MaFt’s Musings

I’ve been chatting to a mate about Hayley from Paramore’s public apology for the blasphemous lyrics in their song, Misery Business. No sooner had I finally found the post form Hayley the song itself came on Kerrang! Radio on Freeview! How freaky is that?

Anyway, if you’re interested here’s an excerpt:

“but god does it feel so good… to steal it all away from you now. and if you could then you know you would. cause god it just feels so… it just feels so good.”

i’m ashamed to say that, although i’m a believer in Jesus Christ and i claim him as my God, when i wrote those lyrics i wasn’t addressing him. i was using his name casually. in vain, to be blunt. if you know much about the Christian religion (which i’m not too fond of addressing my faith as), you’ll probably know that one of the ten commandments is “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord your God in vain”… it goes on to say, “…for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.” As a believer in Christ, that last part scares the hell out of me. i don’t want to be held accountable for being the cause of so many people using his name in vain. you don’t have to believe in what i believe and no one in Paramore is ever going to go around forcing our faith into people’s lives… but believer or not, i might have led some of ya’ll to believe that i take my saviour lightly. and i don’t.

Read the full post including the background for the song here: http://paramoreband.livejournal.com/31376.html

I would dearly love to show you some video from Monday’s Green Day gig at Sheffield Arena however my iPhone was stolen and was last ’seen’ in Liverpool, near Kensington Gardens…

On Sunday night my car was broken into as well. Nothing was taken but it did mean I had to pay for a replacement window and the hassle involved.

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Music has played a massive part in my life – since I was first introduced to Metallica and Megadeth by my older brother, Nat, I have bought and listened to countless albums. While I was at uni I built up an awesome punk-rock vinyl collection but in a possibly silly move I sold it all a few years back when we were seriously strapped for cash. However, I kept my CD’s and, although occasionally sell a few that no longer get listened to, I still have just short of 900 physical CD’s in my possession. There are clearly storage issues here – while it’s not a huge collection, it certainly isn’t small… Read more �

NB: I started writing this aaaaaaages ago – sorry for the delay in posting it!

I had the pleasure of receiving Guest Passes for Leeds Festival for this past weekend. Due to family / home stuff I was only able to make it for one day – thankfully I picked the one day of the weekend when it stayed dry! I set off about half an hour later than planned to go pick up my mate, Shaun, from Wrose. However, I thought it would be a wise move to phone him to confirm his house number and road – I knew roughly where he lived but wasn’t 100% certain. It’s a good job really as I’d completely forgotten that he moved house about 4 months ago to Pudsey…

So, anyway, we finally got there after a mix up between J45 on the M1 and J45 on the A1(M) and after exchanging out tickets for the wrist bands headed through to the guest area. Wow, flushing toilets and picnic benches to sit at! Needless to say we were impressed! The first band wasn’t on until 12 so we wandered around the site to get our bearings. It didn’t take too long so we both decided to buy a new belt each from the bargain bucket at one of the stalls and grab some money from the cash machine to pay for them…

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Back in around 1993/4 when I first started chosing what music to listen to I opted for the Metal albums borrowed from one of my older brothers, Nat. Bands like Metallica, Megadeth and Machine Head (funny how they all begin with ‘M’!) regularly assaulted my ear canals while out delivering papers. In 1994 when I got my first CD player (for Christmas) I bought my first 2 CD’s: “The Best Rock Album In The World… Ever” and Green Day’s “Basket Case” single. The latter changed my musical tastes for ever. Punk rock was then, and has been since, my musical preference although I do still love a bit of metal every so often! If you asked me around 1997/8 during 6th Form who my favourite bands were I would have said Green Day, Rancid, NOFX and The Offspring.

So, moving onto 2008/9 we’ve had new albums from each of those bands. The Offspring released “Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace” at the end of 2008 which was a classic Offspring album – fast tempo’d American punk rock with the odd ballad/slower song thrown in. Next up we had NOFX’s “Coaster” (or “Frisbee” if you bought the vinyl version). This was a return to form, the previous couple of albums were a bit too political and it kinda spoiled the records. Rancid’s “Let The Dominoes Fall” is probably the best album of 2009 (so far) – a great mix of punk rock and ska with Matt Freeman even taking on more of the lead vocals than the last few offerings. Of the four bands Green Day have changed the most. Now, don’t worry, I won’t be going down the whole ’sell out’ thing cos I honestly don’t think that they have; they’ve just changed their style somewhat. Green Day have a special place in my heart as being the band that got me into punk rock in the first place – as clichéd as it sounds, they changed my life! However, “21st Century Breakdown” is not a punk rock record; that’s not to say it isn’t a good record though! Green Day may have gone more stadium rock than punk rock but they still know how to make good, catchy music – even if it IS five times longer than their previous offerings!

So, in July 2009, if you asked me who my favourite bands were I would have to say, still, Green Day, Rancid, NOFX and The Offspring regardless of how they have changed.

Anyone who knows me knows I like cheap. Even better than cheap is free. So it may surprise you that in a bizarre turn-around I’ve actually bought an iPhone app that was £5.99!

I like my music and I’ve been using Collectorz.com Music Collector for about 7 years now. MuC (as it is often referred to) is a fantastic piece of Windows and Mac database/collection software specifically for cataloguing CDs, LPs etc. It has a tonne of features that can be viewed via their website (I’m blogging this on my iPhone so am too lazy to fully review it!) but earlier today their ‘clz music’ app was finally added to the AppStore. So I bought it!

Now, instead of having to export my collection to HTML, format it, split it into groups by letter, upload and update the search database I can simply export it to my iPhone and view/search from there! It’s great! No more will I be rummaging around Discovery (local 2nd hand music shop) and end up buying a CD I already own (yes, I’ve done it a few times) or cursing the shopping center for no GPRS signal to check my collection online…

Oh, they also have software for movies, comics, books, photos most of which have iPhone apps to go with them.

After my rant yesterday about iTunes being a bit rubbish at managing libraries over the network I’m going to eat a bit of humble pie… I thought I’d give it another try and it seems to be OK now. This could be down to one of two things either 1) an update to iTunes solved some issues or 2) better account control on Windows 7 RC. I’m going to opt for a mixture of the two!

I’ve also been playing with ‘Remote’ for the iPhone which works really well. Just to have the iPhone sat next to me to switch tracks without having to keep switching to iTunes itself – it’s really lazy but could be handy if I ever connected the laptop to the stereo for parties. Which I might now it works properly!

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Now playing: Nerf Herder – Easy Mark
via FoxyTunes

I use FireFox, I like music, I use FoxyTunes I also use Spotify and have both Mac and PC. All my tunes are stored on the desktop PC and accessed via the network when I listen to them on a laptop – I rarely (if at all) use iTunes on the Mac Book Pro because it’s networking ability is poor* (on the Windows laptop I prefer MediaMonkey) so often end up using Spotify.

Now, on the desktop I can use FoxyTunes to control my music and add ‘currently listening to’ links to blog posts etc but on the Mac I can only do that with iTunes as there is no Spotify support in FoxyTunes. A bit of googling tells me that the Windows version of FoxyTunes can control Spotify with a bit of fiddling but this does not work on Mac OSX.

So, what I’m after is anyone who can tell me a way to get FoxyTunes to work with Spotify on the Mac! Either that or for FoxyTunes developers to add Spotify support officially!

*EDIT: just to clarify, the networking ability of iTunes is poor – not the networking ability of the Mac Book Pro!!!

Hmm… Why do I get the feeling that this Sunday Morning will be the end of Punk Worship?

MaFt

Having a bit of a clearout of CD’s so head over to http://maft.co.uk/ebay to see if you can grab yourself a bargain!

MaFt