Tour van friends by Claire. On Flickr.
AUSTRALIA! What a rad place! Maybe it's like England and Florida? London and Florid? Flondon! Everything here is just a little bit nicer. The quality of life seems to be pretty high and so far the percentage of amazingly nice people to jerks is pretty amazing.
The one thing that sucks here is the INTERNET. Australia you are crazy! No one has wifi, and if they do, it's expensive. FUCK THAT, THE INTERNET IS FREE. Australia, seriously, get it together.
DAY ONE: BRISBANE. We started off on Monday in Portland, Oregon at 3pm. We flew to San Francisco first, then hung out at the airport for a few hours before getting on the 10 hour flight from San Francisco to Auckland, New Zealand. We lived some sort of time warp day on the plane and arrived in Auckland at 5am on Wednesday. At this point we felt pretty normal. We both slept on the plane a fair amount and Air New Zealand was totally nice and had surprisingly good vegan food. The airport wait and the following 3 hour flight from Auckland to Brisbane gently pushed us towards exhaustion. WE MADE IT!
We met the incredibly nice Andy from UV Magazine and Wolfgang Monthly at the airport and he took us all around Brisbane and introduced us to the flat white (pretty much a latté with less milk and a better name) before dropping us off at the weird backpackers' motel we stayed at. Now we're seeing these places all over. They're pretty much hostels, but seem to be a lot more of them around than in Europe. Remember to bring your own shampoo if you plan to stay in one of those. I washed my hair with a bar of soap.
DAY TWO: SYDNEY. I played on live TV for the first time. Well, wait, maybe some of the shows I played with Devendra Banhart in France, Denmark, or Sweden were live, but this was definitely a first for YACHT. I played two songs on MTV's The Lair, a live show on MTV Australia, and taped for MTV UK, Germany, Baltic Regions, and some other MTVs that I forgot. I'm not sure if anyone even watches it, or watches MTV at all in this country (apparently not many people have cable), but it was an experience nonetheless! Of course the host was a total d-bag, as one might expect from a television show host.
DAY THREE: SYDNEY. Here's a clip from the Sydney show at Manning Bar taken by Waferbaby! He was an Ultimate Blogger 2 contestant, and I was a big fan of his site waferbaby.com back in the day before social networking sites or even blogs were really popular. He is a pioneer! He took some photos here, too.
Truly,
Jona
Looking forward to seeing you guys back in Brisbane on Wednesday. Should be a blast! Keep those dance moves coming.
i was looking into this MTV's The Lair.
http://editorial.gettyimages.com/Search/Search.aspx?EventId=75275793
hilariously, three out of the four your face is nearly in the same formation
i love your new blog-u have a beautiful life; jona !!
p.s. ingmar bergman is eternal like the stars........
Vegemite tastes very good, but I live in Melbourne! Saw you on Saturday night, for both shows, was up the front for the second show, told you to take your shirt off but you weren't real keen on that idea.
Hope you're having a blast man, Australia is awesome!
Vegemite tastes like a solid spreadable version of Braggs, which is maybe my favorite condiment of all time! Maybe like Braggs and nutritional yeast mixed together? It's very salty and very good.
Jona, excited about playing another show in Brisbane? I'd never heard of you guys til I saw you supporting Architecture in Helsinki at The Met but I actually thought you guys were better. My mate and I enjoyed your crazy short films on the CD/DVD you had for sale.
Good luck with the rest of the tour.
i'm under the impression that air new zealand is amazing. my dad's from new zealand, and we went there for christmas when i was younger. they actually played really good movies (super cool british version of the christmas carol that i'd never seen) and had awesome food (passionfruit mousse? gourmet!) and everyone is super charming. i was rather pleased by the entire experience.
Caught you again last night in Brisbane Jona, awesome! When you guys coming back to Australia because I had an absolute blast?!
Aussie Sit and be Fit!? Looks just like American Sit and be Fit!
I saw that on my Tivo once and was psyched that I could learn how to exercise from my couch. Bummed when I actually watched it.
Vegemite!