I had mixed feelings this morning about the news that Mike Portnoy has left Dream Theater.

According to his website he wanted to take a breather as “the DT machine was starting to burn [him] out …and [he] really needed a break from the band in order to save [his] relationship with the other members and keep [his] DT spirit hungry and inspired.”  The rest of the band disagreed: they didn’t want to stop. So Portnoy decided to leave.

On the one hand, I felt sad.  Sad that he’s left the band that he has been so central to for 25 years. Sad that the rest of the band couldn’t put his needs above their own and give him the space that he needed.

While on the other hand I felt a great deal of respect for Mike Portnoy that he was able to be true to himself and just say, “Ok, this is what I really need so this is what I’m going to do.”  Inspiring stuff.

I knew that my mobile phone ring tone was missing something: a drummer!

Here are the rules:

1. Band name
   Go to a random Wikipedia article. The name of the article becomes your band name.

2. Album title
   Next go to Random Quotations. The last 4-5 words of the last quotation on the page are your the title of your first album.

3. Album cover
   Now go to Flickr’s Explore the last 7 days and choose the third picture. This will be your album cover.

4. Final article
   Finally put them all together and you have an album cover.

I’ve just done it three times. I think I’ve found my new hobby!

Earl of Sefton Stakes – “Can’t hear what they say?”

Photo credit: liao,che-yi

This is the first one I created. It was a bit too disturbing, so I signed to another record label, changed the name of the band and ended up with our new album …

Vydra – “Men just need a place”

Photo credit: *ailicec*

Vydra did really well, reaching number 51 in the alternative rock charts. The NME said that we were quite literally “a peg above the rest” but disaster struck when the drummer left to start his own laundry business.

But not one to stay down I found another bass player, changed our name once again, and released …

Akreavenek Island – “Affirmatively says nothing”

Photo credit: Rock the pixel

Akreavenek Island are your typical rock/metal crossover act, somewhere between Sigur Rós and Rammstein meets Extreme Noise Terror and Celine Dion. We cover mostly ballads. But with more shouting and white noise than the originals. Available now in no good record stores.

Over the last few weeks, with many thanks to James for access to the invitation-only beta, I’ve been trying out a new online music player called Spotify.

What is Spotify?

According to their website

Spotify is a new way to enjoy music.

Except it’s not really that new a way: you use software to listen to music downloaded from the internet.

A completely new way to enjoy music would involve something like a way of enabling your cat to download MP3s via WiFi and singing the songs to you!

What is new, however, is that it’s free. That’s “free” as in: if you can put up with the occasional audio and pictorial advert.

It’s a bit like a cross between Last.fm and the iTunes store; in fact it will automatically scrobble played tracks to last.fm if you have an account.

Once you’ve signed up you can download their client, which has a similar look and feel to Apple’s iTunes, but unlike iTunes you can use Spotify to search for and stream entire songs to listen to; in fact you can listen to complete albums, or the entire back-catalogue of your favourite artist.

As I’m typing this, I’m currently listening to Jethro Tull’s Aqualung album; Spotify tells me that it has found 512 Jethro Tull tracks that I’m welcome to listen to.

Playlists

It’s great, it’s like having my own customizable radio station, where I get to choose exactly what’s played and in which order, by creating playlists. Or I can check out artists that I’ve not heard before, or albums that I’ve not bought safe in the knowledge that if I don’t like them then I’ve not wasted money buying it.

And because this information is stored in my online account when I login to Spotify at work I have immediate access to any playlists that I might have created at home.

Collaboration

According to the website I should be able to share my playlists with friends:

Because music is social, Spotify allows you to share songs and playlists with friends, and even work together on collaborative playlists

I’ve not explored this feature yet and have only just discovered how to make a playlist collaborative.

What’s new and Top lists

Another feature that I’m only now checking out is the What’s new and Top lists features. Here you can see a top ten of what other folks are listening to, both tracks and albums. You can also filter this by country: see what albums people in Finland are listening to most (Guns N’ Roses) or Germany (MGMT).

What’s new, as the name suggests, lets you see the latest albums to be added to the system. U2 anyone? Apocalyptica. It also shows you a grid of artists that it thinks you might like. I’ve no idea how it compiles this collection because I’ve been listening to rock and metal almost exclusively since I installed Spotify and it’s suggesting a bunch of pop, R&B and Rap artists!

Radio

The radio feature allows you to specify a genre (or genres) and decades that you’d like to hear music from, and then it goes off and does its stuff, streaming a randomized selection of music from your chosen categories and eras.

Wishlist

Now I know it’s early days but here are the features I’d like to see in Spotify:

1. Suggestions
   There I was listening to Jethro Tull a few minutes ago, it would be great to have a list of suggested other artists that I might like to explore. Similar to Amazon’s “Customers who bought this also bought …” feature. That way you could hear a wider range of music, otherwise you’re left to the devices of either the random choice Radio or you simply have to know the artists you’re looking for in order to search for them.

2. Mini Player
   The ability to minify the player, in the same way that iTunes or Windows Media Player does, would be great.

3. Keyboard shortcuts
   You don’t realise how much you rely on keyboard shortcuts to start, stop, pause and navigate through tracks on your digital media player until you don’t have that ability anymore.

4. Scroll through radio lists
   I’d really like an easier, quicker way of browsing through radio playlists.

Apart from that … it’s great.

0 invitations available

All 5 invitations have now been claimed — thanks for the interest.

Another new Metallica song — their first single — from their forthcoming album Death Magnetic: The Day That Never Comes.

To me it sounds like a combination of songs from Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets, … And Justice For All, and Load/ReLoad.

I’m really looking forward to the album’s release …

Spotted on the Metal Hammer website:

Metallica played a track that will appear on ‘Death Magnetic’ at their Ozzfest debut on Saturday night in Dallas, Texas in its entirity, the first all-new material from the band in half a decade.

The track that Metallica have played is called ‘Cyanide’…

Sounds good — I’m looking forward to hearing the whole album when it’s released next month, on Friday 12 September.

Update

There’s a better quality recording here (with no video), seemingly recorded from the sound-desk.

I spotted this quotation in an interview with Rob Flynn from the Californian thrash metal band Machine Head in the Christmas 2007 (vol 02, issue 06) of the Soundcontrol magazine Reverb:

The four of us need this release of anger just as much as any of those people who come to a Machine Head show. And that’s what I think the bond is. I think that’s where the devotion comes from, that’s where the passion comes from, because we’re just as lost as them.” — Rob Flynn

All caught in a mosh

I remember standing at an Anthrax show in Glasgow a couple of years back and realising just how important gigs are for a lot of folks. I was standing on the edge of a swirling mosh pit in which there were maybe 20-30 young, sweaty guys — some topless — thrashing about to the music.

Here’s what the mighty Wikipedia has to say on the matter:

Moshing refers to the activity in which audience members at live music performances aggressively push or slam into each other. Moshing is frequently accompanied by stage diving, crowd surfing, and headbanging. It is commonly associated with concerts by heavy metal, punk rock, and alternative rock artists.

It looked aggressive. The music sounded aggressive. But, you know, as soon as someone went down there was always someone ready to step in and help him out. As soon as some slammed into you just that little bit too hard there were grins and apologies, and then both parties would step back into the fray.

I remember standing there, observing all of this and realising that this was incredibly healthy. Who knows what kind of crap these folks have to deal with in their every day lives. I know what I’ve had to deal with, and I guess what I still have to deal with. What other outlet is there for folks to healthily release any pent up anger or frustration? At that metal gig they could do just that, and I saw that as something really healthy.

Metallica and philosophy

I’ve just started reading a book called Metallica and Philosophy: A Crash Course in Brain Surgery.

Plato seemingly argues that we should be suspicious of the so-called “imitative arts” as they can “arouse our passions” and “corrupt our moral character”. His student Aristotle (clearly a headbanger … in the good sense!) instead suggested that “the imitative arts … can have a healthy effect on the soul, by purging the individual of destructive emotions” (op cit, p.6).

I remember a few years ago in a conversation with a psychotherapist, Murray, saying that I believed that my listening to metal and extreme genres of music helped to keep me sane during my adolescence, when as well as dealing with the complex task of growing up in the latter decades of the 20th century I had to also come to terms with and live with my father who had a severe brain injury.

What I said to Murray about the music was that it helped because they [meaning the bands] got angry so that I didn’t have to. It was a release, an outlet for my emotions, as well as some kind of absorption of their energy, something to keep me going. In the case of some bands I found their lyrics helpful too (Metallica, Megadeth, for example) as they put into words emotions that I felt. I didn’t feel quite so alone.

When re-reading that quotation from Rob Flynn today, saying “we’re just as lost as them”, I felt sad. Here’s to the lost that they’ll be found.

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life!”

It’s been a crazy week since I got back from Birmingham that I’m only now getting around to writing about it. But what a superb weekend, packed with great friends, good food and much laughter.

Jane and I drove down on Friday, arriving in the city of a thousand trades in a little over seven hours, to be greeted almost at the door by a couple of friends sitting in the bar.

Gimme credit!

Checking-in took a little longer than anticipated. When I handed over my credit card it flagged up a warning which required the hotelier to call the bank for an authorization code. “I’m so sorry about this,” he apologised.

“That’s okay,” I said. “That happens every now and again, just to make sure that it really is me spending £300 about 350 miles from home. I’m quite glad they’re paranoid.”

It turned out to be more than that.

Seemingly my credit card number had been compromised on an online store (not sure which) and was being used to make fraudulent payments. First £1.00 to Oxfam, then £10 to O2 pay as you go, and £30 to Vodaphone pay as you talk. It would appear that this is what they do: make small payments that could easily get overlooked. Were it not for the fact that my cautious bank look out for exactly this sort of thing.

So within twenty minutes of arriving at the hotel I was now sans credit card: it had been cancelled. It’s now cut up into little pieces and I’m awaiting a replacement card.

Rehearsals

Rehearsals began on Saturday morning at 11:00 … ish. They were conducted by Matthew Owens (aka Smiggins) and went really well. Warm ups were hilarious and I wish I’d taken more video footage of it. It would certainly rival any so-called celebrity fitness video for entertainment value.

So there we were, back in our places in the choir. I was transported back to Beaconsfield #1 in 1989, with the same rogue’s gallery on the back row, much banter and deep laughter. It was great, great to be back, great to be back singing. I love my NYC friends with all my heart.

I was initially a little disappointed with the music choice. There was a lot of new music, which is fine, and a few of us felt that we’d rather have had more of a “NYCGB Greatest Hits”. But we got to sing Shenandoah (arr. Erb), which we toured the world singing in 1992 which was great.

But, you know, at the end of the day it wasn’t about us. It was about celebrating NYCGB in all its fullness and looking ahead to the next 25 years (not back to the halcion days of 1987-1994!!) and that was certainly done with style. I’d sing a whole concert of nursery rhymes if it could be with NYC!

Anniversary dinner

In the evening we retired to the Copthorne Hotel for the anniversary dinner where there was more fun and laughter and a guest appearance by master magician Kockov from the former Soviet Republic of Monrokvia who entertained us with close card tricks and then a 20-30 minutes set, including a quick game of Russian roulette!

This is my favourite photo from the evening (above). As far as Mark (left) and Carl (right) were concerned I was taking a photograph of them. It was only after I’d taken it and was reviewing the picture that I noticed what Danny (foreground) was doing. That had me crying with laughter. Mark and Danny used to be choir administrators; Carl founded the National Youth Choir in 1983.

Concert

Sunday morning was a relaxed affair with rehearsals beginning in the Adrian Boult Hall around midday for an hour. We took lunch and reconvened in the Birmingham Symphony Hall around 14:15.

We made the mistake of eating in at All Bar One, a hop, skip and jump from the Symphony Hall. The food took an age to arrive, and when it did some of it wasn’t even cooked. As Danny pointed out, it should have been called All Bar Food!

The concert began at 19:00 and ended nearly four hours later at 22:45. A gala concert indeed. Perhaps a little late for some of the younger choir members, and indeed our choir members who were needing to drive home to get to work the following morning.

I left the post-concert party back at the hotel just as Big Robbie Patterson was demanding that the bar be reopened. Again. It was nearly 02:00.

All in all, an absolutely brilliant weekend, with some of the loveliest and funniest people that I know.

Photos
You can see all my photos from the 25th anniversary celebrations on Flickr.

I’m off now for a few days to Birmingham to take part in the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain’s 25th anniversary gala concert as part of the exNYCgb choir.

I’ll not be blogging, but you can follow my goings on at Twitter: www.twitter.com/garethjms.

Mike Arthur tagged me to do the meme that is Five artists, five songs.

Here’s the challenge:

List your five favourite artists, your five favourite songs by those artists and tag five other people to do it.

I find this a really hard question, because it really depends on what day / week / month it is. It depends on what kind of mood I’m in or what I’m doing.

When I’m writing Web code, for example, I much prefer listening to industrial or thrash metal. I find the sound of white noise to be relaxing and conducive to concentration.

Maybe that’s just me.

Last.fm statistics

In terms of statistics, Last.fm can tell me which artists I play most frequently. Since I listen to most music in MP3 format on my PC I have a plugin that informs my Last.fm account which artists and songs I’m currently playing.

Since registering on Tuesday 6 Sep 2005 (which also happens to be Andrew Howie‘s birthday!) I’ve played 31,156 tracks while connected to Last.fm. And according to statistics from those tracks my top five most played artists are:

1. Metallica
2. Megadeth
3. Sepoltura
4. Slayer
5. Iron Maiden

So, also based on my Last.fm stats, here are the top five tracks from these top five artists.

Metallica

1. Nothing Else Matters
2. Too Late, Too Late
3. Sad But True
4. Master of Puppets
5. The Thing That Should Not Be

I’m not entirely sure why Too Late, Too Late, a cover of the Motörhead song, is listed so high. Nothing Else Matters is probably there because I’ve played along to it so often to learn how to play it on the guitar. The Thing That Should Not Be is just a great song, off an incredible album.

Megadeth

1. Wake Up Dead
2. Symphony Of Destruction
3. Die Dead Enough
4. Train Of Consequences
5. Hanger 18

My favourite Megadeth album is 1994′s Youthanasia, from which Train Of Consequences comes, so I’m glad to see it in the top five. I’m surprised to see Die Dead Enough so high; that’s probably as much to do with random play as having selected that particular track.

Sepultura

1. Convicted In Life
2. False
3. City of Dis
4. Fighting On
5. Inner Self

I’ve been playing a lot of Derrick Green-era Sepultura lately, rather than the classic Max Cavalera-era repertoire, which is clearly shown in my stats here. I saw Sepultura play in Glasgow a few years back: amazing!

Slayer

1. Here Comes The Pain
2. Behind The Crooked Cross
3. Mandatory Suicide
4. God Send Death
5. Spirit In Black

An interesting selection of tracks from Slayer here; no doubt the result of playing my MP3s on random play. I’d have probably chosen Angel of Death, Rain In Blood, Seasons In The Abyss, 213 and Dead Skin Mask (not necessarily in that order).

Iron Maiden

1. The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg
2. 2 Minutes To Midnight
3. Run To The Hills
4. Flight Of Icarus
5. Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

Again, an interesting selection thanks to playlist shuffling. I’d probably bump up Stranger In A Strange Land into the top five along with Paschendale and the entire Killers album from 1981!

Tagged

… and tag five other people to do it.

1. Andrew Howie
2. James Frost
3. Rich Olyott
4. Steve Lawson
5. You!

Leave a comment if you like about your favourite artists and tracks