When you list famous musical cities it's unlikely that the words Portsmouth or Southsea will crop up. Too close to London and lacking the artistic bond of Brighton, Portsmouth has always been the UK's south-central second rate cousin in terms of music. Portsmouth may possess a small but thriving grassroots scene, the hub of which is Southsea's Albert Road area, but the size of the place, the lack of quality small music venues (the Wedgewood Rooms excepted), combined with the lack of vision and entrepreneurial foresight of many (but not all) local bands and promoters means that Portsmouth often exists [...]
There's a moment just before The B of the Bang play Lung – their song about dying, where the band pause for a moment to announce that punk svengali Malcolm McLaren has died. It would have been interesting to see what McLaren would have made of this evening. He once proclaimed "It is better to be a flamboyant failure than any kind of benign success." There's little flamboyancy or failure tonight, although the muddy sounding speakers and sterile interior of the venue do their best attempt to doom both bands performances. Yet neither is the evening [...]
A while ago our ears pricked up when we heard Carnivalesque on Radio 6. The band were Dawn Chorus and a bit of research revealed the song was being released as a free download by Jellymaid Music on February 1st.The song is the first single from their forthcoming long-player The Carnival Leaves Town and also features top folk-punkster Frank Turner. We're glad to report our first instincts were
After another dmca takedown by blogspot's automated goons, I'm gonna try switching to publish this blog at my own howmarvellous.com domain, which may or may not stop those occasional irritations... and if not - it's Wordpress time. In theory... you'll notice no difference at all, save an initial blogger redirect page & the domain name in your browser - in fact by the time you read this, the change may be done & dusted (fat chance!); but please bear with me if things go awry, either here or via the rss feed. I'm strangely nervous about it - [...]
My next item on the reading list was " The Schopenhauer Cure " by Irvin Yalom. Aside from a Psych text book here or there I haven't read any of Yalom's literary work thus far (and I probably should). This is also the case with Schopenhauer , a 19th century German philosopher, the absent but very dominant character and force throughout the book. In short, the book tells the story of an aging psychiatrist, focusing on his final year of leading a relationships working therapy group, as he is slowly dying from cancer. He introduces a new [...]
Raleigh's third annual Raleigh Wide Open was held this past weekend to celebrate the opening of the new Raleigh Convention Center . Dozens of local vendors set up booths offering a wide variety of food and beverage options for the anticipated tens of thousands of attendees. Three stages were booked with bands representative of the varied nature of Raleigh's collective musical taste... from Chuck Berry to Annuals, Soul Asylum to Freebase 808, and many many more. Unfortunately, Hurricane Hanna (at this point merely a tropical storm) had other plans. Most of the day Friday was [...]
Seeing a band with multiple writers employing the old trick of 'you write it, you sing it' is always fun to watch - especially to see how the other singers add to the recipe when they're not the spotlight. Greensboro, North Carolina's Dawn Chorus mine that territory with a pair of songwriters - Zachary Mull [...]
Raleigh's third annual Raleigh Wide Open is a 36 hour free festival that is set to celebrate the opening of the new Raleigh Convention Center with appearances from bands such as Soul Asylum, Chuck Berry, and Arrested Development. This excites who exactly? Not that I don't adore Chuck Berry but shouldn't these things be about fresh and exciting music? Well, if you're in Raleigh this weekend and looking for great music at an all-day (free) outdoor festival then you're in luck, just steer clear of that main stage. For the good shit, head over [...]
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Diplo Blow Your Head 12 MOOMBAHTON 2k12 MIX
Madonna producer unloads of CD disaster
Madonna producer unloads on CD disaster
