Category: Music

#oneaday Day 625: Communal Listening

I've seen a fair bit of negativity floating around surrounding Spotify's new (optional) integration with Facebook — for those unfamiliar with the changes, Facebook now has a new Music dashboard which broadcasts the details of what you're listening to from services such as Spotify in real time and provides links for other people to go and listen for themselves.

I've seen several people on several social networks decry this as some sort of gross invasion of privacy, but I can't help feeling they're missing the point in a number of different areas.

Firstly, the whole "Facebook privacy" concern thing is something of a moot point when you consider the point of the site — it's a social network designed to let people connect with each other and share things, whether that's a banal status update, what album they're listening to or the fact they unlocked an achievement in The Binding of Isaac. What you share on there is, ultimately, up to you, and if you're worried about your details being online then — there's no simpler way to say this — don't put them online. Facebook doesn't belong to you. It's never claimed to be a private network and, in many ways, locking yourself in a walled garden when using a social network defeats the object somewhat — if you just want to use it with close friends and family then you might as well just use email.

Taking the music thing specifically, Facebook integration is an excellent idea. Consider how we used to consume music in the pre-Internet days. We'd listen to the radio, watch Top of the Pops, talk with our friends. We might have friends over and listen to a particular band's latest album together — we'd certainly talk about it the following day at school, in the office, wherever you happened to be spending most of your time. Buying a new album was an event — these days, music is just "there", it's just something to have on in the background and people don't think twice about buying a track here, a track there without any thought of its context as part of a larger album. As part of this evolution, the whole real-world social aspect of music has been somewhat diminished.

Which is why embracing online socialisation is a good thing. Your personal musical tastes — key word personal — are your own individual thing, and there's very little reason why you shouldn't want to share them with fellow listeners. In fact, Spotify has always been set up to encourage the discovery and sharing of new tracks thanks to its Spotify URLs and ability to share on Facebook, Twitter and other services. The automatic broadcasting of what you're listening to right now is simply an evolution and automation of the process. And, if you're embarrassed about your musical tastes, then you can always turn the facility off.

Facebook is guilty of many things — pointless interface redesigns, a bizarre definition of what "Top News" is, fiddling around with settings behind your back without telling you and gradually building up a near-monopoly on the social Web — but one thing it has always done over the years is do exactly what it set out to do — provide an online social network with which you can communicate and share with your friends. The precise definition of what you can (and what is worth) sharing has changed and grown over the years — but why shouldn't music be a key part of that? And why, if the infrastructure's already there to do so, shouldn't that process be automatic?

You're very welcome to look at my Music page — here it is.

#oneaday Day 607: Musical Memories

In the last couple of places I lived, I didn't have my CDs out, largely due to space issues. They sat quietly in boxes in cupboards waiting to be set free once again. Occasionally I had a sudden urge to rip some to my computer, then once I started the process I realised it took quite a long time, so often gave up rather quickly.

In my new place, though, I've got all my CDs out again. There's some among the collection that I'm not sure I'll ever listen to again, but it's nice to revisit some albums that I've had for many, many years now — particularly those which I got back when I was at school, as these are often the ones that have the strongest memories attached to them.

They're not even specific memories as such — simply memories of a time and a place, not any particularly special events. But I can remember when I got many of these albums and why — in some cases it was a simple matter of buying something that was popular at the time (and in some cases struggling to understand why it was so popular — see: The Verve, Urban Hymns, one of the most tedious albums I've ever listened to), others it was a case of thinking the lead singer was hot, others still it was songs I'd listened to on the radio so many times I was curious to hear what other stuff the artist had come out with and others still beyond that simply just because I was curious.

I wouldn't say that as far as popular music goes I'm particularly "well-read" or whatever the popular music equivalent is. But my CD collection demonstrates an interesting cross-section of mid to late 90s music coupled with a few bits and pieces from the early 21st century — though around this point is when iTunes started to take over, leading to a decline in the number of physical products on the shelf.

In some ways, I can see the point that those people who prefer to still buy CDs have. The digitalisation of music has given it a more "disposable" quality, leading to people putting it on just so they have some noise in the background, not necessarily to appreciate what it is. Putting on a CD, though, kind of implies that you're going to invest some time into listening to the whole thing — even if you're doing something else at the time. This is because, as everyone knows, changing CDs is a massive faff to the lazy person of the 21st century, who wants everything at their fingertips and, preferably, controlled by their mobile phone.

If you've still got a CD collection, though, it's worth taking a moment to dig it out and investigate the treasures it holds within. Sure, there may be some embarrassing things in there, but even those had a part to play in your past. Take a moment, dig out a random pick from your collection, sit down and listen to it. All of it. You might just be surprised at the complexity and thinking that goes into a complete album — or, then again, you might just find yourself wondering why on Earth you own two Spice Girls albums.

#oneaday Day 546: Spot the Music

Hi, Americans. I hope you're enjoying Spotify. As you may be aware, we lucky Brits have had it for some time and have been enjoying its considerable charms. It's great to see you lot get the chance now, too.

Of course, you've had plenty of services like that already available, such as Grooveshark and RDIO. You also get to play with Turntable.fm while we don't, which is a bit of a shame. As such, though, this means that Spotify is having to work a bit harder to impress you — it's working in some cases, others not.

I have a Spotify Premium account — £10 a month for ad-free unlimited playback plus the ability to use the mobile app to stream over 3G (risky given the patchy coverage in most of the UK) and/or download playlists directly to the app for offline listening (much better). Since signing up for it, I don't think I've bought a single thing from iTunes. I haven't needed to. Most of the stuff I'd want to listen to — and plenty I don't — is freely available for me to grab, stick in playlists and listen to at my leisure. There's plenty of music to keep a continuous soundtrack spinning while I do my day's work, and more than enough to set up some decent driving playlists for long journeys.

The service and its software isn't without one or two flaws, of course — you can't search playlists on the mobile apps and the interface is inexplicably the opposite way around to the native iPod app on iOS, meaning you'll find yourself bringing up track information a lot when you actually mean to just close the player screen and get back to the menus. The desktop client's habit of just disappearing and updating itself without telling you it's updating is a little unnerving, too, but at least it keeps itself up to date. (I say that — it's currently attempting to download the latest updater manually and claims that a 5MB file is going to take 16 hours to download.)

But all that aside, what Spotify provides for me has many benefits. Firstly, it's a means of listening to music that I know and love without having to root through iTunes libraries or — in many cases — stacks of CDs that are buried in a cardboard box somewhere. Secondly, it's a means of discovering new music — having listened to an album I like, taking a journey through the "Similar Artists" links is often quite eye-opening. Thirdly, and I can't emphasise how nice this is, it makes having to manually sync an iOS device almost unnecessary, software updates notwithstanding. iOS syncs have a habit of taking at least three times as long as you think they will, particularly if you really need to be somewhere and you suddenly realise you don't have any music on your iPod/have the "wrong" music on your iPod. Spotify's offline sync system isn't the quickest in the world, admittedly, but at least you can do it wirelessly without having to faff around with cables and USB ports and computers. Which is nice.

Spotify, then, is very much a Good Thing. And I'm delighted that I can now share links to tracks and albums with my friends in the US, as well as allow people to subscribe to my playlists. I already noticed that my "dungeon crawling" playlist where I just dumped a whole bunch of metal without really paying much attention to what it is has picked up a subscriber in the form of the fine Chris Whittington — guess I better be careful about what I publish from now on if people are watching! (Damn, no more Lazy Town?)

#oneaday Day 534: Who's Buying the Crap?

I'm pretty sure I already knew this some time ago, but I've come to the not-so-startling conclusion recently that I'm the one buying the crap games and listening to terrible music and enjoying awful films. It's not a conscious decision to be contrary, but I do find myself more willing than some to give creative works that have been somewhat maligned the benefit of the doubt — and more often than not actually end up enjoying them.

The first time I recall this happening was one summer when I was home from university. I got very bored and decided that I was going to go to the cinema by myself, just pick a movie that happened to be on, sit down, watch it and attempt to enjoy it. It was partly borne from a desire to prove wrong the unwritten rule that going to the cinema by yourself is somehow shameful (if it is, why is watching a DVD by yourself OK?) and partly just out of a desire to get out of the house.

The movie I went to see? 2 Fast 2 Furious. It was terrible, of course, but I enjoyed it a great deal. And the reason for this was the fact that I didn't feel "accountable" to anyone — there was no-one with me judging my tastes or making me believe that I should feel a certain way about this piece of entertainment that was bombarding me with nonsense. ("Wow, bro, it's like a ho-asis in here!") Judged entirely on its own merits and on whether or not it performed the function I wanted it to at that specific moment in time — to entertain me without making me have to think too much — it succeeded admirably.

More recently, I found similar joy in Duke Nukem Forever. The thing that annoyed me most about the vitriolic reviews scattered around the web was the fact that all the critics seemed to feel somehow "responsible" for their audience, like they had a moral obligation to dislike it because of its more questionable elements or its rough edges. I played it and enjoyed it — genuinely — and was surprised there weren't a few more people willing to stand up and be counted, saying "look, yes, it is crass, it is rude, it is inappropriate, but for fuck's sake lighten up." But that's by the by — if you found it objectionable, that's your business, but it doesn't make me wrong either.

Most recently, the recent Steam sale encouraged me to pick up Alpha Protocol, a game I've been curious about for some time. Roundly panned on its release for poor AI, questionable game mechanics and outdated graphics, most people seemed to think it was one to pass by. But for three quid I wasn't about to let that happen. So far I've enjoyed it greatly. I don't mind that the shooting and the AI isn't great because I'm not very good at shooters or stealth games. What Alpha Protocol has provided for me so far is a 24-esque espionage plot with action sequences where I at least feel like I'm a badass spy, even if the execution means it's quite difficult to mess things up, from what I can tell. The key thing about the game is its story, and for that, I'm willing to forgive its flaws — some may say too forgiving.

This is a pattern I've continued for as long as I remembered. Back when I bought CDs (oh so many years ago) I tended to purchase music on something of a whim rather than with the charts or peer reactions in mind. I bought things out of curiosity, because I liked the cover art, because I thought the singer was hot. And there's very few of those decisions I regretted, because it gave me the opportunity to experience some things that many other people might never have been exposed to.

I'm cool with that. It gives me interesting things to talk about when people want to know about obscure games, cheesy music or crap films. Everyone knows Halo and Call of Duty are good. But how many people can vouch for the awesomeness of Doom: The Roguelike?

#oneaday Day 524: Live and Let Live

The whole "OMG YOU MUST SEE THEM LIVE" argument has never really washed with me. In my admittedly limited experience of going to gigs, the experience of hearing a beloved band (or, in one case, a beloved band of my friends', and one which I was totally unfamiliar with) performing their best work on stage is infinitely inferior to sitting down, putting their album on your high-falutin' home theatre setup and cranking up the volume.

For one, the people in charge of the mixing desks at all the gigs I've been to felt that the bass should clearly be the highest number, meaning the subtleties of the sound were completely overwhelmed by the WHUBBBB WHUBBB WHUBBBBB of the bass. I know there are people who specifically go in search of music that goes WHUBBBB WHUBBBB WHUBBBB but I'm not sure there's as much crossover with fans of guitar bands as some sound engineers think.

The other thing is all those bloody other people that are milling around blocking your view, bumping into you and spilling your drinks. You may well give the "oh, it's all part of the atmosphere" argument here, but, well, I think we're rapidly establishing that the only kind of atmosphere I'm particularly interested in is one where I can sit in front of the fire with a pipe and listen to some records of the hippity-hop music on my high-fidelity home stereo audio system, preferably with some sort of family-friendly dog or cat sprawled out in front of the fire at the same time.

My attitude towards a lot of live music, I think, is why I've never had any interest whatsoever in going to Glastonbury, Reading or any of the other festivals there are. Living out of a tent? Fine, I could do that. Living out of a tent and sharing limited toilet facilities with approximately eleventy bajillion unwashed hippies smoking the crack? (Well, maybe not all of them smoking the crack. Some of them are shooting up heroin.) No thanks. The toilet facilities on my primary school camping trip terrified me enough to not shit for a week (I wouldn't recommend it — that first shit after a week will 1) be immensely difficult and 2) present you with some of the more unpleasant things that will ever come out of your body) so I shudder to think the effect that Glastonbury would have on my bowels and arse, especially with the quality of the food as it is there.

Perhaps I'm missing the point. I have a feeling that I am, because otherwise that many people wouldn't converge on Glastonbury year after year and see apparently increasingly-mainstream headline acts (I believe Beyoncé is on as I write this) and mutter to themselves about how it "used to be better".

Ah well. Live and let live. They have their field full of mud. I have my pixelated tower block simulators and 2D multiplayer Team-Fortress-2-in-aeroplanes joy Altitude (which I discovered tonight — seriously, it's awesome). I think we're all happy with our lot. Ish, anyway.

(As an aside, can I just say that this weekend has gone by entirely too quickly for my liking and I'd very much like another one, please. That said, this week I'm expecting to be able to share some exciting news, so perhaps it's good that this week is starting imminently.)

#oneaday Day 143: Music Monday: Unfair Reviews Edition

It's been a while since I went through the top songs on Spotify, so I think it's about time we rectified that right now. I'm going to do it with a twist this time, though. Since it's been so long since I listened to the radio or watched any kind of TV with modern pop-type rhythm music in attendance, I'm sure there's a lot of stuff out there that I've never heard before. So I'm going to completely subjectively go off my gut instincts after no more than 30 seconds of each song. I am also going to use no more than three words to discuss each song. And I'm going to sample 23 songs, just to be completely arbitrary. What could possibly go wrong?

From the top, then — I'm using the UK Top Tracks list in Spotify for this. Here goes nothing.

The Lazy Song – Bruno Mars

Bit Jack Johnson.

Party Rock Anthem – LMFAO

Not rock. Crap.

Give Me Everything – Pitbull feat. Ne-Yo, Afrojack & Nayer

Whiny dudes. Synth.

Judas – Lady Gaga

Jude. Arse. Judah-arse-ga-ga.

Beautiful People – Chris Brown feat. Benny Benassi

Dance eJay synth.

Where Them Girls At (Feat. Nicki Minaj & Flo Rida)

Awful. Just awful.

Rolling in the Deep – Adele

Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.

On the Floor – Jennifer Lopez

90s dance nightmare.

Sweat – Snoop Dogg vs. David Guetta

Autotuned single note.

I Need A Dollar – Aloe Blacc

Band costs more.

Buzzin Remix – Explicit Version – Mann

Shut up, Fiddy.

Born This Way – Lady Gaga

Sinister opening. Cheesy.

All Of The Lights – Kanye West

Terrible video. Pretentious.

Just Can't Get Enough – Black Eyed Peas

Please stop autotuning.

The Edge of Glory – Lady Gaga

Racing game start.

Price Tag – Jessie J

Moderately catchy. Kinda.

Skinny Love – Birdy

Nice piano opening.

Make You Feel My Love (album) – Adele

Bit Norah Jonesish.

E.T. (feat. Kanye West) – Katy Perry

Babbling autotuned twat.

E.T. – Katy Perry

Infinitely superior version.

Guilt – Radio Edit – Nero

Song for club.

I Need A Doctor – Dr. Dre

Nice opening. SHOUTING.

Grenade – Bruno Mars

Deceptive title. Whiny.

There we go, then. If, for whatever reason, you want to listen to all this garbage, then feel free to load up this playlist into Spotify.

#oneaday Day 134: Eurovision

I'd say "sorry for the late entry", but looking at the clock it's somehow only 11pm and yet my pissed-up state makes it feel a great deal later, and that going to bed and sleep would be a Very Good Idea right now. In fact, I'd already gone to bed before I realised I hadn't written today's entry, and promptly leapt out of bed to sort out that situation forthwith. Fortunately, my awesome girlfriend Andie has already succumbed to the lure of sleep, so she probably won't notice that I snuck off to write this, at least until tomorrow morning, when she might read it.

The reason I'm so pissed-up is because of the Eurovision song contest. It's been some time since I last watched it, but as I recall, the last few times I watched it also involved a great deal of drinking, even without the use of The Eurovision Drinking Game, the rules of which seem to vary from social group to social group.

Tonight's rules involved drinking whenever you saw someone (not necessarily a lead singer) who was "hot", any time there was a key change (disappointingly infrequent this year) and, as the evening proceeded, a variety of other criteria, including light-up outfits and "if you felt like it".

As I say, it's been a while since I watched Eurovision and the songs on display this year seemed disappointingly short of the usual cheesy nonsense and skirt-ripping usually on display. France, in particular, seemed to be taking the whole thing very seriously, with a quasi-operatic number that seemed completely out of place. I hasten to add we've turned it off before all the voting is over — mostly because the voting goes on for hours and hours and hours but at least partly because of the amount of vodka and Tizer (classy) that has been consumed throughout the course of the evening.

Jedward were on fine form representing Ireland, exhibiting a song which required them to do little more than shout a bit whilst dressed as homosexual space marines while their backing singers did 95% of the work. The UK's entry Blue was rather weak, with some dodgy tuning issues in the solo singing, but some nice harmonies. As usual, there were conspiracy theories about the UK entry's mixing making it appear worse than it was, which I feel is missing the point somewhat — however much we used to enjoy dancing to Blue in Kaos "back in the day", they were never that good really, were they?

Germany's entry was notable for featuring a spectacularly hot lead singer (the same one as last year, I believe, not that I watched it last year) and a song that was actually quite listenable and a bit Portishead-ish. The fact it was quite listenable, however, meant that it was completely inappropriate for Eurovision.

In fact, the whole thing was disappointingly light on eccentricity this year — there was no Norwegian death metal, and only one group featured a unicycle. Maybe next year it'll get back on track.

Also, it's not the same without Wogan.

Anyway. I'm off my face (and surprisingly coherent despite this) so I'm off to bed now. Good night.

#oneaday Day 98: Inappropriate Soundtracks

Music's a powerful tool for emotional manipulation. You can use it to make people laugh, cry, jump, be scared, be excited and get tingly feelings in those hairs on the back of their neck.

You can also misuse it, with varied results, such as this video I made more to test the iPhone's ability to upload directly to YouTube more than anything — hence the crappy picture and sound quality.

Yes, that is indeed Crackdown 2 featuring the Lazy Town soundtrack, a choice which both confused and delighted the YouTube community and has meant that I still get random, sporadic comments on this video to this day.

It… kind of works, though, doesn't it? Happy, bouncy music for a happy, bouncy agent leaping around collecting shiny orbs. Of course, it completely changes the character of the game — but then Crackdown 2 is a game that isn't particularly strong on the narrative front anyway. If anything, it encourages this sort of messing around.

There's certain genres I won't touch with custom soundtracks. RPGs, for example. While RPGs often have repetitive soundtracks that you listen to on repeat for 40-100 hours, for the most part I like to experience them the way the composer intended. It's like a movie; you wouldn't replace the soundtrack from Shawshank Redemption with Kylie Minogue, would you? It would completely undermine the experience. As RPGs tend to be story-heavy, I prefer not to undermine the experience with a custom soundtrack — many of them are more than capable of undermining themselves with ridiculous plot twists, of course.

But driving games are another matter. Ever since the original Xbox launched the custom soundtracks feature, it's pretty rare that I'll play a driving game with the music included on the disc. (This is at least partly because the vast majority of driving game soundtracks are complete garbage, but that's a little beside the point.) I wrote the other day that I wished for a bit more "drama" in my driving games, and that no-one seemed keen to follow through on the idea. What I can do, though, is put ludicrously overdramatic soundtracks over my driving games, producing results like this. Much more epic, I'm sure you'll agree.

Okay, I shamelessly stole the idea to use the Plunkett and Macleane soundtrack from Top Gear, but they used it because it works. Also recommended: Neodämmerung and/or Navras from The Matrix Revolutions, anything from the Shadow of the Colossus soundtrack, anything from the Castlevania soundtracks since Symphony of the Night and… well, anything epic, really.

I suggest you try it next time you fire up a racing game. You'll have much more fun and your races will carry that much more "weight". You can imagine that you're racing to survive or something. (Obviously if you're playing Split/Second, which already has an excellent cinematic soundtrack, you literally are racing to survive in many cases.) You can imagine your own reason for driving shiny cars very fast. If you're the sort of person like me who enjoys driving shiny cars very fast but would prefer it very much if there was a reason beyond "to win", then this approach will sort you right out.

Any recommendations for other games with inappropriate soundtracks? I'm all — wait for it — ears.

#oneaday, Day 38: Angry Jedi

In an attempt to stem the tide of people asking one of the most common questions on the Internet—"how did you get your username?"—I shall set out the story forthwith.

I'm a trained teacher, as some of you may know. This meant I spent an extra year at university following my practically useless but enjoyable English and Music degree studying a PGCE (a PostGraduate Certificate of Education, for those who like to know what their acronyms mean). It was an enjoyable but stressful time, and I was happy to make some good friends during that time, one of whom was my placement buddy for my second in-school assignment.

His name was Owen, and he was a good man that I've sadly fallen out of touch with in recent years, but we had some excellent times. He was also convinced that we were Jay and Silent Bob, an observation that was pretty accurate on so many levels. But that's beside the point: the point is, Owen and I were the original source of Angry Jedi.

You see, sometimes when you get home from teaching practice all you really want to do is get absolutely trashed on cheap rosé and make music from approximately 48 CDs worth of samples. So that's what we regularly did, with extremely entertaining results. We decided that we needed a name for our makeshift band, and decided that the oxymoron "Angry Jedi" was a fitting summation of our respective personalities and the bizarre music we created. Ever since that time, I've taken to using "Angry Jedi" or some variant thereof as my username, as it's 1) a reminder of some very fond memories and 2) a name that no-one else ever appears to have thought of on the Internet… except someone on Xbox LIVE.

On Xbox LIVE, I'm called "sonicfunkstars", which I believe we discussed the other day. "sonicfunkstars" (all lower case, that's important) was a previous makeshift band that consisted of me and, occasionally, my good friends Sam and Edd. There was also a brief dalliance with being "Captain Gaspard and the Snarfriders", but tracks under that name are all on a MiniDisc somewhere (yes! MiniDisc!) and I have no idea where. If I ever find them, you'll be the first to know.

But you don't care about personal history. You want to hear the ridiculous sounds we came out with, of course. All right. Here's a selection of some of our finest moments. iPhone users, as ever, click on the song titles to listen. Everyone else, use the fancypants WordPress flash player thingy.

Bad Influence

This track was composed for two reasons: firstly, to have an excuse to use as many Harry Potter quotes as possible, including the titular "Bad Influence" extract. Secondly, we put it together while we were teaching a unit on "fusion" music at school. As such, there are some fairly diverse ethnic influences throughout the track. It also contains the line "It's knowledge. It's power. It's not a fucking tractor." And, as I recall, we used to find the "ta ta tippy tippy tum na" guy hilarious, though that may have had something to do with the amount of wine consumed.

Baching Mad

When creating this track, we decided it would be amusing to imagine what it would be like if J.S. Bach were having a piano lesson and doing very badly—so badly, in fact, that he ended up breaking his piano. (Let's leave aside the historical inaccuracy of J.S. Bach playing a piano for a moment.) We then followed this by attempting to mix together as many inappropriate pieces of "classical" music as possible with some kickin' beats. See how many you can spot. This is, to date, one of my favourite aural monstrosities. Particularly the key change partway through.

Kick the Dog

I honestly can't remember what twisted path of logic led to the decision that we should create a track based on abusing small yapper-type dogs with a variety of increasingly-gruesome implements punctuated by drum fills performed by chickens. But I'm glad we followed it. Owen's performance of all the verbs he wanted to do to annoying rat-like dogs took several takes, as I recall. There's also a nice bit of Nirvana mixed in there, too. No actual dogs were harmed during the course of this track.

The Guff Rap

No explanation required.

Get Off My Ship Original Mix and Ultimate Mix

These two tracks performed two important functions: firstly, to provide a showcase for PATRICK STEWART, and secondly, to demonstrate the concept of remixing to impressionable sixth formers. Captain Picard gets increasingly frustrated at the people who keep invading his bridge and politely requests they vacate the premises.

The Judas Joint

Our crowning glory: mixing, if I recall correctly, five Judas Priest tracks together and including a break for Meg Ryan to have an orgasm. The evil laugh in this is performed by me. I was pretty impressed with myself.

There are other tracks, some of which don't appear to have survived the move between computers and through time. The most notable absence is a brilliant song called "Today Fucking Sucked", which I don't believe needs any further explanation.

Anyhow. I hope you've enjoyed this window into the life of a trainee teacher, circa 2002-2003. And now you know why I'm called Angry Jedi. It is not because of the somewhat more offensive meaning of the phrase which my friend Amy discovered last year.

If you want to know that one, you can Google it yourself. (It's quite amusing. And/or disgusting. I forget which.)

#oneaday, Day 36: School Bands

The delectable and sexy Mr Alex Cronk-Young came out with this little nugget on Twitter earlier:

(in other news, great job on that Twitter integration, WordPress. Love it. But I digress.)

Ahem. Anyway. Following that statement, I decided it would be a good idea to go back and investigate if the music I listened to back at school actually was shit. Well, actually, I know for a fact that some of it was shit, even back then, but I'm interested to see how it compares to the shit we have today, if you see what I mean.

I've carefully selected ten tracks for your delectation. Those of you who have Spotify can clicky-click the titles to hear them if you've never heard them or can't remember what they sound like.

So here goes! Let's jump in.

Oasis: Rocking Chair

Oasis were huge while I was at school. It was the height of the "Oasis vs Blur" nonsense, which I never quite understood because they were two completely different bands with very different sounds from one another.

Within the Oasis fans, though, there were a few subsets; the people who just bought the albums and listened to their stuff on the radio, and those who thought they were "hardcore" because they'd bought all the singles and thus had access to all the B-sides.

The thing is, though, most of Oasis' B-sides and album tracks were considerably better than the singles they put out. For starters, they didn't always stick to the standard "guitar, bass, drums, vocals" combo that most of their singles did. This track, for instance, includes a bit of subtle organ work (easy there) in the background and as such has a very different sound from a lot of their other work.

Most of the B-sides were just plain better tunes, too. Rocking Chair perhaps wasn't the best of them, but it's certainly one that I'm fond of, and less well-known than the now overly-played The Masterplan.

Alanis Morissette: You Oughta Know

Jagged Little Pill was the second ever album I bought. I'm not entirely sure why I bought it, because Alanis Morissette was on local radio on the school bus pretty much every single day and I wasn't entirely sure that I liked her voice.

I was pleasantly surprised by the album, though. There was a lot of very obvious angst throughout, particularly in this track. She swore, too, which made it A Bit Rebellious.

Now obviously I wasn't an angry young Canadian woman in my teens, so I perhaps couldn't relate to this album on a particularly personal level. But she wrote some decent tunes and had a distinctive sound of her own. More to the point, these songs still hold up pretty well today.

The Verve: Lucky Man

The Verve were one of those groups that I picked up the album for after much deliberation. I wasn't entirely convinced that the singles I'd heard on the radio were quite what I was looking for, and once I'd picked up the album I still wasn't convinced that they were actually any good.

This track stuck out, though. It may have been due to my friend Craig's incessant insistence that we try and learn how to play it in the school's music practice rooms every lunchtime—that and most of Oasis' B-sides, some of which we actually did a respectable job of—but, besides the over-over-overplayed Bitter Sweet Symphony (which still gets rolled out on TV promos today) this was one that seemed to be tuneful and memorable.

Listening to it now, it's a bit dull and morose, but it is better than the rest of the album.

Spice Girls: 2 Become 1

Too many guitars! Need more crap and cheese! (That sounds like the worst party ever.)

The Spice Girls were overproduced rubbish who couldn't sing live. They were supposedly "hot", but I found their aesthetic appeal somewhat questionable. Victoria Adams (now Beckham, of course) was too skinny and moody-looking. Emma Bunton looked a bit… I don't know, odd. It was unfashionable to find Mel C attractive and she had pikey trousers (but would go on to be by far the best solo artist) and Mel B was just too frightening and weird to find in any way hot.

That left Geri, of course, who was ginger at the time, and thus made anyone judging her to be the "hottest" feel a little conflicted thanks to the age-old ginger stigma—something else I never quite understood.

Also, this song made us giggle at the time when we all determined that it was about fucking. It's really not subtle. At all.

The Cardigans: Sick & Tired

I actually didn't own a Cardigans album until much, much later, but this track was on a dodgy compilation CD called "Essential Indie" (the rest of which was utter shit, as I recall) which I got free with my Discman. I remember thinking that I liked the combination of Nina Persson's sweet, girly voice and the unusual inclusion of flute and bassoon in the backing instruments.

Turns out I still do like all those things. What do you know.

Bernard Butler: Not Alone

Bernard Butler's People Move On is another album that I don't remember why I bought. I also remember thinking that the vast majority of it was dirge-like, boring crap. This track, though, had energy and "power" behind it, and I enjoyed listening to it, even if the rest of the album was dirge-like boring crap.

Still sounds all right today. I like the strings. I'm a big fan of string parts in guitar bands generally.

James: Laid

Ah, actually, I think this one was also on "Essential Indie". It's also another song about fucking.

I was a bit torn on whether I liked James or not; "Sit Down" was one of those tracks that was played so often on the radio and TV that you felt a bit dirty liking anything that was associated with it. But this was a decent enough song, even though it doesn't really go anywhere and has way too much falsetto.

No, actually, it's not that great at all. Fuck James.

Britney Spears: I Will Be There

Time for more cheesy crap! Britney hit the bigtime while we were still at school and I found myself liking her cheesy bullshit despite myself—even without taking that video (which, for the record, no-one was quite sure if they were supposed to find sexy or pervy) into account.

I've chosen this track to prove that I have indeed listened to her whole album. I also quite liked the fact that Metropolis Street Racer spoofed this particular song quite nicely on its excellent, completely original soundtrack.

Mansun: Stripper Vicar

Mansun were weird. Their album Attack of the Grey Lantern appeared to contain some sort of rudimentary conceptual storyline, until the bonus track told everyone otherwise.

This track pretty much summed it up. A song about a vicar who wears plastic trousers and gets away with stripping, who then dies.

It's still pretty bewildering to listen to today, to be honest. Decent album, though—worth a listen.

Radiohead: Exit Music (For A Film)

This is the most depressing piece of music of all time, without question. It's not as if OK Computer was a particularly uplifting album at the best of times, but for this track to show its miserable, suicidal face just four songs into the disc pretty much made it clear that if you were going to listen to this album all the way through, you were in for a Rough Ride.

It's still a profoundly affecting track today, full of whiny miserable emotion and dodgy vocal synthesis in the backing. It's difficult to know what is the "right mood" to listen to this track, because if you listen to it while feeling miserable, it sure isn't going to help. But this song could bring a candy convention in Happyland to its knees, too.

Basically, it's a great song but no-one should listen to it if they want to smile ever again.

There you go. A super-uplifting playlist for your Saturday night, circa 1999. Enjoy.