I have been neglecting my duties over the last couple of weeks. I've been busy collecting music, planning radio shows, trying to promote gigs, trying to get money out of various people to pay for my hobbies, etc etc. I've also been meaning to put up some nice new bright colours on here, and also a hell of a lot of MP3s from the 90s that I think you really all should listen to.
A short but sweet cover from Radiohead's criminally-forgotten Pablo Honey, although having said that I don't think anyone can accuse this song of having gone the same way.
A slightly rockier offering which I remember seeing, and in fact, enjoying!, in front of an enormous crowd. Snow Patrol had the biggest crowd of the weekend, and they were on around 3pm, which tells you something about the point of headlining festivals these days.
Edit: it's a good job I get people complaining otherwise I'd never fix broken links, would I!
My obsession/collection with weird charts continues. What do you reckon about this?
1 Coldplay 2 Radiohead 3 Green Day 4 The Beatles 5 Death Cab for Cutie 6 System of a Down 7 Foo Fighters 8 Gorillaz 9 The White Stripes 10 Weezer 11 Red Hot Chili Peppers 12 Nirvana 13 The Killers 14 Metallica 15 Pink Floyd 16 Beck 17 U2 18 Franz Ferdinand 19 Oasis 20 Led Zeppelin 21 Nine Inch Nails 22 The Smashing Pumpkins 23 blink-182 24 The Cure 25 Queen 26 Muse 27 Kanye West 28 The Postal Service 29 Bloc Party 30 Modest Mouse 31 David Bowie 32 Bright Eyes 33 Incubus 34 Pixies 35 R.E.M. 36 Jimmy Eat World 37 Interpol 37 The Offspring 39 Linkin Park 40 The Shins
Taken from Audioscrobbler/last.fm's weekly artist reach - ie this chart is sorted by the most popular played artists over the last 7 days from Audioscrobbler's army of thousands of well-meaning nerds, of which I am one.
The Shins???
Now apparently if it was down to me, the top 40 would apparently look like this:
1 Sultans of Ping F.C. 2 Blur 3 Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine 4 Radiohead 5 A 6 Art Brut 7 Kate Bush 7 Franz Ferdinand 9 frank and walters 10 Data Panik 11 ¡Forward, Russia! 12 They Might Be Giants 13 XTC 14 My Life Story 15 Coldplay 15 The Cardigans 15 British Sea Power 15 Bloc Party 19 Republica 19 Salad 21 Pulp 22 Stereolab 22 Manic Street Preachers 22 Echobelly 22 Kenickie 22 The Darling Buds 27 Ben Folds Five 27 The Clash 27 bis 27 Gorillaz 27 The Stone Roses 27 Saint Etienne 27 Marion 27 A House 35 The Divine Comedy 35 Pop Will Eat Itself 35 Super Furry Animals 35 Barenaked Ladies 35 Menswear 35 The Pipettes
Five reasons why I love ¡Forward, Russia! right now
1. All of their songs are named after numbers. This is a commonly known fact, but did you know that the odd numbered songs are better than the even numbered ones? 2. They have an upside down ! in their name, which is grammatically erroneous. (You can find this on a PC by typing ALT+0161, which is the STD code for Manchester - which I'm sure they won't be happy about as they come from Leeds). 3. They're really not messing about with a half-hearted beard thing. The guitarist is called Whiskas, nothing to do with the cat food. 4. The drummer, Katie, loves Bis. 5. They all wear their own ¡! design T-shirt on stage, which gives them a slightly militaristic appearance on stage. However, despite this, and their name, they are not particularly banging the leftie drum in their music, which I thought was unexpected.
The songs are great though, described as angular, spiky, and sounding like Bloc Party which I don't really think they do - I would describe them as Urgent Indie, as I have just made that one up.
I saw them on Wednesday at 93 Feet East, a venue I'd never been to before. It's in Brick Lane, so needless to say I had an excellent curry too.
Due to the 300% increase this month - I've had to host some files on Rapidshare and delete others. So if you find a link's not working, then that's why!
I have a limit of 80GB per month and I think I am halfway there for September. I much prefer hosting the mp3s myself - but if it can't be done ...
I can't believe I actually bought 5 of the top 6. NO, James Blunt is NOT one of them! I think I have only got 2 of the other 34. I did buy Gorillaz, and don't recall if I bought Athlete or not. I might have dreamt that.
1 X&Y - Coldplay 1,354,000 2 Back to Bedlam - James Blunt 1,257,388 3 Hot Fuss - The Killers 717,000 4 Hopes And Fears - Keane 703,000 5 Scissor Sisters - Scissor Sisters 687,900 6 Employment - Kaiser Chiefs 687,700 7 American Idiot - Green Day 664,000 8 Forever Faithless - Faithless 650,000 9 Love Angel Music Baby - Gwen Stefani 613,000 10 Don't Believe the Truth - Oasis 585,000 11 Definitive Collection - Tony Christie 551,000 12 G4 - G4 527,000 13 The Singles - Basement Jaxx 491,000 14 The Massacre - 50 Cent 475,000 15 Trouble - Akon 465,000 16 Demon Days - Gorillaz 460,649 17 Tourist - Athlete 454,000 18 Language, Sex, Violence, Other - The Stereophonics 399,000 19 In your Honour - The Foo Fighters 394,000 20 Eye to the Telescope - KT Tunstall 366,000 21 Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand 355,000 22 Kasabian - Kasabian 346,000 23 Mind Body & Soul - Joss Stone 338,000 24 How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb - U2 324,000 25 The Emancipation of Mimi - Mariah Carey 302,933 26 Songs About Jane - Maroon 5 298,000 27 Il Divo - Il Divo 297,000 28 The War of the Worlds - Jeff Wayne 293,000 29 Finally Woken - Jem 290,000 30 Up all Night - Razorlight 274,000 31 It's Time - Michael Bublé 272,000 32 O - Damien Rice 264,000 33 The Documentary - The Game 264,000 34 Encore - Eminem 259,000 35 Breathe In - Lucie Silvas 254,000 36 Final Straw - Snow Patrol 251,000 37 Get Lifted - John Legend 250,000 38 Rhythm & Gangsta - Snoop Dogg 238,000 39 Push the Button - The Chemical Brothers 237,000 40 Time To Grow - Lemar 226,000
The Young Knives were one of the better bands gracing the early part of the day. Another Oxford band - that town has a habit of churning out pop gem type bands, like the Samurai Seven, and, erm, Radiohead. I've been almost as enthused about Tom Vek, but not quite. Yeah it's been a long long week so not much to add there!
That sponsored music prize and the madness of Roger Daltrey
I think it's great that Anthony and the Johnsons won the (sponsored) (sponsored) prize. I also think it's great that the prize is still known as the Mercury Music Prize by most of the general public, even though Mercury (the first sponsors) hasn't existed for several years now.
I noticed that several publications (including the BBC early editions, although it seems to have been removed now) called A&TJ "outsiders", even though they were the second favourites last night. All I can add is thank God it wasn't M.I.A.
From today's Guardian:
Roger Daltrey, lead singer of The Who, the guitar-smashing band of the 60s and 70s, has not lost his touch for iconoclasm. While opening HMV's digital music download service this week, he is reported - to the chagrin of his hosts - to have launched into a eulogy for vinyl records, resonant of the heyday of rock, which are supposed to have been confined to history by the digital revolution. He added that if he was a billionaire and had his time again, he would invest all his money in a factory to produce vinyl records since "nothing beats the rich sound of vinyl, it's a fact and you get none of the decrease in quality that you get with other types of modern recordings". Many musical enthusiasts, classical and pop, would agree with that statement.
I'm just a bit puzzled by this statement. In fact I am *so* puzzled I can't even think of where to start picking holes in it.
I also like the way Daltrey dreams of being a billionaire, therefore trying to hide the fact that he is a mere multi-millionaire. You do remember those ads for American Express shot at his trout farm?
The most depressing thing for me is that I tend to get bored of everything in the end. Except the Frank and Walters and the Sultans of Ping, whose music sounds as fresh and inspiring to me today as it did when I bought it all up in the early and mid 90s. Oh and all of Kate Bush's stuff. In fact there's a lot of things I don't get bored of. I just remember how quickly King Adora went cold on me - one minute I couldn't stop playing Smoulder and The Law, the next minute I couldn't even be bothered to put their CD back in the correct alphabetical order on my wall.
At the moment though, I'm still fairly content with the BPs. I'm just a bit annoyed that I missed the boat on their forthcoming tour - I've been signed up to the website mailing list thing but I don't think I've had a single email from it yet, so I now have to keep VISITING it to find out when they're playing again.
The Streets remix is getting a lot of play on MTV2 but I haven't found the MP3 anywhere else yet. It's a bit of a weird contrived apology of a song but it's still much better than that other weird contrived apology of a song - The Sweetest Thing by U2 - and the video doesn't have Bonio's sad smirk either.
I stumbled upon the Mystery Jets' cover version (their version seems to be called Pioneers, not The Pioneers, pedantic music fans) while nosing around their web site having heard their excellent new single You Can't Fool Me Dennis which I recommend you buy forthwith. The song is from their website but rather than link you to their WMA with all the digital rights hoo ha, I've just stuck the MP3 up instead.
