). If you didn’t read my last post in its entirety, then you’ve just saved about 10 minutes … 10 minutes which you can now spend finding out how someone like ME got a ‘job’ like THAT - you can read my desperate plea below …

 

Dear newest member of my health care support network

Now, I know that desperate is never a good look – as one of my friends so astutely pointed out recently “you should never say you’re desperate, even if you actually are.” So, please just read on and come to your own conclusion about my ‘situation’.

The thing is I NEED the NOVA CEO gig for medical reasons. Please, stop laughing – this is a sensitive and very serious issue. You see, I am the first and only officially diagnosed – albeit a self diagnosis, but let’s not let that get in the way of a sensational(ised) story – sufferer of a little known condition called FOMO, or its extended and somewhat literal name Fear of Missing Out syndrome. Not familiar? Allow me …

FOMO is a condition that can be massively crippling and yet, unfortunately, is not supported by Medicare. The causes of FOMO are many and varied though the onset of an episode occurs when a sufferer is of the belief that they are indeed ‘missing out’. It becomes particularly chronic in the instance of ‘once off’ events – concerts, gigs, any night on the weekend – however its effects can be just as brutal for continually accessible ‘events’ – like the release of a new CD.

There are a range of symptoms sufferers of FOMO may exhibit, including:

• An inability to say ‘no’
• An inherent disregard for their own financial well being
• Bank account bulimia (tends to be MUCH more purge than binge)
• They’re always the last to leave (they are of the view that ‘something’ may happen in their absence)
• Music festival whore-ism – for example, travelling from Melbourne to Sydney for Homebake (and as a result missing Stereosonic in your home city) then travelling from Sydney to Brisbane the following day to attend the Stereosonic festival to be sure not to ‘miss out’

My person has presented with each of these symptoms at least once – as you may have gauged, my condition is quite advanced and becoming increasingly difficult to manage. To date, there have only been two known successful methods of treatment, fortunately both can be self administered:

1. Saying ‘Yes’ to absolutely everything
2. Alcohol (which usually leads back to treatment option 1, i.e. saying yes to absolutely everything and usually with additional enthusiasm)

Unfortunately, I appear unable to treat this most recent case of FOMO myself. Like having a carrot shaped block of chocolate dangled just out of my cocoa loving taste buds’ reach, I’m anxiously salivating at the thought of being the Nova CEO (actually, the chocolate is to blame for the saliva, but let’s pretend it’s because I’m ‘hungry’ for the job or another semi saliva related cliché). But this is not something that I can just fix with money and it’s not as simple as just manipulating a friend into accompanying me to a gig I believe they possibly won’t even like. No, my fate is in YOUR hands.  Hopefully you take pity on my tragic (yes, possibly even pathetic) situation and see a philanthropic opportunity – you have a real chance to cure my ill and if we work together, well, this could be a real win for both of us. Who knows, maybe when we become really successful we can talk about adding a dollar $ign to our names like Ke$ha.

But I understand that this is a ‘recruitment’ process and sympathy may only be one of the selection criteria, so it’s probably a good idea for me to do some credensationalising (this means to either show you my sensational credentials OR sensationalise my own credentials, but compacted down into one convenient hybrid word). I’ve embellished as best I can in the attached summary and addressed a selection criteria that I’ve put together myself – quite remarkably and in a neat little coincidence, I exceed all of the criteria … I’m getting the feeling that this is meant to be.

(And now for the Kleenex ending … the lead role is voiced in a spoken word duet by the Notebook’s Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling – through tears, no less)

It’s too hard to predict what will happen to me if I miss out on this opportunity, but I’ll fight on – I’ll find another. I’m already experiencing pangs of potential loss about something I’ve not even read about yet …

I’m looking forward to your sympathy.

Painfully and yet somehow still optimistically yours (seriously, what a battler)

Daniel Murphy

 

Reason I Should Get THE Job 1: Proven experience and willingness to cross borders for the purposes of slightly crazy music festival fun.

As I briefly noted in my covering letter, FOMO recently took hold in a massive way. Being from Melbourne I’ve been a little jealous of the line up for Sydney’s Homebake festival in recent years with the likes of Crowded House and Silverchair headlining, so last year we thought that we’d bite the bullet (Butterfly Wings optional, thanks Smashing Pumpkins) and head north to Melbourne’s own Shelbyville-style rival residence. The line up was Excitement (!!!) Central thanks to Sia, Daniel Merriweather, Phrase and Gin Whigmore to name a few and we were mega pu-umped for the journey!

“Uh oh, did you guys peak too soon?” I hear you ask. Hold your racing horses, I will get there – though I should warn you that like the awesome Dixie Chicks I too like Taking the Long Way around (refer Reason I Should Get THE Job 2.2 for why that’s a very good thing). The line up for Melbourne’s Stereosonic was announced soon after and it was very easy on the eye. Our excitement was building like junkies about to score another hit, UNTIL we realised that the Melbourne Stereosonic was on the same day as Homebake in Sydney – and not even with all of our difficult-to-harness-enthusiasm and excessive ways were we going to be able to do both. Stereosonic seemed destined to become a little bit FOMOsonic. Sigh.

As I was just adjusting to FOMOsonic’s existence within my mind, body and whatever soul I have left these days, my friend Kitty Cat decided to become the Kitty Cat-alyst – “hey, Stereosonic is on in Brisbane the day after Homebake … imagine if we flew up after Homebake and backed it up – haha, LOL, ROTFL?” Seriously, you can’t just present ridiculous possibilities like that in front of someone like me because no matter how over the top and completely unnecessary it may appear, I am now aware that there IS a POSSIBILITY and that’s all my over eager self needs. Plus, we declared that this summer was going to be the “best summer EVERRRR!” (which follows the “summer of FUN” in 07/08, and the “summer of saying YES” in 08/09 – would a summer by any other name taste as sweet? Probably, yes) and if we were to truly make this the “best summer EVERRRR” we’d have to do something that sounded worthy of the title.

And so the fairytale of ‘4 trashbags, 3 states, 2 festivals over 1 whole weekend of totally excessive FUN’ was born. We all survived and are currently living happily ever after. To be continued …

 

Reason I Should Get THE Job 2.1: Previous experience in the area of attending live music documenting said experience.

A fairly high percentage (read: stacks) of my time is spent sharing with my friends/ boring them to crocodile tears (depends who you talk to) my musical exploits. But I just wasn’t totally satisfied – it was like a scratch that I COULD itch, but the itching just made it itchier, you know? So late in 2009 I decided to start a blog (other stuff this white person likes are sushi, Sarah Silverman and recycling) – the blog is almost totally dedicated to music. To date I’ve compiled a few ‘lists’ (I know, how original, right?), talked up some of my favourite musos and CDs and, yes, even reviewed a couple of music events. For your assessing convenience I‘ve uncovered some evidence and present Exhibits A through C below:

Exhibit A:   Laneway Festival, Footscray & the XX, Corner Hotel http://onthebeatntrack.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/xx-gg-omfg-awesome/

Exhibit B:   Good Vibrations Festival, Flemington http://onthebeatntrack.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/gvf/

Exhibit C:   George Michael, Etihad Stadium http://onthebeatntrack.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/the-georgey-orgy-live-at-etihad/

 

Reason I Should Get THE Job 2.2: Ability to fill pages with semi (but not always entirely) relevant words, irrespective of the subject.

I understand that part of the ‘job’ is maintaining a daily blog. Without even understanding the brief of what this is to contain, I am very confident in my ability to write about it – well, maybe not the designated subject specifically, but that’s ok. You see, the topic of my own blog (www.onthebeatntrack.wordpress.com – have you heard of it?) is music. Sure, that’s the general theme and the whole reason that I do it, but actually most of the words I write are usually poor attempts at humorous metaphors, modern takes on outdated clichés and pop culture references – ssshh, don’t tell anyone. But in the end it’s a way of engaging the reader enough to fill them with my not so subtle subliminal propaganda. But, I suspect you’re already currently living that dream yourself so let’s consider the obvious stated shall we and move on …

 

Reason I Should Get THE Job 3: Proven stamina to cope with three gigs in less than a fortnight.

I’ve told you all of the terrible, horrible and almost but not completely debilitating side effects of FOMO and you’re no doubt mortified that you’ve not been able to sympathise with its sufferers (or victims, if you insist) before now. One very slim dark grey (definitely not silver) lining on this ill cloud is fun fitness. Fun fitness? Yes, fun fitness. Basically you build up a phenomenal ability to just keep going – never say die OR no would be an apt motto, if for some sick reason we were interested in promoting the condition. So three festivals in less than a fortnight should be achievable (read: PISS easy maaaate).

In fact/ to be honest/ would Charles and Eddie lie to baby, would they lie to you, I am just coming off the back of back of a TRIceretops-GIGasauras fortnight only last month. It wasn’t at all intentional to pack so much live music into one fortnight sized suitcase but thankfully the only resulting excess baggage I had on me was a few more pockets full of muzak loving goodness.

It started on a freaking warm Friday eve at the Melbourne Zoo to see a man that I love – Lupe Fiasco. Two days later I went to the Good Vibrations Festival. Then 9 days later (doesn’t sound that impressive really, does it? Let’s just pretend for today that it does) I had the upper case PLEASURE of seeing George Michael do his post Wham thang at Etihad and just so you know, he was freakin amazing.

Coupled with the Sydney/ Brisbane junket, I think you can see that I’ve definitely got the moves. Word.

 

Reason I Should Get THE Job 4: Obspassion for acts playing at the designated festivals

Ok, so I’ve shown you (surely, yes?) that I’ve got the moves to manoeuvre my way through the assigned logistics of the role but there’s another ingredient needed to make sure this sponge doesn’t come out of the oven all flat – and that ingredient is obspassion! Obspassion adds the social acceptance of passion to the less favoured obsession, removing some of the latter’s stalker stigma and giving it a more positive spin. Really, obsession does it tough – it’s not all that different from commitment if you think about it. I am definitely obspassionate about many things, including many of the acts playing at the three festivals.  For my over indulgent and, yes, obspassionate pleasure I’m going to talk about some of them now.

Jay Z is one of my all time favourites (he is in good company with about 450 of my other ‘all time favourites’ – anyone for a grain of salt?) and I’ve NEVER seen him live – that hurts my heart more than just a little. I could justify my love in about 800 ways, but in a more CV friendly quantity I can tell you 3 of those reasons right now: The Black Album is one of my all time favourite albums, 03 Bonnie & Clyde with Beyonce from The Blueprint 2 is one of my all time favourite tracks and Jigga’s rhyme in Pharrell Williams’ Frontin’ is up there as one of my favourite ever guest rap appearances (on another of my favourite ever songs).

Friendly Fires cancelled Good Vibes this year in Australia which has left a whole in my heart (DEVO!). I know that Friendly Fires aren’t currently listed on the line up for any of the three festivals (my fingers and toes are crossed) BUT Aeroplane are responsible for an awesome remix of their song Paris. There’s a good chance they’ll play that song which will help fill the Friendly Fires void that I live with every day.

 I’d really like to witness the battle of the night dwellers too – will Passion Pit’s sweet pillow loving Sleepyhead beat out Faithless’ nocturnal Insomnia?

Hot Chip were the best act that I saw that Melbourne Big Day Out a couple of years ago and I’ve been playing their new CD over and over and over and over (you guessed it, like a monkey with a miniature cymbal).

There are so many other questions in the public interest that I can get answers to by attending these festivals, like do Major Lazer’s lazers really kill people? Does Calvin Harris actually get all the girls? Can I take on A-Ha? What is in Jason Derulo’s head? Was Milli a better mimer than Vanilli?

My investigative work won’t stop there though – I can help Kasabian work out where all the love did go, get Muse to disclose some of their desires and hopefully see why Speech Debelle won the Mercury Music prize last year over Florence and the Machine.

If absolutely required, I will sit through and be reminded of what Nickelback really are (starts with R and ends in UBBISH) BUT I will have to draw the line at 30 Seconds to Mars. C’mon, fair’s fair.