Music

Alestorm’s new album

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Over the years I’ve occasionally mentioned the music of the band Alestorm, a Scottish pirate metal band. Imagine heavy metal sea shanties, covering such subjects as piracy, drinking, and the acquisition of wenches. The above music video is a prime example, containing all of the aforementioned things, and it just happens to have come from their latest album. Other songs include ‘Surf Squid Warfare‘ about going into the future to defeat undead squid from space with beer. Yes.

I first came across Alestorm in 2009, when a friend recommended that I check them out on Spotify. I’ve since bought three of their four albums, went to see them play live in Leeds in 2012, and right now they’re the third highest-ranked band in my last.fm library. Their fourth album, Sunset on the Golden Age, was released recently and I got halfway through listening to it on Spotify before buying it. It’s one of their best.

Their first album, Captain Morgan’s Revenge, was okay, but I much preferred their second album Black Sails at Midnight – which I listed as my second-favourite album back in 2011 (it’s probably my third or fourth nowadays). Back Through Time, their third album, was okay – some good songs let down by rough and (in my view) poorer production quality. Sunset on the Golden Age, by contrast, has the production values of their second album and sounds much better for it. I also note that Alestorm’s lead singer Christopher Bowes has consigned his keytar to Davey Jones’ Locker – they’re actually playing real instruments instead of synthesising their sounds.

Though not very politically correct, Alestorm’s music has surprising staying power, considering that they’re arguably a novelty act. But, a novelty act that has released four albums and been on several world tours is not to be sniffed at. So crack upon a bottle of rum, fire your cannons and grab yourself a copy of their latest album – it’s on Amazon or iTunes. And they’re touring the UK again in the autumn. Plus, if you like Alestorm, you may also like Christopher Bowes’ other band Gloryhammer, who songs include the wonderful Unicorn Invasion of Dundee amongst others.

Eurovision Eve

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Tomorrow night is the annual Eurovision Song Contest, a pan-European music competition where each of the nations of Europe can put forward a musician or band and hope to win the chance to host the following year’s contest. Last year’s winning act, Emmelie de Forest, was from Denmark, so this year’s competition will be broadcast from Copenhagen.

In Britain the main focus is always the ‘final’ on the Saturday night, but there have been two semi-finals this week. They’re broadcast here on under-threat TV channel BBC Three, and I bet a lot of Brits don’t even know about them. I think this because the semi-finals don’t matter to us Brits –  Britain is one of the largest contributors to the European Broadcast Union, the producers of Eurovision, and it means that British acts automatically qualify for the final. This is along with those acts from France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Consequently the semi-finals are not a big deal here, and are mostly watched by those more fanatical about Eurovision.

For most of the past few years, we’ve been to Eurovision parties, where we watch the final as a group, usually with ample amounts of alcohol. This started sometime around 2007, when one of our friends was an international student from Canada – we tried to convince her that Eurovision was a major cultural event. I think she believed us right up until the show started, when she realised it was just a massive camp-fest. Which it is, but that’s one reason why I like it so much. Another other big reason is getting to laugh at the various novelty acts that invariably make it through to the finals, and then get increasingly frustrated at the end when none of our European neighbours decide to vote for the UK entry. And there’s the commentary provided by Graham Norton throughout the night.

This year, we’re hosting a Eurovision party ourselves for the first time. Not a big one, and most of the people who are coming are the same ones that we watch Eurovision with every year. It’s probably the last chance we’ll have to host a Eurovision party in our current flat, as hopefully by this time next year we’ll have bought a new house.

The UK never does particularly well in Eurovision and we’ve not won since the 1990s, but we still enter every year. Despite putting up reasonably well-known acts, such as Blue, Engelbert Humperdinck and Bonnie Tyler, we haven’t placed inside the top 10 since 2009.

In the past there has been a public vote to choose the act that we sent to Eurovision – usually called A Song for Europe – but since 2011 the decision has been made by the BBC. This year’s act is ‘Molly’ with her song ‘Children of the Universe‘ – it’s not really my kind of song but hopefully it’ll do well. Molly, incidentally, is not using her full name of ‘Molly Smitten-Downes’ in the competition.

Political events often affect the results, and it will be interesting to see what effect the recent issues in the Crimea have on Ukraine and Russia’s rankings. It may also reflect Britain’s historically poor performance, as the rest of the Europe hates us apparently. The current rise of the UK Independence Party may indicate that the feeling is mutual. I wonder what UKIP’s policy is on Eurovision?

Kickstarted: Frisky & Mannish’s Pop Education Trilogy

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What was it?

The twelth project I backed on Kickstarter was Frisky & Mannish’s Pop Education Trilogy, which sought to edit and post their three tour shows online for everyone to watch.

How much did I pledge?

Just £1.

What did I get?

I didn’t select a reward so I didn’t get anything specific in return for backing the project, but the money raised meant that all three videos are available on YouTube for everyone to watch free of charge.

Christine and I went to see Frisky & Mannish when they came to play in Bradford in September 2012. I’ve been aware of them for a while, after a former housemate shows me some of their videos on YouTube. Essentially they are a cabaret duo who do musical parodies, such as Kate Bash – combining the works of Kate Bush and Kate Nash, and a ‘grime’ re-working of Top of the World by The Carpenters. Though these short videos are good, they are far better live as it’s the interactions between the songs that make them worth watching. So now that they have posted three of their full length shows for all to see, you can see what they’re really like.

At the moment, Frisky & Mannish are on a break, but they are doing a stint at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this summer. Hopefully this will lead to another tour – either way, if you have the chance to see them, please do, as we had a really good time.

Little Shop of Horrors

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This coming Thursday, my wife Christine will be featuring in an amateur production of Little Shop of Horrors, along with other students from the University of Bradford where I work. It’s on at The New Bradford Playhouse and runs until Saturday.

As well as playing a character in the show, Christine has been helping out for a number of weeks now, and I also spent much of the weekend helping and/or hindering the technical team as they set up in the theatre. It promises to be a good show, and the puppets they’re using look really good.

So, if you’re available on Thursday, Friday or Saturday nights this week, we’d both very much appreciate it if you were able to come along. Tickets can be purchased online here.

We Will Rock You

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The 'Minion' Theatre

As I mentioned briefly earlier in the week, on Friday we went to see We Will Rock You at the Dominion Theatre in London. For those unaware, it’s a a so-called ‘jukebox musical‘, where the script is written around pre-existing songs. All the songs are by Queen, hence the title.

It opened in London in 2002, and it still going strong. When we went it was nearly a sell-out, although it was a Friday night, the beginning of the half term holiday for some schools, and Valentines Day, so that’s not so surprising.

The musical is set in a dystopian future, where one corporation, GlobalSoft, rules the world, and all original music is banned. Except one person, Galileo, who keeps hearing lyrics from music from the twentieth century in his head, but doesn’t know why. He teams up with a young woman, who he calls ‘Scaramouche’, and they flee to the sewers where the Bohemians live, all the while being pursued by GlobalSoft and its leader, the Killer Queen.

That’s the general synopsis of the plot, whilst trying to avoid spoilers. The story is rather contrived, and some of the links with the songs feel a little forced. The ending is also a bit rushed in my opinion, leaving several plot holes unclosed. And it’s very similar to the plot of The Matrix, in several ways, which is something that its writer, Ben Elton, has admitted.

Thankfully, what it lacks in plot, it makes up for in looks. Some of the lighting and effects are brilliant, and visually it is quite spectacular. Plus, you’ll probably know most of the songs already, even if sometimes the words are changed to fit the plot.

Furthermore, there have been some minor changes to the musical over the years to keep it topical. The Bohemians are all named after current pop acts, some of which were not around in 2002, so these have been changed. And references to Facebook and Twitter have been introduced as neither existed 12 years ago. What hasn’t changed is some of the computer graphics, shown on the backdrops, which arguably looked dated even in 2002. I’m sure your average computer animation student could do something better in an afternoon nowadays.

Should you go and see it? If you can get some of the cheaper tickets like we did – £30 each, for the back of the stalls but still with a good view – then sure, go for it. But there are better musicals out there in the West End – Wicked is amazing, and I’ve head good things about Book of Mormon, although tickets are still like gold dust for that. Of course, it also depends how much you like Queen’s music.

Bingley Music Live 2011

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Jon Fratelli

Having enjoyed it last year, when we heard that acts such as Feeder and Eliza Doolittle would be playing Bingley Music Live Christine and I snapped up tickets a few months back. The festival was last weekend and, like last year, we had a good time. Though the price of a weekend ticket has gone up by a fiver, there were some bigger acts this year, as well as a smaller, second stage designed around kids and families. Also changed from last year were the toilets; thankfully, the toilet area hadn’t turned into a smelly quagmire by Sunday unlike in 2010. Unchanged were the astronomical drinks prices but I guess that’s par for the course for most festivals.

This was also the first time we went to all three days – last year we skipped the free Friday night events but we made it this year to see the Young Guns. Sadly they’d arrived late and their set was cut to 20 minutes; plus, there appeared to be some technical problems making them sound very flat. A shame because they’re one of my favourite up and coming bands.

I won’t do a full review as my friend Phil has done a much better job at his blog .wav Goodbye – read his reviews of Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Some of the sets from the likes of Feeder, Athlete and Eliza Doolittle were excellent, and worth the ticket price on their own merits – seeing the other acts just added to the value.

As it sold out a few weeks ago (the first time it’s sold out in advance in the five years it’s been running), plans are already afoot for 2012 and tickets went on sale today. I think we’ll wait to see which acts are confirmed first though – whilst the line-up has been good these past few years, I’m not willing to gamble £40. Even if the tickets being sold now are ‘limited edition’ – whatever that implies.

Hopefully next year we’ll be able to make some other festivals – Sonisphere in particular could be good if the right bands are playing. We’ll see.

30 Day Song Challenge Day 30

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It’s the final day! Apart from one day earlier in the week, I’ve managed to post something every day for the past 30 days, and I’m feeling quite impressed with myself.

So, day 30 of the 30 Day Song Challenge is a song that makes you want to help the world, help the environment, end poverty, help society…. Frankly, I couldn’t think of one, and as it’s such a nice, warm, sunny spring day, I’ve chosen “Hard To Beat” by Hard-Fi which suits the mood, I think. It’s from their album Stars of CCTV, which available from iTunes and Amazon.

I’ll try to stay in the habit of posting stuff regularly on this blog, although I can’t guarantee a post every day like there has been for the past month. Still, I hope you enjoyed this small insight into my musical tastes!

30 Day Song Challenge Day 1: Your Favourite Song

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Monty Picon

I’m going to give the 30 Day Song Challenge a go. You’re asked to post a different song each day – your favourite, least favourite, guilty pleasure, or that best describes you. I’ll try to embed YouTube videos where possible so that you can listen to them yourself, but as some of the official videos have embedding blocked I won’t always be able to do this. This will mean a lot of extra posts, but it’s only for a month if you don’t care for it…

Day 1 is your favourite song. This is rather difficult, as I don’t have an all-time favourite song. Instead, I’m going to choose a song that has been one of my favourites for over 15 years, and I still enjoy listening to today: “Set You Free” by N-Trance. Even though it’s been around a long time, it has aged well and as far as I’m aware it still gets played at nightclubs quite a bit (I wouldn’t know for sure because I haven’t been clubbing in ages…).

Bingley Music Live 2010

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Reef

Yesterday Christine and I went to our first proper music festival: Bingley Music Live. It’s certainly not one of the biggest festivals, with only 15,000 tickets available, and it doesn’t draw many big names. The main acts this year were mostly bands that were at the peak of popularity some years ago, namely The Buzzcocks, Public Image Ltd., Reef and James.

Bingley Music Live is in its fourth year and is organised by Bradford Council with no corporate sponsorship. Despite this, tickets are only £30 for the full weekend, and the Friday event has free entry as well. The small size of the festival means there’s only one stage, and there’s no campsite, but then I think most people who go live locally.

I’ll be going back today for the Sunday bands, although this time I’ll be bringing more of my own drinks. £2 for a small bottle of cola is frankly scandalous.

Solid Gold Chartbusters

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I’m afraid I am about to post a music video which ranks as one of the most annoying songs of all time:

Once you have watched it, and presumably received relevant counselling, I’ll explain myself.

The song is called “I want a 1-2-1 with You”, unsurprisingly, by a band calling themselves the Solid Gold Chartbusters, but who are actually better known as The KLF. It wasn’t a very big hit, being released in the run-up to Christmas in 1999 along with other novelty songs.

But it’s notable for being one of the first songs to use a ringtone as part of the main melody, in this case the default tone used by Nokia phones. Of course, in 1999 we didn’t even have polyphonic ringtones, never mind MP3s, so it was a series of beeps. And the “1-2-1 with you” idea was almost certainly inspired by the UK mobile network One2One, originally part of Cable & Wireless and since bought out by Deutsche Telekom and re-branded T-Mobile.

Why am I mentioning this? In 2005, some marketer who probably deserves a rather painful death came up with the idea of combining the Crazy Frog ringtone with the song Axel F, in this instance covered by the Bass Bumpers. This song, rather unfortunately, went on to be UK number 1 and spawned a whole album of songs which were mercilessly destroyed by El Frog. At the time, it was claimed that this particular cover of Axel F was the first time that a ringtone had been made into a single, as opposed to the other way around which is what normally happens. While it was the first ringtone-based song ever to be number 1, it certainly wasn’t the first song to be released.

It also happened to one of those random songs that I vaguely remember seeing on MTV 10 years ago that for some reason surfaced in my mind, and so I decided to share it. You’re probably wishing I hadn’t, though.