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12月2日 This week, Zane Lowe of Radio 1 is playing four albums he considers a "masterpiece" in full, one per night, with appropriate interviews and messages from famous fans. And this time round, I am inclined to agree with him on most of this week's selections. Let's go back a bit first and note that he has been doing this feature for a couple of years now. Such proclamations have been bestowed upon some great work, as ones I may never understand! They seem to be getting better lately, though. :)
Previous choices have come from artists by The Stone Roses, Rage Against The Machine, Nirvana, Led Zeppelin, The Strokes, Pink Floyd, The Prodigy, The Arctic Monkeys, Radiohead, Public Enemy, The Libertines, and Guns N' Roses.
I own one of those albums - The Prodigy's Music For The Jilted Generation.
Anyway, back to this week, the fourth round of Masterpieces overall, and what we know for sure is that we see the following albums presented to us, and that I already own three of them - the best run yet, if you ask me!
Monday 30th Nov - Metallica, Metallica (1991)
Tuesday 1st Dec - The Streets, Original Pirate Material (2002)
Wednesday 2nd Dec - The Clash, London Calling (1979)
Thursday 3rd Dec - Daft Punk, Discovery (2001)
For each night I will write a bit about the albums.
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Monday is Metallica - 'Metallica'
(NB. I wasn't able to hear it played live on the radio on Monday night, so stay tuned while I play it back at home and get into the mood!)
I have been a huge Metallica fan since 2003, and at that time they had released ten albums. They all had classics on them, and I may even have a preference for some of their albums over the others - but that's for another day. As predicated, I've seen comments saying that 'Master Of Puppets' should have been chosen over this one. I could go either way, frankly! But the one they chose feels right.
This release, also known as The Black Album, was the third album of theirs I had bought. The standout tracks for me are The Unforgiven, Nothing Else Matters and Enter Sandman. Their inspiration of other musicians goes without saying. I like the audio dynamics of this record, and if you haven't seen it yet, watch the Classic Albums - 'Metallica' DVD which goes behind-the-scenes in the making of the album. This is one of those albums I would enjoy hearing in super-high quality 5.1 sound or whatever they call it... maybe one day! Other tracks I would frequently blast out on the stereo are Sad But True, Wherever I May Roam and Of Wolf And Man. There's definitely an identity to this album. And I've only mentioned half the tracklisting so far. By all means, the rest are OK and I can imagine people hearing this for the first time in 1991 either stunned at the difference from the previous four albums, or moshing along to the album for which they had been waiting had finally arrived. It was their album.
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Tuesday is The Streets - 'Original Pirate Material'
Say what you will, but I own a rare clean/DJ version of this album. Being who I am, while at the same time a music lover extraordinaire (and no pretense!), explicit language is something I haven't always been comfortable with on record - while the fact that certain words or even sounds must be removed for UK daytime radio play is something for which I can't help but hold a mild curiousity, and where creativity can be used to obscure words, notably on the amended version of Puff Daddy's Forever, can be a source of entertainment. But for me, things did a 180° when the M.I.A. song 'Paper Planes' had its gunshot sounds removed for most of its video and radio airplay. It felt like the point of the song had been constricted; this wasn't the way it was meant to be heard! Just so it could be "accessible" and "safe" to the mainstream. And M.I.A. herself said "there is no edited version"...
So to The Streets. And I took to the streets, gearing up for this night by playing Original Pirate Material in the car, but in a different track order. I started off with tracks like It's Too Late, Who Got The Funk? and Same Old Thing before leading up to Has It Come To This, Turn The Page and the very excellent Weak Become Heroes, played towards the end like a victorious finale, while Stay Positive and Sharp Darts tailed off this listening session. I respect the running order of the album, so I listened intently when it was played on the radio last night at 8:10pm (clearly there is no watershed at this time!!) when at the same time I decided to play my version on the computer and line them up, for each track, synced up! (Thus if a word had been dropped on my version, you could hear the word only on the radio! It was like the opposite of what you could usually do...) At one point I played the album at the same time on both my computers, thus having three sources of the same song with just milliseconds of out-of-syncness. I imagine some of you know exactly how you feel. If you don't, give it a go sometime!
After listening to this, there are so many good tracks; The standout ones for me are Turn The Page (great opener, a track somewhat overlooked on my part in the past), It's Too Late, and Weak Become Heroes. The Irony Of It All should be considered too. Has It Come To This was where most of us first heard a Streets song. More delight on Let's Push Things Forward ("You won't find us on Altavista/Cult classic, not best seller"). The relatively shorter tracks - Sharp Darts, Who Got The Funk? and Stay Positive - are interesting, spread out over the album and they aren't extended to conventional length, for better or for worse. (More to come on the tracks)
Not sure how to react to last year's news that The Streets' next album - their fifth, due out in 2010 - is said to be the last one recorded under the alias. But if Mike Skinner does continue to make music under whatever guise, I'm sure the nation will be listening.
Nice choice, Zane. The beats, the rhymes, The Streets. Tomorrow: something I am far less familiar with...
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Wednesday is The Clash - 'London Calling'
. I'm back. I've been here, there, everywhere. And I hope to use some of that experience in refreshing this blog, bringing it up to date... first of all, I want to talk about the sad loss of my good friend Alikhan of AK's Musical Journey fame. I hope his superb blog remains online for a long, long time. We both started our Spaces around the same time in 2004 but a few years later our updates were getting rather too infrequent. But what content we (and in particular he) has contributed now should be appreciated, cherished and consumed for musical goodness. I have already made a tribute CD for him entitled From Song 2 To Angels, details of which I will be posting here soon. He deserves a tribute blog posting here, because I knew I joined him on his Musical Journey along the way (as did quite a few of us, whether we knew it or not).   
I recently realised I have been to just four gigs since the last update, but what gigs they were - Late Of The Pier visited the Boro in February, and I made sure I was there in order to catch such delights as The Bears Are Coming, VW and one of the (in my opinion, natch!) singles of the decade (now there's a feature coming soon!), Bathroom Gurgle. It was good that about six of my friends were there too, all together and not "segregated" like some of us were at a gig I shall mention soon..
Moving on, a month later Elbow were in town and I waited until the very day to secure myself a ticket.. in the end, taking up the services of a seemingly established tout. He came good, and for a little more than face value I was in. They were great live, I felt the emotion in the songs very early on. It was just me out of my friends who went. The Sparks gig two weeks later requires its own blog, so we'll come back to that one. Then another fortnight later The Prodigy made an extremely welcome return to Newcastle. This was where Mark and I had a standing ticket, but my other friends (five of them) had seated tickets. I was gonna make sure I danced. And I did. Yes, I was definitely in the wrong place at times during the gig as people around me were not wanting to move as much as I was (reminds me of being too close to the front the last time, whereas everyone around me did want to move more - glasses 0, crowd 1) but at the end of the gig, I was among like-minded people. And I couldn't wait for the next one, so a visit to either Bridlington, Doncaster or Blackpool awaits in January!
Two gigs that didn't go to plan were the Morrissey one in Hartlepool. I once again tried a tout, and this one had used tickets - thinking he was giving them to me for free, he sent me inside. Not going into too much detail, but my friend who I left outside was asked for £100 for the two tickets. Cue a gig I'm only glad I tried to attend because it taught me something. And it's pretty obvious what, although I'm adamant it's Rich 1, Touts 1. Also in the summer, Blur played in Newcastle and with it being a "warmup" gig, I was (once again!) adamant they'll be back again soon so we will catch them then. Well there are still no plans for them to tour live again, not right now anyway, and Alikhan would love to have seen them, as Blur are indeed the first band we discussed and for whom we both had an interest, and I just happened to have Blur's Best Of on the car stereo when I was giving people a lift home, I knew we'd be friends forever.
In addition, I went to the Michael Jackson vigil at the O2 Arena in London on Monday, 13th July 2009. Thousands turned out for what would be his first date at the arena, celebrating his life. It was a great day, the sun was out, MJ songs were being sung, and I met some new people who I've since been in contact with on Facebook. I posted some photos of the day on Flickr. And on Wednesday, 28th October 2009 I returned to London to hear The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman, the latest project from Sparks, their 22nd album. I was in the second row of the audience as they came on stage to take part in an hour-long interview. I could feel Ron staring in my general direction (the way he does it, it's something interesting!) and being me, I couldn't make long-lasting eye contact, glancing over to Stuart Maconie and Russell alternatively. Perhaps I'm just too in awe of them, but I could never fathom why someone would be scared of his 1974 TOTP appearance. (Link coming soon?)
So, based on what I have talked about already today, you can expect at least three more blog postings soon! 11月14日 Kanye's Glow In The Dark tour revolves around the concept of his journey through space in a ship that is crashing and breaking down. He communicates with a female computer system voice. Essentially I went to see Kanye West live last night at the Metro Radio Arena and had a great time. It was the first arena gig I have attended in a while. He performed so many of his hits and as a performer he does really well. Of course his music sounded sonic and powerful, filling the arena up. I must go through all the hits we heard tonight in no real order - Through The Wire, All Falls Down, Jesus Walks, Diamonds Are Forever, Gold Digger, Heard Em Say, Touch The Sky, Can't Tell Me Nothing, Stronger, Good Life, Homecoming, Flashing Lights, American Boy and a great performance of Love Lockdown, his recent single with live drumming. He stopped halfway through the song to start again! I figured it was a reference to his recent re-recording of the song based on feedback from its debut at the MTV Video Music Awards in September. His new album is going to be really promising. It is released in a couple of weeks. Support came from Mr Hudson And The Library, a band I was aware of and had one of their songs in my collection. They delivered some cool sounds and I definitely picked up some steel drum sounds. I haven't heard my conventional rock/pop bands that incorporate that instrument! The visuals didn't disappoint, and the songs I hadn't heard before impressed. A real recommended show to check out! I came away from the venue with a new-found respect for Kanye, and will continue to support him with further interest.
In fact, this is one of the first gig reviews I have written on here in a while. The good news is that the upcoming gig at the same venue is The Prodigy this coming April and I am trying to get several friends to come and see it again! (Hopefully the review for the last time we saw them, from November 2005, can be found on this blog.)
6月2日 Middlesbrough Music Live 2008. First held in 2000. Imagine how far it has come since then. Somehow I was not fully aware of the event until 2004, and since then it has been a must for seeing great bands and singers from not only the past and present, but the future. Here's my report of this year's musicfest: The first group I made sure to check out was local ska tribute act ' Ska-Boom', and having seen them on a YouTube clip I knew I was in for a treat! It made me appreciate ska music more, and realise that there are some famous tunes associated with the genre. Covers such as 'Baggy Trousers', 'One Step Beyond', 'Pigbag' and 'Lip Up Fatty' were played. My friend from Uni and Teesside Pirates' Ashley plays trumpet for the band. After going into town for some lunch we returned to the scene via Jack McManus's set on the main stage. Shortly after this we happened across a local woman on a smaller stage who plays acoustic guitar (and could also be seen on the Open Mic stage at m.i.m.a.) named Suzanne Elizabeth Marron. We checked out a few songs such as "Lemonade" which sounded good and we agreed that she had a great voice. Later in The Empire we were expecting to see Howling Bells but instead we were treated to a different band - and their identity remained a mystery to me until the last song - which I termed it that "Na na na na na" song until I went home and looked it up - I then attributed the song to recent hitmaker Doug Walker, the song being "The Mystery". According to his MySpace it was indeed him, only appearing later than scheduled. Not bad at all for a last-minute replacement. The set I was looking forward to the most of course was Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip - this being the third time in Middlesbrough I will have seen them perform live. I was totally au fait with the songs this time round, having had the album on almost endless play. The set list included Beat That My Heart Skipped, Development, Look For The Woman, Tommy C, Fixed, Angles, a spoken word piece which I think was based on the theme of Music (hence their song 'First Time We Met Muzik') interspersed with an incredible spoken word piece which involved Bush singing the hook from a Justin Timberlake song....anyway!, Back From..., Thou Shalt Always Kill, Letter From God To Man and a Strangers cover of 'Nightclub'. This now means that I have now seen both Le Sac vs Pip and indie/art punk act Art Brut three times. After that we returned to the main stage where a local-ish band One Night Only were playing their final song, the top ten hit 'Just For Tonight'. I recognised it before the beat and other familiar parts kicked in and I am hardly a fan, which shows how far it has reached into mainstream culture. Following in the footsteps of Electric 6, The Thrills, Ocean Colour Scene and whoever it was last year(!), this year's headline act was Ash. Now I can name a fair amount of their tunes - I remember their first Top Of The Pops appearance in 1995. They opened with "Lose Control", a fine song indeed, and familiar tunes were played out to the thousands present. "Girl From Mars", "Oh Yeah", "A Life Less Ordinary", "Shining Light", "Orpheus", "Burn Baby Burn" and "You Can't Have It All" were among my favourites. Great job, lads! My photos from the day can be found here at this Flickr set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/richcam/sets/72157602207401773/ 5月25日 It is indeed that time of the year again when tradition has begun to dictate that we get together at Ali's house and watch the annual Eurovision Song Contest, and here in the UK we are treated to the great commentary of a certain Mr Terry Wogan. According to him, Russia are this year's "political winners"! Not to get too controversial, but the voting results can sometimes be predictable, with certain countries normally voting for their neighbours! I was glad to see Ukraine and Greece land 2nd and 3rd place, having personally rated their songs highly. Read on to find out my thoughts on each song.
1. Romania - "Male and female duet. Started out with man on his own. Wondered if woman was late but guess just standing around waiting for her first line would have been a bit unimaginative! Slow-ish, not the best ever but something to gradually ease into tonight." [5/10]
2. United Kingdom - (Not being too biased, but I do like this one! Glad this was chosen to represent the UK, and Terry says it's our best song in years. I agree, and I decided to rate this very highly! Also, during this song, the first of the political discussion started taking place amongst us!) "Here we go! Enjoying this. Confident, soulful, upbeat." [9/10]
3. Albania - "Female, attractive! Nice looking is the concensus. Personally thought it sounded a bit like Shakira, others said Evanescence. Bit rock-driven overall. Is it windy there? Hair blowing about. [8/10]
4. Germany - "No Angels are quite big in Germany having won that Popstars programme back in the day... not sounding in tune according to some of us... There are four of them, wearing blue and purple costumes. Not rated too highly!" [4/10]
5. Armenia - "Another female. A mullet is spotted on a male dancer. Causes amusement among some, leading to the moniker 'Mullet Man' being bandied about. Nice woman. English and Armenian lyrics?" [5/10]
6. Boznia-Herzegovina - "Terry says 'experimental'. Mmkay! Weird sort of comedy guy appears. Legendary. CRAZY! Knitting brides in background, Kate Bush/Strawberry Cheesecake sort of woman with frizzy hair also sings and hangs some stuff on a washing line. Lively. A performance!" [7/10]
7. Israel - "Man with high voice we thought was gonna be a woman when the lights came on. Written by 1998 Israel winner Dana International, this. Fair enough kinda song." [6/10]
8. Finland - "Hard rock, heavy metal? Judas Priest rejects? Lordi part II? Funny but generic? What more can I digress!? Still a bit different to usual Eurovision fayre, mind you." [7/10]
9. Croatia - "Old man in white suit, another guy in darker suit too. Traditional kinda thing, sort of Italian/romantic/crooner arrangement. 'Unique in a good way' according to one of us. Well liked." [8/10]
10. Poland - "Observed as not only a Disney song, but... Lily Allen on violin? Musically, a solo female, ballad, average." (Still gave it a generous rating though!) [6/10]
11. Iceland - "Camp... trancey number... sounds like it's been done before. Male and female duet, hmm, not bad." [5/10]
12. Turkey - "Rock kinda band, again not bad. Dunno what to say.. good outro by the sounds of it!" (I think we had turned on the sing-a-long lyrics by now, and became acquainted with that pantomine dame named Stu!) [6/10]
13. Portugal - "Aria? Traditional. Vocal alright. Not much more to say." [4/10]
14. Latvia - "An effort! PIRATES!!! Will they loot all our votes? 'Euro-bysmal' according to Stu! Cheesy... novelty... still, entertaining! Fun for Eurovision, definitely. Potential to get annoying but fun for three minutes, that's fine by me!" [6/10]
15. Sweden - "Trancey but positive message and a hearty vocal of self-determination! Backing dancers/vocalists appear from nowhere!" [4/10]
16. Denmark - "Cool. Upbeat. Positive! Catchy... Cockney style of clothing??? Don't worry, be happy. Good pop - should do well." [7/10]
17. Georgia - "Black, dark lyrics at first... is she blind because she wears those sunglasses? Downtempo-ish. Halfway through, a costume change where they change from black to white. At least it goes somewhere." [5/10]
18. Ukraine - Hot woman! Uplifting, dancey. Hope it does well, like the sound of it. :)" [8/10]
19. France - Oh wow, it's Sebastian Tellier! Coming on in a golf cart! Brilliant. Backing singer ladies bearded too, lol. English lyrics to begin with, but then French halfway through. 70s-ish? I like it in a way! Hit and miss between us lot, but yes, one of my favourites tonight so far!" [7/10]
20. Azerbaijan - "Operatic? Scary? Dramatic - interesting voice made an impression on all of us. Great effort." [8/10]
21. Greece - "Was it a bit Bhangra there in the intro? Timbaland-inspired... AK and I are liking the beats! Female solo. Very enjoyable - as good as previous song. Summery!" [8/10]
22. Spain - "Bit Reggaeton... interesting, singer with a quiff and a greying beard! Described by one of us as Rolf Harris meets Weird Al Yankovic". Rapping style. Enjoyable - we LOVE the Robocop bit, I'm thinking this is fun, but otherwise it isn't too highly rated compared to what we have mostly seen thus far. A sort of 'Gasolina' meets 'Macarena'!" [7/10]
23. Serbia - "Some folk elements. Female. Violin also heard. Peaceful... soaring... calming." [6/10]
24. Russia - "Solo male... positive... easy-going, this cool. 'Believe'." [6/10]
25. Norway - "Nice singer. Pretty! Sassy, classy, agreeable. Obviously not a standout but I am liking this." [6/10]
*My Top Rated*
- United Kingdom [9/10] :p
- Albania [8/10]
- Croatia [8/10]
- Ukraine [8/10]
- Azerbaijan [8/10]
- Greece [8/10]
- Spain [7/10]
- France [7/10]
- Boznia-Herzegovina [7/10]
- Finland [7/10]
- Denmark [7/10]
Interesting other blog with running commentary of the contest here at Cheeseford.
The event concluded a great day out in which we had ascended to the top of Roseberry Topping again - the first time in three years for me. This time we were in a group of 12. Photos and videos were taken. All in all a lot of fun was had full of laughter - this is what all days should be like!
9月1日 Let's summarise what has been happening at the moment. Last night was Dave's birthday meal and it was good to catch up with loads of friends again, especially Ali and Vasso, both of whom I hadn't seen for weeeeeeeks. Dean, Sean, Marko, Martin, Phil, Jamie, Enzo, Mark, Jenna & Emma also turned out for the gathering. I felt very tired after the meal so was almost falling asleep back at Rileys during some further games of pool. I didn't play any pool; I wasn't too bothered about it.
Looking back, most of my blog entries mention my previous jaunts to live concerts / gigs. So without further ado I must mention that it will soon be the "gig season" again, as the last few years have proved. You know, those big arena / venue gigs that tend to take part between October and December. I'll try and limit myself to these gigs for the remainder of the year; any more and I might be broke! So far this year, then:
1月12日 "It feels good to be back!" - as P Diddy recently sang on 'Come To Me'.
Indeed, 2007 is here and just like last year it's time to play catchup with the latest goings-on. So what has happened since the last post of June 19th? Here is a summary.
My profile picture now reminds me of former Weakest Link and current Deal Or No Deal (UK) contestant, Bunney (aka Jonathan). And as I have previously mentioned, that picture looks nothing like me!
Major gigs included Basement Jaxx with support from CSS, The Raconteurs, To My Boy and The Magic Numbers. Of course the "gig season" of late 2005 was a tough act to follow but the passion my friends and I have for the bands we saw this time around was as strong as ever. More on these shows individually as we go on. 6月19日 It was that time of year again where the town of Middlesbrough hosted a wealth of live, free music. As a music lover who was I to give it a miss? Looking at the line-up there was promise in the fact that Captain, Ocean Colour Scene, Paolo Nutini, The Upper Room and The Modern were making very welcome appearances.
But the main reason I was getting myself down to the festivities was to catch the very up and coming band Jane Wails, whose web presence is shrouded in mystery right now (can I remedy that?). As the MC, a TFM DJ, came up to the mic to announce this band "will be blowing you away in the near future". I think that's what he said, I was quite excited to tell you the truth. So who are Jane Wails? Yes, they are a "them". Essentially the core of the band is former solo star Amy Studt, who has been songwriting since she was nine and enjoyed two top ten hits in 2003. Having been missing from the music scene since 2004 this was a welcome return for Amy, who along with her new band looked confident in their show and - coming back to Amy again - she looked amazing, playing one song on keyboard, expressing herself vocally and then picking up a bongo-like drum for the finale.
The set included the tracks "Sad, Sad World", "One Last Cigarette" and "My Paper Made Man" (this track can be heard at Guy Sigsworth's MySpace). Around seven songs were performed in all. I took some snaps on my new camera which I shall put online to show the world that Amy Studt is back. The UK music scene should be rewarding talented songwriters like Amy, and if you remember Amy's attitude in her solo songs (Just A Little Girl, Misfit, Under The Thumb), then you will no doubt know that there is no stopping her.
I along with a friend met Amy afterwards, through a steel cage barrier! She told us about the plans for the single and album release, I was nervous meeting her but once she came over to talk to us I felt relaxed, and we talked some more (I admit I told her I'd gone there just to see her!) and she signed our Music Live booklet, shook her hand through the caged barrier and said our goodbyes... it felt like it was a dream!
Other bands I watched later on in the day were Root-ID and Morning Runner. Couldn't catch any of the bands appearing in The Empire because the queue was the longest it has ever been, i.e. some hundreds of people in the queue! Had I stayed a bit longer I would have watched Ocean Colour Scene, which a number of my friends did, but people get drunk about that time so I excused myself!
Another year, another Middlesbrough Music Live which maintains the standard... you could say I had the best time this year! If you were there, please leave a comment! 6月2日 LATEST NEWS - It has been just over four months since I updated this blog. It was getting most of the updates last summer and despite winter gone being just as big for gigs as last summer had been, I still have not given it the coverage it deserves. I refer of course to the excellent Prodigy, Franz Ferdinand and Chemical Brothers shows, plus this year's Lethal Bizzle and The Longcut gigs. Coming real soon. For now I have prepared this four-in-one blog entry!
QUESTION TIME! - Tonight I was at the recording of the BBC's flagship programme Question Time, which tonight came to Stockton-on-Tees. I went along with three friends who are all much more politically-minded than I am. I along with everyone else submitted some questions I wouldn't have minded asking although in the end only five or six people had the opportunity to ask theirs! One of our friends PB managed to comment about Prezza (deputy PM) while I liked SB's potential question involving "a certain croquet-playing member..." it was great fun and would do it again!
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