Posts Tagged ‘music’

On Friday, myself and Norm headed over to Manchester to see Tim Minchin at the MEN.

Tim certainly didn’t disappoint! He is currently touring with a 55 piece symphony orchestra which he uses to great affect and left us all coming away with some brand new favourite Tim Minchin songs, number one for most of us being Sam’s Mum’s Cataracts (btw, the official name of the song is Thank You God if you were wondering).

The best part of the evening though was finding out that even though Aimee had booked her tickets five months ago, and I had booked mine on Tuesday – we were closer to Tim than she was 😀 .

Of all the gigs I imagine I would have shortlisted to go to this year, I can’t say Meat Loaf would have been one of them. But when I got a text off Norm saying he had two tickets to the o2 corporate box, I thought to myself, “I could go for a bit of that.”

So we headed over to the MEN in Manchester for a bit of corporate hospitality. Which is a codeword for free bar. Good times :D. The box itself was quite nice, it also included some tasty food (that they come in and steal in the middle of the main gig though) and it’s quite a nice level to watch the show from – could definitely get used to this kind of thing!

With Norm having a spare ticket to the Gorillaz gig at MEN last night, I decided to take him up on the offer and head over. The train journey over there was a nightmare – pretty much every train in or out of Leeds was running late and so we started off fifteen minutes late only to find we could only crawl to Pudsey.

So an hour into this journey we hadn’t even made it out of Leeds yet with the official reason for the problems being a combination of a gearbox problem and “the track being wet.” So we spent another twenty minutes or so waiting for the Blackpool train which was only a few minutes behind us apparently so turn up so it could push us into Bradford at which point they gave up on our train and cancelled it.

Once we had found another train the journey finally got going and I ended up reaching Manchester about quarter past nine – over three hours after having set off but just in time for the set – Gorillaz had just taken to the stage and were onto their third song by the time I got to my seat.

Some, who regularly go to bland and unpopular bands who can’t fill a large audience, would wonder whether they were looking at musicians or ants at stadium gigs but luckily we had no such problems – the seats themselves were really good – it was as far forward as you can get (I was in seat 3) on the left side, about half way up the lower tier.

There were a huge number of people involved in the performance. The regular act consisted of Damon Albarn, three guitarists, two drummers, four vocalists, a five piece string orchestra and two or three other people meaning just as standard there were nearly 20 people on stage, plus on top of that they had a brass band and another orchestra that did some sets and maybe 8-10 guest vocalists as well resulting in there being probably 40 people on stage at various points throughout the gig!

Despite not being that familiar with a lot of Gorillaz’ music I really enjoyed the gig, well worth the wait.

On Thursday, we headed down to Sheffield to see Paramore. The wind and the rain made for an interesting journey, but never the less we made it down in good time and after grabbing some food we headed in just to see the final few songs of B.o.B.

Paramore themselves hit the stage at around 9:15 and played an almost identical set list to the one they had played in Nottingham a few days earlier, which was great, because those were the songs I had been listening to non-stop since 😀 .

I really enjoyed the gig, probably more than Linkin Park, mainly due to us having standing tickets which was well worth the premium cost as you get so much more atmosphere on the floor – not to mention more room to get into the rhythm.

Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing in the Name” beats out the X Factor single to be Christmas number one. Win.

I don’t know Joe McElderry. I’ve never met him. I don’t know what kind of personality he has, whether he is a enjoyable man to be around, funny, charming and interesting or not.

But if I was to guess I would give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he is probably a nice guy. Honest, genuine, just wants to get up there and sing.

Which makes me wonder how situations like this occur.

Look at yourself. You’re throwing darts at somebody else’s head! What kind of sick weirdo does that?

If I was to take a guess I would say a sweet kid who has a great voice on him but isn’t the smartest kid in the class that has been taken by the music industry and turned into a tool for their own use.

That’s why we’re raging against the machine.

For those of you who read NME you may well have read possibly one of the silliest comments I have read in a long time, and this is from someone who reads the Daily Mail every morning.

Cheryl Cole has launched an attack on Rage Against The Machine for sabotaging the Christmas Number One race. Despite the US band themselves not orchestrating the Facebook campaign to get ‘Killing In The Name’ to the top of the charts ahead of X Factor winner Joe McElderry, Cole said the battle had now reached biblical levels. “It’s David versus Goliath and it’s not fair on Joe. It’s getting out of hand.” She went on to say that the thought of a US band topping the charts at Christmas was just wrong. “If that song, or should I say campaign, by an American group is our Christmas Number One I’ll be gutted for him and our charts” (The Sun).

The obvious first point is that this campaign wasn’t started by Rage, it was started by fans (and someone would phrase that as true music fans for obviously justified reasons). But that isn’t the main point that I want to make.

The reason the comment is so stupid is because the campaign hasn’t sabotaged the race for the Christmas number one, it’s created a race! Until Rage came along there was no race, the only thing this campaign has sabotaged is X Factor’s divine right to have the Christmas number one as it somehow thinks it is entitled to.

And this is what the campaign is about – it shouldn’t just be a fact that X Factor is entitled to take the number one spot every Christmas, we’re tired of it. We want a fair race based on genuine musical talent rather than how much publicity you can spin off the back of an appallingly bad TV show.

As such I cannot imagine what thought process went through her head that concluded “yes, that’s an intelligent thing to say.” Presumably none.

In other news despite the physical single now being out for the past two days it has still failed to catch up with Rage! Saturday will be the real physical sales boost though so Rage needs a big lead and the campaign needs you. You can gift up to two extra purchases to friends and you can also grab some copies for free without a credit card from Nokia Music.

Please, please buy Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name this week.

In case there are people out there who haven’t heard about it, there is a campaign to get RATM’s Killing in the Name as the Christmas number 1 in the UK singles chart in an attempt to beat the X Factor single.

I’m sure many of you are either aware or can figure out the reasons why we would want this to happen. X Factor predictably wins every year off the back of a TV show rather than genuine popularity of the music. This is evident from the fact it’s called the X Factor single rather than actually mentioning the song title or artist.

Not to mention the fact that the campaign for Killing in the Name has also raised £30,000 for charity Shelter.

However given you’re smart enough to know all this, what I really want to talk about is whether you should go out and actually buy the song. Many people will probably be thinking that it won’t make a difference and the X Factor single is obviously going to win so it’s pointless buying it.

But it isn’t.

Here are some stats. The Christmas number one normally sells around 400,000 copies, that is around half the number of people in the Facebook group for the campaign. If everyone in the group bought just one copy it would have twice the sales that the X Factor single would have.

Of course you’re thinking that most of the people in the group won’t buy it and so it won’t get nearly that much sales. I thought the same thing but apparently that simply isn’t the case. As well as the group growing exponentially (it’s gained 50,000 members in the past 24 hours) it is actually outselling X Factor currently according to BBC News.

It has been ahead of X Factor on the Amazon, HMV and Play.com sales charts and this afternoon finally overtook X Factor on the iTunes chart as well. It’s winning.

The reason we aren’t counting our chickens just yet though is because the X Factor single comes out in hard copy tomorrow, which is likely to give it a boost in sales.

However physical sales account for only 10% of singles sales these days and according to the BBC News article Killing in the Name is just over 10% ahead currently. This means that with the boost X Factor will get from physical sales it will amost be a dead heat.

Therefore we can draw two conclusions from this. Firstly is that you actually buying the single will actually make a difference as Killing in the Name can win this thing. Secondly it isn’t too far ahead that it makes it pointless you buying it because it’s obviously going to win. It’s going to be very close to the point where you actually buying the single could not make more of a difference.

So there you have it, buy it, it will make a difference. Also if you aren’t aware, it is only 29p on Amazon! For that kind of cash if you bring me your receipt when I next see you, I will actually refund you the cost of buying a single.

For those of you that really want to get involved, while chart rules prevent you from just buying loads of copies for yourself (although one wonders how they would know, especially if you buy from multiple sellers), you can gift extra purcahses to your friends and family. Don’t forget to join the Facebook group and invite all your friends too.

Oh and one final thought in case everything I have written has yet to sway you – just imagine how much Killing in the Name willing will annoy Daily Mail readers 😀 .

A much overdue return to Wendy House arrived last night. While the music was it’s usual mix of good stuff and bad stuff it was at last a reasonably quite night with enough people on the dance floor to give it some atmosphere but plenty of space to dance.

Tonight’s Halloween party provided an excellent if flimsy excuse to get my decks out in preparation for the festivities. It’s been quite a while since I’ve really had them out as I don’t have space in my room anymore so it was cool to get everything tested last night.

Having said that, when I got my old laptop out to boot up, the hard drive was missing.

I mean, it was still physically there. But the computer couldn’t see it 🙁 . Might have to try hitting it until it works again.