Michael

Turned on the radio last night just before heading to sleep, listening to 6Music when between songs they head over to the news room. An unusual thing to happen on a predominantly music station, and there I hear the news that Michael Jackson has been rushed to hospital and there are reports that he wasn't breathing. Immediately it sounds very grave and I feel a sense of shock, this is not a man whose time it is to die. Then there are the rumours that he has died and I just can't get to sleep, so wander downstairs and watch some 24 hour news, where this is the top story. At that time there are various reports that he has died or in a coma, until eventually the sad news is reported that he has died. Unbelievable. How can someone I have never met, nor indeed, desired to meet's death cause me an emotional shockwave? There are few celebrity deaths that have stirred me, and I can still remember the events now. Waking up in November 1991 to hear that Freddy Mercury had died, even though his illness was well known, probably the first person to die that I would recognise as a pop star. Then getting into grunge music during my teen years, being particularly influenced by the music of Nirvana, there was the shock of Kurt Cobain's suicide in April 1994. This news I remember hearing during a power cut at home, listening to the radio on my walkman. The news of Princess Diana's death in 1997 shocked the world, and finally the death of John Peel in 2004. Michael joins this list, and it's interesting that the majority of this list are in someway connected to the music industry. I love music, and growing up in the 80s, Michael Jackson was just part of the scene. Everyone new who Michael Jackson was, even when i wasn't really into music, I was aware of Thriller, that video, and his pepsi advert where he caught fire. Autumn 1987 I can vividly remember a newsround dedicated to the release of Bad, people rushing into the stores and buying handfuls of LPs. Everyone at school could sing "I'm bad, I'm bad, you know I'm really bad." A few years later I remember sitting glued to the bbc who were going to exclusively show Michael's video to "Black and White". The suspense surrounding it was justified, it was a ridiculous bombastic and expensive video featuring Slash on guitars. To be honest I recall being fairly ambivalous to the music, but was completely blown away with the special effects used to morph people's faces from one to another. The first time I'd seen such technology, something which will cause no stir these days, but back then it was the talk of my peer group. How could a computer morph people's features - amazing! Though the succeeding periods saw the demise in the quality of his music, he continued to be headline news and sell records by the bucketload. Hi unusual and eccentric behaviour, his fascination with children began to lead to him being vilified by the press - culminating in the Martin Bashir documentary which painted Michael as the weirdo we all thought he was. Though I'm sure this documentary was deliberately made to portray him so, and I expect if they wished they could've compiled footage to portray a completely different person. However, even during all these allegations, Michael continued to showboat, turning up to court in pyjamas. So I guess throughout my life, Michael has continually been in the headlines - for exceptional music and for his eccentricities. And his music, particularly from the 70s and 80s always makes you want to get up and dance. I was hoping that his forthcoming live performances would be great and remind people that it was the music and performances that were what made him Michael Jackson, not his eccentricities. His death will sadden many, and I'm sure there will be swathes of over-emotional fans, cos he had such a crazy fan base, and I remain saddened. The death of an ever present showman who has always been there throughout my life has gone. A stark reminder to the fragility and shortness of life, we are just dust in the wind.

painting

just before new year i was shopping in wilkos when i chanced upon canvases for sale at £2. Now at that price i thought i might try and do some painting, a few small tubes of acrylic paint were equally cheap. Listening to MIA at the time i had visions of colours and images flashing vibrantly through my head. Painting would be the way to capture them. I made the purchase, got home and found my little polyfiller trowel. Not having an artists pallette, i made one blue peter style from a piece of card wrapped in tin foil, put on bamboo banga by MIA really loud and set to work, whirring the trowel over the canvas. I really enjoyed the creative burst and was quite pleased with how the painting turned out. Buoyed on with the success i purchased further canvases and tried a couple more paintings using different music tracks for influence. Click the images to see full size.




and a clip of me painting

Nat Johnson live review

Early december i used my last annual leave to have a long weekend in london. I always enjoy spending time in london, there's always plenty to see and do. This time i was keen to check out the new exhibition in the turbine hall. Shibboelth is a huge crack that has been created in the actual fabric of the hall floor. It's an incredible and novel idea, the name of the piece taken from a passage in Judges where the gileadites use the word to distinguish their enemy, fellow israelites, but from the tribe of Ephraim. The inability of the Ephramites to pronounce the word correctly resulted in their execution. A brutal biblical story that leaves 45k dead. A term that since has been come to use a means of differentiating between types of people, here the crack represents the cracks and divisions that arise in society. Cracks that are set up as stumbling blocks to make life harder for those who are different. It's a powerful message, and a popular piece of work. Plenty of other interesting things to see in and around the tate modern. Sunday afternoon I had to run to catch my coach home, just arriving at the platform on time. The journey was delayed and i arrived back in sheffield later than anticipated, but just in time to get to the red house in sheffield to see nat johnson's debut gig. The lead singer of monkey swallows the universe is currently pursuing some solo work during the indefinate hiatus. Despite the songs being very new, it is clear that with a bit of nurture they will grow into songs of beauty. She has a rare talent in making music that contains that je ne sais quois which sets it way above the rest. Teletext deemed my review worthy of publishing, a rarity for a debut gig review to be published i'm sure.

my photos of london dec 07
photos of Nat's gig

MIA live review

Just before christmas i got my M.I.A. review published on teletext. It's pleasing to see this on the screen as it was my favourite gig of the year. M.I.A. has a sound that is so fresh and original, the music is almost alive. Click the image to see full size to read the full review.

Music review 2007

Time for me to compile a list of my favourite music from the last year, and it has been a very good one on the music front. And I'll probably miss something

Top 10 Albums of 2007

1 Feist - The Reminder
This album is superb, from lilting pop to understated folk. Feist's voice is wonderful and beautifully backed by intricate melodies as she sings of love won and lost. Favourite track: The Park.

2 MIA - Kala
Bought on the back of glowing comments on teletext, this album proved to be huge. Inventive and fresh, these electronic noises rage with life. Challenging intelligent lyrics bolster this heady mix of beats, bringing issues of war and poverty to the dance floor. Fave song: $20

3 Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
Once again they have managed to expertly bring together a myriad of instrumentation to make a sound that is vivid and not pompous. Hurdy Gurdy's and Cathedral Organs nestle with electric guitars and horns. Songs question the insignificance of the church and it's apparent failure to engage with modern life. Fave song: Intervention

4 Monkey Swallows the Universe - Casket Letters
I have been privilaged to have become friends with this bunch of musicians over the last year and as such it makes it harder to review their music. Their second album certainly produced the goods, lilting folk pop, songs full of charm and accessibility. Music this good should really be playing on iPods around the country. Fave song: Gravestones

5 Radiohead - In Rainbows
Radiohead return to form with this album. Mixing interesting electronic noises with their brand of guitar rock. Thom varies his vocal performances with falsettos providing frshness to tracks. They continue to show that rock music can evolve. Fave song: Reckoner

6 Stars - In our bedroom after the wall
Third entry by a canadian band in the top ten. Girl/boy vocals play together against sunny guitar pop. Songs of love and broken relationships interplay, as the music careers between 70s funk to piano ballads. Fave song: Personel

7 Strange Death of Liberal England - Forward March!
Passionate vocals are hollered against a backdrop of angry guitars. But it's not all noise as gentle glockenspiel and banjo are cleverly included. Vibrant and punchy. Fave track: A day another day

8 Justice - cross album
An album named by a symbol - how crazy (!) This album starts with the dirtiest rummbling bass that entrances your legs into a dancing frenzy. The beats continue to pound as funk laden melodies are carried along. Album begins to tire after the first half for me. Fave track: D.A.N.C.E.

9 Bjork - Volta
As always Bjork brings an album to the table that continues to bring music from the future. Working with some of the world's most inventive producers she brings alien noises to back her unique voice. The album suffers from patchy mediocre tunes, but the good ones are very very good. Fave track: Earth Intruders

10 Malcolm Middleton - A Brighter Beat
Malcolm sings about the downs and hurts of life with wit and uplifting tunes. Often overlooked for being depressing, his lyrics are actually filled with hope in the gritty reality that often you feel let down by life. Anti folk at its best. Fave track: Brighter Beat

Of course I haven't managed to listen to loads of albums that have been released this year and am sure that some of them may well have made my top ten and the alustrious acolades that that brings ;)

Top singles:

1 Justice - D.A.N.C.E.
2 Going to a town - Rufu Wainwright
3 Fire Escape - Fanfarlo

three singles will do cos I don't really pay attention to singles anymore

Top gigs of the year:

1 MIA - Manchester Academy 2
Only a few days ago, this stormed straight to the top of the gig list. I was so impressed with the live mixing of electronic loops and the ferocity of MIAs vocal delivery. A performance full of passion whipping the crowd into a frenzy of dancing. Astounding

2 Arcade Fire - Latitude
Awesome finish to a really great festival, with Final Fantasy joining them onstage the bombastic orchestral sound was electric.

3 Feist - Manchester
Small venue, big voice. Session musicians squeezed onto the stage gave a wonderful rounded sound to supplement her gossamer vocals. Wonderful

4 Monkey Swallows the Universe - Merlin
Launching their new album, this theatre proved the perfect venue for their wonderful indie folk pop.

5 Hush the Many - leadmill
Supporting The Fields - this support act blew me away with their wondrous soundscapes. Supplemented with cello and understated boy/girl vocals this sound was awe inspiring. Hope to hear more in the future.

more of my live reviews can be read in the teletext flickr set

Music I discovered this year that was out ages ago

Sufjan Stevens - this man is so good. His Illinois Album has been catapulted into my all time top albums ever. Wonderful instrumentation backs intelligent and heartfelt lyrics. You must own some of his music. Thanks to Last.fm and cait for the recommendation.

Bat for Lashes - spotted on glastonbury this eccentric musician is not only beautiful, but creates wonderful folk pop.

Antony and the Johnsons - what a voice! Album picked up on the cheap, knew it was a mercury winner - and how.

Thom Yorke - solo album of chilled electronica fused with his varied vocals. great for focusing concentration when at work.

Bands to look out for this year:
Operator Please, I was a cub scout (for pink squares, a top pop tune), nat johnson, fanfarlo, hush the many

Last Sunday Roast

Sunday I went to the parent's house. The place I used to refer to as home. It still is home in some sense, there'll be the odd time I'll say I'm going home, when what I mean is I'm going to see the parents. This was the last time I would go as they are due to move house shortly to downsize. It's been a great home and full of plenty of memories. Christmases, spectrum computers, lego, washing up liquid bottle water fights, snow, hurricanes, pets, friends. But really none of those memories are tied to the bricks of the place, rather the items and people that were in them. I loved living there and the rolling views, the ability to walk off the end of the garden and pick up a footpath and head up to Ashover, but it's not a place I've called home for a long time now. It was nice to gather as a family, eat and reminisce. I helped with a few chores before taking away the last few items that belong to me. It'll be a bit strange not to be going back there again, though my mark has been made. I scrawled on a number of the walls at various ages as the wall paper had been stripped :)

Nostalgic weekend

It's been ages since I've blogged, I seem to spend most of my net time on scrabulous these days. Anyway, thought I'd blog about some stuff, so I'll start with a few weeks ago, though I'll set the post date to match the time it occured.

Saturday afternoon I headed to Bolton to see the wonderful monkey swallows the universe and I gave a lift to ag to help with transportation. JT and his girlf came down too, so it was a good opportunity to meet up with them and introduce them to the live sound of mstu. The venue was actually quite nice, a little pub with small band stage and a huge video backdrop, that for the most part of the evening was playing anime. It was pretty strange to watch mstu with some futuristic japanese backdrop. As always I enjoyed the gig, despite a few technical problems with the mikes and mixing desk. Oh yes, the other really exciting part about the set was that I had been asked to put the songs on their set list into a running order. So the song order was in the main part how I'd picked them. A few changes had been made due to instruments required in the songs. The weather had turned for the worse so on the way back i decided to go via the m62, ag played dj on the iPod and we were making good progress despite the driving rain. As we came down the M1 the variable message signs were informing 'pedestrians in road' 50mph. We dismissed this as foolish, suggesting that surely they meant workers in road. A couple of miles later and out of apparently nowhere some guy was thumbing for a lift right in the hard shoulder. It was crazy, what on earth was he doing there!
Sunday afternoon I spent going through the numerous boxes of stuff I'd picked up from my parents a few days previously. I'm rubbish at throwing things away and I was faced with the quandry of what to do with a pile of smash hits from the late 80s, piles of school books, and boxes of old birthday and christmas cards. In the end most got sealed in boxes ready to go into my loft. I did come across a few interesting things. A class project on how to keep warm in winter was full of lots of useful advice, though I seemed to get sidetracked and talked about playing He-Man. I was Battle-Cat. Also a bit strange to read John's entry, even back then he got a mention for his beloved Liverpool FC in the scarf he wore. Reading through my creative writing journal was also tinged with sadness as I read many 'famous five' inspired adventures where me and my friend John would solve some mystery or other. I'm sure if John was still here he would've taken great delight in reading them now. There was another piece that described the things I liked and was amused that the things i liked when i was ten pretty much still stand: Reading, maths, walking.

More tips on how to keep warm in winter can be found here

Music reviews

I've been to a couple of gigs this week and had one review published on teletext - hooray. This was from a gig at the leadmill on monday, though I actually preferred the support act - sound grade, but I quite liked it, so to rescue the words from obscurity I shall paste them here:
I was a cub scout - live leadmill 29/10

I don't know what Todd Marriott's fire making or knot tying skills are like, but on tonight's performance he will be gaining his synth twiddling badge with distinction. Bedroom synth pop is given life and vibrancy from driving live percussion, this is no geeky art noise but a colossus of pulsing pop. Todd's distinct vocals work well with the clattering guitar and his passionate performance is infective. Pinks squares epitomises the best of their catchy sound. Akela would be pleased.

8/10

Forward Russia were the headline act, and although they produced a riotous noise, the lack of vocal variety began to bore me a bit.i was a cub scout. The penned review didn't make the planet I'm always a little embarrassed when a slightly critical review is published, I really respect anyone who forms and plays in a band - creativity should be encouraged and i hope my criticism can help encourage them to greater things. They probably will never see it anyway ;)

The second gig was the remarkable arcade fire who i saw at nottingham arena. The third time i've seen them live this year. Being seated i felt that somehow the passion on the stage was sucked out by the cavernous venue and so i didn't really get into the live experience as much as previous times. The music was still unbelievably good, musical prowess at it's height, they have a knack of arranging a myriad of musical sounds to form a cacophony of pulsing rock. I'm pleased that they are reaching super group status, but sorry that the energy of more intimate gigs can not be felt as strongly. There were a couple of new songs played and also a Smiths cover, but disappointingly some idiots thought it would be good to throw bottles at the band. Win Butler was understandably annoyed and promptly left the stage after finishing the song where the incident occurred. The band did reappear but another bottle was thrown enraging Butler further who exclaimed the band would never play Nottingham again if anything else came their way. Thankfully nothing did and the band did return for an encore, but I can't help thinking that the encore was somewhat reduced in length because of the incident. Bah - arena gigs are a let down (apart from the white stripes who were awesome a few years ago)

Milling

Had a nice day milling around yesterday. After a busy week of late nights and meetings it was nice to have some time relaxing. Didn't really achieve a great deal on my visit into the city centre. Popped to the library to see if they had Science of Sleep on dvd, which they do, but someone has failed to return it and it is now 2 weeks overdue. Still want to see this film, it looks interesting and i missed it when it was on at the showroom. Did have a look to see if i could buy it, but the cheapest i found was £9 which i wasn't prepared to shell out. Whilst in the library i went up to the graves gallery to take a few photos of the kiss, which is a piece i admire, and it is currently set in a nicely laid out gallery.
Also popped into the cathedral which is somewhere I've never been to in all my years in the city. Nice to wander around and there were a few people in there admiring the space and lighting a candle, saying a prayer. It's good that there is such a space in the city to do that, though it has never struck me to go in before. Whilst inside I decided to see if i could find john wesley who i'd heard was present in one of the stained glass windows. I found him with the help of the verger, nestling in the corner of the piece in the holy spirit chapel room. I don't think i'd've found it without help. It's actually quite large inside and there are loads of windows.
Click the images to see larger sizes.

runaway boy at runaway girl

I popped into the library on saturday whilst i was wandering around town, mainly to go and view the exhibition in the graves gallery. They have some nice photography and some abstract pieces in at the moment. One of the galleries looked especially good, a great use of space and colour and perhaps the best setting i've seen of the sculpture 'the kiss'. Whilst i was leaving i picked up an information booklet about the annual festival of reading and writing in sheffield, off the shelf. I'd noticed that tonight there was opportunity to go and read something aloud for up to 3 minutes at the runaway girl. It sounded interesting and I wondered if i could perhaps try reading a bit of the book I'm writing aloud. Bit apprehensive about mooting a work in progress, but there was a scene i'd read on saturday which i was quite happy with, and would also work as a stand alone piece. So off i toddled this evening, late cos getting into town for 7:30 isn't going to happen when you get home at 6:30 and have nothing in the fridge to eat. No matter, i envisaged a bar of bohemian writers and creative types, musing over beer and wine. Perhaps I may even find a creative writing class that could provide some assistance. I could slip in and listen to the readings and if brave, venture forwards and breath life into my sterile words. Take them off the page and see how they form when i articulate them audibly. Maybe receive some feedback. I got there and snuck a look through the window, all the tables were set out and they were filled with groups of people enjoying a meal over a glass of wine. Not looking particularly bohemian, more 'richard and judy book club' middle class women. A split decision, i'm not going to be able to sneek in here and sit and be comfortable. no way. I'll stick out like a fool with no friends.

run away....