I have put off writing in my blog for far too long, despite the fact i've had quite a lot of free time recently, now that my exams have finished, since three weeks ago. I have still been going to college though, as we are supposedly starting studying for our A2 exams next year, this is far from what has occurred.
For most of the time I have been at college for the last few weeks, it's been way too relaxed for it to be beneficial in the long run. There has been a minimal amount of homework set, which makes up for a fairly major amount of learning time, and the worst part is the lack of encouragement by the teachers, they aren't too bothered how you interact in the lessons or even if you skip lessons.
However some lessons have been useful, for instance in my english literature classes we have begun looking at gothic literature, which is the topic we are studying for A2. We have not properly started on the texts yet, but have been looking at the traditions of the genre. This is mainly because they know we will forget a lot of what we learn over these last few weeks of term-time, so therefore do not properly start teaching us. This applies to all lessons I have had really.
I could go on for a while detailing what has happened at college, but frankly it's not very interesting either to read or write, so i'm going to move on from that topic.
I find the main irritating part of this gap between exams and the summer holidays is that it's a compromise. I understand why they have chosen to be so relaxed about these last few weeks, because most people would be very unhappy were they to put us straight back into the standard college routine, and I would too. However it would still be a good use of time.
On the other hand, they could have chosen to end really early, which I wouldn't be complaining about. I just find it so annoying how they use up time in such a bad way, that could be used as quality relaxation time, or good work time.
I finish next friday though, so it will soon be over for the summer!
I feel I should fill in on what has been happening lately due to my lack of writing. College has been taking up most of my time, but in between that I have been attempting to regain my social life after a month or more of abstaining from meeting friends, to give me time to attempt to get down to revision. That's been my aim at least, last weekend was the only actual time I managed to meet people, because the previous weekend I went to a university open day at Bournemouth. It was my first day, and I looked around mainly to get an insight into the course I am interested. I also went to an exhibition the next friday, where the finishing students were displaying their work and I found this more of an insight to the course than the open day, so I am glad that I dropped by.
Other than this open day, last weekend I went to a friends 16th birthday party and had a great time. It was a great party, I stayed awake for most of the night, and only slept around 7 in the morning for a couple of hours. Some parts of the party were a little surprising, the main thing being that nothing went wrong and there were about 25 or so people there, which in my mind, can easily spell disaster.
I also went into town and met a bunch of different friends on thursday which was great, as I had a catchup with some people that I haven't seen for a fair while. The only complaint I had about this day was that I had to go back to college today!
Seeing as I wrote this partially because of how long ago I last posted on here, this has been very disorganized, so hopefully if I can get back into a routine (which I should do seeing as I have the time now!) I will make my writing a little more organized.
Saturday, 29 June 2013
Friday, 31 May 2013
Exams
I haven't written in a long time. It's bad I know, especially considering my aim to put out at least one post a week, but i've been busy so haven't really put the time into blogging lately, despite the massive amount of things I could have written about.
I've been busy with my AS level exams. They aren't over yet, but i've had most of them by now, over the last two weeks. Half term just started today, and then I am going to have 3 more exams the next week, so soon I will begin to start writing more regularly!
I've had 6 exams so far. In the first week, the only exams I had were maths ones; a retake of an exam I took in january and another maths exam that I had been studying for since january. The retake didn't go too well, I hopefully did better than the last time (which I failed) but after that, when I began to prepare for the next maths exam that friday, I found that I had focused too much on the retake and done too little work towards the other maths exam. I tried my best to prepare myself, but it didn't really work out in the end. I attempted something along the lines of 35/72 marks on the paper, which is not at all good..
But I stayed completely calm during this exam, which was a miracle, considering I was going absolutely crazy in the retake!
This exam pretty much sealed my fate in terms of how well i'd do in maths. I thought maybe at most i'll pass with an E (the lowest pass there is at A level), but that's only if i'm lucky..
However, the worst for maths was still to come, the next friday.
That afternoon, I also had my only english exam. This did not go too well. I don't think I've outright failed it, partially because of the coursework I have done, but still, it went badly. The main problem was that I wrote too little. I typed (I can type because my handwriting is that poor, which is brilliant!) about a page and a half worth of words, which is terrible; I should have done roughly 2 and a half pages as a minimum. In terms of results, all I can do is wait, and hope.
After this week of exams, I then had to start revising for next weeks set of exams. There was General Studies, the chemistry retake that I was doing as I got a low grade in the January exam, and statistics.
General studies, cannot really be 'revised' and there is not much point in the actual exam, so that was no sweat off my brow. It wasn't too bad though, and I feel i've got an okay grade in it. The reason that there isn't a point in the exam is that most, if not all universities don't even take one look at it or even allow it to be used for UCAS points. In fact, a lot of the time, one of the first things you will find on their application form is: "General Studies is not accepted as a qualification" or something along those lines.
So that was a pointless exam, but the minimal amount of classes we had (1 hour a week) were interesting at times, as one of the sections we were studying for the exam was politics, which has never been of much interest to me, so it was good to get a look into a subject like that, which I will most likely never touch on again.
The next exam was the chemistry retake. This I was fairly worried about, not to the extent about the maths exam I had the previous friday, but still fairly uncertain how well I would do. In the end, I focused my revision on chemistry entirely and I feel that the work really paid off. I think the exam went fairly well and if I manage to do alright in the upcoming exam I hopefully should be able to continue it next year at A2 with a decent grade!
I am feeling quite worried about these three upcoming exams though, due to how close they are to each other. One ICT exam is on the monday that I go back, then the next day is my second Chemistry exam, then the final ICT exam is on thursday. The main thing I think i'm most likely worried about though is being prepared, which means doing quite a lot of work over the next few days.
The thing i've found is that i've spared the time to revise, by not going out much at all, except for a party on wednesday, but despite sparing the time, i've still found plenty of ways to distract myself..but I guess that's just the nature of procrastination; you'll do anything to keep yourself from doing the necessary work.
I've been busy with my AS level exams. They aren't over yet, but i've had most of them by now, over the last two weeks. Half term just started today, and then I am going to have 3 more exams the next week, so soon I will begin to start writing more regularly!
I've had 6 exams so far. In the first week, the only exams I had were maths ones; a retake of an exam I took in january and another maths exam that I had been studying for since january. The retake didn't go too well, I hopefully did better than the last time (which I failed) but after that, when I began to prepare for the next maths exam that friday, I found that I had focused too much on the retake and done too little work towards the other maths exam. I tried my best to prepare myself, but it didn't really work out in the end. I attempted something along the lines of 35/72 marks on the paper, which is not at all good..
But I stayed completely calm during this exam, which was a miracle, considering I was going absolutely crazy in the retake!
This exam pretty much sealed my fate in terms of how well i'd do in maths. I thought maybe at most i'll pass with an E (the lowest pass there is at A level), but that's only if i'm lucky..
However, the worst for maths was still to come, the next friday.
That afternoon, I also had my only english exam. This did not go too well. I don't think I've outright failed it, partially because of the coursework I have done, but still, it went badly. The main problem was that I wrote too little. I typed (I can type because my handwriting is that poor, which is brilliant!) about a page and a half worth of words, which is terrible; I should have done roughly 2 and a half pages as a minimum. In terms of results, all I can do is wait, and hope.
After this week of exams, I then had to start revising for next weeks set of exams. There was General Studies, the chemistry retake that I was doing as I got a low grade in the January exam, and statistics.
General studies, cannot really be 'revised' and there is not much point in the actual exam, so that was no sweat off my brow. It wasn't too bad though, and I feel i've got an okay grade in it. The reason that there isn't a point in the exam is that most, if not all universities don't even take one look at it or even allow it to be used for UCAS points. In fact, a lot of the time, one of the first things you will find on their application form is: "General Studies is not accepted as a qualification" or something along those lines.
So that was a pointless exam, but the minimal amount of classes we had (1 hour a week) were interesting at times, as one of the sections we were studying for the exam was politics, which has never been of much interest to me, so it was good to get a look into a subject like that, which I will most likely never touch on again.
The next exam was the chemistry retake. This I was fairly worried about, not to the extent about the maths exam I had the previous friday, but still fairly uncertain how well I would do. In the end, I focused my revision on chemistry entirely and I feel that the work really paid off. I think the exam went fairly well and if I manage to do alright in the upcoming exam I hopefully should be able to continue it next year at A2 with a decent grade!
I am feeling quite worried about these three upcoming exams though, due to how close they are to each other. One ICT exam is on the monday that I go back, then the next day is my second Chemistry exam, then the final ICT exam is on thursday. The main thing I think i'm most likely worried about though is being prepared, which means doing quite a lot of work over the next few days.
The thing i've found is that i've spared the time to revise, by not going out much at all, except for a party on wednesday, but despite sparing the time, i've still found plenty of ways to distract myself..but I guess that's just the nature of procrastination; you'll do anything to keep yourself from doing the necessary work.
Tuesday, 16 April 2013
Gig week (part 2)
Last thursday night (11.04.2013) I went to Bristol for the other gig of this week. It was at 'The Fleece', a 450 capacity venue that is about the size of a large pub. A notable thing about it is that there are pillars dotted around the room and there is no barrier at the stage.
In comparison to the previous gig, I managed to get a fair few pictures, which is good to be able to look back upon!
I went to it with a friend from my last school, the girl I (still) have feelings for and her younger sister.
The gig was not all that I expected it to be; both disappointing and brilliant! This is because there were some things that were amazing and some other things that made me really mad. This post is probably going to be even longer than the one about the last gig, as I have so much to say about it.
I should start the post off by describing the bands that played. There were five on the line up: Buried In Verona, Attila, Obey The Brave, Chelsea Grin and Emmure.
The first band on the line up, was Buried In Verona.
For me, they were one of the bands that I mainly came to see, and were also the band that I would say I knew their music most, despite the fact that I've seen seen Emmure live before. They are a metalcore band from Australia that have been together since 2007, however still have a fairly small fanbase in comparison to the other bands playing. They were the most technical band that played, as all the other bands played simpler music.
As the door opening time had been shifted forward by half an hour, they played early. We missed the first song they played because there was a queue for the lockers to store bags, but due to the size of the venue we could hear the song quite clearly down the corridor. We gave up with putting our bags away and instead dumped them down in a corner and headed towards the stage. We caught the four other the songs that they played and I sung along to every word. I think that occasionally their vocalist looked at me and recognised that I was singing along to all their songs which I was thrilled about!
I was a little disappointed by their set however, I wish they played more than five songs. I was also surprised by the fact they only played songs off their latest album, which is a shame as there are some great ones on their first album. Their set over all was brilliant. As most of the crowd didn't get into the band, most people were towards the back of the venue, so there weren't too many people up at the front which meant that I could get very close to the stage!
Unsurprisingly, there were no mosh pits for their set, as usually bands that open don't get a good crowd reaction, even at much larger venues. However, this was not the only reason; it was also because of hardcore dancers.
There are two types of hardcore dancers at shows such as this: ones out to have fun, and people out there to hurt people as much as possible and ruin the night for everyone. Hardcore dancing is fairly hard to describe, so I am going to include a link to a youtube link that explains it:
This video explains what I just mentioned about those hardcore dancers that go just to ruin the night and purposefully hurt people. In this video it isn't too bad as there is a lot of space, but if they are at a venue as small as the one I went to, they are a real pain (no pun intended).
They were the only real problem I had with the gig, it was pretty good otherwise. For the entire gig, there was always an empty circle in front of the stage where nobody ventured into because the hardcore dancers used that as their space. I found myself so angry at them at some points, but by the time the 4th band were playing, things improved and people started to mosh more, despite the fact that the hardcore dancers were still there.
I loved the set they played, as I said earlier, it was only 5 songs and all ones off their new album, but still they played so well live and had such a great stage presence! I must admit that I did find myself fangirling over them after they performed..which was a bit of a shock for me. I enjoyed their music a lot before the gig, but I think that their performance just amazed me so much. It made me very happy to see their frontman, Brett Anderson coming down the corridor as I lined up to put my bag away. He was wondering where the toilets were so I pointed him in the right direction and congratulated him on the good set they played. I was absolutely ecstatic after this encounter!
We in fact saw him again after the gig, when they were packing their gear away into a transit van that was stacked high with all sorts of cases and boxes. We talked to him about them for a bit and before we went, I told him about my fangirling. Before you think anything, I feel no embarassment.
I think the best pictures I took during the gig are of Buried in Verona, probably because my phone's camera lens wasn't steamed up yet. I will include some of the best that I took on this post:
I will also include youtube links to some of the songs they played:
Attlia were the second band that played. They were pretty terrible for such a popular band. I had very low hopes for them before the gig and they performed my expectation. Their intro was appallingly cheesy but their first song was bearable. After that it was just utterly boring, so I went into the smoking area and waited for them to finish playing with my friends. I won't waste any more time writing about them and go straight on to writing about the next band on the line up instead.
The 3rd band that played were Obey the Brave. They are a hardcore band from Montreal in the USA. They are a fairly new band, mostly made of ex members of other fairly well known bands, some still active, some split. I didn't know the band as well as I did any of the other bands (excluding Attila), but I knew a fair few of the songs off their only album. They played a fairly good set, they started pretty well for the first couple of songs but about half way through something changed and the vocals were cut out mostly by the guitars, and the lead guitarist was overpowered by the rhythm guitarist. This was a shame as they sounded pretty good and from what I had heard on album, they aren't at all a bad band. From the lyrics of the songs that I know, I can see that they aren't the greatest band lyrically however they are still quite interesting to listen to.
By this time, the circle was still there, but people started to get more into the music and went into the circle a bit to mosh. I went in for a while as I was just so fed up with the hardcore dancers so I thought I would get my own back on them. I squared up to one of them and as I approached them they smacked me properly hard so I lost my temper and swung a punch at their head, which was at a perfect height because they were looking down at the floor while flailing their arms about like a maniac. I missed the punch sadly, which is a shame as I expect it would have connected perfectly. While we were at the front during their set, one of the hardcore dancers in the circle roundhouse kicked two of my friends (girls) in the back and one of them went to the side, out of the way; This just added to my rage. I stood in front of the sister after this event, as I was certainly was not letting this happen to them again. I didn't feel any kicks to the back, but if I had, I would most certainly have gone straight after them into the circle and got some revenge.
I got a fair few pictures from their set, not as good as the ones of Buried in Verona but not as good quality ones:
My friend and her sister with the Bassist from Obey The Brave
Here are a couple of links to some of the songs they played:
Chelsea Grin were the 4th band to play. They are a Deathcore band from Utah in the USA, and have been together as a band since 2007. I wouldn't say i'm a massive fan of them, but I enjoy listening to their music and I would see them again live, but not as headliners.
Like Attila, they were also a band I didn't have too high hopes for, but they surpassed this expectation by far! My main concern was that their vocals would be worse live than they are in recording and i'm not a particular fan of their vocals on their albums. I mostly listen to them for their instrumental parts rather than their vocals.
They sounded over all pretty good live, the vocals were in fact better than they are in recording, with the minor detail that they used pre-recorded cleans, and the music was brilliant. Their albums sound quite heavy as it is, when played at a decent volume, but they sounded even heavier live, and retained their cleaner high gain guitar tones during parts of songs that incorporated things such as sweep picking. I found that I enjoyed them most when I knew the song that they were playing.
Their stage presence was also pretty good, getting the crowd moving a fair bit and encouraging the crowd to sing along, without taking too many breaks from singing to allow the crowd to fill the gaps. It seemed that people also went into the circle a little bit more, so from here on, the pit wasn't so dominated by the hardcore dancers. I joined in for a bit and had fun, I took a fairly hefty knock to the nose at one point and expected to get a nosebleed but surprisingly I didn't. One of the people at the edge of the circle held me back after a little while and said 'dude stop'. This is probably because I was stepping out of my league as there were still a lot of hardcore dancers around and I was doing my upmost to sort them out within reason. This probably would have ended badly for me which is why he stopped me, so instead I moved towards the stage to watch them play. Even without the moshing, it was still good to listen to them play live, which was a little surprising, as one of the main things I was looking forward to about their set was the mosh pit that would occur.
When I wandered down the corridor towards the lockers to deposit something before they began playing, I saw their vocalist! I was a surprised by this, but I decided not to say anything to him, just in case they turned out to be crap live.
I didn't manage to take very many good photos of them as by now my phone's camera lens was fairly fugged up and blurring was also a major problem considering how their music contains so many breakdowns.
Here are a couple of youtube links to some of the songs they played and a live video from the night:
This is a video of them playing 'Recreant' on the night. The video quality isn't of particularly good audio quality and I would say the vocals could certainly be given more justice live. This video however, does show the heaviness of the music they played though.
The headliners were Emmure. They are also a Deathcore band from New York. They have been going considerably longer than any of the other bands that played, as they first started in 2003.
They are fairly disliked by many people, partially because of the genre of music they play, their lyrical themes and their lack of musicality in comparison to other metal bands. While I agree with these points that people make, I still enjoy the band. They are not overly serious in the themes they have, but they don't have a bad stage presence and aren't cringe worthy. They do however have serious songs and played one particular song at the gig. It is called 'MDMA' and is I would say this is one of my favorite songs by them and I was shocked to hear them playing it, as they never play it live! This made me very happy due to the meaning it has to me, the lyrics really touch me, as I find they link into my feelings for my friend, as for a long while I have been trying to get over them.
Despite the fact i've known them for a fair while now, and have seen them live before, I didn't know so many of the songs they played, this however did not deduct from my enjoyment of their set.
Their set got a little crazier as you would expect of the headlining act. There was still that circle, which irritated the hell out of me, but it's one of those things you just have to deal with. People around us started a few very small mosh pits at points, but mainly everyone was just always jumping and singing along.
Joining in with this caused my phone to fall out of my pocket, not to my knowledge..my friend held up my phone and looked at me as if to say "is this yours?" I took it from her and checked it. It was thankfully still in full working order; it seems I got lucky. Talking to some other people after the gig, I found them saying that a couple of them had lost their phone, most likely stolen though. This will make me think twice about bringing a phone to a gig again, as I thought it would be fine considering it was a small venue. But if such a thing were to happen at a larger gig, my phone would be lost forever, along with the photos I took with it.
We met Franki Palmeri, their vocalist after the gig which was cool, my friends got his autograph signed on their arms and I took a picture of them with him. He actually seems to be a really nice guy in comparison to the way he acts on stage presence, which with this genre of music, isn't particularly to be expected.
I took some images of their set, in between the jumping and moshing. Some photos were pretty blurred due to the amount they moved about on stage.
This is my friend and her sister with Franki Palmeri, the vocalist of Emmure
Here are a couple of the songs they played during their set that night:
This is a video of them playing at the gig. It isn't one of the best songs they played, but the audio quality is pretty good on this video so it provides a good example of what they were like live.
In fact, this video was shot very close to where we were standing, right by the closest pillar to the camera.
Over all, this was brilliant gig. I found at first I was thinking it was the worst gig I will be the worst gig i've been to, but my perceptions changed as it went on, due to the way that all the bands performed. This was still the worst gig i've been to yet in terms of the atmosphere however, but that is only a minor thing; gigs are about music.
During the gig, when I looked at the merch stall I found that none of the shirts appealed to, so I thought i'd leave getting merch till another gig, but then I saw a poster. It was a signed one of Buried in Verona. When I saw the price tag I thought that I must get it; it was only £5, cheaper than most posters brought off the internet!
I looked up some of their t-shirts on the internet and found one that I like a lot so I decided to buy that too. Hopefully it should arrive in the next couple of days!
This is the poster!
This is the T-shirt I have ordered
The journey wasn't too bad, as we took a train down there and then later on my dad picked us up and drove us home, as trains only run till 11 usually. The train journey was fine, we just chilled out and listened to music in preparation for the gig, but the price of it was far from alright. As we left at a peak time (16.40) it cost me £20 for a single, when it would have cost half that price an hour earlier or after.
My friend from my last school lives in bristol so he did not have a massive journey to get home, but he left the gig early anyway, as he had an exam the next day. It was sad, as he missed most of Emmure's set, but he at least heard a couple of their songs and he has also seen them live, at the same gig that I saw them at. Luckily, the exam he had the next day was not a knowledge based exam; it was a practical photography exam so being tired wouldn't be too much of a problem!
During the car journey back, we didn't sleep at all which was unsurprising, we were all too hyper. So I decided to put on some post-gig music, including some of the tracks that some bands did not play that night. Luckily my dad has a similar music taste to me, and enjoys a lot of the metal that I listen to quite a bit, so playing this music was not a problem at all for him.
After we dropped my friends off at their house, we drove home. I stayed up for a while as I just wasn't feeling tired at all. By the time I woke up the next day, I found my ears were still ringing quite a lot and this didn't fade till that evening, which shows how loud the gig was.
When comparing the previous gig to this one, I find it quite an odd fact how I ached and felt quite worn out by this one yet after the Enter Shikari gig, I felt absolutely fine the next day, where as most people I knew were talking about hurting in one or place or another. It makes no sense, as in terms of the mosh pits the Enter Shikari gig was much more action packed compared to the one in Bristol...odd eh?
Buried in Verona setlist:
Maybe Next Time/The Descent/Forget What You Know/Perceptions/Four Years
Obey the Brave setlist:
Lifestyle/It Starts Today/Self Made/Garde la Tete Froide/Grim/Get Real/Early Graves/Live and Learn
Chelsea Grin setlist:
The Foolish One/Cheyne Stokes/Lilith/My Damnation/Confession/Crewcabanger/Don't Ask Don't Tell/Recrant
Emmure setlist:
4 Poisons 3 Words/Solar Flare Homicide/Protoman/Sound Wave Superior/Sunday Bacon/I thought You Met Telly and Turned Me Into Casper/Demons with Ryu/Cross Over Attack/Drug Dealer Friend/Dogs Get Put Down/R2Deepthroat/Children of Cybertron/10 Signs You Should Leave/MDMA/When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong/Chicago's Finest
In comparison to the previous gig, I managed to get a fair few pictures, which is good to be able to look back upon!
I went to it with a friend from my last school, the girl I (still) have feelings for and her younger sister.
The gig was not all that I expected it to be; both disappointing and brilliant! This is because there were some things that were amazing and some other things that made me really mad. This post is probably going to be even longer than the one about the last gig, as I have so much to say about it.
I should start the post off by describing the bands that played. There were five on the line up: Buried In Verona, Attila, Obey The Brave, Chelsea Grin and Emmure.
The first band on the line up, was Buried In Verona.
For me, they were one of the bands that I mainly came to see, and were also the band that I would say I knew their music most, despite the fact that I've seen seen Emmure live before. They are a metalcore band from Australia that have been together since 2007, however still have a fairly small fanbase in comparison to the other bands playing. They were the most technical band that played, as all the other bands played simpler music.
As the door opening time had been shifted forward by half an hour, they played early. We missed the first song they played because there was a queue for the lockers to store bags, but due to the size of the venue we could hear the song quite clearly down the corridor. We gave up with putting our bags away and instead dumped them down in a corner and headed towards the stage. We caught the four other the songs that they played and I sung along to every word. I think that occasionally their vocalist looked at me and recognised that I was singing along to all their songs which I was thrilled about!
I was a little disappointed by their set however, I wish they played more than five songs. I was also surprised by the fact they only played songs off their latest album, which is a shame as there are some great ones on their first album. Their set over all was brilliant. As most of the crowd didn't get into the band, most people were towards the back of the venue, so there weren't too many people up at the front which meant that I could get very close to the stage!
Unsurprisingly, there were no mosh pits for their set, as usually bands that open don't get a good crowd reaction, even at much larger venues. However, this was not the only reason; it was also because of hardcore dancers.
There are two types of hardcore dancers at shows such as this: ones out to have fun, and people out there to hurt people as much as possible and ruin the night for everyone. Hardcore dancing is fairly hard to describe, so I am going to include a link to a youtube link that explains it:
They were the only real problem I had with the gig, it was pretty good otherwise. For the entire gig, there was always an empty circle in front of the stage where nobody ventured into because the hardcore dancers used that as their space. I found myself so angry at them at some points, but by the time the 4th band were playing, things improved and people started to mosh more, despite the fact that the hardcore dancers were still there.
I loved the set they played, as I said earlier, it was only 5 songs and all ones off their new album, but still they played so well live and had such a great stage presence! I must admit that I did find myself fangirling over them after they performed..which was a bit of a shock for me. I enjoyed their music a lot before the gig, but I think that their performance just amazed me so much. It made me very happy to see their frontman, Brett Anderson coming down the corridor as I lined up to put my bag away. He was wondering where the toilets were so I pointed him in the right direction and congratulated him on the good set they played. I was absolutely ecstatic after this encounter!
We in fact saw him again after the gig, when they were packing their gear away into a transit van that was stacked high with all sorts of cases and boxes. We talked to him about them for a bit and before we went, I told him about my fangirling. Before you think anything, I feel no embarassment.
I think the best pictures I took during the gig are of Buried in Verona, probably because my phone's camera lens wasn't steamed up yet. I will include some of the best that I took on this post:
I will also include youtube links to some of the songs they played:
Attlia were the second band that played. They were pretty terrible for such a popular band. I had very low hopes for them before the gig and they performed my expectation. Their intro was appallingly cheesy but their first song was bearable. After that it was just utterly boring, so I went into the smoking area and waited for them to finish playing with my friends. I won't waste any more time writing about them and go straight on to writing about the next band on the line up instead.
The 3rd band that played were Obey the Brave. They are a hardcore band from Montreal in the USA. They are a fairly new band, mostly made of ex members of other fairly well known bands, some still active, some split. I didn't know the band as well as I did any of the other bands (excluding Attila), but I knew a fair few of the songs off their only album. They played a fairly good set, they started pretty well for the first couple of songs but about half way through something changed and the vocals were cut out mostly by the guitars, and the lead guitarist was overpowered by the rhythm guitarist. This was a shame as they sounded pretty good and from what I had heard on album, they aren't at all a bad band. From the lyrics of the songs that I know, I can see that they aren't the greatest band lyrically however they are still quite interesting to listen to.
By this time, the circle was still there, but people started to get more into the music and went into the circle a bit to mosh. I went in for a while as I was just so fed up with the hardcore dancers so I thought I would get my own back on them. I squared up to one of them and as I approached them they smacked me properly hard so I lost my temper and swung a punch at their head, which was at a perfect height because they were looking down at the floor while flailing their arms about like a maniac. I missed the punch sadly, which is a shame as I expect it would have connected perfectly. While we were at the front during their set, one of the hardcore dancers in the circle roundhouse kicked two of my friends (girls) in the back and one of them went to the side, out of the way; This just added to my rage. I stood in front of the sister after this event, as I was certainly was not letting this happen to them again. I didn't feel any kicks to the back, but if I had, I would most certainly have gone straight after them into the circle and got some revenge.
I got a fair few pictures from their set, not as good as the ones of Buried in Verona but not as good quality ones:
Here are a couple of links to some of the songs they played:
Chelsea Grin were the 4th band to play. They are a Deathcore band from Utah in the USA, and have been together as a band since 2007. I wouldn't say i'm a massive fan of them, but I enjoy listening to their music and I would see them again live, but not as headliners.
Like Attila, they were also a band I didn't have too high hopes for, but they surpassed this expectation by far! My main concern was that their vocals would be worse live than they are in recording and i'm not a particular fan of their vocals on their albums. I mostly listen to them for their instrumental parts rather than their vocals.
They sounded over all pretty good live, the vocals were in fact better than they are in recording, with the minor detail that they used pre-recorded cleans, and the music was brilliant. Their albums sound quite heavy as it is, when played at a decent volume, but they sounded even heavier live, and retained their cleaner high gain guitar tones during parts of songs that incorporated things such as sweep picking. I found that I enjoyed them most when I knew the song that they were playing.
Their stage presence was also pretty good, getting the crowd moving a fair bit and encouraging the crowd to sing along, without taking too many breaks from singing to allow the crowd to fill the gaps. It seemed that people also went into the circle a little bit more, so from here on, the pit wasn't so dominated by the hardcore dancers. I joined in for a bit and had fun, I took a fairly hefty knock to the nose at one point and expected to get a nosebleed but surprisingly I didn't. One of the people at the edge of the circle held me back after a little while and said 'dude stop'. This is probably because I was stepping out of my league as there were still a lot of hardcore dancers around and I was doing my upmost to sort them out within reason. This probably would have ended badly for me which is why he stopped me, so instead I moved towards the stage to watch them play. Even without the moshing, it was still good to listen to them play live, which was a little surprising, as one of the main things I was looking forward to about their set was the mosh pit that would occur.
When I wandered down the corridor towards the lockers to deposit something before they began playing, I saw their vocalist! I was a surprised by this, but I decided not to say anything to him, just in case they turned out to be crap live.
I didn't manage to take very many good photos of them as by now my phone's camera lens was fairly fugged up and blurring was also a major problem considering how their music contains so many breakdowns.
Here are a couple of youtube links to some of the songs they played and a live video from the night:
The headliners were Emmure. They are also a Deathcore band from New York. They have been going considerably longer than any of the other bands that played, as they first started in 2003.
They are fairly disliked by many people, partially because of the genre of music they play, their lyrical themes and their lack of musicality in comparison to other metal bands. While I agree with these points that people make, I still enjoy the band. They are not overly serious in the themes they have, but they don't have a bad stage presence and aren't cringe worthy. They do however have serious songs and played one particular song at the gig. It is called 'MDMA' and is I would say this is one of my favorite songs by them and I was shocked to hear them playing it, as they never play it live! This made me very happy due to the meaning it has to me, the lyrics really touch me, as I find they link into my feelings for my friend, as for a long while I have been trying to get over them.
Despite the fact i've known them for a fair while now, and have seen them live before, I didn't know so many of the songs they played, this however did not deduct from my enjoyment of their set.
Their set got a little crazier as you would expect of the headlining act. There was still that circle, which irritated the hell out of me, but it's one of those things you just have to deal with. People around us started a few very small mosh pits at points, but mainly everyone was just always jumping and singing along.
Joining in with this caused my phone to fall out of my pocket, not to my knowledge..my friend held up my phone and looked at me as if to say "is this yours?" I took it from her and checked it. It was thankfully still in full working order; it seems I got lucky. Talking to some other people after the gig, I found them saying that a couple of them had lost their phone, most likely stolen though. This will make me think twice about bringing a phone to a gig again, as I thought it would be fine considering it was a small venue. But if such a thing were to happen at a larger gig, my phone would be lost forever, along with the photos I took with it.
We met Franki Palmeri, their vocalist after the gig which was cool, my friends got his autograph signed on their arms and I took a picture of them with him. He actually seems to be a really nice guy in comparison to the way he acts on stage presence, which with this genre of music, isn't particularly to be expected.
I took some images of their set, in between the jumping and moshing. Some photos were pretty blurred due to the amount they moved about on stage.
Here are a couple of the songs they played during their set that night:
In fact, this video was shot very close to where we were standing, right by the closest pillar to the camera.
Over all, this was brilliant gig. I found at first I was thinking it was the worst gig I will be the worst gig i've been to, but my perceptions changed as it went on, due to the way that all the bands performed. This was still the worst gig i've been to yet in terms of the atmosphere however, but that is only a minor thing; gigs are about music.
During the gig, when I looked at the merch stall I found that none of the shirts appealed to, so I thought i'd leave getting merch till another gig, but then I saw a poster. It was a signed one of Buried in Verona. When I saw the price tag I thought that I must get it; it was only £5, cheaper than most posters brought off the internet!
I looked up some of their t-shirts on the internet and found one that I like a lot so I decided to buy that too. Hopefully it should arrive in the next couple of days!
The journey wasn't too bad, as we took a train down there and then later on my dad picked us up and drove us home, as trains only run till 11 usually. The train journey was fine, we just chilled out and listened to music in preparation for the gig, but the price of it was far from alright. As we left at a peak time (16.40) it cost me £20 for a single, when it would have cost half that price an hour earlier or after.
My friend from my last school lives in bristol so he did not have a massive journey to get home, but he left the gig early anyway, as he had an exam the next day. It was sad, as he missed most of Emmure's set, but he at least heard a couple of their songs and he has also seen them live, at the same gig that I saw them at. Luckily, the exam he had the next day was not a knowledge based exam; it was a practical photography exam so being tired wouldn't be too much of a problem!
During the car journey back, we didn't sleep at all which was unsurprising, we were all too hyper. So I decided to put on some post-gig music, including some of the tracks that some bands did not play that night. Luckily my dad has a similar music taste to me, and enjoys a lot of the metal that I listen to quite a bit, so playing this music was not a problem at all for him.
After we dropped my friends off at their house, we drove home. I stayed up for a while as I just wasn't feeling tired at all. By the time I woke up the next day, I found my ears were still ringing quite a lot and this didn't fade till that evening, which shows how loud the gig was.
When comparing the previous gig to this one, I find it quite an odd fact how I ached and felt quite worn out by this one yet after the Enter Shikari gig, I felt absolutely fine the next day, where as most people I knew were talking about hurting in one or place or another. It makes no sense, as in terms of the mosh pits the Enter Shikari gig was much more action packed compared to the one in Bristol...odd eh?
Buried in Verona setlist:
Maybe Next Time/The Descent/Forget What You Know/Perceptions/Four Years
Obey the Brave setlist:
Lifestyle/It Starts Today/Self Made/Garde la Tete Froide/Grim/Get Real/Early Graves/Live and Learn
Chelsea Grin setlist:
The Foolish One/Cheyne Stokes/Lilith/My Damnation/Confession/Crewcabanger/Don't Ask Don't Tell/Recrant
Emmure setlist:
4 Poisons 3 Words/Solar Flare Homicide/Protoman/Sound Wave Superior/Sunday Bacon/I thought You Met Telly and Turned Me Into Casper/Demons with Ryu/Cross Over Attack/Drug Dealer Friend/Dogs Get Put Down/R2Deepthroat/Children of Cybertron/10 Signs You Should Leave/MDMA/When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong/Chicago's Finest
Thursday, 11 April 2013
Gig week (part 1)
As the title suggests, gigs will be the topic. I am splitting the posts up into describing each individual gig because of the sheer length of the posts. I was aiming to put them as one long post in the first place, but I now realise that that would definitely be possible, by the fact that i've used up so much space already only describing one gig.
Last night (09.04.2013) I went to see the first out of two gigs that I am seeing this week. It was a local gig, in the town I live in. However the bands were not at all local though; the headliner was Enter Shikari, and the support acts were Hacktivist and Tu Amore. They are still UK based bands, but Sadly, I didn't manage to get any photos of the gig, but I was a little too busy for most of it anyway.
I'll start describing the gig by talking about Tu Amore, the smallest (popularity wise) band.
They define themselves as an "alternate soul rock" band, but if i'm honest that means nothing to me, so I would simply describe them as an alternate rock band. On their facebook page, they have a grand total of 1879 likes..which is makes it so surprising that they made their way onto supporting a tour with such well known names playing.
They played extremely well, and the sound was well set up, so over all they were great, good stage presence, good sound quality and great vocals! They really did get the crowd going as well, which is great for an opening band, usually the audience don't get moving at all for an opener. I saved my energy however for the two other bands, which was probably a good idea considering how knackered I was at the end!
I haven't written as much about them as I have for the other bands, because I don't know them as well as the other two bands.
Here are youtube links to a couple of their songs that they played (music videos, not live performances):
The second band, Hacktvist were also pretty good.
They are also a fairly small band, however much more well known than Tu Amore. They are a djent-rap band (if you don't understand the term 'djent' basically listen to the band meshuggah, that will explain it). They have been together about 2 years, the same as Tu Amore and have managed to get a fairly large fanbase in that space of time.
The music drowned out the vocals a little at some points, which was a shame, however in the end, I think that the music rather than vocals was what got a lot of the crowd going. While I am talking about vocals, i should probably also mention about their clean vocals. I have a feeling that they used prerecorded samples for their cleans which was a bit of a disappointment, as from what i've seen on youtube, they are pretty good live.
Even though the crowd went fairly crazy for Tu Amore, I feel that when Hacktivist started playing the crowd in general began to get properly stuck in. This is probably because Tu Amore had been announced fairly late as support acts so not that many people knew about it, but still that does also make the reaction they got fairly impressive.
Soon, things really began to heat up in the mosh pits and from then, the crowd was constantly moving about. One of the crowd's favorite songs was their cover of Kanye West's 'Niggers in paris'. While it isn't their best song, and i'm not particularly into rap music, this was pretty good live. Partially because of the crowds reaction, people really seemed to get moving for this song, and in the end even if the music you're listening to isn't that great, a good ol' mosh is still enjoyable!
One of the coolest things I saw in the crowd during Hacktivist's set was a particular individual. They were a fairly a short adult, not to the extent that they were the same height as Warwick Davis, but still very short in comparison to everyone else at the gig. I saw them in the pits for most of the set and also for Enter Shikari's set so I feel they did pretty well in my eyes. The outstanding thing however, was when he, probably the most vulnerable person in the pit was splitting the crowd apart for the next pit to start and waiting in the middle for everyone to crash into the circle! Hats off to that man.
Considering how long they have been around, as far as I know they only have 7 songs recorded to date, so I found their set lasted a surprisingly long time! It may have been the fact that they had about a half an hour interval which was pushing it a bit...but it was due to technical difficulties so it's forgivable.
I managed to get a picture with one the lead singers (they have 2 lead vocalists) at the end of the gig which is pretty cool. I shall put the picture up later on in this post.
Here are some links to a couple of the songs they played (again, recordings, not live):
I shall now talk about the headliners, Enter Shikari!
They are very well known band by now, much more so than either Tu Amore or Hacktivist. They first started as a band back in 2003. The genre of music they produce is very much debatable, as they cross over the boundaries of various genres. I mean on their facebook page the first thing on their info page is this statement "abusing music's worthless genre boundaries since 2003"..to describe them fairly simply and inaccurately, I would say their music is a mix of hardcore and rave style music.
They performed exceedingly well, better than I expected. I was thinking they would be far from bad, however from some of the live videos i've seen on youtube, the lead singer Rou has sometimes doesn't do such a great job. This was definitely not the case last night though, they were great, and had such a great stage presence! On the subject, at one point, when their bassist threw his bass in the air as a stage trick..it landed square on his forehead and caused a slight break in the music due to getting the cut cleaned up! But they soon began playing again which was good.
Obviously, as they were the headliners, everyone went crazy for them because that was who they came to see. One of my favorite things during their set was the crowd interaction during the song 'sorry you're not a winner'. It's only a couple of well timed claps..but when almost everyone in a 800+ crowd, it sounds amazing. Another great moment was a break they did before going into the song 'mothership'. They played the first few notes of it, but then mixed it up and it sounded brilliant. Then they went straight into the song and everyone loved it! Other great thing that they did was when they played one of their older songs live for the first time, called 'all eyes on the saint'. This was great to hear live, it was a nice surprise!
At points I was a little disappointed in myself, as some of the older songs I didn't know very well at all, which I think is a shame considering that they were the headlining band..I still knew most of the songs they played, even if I was too busy moshing most of the time to sing!
Here are some of the songs they played, and some videos that people took during their set!
This is them playing 'Sorry you're not a winner' last night
This is a video of them performing live a back in 2012. It has 'motherstep' in it, the break that they did before playing mothership. It starts at 4.15 and the song before it is Destabilise, which they also played live. I think they did better live last night than they did in this video.
These were the two songs they opened with
Over all, this was one of the best gigs i've been to so far! (I know, that's one of those lines you'll repeat many times to the point where it has no meaning). However it definitely does not beat the one I went to see last November, when I saw Structures, The Word Alive, Emmure and Parkway Drive, which I would say is the best gig so far.
One of the great things about it was that it was a local gig. This meant that I didn't have to spend a amount of money on travel and also because of the people I knew that were ridiculous going. A simple way of describing this would be to there were about 30 or so faces that I recognised there, and probably about a few more than 20 that i'm friends with. This made the pits quite fun to be in, occasionally sighting friends to compete with. I also love the fact that I have so many people that I can discuss it with.
The atmosphere there was also surprisingly good, considering it was a fairly local gig, with most people coming from my town and the surrounding areas. People seemed quite kind and considerate, which wasn't expected; I expected it to a be a 'no mercy' gig. One great thing I liked was the female interaction that I witnessed. From what I saw, many girls got stuck into the mosh pits which was great! The pits were still male dominant, but that is a common thing. In terms of females and mosh pits, I was glad that they got stuck in mainly because it meant that there weren't really any fangirls that had come to a gig that was too much for them to handle.
This is a picture of me with J Hurley, the vocalist from Hacktivist. It is an appallingly bad photo of me, but it just illustrates how mental the pits were. If your thinking that my hair looks so bad because I poured water over myself to wash or cool down, you're wrong; It's pure sweat!
I didn't receive too many bruises or other injuries, mostly just a load of marks on my chest, back and arms, which in a sense I find a little disappointing, considering most of my friends were saying how sore they felt the next day. This is probably a good thing as I have an even crazier gig soon!
It may help as it showed me how much energy I need to conserve as to not be too tired for the headliners at the next gig. Mainly because i've seen them live before and I know that the crowds will be beyond crazy. A simple way of explaining it would be to describe their set as a constant mosh pit.
At the end of the show I decided to buy an Enter Shikari t-shirt. Over the past few gigs i've been to I usually brought a tee, but only if I actually liked the top, not just for the sake of getting a gig top. This is a the shirt I decided to buy:
Hacktivist setlist:
Hacktivist/Blades/Elevate/Unlike Us/Niggas In Paris/Cold Shoulders
Enter Shikari setlist:
System.../...Meltdown/Sssnakepit/Sorry You're Not a Winner/Gandhi Mate, Gandhi/The Feast/Anything Can Happen in the Next Half Hour/The Paddington Frisk/Destabilise/Havoc B/All Eyes on the Saint/Arguing With Thermometers/Unite/Mothership
encore:
Return to Energiser/Zzzonked
Last night (09.04.2013) I went to see the first out of two gigs that I am seeing this week. It was a local gig, in the town I live in. However the bands were not at all local though; the headliner was Enter Shikari, and the support acts were Hacktivist and Tu Amore. They are still UK based bands, but Sadly, I didn't manage to get any photos of the gig, but I was a little too busy for most of it anyway.
I'll start describing the gig by talking about Tu Amore, the smallest (popularity wise) band.
They define themselves as an "alternate soul rock" band, but if i'm honest that means nothing to me, so I would simply describe them as an alternate rock band. On their facebook page, they have a grand total of 1879 likes..which is makes it so surprising that they made their way onto supporting a tour with such well known names playing.
They played extremely well, and the sound was well set up, so over all they were great, good stage presence, good sound quality and great vocals! They really did get the crowd going as well, which is great for an opening band, usually the audience don't get moving at all for an opener. I saved my energy however for the two other bands, which was probably a good idea considering how knackered I was at the end!
I haven't written as much about them as I have for the other bands, because I don't know them as well as the other two bands.
Here are youtube links to a couple of their songs that they played (music videos, not live performances):
The second band, Hacktvist were also pretty good.
They are also a fairly small band, however much more well known than Tu Amore. They are a djent-rap band (if you don't understand the term 'djent' basically listen to the band meshuggah, that will explain it). They have been together about 2 years, the same as Tu Amore and have managed to get a fairly large fanbase in that space of time.
The music drowned out the vocals a little at some points, which was a shame, however in the end, I think that the music rather than vocals was what got a lot of the crowd going. While I am talking about vocals, i should probably also mention about their clean vocals. I have a feeling that they used prerecorded samples for their cleans which was a bit of a disappointment, as from what i've seen on youtube, they are pretty good live.
Even though the crowd went fairly crazy for Tu Amore, I feel that when Hacktivist started playing the crowd in general began to get properly stuck in. This is probably because Tu Amore had been announced fairly late as support acts so not that many people knew about it, but still that does also make the reaction they got fairly impressive.
Soon, things really began to heat up in the mosh pits and from then, the crowd was constantly moving about. One of the crowd's favorite songs was their cover of Kanye West's 'Niggers in paris'. While it isn't their best song, and i'm not particularly into rap music, this was pretty good live. Partially because of the crowds reaction, people really seemed to get moving for this song, and in the end even if the music you're listening to isn't that great, a good ol' mosh is still enjoyable!
One of the coolest things I saw in the crowd during Hacktivist's set was a particular individual. They were a fairly a short adult, not to the extent that they were the same height as Warwick Davis, but still very short in comparison to everyone else at the gig. I saw them in the pits for most of the set and also for Enter Shikari's set so I feel they did pretty well in my eyes. The outstanding thing however, was when he, probably the most vulnerable person in the pit was splitting the crowd apart for the next pit to start and waiting in the middle for everyone to crash into the circle! Hats off to that man.
Considering how long they have been around, as far as I know they only have 7 songs recorded to date, so I found their set lasted a surprisingly long time! It may have been the fact that they had about a half an hour interval which was pushing it a bit...but it was due to technical difficulties so it's forgivable.
I managed to get a picture with one the lead singers (they have 2 lead vocalists) at the end of the gig which is pretty cool. I shall put the picture up later on in this post.
Here are some links to a couple of the songs they played (again, recordings, not live):
I shall now talk about the headliners, Enter Shikari!
They are very well known band by now, much more so than either Tu Amore or Hacktivist. They first started as a band back in 2003. The genre of music they produce is very much debatable, as they cross over the boundaries of various genres. I mean on their facebook page the first thing on their info page is this statement "abusing music's worthless genre boundaries since 2003"..to describe them fairly simply and inaccurately, I would say their music is a mix of hardcore and rave style music.
They performed exceedingly well, better than I expected. I was thinking they would be far from bad, however from some of the live videos i've seen on youtube, the lead singer Rou has sometimes doesn't do such a great job. This was definitely not the case last night though, they were great, and had such a great stage presence! On the subject, at one point, when their bassist threw his bass in the air as a stage trick..it landed square on his forehead and caused a slight break in the music due to getting the cut cleaned up! But they soon began playing again which was good.
Obviously, as they were the headliners, everyone went crazy for them because that was who they came to see. One of my favorite things during their set was the crowd interaction during the song 'sorry you're not a winner'. It's only a couple of well timed claps..but when almost everyone in a 800+ crowd, it sounds amazing. Another great moment was a break they did before going into the song 'mothership'. They played the first few notes of it, but then mixed it up and it sounded brilliant. Then they went straight into the song and everyone loved it! Other great thing that they did was when they played one of their older songs live for the first time, called 'all eyes on the saint'. This was great to hear live, it was a nice surprise!
At points I was a little disappointed in myself, as some of the older songs I didn't know very well at all, which I think is a shame considering that they were the headlining band..I still knew most of the songs they played, even if I was too busy moshing most of the time to sing!
Here are some of the songs they played, and some videos that people took during their set!
Over all, this was one of the best gigs i've been to so far! (I know, that's one of those lines you'll repeat many times to the point where it has no meaning). However it definitely does not beat the one I went to see last November, when I saw Structures, The Word Alive, Emmure and Parkway Drive, which I would say is the best gig so far.
One of the great things about it was that it was a local gig. This meant that I didn't have to spend a amount of money on travel and also because of the people I knew that were ridiculous going. A simple way of describing this would be to there were about 30 or so faces that I recognised there, and probably about a few more than 20 that i'm friends with. This made the pits quite fun to be in, occasionally sighting friends to compete with. I also love the fact that I have so many people that I can discuss it with.
The atmosphere there was also surprisingly good, considering it was a fairly local gig, with most people coming from my town and the surrounding areas. People seemed quite kind and considerate, which wasn't expected; I expected it to a be a 'no mercy' gig. One great thing I liked was the female interaction that I witnessed. From what I saw, many girls got stuck into the mosh pits which was great! The pits were still male dominant, but that is a common thing. In terms of females and mosh pits, I was glad that they got stuck in mainly because it meant that there weren't really any fangirls that had come to a gig that was too much for them to handle.
I didn't receive too many bruises or other injuries, mostly just a load of marks on my chest, back and arms, which in a sense I find a little disappointing, considering most of my friends were saying how sore they felt the next day. This is probably a good thing as I have an even crazier gig soon!
It may help as it showed me how much energy I need to conserve as to not be too tired for the headliners at the next gig. Mainly because i've seen them live before and I know that the crowds will be beyond crazy. A simple way of explaining it would be to describe their set as a constant mosh pit.
At the end of the show I decided to buy an Enter Shikari t-shirt. Over the past few gigs i've been to I usually brought a tee, but only if I actually liked the top, not just for the sake of getting a gig top. This is a the shirt I decided to buy:
Hacktivist setlist:
Hacktivist/Blades/Elevate/Unlike Us/Niggas In Paris/Cold Shoulders
Enter Shikari setlist:
System.../...Meltdown/Sssnakepit/Sorry You're Not a Winner/Gandhi Mate, Gandhi/The Feast/Anything Can Happen in the Next Half Hour/The Paddington Frisk/Destabilise/Havoc B/All Eyes on the Saint/Arguing With Thermometers/Unite/Mothership
encore:
Return to Energiser/Zzzonked
Sunday, 31 March 2013
Unstructured
I'm late. Missed my weekly blog post by two days so I feel that I should get writing! I have no idea what to write about so I think the topic will come as I write..
I'm now in the Easter holidays. We broke up a couple of days ago on Thursday. On that day, we had a half day, so we finished at 12. A friend of mine had organised a trip out to a curryhouse nearby the school for lunch so I went there with about 15 other people from my college. I had a good meal there, but I think in terms of spice, I overshot the mark. I chanced a lamb madras, which as I expected..would be a little to hot. This isn't to say I didn't like the food though, it was a pretty decent curry and I just powered through it. There was some funny banter that occurred during that meal, most if it involving me. As this was a 'lads' curry lunch, it was awkward that me and a friend unwittingly chose to sit at a table for two. As I said, the banter that went on because of this was pretty funny, but still good humored though.
On a completely unrelated note, I've been ill recently hence why I haven't said that I've been doing much lately. It's not really bothered me too much, I can deal with the sore throat side of it, but having a runny nose is extremely annoying. When the cold was bad, it seemed I needed to use a tissue every two seconds, which as you can imagine, means your nose gets sore quite quickly! I've almost recovered by now which is good. Either way, I can't complain about this at all, considering how in this time, one of my close friends was being evicted from the rented accommodation, for seemingly no reason, and also, without being giving enough notification (a month) to make the house owner's actions legal. They are now currently staying at various friends houses until the council find them somewhere to live. I feel for them so much, especially considering the past that they have had, and the effect that it has had on where they have lived. I think I've done all that I could to help well I hope so at least, because they are rather a dear friend to me and in situations such as these I feel I should help out, considering my better living conditions.
My main hope though is that things just even out for them soon as they've had enough things to make their life unstable as it is.
I also just realised I usually write like this, thinking that I haven't written in a little while so feeling the need to, and then just rambling on about what I've been doing lately and what I'm thinking about at the time. While I see nothing wrong with that, it would be interesting to get friends to suggest particular topics to blog about. It would probably make it more interesting for that friend to read too. I think it may help my blog posts be structured well too, because at the moment, the organisation can be pretty shambles (this post is a good example of this! )
This holiday should be a good one, as soon, I am going to hopefully get to catch up with a load of friends and also, in two or so weeks time, I will be going to two gigs, very close to each other (one on the 9th and 11th). I'm very excited for this, the first gig will be good, and It's in my hometown too! It's a pretty rare thing for any good gigs to be held in our city hall, so this was one of the incentives to get a ticket for it.
I think that the best gig will be the second one will be the second one though. It is a little further away (about 45 minutes by train) but I will be staying at a friends house there for the night along with another two friend that is coming, so transport is not an issue. The other people that are coming are my current crush (who you would probably know I have mentioned in so many of my previous posts) and her sister. The interesting thing is that, counting her sister out, all three of us went to a gig together last November in London. There's this, and then also the fact that by now me and my crush have become gig buddies, considering how many shows we've been to see together. Most of them local, but still, the point stands.
I really should finish this blog post up now, considering that It's 2:42 in the morning..but oh well, It's the holidays at least so late nights are alright!
I have decided to continue my blog on for a little while today, just to briefly describe my day.
Today was Easter day, so me and my family went to my uncles house in the country to meet a load of my mothers side of the family. So pretty much, as usual they put on a great meal worthy of being described as a feast. So for most of the afternoon I've found myself drinking and eating myself to a standstill! So yeah, its been a fun afternoon!
I'm now in the Easter holidays. We broke up a couple of days ago on Thursday. On that day, we had a half day, so we finished at 12. A friend of mine had organised a trip out to a curryhouse nearby the school for lunch so I went there with about 15 other people from my college. I had a good meal there, but I think in terms of spice, I overshot the mark. I chanced a lamb madras, which as I expected..would be a little to hot. This isn't to say I didn't like the food though, it was a pretty decent curry and I just powered through it. There was some funny banter that occurred during that meal, most if it involving me. As this was a 'lads' curry lunch, it was awkward that me and a friend unwittingly chose to sit at a table for two. As I said, the banter that went on because of this was pretty funny, but still good humored though.
On a completely unrelated note, I've been ill recently hence why I haven't said that I've been doing much lately. It's not really bothered me too much, I can deal with the sore throat side of it, but having a runny nose is extremely annoying. When the cold was bad, it seemed I needed to use a tissue every two seconds, which as you can imagine, means your nose gets sore quite quickly! I've almost recovered by now which is good. Either way, I can't complain about this at all, considering how in this time, one of my close friends was being evicted from the rented accommodation, for seemingly no reason, and also, without being giving enough notification (a month) to make the house owner's actions legal. They are now currently staying at various friends houses until the council find them somewhere to live. I feel for them so much, especially considering the past that they have had, and the effect that it has had on where they have lived. I think I've done all that I could to help well I hope so at least, because they are rather a dear friend to me and in situations such as these I feel I should help out, considering my better living conditions.
My main hope though is that things just even out for them soon as they've had enough things to make their life unstable as it is.
I also just realised I usually write like this, thinking that I haven't written in a little while so feeling the need to, and then just rambling on about what I've been doing lately and what I'm thinking about at the time. While I see nothing wrong with that, it would be interesting to get friends to suggest particular topics to blog about. It would probably make it more interesting for that friend to read too. I think it may help my blog posts be structured well too, because at the moment, the organisation can be pretty shambles (this post is a good example of this! )
This holiday should be a good one, as soon, I am going to hopefully get to catch up with a load of friends and also, in two or so weeks time, I will be going to two gigs, very close to each other (one on the 9th and 11th). I'm very excited for this, the first gig will be good, and It's in my hometown too! It's a pretty rare thing for any good gigs to be held in our city hall, so this was one of the incentives to get a ticket for it.
I think that the best gig will be the second one will be the second one though. It is a little further away (about 45 minutes by train) but I will be staying at a friends house there for the night along with another two friend that is coming, so transport is not an issue. The other people that are coming are my current crush (who you would probably know I have mentioned in so many of my previous posts) and her sister. The interesting thing is that, counting her sister out, all three of us went to a gig together last November in London. There's this, and then also the fact that by now me and my crush have become gig buddies, considering how many shows we've been to see together. Most of them local, but still, the point stands.
I really should finish this blog post up now, considering that It's 2:42 in the morning..but oh well, It's the holidays at least so late nights are alright!
I have decided to continue my blog on for a little while today, just to briefly describe my day.
Today was Easter day, so me and my family went to my uncles house in the country to meet a load of my mothers side of the family. So pretty much, as usual they put on a great meal worthy of being described as a feast. So for most of the afternoon I've found myself drinking and eating myself to a standstill! So yeah, its been a fun afternoon!
Thursday, 21 March 2013
Amplifier
I feel things are absolutely brilliant right now! With summer coming up fairly soon, parties and other events like that, and then my general social life is pretty good at the moment. Plus, over the summer I plan to get a lot more guitar practice done with the free time I will have. With recent events, this has been made even better. If you read my last blog, I wrote towards the end of it about buying a half stack amplifier off ebay.
Well last night, I journeyed all the way up to london to pick it up! In the picture on the auction, it looked pretty massive but still, when I came into the sellers house to give it a quick test run before packing it away, I was blown away by the size. With the size of it, also comes the volume..He had it set at a fairly low volume (about 2 ish) but still it was about as loud as my other amp (A Line 6 Spider 30 watt) cranked up to about 4-5! The first thing I noticed about it was the clarity; considering the fact that my line 6 is a fairly cheap combo amp, the distortion on it is rather muddy, lacking clarity when picking individual notes. This was not an issue at all with the new amp. One of the reasons for this is the type of amp; as far as I know, it is a hybrid amp. To clarify what that term means, it is a solid state amp (fully electronic, using transistors to create tone) with a valve preamp inside it, which I find adds greatly to the tone.
It sure is one hell of a confusing amp though, in comparison to my previous amp, which had 4 basic setting knobs: drive, bass, mid and treble. It has other settings such as presets, channel volume (volume settings for the specific presets) and then other effects. Still, it is a fairly easy amp to use and work out how to change.
My new one though, as is said will take a lot of learning. It has only two different channels, lead and rhythm. The lead is made for more of a rock/metal tone, and the rhythm for a cleaner tone.
This part of the amp is fairly straightforward (except for on the lead channel, where the gain knob has been named 'balls' for some silly reason!). The consfusing part is the changing the channel, and other similar buttons. As it is a hybrid amp, it has a preamp button that can be toggled off and on. On the lead, I find it sounds best with it on, but it depends on the rhythm, as the preamp on that channel can be used to turn it into more of a lightly distorted rock tone than a clean one. The button that turns the effects on is fairly straight forward and understandable. The most confusing one I would say is the one on the lead channel named 'bigger balls'. In the manual, it describes it as a boost button, adding more distortion, however it seems at the moment, using it just worsens the sound. I guess with time I may find a use for it, once i've customised the channels to my liking.
Well last night, I journeyed all the way up to london to pick it up! In the picture on the auction, it looked pretty massive but still, when I came into the sellers house to give it a quick test run before packing it away, I was blown away by the size. With the size of it, also comes the volume..He had it set at a fairly low volume (about 2 ish) but still it was about as loud as my other amp (A Line 6 Spider 30 watt) cranked up to about 4-5! The first thing I noticed about it was the clarity; considering the fact that my line 6 is a fairly cheap combo amp, the distortion on it is rather muddy, lacking clarity when picking individual notes. This was not an issue at all with the new amp. One of the reasons for this is the type of amp; as far as I know, it is a hybrid amp. To clarify what that term means, it is a solid state amp (fully electronic, using transistors to create tone) with a valve preamp inside it, which I find adds greatly to the tone.
It sure is one hell of a confusing amp though, in comparison to my previous amp, which had 4 basic setting knobs: drive, bass, mid and treble. It has other settings such as presets, channel volume (volume settings for the specific presets) and then other effects. Still, it is a fairly easy amp to use and work out how to change.
My new one though, as is said will take a lot of learning. It has only two different channels, lead and rhythm. The lead is made for more of a rock/metal tone, and the rhythm for a cleaner tone.
This part of the amp is fairly straightforward (except for on the lead channel, where the gain knob has been named 'balls' for some silly reason!). The consfusing part is the changing the channel, and other similar buttons. As it is a hybrid amp, it has a preamp button that can be toggled off and on. On the lead, I find it sounds best with it on, but it depends on the rhythm, as the preamp on that channel can be used to turn it into more of a lightly distorted rock tone than a clean one. The button that turns the effects on is fairly straight forward and understandable. The most confusing one I would say is the one on the lead channel named 'bigger balls'. In the manual, it describes it as a boost button, adding more distortion, however it seems at the moment, using it just worsens the sound. I guess with time I may find a use for it, once i've customised the channels to my liking.
Here is the amp itself, along with my original amp my guitar! The guitar is stood almost vertical.
This picture is a picture of standing me up against the amp to show the height of it.
Monday, 18 March 2013
Party times!
This weekend I went to a friends 19th birthday party. To say the least, it was pretty fucking messy. I was such a bad drunk, but I guess at least remember the night this time.
Pretty much it was a good night, up till later on in the night, when I threw up over the carpet..right by the toilet that was apparently not being used. Finding out in the morning that the toilet was free at that point was rather shameful.
A little while later I broke down completely when talking to my long time crush (who I've mentioned in a fair few of my last post) and explaining my feelings for them. I'm ashamed of myself for this, not because I discussed such things, but because I allowed myself to be so weak. I am normally much stronger than this but I allowed myself to be weak in this case.
This is a photo of me and her from the night. Honestly neither of us are looking very attractive, but then again, who does when your drunk?
To do her justice, this is another picture of her from the night, and I have to say she looks pretty beautiful in it.
The first part of the night was fun, with everyone chatting and drinking, taking photos; the kind of thing you'd expect. but then as I said, I broke. I wouldn't say this made it a bad party for me per se, it was a great party!
My weekend started off on saturday meeting a friend in town then going back to their house. For most of the time I was there, we jammed together and played about with the delay pedal he had brought that day. The sounds we could get out of it were brilliant. From there, I went home and packed up things that I would need and headed off to the party.
One of the best things about the weekend though was that I won myself a half stack guitar amplifier on friday off ebay. It cost me £145 which in terms of amps and speaker cabinets of that size is a pretty good price I'm probably going to sell my current amp for about the same price so that means that it will be even cheaper to get! The main reason I decided to bid on it was the price. Frankly I wouldn't want to miss out on such an opportunity! The second reason was a different tone to my current amp. As much as I like it, it's just not very versatile. It has very warm clean tones, which aren't bad at all, and then the distortion has a lot of low-end to it. The distortion isn't that great, but I would say that it is much better than a lot of amps at the same price range. The trouble is that those are the only two good tones it has to offer, there is no intermediate, no rock tones, just metal and clean. I hope with this new amp, I should be able to get a variety of different tones, so it should be exciting to play around with it!
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