Musical Musings, Supplemental.

See? Two for the price of one, to make up for my absenteeism. (Gods, that’s a fun word) Don’t say I never do anything for you, loyal reader. And I know you’re loyal, for why else would you still be reading this, the product of my brain-farts?

To fully understand my reasoning behind this blog, I must first relate a short story to you. It starts, as all good stories do, with drinking. After I had returned from my previous trip to America, I was sitting in a pub with my friend Helen, having a couple of beers and generally catching up. After a couple of pints, we were both feeling borderline tipsy, which when we two are together, can be a dangerous combination- once, we ended up planning a trans-America motorbike trip while we were in this state, which should give some idea of what we’re like. Anyway, on this occasion, our madness was fairly restrained, and we stuck to philosophical discussions. A few days before, I’d attended a Decemberists concert, and I was having fun articulately describing to Helen the pure sense of fun derived from that experience. This, dear reader, brought us onto a topic that now makes its way to this blog- is live music the entire point of music?

A stupid question, you might say. Certainly, live music is fun sometimes, but in cases of a band phoning it in, just there for the money, the negative experience derived from that could put one off concerts for good. Not to mention, live music is hardly practical all the time- part of the joy of music is to be able to pop on a CD at home, or to listen to your iPod while on the bus. Hell, even listening to it in your head when you’ve nothing else to listen on is great.

Yes, that’s all fine, I admit. Everyday music like that is convenient, but it’s hardly an immersive experience, that is, unless you’re a teenage Goth, listening to death metal in your black-coloured bedroom that hasn’t seen the sun in years. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, you guys are living the dream) But there’s something special about getting into costume (putting on your ‘gig outfit’- I know I have one) going out, and losing yourself in pure sound. Sure, there are a lot of bum bands out there- I only have to mention Towers of London, All-American Rejects (worst live band 2006) or, to a certain friend, The Man That Can’t Be Hanged to elicit shudders and Freudian repression. These people were either under false impressions of their own greatness or in it for the moolah. But, let me give you another example.

Last Thursday, I went out to see Motion City Soundtrack at one of the local venues. If you’ve read the first few chapters of my book, the Notes (shameless self promotion for the win!) you know that I have a very high opinion of these guys already. However, at the time, it was the 2nd support band that really impressed me. Despite the idiots throwing water over each other (ah, to be young again) I was able to stand there, eyes closed, letting the waves of sound crash over me in perfect contentment. If there’s one thing that chilled emo is good for, it’s, well, chilling. (I found out later that this band was Straylight Run, which most of you have probably never heard of. Go and listen to ‘Existentialism on Prom Night’ for starters.)

That’s why live music is so great. Unless you’ve a truly awesome hi-fi system, you can’t achieve the same effect of feeling the music around you, every chord, or crash of stick against drum. You can lose yourself for an evening; throw yourself into the pit with no thoughts of anything other than the rhythm and the bodies around you. It’s a special experience, and one that is, at least in my opinion, the reason we have music in the first place.

Anyway, I’ve yapped enough, over to you.

Tom

Bright Young Thing

Again, apologies for the delay in updates. I don’t really have an excuse, but since the majority of you are my friends, you understand how I do many things on a whim. So, please forgive me, and I make no promises about the timing of future updates. They’ll happen at the opportune moment.

In any case, time to get on with the show. A few weeks ago, an auspicious event occurred. That’s right, I, your dear author and favourite spleen-venter, turned 21. I’ll just let that sink in for a moment.

Yup. I’m officially an adult. How weird is that? Now, granted, the friends I was with did a great job of not making me feel like an old fogey, partly because they’re all older than me, and partly because they got me ice cream cake (yay!). I’m usually not much for cake, but when it’s made from ice creamy goodness, I can definitely go for that.

Still, I digress. The point of this entry is for me to take stock of my life a little as I pass this important landmark. Your purpose in this is twofold: both to critique my ramblings, as ever, and, if you’re lucky enough to be younger than me, to mock my advanced years. I hear that’s what all the cool kids are doing these days.

So, important things that have changed now I’m 21:

I can now no longer say that I haven’t thrown up due to alcohol. On a related note, I can also no longer say that my friends haven’t seen me practically naked while I was passed out. It’s a long story.

The ‘songs I can no longer sing’ list has increased to include the Swiss Army Romance by Dashboard Confessional, for the ‘we’re not 21’ line. However, I am yet another year closer to being able to sing ‘What’s My Age Again?’ and mean it.

I now appreciate Blink 182 for their knack of writing good pop, rather than their immature antics. I also now appreciate Avril Lavigne for blatantly phoning it in, rather than completely for her looks.

I’m now terrified of flying, at least going to America. Strangely, on the way back, I couldn’t care less about dying.

All my housemates are again a year younger than me. This means that I have to put up with endless ‘granddad’ cracks. On the bright side, I can now get into the over 21 bars here. All one of them. It’s hardly worth being 21 on this damned continent.

My musical tastes are broadening, which means that my ‘I hate the bands that you like’ T-shirt is in increasing danger of being untrue.

Oh, and finally, not to do with me, but a further sign of the Apocalypse (if one was required beyond me surviving to maturity): Miranda now likes Fall Out Boy. Unfortunately, this means that one of my main avenues of getting under her skin has disappeared.

Anyway, I’ll stop rambling. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the last week or so, but I won’t share. Besides, most of it was bolstering up my self-esteem after spending a week with the ‘constant source of introspection and ego-crippling’.
Peace out.

Fun involving the psyche.

OK, first of all, apologies to everyone who has checked this blog regularly for the last however long, waiting for the third exciting instalment of ranting from yours truly, or even the 8th chapter of my future bestselling book, the ‘Notes’. Things have been crazy busy lately, first with exams, then moving house twice, and now I’m currently stuck in Taverham without reliable access to an internet connection. So, once again, sorry, adoring legions of fans, things will soon be rectified once I get back to Bournemouth and my lovely broadband connection. So, as a small consolation prize, y’all’ll receive a small rant here, courtesy of your favourite Irish malcontent. How did this go again?

You know what really grinds my gears? People with closed minds. Yeah, that’s right, anyone who’s unwilling to try a new food because they might not like it, or who have a stubborn and irrational dislike of something without really knowing about it, whatever their problem may be. I have a fair few prejudices of my own, so I can understand reasoned dislike- for one, I have a burning hatred of Delta Airlines in this and every parallel dimension, but they’ve earned that special place in my festering-with-evil heart.

I’m probably a hypocrite for hating on these people, though. For one, my discussion with a certain person from Illinois revealed how closed my mind really is in some areas… OK, most areas, including religion, politics and psychology. I can’t really back my opinions up with words, having a blind faith in my beliefs that defies proof and reasoned arguments. I guess you could call me a militant atheist- but that’s a story for another column

Anyway, I’ll wrap this up by saying this: at least TRY the things you don’t like, guys. Then, not only will you be able to say ‘yeah, I had a go, but I just hated it’, but you might actually find you like it. And what’s more, you can blame me if you find out you’re allergic to it and you die or something. It’s win-win!

Oh, and a guy just walked past the window walking his dog and doing the Nazi salute. I love Dereham.

Peace out, homeslices. Normal service will resume shortly.

Musical Musings

OK, I hope everyone (probably, all one of you) enjoyed my first blog last week. It’s that time again, which means you’re being treated to another insight into my stunning intellect. However, a change for this weekend: instead of going off into yet another rant about the current state of affairs in the world, I’m actually going to talk about something nice and mildly philosophical. After all, I’ve plenty of rants up my sleeve, so I can afford to spread them out a bit.

So, the topic this week is music. Can a piece of music, like Natalie Portman claimed in ‘Garden State’, “change your life”? And what did she, or rather, her character, mean by that? For every experience we have alters our perception of everything that comes after, subtly changing our lives. But it’s fairly safe to say that she didn’t mean something so mundane as that. Did she means that the song would so radically change your perceptions in a way that would mean that there was no going back? Imagine, hypothetically, of course, someone who has experienced no music in his life (poor guy) suddenly coming face-to-face with a full orchestral rendering of the Ode to Joy. Similarly, imagine someone who has only come across classical music -as I pretty much only was up until the age of 12- and think of the effect a song by Hendrix would have. Well, all right, so pretty much my first experience of popular music that I can remember was reggae -which led to the oddest, and whitest, reggae fan ever, for a few months- but the principle is the same. Is the song in question in the scene from ‘Garden State’ (The Shins’ ‘New Slang’) be so radical a work compared to everything that came before that the effect would be just as mind-blowing? The answer is probably not, and I’m afraid to my ears it’s horribly bland.

So, what is this ‘life-changing’ X-factor? To my mind, I’d have to say that it’s not just the music you listen to, and whether it’s for the first time or not, but also the situation you listen to it in. After all, how many songs have been etched in all of our memories because they happened to be playing at particularly significant moments in your life? Is there any one of us who hasn’t got at least one song indelibly linked with a time, a place, and maybe the people you listened to it with? In my case, the list is nearly endless: belting out karaoke tunes at the top of my lungs while driving through Illinois, all those old songs that played on the school bus, and of course, the music we played while hanging out in my first year at University. All of these have particular significance to me, and I’ll never be able to listen to them again without recalling those times.

Maybe it’s not the music, but just the moment itself that so impresses itself on our lives so that they’re irrevocably changed. These special songs are a way of recapturing the past that is otherwise gone. With just a few notes, you can not only remember what you were doing, who you were with and the exact reason that it’s become etched in your brain.

And perhaps if we ever need to revise, we should turn the subject matter into a song. We’ve more chance of remembering it that way.

Please post comments, questions, and, if you don’t mind, songs that have changed your lives.

Tom

A beginning, and British accents.

Hi there, and welcome to the first edition of my new blog. Hopefully, this should be a weekly thing, or at least, if not precisely weekly, something I update semi-regularly. My reasons for writing this are three-fold: firstly, it gives me something to work on while I’m avoiding both my college work and writing my book, secondly, it means I’m exercising my incredible writing talents on something other than an account of my holiday, and thirdly, to give you all an insight into my sick little mind. You may, or, as probably will be the case, may not enjoy it, but that’s not important.

Oh, quick disclaimer. I may come off as slightly fascist at times here, or at least, anti-working classes. Well, I’m not. Simply trying to play Devil’s Advocate, which I love, and make you think about the issue. Everyone who knows me knows that it’s hippies and Commies that I hate. So very, very much.

So, without further ado, let’s get started. For the subject of my auspicious first blog, I chose a subject dear to my heart: the British accent. Or, rather, accents. Yes, Americans, there’s more than one. We don’t all speak of tea and crumpets and cricket. Well, a lot of people speak about cricket, but it doesn’t sound posh, as you’d generally expect.

The reason I chose this subject to start on is rather a selfish one, but that’s OK, because it’s my blog. So there. You see, beloved readers, I work in a Chinese takeaway. That might be somewhat surprising for people who see me in the street, but whenever any questions about my appearance come up, I just explain that I’m Chinese-Irish. Anyway, in the Godforsaken part of the world that is Norfolk, there exists the most horrific accent, or more properly, dialect, known to man. Even worse than the stereotypical Southern American ‘Get’im, Pa!’ that so many people cringe at. This page should give you a rough idea of what I’m dealing with: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norfolk_dialect. Now, being something of a stickler for proper grammar, you can imagine how it grates on my nerves having the majority of people talking like that. Especially since they all feel that since you work in a Chinese takeaway, you must be somehow deficient, so they all speak rather slowly and (supposedly) clearly to me, to help the poor mentally handicapped boy figure out what they want to eat. Excuse me? Am I the one who speaks as if they’re in their third inbred generation? Is it my fault that, despite having lived in the same area pretty much all my life, I cannot decipher this butchering of the English language? Oh, and it gets worse. Anyone who doesn’t speak the Norfolk accent who comes into my takeaway is usually either Scouse or Scottish. Two more accents that, broadly, I cannot understand for the life of me! It’s as if there’s some huge cosmic joke at my expense.

OK, rant over. I come (eventually) to my point. I was reading the EDP (that’s the local newspaper) the other day, and there was an article about how the Norfolk accent is dying out. Well, good, I say to myself, it’s about time. However, not only is there a campaign and a festival every year to promote further mangling of diphthongs, but it’s being replaced by Estuary English. In fact, Estuary is spreading throughout the country, and some linguists believe that it will actually replaced Received Pronunciation as ‘the’ British accent. Well, I for one will not stand for this! A nation, once proud, once rulers of pretty much all of the Earth that matters, (not you, America. Sorry, but you’re irrelevant to everyone but me) reduced to a country of chavs? Sixty million people, assuming that it spreads to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as well (although in the case of the first two, it would be a grudging improvement) sounding as if they wear half their own body weight in ‘bling bling’ and are all called some variant of ‘Sharon’ or ‘Gavin’? Not on my watch, Goddamnit! What of Wellington, eh? What of Nelson (who, admittedly, was from Norfolk and sounded as much of a farm-boy as that man I can see from my window on his tractor)? Would they have stood for this? Hell, no, I think the answer has to be.

Now, I know I’m infernally lucky to speak Received Pronunciation, or at least, close enough to pass for it in a bad light. I know that my accent is slightly bastardised with Sheffield, (for some reason) London, Norfolk and New England sometimes, but my voice helps me sound more intelligent than I actually am. And hey, I often slip into a reasonable Norfolk accent when I’m with my father, but that’s just his influence. But I, for one, will not put up with the chavs inheriting the Earth. My children (God help them) will be taught to speak Received Pronunciation, not only because Americans love it, (but that definitely helps) but because it’s how they should speak, and Hell, it’ll stop me from being put in jail for killing them because they uttered those abominable words, ‘am I bovvered?’ Ugh.

So, in closing, don’t believe anything that ‘Love Actually’ tells you about that guy going to America. It’s a lie, kids.

Peace out.
P.S. Feel free to email me suggestions for future blogs. Any suggestions welcome. Oh, and comment away! Keep it civil, though.