I don’t know what your new years eve celebrations usually entail, but for me and my friends the tradition is for us to leave the city and the mad parties and clubs and horde of drunk bogans behind and spend 5 days or so cooped up together in some kind of beach house or lake side property. This year we went back to the same place as last year – a dilapidated school camp on the edge of a lake. Last year it was hot and in the midst of a swarm of bugs – not amazingly pleasant but swimming in the lake made it all much more bearable. This year there were far less bugs thankfully but the lake had blue-green algae in it so there was no swimming and the temperature got progressively hotter the more days we were there. By the day we left it was supposed to hit 40 degrees. The place also didnt seem to have been cleaned since the last time we were there and various things were broken, in some cases they were still broken from last year. The place has been for sale for about 3 years tho so I guess it’s understandable the owners didnt want to spend any money on it, especially now that its actually been sold (new owners take over mid jan apparently).
Despite all its problems, it did offer us a few very important things – a big property all to ourselves with not many neighbours, which is important when you’re bringing a 3.8k PA system with you to blast tunes for the whole time you are there. My housemate also bought his laser (that he built himself no less) and a bunch of lights with him to, so it all looked and sounded pretty sweet on new years eve – sweet enough to attract a few people from the other side of the lake who paddled across on a boat to see what was going on.
One of the highlights of the new years eve tradition for us is that everyone gets to pick one up beat and one down beat song and we string them all together into 2 big long play lists which get played at night and the next morning. It’s always interesting to listen to other people’s picks and exciting to hear yours and talk about it with your friends. Good way to get exposed to music you don’t normally listen to.
I spent a bit of time over the few days we were there re-mastering a couple of my older tracks, trying to get everything mixed to the same level ready for release as some kind of album… when I finish a couple more tracks at least. Hopefully that will be this year, I feel like I am ready to put more energy into my music this year…. we’ll see how that pans out in time.
