i was just talking to a doctor friend of mine, and for some reason we got on to the topic of medical indemnity insurance. doctors pay a relatively small amount of money to a company that will then step up and pay out (to a degree) an amount of money that covers legal costs and even damages if the doctor in question ever is faced with nasty things like malpractice suits, which are more common than you might think.

it got me wondering whether any enterprising young music/business/law entrepreneurs had considered setting up ’sample clearance insurance’. maybe you could call it ‘copyright indemnity insurance’? scared young sample-based producers, who are nervous about the prospect of having to sell their homes or their grandmothers in order to pay legal costs and damages to evil publishers and major labels who have successfully recognised 60 seconds of “crunchy granola” in their otherwise most unique and excellent electronic work, could pay a small monthly amount to an insurance company who would agree to foot the bill (or at least some of it) when the shit hits the fan. would there be enough sample-based musicians out there to justify this business model? how many of them are so nervous about sample clearance issues that they would pay for insurance like this? a lot of sample-based producers seem indifferent, i would even say cavalier, about copyright issues these days.

then i envisaged a nightmare scenario, where a big publishing company with money to burn takes over the copyright indemnity insurance company, dismantles it, and in doing so gains access to a large database of scared sample-based producers who they can then target immediately to hunt down those uncleared samples. and then they hunt down the producers, cook their bones in a cauldron and make ramen from the marrow. irashaimase!

to follow an ox to zenkō-ji (a famous buddhist temple in nagano japan) means to have something good unexpectedly happen to you, which seems to describe nearly all of the good things that have ever happened to me, like, for example, this.

in other news, i’m home again. cue a chorus of indifferent shrugs and a shuffling of feet. i’m back in melbourne this time for good, that is until the next improbably long overseas jaunt. i got back from tokyo yesterday. in the nine months since i released entropy begins at home, i’ve seen a bit of new york, a lot of london, many amazing parts of western and central europe, japan (i think i love you), and - somewhat bizarrely - six weeks in melbourne in spring. the chances are slim that any of these people traverse this particular corner of the internet, but i want to do the right thing and shout out to some of the people along the way that made the trip so damn fun: ej, nathan and daniel (self-appointed faux pas chief of staff in islington); sarah & tim; aaron elvis, lor-en from the planet krypton & carla; kylie & darren; the wazza-gazza wodka explosion; felicity & the rest of that gang; martine and the stripey-shirt man from cesky krumlov who sure could move his gargantuan ass; angela, valter, pinky and belle; amber the queen of gunma; the kobe axis of evil - paul & yuko & dj junko of the unstoppable obscurity saturday people; and of course, my travelling companion (ie drinking partner) mini-smash. let me also just say a thanks to all the people in australia and abroad who supported my album in the last 9 months even though i was, for most of the time, too busy having fun in exotic locales to actively promote it myself. TANKS A LOT

ok. thats out of my system i think. things should go back to ‘normal’ on this blog soon, give me a week or so while i do menial things like find a job (ha!), get my stuff out of storage, unpack my bag, re-adjust to the australian accent, et cetera.