It's weird how we get so affected by the death of someone famous. We don't know them personally, but we feel touched by their songs or performances or work. I think it's especially poignant when we've had the opportunity to meet a celebrity, and been pleasantly surprised by how amiable they are, and learn shortly afterwards of their passing. As a culture, we're quite obsessed with the rich and famous, and I am guilty of being curious of the odd break-up, scandal or feud; but the finalty of death brings out bizarre emotions in us.

The recent passing of Alex Chilton has stirred up some old memories of celebrity death, and I think it's because of my friend Kieran. Alex Chilton rose to fame as the lead singer of The Box Tops, having a No.1 hit with The Letter at the age of 16. His next band, Big Star, never achieved the same success, but their albums were quite influential to bands such as R.E.M., Teenage Fanclub, The Lemonheads, Primal Scream and Velvet Crush, not to mention Matthew Sweet. Kieran is quite a fan of Big Star and turned me on to their first two albums. Without him, I wouldn't have been able to tell you any Big Star songs and would only have known Alex Chilton because he was the guy who sang The Letter originally.

I love passionate people.  Even when I don't agree with them, I admire the passion. Two people can argue about the same band, the same music, the same song and have two totally different opinions.  Neither of them are wrong, but the fact that they try so hard to convince the other can be amazing.  Take, for instance, Nickelback.

This is the first blog I've written on my brand spanking new website!  What do you think?  Pretty flash hey?  My evil web genius designer has put in the hard yards and delivered a brilliantly streamlined, smaller and more efficient site that puts the spotlight on my blogging and gigs. You can also see my Twitter status feed and links to my Facebook, Twiiter and MySpace pages.  How 2010 is this?  It's been a really quiet January this year.  The post New Year lull is at a low ebb, which may have spiked briefly for Australia Day, but is plateauing out again.  Hopefully February will kick things into gear a little.