Monday 28th November 2005
Song: Fightstar - Waste A Moment (Acoustic)
For the attention of bored people: Click here for a big picture. In this picture, there are 75 bands. Your job is to identify them.
As a hint to get you going, incase that doesn't really make sense, look at the cart on the left. Sitting on that, is "Guns and Roses".
Go have fun! Get your friends in on it too. There's quite a broad range of genres on there, so it kind'a needs a lot of people.
Friday 25th November 2005
Song: Fightstar - Until Then
Went to see Fightstar on Wednesday night... was very good indeed. I'm not sure if I'm just getting old, but it seemed *too* loud. When the support band (Prego) came on, I stopped for a second and thought, "is that Fightstar?". It didn't really look like them, but it sort if did also... then when mr singer started talking he sounded identical to Charlie, but I was still pretty sure it wasn't him. Not only did he have the really deep voice, but he also spoke in the same way. Hard to explain, really... anyway. It wasn't Fightstar, obviously. This fact was cemented when mr singer said he couldn't afford a new guitar. They weren't bad though, not too incredible either. To be fair though, I don't think Fightstar are amazingly standout-ish either. Anyway... It wasn't until the train ride home that I learned that Prego are infact lead by Edd Simpson. The third of the Simpson boys to get a band together. Suddenly it all made sense! I remember reading about Edd a while back in an interview with Will Simpson (from Brigade), and he was saying that Edd was trying to get a band together. I guess it's only a matter of time before we see a "Simpson Tour" (The Simpsons?). Prego, Brigade and Fightstar all in one night.
Anyway... Fightstar were as good as expected. Unfortunately I do think Charlie will *never* drop the Busted association, but there you go. Nothing can be done about that. The set was pretty good. My only complaint was that they opened with my favourite song, Lost Like Tears In Rain (the title sounds very emo). The reason I wasn't happy with this was that I'd not been to a gig in ages and so hadn't really got into the swing of it, and the enthusiasm and stuff wasn't there yet. Paint Your Target was pretty good, with the crowd singing along. :)
I guess I should really mentioned James Bourne here... From Bob's blog, I found this.
Quotes that Bob said were his favourites, and I agree: "We could have milked it for another year and still gone out with a bang". And then: "We missed out on a fortune, millions of pounds each. Matt and I were devastated.".
I also saw young Mr Bourne on London Tonight last night. It seemed like nothing more than promo for Son Of Dork, really... but he did deny having any harsh feelings towards Charlie saying something like, why should anyone carry on doing what they don't enjoy doing? Nice one James. Grow some balls, and make your mind up.
I don't doubt that Son Of Dork will have some success, riding on the success of Busted. But I'd bet a lot of money that they call it a day before Fightstar do. If for no other reason, than James clearly needs to be famous and always in the spotlight, whereas Charlie wants to be a musician.
I'm still quite looking forward to seeing what Matt can do now he's out of rehab. I'm sure I've said it before, but it'd be cool if he could manage a Robbie. I think he'll need to find his Angels before it really takes off, like Robbie. But I really think he could do it. I think he's got the charm, and confidence. We'll see...
Friday 18th November 2005
Song: Supersuckers - Psyched Out
ooh! I forgot to mention the main excitement. I bought a TV card for my computer last weekend. Not just any TV card though, oh no... I can now get all the Freeview (!) channels on my computer in a delicious high resolution, clear picture. Sound is pretty good, too... This means unfortunately that I'll be watching a lot more TV than I used to. The good news though is that I no longer need to strain my neck when watching TV and using the computer at the same time... They're on the same screen!
The DVD I mentioned on the last update was The Corrs' latest. It was from the tour (not the show, unfortunately) that I saw them on. So the setlist was more or less the same, which was cool. Sadly it wasn't the best DVD of theirs, I thought. But still not bad by any means. Angel was outstanding, as those with a good memory (and interest) will rememebr I particularly praised when I saw them. It was actually a two disk thing. One disk is the entire show (in DTS, mm), and the other is a loooong documentary. I'm not sure how long, to be fair, but it is very long. This is of course a very good thing, on the whole. But it did make me a bit later to bed than I wanted to be, and I only got half way through. I'm so used to 10 minute documentaries that are stuck on DVDs or maybe 30 minutes on VH1. This one at a guess is probably about 90 minutes or more. Very detailed though, pretty cool. Some amusing video clips from when they were young. The girls all looked like tragic 80s goths, which was quite amusing. Not at all suprising, in a way though. They've always seemed fairly "alternative" to me... though that might just me. On that note, quite oddly it looked like Caroline was wearing a latex skirt on one of their earlier videos. They've never been strangers to leather skirts... but this was very small and very shiny.
I'm sort of expecting the Corrs as a band to be no more. Whether or not they'll ever make an official announcement, I don't know. But it seems like a good place for them to end here. They're over the peak of their fame (though they always seemed to be in it for the music, not the fame). Two of them are married with kids, an other seems to be persuing an acting career, and the other one is the bloke who always gets overlooked in absolutely every article about them, heh. Poor Jim.
Thursday 17th November 2005
Song: System Of A Down - Jet Pilot
Well it's been a while since I've updated this... A couple of things have happened lately which haven't been too much fun, and I've not really had anything that I want to write about which I'm also legally allowed to write about...
Update on the Sony thing: Sony are evil... or something. The story with them and their crazy frisbees is getting more weird everyday. There's now been two bits of copyrighted code found in them, unlawfully of course. Lots of people seem to be suing them now. Hopefully some good will come of this. Though I kind'a fear that they'll do the Microsoft thing of pay out a lot of money and continue being bastards.
I've always been known for being cheap... Never really made much effort to challenge this. Even since I've been in full time work, I've not really been spending much more. This is why it came as a bit of a shock lately, when I started buying stuff! First, the new Mac OS X, a small switch (computer thing), two CDs, then a DVD (a two disk one!), a poster, *and* half of a car exhaust. (Don't worry, it's not a crappy modification to make noise. My old one had holes in it.) I'm out of control! Who knows what I'll buy next.
In other news, I've started losing lots of games of pool at work. This saddens me.
Thursday 3rd November 2005
I recently bought a CD online. What it didn't tell me on the website was that it wasn't really a CD. It was a DRM encrusted frisbee piece of shit thing. As per the standard procedure with one of these things, I'm having to make MP3s of it before I'm able listen to it. It really is stupid.
On this subject, though I doubt many care (though you seriously should), Sony have recently recieved some negative press for releasing a DRM encrusted hunk of shit, except this DRM software was basically a rootkit (or something). To put it in simple terms: it basically installed itself on your computer, putting itself in places that it shouldn't be, and then hiding itself. Any attempts to remove this software from your computer resulted in you no longer being able to use your CD ROM drive. It simply doesn't appear in your "My Computer" anymore.
Whatever you do, do not buy a CD from Sony or BMG. As time goes on I have no doubt that the list of people to not buy CDs from will grow. Hmmph.
Tuesday 1st November 2005
Everyone download and listen to this. It's quite amusing. The really cheesy voice I think is the only reason it's quite so funny.