Category Archives: Music

Music

All Grow’d up

Went to see Pob’s band in Putney last night. Was fun – they played some good songs.POB!

I want a band. I don’t suppose I’ve got a London based drummer, bassist and/or singer reading this, do I? I bring some highly average rhythm & lead guitar to the mix, along with moderate enthusiasm and middling skills on the triangle.

No, I didn’t think so.

But there’s something inspirational for me about going to gigs. I should go to more – might actually get around to writing some lyrics to that song I was working on about two weeks ago…

Music, Personal

On a rainy afternoon…

…thank, erm, heavens for the rain! For those of you elsewhere in the world (and who care about the weather), London has roasting for the last week or so and today has brought some much needed rain. *Phew*.

Where’ve I been? It’s been a bit of a busy social one – Gareth took us to the Blue Man Group show, which was wonderful, surreal, hysterical, energetic and fun in every way — recommended to anyone. Also a couple of drinks parties and general summer goodness.

This afternoon I’ve been fiddling about writing music and recording, with some help from Pob – he’s got a gig happening in two weeks, which I’ll be at – do come along if you’re keen on great live music! Over the next week or so, though, I’ll probably get around to actually laying down the tracks of this song and we’ll see how it sounds… if its not completely rubbish I’ll think about uploading it.

Tonight: off to celebrate Chris‘ new job in far-east London. Should be fun – expect me to finally deliver on the promise of catching up on a few blog topics of more substance and power tomorrow.

Film, Music, Personal, Technology, Television

Update

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Sorry for relative sparseness of posts of late, this weekend in particular. There’s load of stuff I’ve been meaning to blog on but have been spread fairly thin and have a pretty busy week ahead, so things are likely to continue to be quiet.

A very rapid update on what’s been keeping me out of commission:

I’ve been treating my addiction to Lost, and am getting onto the second season now. It’s v. exciting, and there’s some fantastic storytelling in there. Character-driven fiction; simply wonderful, and something that the big screen really doesn’t seem to do as well (on the whole) than the little screen.

I’ve been getting my “studio” in order. Those of you who know me know that I at least like to pretend to be musical, and have, erm, well, some equipment. And have just finished hooking it all back up for recording – so may bash out some song-attempts, now that I have a drum machine in place to deal with my own rhythmic inadequacies… Now where did I put those MIDI cables? And where’s Pob when you need him?

I’ve been shoe-shopping: I’ve had quite bad shin splints for a while so am finally getting the physio I need for them. Good new shoes are going to be a cornerstone of that treatment process, and a very tedious visit to Oxford Street today is sending me straight to Run and Become (conveniently near the office) to get some proper recommendations. I’m almost glad they have a completely inadequate e-commerce facility, as the in-person-ness is crucial for this.

My cousin David has come to stay for the next few weeks; he’s a media engineer, essentially, interning at a post-production studio for the next month or so. More on that later; David’s a mac-fan and a geek in lots of the same ways I am (comic books, Lost, technology, etc) — so we’ll probably have a few good chats at least ;). I’m not a mac-fan, you may have noticed, so… Mac vs PC… FIGHT.

I’ve installed Office 2007 beta. Yes, yes, I know I’m crazy – further destablising my PC and slowing it all down… but I do like the new MS toys and having spent months reading about it and the last two months trying to implement a version of Sharepoint that really, really does not support blogging (the new version, according to a Scoble interview I watched bits of on Channel 9, supports blogging and Wikis natively)… well, I thought I’d give it a whirl. Initial thoughts? It sure is purty… and of course I decided against installing Sharepoint on my home machine anyway!

We went to the Comedy Store last night for the midnight showing, too. 5 acts, 5 accents (Indian, Welsh, Irish, American, ‘London’, and a geordie compere) — one entertaining evening. Although was knackered by the time it wrapped up at 2.30am…

And, of course, the most exciting thing this weekend was… SUPERMAN RETURNS. But I really need to spend some time crafting that post. It will have some feeling put into it.

Signing out for now… The Arminator.

Music, Personal

My musical taste

So, I’ve been classified has having ‘teenage boy’ taste in music. Which seems harsh, but is probably a fair reflection – all my fave West coast rock has its origins in sunshine, skateboards, teenage angst, girl problems, punk culture and, well, crazy melodic guitaring.

Happy to be enjoying an East coast band at the moment, and if anyone has any recommendations for music that someone who likes the Offspring, Blink 182, Green Day and Bowling for Soup (as well as RHCP, Foo Fighters, Collective Soul, BNL and lots of less straightforwardly happy rock) — please let me know.

Oh, and I seem to like some Canadian music, too. Where does that place me?

Current affairs, Music, Television

Eurovision

So, watched the Eurovision song contest tonight with some friends from college; its a tradition of theirs I’ve never fully embraced, but really enjoyed tonight. Suzanne and Jamie hosted an entertaining evening, and there were two things in particular that snagged my interest.

    (1) Terry Wogan is hysterically funny. His sarcastic deconstruction of Europe really made me chuckle: “this is a kiosk… why its not like kiosks in other countries I can’t say… oh yes, I know stuff…” — paraphrased equivalent
    (2) I really, really enjoyed Finland’s winning entry. Shows that humourous music really is appreciated, which was gratifying.

It is a bizarre event, though. Spex speculated that the only people who could adequately replace Wogan would be Ant and Dec – saddens me that they are the best that British television has to offer… but it did make a great deal of sense. Their high-energy idiocy might be the only thing that will wean the UK public off the reassuringly cutting wit of Wogan.

Music, Technology

A flaw in iPod’s armour

Erm, in my new ‘listening to albums’ instead of on random strategy, I tried to stick on a greatest hits album to find… you guessed it… all the greatest hits albums had combined on my iPod.

Perhaps this is a flaw in the ID3 tagging system, but its certainly irritating.

Music

Listening strategies

I go through phases of music listening. My most recent phase has been going for 5 years and is wholly unsatisfactory.

In the mid-90s, I was an album obsessive; I listened to every CD I bought religiously, repeatedly and analytically; deconstructing riffs, harmonies and solos, in part for mediocre reproduction purposes on my guitars, and in part because I had the time to do that.

Then came the late 90s and digital music. All was still good; I had time to make Winamp playlists, my music collection was still manageable.

Sometime around 2001/2, I digitised my entire music collection and gave up trying to listen to coherent collections of songs; I just chucked a bunch of music onto my iRiver/iPod and let it play on random; which had a few side-effects:

    It drained the batteries out of my digital music players
    It drained my enjoyment of music out of me

The latter was a gradual process, which only really properly sunk in this morning as I skipped through track number 175 of 400 on my Nano trying to get something I wanted to listen to. I gave up and put on the Anchorman soundtrack, which I then proceeded to enjoy.

So I think I’m going to go back to the album model of music listenership, and see if I can spare the time to build some playlists again.

All the automated online services that guess at what you want to listen to based on your previous faves – Last.fm, Pandora etc – don’t quite do it for me. Perhaps I’m just in a nostalgic phase of my life… who knows. But we’ll see if I get the music back into my world!

Music

Music reviews

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Pompous writing makes me angry, guilty as I am of doing it myself de temps en temps.

Compare the review of RHCP’s new album Stadium Arcadium on Amazon.com with the review on Rolling Stone. You’d think that Rolling Stone, with its wealthier heritage of music criticism, would be the one guilty of tipping into verbose up-its-own-assness.

Bizarrely, the RS review actually describes what’s on the album relatively straightforwardly – whereas the Amazon.com one is the one that tells you that:

There’s perhaps too much mid-tempo simmering and reflection going on

And that the new album is

an unlikely record to kick back to, and one that both challenges assumptions and eases the band into middle age with an oft languorous, if undeniably savory groove.

Ok, that does convey something – but, seriously, does that strike anyone else as wrong? What the hell happened to rock and roll? And no, I don’t equate rock music with illiteracy, but there’s something all too… institutional about reviews that read like that.

I don’t know, maybe its irrational. After all, a review that said ‘It rocks, man,’ wouldn’t be terribly helpful. But I’d have thought there was a middle ground that didn’t cross over from simply articulate into verbose, pompous tosh. And it’s hard to believe that RCHP would be something you’d listen to in the library with your afternoon sherry with Colonel Mustard as you discussed the affairs of state (and where the bloody candlestick was).

Or maybe I just disagree that RHCP have gotten ‘middle-aged’ and am taking the assertion that they have badly… Am going to have to get the album and find out.

Music

My name is Earl…

…Okin. Earl Okin is a quite funny man we saw recently at the Hampstead Comedy club. Some people think he’s creepy, but I think he’s quite good, and have bought his amusing album, Musical Genius and Sex Symbol.

I don’t know why I like amusing music (amusic?) so much. Maybe it just appeals to my slightly twisted sense of humour. Maybe comedy singers just have a good sense of melody?

That said, I’ve consigned every ‘Weird Al’ CD I owned to cold storage… But I guess its debatable that he is humourous.

Books, Culture, Music

Heggles

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I bought John Hegley’s Family Favourites CD the other day, having seen him perform a few years ago (at a show my brother was reading at). Some might call that a delayed reaction, I call it… measured.

Great as it is, I am somewhat disappointed. Primarily because the great music-comedy-poem-thingy that is Luton Bungalow sounds very different on the recording to how I remember it – at the gig I was at, he sang:

“In my Luton Bungalow…. low… low… low… Luton Bungalow!”

On my CD he simply sings:

“In my Luton Bungalow.”

Which is clearly a poor substitute, although I’ll admit this story loses something in the telling. But its a fantastic disc, and he’s a fantastic man: I’d recommend it to anyone.