Posts in category "music"

Working title: the dangers of Facebook, online dating, stranger danger and gross stupidity.

The (now defunct) Chameleons remain one of my favourite bands but were responsible for the most embarrassing night of my life.

After the band reformed, I went to their London gigs and occasionally frequented the (now defunct) Wishville forums for discussion about the band, concert reviews, banter about football, discovering new bands - all the usual stuff we did before Twitter and Last.fm came along.

In November 2002. The Chameleons played a single date in London before a German tour. As I had struck up a friendship with a like minded individual on Wishville (liked footy, liked The Chameleons, liked a laugh) and exchanged messages with him, we arranged to meet up for a drink in Camden before going on to the gig.

Mark Burgess is a City fan, so he'd arranged the gig deliberately to clash with United playing Bayer Leverkeusen in the Champions League so I'd hoped to see most of the game before going to the venue.

Anyway, we exchanged mobile phone numbers, exchanged descriptions and arranged to meet in an Irish pub (public bar) that was showing the football. I didn't tell my Mummy in case she was worried about me meeting a strange man I'd recently met on the Interweb.

Inevitably, something screwed up on the night mainly because we are blokes. I can't recall precisely what happened but someone had a flat battery, lost their phone or told their Mummy so I arrived at this hostelry and furtively tried to identify this gentleman from a (Wedding) photo he'd shown me.

To cut a long story short, I couldn't find him and he couldn't find me. Worse, the footy wasn't been shown in the Irish pub or rather, I think Arsenal was being shown instead of United, so I went elsewhere to watch the game.

After a few beers and United taking a 2-0 lead, I made my way to Dingwalls. Now, there was no way I was going to make contact with my 'Internet acquaintance' in a packed venue so I was quite prepared to enjoy the support (Brian Glancy), soak up the pre-match atmosphere, drinking overpriced lager while watching the technicians twiddle buttons on amps, place guitars on stands and say 'One Two - One Two' into microphones while waiting for The Chameleons to take the stage.

Unfortunately, as always, alcohol intervened and as I watched Glancy performing, I happened to see a young lady who was also a regular on Wishville. This young lady spent every spare minute and every spare quid on watching bands and had traipsed around Germany and the States following The Chameleons on tour.

Unfortunately, I only knew 'Cath' by reputation and only recognised her by virtue of her distinctive dyed red hair. While I enjoyed her superb gig reviews, we'd never communicated directly so I didn't know her and she certainly didn't know me.

I should have just left it well alone but for some reason I didn't and I approached a complete stranger (a female one at that) and memorably opened with: 'Hi Cath. Do you know where Joe is ?'

Cath Aubergine (for that was her rather unusual name) broke off her conversation with her mate, turned to me and replied: 'Sorry - what ? Joe who ? Who are you ?'. There may have been the odd expletive thrown in for good measure.

'Joe - I arranged to meet him here but....'

Blank stare. Her mate is also now looking at me with a similar blank stare. 27.4 seconds left before the 6'2" boyfriend returns from the bar with their drinks.

'Look - you know. Joe - Mr. Moto. Have you seen him ?'

'Oh Mister Moto - why didn't you say ? But what's your name ?'

'Andy.'

'Sorry - did you say 'Andy' ?' Another piercing, blank, suspicious stare. Times two.

'Look. I'm RomanTotaleXVII on the forums but my real name's Andy, alright'. Christ - the embarrassment levels were now excruciating as we were having to shout this conversation above the noise of Bryan Glancy's set.

'Oh so you're RomanTotaleXVII but hang on - you're not RomanTotaleXVII any more. You are now...'

'Yeah, yeah I know. I'm now FieryJack.'

'Yeah - you're the guy who names himself after The Fall characters. Well why didn't you just say so ?'

And so it came to pass - Cath Aubergine led me to the bar area and introduced me to Mr. Moto (aka Joe Donellan).

'Hey Joe - I've got someone who wants to meet you. Here he is - RomanTotaleXVII'.

Those 2010 Brit Awards in full:

• British male solo artist - Dizzee Rascal
• British female solo artist - Lilly Allen
• British breakthrough act - JLS
• British group - Kasabian
• British Album - Florence & the Machine - Lungs
• British Single - Beat Again (JLS)
• International male solo artist - Jay-Z
• International female solo artist - Lady GaGa
• International album - Lady GaGa - The Fame
• Outstanding contribution to music - Robbie Williams

...and Liam Gallagher swearing and throwing a microphone into the audience. Who said rock'n'roll is dead ? I bet Joe Strummer is turning in his grave.

After buying most of my Christmas presents from them, Amazon kindly gave me a £2 voucher to spend in the MP3 download store.

As the festive season of hosting friends and family approaches, I decided on a 'easy listening', 'middle of the road' purchase suitable for all the family to act as a quiet backdrop while we gather to play charades around the fire.

'Killing Joke' by 'Killing Joke' was one of the first vinyl records I ever bought and, as always, I was introduced to the band by the wonderful John Peel. I was intrigued by the cover art which I still think is brilliant.

Killing Joke also used another very striking and evocative image. When I visited a mate in London, I was surprised to see he had a massive Killing Joke poster adorning his lounge of Nazis saluting the Pope. Initially, I thought it was a mock-up but he told me it was a genuine photograph from the 1930's and while he wasn't a right-wing fascist (quite the contrary in fact), he also thought it was a very striking and thought provoking image.

I'm pleased to report the LP sounds as fresh as it did 30 years ago. Deserves to be played loud.

John Cooper Clarke recited punk poetry while The Buzzcocks performed some punk karaoke but the real stars of the show were, inevitably, The Fall.

I just posted a brief review of the concert over on The Fall forum (blogging is so last year).

I have most of my music available in digital format and have occasionally pondered the purchase of a wireless streaming device so I could listen to music anywhere in the house.

Another possibility would be to upload all the music to my own server and stream music from any computer using freely available software (e.g. Icecast).

Of course, both those options cost money and more importantly, time so, as always, I chose to so absolutely nothing apart from duplicating my iTunes library on my two main (home/work) computers.

Well that's not entirely true - over the years I have had an on-off friendship with last.fm. Last.fm is a social network which allows you to log music you are listening to, mark favourite tracks, create and share playlists with friends so you can use it as a discovery engine. This didn't entirely work for me - I simply marvelled at people's shocking taste in music and wondered how on earth 'Plastic Bertrand' even appears on the Habari group.

Recently, I picked up on a new music service called Spotify and scoured the Web to secure an invite. I was immediately impressed with Spotify - you have to download a desktop client but after that, you are free to play music - streamed from their servers. In fact, I think there may be an element of peer to peer and BitTorrent going on behind the scenes as Spotity does use disk space on the local PC as a cache.

Anyway, streaming music was hugely impressive - playback was completely seamless - no stutters, no pauses, no jumps. It was just like playing music locally in Media Player or iTunes. Spotify doesn't have all the world's music collection available on their servers but fortunately I am stuck in an 80's musical timewarp and the vast majority of my narrow tastes are catered for on Spotify.

I also really like Spotify's interface - simple, intuitive and reassuringly grey. Guess what - you can choose your favourite artist and then select an album (unlike last.fm that insists on playing your library in an arbitrary order which is incredibly annoying when you want to listen to a specific album or track).

So how much is Spotify charging for this wonderful service ? Well, it's free although there are occasional audio adverts sprinkled in between songs although in my view, the adverts are not invasive (every 5 or 6 songs) and no worse than commercial radio - a lot better in fact. There are also visual ads in the Spotify aplication, but again, I don't find these too bothersome. If you do, there are subscription options for an ad-free service although at £10 per month, I think this option is way overpriced.

What's the catch ? Is this illegal ? Isn't this Limewire dressed up with a different interface ? Well - no because Spotify pays the artists and labels for access to the music so the content on Spotify is legal. In fact, Spotify does contain some content from dubious sources which is occasionally being trimmed and removed from the servers as it is identified.

The good news doesn't end there. The labels, bands and A&R men behind Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, AC/DC, Metallica and The Beatles refused to share their music so there is simply no way you can ever encounter any of that dross. Ever.

The only two main omissions that I care about are The Smiths (hears loud cheering in the distance) and that Beatles tribute band fronted by two brothers from Manchester - Oasis (hears more loud cheering).

Using Spotify I can access most of my music library from any PC (desktop or work laptop) and there's an option to automatically update last.fm with tracks played.

Does this signal the death of the music industry and mark my last ever CD purchase ? Well - no, ironically Spotify has sparked my interest and unveiled more hidden musical nuggets ('Entertainment' by 'Gang of Four' to name just one) I had completely forgotten about. Consequently, I will probably go out and buy now more CD's as I also listen to music on my iTouch and in the car.

Anyway, Spotify is only available in selected countries at the moment and subscription is by invite only (Google Blog Search is your friend) but today Spotify opened up to users in the UK without the need for an invite.

Amazon (UK) recently announced an online music store and a £3 discount on all music downloads on Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

To download an album, you need the Amazon Download utility and the music is MP3 format encoded at 256kbps. Best of all, the music is DRM free so you can transfer, copy and play on any device. Normally, I like to buy an actual CD so I can rip into whatever format I need and also as a backup so 'The Seldom Seen Kid' by 'Elbow' was my first ever purchase of online music.

Downloaded music is automatically added to iTunes or Media Player and the only glitch was that the Downloader didn't appear to work under Google Chrome.

As this album (and quite a few others) only costs £3, this album was free. As in beer.

Last week, I travelled to Hamburg, near Germany, on business. As Mark Burgess (lead singer of The Chameleons) now lives there, I took the opportunity to send an email to one of my all-time heroes (even though he is a City fan).

Unfortunately, I guess Mark must be busy with his musical commitments as I haven't had the courtesy of a reply (yet).

Hi Mark

Excuse the intrusion but I am coming to Hamburg tomorrow on business. I'm staying at the SIDE hotel and need to know:

1. Location of Sports Bar that serves Boddies or strong German lager and will be showing MUFC versus QPR (Carling Cup).
2. Music venue with decent indie live music. My favourite bands are The Smiths, The Fall, The Chameleons, Pixies, Nirvana, Joy Division, Interpol, Editors, R.E.M though not necessarily in that order. Bands doing cover versions of any of the above are automatically excluded.
3. Decent bar where I can get a pint without being ripped off or beaten up.

PS. Enjoyed your book (which you kindly signed) a lot apart from the last chapter that left me a bit cold.

Peace, love, empathy - Andy

I have a penchant for some of Oasis tunes and, although he's a City fan, I also like Noel Gallagher.

I like his sense of humour, I like his professional Mancunian accent and his occasional digs at United. I also agree with him that Morrissey's lyrics are hilarious rather than morose. I also love some of his quotes. Just one recent, brilliant example:

'Amy Winehouse is like a destitute horse.'

Having said all that and although I abhor physical violence and drunken behaviour, this recent clip of Noel doing some impromptu stage diving at a Toronto concert raised a smile.

If you want to skip the 'Morning Glory' intro, the incident happens at 1:30. It was just a good job for the culprit that Liam didn't manage to get hold of him !

• Orange Crush
• Wake Up Bomb
• Drive
• Whats the frequency Kenneth ?
• I've been high
• Horse to water
• Supernatrual Superserious
• Living well is the best revenge
• Man on the moon
• Electrolite
• Walk unafraid
• Ignoreland
• Exhuming Mccarthy
• Let me in
• Fall on me
• Man sized wreath
• I'm gonna DJ
• Country Feedback
• Losing my religion
• Imitation of life
• So fast, so numb
• Bad day
• The one I love
• Disturbance At The Heron House
• Perfect circle
• The great beyond
• End of the the world

These songs were played although not necessarily in this order.

I was there. Way back by the corner flag. Sound wasn't brilliant but hearing 'Country Feedback' fulfilled a lifelong ambition. My life is now complete.

Dubious photos. Token #remlondon link for R.E.M tour site.

The time has finally come to shave my head and don blue facepaint.