Amanda Palmer

I know Amanda Palmer is brilliant. Do you know Amanda Palmer is brilliant?

I hope you watched that and now you know Amanda Palmer is brilliant. You may also enjoy the fact that she and writer of comics, books, TV shows (and studly gent) Neil Gaiman are to be wed. Here is a photo courtesy of Coilhouse:

Yet another reason to love Amanda Palmer. For reference see also:

Tags: gratuitous picture, marriage, music, Musics What I Like

The Guild Music Video

Okay, we all know Felicia Day is the new hotness thanks to Dr Horrible and Kari Byron getting knocked up but this is just silly.

For the reality impaired, Ms. Day produces and stars in The Guild, a web show about MMO players. The show is remarkable because it bears the title of ‘web show’ and is actually good. All of this of course, is pretence to show you this:

Did I mention the +52 dexterity vest? I’m pretty sure I did.

Tags: geeks, music, video

Buy This Stuff: JoCo DVD!

Since I’ve resubscribed to WoW I can only spend my time levelling, not posting. Instead here is a video of a man 75% of the SC staff would perform acts of coitus on singing my very favourite song..

If you love Jonathan Coulton as much as we do then buys his new live album and/or DVD.

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Tags: geeks, live, music, whoring

M.I.A. vs the world

Timely news for some, but it makes a nice change for up and coming ‘popstars’ to give a damn about things that aren’t Jimmy Choos or Kompressors, let alone use their influence to bring attention to things people like to ignore, but that’s just what M.I.A. has been upto drawing praise and criticism alike.

M.I.A. is the daughter of a ‘Tamil Tiger’, although she has never lived with him and hasn’t seen him since 1995, and has been using her music to try to draw attention to the ongoing civil war in Sri Lanka. Although she never openly gives her support to the ‘Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam’ she has been attacked by many, most notably Sri Lankan hip-hop artist DeLon for using the image of a tiger in her videos.

The conflict is an extremely complex issue and one that’s summed up definitively here but in a nutshell the minority Tamil Hindus are fighting for an independant state in the North and East of the island and have been labelled a terrorist organisation by many world governments.

In a recent blog she questions why she is also labelled a terorist because she wants the conflict to end. Clearly it will take more than this but hopefully it will open a lot of eyes to the bloodshed going on in Sri Lanka.

Tags: music, politics, Sri Lanka

Los Campesinos! We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

This album slipped by me since it was released in November, just eight months after the release of their Debut ‘Hold On Now, Youngster…’ but I’m glad I stumbled across it. Right from the opening lyrics (I think it’s fair to say that I chose hopelessness and inflicted it on the rest of us) it’s clear that tweexcore has grown up; out the window are the songs where the cherryade flows, replaced by bitterness, resentment and jealousy.

The sentiment in the title track, ‘We are beautiful, we are doomed’ shows a much bleaker, darker Los Campesinos! punctuated by the trademark glockenspiel – “I taught myself the only way to vaguely get along in love is to like the other slightly less than you get in return” – the guitars building to the anthemic outpourings about heart failures.

A major criticism of ‘Hold On Now, Youngster…’ may once again put off listners, as the new album is anything but an easy listen, but in my opinion this doesn’t detract from the quality of the songs; I’ll never grow tired of cheerful sounding tunes coupled with self-destructive lyrics like ‘It’s as if I walked into a room to see my ex girlfriend, who by the wasy I’m still in love with, sucking the face of some pretty boy with my favourite bands most popular song in he background’ all tempered by soft female vocals.

The stand out tracks for me are ‘You\’ll Need Those Fingers For Crossing‘ and ‘It\’s Never That Easy Though. Is It?‘

Tags: Los Campesinos!, music, Musics What I Like, review

Non-English Metal; We Salute You!

For your daily fix of everyone’s favourite President of the Union…

GO COMRADE! Brought to your ears and eyes by ANJ

For more of these visionaries work see below. You want 3:12 for the goods, but watch the rest for the pathos.

Incidentally ANJ are apparently on the soundtrack for Stalin vs. Martians, a new RTS featuring cutesy aliens and a giant controllable Stalin. Win.

Tags: funny, games, metal, music, parody, russia, Stalin, video

Why hit a Corgi?

Yes I know YouTube’s rife with stuff like this but I feel the need to push this on the world just cos it made me chuckle, also somebody’s got to continue supporting the Mon-stars of rock.

Also while you’re there check out the Saturday morning Watchmen video posted up by the same guy.  A tribute I feel more in tune with Alan Moore’s original intention for the material than the lackluster movie.

Tags: comics, movies, music, video

It is Time.

Don’t know how many of our regular or irregular readers were watching the Grammys last night, I’m thinking not all that many.

Green Day

Right before the nominations for best album came the small piece of news that I, and many others have been waiting for for about the last five years.  Green Day’s new album will be released in May this year, and it’s called 21st Century Breakdown.

No clues as to what to expect musically, though if you follow the link above to the official site and sit around for a while the opening bars of something which may (or may not) be the title track start playing.

Since American Idiot the band have parted ways with their long time producer Rob Cavallo who has worked with the band since from Dookie to AI. 21st CB will instead be produced by Butch Vig.  Formerly the Drummer of grunge band Garbage Vig has been working as a producer since the early eighties, and his credits include Nirvana’s Nevermind and Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream.  He has also worked on albums with Soul Asylum, Sonic Youth and Jimmy Eat World (Every CV needs a black mark).

Speaking with UK music magazine NME in December last year Billie Joe Armstrong suggested that the then un-named album could be taking a more power-pop direction, naming Cheap Trick, The Who and The Beatles as possible influences.  In a surprisingly honest interview Armstrong said “How do you take something… and try to expand on the idea of what is supposed to be three-chord mayhem?”

“How do you do it in a way where the arrangements are just unpredictable? So I’m pushing myself to be progressive in songwriting and being a songwriter.”

The new Album cover-art. Similar in style to the single artwork from American Idiot.

As a Green Day fan, what does all this mean to me?  The change in style suggestion isn’t really all that shocking considering that it is possible to listen to any of the five albums from Dookie to American Idiot and find something musically different, though still very much Green Day, will anything from the new album be as much a departure as the segue from Eastern European folk to Mexican Mariachi in Misery from Warning?  I’m thinking possibly not.

I’ve been a Green Day fan for about fifteen years now, since a friend passed me a tape with Dookie on one side, and Kerplunk on the other.  While some bands never change I’ve seen Green Day grow and mature as I’ve grown and matured I’ve seen them come from the music of the minority to making an Album which has topped Charts the world over.  The only concern I have at the moment is when tickets for the obligatory World Tour go on Sale.

Tags: music, Musics What I Like, optimist, superfan

Angles [Musics What I Like]

I love this bloody album (thanks Mat!):

Angles by Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip

Also video:

and the one you probably know:

Tags: music, Musics What I Like

The Most Expensive Game Ever (TM)

Richie Sambora, Guitar Hero

As, already mentioned in these hallowed pages for me the stand out game of 2008 for me was Guitar Hero World Tour.  The reasoning behind this in honesty has very little to do with the innovation on show in the game but comes down to the fact that I’ve enjoyed GHWT more than any other game this year.

The game mechanics are pretty much unchanged since GH3 (well, since Guitar Hero really), the newly implemented slide bar on the neck of the guitar is  the only innovation and is ignorable.  The vertical difficulty curve from GH3 has been dispensed with, though it has been replaced with something more akin to a difficulty scatter graph, this isn’t as much of a curb on progression as in previous iterations though now that the game difficulty level can be changed mid play-list (My sticking point was Today by The Smashing Pumpkins, damn near impossible on medium, probably just me though).

If innovation was important to a GH game to be honest we’d still all be playing Guitar Hero, what matters to a GH game is the music, World Tour is no exception to this with a whopping 86 tracks, all based on master recordings, placing it well above main rival Rock Band’s 58.  Quantity is not always everything, quality has to be considered and this is where GHWT potentially comes unstuck.  Musical taste is subjective and while Activision has attempted to provide something for everyone, inorder to cover all bases it is possible to spread yourself thin.  I’d say that this is avoided, however I pretty much fit the demographic to which the playlist is geared, which appears to be a punk-metal Rockabilly with one foot planted firmly in the eighties and one ear in Seattle around 1991.

I refer to GHWT as the expensive game ever, and at £150 for the full band set  up this is more than I’ve spent on consoles in the past, the price tag is not where it ends however, The Guitar Hero frachise always ends up costing me money as it represents a large influence on my music collection.  The month following a GH release will often see me spending hundreds of pounds on albums.  GH is responsible for me listening to Avenged Sevenfold, Dragonforce (so therefore ultimately responsible for the stain on my buddy Poki’s living room carpet), Creedance Clearwater Revival and Tool.  GH is also responsible for rediscovering bands just by looking at their music in a different way, The Eagles for example it wasn’t until I played Hotel California on GHWT that I asked myself, “What else have have they done?”  Similar can be said of The Smashing Pumpkins, a band which I missed the first time around, also The Pretenders, Cheap Trick and Pearl Jam.

While the music in GHWT tends to throw up a few unexpected suprises I’d say that most are worth persevering as there’s a hell of a lot of triple A tunes to be had, some of the more obscure tracks may even suprise you.

All of this  subject to personal taste, I’m sure not everyone thinks that Livin’ on a Prayer is the best song ever written, and that is why you all fail.

Tags: games, geeks, music, review, superfan