Sunday 19 September 2010

Change? You got's change!!!

Musical picks yipee!

This week's bare necessity is....The Sleeping - Young Vibes...Dont Run Away From Me



Within a few days i learned a new album was coming out from these then i heard this song. Really looking forward for the album to drop at the end of September.


This week's must have LP is....Interpol - Interpol



To be fair i could of picked 6 or 7 different albums in this section this week, but i'm going with the release of this self titled number from one of my faviourite bands. The guitar in this = :D.


Finally this week's Kirk classic (only to him) is.....Van Halen - Hot For Teacher



The video just cracks me up good video and song combo.

Saturday 11 September 2010

Snug And Suggle!

This week's musical pickels:

This week's bare necessity is......The Clash At Demonhead - Black Sleep

From the marvelous Scott Pilgrim film. Metric did the song but this is the film version.

P.S - Go and see the film NOW!!!





This week's must have LP is.......Young Guns - All Of Our Kings Are Dead



A album that surpised me here one reason why!

Finally this week's Kirk classic (only to him) is.....Radiohead - How To Disappear Completely



Tingles! A haunting number that stays with you to keep you company.

Kirk off for a kick-a-bout.

Friday 10 September 2010

LEEDS!!!!!!! the first

Here be my first part of my Leeds posting part 2 coming soonish.

Friday

The Walkmen - 7 - Solid start to my three days of music. 'Paul Maroon ' guitar work is so different from anyone else and even thou 'Hamilton Leithauser ' had an illness he still hit the high vocal notes.

The Futureheads - 8 - First time I’ve seen these live and it was a treat. Good interaction with the crowd and a short but sweet set.

Hadouken - 1 - Oh dear these where horrible. My mate likes one song so I thought I would them a go and after this I won’t be 'going' anywhere there playing again. The lead singer was a chore to listen to.

Kids In Glass Houses - 6 - Not as good as previous gigs I seen them at but they did a stern job of picking people up after the awful Hadouken!

Frank Turner - 10 - Friday was my 'up in the air' meaning there where hours where I had no fixed band to see. I decided to sit on the grass (it was grass at this point) and listen to the softer sound of the ex 'Million Dead' singer. I used to work who raved on about Mr Turner so I thought I would give him a turn to impress me. He was a revelation he had the crowd in his hand the whole time. Each song impressed me and I will be certainly reaching out to hear his records in the future - you should too.

Zebrahead - 6 - Again my mate wanted to see this band so I headed to my first and only visit to the Lock - Up stage (the line up was mostly crap) to check out a couple of bands. Zebrahead had good energy and the crowd doing circle aplenty but in terms of songs they all sounded far too samey to spark a interest.

Cancer Bats - 9 - Very good, I got my rock on for these. Doing the Beastie Boys cover was immense scream rapping was the name of the game here. Heaviest band I saw all weekend and I received a sore neck from all the head banging!

Enter Shikari - 7 - Only caught a couple of songs as I wanted a good standing position for Arcade Fire. They played my favourite Shikari songs from the two records "Mothership' and 'Solidarity' so I left happy.

Arcade Fire - 10 - Possibly the best act of the three days. Eight genuine talented musicians who played their collective socks off. I didn’t hear the new album before I left for Leeds but it didn’t matter all the new tracks made me want go home and listen to it time and time again. The crowd was small but everyone that was there got a treat instead of the people they went to see - Pendulum - no contest.

Saturday

Thrice - 6 - An ok start to the second day thou Thrice are more suited to smaller stages. Thou they did enough to make them above average and ' Of Dust And Nations' still sounds ace live.

All Time Low - 1 - DEAR LORD!!! I disliked them before Leeds and now I can happily say I hate All Time Low. I'm convinced this band are in the music business just to get laid. Annoying songs even more banter with the crowds, just plain wrong.

Youmeatsix - 4 - I'm not sure if the band have come from a long world tour or where just tired, but Youmeatsix where terrible. They did their best with getting the crowd to mosh and crowdsurf and that's what the marks are for because the songs just didn’t match up. Thou I seen them plenty of times previous so at least I know they can do better.

Limp Bizkit - 9 - My guilty secret of the weekend Limp Bizkit where the first heavy band I was into and I used to play 'My Way' way too much. After I moved on to other, better bands I still managed to rock out to the Bizkit most weeks at my local rock club (The Krazyhouse). So I was looking most forward to seeing them for the first time. Well I wasn’t disappointed. The only gripe was that weren’t on long enough. On a funny note Fred Durst had the exact same gear he had on in 1999 ha-ha.

Kele - 7 - One of the good things about the weekend was I able to catch a few other acts that I originally thought I would miss. So I raced to the NME tent to the Bloc Party frontman. For what I saw it was pretty good Kele played some Bloc Party songs which got the crowd into a frenzy especially 'Flux' which suits Kele new direction in sound.

Cypress Hill - 5 - Literally caught the end of this and what I saw most people didn’t know what to make of them. The two or three songs I saw didn’t annoy me so they get average marks for me.

Weezer - 10 - Weezer where another band I was looking forward to but I weren’t sure how many of the old songs they would play with a new album to promote. Well they only played one track from the new album and played a greatest hits set with a few surprising covers. A small part of Van Halen's 'Hot For Teacher' was :0 enough but then a MGMT (Kids)/Lady Gaga (Poker Face) was surprisingly good. The set was littered with classic songs from the extensive back catalogue such as 'Beverly Hills' (such a cool song) and 'Buddy Holly'. The best part was Rivers (lead singer) who made the show memorable with his antics. Climbing on everything he possibly could and at one point running away from the stage (to the bemusement of the stage guys) and doing a small set in the corner of the field while everyone chased him.

Paramore - 4 - Paramore are a good live band let me put that out there first. Tonight thou they where horrid the sound was horrible as I couldn’t hear Hayley when she spoke and could barely hear the band when they played the songs. This was mostly a singles set, no songs from the first album and the new album played heavily which just showed clearly that Paramore should not of played ahead of Weezer. The new songs where dull live and it killed any buzz that Weezer had built up.

Blink 182 - 9 - Another of my early musical loves that I had not seen before. It was very cool to see Blink play a 90 minute set filled with every good song they have done. No one would be left disappointed unless you where my mates who were convinced that they never played 'Rock Show' even thou it was the third song. What was weird was Tom Delonge who was back to his antics of yesteryear with the penis jokes and just shouting babble. Very strange considering I’ve seen Angels And Airwaves and he was the complete opposite with his world peace speeches. He also missed guitar notes and some song lyrics but he did his best. The best bit was Travis on the drums, when Blink came back for a encore Travis did a 3-4 minute drum solo which included him flipping upsidedown whilst still drumming...WTF. Words never do events like that justice so check below to see what I mean.



Sunday
A Day To Remember - 7 - On my third day I was starting to feel the festival pains (bad back, sore legs etc) due to my sleeping arrangements which will touched upon more in the second part of my Leeds post! Anyway ADTR did a fine job of waking everyone up. Nothing too special as the screamo vocals weren’t nearly as good as they would of been on a smaller stage, but what they needed to do ADTR delivered.

Billy Talent - 8 - Solid performance, funny banter with the crowd. Exactly what I expected from Billy. They are incapable of putting on a bad show.

Two Door Cinema Club - 10 - I rushed to the NME once more to get a good standing place for Two Door. They were much better than I thought they would be. Again the problem was it ended so soon. With one album and average of 3.00 per song that was bound to happen.

The Big Pink - 2 - Erm....next? Felt like I was watching a band for people on the come down from drugs. Luckily I had the right mind to go check LP at the main stage...or did I? On a side note they were still better than All Time Low!

Lostprophets - 5 - Another band I accepted I was going to miss due to band clashes, but luckily I had enough time to catch all there set. The backdrop of MEGA LOLZ - which has to be the most stupid slogan to have on a t-shirt never mind as a backdrop for your set. The performance itself was way below what I’ve seen from LP in the past. Sound issues once again came into play as it was quite windy and I have heard that can affect the noise of the music. Still it wasn’t a joy to watch and it was only when 'Shinobi vs Dragon Ninja was played that I got involved to do my bit of headpounding.

Delphic - 9 - Back at the NME tent where possibly the best part of the weekend was about to be laid out upon me, starting off with Delphic. After a slow start Delphic kicked to another gear and a delivered a performance that shows backs up the potential this band has. It ended with the awesome 8 minute spectacle that is 'Acolyte' - I don’t think I stopped jumping throughout.

Mumford And Sons - 6 - A hard one to score this one because after Delphic me and my friend went to meet another friend who never turned up. While we were waiting the NME tent became packed, so packed that when Mumford And Sons came on we couldn’t get back in. We tried to enter through the side entrance with the problem hit us. Which meant we stuck outside watching them on the screen which wasn’t great as you could hear the crowd in the tent more than the speakers outside. So the score is based on what I saw and heard from the crowd more than the band itself.

Phoenix - 9 - With Mumford And Sons finished a new problem arose - trying to get to in the NME tent as virtually everyone was heading the opposite direction (was anyone else here to see Phoenix?). Luckily after 5 or 10 minutes of being in a pinball machine I reached my destination at the front of the tent. Now people may ask why are Phoenix above Mumford And Sons when they have less of a audience? Well it's simple I would rather see a band with 3 solid albums to their name than a band with 1 extremely popular flavour of the month band. Anyway Phoenix played a brilliant set with a dazzling light show to fully justify their high placement on the billing. The only thing that stopped me giving them a 10 was that there was no songs from their debut 'Alphabetical' which is a sin in my book.

LCD Soundsystem - 10 - I ended my first festival experience in suitable fashion not with Guns And Roses but with LCD - who are playing there last shows in the UK before 'James Murphy’' ends the band. 'Us vs. Them' Get Innocuous' 'All My Friends' this was AMAZING it got to a point where I couldn’t stand still or all the pain that I had gathered over the 3 days would hit me hard. So I just kept jumping and dancing and such silly stuff :D. No encore which was a shame but it was exactly 11pm and I think the cut off point was at that time unless your Axle Rose who got to play till half 11 grrrrr.

That was three days of Leeds. I would say possibly Sunday was my best day as I just had the most fun and overall the performances where better. Here is my best and worst.

Best Performance
1.Arcade Fire
2.Weezer
3.LCD Sound system

Worst Performance
1.All Time Low
2.Hadouken
3.Paramore

Most Surprising Performance
1.Frank Turner
2.Weezer
3.Phoenix

Saturday 4 September 2010

Is back after the battle of Trojan.

Happy newspaper carrier day people. Due to Leeds festival, my gf being in hospital and my laptop being infected by trojan viruses i havent been able to post recently. My laptop is now clean (i hope) and my gf is close to leaving hospital so no excuses for no posts!

My Leeds festival post will be done in the next few days, it will long and will rate all the bands i saw (all 27 of them)also my thought on all the other aspects of my first festival.

Untill then thou this week's musical pieces...enjoy!

This week's bare necessity is....Anberlin - We Owe This To Ourselves



A bright flare to attract your attention to the new album out at the end of the month.


This week's must have LP is.......Arcade Fire - Suburbs



After a exceptional performance at Leeds Festival Arcade Fire showed they are one of the best bands of our time. Here is a cut from there return to form album.


Finally this week's Kirk classic (only to him) is.....Blur - Beetlebum



Best Blur song..period!!!

Kirk off to beat the rest of the Trojan army.

Tuesday 24 August 2010

Headache butties

Just a brief one for my two followers and anyone who reads this privately! Leeds festival has truely taken over my life last few days stressing over selling wrongly purchased tickets (i've sold friday and sunday with just saturday to sell!). So this is me making i at least do this week music picks and then next week i can start post other bits....goody :).

This week's bare necessity is....Lower Than Atlantis - Far Q



I loving this currently, mite check out the album to see if it's matches up well.


This week's must have LP is.......Two Door Cinema Club - Tourist History



A band that make me wanna dance, and are on my list of bands to see at Leeds. The album full of quickfire hits and the ten tracks breeze by, but in a good way.


Finally this week's Kirk classic (only to him) is.....Blink 182 - Stay Together For The Kids.




In the sprit of this week festival i thought i would choose the band that arguably most people are looking forward to seeing this weekend. This however is possibly one of my faviourite Blink songs.

Kirk going....going...........gone

Wednesday 18 August 2010

Where the 3D?

What it is with 3D? Why is it suddenly so popular again? My mind struggles to digest why in the last couple of years everyone making a film of putting a poor quality 3D stamp on it?

My first experience of 3D that i can remember was the re-release of 'A Nightmare Before Christmas' in 3D. I remember me and my freinds going to Manchester to see it and making a big deal about the fact it's in 3D. I also remember having a super cold Mcflurry that took a full hour to consume due to the baltic conditions the ice cream machine made for me. The film itself is one of my faviourite musical films (and i dont like many musicals!) but the 3D was terrible as it had ONE three second clip that was 3D which left me thinking 'what the big deal with 3D'?

Since Avatar brought some new techonlogy to the fourth front of filmmaking the 3D boom has offically hit us as there seems to be a 3D film out every couple of weeks. The problem is most of the films add the 3D after the film not make the film 3D from scratch (like Avatar). This leaves with the same effect as the films years before...no 3frickingD!!!. Plus your getting charged a extra few pounds, dollars ect to experience this unsatisfactory event while wearing glasses that dont fit and cause great pain to the bridge of your nose and ears.

Another problem is that in the past the films that had 3D in them where action flicks that would be enhacned by this effect or not, but least that where appropriate films to try it in. Now it seems film companies are thinking any film is worthy of 3D. Look at the next few films to have it: Step Up 3D, Jackass 3D, Piranha 3D, Saw 3D = WHAT THE FUCK WHERE YOU THINKING?? Seriously a dance film and a bunch of guys doing stupid stuff warrants this? I get the feeling that without the '3D' in the title these films wouldnt even see the light of day so why are they using such a cheap, cheap ploy to get us to see these things? I know the answer to that is money, but really that's a cop out reason to bring a film and most of all it's daft.

With a extended list of films to come out in the next couple of years 3D inst going away, but unfortunatly most of these films will use a heavily watered down version of the product.

I can say i have been impressed by 3D on a few occasions. Firstly when i saw U23D which for the people who dont know was a U2 concert filmed in yes 3D! It made me believe for a few moments that i was in the concert and for one moment made me feel silly. A drink had been throw by the fan and silly bill here thought the drink was heading for me luckily a embarrassed moment later eased my first thoughts! The second time recently when i went to 'A Christmas Carol' the snow effects where :O and it felt very very real at the time.

I think legendary film critics Siskel and Ebert said it best when they said that 3D is a 'gimmack' and that's exactly what most of these films are!


If i say 3D two more times, that 28 3D's in this 3D post. Kirk out and about!

Tuesday 17 August 2010

Understand your own madness before you try to understand mine!

Evenings,

It's tuesday night fall and the weather here is crazy. I have no way to predict what i need to wear to combat the day's outlook. It's like basically living in the amazon with it's heavy rainfall one hour then humit heat the next hour, i cant win!

After a brainstorming meeting with me, me and erm me i've decided to give you fine people three music videos each week....:o! The first video will be a song that's caught my eardrums. The second will be album that warrants your attention. The third video will be a classic song. This wont be classic in the sense of a Beatles or Elvis song. No i'm talking about a classic in my ears, a song i could listen to again and again and so on.

This week's bare necessity is....Brandon Flowers - Crossfire



Lead singer of The Killers giving his best vocal performance to date. Solo album due out next month!

This week's must have LP is.......Versaemerge - Fixed At Zero



A band i first saw at 'Give It A Name Introduces 2009' i did a review of there set that night and they really impressed me. Since then then have recorded there debut album and this, the final track is the pick of the bunch.



Finally this week's Kirk classic (only to him) is.....The Departure - Lump In My Throat




Anyone remember them? They had a couple of minor hits in 2004 with 'All Mapped Out' and 'Be My Enemy' but my favourite song is this little number. I just love the guitar bits, even after 5 years it still sends chills.


Right so tomorrow will be back to my normal post and tomorrow topic....3D!

Kirk an gonner!