The end of The Feeling's set, who sounded good but we didn't see them/
The last two songs of Calvin Harris, getting the crowd up and down in the tented arena.
A resurgent Travis who played a great acoustic version of Flowers In The Window, and showed that you can still climb lighting rigs whatever your age.
A fairly poor Amy Winehouse - no link intentionally - who played a couple of songs, one of which was her own.
A headline-inspiring The Charlatans, with Tim Burgess sporting a 1990's pudding-bowl haircut.
An awesome "I didn't notice the rain' The Verve who provided an epic version of Life's An Ocean and a stunning run through of new song Sit And Wonder.
Sunday 17 August
The Troubadours were cancelled, so I watched The Hazey Janes instead, who were really quite very good.
A pumped-up Shed Seven (who still don't seem to have an official website) who brought out the sun with them, and showed that you can still jump over drum kits whatever your age.
A diminutive Alanis Morrissette. I went to the toilet instead.
A relaxing, chilled out Amy Macdonald (who?) and Duffy (to call her the Welsh version of Amy Winehouse would be an insult, as Duffy not only has a good voice but is not ruining her body.
A fun Sugababes, who we caught a glimpse of at the back of the tented arena, leading us to ...
An energetic The Twang, who reminded me that you cannot really "get" a band until you see them live (I had no idea that they had two singers, or one singer and one Bez/singer).
We decided at that point to leave ... good job. Car was stuck in mud. We heard Stereophonics who sounded ok.
]]>Taking to the V Stage at the Staffordshire leg of the event, the band braved torrential rain as they mixed crowd favourites with songs from new album 'Forth'.
Joined for most of the set by a violinist, the four-piece introduced new song 'Sit And Wonder' – which has featured in their set all summer – by referencing the atrocious conditions.
"Shake off the rain with me," frontman Richard Ashcroft commanded the crowd before the song, "shake off the pain with me."
Playing a series of songs from 1995 album 'A Northern Soul', including an epic version of 'Life's An Ocean', the band then enjoyed a series of loud sing-a-longs from the fans who stuck with them through the heavy rain.
'The Drugs Don't Work' and 'Lucky Man' were bellowed back, before the band reached their climax mixing 'Bitter Sweet Symphony' with recent top five comeback single 'Love Is Noise'.
"Thank you from the heart," freestyled Ashcroft as the songs merged, "it's always been the same."
The Verve played:
'This Is Music'
'Sonnet'
'Space And Time'
'Sit And Wonder'
'History'
'Life's An Ocean'
'Velvet Morning'
'The Rolling People'
'The Drugs Don't Work'
'Lucky Man'
'Bitter Sweet Symphony'
'Love Is Noise'
Keane - Spiralling : Download Here by Monday 11 August 2008
Coldplay - Death Will Never Conquer : Download Here
The Streets - The Escapist : Download Here
Mercury Rev - Senses On Fire : Download Here
Primal Scream - Urban Guerilla : Download Here
Kings of Leon - Crawl : Download Here
and finally a whole bunch of stuff by Swervedriver if you fancy some live versions of their albums (I recommend Duress or Duel).
]]> VIDEOS (where possible)Keane -Spiralling
Coldplay - Death Will Never Conquer
The Streets - The Escapist
Mercury Rev - Goddess on A Hiway
Primal Scream - Urban Guerilla
Kings of Leon - Crawl
]]>
They are pretty much all from indie roots, but now are in majors. I am also awaiting Keane's Perfect Symmetry, Kaiser Chiefs' Off With Their Heads (but they are not on Amazon at the moment).
I might be being a bit harsh - but it illustrates that often the indie bands that I like are snapped up by majors, once they have had one or two singles issued on an indie label. I just need to change their labels in iTunes from "Indie" to "Mainstream Corporate Rock" and start buying more random stuff in shops.
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The new album, Forth, to me confirms where the money is in music these days. Aside from touring, established bands are cashing in on fans who will pay for their music by issuing attractive limited editions.
The Verve release their new album in a number of formats, including vinyl for the purists and a Limited Deluxe Edition Box-Set (which has the CD, a DVD, and the entire album issued as a download delivered before 25th August release date and an instant download of 'Love is Noise' (Recorded live from Glastonbury '08). All for £40. Being a music nut I obviously went for this one. I'm still trying to get the instant download to work.
Radiohead did a similar trick with In Raindows, as well as issuing the album for free (or for a donation of up to £99.99), they offered a limited edition box set for £40. Later, they issued a normal physical release of the record.
The Charlatans issued their excellent album You Cross My Path as well as a single or two through Xfm, before releasing a limited deluxe version of the album with Live Bonus Disc. They hoped fans, like me, would buy the deluxe version. I did. I probably would have done even if it was a poor album, but actually giving the music away for free made me more interested in hearing it and getting into it.
The band who has taken this concept to the extreme I think is Nine Inch Nails. They released Ghosts I - IV, a 36 track instrumental album available in a number of different formats and forms, including a free download of the first volume, a $5 digital download, a $10 double CD set, a $75 deluxe edition set, and a $300 Ultra-Deluxe limited edition package, which sold out all 2500 copies.
I am not a great fan of Nine Inch Nails, but I was tempted by the limited edition set anyway! I got the free download thinking about getting the rest, but never really got into it. The next album, The Slip was also available free. I got that but didn't get it either. Oh well - that is the diversity of music for you.
Chapterhouse & Ulrich Schnauss - Love Forever, Truck Festival 2008
There does seem to be a ressurgance of shoe-gazing activity though. Not just at the Truck festival. Swervedriver are touring again it seems. And Maps are doing the new shoegazing scene proud, recently covering Ride's Leave Them All Behind at the end of their performance at the Truck Festival.
If Chapterhouse tour properly, I'll be there however many broken bones I have. Here's them doing a better song in a studio:
Chapterhouse - Pearl
and just found on YouTube some TV live performances from The Beat:
Chapterhouse - She's A Vision
Chapterhouse - We Are The Beautiful
Part 1
Album Wilderness played all the way through:
A Different Place
The Empress
Clowns
Chinese Whispers
Blessed
Funeral Mantra
Back To You (with Emmanuelle Seigner)
Knife Edge
P Marius
Part 2
Misc Brett Anderson / Suede tracks and b-sides etc
Love is Dead - from Brett Anderson album
Song For My father - ditto
Simple Words - from Emmanuelle's album "Ultra Orange & Emmanuelle"
Saturday Night - from Suede "Coming Up"
The Living Dead - Suede b-side going into ...
My Dark Star - Suede b-side
Pantomine Horse - Suede "Suede"
Still Life - Suede "Dog Man Star"
The Wild Ones - ditto
Then six songs in one, at the piano:
To The Winter - from Brett Anderson album
By The Sea - Suede "Coming Up"
The Power - Suede "Dog Man Star"
He's Gone - Suede "Head Music"
The Two of Us - Suede "Dog Man Star"
Asphalt World - ditto
Encore
So Young - Suede "Suede"
Ebony (extract) - from Brett Anderson album
Everything Will Flow - Suede "Head Music"
Trash - Suede "Coming Up"
Reviews:
Read some reviews posted on the BA forum here.
My favourite song;
Well, I like Clowns especially as I can play it on the piano (but I can now play The Wild Ones as well. I think my favourite though was The Asphalt World.
]]>(Golden Cage by The Whitest Boy Alive)
]]>It took a while but eventually I managed to transfer my data from my Commodore floppy disks on to my new PC (which cannot ordinarily read Commodore disks). I think I found a freeware Commodore program that made a Commodore disk drive able to write PC-readable data.
I then created a database in Access 97. This I customized quite a lot, but I still had a lot to learn and by then no time to learn it as I was in work. I decided to buy an off-the-shelf music database but they never had what I wanted. Namely: Store track names and separately song version (e.g. for remixes) and purchase information and a decent import function. Eventually I found the great CATraxx.
I trialled and used version 5 which I then registered for and later upgraded to version 6. It really is fantastic if you need to store lots of information and the import function is I reckon unique in being so customisable, as is the rest of the database generally.
Eventually, I moved to database number 4. Being iTunes. Now iTunes is not really a database of physical CDs, Vinyl, DVDs etc. But from my point of view, it overtook my database as I was more interested in adding CDs to iTunes, by ripping them, then by adding them to CATraxx by scanning the CD and getting informaiton from the online CD database (CDDB / Gracenote).
Now, instead of having a database of information, I had a database of songs that I could click and play. I started getting behind on keeping CATraxx up-to-date. My move to Mac at the end of 2005 exacerbated this. By age 30 I had managed to check that every CD was on CATraxx andon iTunes. But this has not been kept up.
So now I am faced with a large number of CDs that are on iTunes but not on CATraxx. And iTunes is missing information that is contained in CATraxx. And CATraxx is on the PC but I use Mac now for iTunes.
Time for Database number 5.
Number 1: Own Commodore Amiga written database in AMOS
Number 2: Own PC database written in Microsoft Access 97 (later Access 2000)
Number 3: CATraxx Version 5 & 6
Number 4: iTunes
Number 5: ? ? ? (see next post)
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There is a section on Pet Shop Boys where they have exclusive tracks (go to Navigation/Product/Exclusive Tracks). There are some great tracks there, including an extended verison of My Night. I had on repeat whilst I was surfing, and can't get it out of my head.
I need a new tune, to get me off the repeat . . .
]]>EMI owner Guy Hands told The Guardian: "Roughly 85 per cent of what EMI does get to release never makes a profit, in part because of the cash spent signing bands and partly due to ill-made bets on the number of CDs the market requires for particular acts."
Well seeing as EMI generally makes a profit (at least in the good old days) I assume this goes some way to explaining why CDs are so expensive: 1) because they waste lots of time signing rubbish bands, jumping on the bandwagon no doubt 2) they snap up people like Robbie Williams for ridiculous sums of money, when he is going out of fashion (step forward Mariah Carey too who cost Virgin, part of EMI $108million in total) 3) they then overpress the number of CDs, so we have to pay for the CDs that are getting chucked.
I am thinking that if Sainsburys over-order on their Ferrera Rocher's, they don't overcharge people on milk to make up their losses. Or do they?
P.S. I don't buy the Guardian. I just used Google.
There is a new greatest hits package out and the recent concert I went to made me realise that I hadn't really appreciated their song, Disco Down. I got sent a promo video for their Greatest Hits package which gave a clip from the Disco Down video. Here's the video in full, with the line dance after approx 3 minutes:
Here, for those interested, is the Greatest Hits promo video:
]]>BRETT ANDERSON - BRETT ANDERSON
Only beaten by Brett's 1500-only issue of his concert at Union Chapel, available from Concert Live. But being of limited issue, I thought the studio album best take the No.1 spot.
Runners Up - no particular order
Kaiser Chiefs - Yours Truly, Angry Mob
The Cribs - Men's Needs, Woman's Needs, Whatever
Maps - We Can Create
The Chemical Brothers - We Are The Night
BEST EVENT - LOVE - CIRQUE DU SOLEIL
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