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Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts

Sunday, 26 April 2009

Senses Fail Club Academy Gig Review 25th April 2009

Went train hopping to Manchester for last night's Senses Fail gig at Club Academy, supported by Deaf Havana and My Emergency (click links for their MySpaces!)

Before the Gig

We had the time to get a pint in at the Lass O'Gowrie after briefly revisiting the memories of Weston Hall - Titanic Stout for myself. All was looking up as Manchester United were losing 2-0 too.

Ended up at the gig early enough to sit outside Jabez Clegg for a sit down and discovering United had reversed the score to 5-2 by the end of the match! - I had the fortunate honour of being hit on - twice for lighter and where to get cigarettes. The girl was going to some Chav gig in another one of the Academy rooms, and looked a right tit since the way she said she came she had to pass a shop. More for my ego, I suppose.

Despite the epic queue stretching as far back as Coupland Street - 2 gigs on, so no joke here - I used my university connections to get in via the side entrance at the Union pub. I'm sneaky, but get away with what you can.


The Gig

It was all broadcasted on my Twitter, but I thought I'd put a blog here too.



My Emergency - typical scene band, but listenable.




Deaf Havana - the better of the three - a bit more like Senses Fail of old, with sscreamer lead vocal and singer/guitarist, nice 4 set.




Senses Fail - the band practically everyone came to see. As I was warned, they were your typical studio band. Having stood in front of the stage by the amp, could barely hear the voices in the songs. Some classics like "You're Cute when you Scream", "Bloody Romance", "Martini Kiss" were all played, and well as their newer, more whiner stuff.

The singer was incredibly dense. He told us that he was an American Cub Scout and there was some documentary of him or something on some channel in America, something about something called "Oxygen" (the channel I think), and to watch at 2AM GREENWICH STANDARD TIME. Tit. Anyway, we are on British Summer Time.

Also, he tried telling us stories of swimming pool parties - thinking we would all understand and that we all have swimming pools. We don't.

And for comical measure, despite admitting he was not a comedian he still saw something humourous in that Mayo squeezing out of a bottle had a striking resemblance to semen. I suppose it was fitting as I and Renate were probably the oldest there - too many 13 year old scene kids drinking WKD by the looks of things.

There was something good though - some guy at the front got kicked out for throwing people over the safety barrier - and plenty of crowd surfers tried to get to the stage but failed. The singer almost got pulled in too. Fun times.

In in all, gig was not too shabby and it was a nice leveller to have someone in Manchester with me who loves it as much as I hate it.

After the Gig

After the gig it was time for Relentless and the treacherous walk through Canal Street. Much to my dismay there wasn't any men in leather, but many uniformed army gays and dykes you could easily mistake for men, and men you could mistake for flat chested ladies. I managed to make up for the experience after though, and a 4 hour wait called at the National Express cardboard box awaited.

We managed to witness a coach driver getting near assaulted by drunken passengers, police coming in and some racially incited banter between some passengers or something trying to go home to London. It's amazing how absolutely leathered people get on a night out!

I had a rude awakening and encounter with the security guard when I went for a cigarette who was probably expecting me to be rude back - but he had a hard night. A short stop at Keele services for photo processing and a walk home ended the night.

I give the night a ***/5 - * for getting away with so much and the entertainment of people getting in trouble with the policia, * for the gig being bareable, * for the shits and giggles.



Ren & I (at Jabez Clegg)
See full Facebook photo album of the night here

Fun with my friend, but I'm tempting to just let my beard grow all Karl Marx like - I never get served like this and its embarassing! I'm 20 for crying out loud!

Tomorrow - essay hand-ins and Eddie Izzard in London. Roll on.

Fin.


Saturday, 28 March 2009

Dashboard Confessional - Even Now (Video, Lyrics, Download)





Dashboard Confessional
- Even Now
download for free here!

Even now I can smell the clothes
Freshly from the wash
Still hot from the dryer

Even now I can smell your skin
To wrap you in a towel
Lay you on the bed
And try to love you

Even now I can feel your arms
I can feel your breast
I can hear your songs
And I always can find you again

Even now I can feel your hand
Gently over mine
With almost no weight at all

Even now I can feel your eyes
Watch me as I strum
Much too late at night

Even now I can see you smile
I can hear you hum
I can hear you sing
And I always can find you again

Even in the dark of night
Even in the lowest light
Even as the world outside
Is spinning, and spinning

Even now I can feel your hair
Blow across my cheek
As we sit in one of two chairs

Even now I can feel your face
Resting on my chest
Wrestling for sleep
And failing at it

Even now I can see you sleep
I can see the dream
I can see you fly
And I always can find you again
And I always can find you again
And I always can find you again



Note: A song, from my favourite band/artist, Dashboard Confessional (Christopher Ender Carrabba) - see here - for a live video of the performance I saw last year. It was special, in so many ways. I won't forget. ♥

Tuesday, 3 February 2009

Baby, You Wouldnt Last a Minute on the Creek





Chiodos at the Sugarmill. Good performance, loud and crazy stage dives. The guy does Triple H-esque water spits. Fun.

Bought a teeshirt too!





Best shirt there!

-- Post From My iPhone

Friday, 12 December 2008

iPhone ringtones in 17 steps - no downloads required!

I was looking for ways to get ringtones after a Facebook friend had asked me how it is done. As it turns out, very easily - with no downloads, at all (though you can get applications for your Windows and Mac that do this for you).

To find out how, it was as easy as a google search, credit goes to e-How.

Once you have done it once, I would say its easy enough to keep doing it. So here we go:


Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

  • iPhone
  • iTunes
  • Mac or Windows Computer
  • Non-DRM song (i.e. one not bought from the iTunes Store)
Step1
Open iTunes.

Step2
Find the song that you want to make into a ringtone.

Step3
Listen to the song and find the part of it you want to use. The chorus may be a good place to start.

Step4
Write down the start and stop times of the clip.

Step5
Right-click the song and select "Get Info."

Step6
Click the "Options" tab.

Step7
Type in the start time of your ringtone in the text box next to "Start Time" in the minutes:seconds (i.e. 2:01) format.

Step8
Type in the end time of your ringtone in the text box next to "Stop Time." Make sure the ringtone is no more than 40 seconds long.

Step9
Click "OK".

Step10
Right-click your song again and select "Convert Selection to AAC". Wait for iTunes to convert your song. It will create a duplicate version.

Step11
Right-click the ringtone and select "Delete".

Step12
Click on the "Keep Files" button.

Step13
Find the file. It's usually in your User folder under Music > iTunes > iTunes Music and under the band's name. It will have an extension of "m4a."

Step14
Replace the "m4a" extension of your ringtone with "m4r". You can either double-click slowly to re-name your file, or right-click and select "Get Info" on a Mac or "Rename" on a Windows PC.

Step15
Click "Use .m4r" or the PC equivalent when the system warns you that the change may affect the use of your file.

Step16
Double-click the ringtone file. ITunes will automatically add it to your ringtones folder in your iTunes Music Library.

Step17
Connect your iPhone and sync your ringtones.





Easy as pie. I've gone and put the guitar riff from Scary Kids Scaring Kids cover of Losing my Religion as my ringtone. Brilliant.

Wednesday, 10 December 2008

Twenteen



So today, I turned Twenty. Or Twenteen, as my brother so nicely put it.
It's been a good day, and I've treated myself to West Wing on DVD and Friends on DVD to give me hours of entertainment.
But for a lot of reasons I've been getting nostalgic about my teen years, as you do when you finally do when you're not a teenager anymore.
I would like to thank everyone who got me cards, sent me text messages, for the presents and messages on Facebook and MySpace. And its not all over as I have a little gathering with a couple of friends this Friday that I'm looking forward to.
It was a strange day for me in terms of who gave me messages of 'Happy Birthday', and who didn't.
Sometimes that leaves me a little confused, but when I think of my teen years, it brings me to recall probably my favourite day of recent times - the band and its music has always been an inspiration to me. And being there with a certain someone made it even more special.













Monday, 8 December 2008

Child Pornography, or Art?



Wikipedia child image censored

Mouse and keyboard, Eyewire
Wikipedia allows readers to edit the content of its pages

A decision by a number of UK internet providers to block a Wikipedia page showing an image of a naked girl has angered users of the popular site.

The blocked page of the online encyclopaedia shows an album cover of German heavy metal band Scorpions.

Internet providers acted after online watchdog the Internet Watch Foundation warned them its picture may be illegal.

Some volunteers who run Wikipedia said it was not for the foundation to censor one of the web's most popular sites.

They also argued that the image was available in a number of books and had never been ruled illegal.

But the IWF, which warns internet providers about possible images that could be linked to child abuse, said it had consulted the police before making its decision.

The foundation's list of proscribed sites is widely used by British internet service providers to filter out images showing child abuse and other illegal content.

It's the first time they've done this on such a visible site
David Gerard, Wikipedia volunteer

As a result, the addition of the Scorpions Wikipedia page has made it inaccessible to the majority of British internet users.

A spokeswoman for the IWF, which lists its members as including the BBC, AOL (UK), Ask and News International, suggested as many as 95% of British users would now be unable to access the page.

Wikipedia volunteer David Gerard said he and fellow users were angry that as well as the photo, the text on the page had been blocked.

"Blocking text is a whole new thing - it's the first time they've done this on such a visible site," he said.

Jay Walsh, a spokesman for the Wikimedia Foundation, which manages the encyclopaedia, said the removal of the page also appeared to have stopped thousands of UK users from editing articles on Wikipedia, which allows readers to self-edit its pages.

"It appears that there's a large number of editors - I can't say all - who appear to have access issues," he said.

The IWF spokeswoman said a reader had brought the image to the foundation's attention last week and it had contacted the police before adding the page to their list.

Wikipedia is one of the world's most popular websites. It is a multi-lingual online database written, edited and funded largely by its users. It has 2.6m articles in English alone.

(Source: BBC)



Child Pornography, or Art?

The Album the news is referring to, is Scorpions album "Virgin Killer" released in the 1970s - (access to wikipedia to find out if you can get to the page for UK users).

Reading further into Wikipedia's own entry on the controversy, I found that:

"The filtering is in response to the Internet Watch Foundation’s list of websites that host or contain content that have been reported to contain inappropriate images of naked children,(those under the age of 18). The IWF considers those images child pornography. However, in the United States (where the websites of the Wikimedia Foundation are hosted), it is not considered obscene under the criteria of the Miller test, which requires that an obscene work lack “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value” (as album art is used to “brand” the album, it is considered to be artistic)."


This then, brings the question of whether we can consider such controversial images as Art. The crucial thing to note between the US and UK system of laws is that the UK is not protected by any Bill of Rights and I would assume that the "Miller test" which makes this kind of controversial image legal in the US is protected by the first amendment, the freedom of speech and freedom of the press. The UK however, is not given this kind of protection in the constitution as we are bound to the 1998 Human Rights Act, which is subject to EU Human Rights legislation. There appears to be a case for a new bill, which is advocated by David Cameron.

I am not defending child pornography in any way, but freedom of speech, freedom of art and publication and expression is at the very foundation of our society. I have already looked into recently the criticism of Alan Carr, Russell Brand and Jonathon Ross in two blogs (One and Two).

Unfortunately because there is no real Bill of Rights in the UK protecting free speech (something that we really ought to sort out in the 21st Century), I cannot give any further analysis without viewing the image, which at the moment being considered "Child Porn", I could arrested for viewing and publicising the picture for something which is arguably art.

I would argue however, if it can pass the US litmus test for appropiate freedom of expression, then surely it can be accepted in our own society. The real crime here, is the true lack of any established bill of rights universally - if it can pass a western democracy with the power and stature in the world like the United States of America, then why not here in the United Kingdom.


Protect Art.

Protect Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Expression.


The argument against the publication or viewing of the album cover that it personifies and encourages child porn is akin to saying watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre will make us all like Edward Gein.

It would seem the media lately are having a particular moral panic and we cannot be trusted in the UK to use our common sense to say that such work (however distasteful) is art, not child It would not seem that the cover to Nirvana's "Nevermind" album is censored, it does feature a naked baby afterall. Is this "art" or child pornography? Art. And though it is apparently on the grey area whether I can look at the Scorpions album cover or not for legal reasons, I would argue anyway on the same grounds that artistic integrity should be protected, not just because somebody is offended by a particular image of particular expression. If the Virgin Killer album cover is censored for a depiction of 'child porn' and not art, then how the Nevermind album cover is free from scrutiny I will never know. I would like to think we can acheive some sort of moral standand. At the moment this smacks of nothing but double standards, and freedom of speech and expression has gone down the toilet because somebody raised a red flag because they were offended. Again.

If such arguments and events are a sign of things to come, then we have let the dark side of humanity win, and not our good side.

I would hope, that we can all use our common sense when it comes to moral issues and controversial subjects. Perhaps then we will actually get somewhere without seemingly pressing the panic button at every opportunity.