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.
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.
Tweet nothings
February 4, 2010 at 9:47 pm | Posted in music | Leave a commentTags: advertising, buffalo, cardiff, cardiff arts institute, clwb ifor bach, ellie goulding, richmond fontaine, tweet, Twitter, vote, willy vlautin, xbox reverb
That’s right: I’m about to blog about a gig which I’m not even attending. A pretty self-evident fact, really, given that said gig is currently taking place, while I am sat at home blogging. I’m just not that great a fan of Ellie Goulding so far.
Still, her free gig at Cardiff Arts Institute tonight: exciting, hey? You got to vote and choose where you where you wanted her to play: Buffalo, Clwb Ifor Bach or the Arts Institute. It is, according to hosts Xbox Reverb, an attempt to give back control to the audience – though is it just me who’d not be especially influenced into going to a gig just because of where it was held? Obviously I prefer some venues over others, but if I want to see a band, I’ll go regardless; I’ve never found it to be a decisive factor.
What’s in it for Xbox? Free advertising, obviously. Attendees got digital wristbands, from which they would apparently be able to live-tweet about the gig. Ace – interactivity and all that. Could have been a nice move, if people were actually able to use them to pass comment about the set. But no, obviously.
The feed on my Twitter home page currently shows now less than 10 tweets all saying exactly the same thing: “I love @xboxreverb now give me a free Xbox! RT this by 11/02/10 to be in with a chance of getting a free Xbox. Nice. #reverbcomp“. My friend Josie said she had had no control over this. So, essentially, you get a free ticket in exchange for allowing them to hijack your Twitter profile for the evening for advertising purposes. As they said: nice.
I’m far more excited about Willy Vlautin at CAI next week:
In defiance of the support act
November 17, 2009 at 2:03 pm | Posted in music, Uncategorized | 6 CommentsTags: bright eyes, cardiff, coal exchange, conor oberst, jim james, live music, m. ward, mike mogis, monsters of folk, my morning jacket, support act
Let’s be honest: support acts are mainly rubbish, aren’t they? There are very few that I’ve seen that have converted me, The Sleepy Jackson and The Subways being among them.
Last night I saw something quite remarkable: a gig with no support act. Monsters of Folk at the Coal Exchange, who took the stage in their three-piece suits looking for all the world like the house band straight from an American Gothic novel; perhaps something imagined up by Edgar Allan Poe.
(I wish I had an original image to use here, but there was a strict no-camera policy)
Obviously they were fantastic; that pretty much goes without saying for anything which has Conor Oberst’s involvement. But no support act? Controversial choice, arguably.
There tend to be two camps of opinion when it comes to support acts: some think that they’re just a way of making the headliners look good; others think that they’re a valid way of introducing audiences to other, lesser-known bands.
I’m sure that many would claim that forgoing one altogether is a colossal act of ego. Personally, I think that it was the complete opposite in this case.
Monsters of Folk feature members of Bright Eyes (Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis), My Morning Jacket (Jim James) and M. Ward (well…) – they’ve got more than enough talent between them not to need someone to make them look comparatively good.
Not showcasing another band? Less defensible, perhaps. But MoF literally played a three-hour set. This set included at least seven Bright Eyes songs, as well as plenty of My Morning Jacket and M. Ward material. This simply wouldn’t have been possible if time had had to be allowed for another band’s set.
‘Supergroups‘ (God, I hate that term, hence the inverted commas) can sometimes be frustrating because of a refusal to acknowledge that many in the audience will be there as a result of their admiration for the component bands. “Hey, we’re playing in a different band, now; you’re not meant to be here for anything else,” can sometimes go the logic.
And that, I think, is a far worse.
Lovely.
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