once again here i am throwing my efforts into kick starting the perpetually still-born offspring that is my blog.
this weekend, as with most, i was in leeds visiting maz and friends. we got off to a good start on the friday; a short but sweet trawl through a miniture mutated otely which ended up at the brude and then subculture for some much needed idioteque. not too shabby. happy birthday to gareth by the way and thank you for an epic excuse for such a knees up!
saturday rolled round as did an eventful day of food and frolics. we headed off to popinas for some breakfest. we'd originally set ourselves the challenge of getting down for food at 11am, ignoring the our heroics of the night before. we ended up getting down for 1ish only to find bryony (of maz's, soon to be renamed band, little bear fame) tucking in having waited for half an hour for us. we were, and still are, terrible, terrible people.
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Monday, 12 October 2009
Tuesday, 6 October 2009
Scarboro'geddon and the Scarborough music scene
the dust has settled.
on saturday i put on a 1pm till 1am all dayer headlined by pulled apart by horses who were brilliant. helsinki seven, mum locked in castle, cassini, lover octave, everyone an army, kitchen girls and missionary were all also excellent. the night didn't quite break even but we had a lot of fun putting it on and i hope everyone enjoyed themselves.
monday also saw the first of our new monday nights at quids inn. it went alright-ish. missionary pulled a fair crowd which my friends, leeds band antares, decimated. they weren't bad, far from it! quids inn just wasn't ready for it. cassini and olivine saved the day though and brought the masses back.
the antares set put a lot of things in perspective for me. the whole reason i wanted to start putting on gigs in scarborough was so that i could bring mental, exciting stuff to the town that may or may not be challenging at times. i was never in this purely for the sake a night which is, at the moment, what it feels like. every week we'll be barely managing to scrape a line up together and it's just a big incoherent mess. pretty harsh considering it was only our first gig and we did bring 130 people through the door, i know, but i'm sure i can put on something a bit wilder, a bit darker perhaps, in a more focussed space than a bar coated in mirror balls. i want sweaty rooms packed out with people all belonging to a scene or something approaching it. a night that people will come down to even if non of their mates are playing, purely for the music. i know it's a big ask but i don't feel like i can make it happen at quids with scarboro'geddon and it looks like i'm gonna have to walk the plank.
on saturday i put on a 1pm till 1am all dayer headlined by pulled apart by horses who were brilliant. helsinki seven, mum locked in castle, cassini, lover octave, everyone an army, kitchen girls and missionary were all also excellent. the night didn't quite break even but we had a lot of fun putting it on and i hope everyone enjoyed themselves.
monday also saw the first of our new monday nights at quids inn. it went alright-ish. missionary pulled a fair crowd which my friends, leeds band antares, decimated. they weren't bad, far from it! quids inn just wasn't ready for it. cassini and olivine saved the day though and brought the masses back.
the antares set put a lot of things in perspective for me. the whole reason i wanted to start putting on gigs in scarborough was so that i could bring mental, exciting stuff to the town that may or may not be challenging at times. i was never in this purely for the sake a night which is, at the moment, what it feels like. every week we'll be barely managing to scrape a line up together and it's just a big incoherent mess. pretty harsh considering it was only our first gig and we did bring 130 people through the door, i know, but i'm sure i can put on something a bit wilder, a bit darker perhaps, in a more focussed space than a bar coated in mirror balls. i want sweaty rooms packed out with people all belonging to a scene or something approaching it. a night that people will come down to even if non of their mates are playing, purely for the music. i know it's a big ask but i don't feel like i can make it happen at quids with scarboro'geddon and it looks like i'm gonna have to walk the plank.
Thursday, 30 July 2009
Burning a hole through my leg, via the wallet in my pocket
Money. I need lots.
This summer alone i've been offered a very nice bass stack for £800, £700 for a kitted out tour bus and holidays/festivals left, right and center. I want to do it all and, via peer pressure/wanting to have an awesome summer i've spent the vast majority of my funds on bestival, leeds festival, ATP in december and a holiday in barcelona. Oh dear. Now i'm lacking the dough for all the shit i actually need to play music in the way i want... pedals, new amps and cabs and transport... it's all very expensive.
We need to be able to illegally download physical objects as soon as possible... doable right?
A big dilemma at the moment is freshers week. I'm meant to be organising an all day gig for the tail end of the week funded entirely by my student loan, money i make over summer and whatever i find down the back of sofas and furniture.
Today i tried to book a semi-well known indie pop band to headline the show. Whilst existing somewhere in a land of spazzed brain farts and naive hope i offered a pitiful offer of a few hundred quid. I was pretty much told where to go; a fuck off and no thanks followed by the suggestion by offer was missing two very expensive zeroes from the end of the figure. I felt very much like an empty headed retard and made to feel as such. The guy i was contacted managed to do this via email. He was obviously an up himself prick but it really was a noobish error on my part. Oh dear! At least my first choice (the band i managed to offend are not them) seem pretty positive and up for it. Huzzah!
So. If you fancy sending me money, please do! If you don't, fair enough. I might just play the lottery for a bit and see what happens, if only for the "lulz".
Although, i've always had a weird thing with winning the money to buy my way into what i want to do instead of working for it. It's like playing the sims with the money cheat. It's all fun and games for the first few minutes until you throw a loved one in a pool, remove the ladder and stare out their pixels until they sink and die.
Or placing tinder-like carpets next to petrol spitting fires whilst forcing your little people into diving into the inferno until they morph into tombstones.
In short, i want more money to do my shit but i don't want to become a omnipotent sociopath with a wireless mouse, lording my edit mode over the world. Would be an interesting career choice however. Definitely a plan b.
This summer alone i've been offered a very nice bass stack for £800, £700 for a kitted out tour bus and holidays/festivals left, right and center. I want to do it all and, via peer pressure/wanting to have an awesome summer i've spent the vast majority of my funds on bestival, leeds festival, ATP in december and a holiday in barcelona. Oh dear. Now i'm lacking the dough for all the shit i actually need to play music in the way i want... pedals, new amps and cabs and transport... it's all very expensive.
We need to be able to illegally download physical objects as soon as possible... doable right?
A big dilemma at the moment is freshers week. I'm meant to be organising an all day gig for the tail end of the week funded entirely by my student loan, money i make over summer and whatever i find down the back of sofas and furniture.
Today i tried to book a semi-well known indie pop band to headline the show. Whilst existing somewhere in a land of spazzed brain farts and naive hope i offered a pitiful offer of a few hundred quid. I was pretty much told where to go; a fuck off and no thanks followed by the suggestion by offer was missing two very expensive zeroes from the end of the figure. I felt very much like an empty headed retard and made to feel as such. The guy i was contacted managed to do this via email. He was obviously an up himself prick but it really was a noobish error on my part. Oh dear! At least my first choice (the band i managed to offend are not them) seem pretty positive and up for it. Huzzah!
So. If you fancy sending me money, please do! If you don't, fair enough. I might just play the lottery for a bit and see what happens, if only for the "lulz".
Although, i've always had a weird thing with winning the money to buy my way into what i want to do instead of working for it. It's like playing the sims with the money cheat. It's all fun and games for the first few minutes until you throw a loved one in a pool, remove the ladder and stare out their pixels until they sink and die.
Or placing tinder-like carpets next to petrol spitting fires whilst forcing your little people into diving into the inferno until they morph into tombstones.
In short, i want more money to do my shit but i don't want to become a omnipotent sociopath with a wireless mouse, lording my edit mode over the world. Would be an interesting career choice however. Definitely a plan b.
Wednesday, 22 July 2009
Moo-sick!
What a better place to regurgitate my own mess than my own blog:
Violent Sky and the Lightning Kite
All three of us come from different musical backgrounds and we all retain our own individual tastes and writing directions, which is what makes playing in the band so exciting. Once we've got our shit together and tied our massively sprawling, out of control spray of ideas into a coherent strand i'll post it here proper but right no we've got a few badly recorded live recordings and jams at:
www.myspace.com/violentskyandthelightningkite
The Black Mesa Incident
The band that has existed and been on hiatus whilst being active for the last 3 years. We've been a three piece hardcore band, a five piece prog collective and a badly thought out foray into screamo. I've pretty much reclaimed the name as a little alter-ego for myself and the darker, scream-ier, more hardcore stuff i've written/am writing. The Black Mesa Incident will now be two bands existing under the same name at the same time, one based in Scarborough, the other based all over the shop and worked out via email. At the moment our myspace is rather bare. We've got two tracks up, a demo from Scarborough and "Tooth and Claw" from one of the elder Northwich branches. Expect more soon...
www.myspace.com/blacmesaincident
Florence Nightingale and the Cancer Germs/All My Eyes and Betty Martin
Pretty much the same deal as Black Mesa but a less-hardcore home for random musical scribblings spat out by my mind.
http://www.myspace.com/andbettymartin
Violent Sky and the Lightning Kite
All three of us come from different musical backgrounds and we all retain our own individual tastes and writing directions, which is what makes playing in the band so exciting. Once we've got our shit together and tied our massively sprawling, out of control spray of ideas into a coherent strand i'll post it here proper but right no we've got a few badly recorded live recordings and jams at:
www.myspace.com/violentskyandthelightningkite
The Black Mesa Incident
The band that has existed and been on hiatus whilst being active for the last 3 years. We've been a three piece hardcore band, a five piece prog collective and a badly thought out foray into screamo. I've pretty much reclaimed the name as a little alter-ego for myself and the darker, scream-ier, more hardcore stuff i've written/am writing. The Black Mesa Incident will now be two bands existing under the same name at the same time, one based in Scarborough, the other based all over the shop and worked out via email. At the moment our myspace is rather bare. We've got two tracks up, a demo from Scarborough and "Tooth and Claw" from one of the elder Northwich branches. Expect more soon...
www.myspace.com/blacmesaincident
Florence Nightingale and the Cancer Germs/All My Eyes and Betty Martin
Pretty much the same deal as Black Mesa but a less-hardcore home for random musical scribblings spat out by my mind.
http://www.myspace.com/andbettymartin
Sunday, 19 July 2009
Rejigging
It's been a long, long time since my first post. You may recall an obtusely sized scatter gun attempt at a follow up made up of an essay i handed in for uni and fan boi enthusing about La Quiete, and that's quite enough of that. Not that i don't enthuse about La Quiete because i do, a lot, i just feel this blog such begin to take a more constructive, creative and far more maintained bent.
First off, bare basics out of the way. I'm back in Northwich, home of the interesting and the few. Got me a job down Bunbery way potwashing for a princely price with tips. Not bad. I have a friend to thank of course and it was sheer luck i got it. Handy that really.
Besides potwashing my way into the black whilst spending my way into the red (a leeds ticket, new amp and just generally being a reluctant but active bitch-slave to the consumer sandwich that is the spending sprees just to get by), i have been attempting to understand the faint but very real misogyny within. Now i'm not classing myself as a woman hating sadist who believes the enwombed's rightful place is in the kitchen, far from it. Or am i? Ever since i can remember i've always aimed to be for equality. I've had my moments as we all do and i'm in no way saying that, up until recently, i thought of myself as a paragon of truth, justice and virtue, i just can't help but feel a nag in my head that has unlocked a few dark hidden home truths.
First off, bare basics out of the way. I'm back in Northwich, home of the interesting and the few. Got me a job down Bunbery way potwashing for a princely price with tips. Not bad. I have a friend to thank of course and it was sheer luck i got it. Handy that really.
Besides potwashing my way into the black whilst spending my way into the red (a leeds ticket, new amp and just generally being a reluctant but active bitch-slave to the consumer sandwich that is the spending sprees just to get by), i have been attempting to understand the faint but very real misogyny within. Now i'm not classing myself as a woman hating sadist who believes the enwombed's rightful place is in the kitchen, far from it. Or am i? Ever since i can remember i've always aimed to be for equality. I've had my moments as we all do and i'm in no way saying that, up until recently, i thought of myself as a paragon of truth, justice and virtue, i just can't help but feel a nag in my head that has unlocked a few dark hidden home truths.
Saturday, 3 January 2009
Chapter One: Genesis
In the beginning there was man. A man with a disheveled beard and a dodgy haircut, tired of using msn file transfers and sordo to spread the sound of Screamo to all his friends. He decided to start a blog to rant and rave about all his favorite bands and generally compile his thoughts on random happenings.
He didn't want to come across all preachy and evangelical and soon realised that writing in a faux-biblical style with genesis in the posting title was counterproductive to his goals.
He dropped using the 3rd person and everything.
Bit of a background; i've been into "music" from since i can remember but around the age of 9 or 10 something clicked inside my head and i suddenly acquired a vague sketch of exactly the sort of music i craved to hear. I started off with the usual commerical pop-punk shennagins of Blink and Sum 41 (i've always hated Green Day). After the briefest of metal phases (it all just seemed a bit daft and pretensious like bastardised theatre) a friend got me into AFI and I found my way into hardcore and more. Bands like At The Drive-In, Glassjaw, Thursday, Alexisonfire, SiKth, Converge etc. etc. they all made my ears do summasaults (they still do!) but I still hadn't found the "sound" I was searching for.
My ears were like metal detectors picking out bands like road signs. I slipped in and out of subgenres and styles trying to find this holy grail genre my brain had envisioned. It took me nearly a decade to bump into exactly what i was looking for. I found it on the internet on a forum set up to adore The Fall Of Troy (http://www.maybesheforgot.com/forum/index.php if you're interested)where we did anything but. Thanks to a couple of conversations, I was introduced to what real Screamo sounds like and satisfyed the persistant musical nag thats annoyed by head since I was 9.
So now im at university studying music technology, finally able to try and weave a footnote for myself on the long, long tapastry of music with my own music that hopefully will get me somewhere but if it doesn't then what? I'm thinking of writing about music whether I succeed in my dreams or not. I've always enjoyed it. That and promoting gigs, perhaps working for a record label or something. This blog will probably be littered with gig listings/reviews in the very near future from nights i'm going to be putting on in Scarborough (im at Hull University but their music tech course is at a different campus) and i'm attempting to squeeze my way onto the student radio station for a audio adaptation of this blog and it's contents (more the musical side of things that my freehand random rantings).
My two main goals with this blog, if I have any at all, is to try and pull like minded people together and introduce some very alternative music to people who may not have heard it yet.
And I promise. No more weird third person things to kick stuff off. I had to blow away the mandatory cobwebs somehow!
Thanks for reading. More soon.
Currently listening to: Louise Cyphre - Revolver A.K.A. Schall And Rauch
He didn't want to come across all preachy and evangelical and soon realised that writing in a faux-biblical style with genesis in the posting title was counterproductive to his goals.
He dropped using the 3rd person and everything.
Bit of a background; i've been into "music" from since i can remember but around the age of 9 or 10 something clicked inside my head and i suddenly acquired a vague sketch of exactly the sort of music i craved to hear. I started off with the usual commerical pop-punk shennagins of Blink and Sum 41 (i've always hated Green Day). After the briefest of metal phases (it all just seemed a bit daft and pretensious like bastardised theatre) a friend got me into AFI and I found my way into hardcore and more. Bands like At The Drive-In, Glassjaw, Thursday, Alexisonfire, SiKth, Converge etc. etc. they all made my ears do summasaults (they still do!) but I still hadn't found the "sound" I was searching for.
My ears were like metal detectors picking out bands like road signs. I slipped in and out of subgenres and styles trying to find this holy grail genre my brain had envisioned. It took me nearly a decade to bump into exactly what i was looking for. I found it on the internet on a forum set up to adore The Fall Of Troy (http://www.maybesheforgot.com/forum/index.php if you're interested)where we did anything but. Thanks to a couple of conversations, I was introduced to what real Screamo sounds like and satisfyed the persistant musical nag thats annoyed by head since I was 9.
So now im at university studying music technology, finally able to try and weave a footnote for myself on the long, long tapastry of music with my own music that hopefully will get me somewhere but if it doesn't then what? I'm thinking of writing about music whether I succeed in my dreams or not. I've always enjoyed it. That and promoting gigs, perhaps working for a record label or something. This blog will probably be littered with gig listings/reviews in the very near future from nights i'm going to be putting on in Scarborough (im at Hull University but their music tech course is at a different campus) and i'm attempting to squeeze my way onto the student radio station for a audio adaptation of this blog and it's contents (more the musical side of things that my freehand random rantings).
My two main goals with this blog, if I have any at all, is to try and pull like minded people together and introduce some very alternative music to people who may not have heard it yet.
And I promise. No more weird third person things to kick stuff off. I had to blow away the mandatory cobwebs somehow!
Thanks for reading. More soon.
Currently listening to: Louise Cyphre - Revolver A.K.A. Schall And Rauch
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
