T2007
Dec 20
2007
It’s that time of year again, when I make my annual compilation music CD. I have done the front cover and the track listing, all I need to do is make the back cover and actually burn and print the CDs and covers. Here’s a preview of the front cover to keep you guessing.
John Butler Trio
Sep 21
2007
I went to see the John Butler Trio last night at the Brixton Academy. This was an amazing gig, the first few songs were a bit disappointing as the guitar was bit quiet, but after that was sorted out the gig took off. It just kept on getting better and better; the passion and energy from all three was amazing. I particularly enjoyed the drum solo that must have lasted at least eight minutes, at one point the drummer was sitting with his back to the audience, playing some drums behind him, while still playing the bass drum with his foot reversed, amazing. Stand out tracks included Zebra, which really got the crowd going as well as the sublime Ocean.
Last.fm
Sep 8
2007
I’ve recently setup my MP3 player to use last.fm, this makes a record of every song that you listen to. You can see my “Artist Quilt” on the right-hand side of this page. There are a lot of duplicates at the moment because I haven’t been logging the results for a while, but it should be interesting to look at after a few months listening. You can also check out my profile page here: http://www.last.fm/user/wooglie. Let me know if you are using this already and we can compare.
Soul Survivor: Spoken Groove
Aug 21
2007
I saw a very cool band called Spoken Groove at Soul Survivor. They are a two piece Peter Nevland and Paul Finley. Paul play some amazing acoustic guitar, while Peter is a poet. He moved between speaking, rapping and singing throughout their set, which included various hilarious songs as well as some incredibly moving and intelligent pieces. I bought their first album “Acoustic Spoken Groove” which is very funky in places, if you like something a bit different I’d recommend you check them out.
Glastonbury
Jul 3
2007
I got back from Glastonbury music festival last week. It was a bit wet and muddy, but I really enjoyed everything else about the weekend. I saw some amazing bands and musicians. The View, Newton Faulkner, Rodrigo y Gabriela, The Who, Kaiser Chiefs, Bjork, the Kooks and Paulo Nutini. I’ve probably forgotten some of the other acts that i enjoyed, but nevermind. As ever the atmosphere was amazing from having a field full of people sining along with Paulo Nutini to “I Wanna to Be Like You” from the Jungle Book to tens of thousands of people covering the field overlooking the pyramid stage on the last night watching The Who in the rain.
Muse
Jun 18
2007
I went to see Muse play the new Wembley Stadium on Saturday. What an amazing gig! I’ll get to Muse in a bit, but I’ll start with the support acts.
Rodrigo y Gabriela were excellent, easily the best support act in my opinion. There were large screens to either side of the stag, which were mostly focused on the guitars of the two musicians and watching their hands was breathtaking. They managed to fill the stadium with music better than the two acts that followed and with only two acoustic guitars.
Dirty Pretty Things weren’t that good, it might have been because I didn’t like their style of music, but well meh.
The Streets seemed like a weird choice to support Muse and they were. Mike Skinner did put a lot of effort into the show, but I don’t think he had a very target audience.
Onto the main act. The show started with the band rising up in the middle of a platform in the crowd, with loads of paper “exploding” around them and two rows of people waring gas-masks flanking each side. They then walked along an extended platform to start with Knights Of Cydonia. I won’t go into the whole set list, but stand out tracks for me were Invincible and Time Is Running Out, both had the whole crowd singing along and when everyone joined in to the chorus of Time Is Running Out, it was amazing. They had two encores, the first of which included two acrobats suspended above the crowd from giant balloons. They ended the second encore with Take A Bow and the whole front of the stage lit up with fire right at the end of the song before they left for the final time. An excellent gig and probably the one of best live acts I’ve seen.
Click on the image for a larger picture.
Rodrigo y Gabriela
Jun 15
2007
I’m going to see Muse play at the new Wembley Stadium on Saturday and when they announced the support acts, I wondered who Rodrigo y Gabriela were. They are just two Mexicans who both play acoustic guitars, but the sounds they create are amazing. I bought their recent, self titled album which is a great listen, the cover of Stairway to Heaven is also a must if you like Led Zeppelin.
I’ll hopefully have a review of the Muse gig up sometime over the weekend.
DRM free iTunes
Apr 2
2007
You probably wouldn’t expect me to talk about iTunes or even Apple products, especially in a positive fasion, but here goes. EMI are offering all their songs on the iTunes music store DRM (Digital Rights Management) free. This means that you can buy and download songs through itunes and use them on other music players other than an iPod. If other music companies follow suit then this could mean that you can use the iTunes music store without being limited to copying them to an ipod.
They are charging 20p extra for these tracks, but whole albums are the same price. For those of you who already own some EMI iTunes songs can download the unrestricted fiels for 20p. This seems reasonable, until you remember that you’ve already paid for the song and you are just paying for using the song as it should have been originally. It’s like a company recalling a product and charging you for getting a replacement.
Glastonbury
Apr 1
2007
After a painstaking morning, six friends and I are off to Glastonbury this year. Excellent 
Head Luggage
Mar 7
2007
I went to to see Head Luggage play at the Betsey Trotwood pub in London last night. As I know the band quite well this won’t be a completely unbiased review, but I do get to review them before anyone else does 
Their opening song, Walk With Me*, was amazing and a great way to start a set, very rocky (technical music term) and the vocals worked very well. The second song, Just One Kiss, carried on in a similiar way, but didn’t stand out as much to me. As I’m lazy I’m not going to review every song so here are a coupel of other songs that stood out to me: Grace was one of my highlights, a very powerful song and the band seemed to draw me in with this one. The band finished on again two very rock filled songs that seemed to say “I know we did some slower ones in the middle, but we’re going to leave you on a high”. For me the first of the two, Take Me Home, stood out, especially lead guitarist Andy’s riff. No offence to the rest of the band, but if you only had that riff and the vocals, it would still be an amazing song.
I’ve only heard most of these songs a couple of times now, so some of the others may grow on me. Unfortunately they haven’t recorded some of their newer songs, so we will have to wait to listen to them in the car. Check out the myspace and the website for a few song clips, future gigs and some more info on the band.
*: All song names are unofficial and subject to future alteration.
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