If music be the food of love, let’s eat it.
Music: What Are You Listening To?
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TJs is no longer there. I Googled it yesterday as I was curious. It closed when the owner died in 2010 but his grandson opened a music bar nearby called El Sieco which moved over a lot of the fixtures and fittings. I would have kept the name personally, I don’t come from very near Newport but everyone knew TJ’s because their band booking was so great.
When I was referring to clubs as well I meant in general as well as dedicated live music places like TJ’s. Panama Joe’s wasn’t really a live music venue, it was a Ritzy style disco that very occasionally had bands, but even those are hard to find now.
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Goth heavy month for some reason, but hey ho!
Everyone knows February is Goth Season.
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March blog!
Alt rock, more goth, some banging techno and a few other bits and pieces. Great month again.
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Been listening to the new Depeche Mode album for the last few days and it’s not bad, but there’s nothing really special here either. I’m not saying they’re a spent force or anything, but between this and Spirit feeling lacklustre to me it’s definitely starting to feel like their best days are behind them. Still considering going to see them in Malahide this summer though – I saw them on the Spirit tour and it was still a great show, so…
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I was thinking of seeing DM this year but the cheap tickets are £85 plus fees. So I’ll be giving that a skip.
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I was at a Pascow gig yesterday (German punk band that I love). First time in the mosh pit since covid started. Man, I missed throwing myself at people and vice versa. Great night out that was.
This is a song from their new album:
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Just saw this in a news feed. Diddy deserves it:
Now, I know Cobain, but the other one here..? Please tell me.
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Man, I missed throwing myself at people and vice versa.
I bet it did not hurt you at the size you are at. People watching this hairy giant throwing himself around the pit.
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March blog!
Alt rock, more goth, some banging techno and a few other bits and pieces. Great month again.
The Spotlights EP is 100% chefs kiss. I’ve got SOWT and Memoria queued up for later too
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Man, I missed throwing myself at people and vice versa.
I bet it did not hurt you at the size you are at. People watching this hairy giant throwing himself around the pit.
What’s always really impressive to me is that there’s always some petite girls that are half my size who are cheerily throwing themselves into this mess. Those girls know no fear.
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https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/04/25/media/ed-sheeran-court-day-one/index.html
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What am I listening to?
It came up on my YouTube… Smalltown Boy by Bronski Beat.
The 2014 reprise and (of course) I checked out the original and it still holds up. 😊
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The Ed Sheeran thing is interesting. I have no love for his music, but I hope he wins. The idea that you can copyright a common chord sequence has horrific consequences for the future of music, and Sheeran needs to shut this nonsense down once and for all (literally, “for all”).
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Me too. You need protections on copyright but with literally thousands of songs being created and shared daily that some things will sound similar is inevitable.
They are similar but they clearly have different melodies and there are so few chords on a guitar the same progressions are going to happen. If you can sue on ‘pretty similar’ then every artist is going to end up in court at some point. I’m not going to buy ‘Thinking Out Loud’ by accident because I can’t tell it isn’t ‘Let’s Get It On’.
I saw your point on Twitter about complex prog arrangements but even those are vulnerable because the cases are isolating sections. One I saw was just targeting 5 notes with a ‘yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah’ vocal as a small part of the song.
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I love Marvin Gaye but I think this verdict is right.
Robin Thicke, on the other hand….
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For the first time in many years, I won’t be watching Eurovision. In a disastrous scheduling clash, I’ll be in Manchester listening to two hours of this:
I think I’m getting the better deal, to be honest
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I heard somebody say Blur’s “Song 2” is basically the British version of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”…
Might have a point on that one.
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Interesting if this turns out to be the case:
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Speaking only of the winners of American Idol, only Kelly Clarkson (Season 1) and Carrie Underwood (Season 4) really had superstar-level success out of 21 seasons. Others had moderate success at best. Now, a lot of non-winners have had great success like Jennifer Hudson (won an Oscar) and Adam Lambert (regularly tours with Queen).
Then I look at the winners of The Voice (US) and I couldn’t name even one of them. I seriously doubt any of them have achieved anything close to superstardom.
These shows probably give performers greater success then they could have had on their own but I doubt it is anything substantial or long-lasting.
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I don’t know anything about her, but I’m not surprised. Some of these competition winners go on to big things, some don’t, and I don’t think it’s a reflection on their talent either way. It’s all down to how much a label cares enough to push them.
In the end it’s a somewhat flawed system. I hit back at ‘real’ music fans that said these talent show people can’t sing, I remember ragging David here actually on that with this performance:
In most cases their voices are incredible, apart from the odd novelty act pushed through for amusement, but they are essentially high class karaoke shows. A lot of the best pop stars don’t have great voices. Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys is pretty limited, so is Bob Dylan and Ian Brown. They have though fronted classic albums.
Madonna and Kylie Minogue are not great singers, they are good enough, but surrounded themselves with the best songwriters to have careers lasting several decades.
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In the end it’s a somewhat flawed system. I hit back at ‘real’ music fans that said these talent show people can’t sing, I remember ragging David here actually on that with this performance:
I honestly don’t remember that :D but I can imagine I’ve said it in the past. I would have been wrong though, because there have been a lot of talented people on these things over the years. But the system is more than somewhat flawed, I actually think it’s unhealthy for music as an art form and mentally unhealthy for many of the performers who participate.
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This is a cool thing. Tim Burgess of The Charlatans seems to be a very nice bloke. He did some very fun stuff during Covid lockdowns.
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Here’s an Irish youtuber disecting the ins and outs of being a metaler, instead of his usual pisstaking of crappy Irish towns.
It’s very accurate.
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Pretty sure I know the guy in the Slayer shirt and sleeveless denim jacket.
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Pretty sure I know the guy in the Slayer shirt and sleeveless denim jacket.
I just love that the metal guys are trying really hard not to laugh. That and the commentator knows way too many in jokes not to be full on metal.
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https://www.starsinsider.com/music/472118/the-most-annoying-songs-of-all-time
That list was mostly all the songs that went viral the past 20 years.
I am surprised “Call Me Maybe” wasn’t there. 😂
All subjective though. All time? I would include “Feelings”, “You Light Up My Life”, “Tie a Yellow Ribbon”
I am dating myself. 😂🤣
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The singer of this band wrote the editorial copy for Captain Britain #1.
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The only Zimmer bit I remember off the top of my head is the terrible JL guitar theme.
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At a Lifesigns gig on Friday, the singer (John Young) told this story:
After forming the band 10 years ago, we finally got our first interview on BBC radio the other day. The interviewer asked, “You’ve been going 10 years but I ‘ve never heard your music before, why is that?” and I replied “Maybe you should ask the BBC.”
It’s funny because it’s true
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Elton John is headlining the last night of the massive Glastonbury festival this weekend, which is billed as his final UK gig ever (his finale tour actually ends in Sweden next month).
What are the odds you think he’ll come back again in Barbara Streisand style?
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I saw Deep Purple’s last ever UK show on their “long goodbye” in 2017.
I have seen them three times since then
Same, but for Ministry. I was at the last show of their “last” tour.
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I’ve seen the band YES in concert three times, but it’s been a different line-up each time.
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Cool stuff, it’s not what you know…….
This weekend is Glastonbury and the BBC air most of it live, for those outside the UK their Youtube channel puts up loads of songs: https://www.youtube.com/@BBCMusic/videos
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Same, but for Ministry. I was at the last show of their “last” tour.
That gig was so shit I was glad it was their last ever show. 😑
Playing 2 good songs after a set that boring won’t save your gig.
The three times I’ve seen them since were better
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I was pretty impressed by GnR last night. I was expecting it to all be a bit sad and overly reliant on nostalgia, but to give them credit they played a long set with a lot of energy, mixed up the big hits with some lesser known stuff, and generally put on a pretty good show.
The TV version had a poor sound mix for a lot of it (particularly Axl’s vocals, which kept dropping out and sounding very thin early on in the set – not sure how much of that was technical issues and how much was him struggling to run around endlessly and sing at the same time) but by the end the sound was coming together better and Axl’s voice seemed to have strengthened.
The real star of the show was Slash though, the guy is an incredible musician and watching some of his playing close-up is like watching a magic act, such speed and precision with such apparent ease. Just fantastic.
For a band of guys well into middle-age they put on a really good high-energy show, the whole thing was much better than I expected.
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Cool stuff, it’s not what you know…….
This weekend is Glastonbury and the BBC air most of it live, for those outside the UK their Youtube channel puts up loads of songs: https://www.youtube.com/@BBCMusic/videos
They’ve also packaged it well on iPlayer – full sets, highlight tracks.
There’s an absurd amount of content in the best way. Going to take some time to work my way through it.
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Catching up on some more of Glastonbury weekend and watching the Manics set. Always liked them, a cracking band, and still as good as ever.
Again, these longer established acts benefit from having such an extensive back catalogue of great songs to draw on, so every one is pretty great. And James Dean Bradfield’s voice still sounds very strong.
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I’m going to do some VPN shenanigans to watch the full Manics set on iPlayer tomorrow, outside the UK the BBC Youtube feed only has one or two songs from each act (Foo Fighters get 3 – preferential treatment for Grohl being charming maybe).
I saw in the millennium with them as, socialists as they are, they did a loss making gig at the newly built Millennium Stadium in Cardiff at just twenty quid a ticket (at the time some pubs were charging more than that to get in). They are great live, James does still have the voice and Nicky is the personality of the band.
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On the other side of the coin to the experienced acts these girls are fantastic.
It’s like The Prodigy with a more metal leaning. One thing I think in this shitty era of Brexit gammons the UK should be proud of is not the same cultural segregation as the US. Terry Hall could do ska 40 years ago, the Nova Twins can do metal and rock a massive crowd. It’s all good.
(Sorry if this is geoblocked in the UK, there seems to be some conflict between iPlayer and Youtube on that)
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I’ve seen the band YES in concert three times, but it’s been a different line-up each time.
Six times, four different line-ups :D
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I did catch up with a bit of Elton John’s ‘farewell’. He has an amazing back catalogue to choose from but his singing now is very Vic Reeves ‘club style’.
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I did catch up with a bit of Elton John’s ‘farewell’. He has an amazing back catalogue to choose from but his singing now is very Vic Reeves ‘club style’.
Wasn’t it always?
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He may have overstayed his time on the stage, but Elton John at Madison Square Garden on November 29, 1974 is still one of the most exciting and entertaining concerts I’ve ever attended. My only regret is not having a ticket for the previous night (Thanksgiving) when John Lennon joined him on stage for a few songs.
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On the other side of the coin to the experienced acts these girls are fantastic.
It’s like The Prodigy with a more metal leaning. One thing I think in this shitty era of Brexit gammons the UK should be proud of is not the same cultural segregation as the US. Terry Hall could do ska 40 years ago, the Nova Twins can do metal and rock a massive crowd. It’s all good.
(Sorry if this is geoblocked in the UK, there seems to be some conflict between iPlayer and Youtube on that)
Wow, that was awesome. I’d love to see them live. They’re not going to Germany anymore this year (they’ve been in April), unfortunately, so I’ll have to remember to keep an eye open for them.
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And we’re back for the next blog.
Indie! Shoegaze! Alt rock, dance, industrial. We got all flavours. Mostly.1 user thanked author for this post.
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Some Jan Hammer synth at work (when it is slow)
When I got the earphones on, I feel like I am back to ’841 user thanked author for this post.
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I’ve fallen hard for the new Volkor X album. It’s synthwave and sounds like early M83 but it also is telling the story of an astronaut and her ship’s AI on an exploratory mission to investagate something Spooky going on. It’s like a cross between an audiobook and a soundtrack. It works surprisingly well and you can skip most of the story parts if you need to.
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New blog post.
Loads of stuff, doom jazz, post pock, black metal, sci-fi synthwave, indie, techno, an album based on Frank Herbert’s Hive novel(!), it’s been a big month.
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The Beatles AI song
Then I saw this link in my feed about AI songs using Adele vocals and a fake duet with the guys Weeknd and Drake
https://abcnews.go.com/US/ai-songs-mimic-popular-artists-raising-alarms-music/story?id=104569841
Scary. Music industry will take more legal action.
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This month’s blog.
We’ve the usual mix of indie, metal, electronica and “other”.
Enjoy.
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https://www.loudersound.com/news/living-colour-shunned-for-playing-white-people-music
Where is the logic in that? If Yo Yo Ma is celebrated and respected for playing (mostly) European classical music, why should Corey Glover and his mates be shunned for playing the kind of music they grew up listening to?
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Assigning colour to music is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of. I would like all black people to know that I claim no music for myself, and you are just as free to play it and listen to it as I am. I am white, but nothing I listen to belongs exclusively to white people, it belongs to everyone equally.
Except Chas and Dave, right?
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I just remembered that Be Your Own Pet’s comeback album – Mommy – came out in the past couple of months. Good stuff, but I especially love Drive.
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Underworld’s Dubnobasswithmyheadman is 30 today. One of the greatest albums of the 90’s. It’s very 90’s but also feels fresh because no one ever sounded like this, and still don’t.
https://songwhip.com/underworld/dubnobasswithmyheadman
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