Frank Turner Extract
the interview/review I did with Frank Turner and Crazy Arm earlier this year.
Showing posts with label Sellout. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sellout. Show all posts
Blog Challenge - Day 02!
In case you haven't noticed this blog challenge is something I'm doing on a weekday basis. This is because what with a full time computer-based job, a daily commute and an evening spent doing creative stuff, I tend to reserve my weekends for errands, shopping and hanging out with my friends.
This leads me neatly to my day 2 challenge - the meaning behind my blog name. This is pretty obvious really - it's my name! The second part is to do with Sellout Magazine, a project I created for my degree. I still write under this name because I'd like to create another issue when my current housing/job situation calms down somewhat. I've attached below a copy of my magazine I uploaded to scribd.
sellout_revised
Simples!
This leads me neatly to my day 2 challenge - the meaning behind my blog name. This is pretty obvious really - it's my name! The second part is to do with Sellout Magazine, a project I created for my degree. I still write under this name because I'd like to create another issue when my current housing/job situation calms down somewhat. I've attached below a copy of my magazine I uploaded to scribd.
sellout_revised
Simples!
Liam Frost at Band on the Wall
Last week I was lucky enough to go and see Liam Frost, one of my favourite singers, play with a full band. I’ve only ever seen him play acoustic sets before, which are great because he really strips the songs down to their bones (vocals, guitar and harmonica). However, the music on his albums has a much bigger feel, with some being orchestral in the depth of their sound. So on Bank Holiday Sunday I braved Manchester’s Band on the Wall for some beefed-up folk music.
The recently refurbished Band on the Wall is a venue of considerable style, with trendy furnishings, bars, video screens, a shiny new logo and aloof young staff members, but this is all. The venue seriously lacks substance, with distinctly average acoustics, poor sound management and terrible organisation.
Not only this, but the Mancunian crowd have clearly been drinking for some time by the point Frost gets onstage, and are, as drunken Mancunians tend to be, rude and obnoxious. They push and shove, shout, spill drinks and generally behave like naughty children.
It is a testament to Liam Frost’s talent that he overcomes all of this to play a set that is in equal parts melancholy, joyous, chaotic and beautiful. Above the din of technical faults and shouting scallies, Frost’s pure voice rises and falls, and slowly he begins the mammoth task of winning over the hostile audience.
Heavier versions of album tracks, with pounding drums and expertly wielded guitars, make a bold statement, sounding as though the tracks were tailored to tonight’s rowdiness. Shall We Dance takes on a new mood, becoming a song for singing and dancing to. Sparks also soars, with precise harmonies, bluesy drumming and revitalised keyboard accompaniment meaning that established Frost fans are treated to revamped versions of favourites.
Younger Boys and Older Girls takes the attention caught in the previous, faster tracks and manipulates the mood subtly, with a slower, sadder sound. Clear as glass harmonies and poignant lyrics are offered up to the warm night, and the crowd are soothed and appreciative. As Frost howls “Easy love was a nasty habit I never could quite kick” in “Good Things Are Coming Our Way”, there is a palpable pricking of ears. These are words that resonate with us all, using realism, humour and an ear for a poetic gem to create songs that manage to be personal for every single person in the room, without losing anything to pop blandness.
Shall We Dance ensures all of the venue’s attention is on him, with bold, loud guitars and tuneful hollering wails. Expertly combining new and old tracks, Frost smashes out “Your Hand In Mine”, revised to be poppier than ever, and getting the crowd singing and dancing.
This isn’t a popularity contest though, and Frost sends the band away as he plays some songs in his downbeat, acoustic signature style. Is This Love and Skylark Avenue are deal breakers. If these tracks capture a stranger, they will be fans by the end of the night. The intro to Skylark Avenue is lost in the din from the rabble, but this is poignant. This is a song for the few. Skylark Avenue isn’t a song for those who like their music flavourless and indie-bland, because it is hard to tap into the haunting negativity Frost is reminiscing on and take away something positive. If you can, however, the rewards are rich.
Frost and the band close the set with “The Mourners of St Paul’s”, a song from the first record. It may seem like a strange choice at first, but it perfectly sums up what Frost is about. Starting slowly, the melancholy, delicate music tells of Frost’s troubled past with a frankness that is instantly endearing. Once the ballsy second half kicks in, however, the crowd are uplifted with the music, and the room is filled with joyous energy that bounces back and forth between the stage and crowd.
Many, many thanks to Fiona MacSweeney for coming and taking pictures, despite this really not being her scene!
finally, here's my magazine, which has an interview, another live review and an album review of Liam Frost. He's also on the cover, but I didn't take the image.
sellout_revised
What's going on with Jennifer?
A review of Jennifer's Body. I'm not jealous of Megan Fox, I assure you. She's weird looking.
Jennifer’s Body is awful, unsurprisingly. And lack of surprise is why. With a dull, stretched, predictable plot and a handful of underage totty for a cast, it’s actually more entertaining than it should be. The problem is, if it was as entertaining as it should be, you would prefer to gauge your own eyes out.
The basic story goes as follows: nerdy girl and popular girl are best friends. And when I say popular girl, I mean queen jezebel of floozy town herself, Megan Fox. The small town girls go to a bar, which then burns down, killing the people inside, except for the two girls and the band. Megan Fox aka Jennifer then disappears with the band, leaving geeky Needy (yes, that is her name) to walk home alone. Soon after, strange things begin to happen, due to Jennifer’s newly acquired desire for blood. As boys begin to disappear, Needy decides to take action before her boyfriend, Chip, is attacked.
The gore isn’t big enough to make the film a great cheesy horror in the style of Sam Raimi, and not well written enough to make you care about what’s going on, in the style of George A Romero. It’s basically yet another excuse for Megan Fox (now 23) to play a skimpily dressed high school cheerleader. Unfortunately for Jennifer’s Body, you can get pretty girls in cheerleader outfits for free at home, you just Google for them.
You won’t be shocked or surprised at the ending, but if you read this and then proceed to watch it, you deserve to have to wait until the end to find out what happens. Sellout did it so you don’t have to.
Jennifer’s Body is awful, unsurprisingly. And lack of surprise is why. With a dull, stretched, predictable plot and a handful of underage totty for a cast, it’s actually more entertaining than it should be. The problem is, if it was as entertaining as it should be, you would prefer to gauge your own eyes out.
The basic story goes as follows: nerdy girl and popular girl are best friends. And when I say popular girl, I mean queen jezebel of floozy town herself, Megan Fox. The small town girls go to a bar, which then burns down, killing the people inside, except for the two girls and the band. Megan Fox aka Jennifer then disappears with the band, leaving geeky Needy (yes, that is her name) to walk home alone. Soon after, strange things begin to happen, due to Jennifer’s newly acquired desire for blood. As boys begin to disappear, Needy decides to take action before her boyfriend, Chip, is attacked.
The gore isn’t big enough to make the film a great cheesy horror in the style of Sam Raimi, and not well written enough to make you care about what’s going on, in the style of George A Romero. It’s basically yet another excuse for Megan Fox (now 23) to play a skimpily dressed high school cheerleader. Unfortunately for Jennifer’s Body, you can get pretty girls in cheerleader outfits for free at home, you just Google for them.
You won’t be shocked or surprised at the ending, but if you read this and then proceed to watch it, you deserve to have to wait until the end to find out what happens. Sellout did it so you don’t have to.
The Crazies review
The current trend for remaking cult horror films is making millions for Hollywood. This remake of George A. Romero’s classic 1973 The Crazies is surely no exception. It’s good though. Alongside Pontypool (also reviewed here) and 2008’s Rec., soon to be followed by Rec2 this is horror at its best. This new version of The Crazies is full of moments where you’ll jump so hard you’ll be likely to spill your popcorn, and has some moments of truly gripping, edge-of-your-seat, sweaty palms tension. You’ll find yourself genuinely wondering at some points whether the film is going to end already.
With George A. Romero as executive producer of the remake, and Breck Eisner as the director, it isn’t really surprising that the action is slick and gory, with just the merest hint of comedy. The scares are fast and furious, and the characters incredibly likeable.
The story goes thus: a small town, Ogden Marsh, in North America notices things starting to go wrong – one or two people are acting strangely homicidal, a dead parachutist is found in the local swamp and pretty soon the whole of the town finds itself in quarantine to the prerequisite mysterious, masked military. A healthy dose of bloody, gory violence and a really quite terrifying combination of enemies – the murderous, insane monsters and the menacing, shoot-first army who are supposedly solving the problem, will have you properly frightened.
The town’s sheriff, David Dutton, and his pregnant only-doctor-in-the-town wife Judy make a watchable pair, despite their somewhat saccharine-tinted lives prior to the outbreak. But it is this that makes their characters so three-dimensional and enjoyable once all hell breaks loose. It is how their relationship is so solid and normal that makes the chaos of the outbreak all the more shocking – the bad things that are happening to good people, which are what makes Romero’s work so terrifying and believable.
It is, as all good horror should be, challenging. For every question we have answered, there are more things to ask. It has been said that this is an American 28 Days Later, and it’s impossible to ignore the parallels. Despite this, The Crazies works, not least because the idea came first.
With George A. Romero as executive producer of the remake, and Breck Eisner as the director, it isn’t really surprising that the action is slick and gory, with just the merest hint of comedy. The scares are fast and furious, and the characters incredibly likeable.
The story goes thus: a small town, Ogden Marsh, in North America notices things starting to go wrong – one or two people are acting strangely homicidal, a dead parachutist is found in the local swamp and pretty soon the whole of the town finds itself in quarantine to the prerequisite mysterious, masked military. A healthy dose of bloody, gory violence and a really quite terrifying combination of enemies – the murderous, insane monsters and the menacing, shoot-first army who are supposedly solving the problem, will have you properly frightened.
The town’s sheriff, David Dutton, and his pregnant only-doctor-in-the-town wife Judy make a watchable pair, despite their somewhat saccharine-tinted lives prior to the outbreak. But it is this that makes their characters so three-dimensional and enjoyable once all hell breaks loose. It is how their relationship is so solid and normal that makes the chaos of the outbreak all the more shocking – the bad things that are happening to good people, which are what makes Romero’s work so terrifying and believable.
It is, as all good horror should be, challenging. For every question we have answered, there are more things to ask. It has been said that this is an American 28 Days Later, and it’s impossible to ignore the parallels. Despite this, The Crazies works, not least because the idea came first.
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