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.

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.