Phew!!

Someone else said what I had been thinking.

"Much as i'd love to go 'here's the SebastiAn remix of Rage Against the Machine, it's AMAZING'.... I won't. Because it's absolutely fucking dreadful." Headphone Sex

I second Headphone Sex.

(A great blog, actually.)

Coldseat

A wee while back now I was lucky enough to go to a super-small little gig in my home town to see Crystal Castles. Lots of fun was had by all which is to be expected, afterall, its Crystal Castles! And it was my first experience of what I'd view as different type of gig, in which essentially everyone just ran around and jumped about with the band and just had mega fun.

I still uphold that I think the organisers of the night, Electro Boogaloo (good night, nice tunes, annoying name), did a fucking awesome job of handling such a band like Crystal Castles so well and even managed to set up a little signing session for fans to go along to (I unfortunately couldn't make it, such is the life of a scholar.. ha).

Anyway, we were stood, shifting weight foot-to-foot, feeling vunerable and sober and on struts a tiny framed, young guy, making me feel old he looked so young! Very politely came and introduced himself with his lovely Northern accent and told us he was going to performing a few songs. And my, did he perform! What an engaging set. Aided only with a laptop to punch out his sounds and a mic to blear a crisp, clear vocal scream into.

Coldseat, I eventually found out his name was. I was going to go and say hi and tell him I enjoyed his set, but I didn't, I had a pint instead.

His MySpace songs are good but believe me is far more entertaining live.

Middlesbrough Music Live

Okay, so, there might be a fair few of you who don't know where Middlesbrough is let alone know anything about it's main and only 'attraction' of the year.

"Middlesbrough is a large town in North East England, and is the largest and most populous settlement within the borough of Middlesbrough. It is in the first town in the world to owe its existence to a railway. Historically part of the North Riding of Yorkshire, in 1968 the town became the centre of the county bor -- blah, blah, blah..." (There is a lot more boring crap on this from Wikipedia. Although, please take it all with a pinch of salt. It puts a nice gloss on what essentially is one of the most deprived areas to live in, in contemporary Britain.)

Middlesbrough Music Live. This is obviously something now which is just habit. Something that has to be done every year so the residents of Teesside can come out of the wood-work, get absolutely twatted and cause an awful lot of havoc for those lovely police officers of ours.

Every year when the line-up is announced people complain that it isn't good enough. With a limited budget and a free festival premise they are not going to be able to get the likes of U2 to come and headline (thank God!). But in you always manage to get to at least see one good act. And to me, that's all that matters. Most other people are not that arsed about the music anyway, its more the ritual and the alcohol consumption.

Last year, I very, very excitedly got to see Jim Noir. For those of you dwelling in the UK you may associate him with certain football, sports adverts and also the Gingster pasty advert too. I did almost choke up a lung whilst singing along to My Patch. We also saw the likes of Chairmen of the Bored, starring Cameron from Hollyoaks (!), who were obviously terrible and walked away from Ocean Colour Scene's set before we writhed in too much awkward nostalgia.

This year the star act is Tony Christie, and, well, the less said about that the better. There has been rather a lot of upset views expressed at this. Personally, I'm totally ambivilent, I'll just fuck off elsewhere. And The Twang are headlining. If I said I hated them that might sound cruel, but it's true. What an awful sound they produce, although I can see why they are getting overly-loved by everyone.

But for all those that need a little help, a little direction to make the best out of this odd and life-risking day, here are a few pointers to go and check out and look perilously for:

• The Chapman Family, get yourself down ultra early and check these kids out. If you are lucky enough to not be going check them out on MySpace, add them and love them dearly. They are fantastic. And this will be the first time I'll have had the pleasure of seeing them live!
  
  
• To My Boy are very good. I saw them ages ago and they had me totally engrossed from the moment they appeared on stage. They are also playing Fibbers next Tuesday so I might go, supporting Kate Nash no less.
  
  
• Tiny Dancers, it does say on their profile that they are playing in Liverpool on the 3rd, but I think they must be doing that after their 4pm set in Middlesbrough. These are great fun live. My bestest friend Paul loves these.
  
  
• Now I cannot find it in my programme but, wait for it, take a deep breath Ms Mulrine, steady yourself.. Shy Child are going to be making what will no doubt be a memorable performance. Beads of sweat all round.
  
  
• Foals will be bringing a nice, bleepy, boppy set. By this stage in the day I will either be very happy or very upset. I reckon this will intensify it all.***
  
  
• And to wrap up the day well, really, you've got to keep it local. And if you want to have some awesome all-out, indie fuck-rock, then you've got to go see Dirty Weekend. These boys have potential. And after that if you are still standing (which is usually hard after any set by Dirty Weekend) then stick around for Teesside favourites The Oxfam Glamour Models.
  
  

If anyone sees me without a drink in my hand please, do something about it!

Enjoy kids!

***Edit: I've been informed that Foals have pulled out. Boo that.

Updating my MP3 player..

For my various train and bus rides home.

I've got Feist's new album, The Reminder that I have been meaning to listen to and just not got round to. And after the Boys Noize remix of My Moon My Man that seems to be making a second time appearance round the blogs, and hearing it last week at the Crystal Castle's gig, I have decided I'm very much liking that song. For the Boys Noize remix check out Missing Toof.

Oh, I should actually mention that having eventually listened to the new LCD Soundsystem album I am totally in love with its main peaks. I think All My Friends made every hair on my body stand on end if not the first, definately the second time and then everytime thereafter. Check out the Franz Ferdinand cover, cool as sin, not sure its half as good though.

The Aliens - Astronomy For Dogs is a lot better than I expected. Especially not being impressed when I saw them live recently, but I definately think there was a distinct correlation between how much alcohol they had consumed and their bad performance. Check out the track Rox I can't help but be reminded of Late Of The Pier's most ground-breaking and overly remixed Space and the Woods, there are some great remixes of it to be fair.

I've still not got Help She Can't Swim's new album. Much to my dismay. I want to purchase it but then I'd probably not be able to eat for a while. It's definately going to have to come under close consideration. Food or HSCS?

And, well, after genuinely enjoying, the most cheesy way, Our Velocity, the fun first single from the new Maximo Park album. I really should make an effort for the guys who come from where I live. I may, in fact, even wear my Maximo Park t-shirt today. Oh yes! You know it says 'Mint' on the chest in gold-foiled letters!

I'm probably going to put lots of other stuff on too but I have to read about Weber's idea on religion and various spheres of culture and then get a few notes typed up on the unequal distribution of wealth.

~sigh~

Field Day

What a ridiculous constraint money is turning out to be.

I actually can't do anything I want because I have no money.

I'm marginalised because I don't have money to gain access to the things I desire (e.g. CD's, gig tickets, travel to gig's, somewhere to stay, DJing equipment, a trumpet, etc).

Anyway enough of my moaning. Its just because when I think of Field Day and the fact that obviously besides being awesome, having a fucking amazing line-up, the likes of Absentee and Justice in the same bill (!), being great and fun and yes, yes, all that stuff, its a given. Of course it will be great. But it also means that I am going to have fuck all money for anything else ever.

Or it feels like that.

Money equates to power and access.

I feel deprived and therefore am going to sulk.

Touch yourself..

This is exciting..



Wax:On MySpace.

Errm..

Sometimes I read the tag line of my blog and feel like I am fundamentally cheating. A false advert.

Where is the sociology?

Well, it's a difficulty. I am quite convinced that its going to be of no interest. A couple of words about a band, a video, a picture, an ancedote, all that might be acceptable, after all it is the standard format for these sorts of things as far as I can tell, but I'm not a journalist. I'm not even a Joe-Bloggs-lay-person-on-the-street-customer. I'm a sociologist. And people know what is expected of journalists and critics, how they present their views, reviews and even previews. There is a standard formula. Its a bog-standard phenomenon that you know what to expect from. But how much can I expect for my audience to understand or care about a sociological perspective on the whole shabang? Concepts, theories, a sociological perspective seems to be quite difficult to explain.

But in what capacity should that be applied to my passion for music?

It's fair enough that I am trying to cobble together some stuff about why the concept of 'wealth' is interesting to sociologists. In fact, I described it today as "completely self-evident". Wealth being fundamentally linked to power, an exclusionary aspect that gives extreme access to some, tied to age, gender, geographic location, reproduced within the same class, etc. In that sense it is easy. People don't think about that sort of thing often and when they have it pointed out to them they kind of just go "Oh, yea... I see what you mean." But every man and his dog has a very candid opinion of music. So, who would I be to start commenting on it?

But surely there is something more here than for just critics and journalists to have a say that is regarded with slightly more reverence?

I mean, they are casting their opinion on a sound, a genre, a performance, etc. But from what point did they have the influence? The media have not always existed in the capacity they do now. They are not the Gods that dictate what happens. They can just give it more of a social airing. Significantly improve a musicians chances of 'making it big' or not. For every 10 mainstream acts of any given genre there are hoards below the surface crying out to get their music listened to. I guess, though, this lesson can be very vividly now be seen through the likes of MySpace.

And MySpace has influenced us in other ways too. Hasn't it?

Since when were people so easily led to start defining themselves in terms of a few boxes they could fill in listing their personality traits and favourite music, amongst other things. Bringing people with common interests together is one thing, but to possibly narrow the spectrum in the way which people express their identity can lead people to become more or less interested in something that really may be their niche.

Maybe I'm being too optimistic.

The human brain does like to catergorise. The complexity of the world in which we live in is so incredibly vast that what we deal with is reduced to the things that directly effect us personally. The sheer amount of social relationships, kinships, likes, preferences, technology, science, culture, differences and similarities is just mind boggling. Stand in a busy high street and think of all the people walking past with their individual histories, businesses with processes for profit-making, buses providing transport, air and molecules being exchanged, individual conscious experiences always on going. It is all so vast.

The tradegy?

Well, the tradegy of this is that we can never ever in all our years of toiling and trying, ever know all aspects of culture, the world. Even if we figured it all out, a way to map and track everything, to know all of it, would we really benefit from this? Would it not just disenchant us that there was no more knowlegde to be uncovered? And would we just be existing in some sort of horrible Orwellian vision? Yet, even Orwell gave us hope that we still exist in our own consciousness as individual human social beings, and that all our personal thoughts could never be known in their entirity unless we hand them over.