Nick Seymour

Who are you, Nick Seymour?

I don't know. And as I've said before...that makes me so excited.

I hope he's someone interesting....

Oh. He's music.

I have to admit. Music people aren't always my favorite to write about. Sometimes they're okay. I guess it depends on who they are and what kind of information I can find.

I hate when I end up feeling I'm just listing a chronology of songs and albums. But sometimes it goes beyond that. Sometimes it gets interesting.

There's always hope.

Lord Wiki doesn't have much to say about Seymour though.

He's the guitarist for Crowded House. That's his claim to fame, I guess.

Crowded House is one of those music groups that I heard of but never realized (until recently) they were Australian. I think that's why I added him to the list.

Baby Nick was born on 9 December 1958.

That would make him Sagittarius, right?

Let's check the birthday website!

Yes. He's a Sagittarius. I'm half that and half Scorpio.

He's an 8 in numerology like my dad. The 8 is about success. My dad is successful. I'm not. But I'm not an 8. I'm a 7. We like to learn. Well, I guess I'm fairly successful at learning. Although I often forget what I've learned.

Seymour was born in Benalla Victoria. I've never heard of that place. The name reminds me of porn for some reason. It sounds kind of like a porn star....at least to me.

I'm looking at Google Maps now.

Benalla is about two hours north-east of Melbourne. It's about an hour away from Albury in New South Wales.

Lord Wiki says that, when Nick was a child, he and his family would travel around Victoria performing. They called themselves The Seymour Family Singers.

At university, Seymour studied visual arts. He also taught himself how to play the bass guitar.

He played with some local bands.

He worked on film sets and TV show sets. Lord Wiki doesn't say what he did on these sets. Maybe IMDb will say.

The show he worked on was called Carson's Law. Lord Wiki has interesting things to say about the show. He says it was popular in Melbourne where it was filmed. But Sydneysiders didn't love it. They tried to revamp the show to please the people in Sydney, and in doing that they alienated the original fans.

I can't find Seymour listed in the IMDb credits. I'm not sure what he did on the set. He could have contributed music. And then again he could have been the guy who swept up the cigarette butts.

Speaking of cigarettes...Not only are they bad for our health, but they're bad for the environment as well. This website says cigarette butts are NOT biodegradable as people often want to believe.

Back to Seymour. In 1984 he joined Crowded House. But I guess they weren't called Crowded House yet. Let me see what Lord Wiki has to say about them.

The group was formed in Melbourne, but led by a Kiwi named Neil Finn. The group is not purely Australian. They have the Kiwi influence in there, and they also have some American band members.

Nick's older brother was in a band called Hunters and Collectors. That sounds vaguely familiar to me.

Lord Wiki says Australians nicknamed Crowded House The Crowdies. That's cute...and oh so very Australian.

The song that made Crowded House popular worldwide was "Don't Dream it's Over". That's the song I've heard of before. It came out in 1986. I think I was in eighth grade then.

In 1987, the band won an MTV award for best new artist.

I hardly ever watch MTV anymore.

How would our world change if we knew for sure there was life after death, and it was easy for our dearly-departed to talk to us via the Internet?   

The Dead are Online  a novel by Dina Roberts 

Lord Wiki says "Don't Dream it's Over" was featured in Stephen King's The Stand. Really? I don't remember that. I love The Stand though. Have any of you read the book? It's definitely one of my favorites

I'm not going to list all their other songs now. I might listen to some of them on YouTube later.

Here's some juicy stuff. Seymour was fired from the band in 1989. It was artistic difference type stuff. But later he was brought back into the fold.

Princess Diana said that Crowded House was her favorite band.

It seems Seymour eventually moved to Ireland. Before that he did some work with a band called Deadstar.

I'm getting so bored with all of this.

I guess I'm just not in the mood.

It's all this breaking up, reuniting, firing, rehiring.......

Sadly one of the band members died from suicide. That was Paul Hester. He had suffered from severe depression.

A little later another band member (Neil Finn) was working on a solo album. He asked for Seymour to contribute by playing bass. Then they decided that instead of that, how about doing more Crowded House stuff.

In January 2007 they announced that Crowded House was BACK. They replaced Hester with a new drummer...an American named Mark Sherrod.

Seymour didn't neglect what he learned during his art classes in University. He used that talent to help design the Crowded House album covers. He also designed some of the group's costumes. Ah! Maybe this is what he did on the film and television sets.

Now I'm going to read about the one song of theirs that I've heard of. I might have actually heard other songs and I just don't recognize them by name.

Lord Wiki says "Don't Dream it's Over" is a staple of 1980's music compilations. I had one of those CD's. I wonder if the song is on there. The only song I know offhand that is on there is "Pacman Fever".

"Don't Dream It's Over" was VERY popular in Canada. It reached #1 in the charts. It reached #2 in my country.

The song was featured in an episode of Medium. I'm not sure if I saw the episode. "But For the Grace of God". Let me go look it up. Well, it involves Angelica Huston's character. I remember her. But I don't remember this particular episode. Maybe I missed it.

I think I'm done with Lord Wiki.

I'm guessing somewhere out there is an official website....

Here we go.

It's cute. I wonder if Seymour did the artwork on it.

One of their albums is called Recurring Dreams. I love that title, because I love anything to do with dreams. Dreams are my current secondary obsession. I'm still a little obsessed with eating disorders, but much less so. And I'm doing much better in that regards. I spent the weekend with three thin (one very thin) women. I dealt with talks of dieting and weight. I witnessed my mom praising my cousin for being skinny. I saw the very skinny one claiming she was flabby.

I saw all that and didn't come home wanting to starve myself.

If I can spend a weekend with my family and not go back to my eating disorder...that is TRUE recovery. My family is extremely lovely; funny and fun. But we're poster children for behaviors that lead to eating disorders. There's definitely those conflicting messages. On one hand, there's that push for us to eat eat eat. We're presented with horrific amounts of food and encouraged to get seconds and thirds. At the same time, thinness and dieting is practically worshiped. My past eating disorders are seen as something to be admired.

That's the main reason I had the relapse probably. I wanted to be admired again. But now I'm thinking I'd rather be admired for OTHER things.

Yeah.

Oh...TOTAL tangent here. Right?

Can I be admired for the amount of times I go off on a total tangent?

Probably not.

Back to my other secondary obsession. Dreams.

It's funny because it was recurring dreams that led me to my Australian obsession.

I've been obsessed with dreams off and on my whole life. This new recurrence came about last week. My new thing is to exercise while watching videos on YouTube. I wasn't sure what I wanted to watch and just suddenly decided to plug lucid dreams into the search thing. And I've been watching lots of dream videos since then.

I love dreams.

Maybe I shall focus on dreams instead of weight.

If I had to chose between thinness and my dreams, I'd definitely pick my dreams.

Back to Crowded House....

Their website is pretty cool. You can listen to previews of all their songs. I'm looking at the Recurring Dream album.

When I hear "Don't Dream It's Over", it makes me think of this eighth grade dance I went to. I guess maybe they played the song there.

I'm trying to look at their website. It's a bit slow. I'm going to blame Barry Crocker.

Oh well. Now the website is not doing me much good. I'm going to move on over to their MySpace.

In December 2008 Crowded House participated in a festival called Homeback: Peace in the Park. It was an all day thing that took place in Royal Botanical Gardens. I love the Royal Botanical Gardens.

I like what Seymour says here. Now we're a lot less likely to try to make each other like ourselves. I used to find that in Crowded House we were always expressing a lot of energy in not understanding why we were different. We used to think, why can't you be more like me? Those tensions don't exist any more because we've experienced so much more.

That reminds me a lot of my family. At times we accept each other's differences. Other times we judge each other. This weekend I was judged by one of them in a bitchy way. And I judged some of my family members in a bitchy way. But for the most part we got along well and had fun.

Seymour and one of his Crowded House mates were interviewed by Andrew Denton. Cool!

They talk about how children are influenced by their parent's musical tastes. Some of the people who loved Crowded House in the 1980's now have teens that are fans of their music.

Ah! They talk about Carson's Law. Seymour was the location art director. What is that? I don't know.

He tells a funny story. For the show they needed pigs. Seymour took them home over the weekend to babysit. His neighbor wrote sex on one and pig on the other. When they filmed the pigs later they covered up the writing with mud.

It's kind of a sad story because it seems they got the pigs from a slaughter house. And after their television debut they had to go back. Seymour says he was vegetarian after that for awhile.

Most of the interview is about stuff I talked about before...them having their previous differences but eventually learning to love each other more.

I was going to look at some lyrics next, but I'm not really in the mood now.

I'm going to watch videos instead.

Let's start with "Don't Dream it's Over".

Lovely video. If you go to 2:24....I think that might be toast with Vegemite. I really can't imagine eating that much Vegemite on my toast.

Here's a cover of the song by Sixpence None the Richer. Are they Australian?

Nope. They're American....

Here's Sarah Blasko doing the song.

I think I'm ready to move onto a new song.

Whenever I think of Crowded House, I think of this song. But Crowded House doesn't even sing it. Talking Heads does.

I like that song.

Will Talking Heads surprise me by being Australian?

Let's see....

Nope. They're American.

I really don't know what is what.

There IS an Australian TV show called Talking Heads. It's an interview type show. This week they're featuring Olivia Newton John.

Back to Crowded House.

Here's a song called "Something So Strong".

It actually sounds familiar to me.

Well, Lord Wiki says it went pretty high in the US charts. That can explain why I recognize it. I feel like I've heard it recently.....

Better Be Home Soon is about relationship woes...a person feeling neglected by their partner. Maybe they suspect that their significant other is cheating on them?

I don't think I've heard the song before. I like it...a little bit.

Here's Weather with You.

The video reminds me of our recent New Jersey holiday...beaches and amusement parks.

I think here we have a more recent video. I think it's from 2007. Seymour and his friends do look a bit older.

I like the bit that starts at 2:12. It reminds me of my dreams.

Here's a video for She Called Up It's another one of their new songs. The video features a chorus of school children lip-syncing the song. It makes me think of that frightening lip-syncing episode of Nip/Tuck. I used to love that show, but now I can't watch it because it scares me too much.

As for the kids in the Crowded House video....I wonder what school they're from.

I can't find the answer. I'm not sure how to ask about it in Google.

It might not even be a school. It could be a chorus from a theater company or something.

Oh! Before I go....

Seymour is on IMDb. They don't list the lawyer TV show though. But they list other stuff. Let's take a look.

He was the set decorator for a movie called Annie's Coming Out. Is that a gay thing, or a débutante thing?

It's neither. It sounds like a REALLY good movie. It won awards from the Australian Film Institute. It's about someone who works at a hospital for retarded children. She learns that some of these children are not truly retarded. It looks to me like the movie is scolding psychiatry. I'd probably like it since I'm not a big fan of that profession.

I think there was another movie with the same kind of plot....Mickey Rooney was in it.

Well...it's not exactly the same thing. In Rooney's movie, the character actually is retarded. I do remember a story though...maybe movie or TV show? And it involved the idea of people being in an institution when there wasn't really anything wrong with them.

Who knows...Maybe I saw Annie's Coming Out. It WAS shown in America as A Test Of Love.

Seymour had a part in a recent Irish movie called Earmon. It's a romantic comedy about a mother, father and their child. Seymour plays a barman. I wonder how big his part is.

Seymour worked on props for a 1980's dog movie called Dusty.

IMDb has some biographical information.

Seymour had three siblings.

His parents encouraged them to follow their creativity. It was believed his older brother Mark would go into music and Nick would do art.

Nick did do art. And he taught himself to play the bass guitar. We've talked about this before.

Then Nick saw an interview with Finn and Hester. They were looking for a bass player. And there you go.

It's cool. He got to do both art AND music.

It's nice that he's had a life in which he can pursue two of his passions.