Canadia Beats

Not too far from where I live, and real close to my nearest bus stop, is am Indian restaurant (Indian cuisine and pizzeria!). They’re not the best Indian restaurant in town, in fact they’re not even very good, but they are perfectly placed for grabbing a quick curry after work on a Wednesday night. That and the fact that it’s only $11 for a curry (excl. seafood), rice, naan bread and papadom at dinner time.

We all know to expect a bit of a wait when ordering takeaway food, and with a supermarket nearby this is often a great time to grab some TP and toothpaste, or a bottle of wine if I’m feeling saucy.

But sometimes it’s nice to phone ahead and have it waiting for you. I thought of that tonight after I’d already started walking. Did you know there are no phone books in any of the phone booths up Queen Street, along K Road, and Great North Road? I know that now. I put out a call to Twitter for anyone to text me the number so I could phone ahead, but that didn’t work. Hell, even if people tried this place isn’t easy to Google unless you already know its name, and I didn’t. It doesn’t really exist if it ain’t online.

So let me tell you all about the Copper Chimney, 572 Great North Road, Grey Lynn, Auckland. Telephone (0 9) 376 1600. Lunch 11am-2:30pm (lunch combo $8. Same as dinner plus a can of coke). Dinner 5pm-10:30pm. Open seven days. Halal.

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If only that had been available to me earlier tonight. Don’t worry, I got my curry.

Life, eh? You’d have a assume I’ve been busy with all kinds of things that aren’t your typical Canadia like making movies, looking at comic books and drinking. And this is all true. But despite the fact that I always seem to answer “what have you been up to lately?” with “um, working and… not working,” I have in fact been making an EP.

If you follow my Twitter at all you’ll see I’ve been mumbling about recording for the last month, but then I’m always mumbling about recording. But it goes like this: by the end of June I will have tracked the follow up to One Dog Clapping. There will be a new Canadia EP.

Wait, hold on, it’s July already. So make that some time in July. The plan I wrote on my wall says June, but I used pen and can’t rub it out.

The EP has no name yet, is mostly acoustic in nature, and will have six tracks. There are three brand new songs, and three that have been kicking around in the live set for a while. Although I changed them, so let’s act like they’re new and not get all “I liked your old stuff.” If you liked my old stuff I would have more wine. That is science.

Progress so far: two songs completely tracked, one song almost completely tracked, and three songs totally started. I’m joined on the recordings by new white MacBook Maggie Williams, who is the most helpful member of Canadia since Eunice Brance Branca. She’s basically doing all the work.

My children need wine.