Dream Theater: A Dramatic Turn of Events- Review

http://scan.lusu.co.uk/carolynne/culture/2011/09/16/album-review-dream-theatre-a-dramatic-turn-of-events/

My latest album review, Dream Theater's latest work, A Dramatic Turn of events, read and enjoy. (Also, the name's wrong in the article, I know. My editor does'n know the band at all. :-P

The Unions Strike Back

Goooood evening people of the internet. This is another politically charged rant, so I hope people don’t mind what I have to say, if you wish to comment and disagree, then go ahead. Everyone’s allowed their own opinions.

I’ve just been watching the news. The TUC conference seems to be angry at the Labour leader Ed Milib(l)and. He said that it was a bad idea to strike when there were disputes over pensions back in June (2011) and the unions were still talking to government officials. For once, I actually agree with the labour leader. He has a very good point. Strike action should be a last resort, to be taken only when all talks have completely broken down and even then when there is no possible way out of the arguments. However, the current TUC committee seems to be of the opinion that they have the right to strike over anything and everything that ruffles their feathers even the slightest bit (I.e. every time someone asks them to do their job). Surely doesn’t this completely undermine the whole point of striking? A strike is meant to create a situation that suddenly deprives the industry involved of needed labour so that the bosses have to agree to demands in order to keep companies going. If, however, there are strikes so often that there’s no inconvenience and there becomes a separate infrastructure for the hiring of scab labour, then this becomes a complete farce of a concept and unions have no methods of attempting to force companies round to their points of view.

The sheer anger that was shown by people attending the conference shows how these people seem to have no idea how to campaign for anything. They seem to want to play their biggest card at the very start, therefore giving them nowhere to go and showing their position from the very start.  When companies realise that this short-sighted tactic is becoming the norm it is going to make union action a completely outdated concept when there are simple ways to predict and outmanoeuvre strategies such as these. When people get angry at there being a lack of support from politicians over immediate extreme action, they have only themselves to blame when no-one listens. I have exactly the same point of view about the student riots from last year.

The government proposed to put up tuition fees at universities, so people went on marches to show that they were against these. (I even went on a small, local one) but when people decided that the only way to make the point was to start smashing up London, then that’s when I have a problem. If you want a government to take notice of you, then you send people to talk to them, and maybe back it up with a human presence. But the last thing that’s going to persuade people that you have a valid viewpoint is to start having a temper tantrum like a small child. Liken it to a small child having a paddy. The last thing that their parent should do is give in to their demands just to make it shut up. It’s the same with the student protests. When violence broke out, there was never going to be a possibility for a favourable outcome. Free education is a PRIVELAGE not a right. An economically stable country where the only people with degrees are the intelligent ones who are studying to do  proper subjects should go to universities and get degrees, and there should be separate schemes for people going into other types of work. People seem to want a degree in anything at the moment (Harry Potter studies, Beatles studies. Just two stupid courses that I’ve seen advertised at unis recently) which undervalues the whole reason for having a higher education system in the first place. Surely the whole point in a degree is to differentiate between people of different levels of academic achievement. Which doesn’t happen when absolutely everyone has a degree in something. At least the new £9000 fees will force fewer people to go to university and therefore the degree will once again be worth more. However, the way that the government is persuading fewer people to go into higher education is by splitting the country, not by intellect or any academic achievement, but by wealth. Which is no way to decide who is eligible for further education or not.

People at the moment seem to be obsessed with violent protest, and then people get angry when the police get nervous and, in order to keep themselves safe, and to try and minimise damage, they come out in force, heavily armed and in full riot gear. The riots over this summer (2011), have had people attempt to defend them and call them protests, however there was nothing that any of the protesters really knew that they were protesting about. It was taken just as an excuse to loot shops and destroy cars. The idea of having a coherent sense of protest and successful union action is rapidly becoming a solely historical thing. Radical and hysterical action is eroding any respect that the Unions had.

Keep the peace internet folk.

Generation Why?

http://scan.lusu.co.uk/carolynne/culture/2011/09/05/album-review-diamond-plate-generation-why/

I've just finished my latest article for my uni newspaper. A review of a new band called "Diamond Plate" have a look and see what you think.

Another Little Bit

http://www.youtube.com/user/heavymetalmaniac616?feature=mhee

My youtube channel if anyone's interested in what else I may be screwing up

End of September Rant About Not Much

Goooooooooooooood evening people of the internet. Again, it’s been a few weeks due to both my lazyness and my inability to think of things to rant about. There is something that I wish to have a rant about today which again really relates to my personal passion that is Jazz and playing the saxophone.

I was busking the other day in a city near where I live where the laws that usually hassle street performers everywhere else do not seem to exist. Thus making it easy for anyone with an instrument to turn up on a street corner, throw a hat down and try to make a bit of money in the sun for a few hours. Now, I’d looked into doing this and have busked here a few times now, playing a range of jazz standards (Summertime, Autumn Leaves, St Thomas) funky classics (Superstition) and random tunes that people know and love (Baker Street, Careless Whisper). I played in what was and usually is a very worthwhile spot for over an hour and made a grand total of… £3. That’s right, mid-summer, the sun was shining, tourist town full of people out for the day. On a great many occasions people stopped to listen and to take photos, but hardly anyone deemed it worthwhile throwing down any spare change. The lack of “donations” isn’t the purpose of this rant as it is understandable that, due to the current economic situation, people will be less willing to give any money to a poor student attempting to entertain the masses. However, what really irritates me is this. A couple of streets further down there was a person with an acoustic guitar playing and singing in a very sheepish manner something that sounded vaguely like it might be something that I’ve never heard (probably because I don’t listen to the charts) There was someone in the park, acoustic guitar and sheepish singing again, who played and sang the chorus to ‘Valerie’ by god knows who it was originally, (there have been so many covers that were there the 1^st time I heard it that it could be by absolutely anyone (But, for arguments sake I’ll say it was by Amy Winehouse, because I think it was her version that I just happened to hear 1^st. If I’m wrong and someone wants to have a go at me for it. Sod off, I don’t care. But I digress…)). There were also innumerable other such examples of people doing the same thing. My argument and problem is this. The repertoire was all samey, uninteresting and played very half-heartedly, yet why were these people raking in the money? People seem to enjoy things that they’re familiar with, which is fair enough I guess, but the way these people were hailing their small change at these three chord zeros, you’d think that they were all the new Hendrix or something. Is it something that I’m doing wrong perhaps? Or is it just that more and more people find that Jazz of any form is completely “old” “outdated” “boring” “music my grandma listens to” (all actual quotes from people I know) and therefore refuse to pay out to anyone not trying to be everyone else around?

WARNING: COMPLETELY UNRELATED RANT AHEAD

My mother has recently agreed to be experimented on by a neighbour who recently completed her course to become a “Herbal Life” diet coach. This has led to my mum spending a lot of money on strange milkshakes and eating as much as she usually does in “health foods” as she used to. While attempts at dieting are commendable, surely there are easier and much cheaper ways to lose weight than paying someone to tell you to buy stuff. Surely just doing it the old fashioned way: Cutting out cakes etc, eating healthier foods, eating less in general and exercising more often is just as effective (if not more effective) and also A LOT cheaper. The argument about people needing motivation and keeping one of those diaries to put weight loss, what you ate and whatnot in is, I admit useful. But surely you can just find an old exercise book (or even buy a cheap new one) to put all the info in without having to add that to an already large expense.

Ok. Random rant about stuff that people really don’t care about over. I hope once again that you’ve enjoyed my general bile and displeasure about anything that I can think of to be displeased about. Congratulations to those of you who have managed to get this far through. You’re obviously as bored as I am writing these. :-P

Keep the peace internet folk

A Little Bonus

Goooooooooooooooooood evening people of the internet. I've been a bit lax with these recently, so here's a little bonus. I write as a music critic for my university newspaper (Lancaster University's SCAN), recently, I was given the new album by Thrash Metal band Evile (Yes, I'm a metalhead) so, here, in it's unedited and complete glory, is the review that I wrote for it.

Thrash is Back!

Evile – Five Serpent’s Teeth (Produced by Russ Russell)

In a world where metal is seemingly defined by doom and black metal, it is a rare thing to see an album that seems so influenced by some of Metal’s golden years (i.e. the early-mid 80’s), and “Five Serpent’s Teeth” the latest offering from Yorkshire Metallers Evile is exactly that, a back to basics piece of heavy metal gold. After their first album, which was produced by Flemming Rasmussen, who was involved in the making of arguably one of the best Thrash (if not the best Metal album of all time) Metallica’s Master of Puppets, the band has lost none of their classic, mid-80s Thrash sound. The influences from this collaboration are definitely still present and very obvious to all who know their old-school Metallica. With catchy, head banging riffs that make you want to raise your fist in the air, fast guitar solos and an all-out metal attitude, this is an all round great album with none of the stereotyped metal “doom and gloom”.  

The opening title track ‘Five Serpent’s Teeth” sets the scene for a consistently heavy album, it’s intense riffage is classic thrash at its best: Anthemic, and grabs you in a vicelike grip that refuses to let you go until the album’s well and truly over. ‘In Dreams of Terror’ continues in a very similar vein, which is one of my major criticisms of this album. From time to time it is hard to distinguish one track from another, as there are times when any let-up or subtlety in the song writing and playing are few and far between. ‘Cult’ is a great track, with a groove that occasionally seems to be missing from the other tracks.  ‘Eternal Empire’ and ‘Xaraya’ both follow the same formula of no holds barred, in-your-face metal. The Track ‘Origin of Oblivion’, if anything show a slightly heavier side of Evile, suggesting that they have their ears tilted ever so slightly towards more modern metal and aren’t just stuck in the 80s. ‘Centurion’ begins with an evil intro that leads into a slower song, but no less powerful. ‘In Memoriam’ shows a softer side of the band, as a musical tribute to bassist Mike Alexander.  It’s slow, melancholic melodies show a beauty of playing that the previous 7 tracks barely hint at. In my opinion, the best track on the album. The calmer atmosphere doesn’t last long however, as ‘descent into Madness’ returns straight back to the thrash mould. The closing number, ‘Long Live New Flesh’ is a killer anthem which ends the album as a call to arms for all young metal heads out there.

 Vocally, there are no soaring melodies or songs about demons and monsters, the singing is all deep and gravelly, without sounding growly or too guttural. Lyrically, there are great divides, with the song ‘In Memoriam’ dedicated to their late bass player, ‘Cult’ dealing with cultism, and ‘Origin of Oblivion’ dealing with globalisation and capitalism. The dual guitar assault here sounds huge and tight, with fast riffs and technical, lighting-fast fret board wizardry abound, so the air-guitarists out there (myself included) should be satisfied. The influences of these two guitar playing brothers (rhythm guitarist/vocalist Matt Drake and lead guitarist Ol Drake) are rarely hidden from the surface, with the odd moment of guitar harmony that could be taken straight out of any classic Judas Priest album. There are reasons why the metal community are going wild about this band, the whole album sounds like something that could have come out of the same San Francisco breeding ground that Metallica, Megadeth and Slayer emerged from.  Appropriate then that this band has, amongst many other achievements, toured with Thrash Metal titans Megadeth, won a Kawasaki Golden God Award for being “Metal as F**k.” They have played at many of the huge metal festivals in the last couple of years, including Download, Sonisphere and Wacken.   

Overall, this album, although at times a bit samey, shows the metal community that all is not lost.  Riff based classic thrash metal still exists.

The record label that has produced this have advertised this band with one simple tag-line: “Thrash is back” and is it? Hell yeah!

8/10

That's it. A little review for you. I hope y'all like it.

Keep the peace internet folk.

Bits and Bobs

Gooooooooooooood evening people of the internet. I’m going to try and have another vaguely topical rant... Today, I’m thinking about those stories that keep on going on and on without anything actually developing. People keep on publishing and airing stories that don’t go anywhere. Stories like this really annoy me. They clog up the news bulletins for weeks so that by the end of the however long that the story is on for you can recite all the words exactly and know which pictures are coming up.  If a story has to be played over a few days, what’s wrong with trying to write a new script, or at least try and update it a bit? I find that constantly repeated news merely undermines the quality of broadcasting as it just show off the lack of other material that is available to the producers. Putting on the same stories day after day should only really be necessary if there’s been some sort of development (maybe not if it’s a nationwide manhunt, or a murder of some kind, but for those repetition is more a call for help, or to keep people informed and updated, whereas constant reporting on news stories that don’t change at all, or even happened days in the past seems like a waste of time to me).  Although I think it’s important for other reasons, surely there has to be more than one story in Uk news this week. I am, of course talking about the ongoing debacle that is the News International story. Phone Hacking- was bad, was news, the people have been prosecuted. Surely that part’s now over. The closing of The News of the World as a Newspaper; that happened last weekend, it no longer exists, so how is it still relevant? And now the failure of the attempted takeover of BskyB. This was written a few weeks ago, when I had not much on. The only thing that seemed to awaken the media world to the existence of a wider universe was a racist maniac committing mass murder in  Norway. Surely this shouldn’t be the only other thing in the world that manages to force the news corporations out of their inward looking states of mind? It’s idiotic, and seems like all it is is a reason for news programmers to attack each other.

The main reason that I haven’t posted anything recently has been because I have been on holiday. On a cruise. Which is not what I am complaining about, what I am complaining about are certain... aspects of the cruise.  I was sitting in a bar one night, and it turns out that I was sitting next to 3 generations of idiot alcoholics, arguing very loudly, to the entire ship it seemed, about why people put mixers with alcohol, claiming that it’s merely to mask the taste and therefore to enable you to drink more. What I want to know is how, without sounding smug or too self-righteous is one meant to broach this argument and point out reasons which, to me at least, seem obvious. Such as the mixer diluting the alcohol, therefore enabling your body to process it slower, therefore more of it has gone out of your system before it’s all gone through at all. I sat there for over an hour listening to grandma alchy extolling the virtues of making things taste nice then downing them in as quick succession as possible. My other point is the entertainment. Why is it all always so predictable and cheesy. Every night it was the same rota of bad quiz game shows, drunken karaoke and really bland show tunes. Surely a band playing a mix of originals and covers would be better. No-one really goes to a gig to hear a cover band playing every night. I’d far rather go and hear something I don’t know that was a bit more interesting to the ear than listen to the same Take That and Abba covers over and over.

Anyway, that’s the rant over once again. Thanks for paying any attention to it. As ever, please be constructive with any criticism.

Keep the peace internet folk.

And all that Jazz

Gooooooooooood evening people of the internet! Contrary to what my previous two little rants may suggest, this was never really meant to be a current affairs, political newsy blog. It was meant to be a little record of whatever I like, about music mostly, so I've decided that it's about time I started on that.

What people I know know about me is that I'm a bit of a struggling musician. I play a great number of instruments on various styles, however, as I'm not really a stunning guitarist, or a singer/songwriter, then I'm not really in much demand popularly on the university circuit. I have the strange affliction (as it seems to be) of being a *cough* jazz nut *cough* This means that I'm a bit of a pariah, there being very few other young musicians, at least where I am, who are interested in this kind of music. Despite a great many guitar based, rock bands pretending to do poor quality impersonations of the Rock bands of yore, Jazz from a few years before is still seen as something that is listened to only by old pretentious artsy fartsy people or that your grandparents danced to during the war...

There seem to be very few oppertunities for small jazz groups as there used to be back in the 50s, the only things that people are interested in are the odd possibility for big bands, however, my major gripe with this idea is that the music ends up becoming something that defeats many of the original jazz ideals, such as freedom of musical expression, there were many famous musicians, such as the great innovator Ornette Coleman, who were unable to read music at all. Improvisation and self expression seems to be a very limited and, by many, sneered upon aspect of popular music- all people want to do is be able to play pieces and solos exactly how they were played by the original artist. Although replication may be useful from an academic point of view, it defeats the reason why the solo was created as a section of a piece in the first place. Creation as a part of performance, to the musical circle of people that I know, seems to be unacceptable and abhorrent- whether they see it as being too self-indulgent (isn't showing off part of music?) This, I feel is more of a regression on the part of music, rather than a progression. Improvisation was part of music for centuries, Mozart and Back improvised when playing live, and now people decide that it isn't musically acceptable to put a personal stamp on pieces that you play.


This is a very personal rant to me, so if anyone has their own views/differing opinions, then please feel free to comment.


Keep the peace internet folk.

Read all about it

Well, I know that I posted one of these only yesterday, but there's been lots of things happening today in the news which has made me ponder things and I thought I'd share these musings with the people/person who may read this.

Today, the News of the World had to close after 168 years in publishing. Now, I'm not going to talk about the morality and what they did or anything- the phone hacking of murdered school children, criminals etc was dispicable and horrible, so I'm glad that the paper's been brought to justice. However, surely it was the people involved in the editing of the paper who should have been punished, rather than the actual publication itself (my personal opinion of the quality of this shall be inferred). Surely, the paper itself is completely innocent, it's the editors, investigators, hackers and writers involved in the relevant stories that should have been punished. The editor, I believe, Rebekah Wade (was it? If I'm wrong, then correct me) was forced to quit, so she should be prosecuted now for it, rather than all of the people involved in the publication being published for a minority of people's balls-up. However, the closing down of the paper surely has very little impact at all, the News of the World was the Sunday version of the Sun. Now, the Sun is now going to be published on Sundays and the people in the company will now have similar jobs but as the Sun instead. Which, as a mate of mine put it, is "a bit like getting rid of Blair and bringing in Milliband." i.e. there's literally no difference underneath, just a slightly different face.

There should be something done to make sure that people who are in control of any media are more responsible than they are at the moment. People like Rupert Murdoch encouraging this king of phone hacking in order to get sensationalist scoops in order to try and scare people and move copies. He also needs to be brought to justice, no matter how powerful he may be and no matter how much control he may have over politicians in the country. (which I also believe is wrong; David Cameron should cut himself lose from the Murdoch empire and stop fearing the press)

Really all this is about is an excuse to change the name of a paper and to stereotype journalists as evil, immoral, phone hacking devils.

Although, one thing that I can say is good is that we can now listen to that classic by The Jam "News of the World" and be all ironic and "cool".

The Jazzman Commeth.

Goooooood evening people of the internet. I'm not entirely what I'm going to write in these blogs. They'll probably be a mixture of angry rants, random ramblings and bizzare observations about life, the universe, everything and a couple of bits and pieces in between.(Also, if the grammer or anything starts to get sloppy, then don't get mad as I'm just typing this all out as a stream of thought kind of thing...) I'll keep these as short, to the point, and as clean and insulting to as few people as I can be. However nothing said in any blogs from this point on is meant to be hurtful to anyone and should be taken as nothing more than a joke and an irritable person letting off some steam. Anything said here is also my opinion and has nothing to do with anyone else (unless specifically mentioned). (and yes, I do have a thing about brackets. :-P )

So, I suppose I'd better kick these things off with a little bit of info about myself (yes, I am a self centred, arrogant show off from time to time. I guess this is a way to get rid of my need to have people listen to what I have to say). I'm currently in the summer holidays in between my second and third years at University. I'm studying Music and History (Not the History of Music, or Musical History. But Music AND History as a combined honours degree). I'm largely a performing musician. Playing Saxophone, Clarinet and un petit peu du guitar. My life seems to revolve around a mixture of rehearsals and essay writing. At the moment I seem to have no idea what I want to do after uni finishes. Ideally I want to do something to do with performance, however it's not what you know, it's who you know with that kind of stuff right...

So, first rant. Watching the news and it turns out that the all-powerful facebook seems to be trying to alter the chat service. So you can do group and video chats... Why would they do this when the bog standard, basic chat where it's just a simple box with text. So how do they expect to make this one work? The deal with Skype, although a good concept will either never work, be very slow, or will crash all the time. A video message service takes so much bandwidth etc that it'll make the whole site run excruciatingly slowly. It's also unlikely to work most of the time there would be too many people trying to use it at once, therefore overloading the service and making very few people able to use it at once around the world. I therefore reckon that the computer whizzes should sort out the ordinary chat before trying to expand it.

Well, for the moment I guess this is all that I have to say for myself. I hope this has been readable and not too self-obsessed or anything.

Keep the peace internet folk.