Be Excellent To Each Other

Not quite been a day but already getting over 4% likes to view ratio on Ballacid’s channel. 223 views so far! Compared to 26 on mine over 5 days…

Which is nice.

I've recently accepted invitations to go to a few concerts lately, it's been fun.

Grinspoon - a popular aussie band from the late 90s / early 2000s. They were really good and I recognised one or two sings off the radio. We were right at the front in a pretty good venue. Solid.

They were supported by Private Function - fucking brilliant, punky and funny too. I've been listening to this band a lot since then


Blink 182 at an arena roughly the size of the O2 - really good but my mate bought really expensive 'vip' tickets so we had good seats, but I don't think it was worth the money we paid. Travis is an absolute beast on the drums though, wow.

Finally, the pick of the bunch, the Southern River Band. This was in a small-ish pub in the city with a side room that holds a couple of hundred people. Holy shit these guys were loud, lively and brilliant. The frontman is very much an Australian stereotype. He can really play and has plenty of charisma. The drummer was an animal playing live. They're playing in London soon too - you should totally check it out if you like straightforward hard-ish heavy rock with a touch of flamboyant humour (which I do).

Can’t beat going to gigs, sounds like they were all great bands!
I always try and say yes if invited to stuff, even if not my usual cuppa chances are it’ll be a good do.

Speaking of which I want to see Heaven 17 a couple of weeks ago and they were brilliant.

I remember when I had hair like that.

Will get tickets for this, I reckon. Then Duff will be equal first with Peaness and Do Nothing in the "people I have seen most often on stage".

Must be difficult going through life with a name that is clearly a euphemism for *something*. Fair play for becoming a world (well, Europe) touring musician anyway.

Ticket price was half a Taylor. Jeez.

Self indulgent post, sorry, but I’m really chuffed with this.

Got featured again on Ballacid’s YouTube channel who I’m a big fan of.

https://youtu.be/lZZVeqh4wME?si=riKP1uXU44LeGDbw

Something nice (for me) in a shitty time.

I think these guys might be the most interesting band at the moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzgPhjfuUIg

Managed to finish another tune on the last day of May, that’s five for five now. Also got it featured on the Ballacid channel (Thanks Zoltan!)



Digitakt II should be arriving today, hope I can get to grips with it quickly and it gels nicely with my current setup, looks like a great little box of tricks.

Love this. Like Aphex got lost in (Orbital's) Belfast.

That’s very very kind of you to say

Taylor Swift was amazing.
Absolutely phenomenal.

Girls Aloud in a couple of weeks . They have a high bar.

Take a stool mate.

Swear down, if she said "I need 10 people to come upon stage and have their arms cut off" there would be 5,000 up there. I would be one of them.

This is how religions were formed

I've not really bothered listening to anything she's done but I see mentions of her everywhere. St George Hall in Liverpool was covered with Taylor banners the other day.

If you had to recommend one song by her, what would it be?

I require thinking time on this

I can't.

All of them

Forever.

Blank Space

That's a good jumping off point.

1989 is a brilliant album.

Folklore and Evermore are great low key albums.

Tortured Poets is really growing on me: Fortnight, little old me, and I can do it with a broken heart are standout bangers.

"We are never getting back together" and "You Belong With Me" are great pop songs.

Wildest Dreams is probably my favourite.

Except when I hear Champagne Problems.

Or Getaway Car

Oh god, why did you set him off?

Thanks for the recommendations. I listened to all four. Wildest Dreams was the best of the bunch although I went off of it when the big chorus came in after 2 mins. Until then it was better than the rest. Still, at least I know what Taylor Swift is about now. It's always good to check things out as you never know if there's going to be a song that surprises you.

Like, a mate of mine banged on about Miley Cyrus for ages and while everything she did seemed to be shit, she had one song that was good. Run Away With Me it was called. Good production, good hooks. Decent pop song that. (LOL - I just serached for it and it's by Carly Rae Jepsen. Okay whatever. Still pretty good.)

The issue with Taylor, albeit from just four songs, is that she's not really doing anything that any other massive popstar of her type has done. And that's a problem in a world where Toxic by Britney Spears exists.

In terms of pop songs, I heard this on the pier at Llandudno a few weeks ago and had to Shazam it. It's going on my cooking playlist for kitchen-based terrible singing along.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvuyYj5ROmk

I know that was her big hit, but I prefer this one.

I really like these people. They bring a new meaning to the term 'House Band.' They definitely don't take themselves too seriously .

Been waiting for these guys to release their album. This song is a bit of a grower. Between the Pixies style backbeat and guitar, the great singing and superb lyrics it's such a tight song.



They do a great version of Siouxsie and the Banshees' Arabian Nights too.


EDIT: not sure the embedding is working. Song is Red Hands by Run With Hounds.

Fixed the embedding for you in the quote (you just need the bit after the equals sign)

I like them! Though will have to wait till they're on Spotify to properly listen. I should do bandcamp and such but... It's too much faff.

Sometimes I find a song and then play it like 20 times in a day. And this is one of them. The thing is, it's dangerously close to emo, but I really like it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgBPrBtLMXc

Another tune finished for another month. Rattled out in double time as I’m away for next two weeks. Getting jiggy-er with After Effects (mind your eyes). Its featured on Ballacids channel here:


I’m glad I’m out of the habit of buying new stuff each time, for now.

Last night's Nick Drake prom was excellent with some really good arrangements of his work. Worth a listen.

He's someone who I won't listen to for ages then every time I hear his stuff I remember how amazing it is.

Oh, I hadn't noticed that was on, I'll set aside some quiet time to listen to it.

I have a friend, Tim, who worked at Island records in the 70's. He was a gopher/gig runner/driver/odd job man/jack of all trades and one of his regular tasks was to deliver Nick Drake's royalty cheques to his home at Tanworth-in-Arden. Nick always used to cadge cigs off him.

I'd never heard of Nick until Tim came up to Manchester for a week to cover for Island's northern delivery driver who was going on holiday. In those days Island did their own record distribution for themselves, plus Trojan and Charisma. Tim didn't know the area, so I was navigator for the week as we visited record shops in Lancashire and Yorkshire. There was an 8 track tape player in the van, so we used to use van stock for our entertainment on the road, and that was when he introduced me to Nick's music.

While Tim was in the north, we stayed at another a friend's cottage in the middle of a field in Wildboarclough, out in the countryside near Macclesfield. Apart from navigating, my other job was to wake Tim every morning as he was a very heavy sleeper and he needed to be up early to go to Piccadilly Station in Manchester to collect stock for delivery. Every day it took about 5 minutes to rouse him, even using an alarm clock with twin bells on the top that made a tremendous racket.

At the end of the week Tim said he’d like to pay me for my help, so I could choose anything from van stock as my ‘wages.’ Island’s stock control was very rudimentary at the time, so a few albums disappearing wouldn’t be noticed. Tim used to barter with record shops if he spotted an interesting album, offering them an extra copy of an album they’d ordered as a swap. I got 20 albums for my trouble, including Nick’s ‘Five Leaves Left’ and ‘Bryter Later.’ Still two of my favourite albums from those days.

I also stayed at Tim’s flat in Powis Terrace, just around the corner from Island's offices on Basing Street, with a few of my hippy friends, when we went to London to attend the Oz Magazine ‘obscenity’ solidarity concert in Hyde Park in 1971. The headliners were Grand Funk Railroad, allegedly the loudest band in the world at the time, supported by Pink Fairies and a few other bands.

Tim went on to work at Virgin Records and was Bob Marley’s travelling tour PR rep, among other things.

Hippy, happy days.

Wowzers!

I love Warhead's celebrity stories. One of the highlights back when we did regular BeeX Zooms on a Tuesday.

Oh man. Loved the quiz nights