Calling Four Year Strong fans. Questions?

(Photo: Chris Martin)

 Tonight I will be interviewing the bearded popcore juggernauts that are Four Year Strong for Subba-Cultcha before their only UK headline show on their European tour, at Camden's Electric Ballroom. If anyone has any burning questions for them, then leave them in a comment below or email them to me . Cheers!

A Lesson in Stage Presence: Mayday Parade @ Islington Academy 8.10.10

Derek Sanders & Alex Garcia of Mayday Parade

'Two entries in four days?!', I hear you say. It must be some kind of record. Having started my Newspaper Journalism MA at City University three weeks ago, I've constantly had drilled into me the importance of an active online presence, so here I am, attempting to write something interesting at least once a week and maybe more when times call for it.

While my classmates discuss some of their impressive blogs about current affairs, politics, and even sport (a timeless and honourable pastime), I find myself keeping rather schtum about the fact I like to write about the kind of music more generally favoured by those at least 5 years my junior, for fear of ridicule. However, this is what I know about, and what I enjoy, so better to write something well informed and fun than to drag out some unqualified and half-hearted comment about the inner-workings of North Korea's corrupt pastry industry in the hope that it might result in a smidgen of kudos, when the likelihood is it would result in equal ridicule anyway.

To the point of this entry, anyway. I popped to Islington o2 Academy on Friday evening (8.10.10) to see some of the aforementioned music being performed, as power-popsters The Maine and Mayday Parade played to the packed venue.

Jimmy Gets Old: Invented album review

The obligatory, over-used apology of the not-so-seasoned blogger "it's been a while" tarnishes the screen once more as I begin yet another entry that follows the previous one by at least 2 months. After the last, overly political essay, I thought I'd take this one back to basics with a simple CD review to try and tempt readers back in at a nice accessible level.

The CD in question is the latest release by one of my favourite bands, and one who I’ve gone on record as saying cannot write a bad album. Don’t worry, you won’t get the massive shock of Steve Anderson eating his words here (a very rare event), but I am afraid to say that seeming emo-pop untouchables Jimmy Eat World’s new album Invented (Interscope, released 28.09.10), for me, doesn’t quite cut the mustard in the way some of its predecessors did.

For me, JEW’s musical timeline has seen the Arizona boys go from strength to strength, with an exponential melodic growth between each release, driving the albums forward to poppier and more singalong-laden territory in more recent years. Granted, there was usually the odd track on each record that you couldn’t help feeling was a bit of a filler, but on the whole you could guarantee a quality feel-good, play-loud, experience when blasting out a new JEW album for the first time.

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...

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.