Should be doing journalism work but couldn't resist...

Just a quick one, really.

I'm completely snowed under with work at the moment, so this has been a little neglected, but I promise I'll pick it up again very soon when I find something of importance to write about. I'm loving the new Relient K album, so maybe a review of that will be coming your way at some point.

But in the meantime, in true procrastinating student style, and in the wake of my Top 50 of the 00s feature, I decided to create a new Spotify playlist.

I tried to put one track from each of the albums in the playlist, but unfortunately Spotify didn't host all of them, so it falls short by six tracks or so. By the same problem, some tracks are live versions or are those appearing on compilations.

Anyway, you can hear my playlist here.

Give it a listen and enjoy! Hopefully it will open your ears up to some fantastic artists, both old and new.

Catch you on the flipside...

Full Collapse (of a fan base): Thursday and Rise Against @ Cardiff University 22.11.09

On Sunday night I braved the torrential rain and nigh-on hurricane-force winds hurtling across the M4,and filling my sturdy little Punto with unsupecting friends, travelled to Cardiff to see Thursday support Rise Against at the city's University. I mention Thursday first, as this is who I was really there to see, and despite it being labelled a Rise Against show on the ticket, I'd somehow got into my head that it was one of those 'joint headliner' dealios, where bands of equal stature tour together and share the top of the bill. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Here's a little account of the show for those who'd care to know about it....

Top of the Pop(punk)s: Albums of the Decade

It has been said in the past by some of my more critical friends that I've not got the most eclectic of musical tastes, and to a degree they do have a point. I was caught up in the alternative rock wave that washed over us in the early noughties, when the likes of Blink-182, The Offspring and Green Day were starting to make appearences within mainstream media. At this time nearly all of my friends and I shared musical tastes ranging from the poppy punk of Blink and Green Day to the horribly embarrassing nu-metal of Limp Bizkit and Papa Roach. This stayed the same for a number of years, as we generally veered away from the awful middle-class white boys rapping over horrid dirging guitars and got more into the melodic stylings of American pop-punk and eventually, dare I say it, 'emo'.
However, as we got older, it was clear that to some of us this was merely a phase and people moved on with their tastes and began to explore more diverse avenues, while others steered back towards the mainstream. This wasn't the case with me though, as I continually threw myself back into pop-punk and emo, always listening out for the 'next big thing' or discovering an obscure, well-kept secret.
This is not to say that I didn't and don't listen to and enjoy other kinds of music, it's just that my feet have well and truly stayed rooted in the same area and I think they always will.
A lot of my friends say that I need to grow up and listen to 'real' music, but I don't really understand what this means. This comes from people who listen to slow pounding beats interspersed with a selection of electronic blips which to me qualifies as music about as much as the mind-numbing din of a pneumatic drill.

The beginning....

So I'm studying English and Media, and getting rather intrigued by all this online journalism malarkey, so thought it would be a good idea to start one of these things. I'm not sure if I intend for it even to be read by anyone yet - it's mainly here to just get me to start writing.

At this stage, I'll use this primarily to discuss music (be it CD reviews, live reviews, or opinion pieces), however I'm sure I will later branch out and use it as a general venting space.

I've no idea who'll read this, but I'll leave it here for now and come back when I feel I have something worthwhile to write about.

Catch you on the flipside....