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

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.

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

Both Mini-MaFt and Mrs-MaFt are ill… great… puke and poo everywhere! Seriously!

It has just dawned on me how much I need to get done this week! Not only have I work to do but I also need to get some decorating done at the In-Laws. Then on top of that, tomorrow night we’re off to St Georges Hall in Bradford to see ‘Love So Amazing 2‘ – a collection of modern worship stuff. Mum and Dad are singing so we’re off to support them. Ro, Punk Worship bassist, is operating the projector for the night so he’s gonna spam it with PW2 adverts so I’ll have to get a photo of our massive promo!

I also need to get the laptop’s prepared for various events at church this week: Thursday is Brigades Christmas event, Saturday is PW2 and Sunday I’m on the rota to project the normal worship service… Thing is, I can’t get hold of the church laptop until Wednesday and I’m STILL waiting for people to send me what they want putting on it!

So, that’s about all!

See ya

MaFt

“It’s stupid, contagious
To be broke and famous
Can someone please save us from punk rock 101
My Dickies, your sweat bands
My spiked hair, your new Vans
Let’s throw up our rock hands for punk rock 101″
‘Punk Rock 101′ – Bowling For Soup

I had a message via MySpazz yesterday saying how the Punk Workshop I was running sounded like a great idea and this guy was going to try get some of his friends to come along.

Now, hopefully, it was a simple typo that was supposed to read ‘Punk Worship‘ and the poor lad wasn’t actually expecting a workshop on how to be punk…

In case I am actually mistaken and he WAS wanting a punk workshop then below is my quick guide on how to be punk depending on your age:

Young Punk:

• ensure your wardrobe consists solely of: atticus, lowlife, vans or black clothing
• deny you are ‘emo’
• slag Green Day off for ’selling out’ after releasing [insert any Green Day album title here]
• listen only to the latest ‘cool’ bands
• claim loudly that [insert last week's 'cool' band here] have sold out because they got radio airplay
• only go to see your mates bands and download their cd instead of supporting them
• have a MySpace page with your friends made up of bands you’ve never seen and your school chums
• explain to everyone that being ‘punk’ is about not following fashions and thinking for yourself then go around dressing the same as everyone else…

Old Punk:

• hate new punk rock groups for at least one of the following reasons: they have good quality recordings, they’re in it for the money, they’re too young, it’s just not ‘77
• wear an old, tatty leather jacket with some dodgy 70’s bands Tipp-Ex-ed onto it
• go on constantly about ‘77-’79
• show how much you ‘hate the system’ by working 9-5, 5 days a week, for a multi-national company that exploits cheap labour in China
• explain to everyone you meet that ‘punk’ is about not following rules or a fashion but then dress the same as every other punk and slag off various groups for not fitting the punk rules that, according to your own beliefs, don’t exist anyway…
• never shut up about the time you saw [insert any 70's punk band here] at [insert any small pub name here]

OK, so that was slightly tongue-in-cheek, but some people annoy me! Having said that there are 2 ‘types’ of punk person that I respect:

• 1) The young punk who’ll go to see old bands and respects the fact that this is where their current ‘new’ bands got a lot of their inspiration from
• 2) The old punk who accepts that times change and will go to see and support the new punk bands

That’s all for now, I feel I may have babbled! Anyway, it’s not ‘punk’ to moan about stuff that’s not government (old punk) or fashion (young punk) related…

MaFt

On Saturday night I, once again, witnessed the greatest band in the world playing live.

Scru’, Jim and me headed over to Leeds Uni to catch the Rancid gig. Absolutely fantastic stuff! About 30 songs covering all their albums over the last 15 years as well as a couple of Operation Ivy songs thrown in for good measure. You can’t beat the best punk band in the world coming back for their encore branding acoustic guitars – how weird it seemed but it sounded awesome.

Rancid

A good night was had by all. And a sober night too, flippin’ £2.70 for a can of Carling…

MaFt

According to MediaMonkey these are my top 10 most listened to songs:

Welcome to The Black Parade- My Chemical Romance
Since U Been Gone – Kelly Clarkson
The Darkest Places – MxPx
Blessed Be Your Name (live) – Punk Worship Band
Stars – Dude Fish
Punk Rock Princess – Something Corporate
You’re Beautiful- James Blunt
The Story – MxPx
Friendly Fire – 3Dbs Down
Divide, Devoid, Devine – Chucky No Stars

What a mixture eh?! Wonder how different that list will be on my laptop… That’s for another day!

MaFt