I’ve raved a lot recently about just how much new music I’ve discovered and listened to on Spotify during my long hours spent in the office.
But while I have had a number of these discoveries played more than once, there have been some I have been not only moved to desire to buy, but moved to actually buy.
An Excerpt from the Life of Somebody Vaguely Associated With RDZ.
I’ve mentioned Kilbirnie before; he is somewhat of a legend, an almost mythic figure in this area of the blogosphere. But he does indeed exist, and he thinks he has what it takes to be a staff writer for the Excerpts.
The problem I have with this is that it sets a dangerous precedent. If Kilbirnie gets GBlog1, then who will get GBlog2? And 3? Soon, any old riff-raff will be posting here…
Let us allow his first entry speak for itself: his review of a recent Meatloaf concert.
Oh, A-ha, why did you have to produce your best album since Scoundrel Days only to so cruelly tear yourselves away? You didn’t even come to Scotland for the Foot of the Mountain tour last year, and yet you surely would have sold out just as this year’s finale did (and well in advance).
Oh, A-ha. I love you, but it seems ours is a love that is doomed to languish in the past…
It’s not often that a band who are consistently brilliant live manage to surpass themselves; but regardless of the logistics of how they managed it, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark delivered a stellar performance on Tuesday the 2nd at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, in aid of their new album History of Modern.
My legs hurt. My arms hurt. My damn midriff hurts. These, however, are the hallmarks of an absolutely bangin’ night.
With holidays taken so that I could prepare in style by listening to their entire back catalogue, the evening couldn’t come soon enough. A proper concert is one of the few things in my life I can actually get properly excited about.
Some of you might have heard that I’ve finally achieved a real job. Maybe you’ll even be distressed because I’m not working very much on things like Project Y4, due to being out from half seven in the morning until six at night.
The thing about slaving away at a computer all day is that I don’t have access to my CD collection. Since the ‘done thing’ appears to be to make use of Spotify to while away the 7.5-hour working day (and, let’s face it, somebody else is paying for the internet connection), I’ve been taking this opportunity to discover all the strange music I’ve never been able to find in the shops (or have been wary of purchasing)…
Yesterday I turned 22. Yesterday I bought the extended and remastered versions of A-ha’s first two albums, Hunting High and Low and Scoundrel Days with some gift money.
The selection of unreleased material is absolutely jaw-dropping incredible.
My life just got a little more complete.
The Beautiful South are described, in the promotional literature, as a “Great British Pop Institution”. Now, I’m not convinced that is a flattering thing to say, since establishment types tend to be pretty dull.
But when your parents offer you a free concert, and you are of the mind that live music is (in fact) live music, it would be churlish to refuse.
I visited kylie.com a while back for… no reason, really. Some part of my body clock registered that “it’s probably time for her next album, right?”
I was greeted by a five-second loop from the song All the Lovers. Surprisingly not a vocal segment (her being a vocalist and all), but the sweetest synthesiser this side of the lead on Kraftwerk’s Kometenmelodie 2.
Naturally, I was sold.
