Grinspoon:
"Guide to
better living"

Melanie Henderson

Well, it's the last issue of the year so I thought I'd go with an uprising band.
This is Grinspoon's debut album, "Guide to better living". These boys know what sound they want with the first song "Pressure Tested 1984", rattling your eardrums in the first chord. It sort of hits you with a bang then mellows down and hits you again. Grinspoon is: Phil Jamieson, Pat Davern, Joey Hansend and Kristian Hopes.
Off this album came a few hit songs such as "Just Ace", "DC X 3", "Don't go away" and "Champion". The tunes are a mixture of grunge, punk and funk making it seriously alternative which is what I like.
Grinspoon will be in Alice Springs on the 30th of November and will be appearing in Darwin around the same time as the "Barbie" band "Aqua" will. Yay!
My favourite songs on this album are "Pressure Tested 1984", "Sickfest", "Just Ace", "NBT" and "Champion", but I love the whole album. Grinspoon has just released the new hit single "Black Friday" and are touring to promote the single.
Unfortunately, I'm going to miss the Grinspoon concert by one day because of exams. THAT SUXS!
Well that's it from me for the year.
I give the album 5/5 spuds and if you have the Internet and want to e-mail Grinspoon the address is:
hopspoon@nrg.com.au.

FRESH

Video review by Tony Jefferies

Set in the black projects of Brooklyn 'Fresh' is a boy's fight against the seemingly overwhelming odds of drug-pushers and the violence and degradation they bring in their wake. In this battle the boy, nicknamed Fresh, (played with extraordinary competence by Sean Nelson), receives assistance from his Dad, a speed chess champ, played with his usual flawless brilliance by Samuel L. Jackson.
From him Fresh learns the tactics and strategy that finally enable him, well beyond his years, to overcome and destroy his enemies. The story is in fact an allegory on the chess he learns from his father.
As engaging as the narrative is, however, the real theme of the tale is the social nightmare that ensues in a community when substance abuse undermines and eats up the values basic to the health of a society.
Fresh's father may have pretensions to being speed chess champ of the world but he's also a dysfunctional alcoholic withdrawn into his tiny universe of chess games and beer unable to contribute to the well-being of the tribe of kids he's sired.
Fresh's aunt, and his sisters and girl cousins live the unenviable life of ghetto survival, crammed two and three to a bedroom, doing the drudge work, easy prey to the parasitical pushers and gangsters that control the economic and hence social life of the community.
And finally there are the criminals. Immature, brutalised, degraded, their lives are the puerile fantasies of the 'individual' who carves out an existence on the misery they visit on the weak. Fresh sees his family and young friends corrupted by drugs and senselessly gunned down - their innocence destroyed before it has the chance to flower. Apparently inured to the inhumanity he sees all around him Fresh's brain is working overtime and in the end he exacts a terrible vengeance.
'Fresh' is the story of the individual who can triumph over the evil he or she sees all around them. Such individuals are rare. They are the heroes and saints of their society. For most the vista is not so far nor so extensive, the will not so strong, the intelligence not so keen - they do what everyone else does and proceed down the soft and easy slope to a living hell.
Woe be to those who encourage or assist this progress.