Line 6 Rocks!

It's pretty rare for a guitarist to own the same gear for any extended period of time. We're all on the hunt for that perfect setup and ultimate tone. But this morning I found myself saying "I love my Vetta and my Variax!"

I first was introduced to Line 6 products in early 1999 by a friend who worked in a music store. He was very excited to have me try this new piece of equipment called a POD. I had tried every distortion and overdrive pedal and pre-amp imaginable and gotten totally disillusioned of ever finding something that truly sounded great. I only had a few minutes so I wasn't keen to try it, but he virtually begged me. Twenty minutes later I was walking out of the store already trying to figure out what I would need to sell so I could have my own POD!

Very soon after that I bought the red kidney bean and haven't looked back. I was one of the first in Australia to own Line 6's flagship amp, the Vetta, when it was first released in 2003. Then when I went to the US later that year I bought the then just released Variax 500 modeling guitar. As soon as the Variax 700 was released I ordered one and have been playing it ever since.

I sold my lovely Rivera TBR1M Stereo Head when I got my Vetta, and I had a wonderful Custom Strat-style guitar with EMG's and all the nice fittings that followed soon after. Last to go was my 1990 era Strat plus deluxe. Now I'm officially exclusively Line 6! The POD was sold a couple of years ago, but it was replaced soon after with the POD XTLive when it was first released.

With my Vetta and Variax set-up I'm always discovering new ways to get a great sound, and if your willing to spend the time tweaking you will be rewarded with more great tones than you could ever imagined possible in the pre Line 6 era!

Check out www.line6.com

Mezzanine - Single News

Mezzanine is the project initiated by Woodlands Media that promotes my single, Falling At Your Feet. Here's what's happening:


+ Mezzanine aired on 130 stations last week in The Reality Zone youth show including Sonshine FM, Perth. TRZ has an estimated worldwide audience of five million kids between 14 and 24 listening each week.
+ Text of the story appearing in TRAA this week has been emailed to editors of every known English language Christian publication/website that has an interest in music.

Hopefully this stirs up some interest!
You can help us by calling your local Christian Radio Station (all over Australia & New Zealand) and asking them to play Falling At Your Feet!

First Single Out!!!

Well, finally it's happened! Falling At Your Feet has been released as a single across Australasia just after Easter...
Here's the article that appeared in the TRAA weekly newsletter:

CULLEN SHARES HIS GIFTS WITH A BROADER AUDIENCE


WITH A PASSION for singing, writing songs and playing the guitar, Mark Cullen is steadily gaining attention in the Australian music scene as a solo artist.

Best known as the worship pastor at Perth’s influential Riverview Church, Cullen has a wealth of experience inspiring others. Now it is time for Mark to share his gifts to an even broader audience.

In the past year, the Kiwi born musician has won the Best Gospel Song section of the West Australian Music Industry Awards with the song Learning To Say, and published his first book Permission To Shine. He has also released his first solo CD Mercy-Kissed which has quickly become one of the best sellers on TRAA’s Indie sales chart.

Mark says the album expresses his heart and gifts “without artistic compromise”. “I really hope it is able to reach more people than I have been able to before,” he says.

Some of the highlights of his career include supporting Delirious? in Perth, playing at New Zealand’s Parachute Festival, and performing in Singapore, Indonesia, the US, and of course Australia.

But, the event that stands out for Mark has been leading worship for the past six years at Church Together in Perth where more than 12 000 people from 200 churches get together annually to worship. “It’s awesome. It’s a career highlight for me,” he says keenly.

Not surprisingly, worship is at the heart of Cullen’s album Mercy-Kissed and his new radio single, Falling At Your Feet.
“For me, the song is about surrender, gratitude and wonder,” he explains.

Look out for Falling At Your Feet on your local Christian radio station or program. It was a major hit last year on Perth’s Sonshine FM, now Mark is ready to impact the nation.

Falling At Your Feet is part of Woodlands Media’s Mezzanine Project supporting new
and developing talent.

Fabric Of The Cosmos

I read this book recently and loved it. Talk about stretch your mind! What does very big mean, and what is very small, and how does it all fit together, and where did it come from, and how did it come to be...? Fascinating!


some reviews...

“Send[s] the reader’s imagination hurtling through space on an astonishing ride. . . . He is both a skilled and kindly explicator. His excitement for science on the threshold of vital breakthroughs is extremely contagious.” –The New York Times

“The best exposition and explanation of early 21st-century research into the fundamental nature of the universe as you are likely to find anywhere.” –Science

“Perhaps the single best explainer of abstruse science in the world today. . . . Greene has a gift for finding the right metaphor.” –The Washington Post

"Greene is as elegant as ever, cutting through the fog of complexity with insight and clarity. Space and time, you might even say, become putty in his hands." –Los Angeles Times

“Highly informed, lucid and witty. . . . There is simply no better introduction to the strange wonders of general relativity and quantum mechanics, the fields of knowledge essential for any real understanding of space and time.” –Discover

DNA & Uniqueness

Here's a little perspective on who you are.

DNA molecules can unite in only so many ways. Actually, the number of ways is 10 to the 2,400,000,000th power. So the chances of there being someone with exactly the same makeup as you is 10 to the power of 2.4 billion (that's 10 with 2.4 billion zeroes following it. Someone calculated that to write this number out longhand with each zero being one inch wide it would be 37,000 miles long!

It's very hard to put figures like this in perspective. But physicists have estimated that the total number of particles in the whole universe is about 10 to the power of 76. Ouch, my brain hurts!

We've all heard it said that we are one in a million... well, that's just a slight understatement!

MUTEMATH

Now here's some seriously good music! The production on this is awesome... Great vocals and muso vibes too!
They call it "electro-alt rock" and I guess that's pretty accurate, but as with any music / muso it's impossible to define perfectly in 3 words!

"The four piece (originating from New Orleans) has scattered influences that are apparent without being obvious, and touch on everything from DJ Shadow styled beats, moments of beauty and grandeur a la Bjork, and vocals that pay legitimate homage to Police-era Sting. When asked about this vast expanse of musical territory that we are asked to find them dwelling within, Meany replied, "I blame it on the past forty years of music." They act on the idea that their magic is to be found in the mixture of countless thoughts. Their live show thrives on this random energy too… involving homemade instruments, live sampling, a junked-out keytar, and enough dizzying energy to make the hardest cynics wet their pants."