Listen To Whatever The Hell You Want

Rock Band I’m many things, but one thing I’ve never been is cool. There are many reasons for this – crap hair, being overweight, dandruff, a tendency to blush furiously when talking to people, a voice I hate listening to (which, inexplicably, seems to have gained a cult following thanks to the SquadCast) and, of course, relentless self-deprecation.

This lack of coolness was particularly apparent during my teenage years. These days I like to think I have my own identity – nerd chic or whatever stupid post-modern label you want to apply to it – and I’m quite happy with this. During adolescence, though, it’s easy to be jealous of “the cool kids” and for many nerds such as myself, the way to get in on some of that action was to get into the same music that they liked. At least then you’d have something to talk about, and you’d feel justified sitting in on them in the Music department at lunchtime, trying their best not to crucify their favourite song and, inevitably, failing.

I didn’t quite manage this perfectly, however. Kids were into Blur and Oasis when I was at school, so the first album I ever bought for myself was Oasis’ Definitely Maybe. Fine. A good choice. Unfortunately, I chose the day before (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? came out to purchase it, so was thus branded an idiot.

Over time, I got a little better, picking up some other albums that other people considered to be “classics” for various reasons, and more than a few stinkers as well – all of which I have, and intend to hold onto with no shame as a reminder of my past. I never really strayed that far out of the cultural comfort zone of local commercial radio and what I read in magazines, though.

As time went on, I got older and I apparently at some point signed that non-negotiable contract that means once you’re over the age of 25 you must immediately start hating all contemporary popular music. (To be fair, contemporary popular music is shit.) As such, I kind of stopped paying that much attention to a lot of music for a while, instead sticking to things that I’d liked for years, or more “niche” interests such as countless remixes, reorchestrations and even a spectacular metal reinterpretation of the Final Fantasy soundtracks. During my training as a teacher, my buddy Owen introduced me to 80s and early 90s metal, which I enjoyed greatly but didn’t explore in any depth. In the meantime, the charts slowly filled up with 50 Cent and crap like the track in the link posted above, and television began search after search for “the next big star”, with Popstars, Pop Idol, The X-Factor, Britain’s Got Talent and all manner of other “talent” shows which proved again and again that the mainstream popular music industry at large wasn’t interested in talent, just someone who “looked right” and was “marketable”.

Fast forward a few years – to now, in fact. I picked up Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Band 2 the other week, and between them those two games have reignited an interest in exploring music. Not middle-of-the-road chart music because that’s still shit. (I know I posted that already. But it is shit.) No, I’m talking music where the artists actually play their instruments and in many cases compose their own songs too.

It may sound trite to quote Guitar Hero and Rock Band as influences on exploring music, but it’s true in my case. Speaking as an actual musician (albeit not a guitarist, vocalist or particularly gifted singer), I can say that both games encourage analytical listening of the music you’re playing, even if the note charts for you to play on your plastic instruments are sometimes a little questionable (but that’s a discussion for another day). As such, it quickly becomes apparent which ones are the genuinely-well composed tracks and which ones are masking their compositional deficiencies behind lots of noise. For the most part, there’s a clear divide between “classic rock” of the 70s and 80s and more recent tracks, with many earlier tracks displaying much more in the way of virtuosity (and stamina), particularly on the part of the guitarists and drummers – but there are some notable exceptions, two of which I thought I’d mention particularly, as the individual tracks in Rock Band actually convinced me to explore these artists further and purchase more of their music.

First up is Coheed and Cambria, which I know RocGaude is a fan of. Coheed and Cambria are prog-rock taken to the extreme, with spectacularly lengthy album titles (the one I purchased is called Good Apollo I’m Burning Star IV Volume One: From Fear Through The Eyes Of Madness) and even a companion series of graphic novels to flesh out the story of the characters in the songs. But there’s something about the songs, particularly Welcome Home, the track from Rock Band, that “got” me. Now that I’ve mentioned this, Coheed and Cambria fans amongst my circle of friends have started coming out of the closet too. I’d never heard of them prior to a couple of weeks ago – now it seems that appreciation for their work is more widespread than I thought.

Next up is Dream Theater, their track Panic Attack representing one of the most difficult tracks in Rock Band 2, thanks to some tricky riffs and the fact that it jumps around from 5/4 to triplet rhythms at irregular intervals, meaning that everyone in the band has to keep on their toes. This piece was so unashamedly dramatic that it immediately appealed to me, with the concept of the piece also holding a degree of personal resonance for me. As a result, I decided to check out the album it was from, Octavarium. I wasn’t disappointed – from the opening track through a hugely diverse range of styles paying homage to U2 and Muse among other things, and finishing with a twenty-minute long finale, I really enjoyed the album. It’s the first album I actually decided to sit and listen to – as in, headphones on, lights off, concentrate on the music and nothing else – for a very long time. Not working with music on, not blogging, not browsing the Internet, not having the music on in the background – just focusing on the music exclusively. And I had a great experience with the album.

My point? Yes, there is one, however flimsy it might be. I have no idea if it’s cool to like Coheed and Cambria, or Dream Theater, but I am happy to stand up and be counted as someone who likes them both. I’m sure I will discover more great new music as time goes on, from Rock Band, from the live gigs I’ve been to recently and via services like last.fm.

In short, anywhere but from BBC Radio 1.

And that song is shit.

The Squadron of Shame Squadcast #12: No Shame

The long-awaited first 2009 episode of The Squadron of Shame SquadCast is now available for download!

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You can also follow the Squad’s updates on Twitter here.

This episode, we delve into Games of No Shame. These fall into several categories – the games everyone loves that you hate, the games everyone loves that you love too, the games that everyone hates that you love and the games you’re terrified of being caught playing.

Also on this episode, Beige talks about jizz and Pokémon, we use the phrase “sucks like a banshee” and Pishu goes a-hustlin’.

Follow us on Twitter for up to date news, including rollout information of our exciting new website now that 1up has witnessed the power of that fully operational battle station that is UGO.

Stay tuned!

Haunted Stereo Live at the Hobbit

So here we are again. After a somewhat touch-and-go start to the day after being molested by numerous pints of toilet cleaner masquerading as Lord of the Rings characters, I find myself here considering what it was I saw last night at the Hobbit.

Things began well when I managed to sneak in and grab a peek at the performers’ soundchecks earlier in the evening. When I saw that an electric ukulele was involved, I knew that this was going to be anything but traditional. However, as these things tend to go, it would be an hour or two between soundchecks starting and the actual performances beginning, so I took the opportunity to use every piece of mobile Web 2.0 technology at my disposal to write last night’s blog post, tweet like crazy, post pictures of The Hobbit’s pleasantly literate toilet graffiti to Tumblr and generally keep things rolling until the bands took the stage later. I also had the opportunity to people-watch a little, with The Hobbit’s diverse clientele once again failing to disappoint. From the old drunk babbling about chicken to the selection of surly-looking goths playing pool, The Hobbit is a fine place to witness most subcultures coming together in relative harmony for once. The only group not really represented was the humble chav, which I have absolutely no objection to. I’d much rather they’d all be off their faces on cheap lager at Jesters down the road than spoiling everyone else’s night.

But I digress. There were performances to watch, and it turned out to be a very entertaining, very pleasant evening.

I’m not going to talk much about the support acts here, but I did want to mention the first one. This was a solo female singer named Plat du Jour. She gave a good start to the evening’s entertainment with her songs. Although her arrangements were necessarily simple, given that it was just her and her guitar, her songs were pleasant to listen to, covered a variety of different moods – all too many performers stick too much to one style and one style alone – and she had a wonderfully friendly, down-to-earth manner with the audience. She also had a great voice, with shades of Portishead’s Beth Gibbons at times. I’ll be interested to see where things go with her performances, as she certainly has a lot of potential, judging by her performance.

The main event of the evening, however, was Haunted Stereo, made up of members Andy, Anja, Dave, Joanna, Kenta and Lewis. They describe themselves on their MySpace page as “melodramatic popular song/folk/indie”, which is immediately intriguing. The band’s lineup changes from song to song, with some songs focusing on traditional guitar and drum sounds, with others bringing the folk angle to the fore with violin and accordion taking centre stage, others still involving banjo, the aforementioned electric ukulele and even a glockenspiel at one point. They’re nothing if not diverse.

But what of the music? Well, their own description, as it turns out, is pretty apt. There’s a definite folky edge to many of the songs thanks to the instrumentation involved and the patterns used in the backings. The melodrama comes mostly from the vocal lines which are simple, subtle and sometimes mournful, rising over the top of the busy backing. The combination of instruments means that although at times the band’s pieces are filled with activity, with violin lines, accordion harmonies, banjo plucking, piano lines, drums and guitar parts all competing for attention, they have a pleasantly clean sound which, should you be that guy who sits there listening analytically until he learns how to hum the most obscure harmony part to a song, will make you very happy.

I was impressed with Haunted Stereo. I have a feeling they’re another band that maybe won’t be to everyone’s taste due to their out-of-the ordinary stylings and instrumentation, but there’s certainly a lot to like. The performers all obviously have great technical ability and versatility, and the songs are all extremely listenable, with more than a touch of Belle and Sebastian to one or two of them. They offer an interesting twist on the “folk rock” genre, artists of which The Hobbit seems to attract like flies (but, err, in a good way) and a sound that, even if it’s not your thing, is nothing if not memorable.

Live music is absolutely not dead. Musicians with genuine creativity, too, are still alive and kicking, and this gig proved that. However, it’s only by stepping outside the comfort zone of the national and commercial radio stations, and the pure banality of the popular music charts, that you find this creativity. What I’ve certainly opened my eyes to over these last couple of visits to The Hobbit is that there’s a lot of very talented musicians out there who have no desire whatsoever to appear on The X-Factor in order to be catapulted to stardom and a career of mediocre, predictable songs. This is a good thing, as my thoughts on commercial crap are well-known and well-documented. Haunted Stereo are anything but commercial, but they have carved out a comfortable niche all of their own and I wish them every success in building their fanbase and being stars of the melodramatic popular song/folk/indie world.

Good music should speak for itself. And it does. I’ve enjoyed some good music recently. You should switch off your radio and join me.

Liveblogging from the bar

Well, here I am again, “here” being The Hobbit, aforementioned little live music-friendly pub, waiting for another group to strut their stuff on the tiny downstairs stage and sipping on a vibrantly radioactive-looking Gandalf as I wait.

I’m here as a result of a very pleasant and courteous Facebook message from Andy of Haunted Stereo who you’ll recall, if you’ll cast your mind and/or your browsers back, was playing The Hobbit the same night as Penny Arcade but I was too full of drinks that look more like toilet cleaner to be able to comment coherently on.

Given that I was asked so pleasantly, and my dubious “research” for the last post (well, hyperlinking the bands in question’s MySpace pages) showed that Haunted Stereo would be a potentially entertaining band to watch, I find myself here at the bar with another glass of Domestos and a chicken-obsessed drunk making “small talk” (which, of course, is anything but) with the poor saps serving drinks.

I am blogging from the bar because I can. At least I’m honest about it. A full report of the gig will follow sometime in the next couple of days (i.e. when I actually have a free moment to write it). Along with a SquadCast.

Rock on!

Penny Arcade Live at the Hobbit

Photography in this post courtesy of Laura Bishop. If you’re reading on Facebook and you can’t see said pictures, click here to see the full article.

So I went out the other night. This is a pretty rare occurrence and worthy of discussion in and of itself but I’m not here to do that. Instead I’m going to be focusing on the gig I went to see – Penny Arcade, live at the Hobbit pub, Southampton, UK. I’m going to say now to all the gamers reading that this post has nothing whatsoever to do with Gabe and Tycho and the nomenclature of the band is a complete coincidence, apparently. Who am I to argue?

Live gigs here in Southampton are often a case of a million people crowding into a tiny pub that can seat about three old men and a dog around the fire, listening to ear-shatteringly loud music whilst downing drinks that look like they’ve been piped directly from the local toxic waste dump to the spigots, served frantically by an underpaid and overworked staff clearly insufficient in numbers to cope with the number of rabid, binge-drinking fans.

The Hobbit is, of course, no exception to this rule, with crowds regularly squeezing into its little downstairs bar (a little larger than the average living room) to listen to some tunes and destroy their brain-cells with the vibrant primary colours of the Lord of the Rings-themed cocktails. Actually, “themed” might be pushing things a bit far, as I don’t remember Gollum having a thing for Bols Blue, though many is the time that consumption of too many Gandalfs has led to a fall into darkness, albeit not accompanied by a big flamey demon thing. (Balrog. I know. Be quiet.) Despite all this, however, the Hobbit remains a popular nightspot with a lot of local acts of a variety of styles from the Southampton area performing there on a regular basis. Plus sometimes there’s a guy who comes around and sells fish. Really.

Penny Arcade, consisting of Alex Burton on guitar, Matt Rampton on vocals/bass and Tom Uplifter on drums, were performing as part of a complete evening’s set including other local performers Andy from Haunted Stereo, and Long Shore Drift. In total, they graced us with six songs, including Straight Through, I’m Not Sleeping, Are We Talking, Jaws of the Enemy, Katie and a work-in-progress song called “Rocket Ship” performed solo by vocalist Matt. Are We Talking and I’m Not Sleeping can both be heard on their MySpace page, if you’re reading this and are curious. You know you are.

Penny Arcade’s sound is a pleasingly smooth guitar-bass-drum combo which, when coupled with the distinctively melancholy sound of Matt’s vocals, is very listenable. The band keeps a deliberately lo-fi sound, with minimal guitar effects being used and repetitive, hypnotic guitar/bass riffs and beats making up the majority of the songs’ backings. Performing with a more “clean” sound and using minimal effects to hide behind can be a challenge for many bands as it often highlights the shortcomings of their own technical abilities, but Penny Arcade manage to perform very tightly together as an ensemble. Their songs have an intimate, personal feel to them, with Matt’s vocal performance style of eyes closed, mouth to the microphone and little in the way of body movement draws the audience in and encourages them to focus on what it is he is singing about throughout. This is a great style to perform in a venue as intimate/cramped (delete as applicable) as The Hobbit – arguably made rather more poignant by consuming just one too many Gandalfs to get one to that “drunken melancholia” stage.

Alex Burton on guitar (photo by Laura Bishop)

Penny Arcade’s style undoubtedly isn’t for everyone. They’re low on flashy glitz and overt showmanship, both in their unassuming physical performance styles and the sound of their music in general, but they’re all the better for it – to me, at least. All three performers look deep in concentration during their performance, which is in keeping with the “personal” feel to the songs, and the whole gig felt like the audience were being let in on some kind of secret. This is the kind of thing that I have a lot of time for, and it’s this kind of feel that keeps people coming to the Hobbit for gigs – however sticky the floor gets, however terrible those vibrantly-coloured cocktails may make you feel the next day, however many sweaty bodies you may be squeezing yourself up against (and not in a good way… usually) – it’s the intimacy of the venue and, by extension, the intimacy of the performances there that works so well. Penny Arcade fit right in, and I hope to see more of them in the future.

Matt Rampton on vocals and bass (photo by Laura Bishop)

As for the other bands? Well, to be honest, I couldn’t comment. Gandalf number three made me fall into darkness.