Dix points
May 31, 2010 at 10:02 pm | Posted in music | Leave a commentTags: abba, cosmetic uprise, daz sampson, epic fail, eurovision, eurovision party, flashmob, josh dubovie, television, that sounds good to me, waterloo
We lost, in so extreme a fashion as almost to be called heroic. We scraped just 10 points from a total of 38 nations; we were Herculean in our failure. Yes, I am talking about the musical Marmite of the Eurovision Song Contest.
I am an unashamed fan of Eurovision. When I was little, my Nana gave me a tape of old Eurovision songs after I spent ages listening to it at her house. It immediately became my favourite tape; I listened to it obsessively, and can still remember and sing along to many of the songs. Internet research has revealed it to have been this album:
I’m sure my Nana didn’t realise it at the time, but she had created a monster: a love affair was born. I love the high camp of it all – the costumes, the craziness and the (mainly) crap tunes. Even the ridiculously political voting doesn’t bother me that much; it just adds an edge of doomed resignation to the enjoyment.
This year, I was lucky enough to tick off one of my life’s goals by attending a Eurovision party hosted by the lovely Mia from Cosmetic Uprise. It was bloody brilliant, particularly the Europe-wide dancing flashmob. Critics claimed that our entry for this year was the worst ever, but they’d obviously never heard Daz Sampson.
Granted, Josh Dubovie‘s ‘That Sounds Good to Me’ was…okay, a bit terrible, quality-wise. But endearingly so:
Just look how happy he is, though – he looked the same during the contest itself. He was even gracious in defeat, saying “This has been one of the best experiences of my life no matter where I’ve come in the contest. It’s been a privilege to represent the UK, I will keep performing and I’m still smiling.”
Anyway, only a philistine would argue with the likes of Abba:
I rest my defence.
An audience with Krissi Murison
May 11, 2010 at 4:42 pm | Posted in music | Leave a commentTags: interview, ipc, krissi murison, magazines, music magazine, nme, nylon, redesign, relauch, work experience
Carried as part of a work experience placement at NME…
As the first female editor of NME, it was inevitable that Krissi Murison would make waves – and that was before she chose to put Simon Cowell on the cover of the magazine’s Christmas issue. It was her recent redesign of the legendary music paper, though, with 10 covers for readers to choose from on the relaunch issue, which has ensured that people are sitting up and taking notice.
“We had no idea how to kick the relaunch off,” she explains. “There was such a weight of responsibility on who that cover star was going to be. We also had to have a way to shout and make people know we’d done [the redesign]. That’s very hard with one cover, but with 10 covers we also didn’t have the problem of who that one artist was; we could show the breadth of what NME stands for.”
Sleek and sophisticated, with a greater focus on in-depth, authoritative features, the redesigned NME is undoubtedly easy on the eye. It has received an overwhelmingly positive reception from fans, but Murison was understandably nervous about implementing changes to a publication with such a passionate following.
“The thing is, everyone grew up with NME,” she says. “Everyone thinks they know how it should be run; everyone has an opinion. For a long time it did feel like whenever you put your head over the parapet, you got bashed round the ear by someone telling you why you should do it this way or whatever.”
Having worked full-time for NME since she left Bristol University seven years ago – bar six months spent in New York as music director for Nylon immediately prior to taking on her current position, 28-year-old Murison is perhaps more attuned to what works for the publication than others. “I’ve loved and read it for so long…I’m very, very immersed in it,” she smiles.
She admits that part of her motivation for redesigning the magazine came from “very selfishly wanting to make my mark”, but also recognises the necessity of keeping a weekly format constantly fresh and exciting. The relaunch issue may have hit the newsstands in early April, but it’s something which has been in the pipeline from the moment she touched down back in the UK last July.
“It’s something that I didn’t want to rush,” she says. “Especially being on a weekly, where you’re always working on one and 10 issues at the same time. We started getting loads of ideas together – both content and style ideas – in the period from September to Christmas. One thing I wanted to do differently was to let the photography do its job and really breathe: that’s what a lot of the work we’ve done on the covers has been about.”
So where does the future of NME lie? “I wanted it to feel a little bit more…mature is such a boring word, but I was worried that perhaps it had gone just a little too young,” asserts Murison. “It needed to be a badge of honour, to be more credible again.”
In which I protest that “I’ve been super busy, honest”…
April 21, 2010 at 4:23 pm | Posted in music | Leave a commentTags: busy, giving up on love, headless chicken, mackenzie crook, music videos, musicradar.com, nme, plan b, q, she said, slow club, stop the music, the pippettes
…Because, frankly, I have been. I’m currently on work experience at NME (writing stuff like this). which was preceded by a week at Q and a fortnight at musicradar.com (creating clicky things, such as this). I’ve been rocketing from one side of the UK to the other: flitting between Cardiff or Oxford and Bath or London. Right now, I’m staying at a hostel in Piccadilly which has, as a result of its super-speedy commute down the Jubilee line, has taken on a feeling almost approaching permanence.
All of this is, in essence, a long way of me saying, “please don’t think I’m a slacker for having not given much TLC to Keeping on the Beat as of late.” I still care, promise.
Anyway, I don’t have time for a full-scale update – but I figured that checking in briefly was the least I could do – so I thought I’d leave you with a handful of music videos which I’m currently rather taken with.
Plan B – ‘She Said’
Every fibre of my being fights against me liking Plan B. I don’t particularly like high-pitched male vocals; I don’t particularly like R&B; I really don’t like tracks being rammed down my throat by the radio at every given opportunity. Except, this is brilliant – all hooks and perfectly-placed horns and strings, with a magnificent, Zutons-referencing rap section. Even better is the video, presenting a stylised courtroom in which a spate of dancing is never far away. I’d like to think this is what a faux-urban musical would be like.
Slow Club – ‘Giving Up on Love’
I always find Mackenzie Crook deceptive: he’s so firmly ingrained within my psyche as Gareth from The Office (no bad thing, mind) that I always tend to forget that he’s capable of so much more – like this, for example. I’m not sure how he manages to imbue the figure of a man who gets onto a ferris wheel and rides it for a spins while mouthing along to Slow Club and smoking a cigarette with a sense of gentle pathos, but somehow he does. Maybe it’s the soundtrack, a sped-up rattle through the pros and cons of, well, giving up on love. Cute.
The Pipettes – ‘Stop the Music’
If I could choose to be in any band (I know: dream on, yeah?) it would be The Pipettes. The matching outfits! (Even if they have, sadly, ditched the polka-dot dresses along with a whole host of band members) The syncronised hand-dancing! The unashamedly retro girl-group sound! They’re fun; they’ve always kind of struck me as the musical equivalent of dressing up in your mum’s lipstick and high heels. This kitschy video explores all this with – literally – an almost childlike sense of wonder. If I tumbled through the wardrobe and ended up in this version of Narnia, I’d be a very happy girl indeed.
And there you go. Lazy update? Possibly. I’ll be better next time, I swear.
NME is dead: long live the NME
April 9, 2010 at 11:50 pm | Posted in music | Leave a commentTags: 'zine, biffy clyro, cover, design, ipc, jack white, krissi murison, magazines, nme, peter robinson, redesign, relaunch
So, big news in the world of music magazines: NME has had a redesign.
Perhaps not surprising – the magazine’s circulation figures have been freefalling and something had to give. Still, it’s pretty damn exciting. My inner mag slag nearly fainted at the prospect. Since Krissi Murison took over the magazine last year, many have been wondering what big changes she would make, and the magazine’s relaunched on Wednesday of this week, with 10 different covers to choose from.
The Biffy Clyro one is probably my favourite:
The new covers say a lot about the new design of the magazine as a whole, I think: they’re bold, sleek and far less cluttered. Using just one or two main colours really makes said colours stand out, and this makes some of the covers (particularly the Jack White one) really “pop”.
Inside, too, there’s a lot of clean lines and big pictures. It’s quite simple, but there are enough little design flourishes to keep it interesting. It’s very easy on the eye, and I like it a lot, especially the minimalist new masthead. Check it out for yourself: you can read a digital copy online.
The main feature, also, was a premise which I found interesting. Asking 10 different artists what is ostensibly the same set of questions initially sounds like it could make for tiresome, even arduous, reading – particularly when it’s the only main feature. But there’s enough scope across genres for there to be a lot of different views expounded, and the state of music in 2010 is always going to be an interesting one when it’s tackled in the right way.
My friend/editor, Ben, commented that “it’s totally lost its ‘zine look” and is “much more sober, more mature, less garish”. He’s got a point. And, while the ‘zine look was charming up to a point, the point of a ‘zine is that it’s made by enthusiastic amateurs. NME is a professional music publication owned by IPC. It is not a ‘zine, so why should it look like one?
I’ll be interested to see how the editorial content changes, if it does. What I’d really, really like – if I could have my way (which I can’t) – would be for NME to go back to covering politics alongside music, as it did back in the ’80s. I’m not holding my breath, but for now the new look is certainly enough to appease me.
And, besides, Peter Robinson has stayed put – hooray!
“You’re about as good a drummer as Meg White”
March 19, 2010 at 10:14 pm | Posted in music | 1 CommentTags: criticism, dead leaves and the dirty ground, drummer, drumming, jack white, meg white, new york post, paris hilton, percussion, the white stripes
A friend of mine actually said that to me once, after I’d had a particularly rhythm-free go on her drum kit. It wasn’t meant as a compliment. I hold my hands up and freely admit that I am not a great drummer; at the time, I was really, really awful. Since that comment, there was a nine-month period of intense Rock Band practice – I studied an English degree, alright? I had a lot of free time on my hands. So now I’m just moderately bad.
Poor Meg‘s drumming does come under a fair amount of fire; in the critics’ collective defence, it is quite elementary. But is its overt simplicity a bad thing? Not according to bandmate/ex-husband (at last, they’ve finally ditched the creepy “siblings” front) Jack White.
“Her femininity and extreme minimalism are too much to take for some metal heads and reverse-contrarian hipsters,” he told the New York Post. “She can do what those with ‘technical prowess’ can’t. She inspires people to bash on pots and pans. For that, they repay her with gossip and judgment. In the end she’s laughing all the way to the Prada handbag store. She wins every time.”
Granted, her playing does have the “hey, even I could do that!” element to it. But, while it certainly suits the band’s stripped-back approach to songwriting, it’s not necessarily the first thing I’d be aspiring to upon picking up a pair of drumsticks – hell no. I am quite open about my drumming ambitions: what I want is to be able to twirl a drumstick and make it look effortless. I’m almost there. Technical prowess is definitely not mutually exclusive to inspiring people.
Don’t get me wrong, I do think it’s super-sweet of Jack to defend Meg like this (and I do like The White Stripes, in moderation) – it’s just that a back-handed compliment might not have been the best way to go about it. What’s he’s basically saying is, “You drum like a toddler, but don’t worry, love – you make other people want to do the same.” No wonder they ended up divorced.
And money does not always mean success. After all, just look at Paris Hilton.
Yeah, I reckon I could play this:
First’s the worst, second’s the best…
March 12, 2010 at 10:11 pm | Posted in music | Leave a commentTags: bristol, bristol academy, cardiff, cardiff arts institute, cia, live music, performing right society, the glob, the point, valleys, will young
…Or so the rhyme went, when I was a kid. Cardiff has been declared the second most musical city in Britain. Pretty good, hey?
This comes as a result of research by the Performing Right Society (PRS). Bristol placed top, according to the number of musicians the city has produced, relative to the size of its population. Bristol has a fair amount of good musical memories for me – growing up in Exeter, it was the nearest stop-off for many bands when touring. By the time I was 17 or so, my parents could have dropped me at the Academy in their sleep; it was where I went during my teenage years to see bands that I now cringe to think of. Good times.
Cardiff has a special place in my heart, though, after three-and-half years of being a student here. There are so many lovely venues here and – despite having lost The Point and The Globe being under threat – this doesn’t seem to be deterring the opening of new venues such as Cardiff Arts Institute. I’ve been to some brilliant gigs here, as well as some decidedly patchy ones. Oh, and I once had to go and see Will Young at the CIA, but that was under sufferance for work.
I’m intrigued to know exactly how they defined which artists were counted – I’m not being impertinent; I genuinely am curious. Did the musicians have to have reached a certain level of success in order to qualify? And, with regard to Cardiff, where was the cut-off point, area-wise? Would a band from the Valleys count, say? Send answers on a postcard (or, equally, just post them as a comment on this post.)
We might not have reached the top spot, but we still have Swn festival. So there. Beat that, Bristol.
EMI: just another brick in the wall?
March 10, 2010 at 3:11 pm | Posted in music | 1 CommentTags: albums, CD, court case, dark side of the moon, downloading, echoes, EMI, itunes, legal action, mp3, pink floyd, the wall, tracks
I was late to the Pink Floyd party, I’ll admit; I wasn’t a fan until I saw their televised Live 8 performance in 2005. Criminal, I know. Hell, it took a drunken evening with a housemate at the start of my third year before I obtained a copy of the undeniably great The Dark Side of the Moon.
The thing with the album, though – and particularly with the epic sprawl of double-album The Wall – is that it works best as an album. There are stand-out tracks, of course, but it’s best heard in sequence and in full. Though in the case of The Wall, I’d recommend not viewing the accompanying film, because it’s chock-full of creepy and unnerving images. But God, what a concept.
Pink Floyd are suing EMI over online royalties; their tracks, the band say, should not be sold individually. The likes of iTunes allow for albums to be downloaded on a track-by-track basis – something that we’ve all got used to in recent years – but which Pink Floyd’s contract with EMI is too old to have allowed for.
Should artists be allowed to control how people listen to their music in such a way? Sure, albums are designed to be listened to as such, but CD players have ‘ship’ and ‘shuffle’ buttons. Even if you buy music in a physical format, you can still rip it onto your computer and only import selected tracks onto your mp3 player. Essentially, once you’ve bought the music, it’s upto you how you listen to it.
Also, I’d be interested to know the band’s views on compliation CDs, given that you can buy Echoes (The Best of Pink Floyd), which spans multiple albums.
Cracking tune, but just imagine how much better it sounds in its full context, replete with reprises and all:
…but the hype will last
March 5, 2010 at 11:35 am | Posted in music | 1 CommentTags: childhood fantasies, here it goes again, mousetrap, music video, ok go, this too shall pass, treadmills
I had a toy called Domino Express when I was a kid. It basically involved a set of ramps and things on which you set up these special, multi-coloured plastic dominoes. Once you were done, you toppled the first one and watched the satisfying sight of the ripple of a couple of hundred dominoes falling one after the other. Come to think of it, it involved a lot of setting-up time for a remarkably short pay-off; it was very much an only child-type toy.
OK Go have taken the idea, and extended it to a full four-minute music video. Doubtless you’ll have seen it by now, or at least heard everyone getting very, very excited about it. Still, just in case you haven’t:
It’s essentially every child’s fantasy – the sort of thing you’d idly speculate about during a boring maths or geography lesson – rendered in painstaking detail. And it’s certainly got people talking; it even turned the band into a trending topic on Twitter at one point.
OK Go have quite a knack for the viral video. 2006′s ‘Here it Goes Again’ – yeah, the one with the treadmills – won a Grammy. Everyone knows that video, few thought they’d top it. The full-scale Mouse Trap board of ‘This Too Shall Pass’ may be frustratingly slow-moving at times, but God knows it’s compulsive. This comes in contrast with the song itself which is, despite its awesome title, eminently forgettable – at least on the first listen.
The song may be forgettable, but the video isn’t. It’s a canny marketing strategy, but one that nobody seems to resent because the videos are actually rather endearing.
‘Here it Goes Again’, was by far the better song, though, even if just for the lyric “throw on your clothes / the second side of Surfer Rosa / and you leave me with my jaw on the floor”:
Save 6Music!
March 2, 2010 at 9:56 pm | Posted in music | Leave a commentTags: 6music, baying mob, bbc, bbc asian network, bbc magazines, bbc trust, causes, closure, digital radio, facebook, lily allen, outcry, protest, radio, radio 1, radio 2, Twitter
Gosh, has it really been nearly a fortnight since I last updated Keeping on the Beat? I feel somewhat guilty for having neglected my pet project a little of late, but these are busy times in the maglab; I’ve been making lovely magazines, such as this one, and busily scribbling away at other things – like this, this and this. I’ve not been slacking entirely, I promise.
Last Friday, it was suggested that the BBC might axe their 6Music digital radio station. Naturally, alarm bells began to ring. Today, it was announced officially, as part of a review submitted to the BBC Trust. For the love of Richard Tait, I hope they don’t approve it.
The BBC Asian Network is also in line for closure, and the BBC plans to greatly reduce its online output – which makes sense, because, like, I totally heard that the internet’s not where the future lies. BBC Magazines may also be sold off, but – despite being, at heart, a slave to the printed word – I’m less concerned by this: the main BBC magazines are profitable enough brands that they’ll be snapped up by other companies.
Closing 6Music would, essentially, be a disaster. I’m by no means alone in thinking this – broadcasters, journalists and musicians have all spoken out against the proposed closure. Doubtless many have have been able to express themselves on this topic far more elegantly than I (hell, for once I even agree with what Lily Allen’s saying), but I still feel compelled to add my paltry words to the pool.
6Music represents the BBC’s commitment to independent music. It may not generate the astronomic listening figures of Radio 1 or Radio 2, but that’s the point of it: it caters to a niche audience whose interests may not be catered to by other radio stations. The very reason I originally got a digital radio was because I was sick of having to listen to the likes of Radio 1 – to stations which didn’t play music that I wanted to listen to.
One of the things which I’ve always loved about the BBC is the sheer breadth of its output. Vowing to spend 90 pence from every licence fee pound on programming, while disregarding an area of programming which is obviously close to the hearts of many – if the outcry is anything to go by – is not the way to go. If you’re going to do it, at least do it quickly and as painlessly as possible; have the good grace not to rub salt in the wound by trying to justify it with absurd logic.
Even better, don’t do it at all. 6Music costs around £7 million per year to run; given that Jonathan Ross was on £18 million for three years and is gone from the BBC as of July, the books are already almost balanced. See? If they can do leaps of logic, so can I.
The BBC has admitted that a big enough public outcry could make them change their mind. Write/email to the BBC Trust, join the Facebook group or add a Twibbon to your display picture if you’re on Twitter – make some noise; grab a flaming torch and join the baying mob.
It’s still at the green paper stage
February 19, 2010 at 10:17 am | Posted in music | Leave a commentTags: blindsided, bon iver, cardiff, cold, for emma, for emma forever ago, ice, justin vernon, self-indulgent ramblings, snow, wisconsin
The weather’s gone cold again – it was snowing yesterday in Cardiff, and it’s still icy today. As news hooks go, I am aware that this is, frankly, a bit shit. Still, this is a blog, not an exercise in the writing of hard news – what more do you want from me? Blood?
I’m not a fan of snow – I’m way too clumsy at the best of times – but I do have a proposal for a new law. When it snows, everyone should have to listen to Bon Iver. It’s still very much at the green paper stage, but I think it could work quite well.
Maybe it’s just the associations I’ve made in my head – I spent last year’s freezing February listening to the wonderfully-titled For Emma, Forever Ago to death while staring mournfully out of the window at the snow – but it just always appears to me to be the ideal soundtrack to the winter.
The backstory of the album ties in perfectly, too – to the point of being a PR agency’s wet dream. Justin Vernon has described the recording process, holed up alone in his father’s cabin in the woods of Wisconsin following the terminal demise of a relationship, as somewhat akin to hibernation: “I left North Carolina and went up there because I didn’t know where else to go and I knew that I wanted to be alone and I knew that I wanted to be where it was cold.”
Delicate, haunting and eerie, this is not music to socialise by; this is music for solitude, for you and your thoughts. It’s isolationist, but it’s just so apt.
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