New Zealand 2011: Day 20

This morning was very lazy. I slept in, Dad went to breakfast and ran into a few of our tour-mates before their bus left. The morning was quiet because it was raining buckets outside. We didn’t really mind though, it was nice to have a quiet day to relax.

Around lunchtime we decided to go brave the weather and take a walk. Restaurant options are pretty limited in this city on Sunday. There was a whole line of Asian restaurants we remembered from last time, and they seemed like likely suspects.

Armed with umbrellas and long coats we managed to time our walk to lunch with a break in the rain. We ended up eating at a good Korean place (which was sadly empty). Dad had bibimbap and I had a lunch box with Korean BBQ chicken. My lunch box was good, it came with white rice, a shredded salad, apple slices, tempura shrimp, tiny spring rolls, dumplings, a strange fried ring-shaped thing which was not onion, and a lot of chicken. It was really good but I didn’t make my way through too much of it!

There was a TV on, playing some movie. Our best guess was it was a Japanese film dubbed into Korean. The only reason I paid any attention to it was that it sounded a lot like the dialog between Sun and Jin in LOST! The plot was completely incomprehensible, and I don’t think it’s because I don’t speak Korean...

After lunch Dad and I found another break in the rain and scooted back to Real Groovy, the same interesting little CD shop we found last time. We decided to have a contest to see who could find the best CD.

The rules:
    1. There was a $7 cap on the cost of the CD.
    2. The CD had to be by someone you’d never heard of

Other than that, it was a free for all. We actually ended up pitting 3 CDs against 3 CDs. After we cashed out and returned to the hotel we started ripping them and the judging commenced.

It was close, but I beat the pants off him :-)

My strategy did seem to have been more effective than his. I was browsing in the Pop/Rock section, looking for female artists recording under their own names (no bands), with interesting/professional album artwork. He was in the Alternative section, looking for similar things, although he was more amenable to bands.

One of my CDs was actually so good we’ve already ordered three of her other CDs from Amazon.

My selections:

• That Girl by Stephanie Kirkham: B-, Good voice, good lyrics, needed more interesting music.
• Storybook by Texas: B or B+ (depending on later tracks), good voice, nice orchestration, first two songs much better than middle tracks, but it’s got potential.
• The day’s winner: Darkness Out Of Blue by Silje Nergaard: A+, Amazing album! fascinating orchestrations, brilliant lyrics (so good Dad actually noticed). Definitely a new favorite artist.

Dad’s selections:

• Tuning In by Beki & The Bullets: C, material more interesting than performance, first two tracks are almost the same song, sounds like it belongs in the Twilight Soundtrack, but they have a great name.
• Beneath The Sleepy Lagoon by Ghostplane: D (assuming F is reserved for rap and death metal), too horrible for words, nice packaging.
• The National Velvet EP by Dana Eclair: C-, Nothing special here, his voice isn’t great, it’s a little repetitive and most of the songs don’t go anywhere.

Dad purchased one additional CD that he chose not to enter in the contest. However he should have! Technically it might not have been sporting because it was a compilation of a whole bunch of different artists who played live at a folk music festival in Dunedin, New Zealand. It had a whole bunch of really good songs on it! It included a few by the guys from Flight of the Concords and today’s first hand’s down 5 star song, “Waiting For Love” by Raylee Bradfield, who has a myspace at www.myspace.com/rayleebradfield and sells some songs on iTunes. The live recording on this album is the best recording of “Waiting For Love” but she also has a really good Christmas song called, “Luke.”

The other find from the shop was a Bic Runga CD. She performed live with the Christchurch Symphony. They guy who produced the CD desperately wanted to record the event, she was a little hesitant because most live albums are a mash up of 6 or 7 performances and have been rehearsed ahead of time. This event was one night only and there was no chance for rehearsal. Finally he convinced her to let him record it, and if it was no good, it would never be released. It’s fantastic! Definitely a find.

Tonight for dinner we went across the street (because even if it’s raining it couldn’t take more than 30 seconds to cross the street) and had a fairly authentic pizza, although the crust wasn’t very Italian. It was quite good and the lighting was really cool!