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Writing July 16, 2010

Posted by Sharny in : Ramble,Rants,Scraps , add a comment

It seems like every time I have the urge to write something, a blog post or whatever, there are always so many hurdles to overcome to actually get to the writing.

Today is the perfect example and indeed typical of what happens when I visit my blog. First I start by having an idea for some writing, or indeed just a strong urge to do some writing. So I fire up the blog and always the first thing I am met with is the news that wordpress has been updated. So, of course, I must update.

Now I’m very easily distracted, meaning that while an update in itself wouldn’t take that long, it takes a long time for me to actually complete the update. FTP clients take a little while to do all the deleting and uploading that comes with an update (unfortunately my webhost doesn’t let me update automatically due to the security settings) and by the time I’ve done that I’ve found myself pouring through my last.fm reccomendations, fishing out more stuff to listen to.

Once I get back to wordpress I find that every single plugin I use is also out of date and must all be manually updated. Again, this wouldn’t take so long if I didn’t figuratively look away whenever it does something any longer than 5 seconds. And so, the process stretches out longer and longer until finally the blog is ready to use again! Hooray! Now I can finally make that post I wanted to make.

Oh wait, no, I’ve forgotten what I wanted to write about. I guess I’ll just have to wait till I get another idea and go through this whole thing again…

The Minestrone Mystery February 2, 2010

Posted by Sharny in : Ramble,Rants,Scraps,Thoughts , add a comment

There is a great mystery that currently confuses countless in this country. How many times have you reached for your variety pack of Cup-a-Soup (or generic brand Cup Soup) only to find unwanted packets of minestrone? Like a plague that haunts our cupboard, minestrone is rife among these variety packs and is almost guaranteed to sit for years at a time, fermenting and stagnating.

No one likes minestrone (Source: me and 4 of my friends). Or at the very least, everyone likes all the rest of the better. So why do they keep appearing? Surely there isn’t a big difference in cup soup production costs, I can’t imagine that chicken and vegetable, mushroom or tomato are more expensive to produce than minestrone.

I’m not asking for much here, just some variety packs that don’t include minestrone, cause I’ve got about 5 packets still left to get through, and they’ve been there for as long as I can remember. Many people are left enraged and frustrated by looking to a relaxing cup a soup after a long day at work and only finding minestrone. This plague upon our land must stop, for the sake of all our sanity.

Happy Arbitrary Celebration Day January 1, 2010

Posted by Sharny in : Fun,Ramble,Scraps,World , add a comment

Yep, we’re finally out of the cool sounding oh-somethings and into just plain old 10. I’m not gonna have fun with my event names for another ten years, that does rather suck, my whole twenties spent not being able to call things “Awesome Event *last two digits of year*” since it just doesn’t sound very good.

As you can guess from my title, I find the celebration of new year a bit puzzling. A good excuse for a party to be sure, but I don’t really understand why everyone gets so happy and hugs and kisses everyone around. Really every day is a new year, a new year from the same day the year before. I call bullshit on new years resolutions too, if you wanna make a change fucking make a change, don’t wait for some arbitrary date to do it.

Anyways, have fun wherever you are.

Opium Toad Updates November 26, 2009

Posted by Sharny in : Life,Music,Opium Toad,Ramble , add a comment

It’s been a while since I posted about anything really. I’m not entirely sure why I’ve started again, I guess because I can’t help feeling it’s pointless to just have this sitting around here doing nothing.

I don’t think I ever really explained what happened with the band after I returned.

Not that long before I came back, our singer abruptly left, leaving us with rather a huge gap and feeling as if we were back at square one. In a way, that was kinda true except that our experience in song writing had gone a long way. But without a singer we were certainly in trouble. After exhausting possibilities elsewhere we looked inward for vocals. I’d always liked the idea of singing but I don’t think I ever could have done it before going to the US.

It’s strange to me in a way that singing is so much scarier than being on stage with any other instrument but for some reason the voice feels like something that is judged much more readily by others than anything else. Perhaps it’s because everyone has a voice, everyone can do their own level of singing, so there’s an even greater chance people with see themself as better than you.

My voice, it’s not really anything special. My only real boost is the fact that actually how well a person can sing doesn’t seem to be the biggest factor in how sucessful bands and artists are. It depends more on other elements. A lot of bands get around having the best vocals technically by simply playing to their strengths and the style of the music. I’ve always dreamed of playing as the front man to a band, guitar and vocals. Now I have a shot at that actually happening.

So from deciding I would be doing vocals, we started writing again, this time with me sitting around with pen and paper whilst the rest of the band played our new songs over and over as I wrote lyrics. At first it was quite hard, learning to see where lyrics should go and what melody feels best for them is a skill that certainly takes time to develop, but it’s one that I’ve known I had a bit of for a very long time. I’ve always liked to improvise over music and have sung my own tunes since I was little.

It’s taken us a few months but we are now at a point where we have a 30 minute live set that we’re comfortable to play and are actively looking for gigs. Our next one falls on Sunday December 13th at the Grange Hall in Radcliffe-on-Trent, which is where we’re all based out of, nice to have such a local gig. Unfortunately it’s an extremely packed show, we’ve been told a total of 14 bands are playing which limits our time (and presumably most of everyone else’s) to 15 minutes. So we’re looking for other stuff in December. We played our first gig as we are earlier this month at a pub in Southwell, it was a nice place, 30 minute set with 2 other bands (originally 3 but one had to drop out due to lacking a drummer).

Ideally we’d probably be playing every couple of weeks but whether we can achieve that is yet to be seen, it’s quite a task. So alongside looking to play we’re also full steam ahead in the writing department. We’re in the position of having enough potential material to fill an album but we’re obviously taking things one step at a time. I’d like to go it at on our own, but that’s the enterprise side of me kicking in. I do want to run my own business in the future, work for myself. All the number crunching and looking at statistics for sales would give me such a kick. It’s one of the reasons I think I probably should be an accountant.

The complication and expense is a problem but really at the moment we’re just going forward in the ways that we can, with a goal of getting our music to as many ears as possible. Who knows if many people will like it, but surely someone will, and if we can find that someone then I’ll be a happy person.

We’re going to be getting an EP together pretty soon, when we do I’m gonna be getting it out for free onto the web wherever I can just trying to get as many people to listen to it as possible. I’m trying to do as much as I can to work on back end stuff as well, just to keep myself busy in these crappy boredom times. I should probably post about that. So look out for a heavily understocked merchandise shop coming to an Opium Toad website near you…!

Musical musings July 16, 2009

Posted by Sharny in : Entertainment,Music,Ramble , add a comment

So, I say right up there in the tag line that I talk about music, but short of a few gigs and bits and pieces on Opium Toad I haven’t done much. Over time, I’ve really come to learn what makes good music for me although still new things open up and make me think in different ways.

The easiest thing for me to write about would probably be where I am at now musically, and to do that I’m gonna consult my last.fm profile. My top charts from the past 6 months say a lot I think, although said a little more a month or two back. Here they are:

  1. Porcupine Tree
  2. Karate
  3. Ayreon
  4. Riverside
  5. Turisas
  6. Finntroll
  7. Clutch
  8. Seth Lakeman
  9. Kalmah
  10. Opeth
  11. Dark Tranquillity
  12. dredg
  13. Alestorm
  14. Eluveitie
  15. Paul Simon
  16. Anathema

Symphony X, Queensrÿche, The Sword, Megadeth, Pure Reason Revolution, Korpiklaani, Machine Head, Dream Theater, Blackfield, Kiuas, Orange Goblin, Show of Hands, Equilibrium, Ensiferum, Children of Bodom, Spock’s Beard, Jethro Tull, Metallica, Thin Lizzy, Down, Municipal Waste, Indukti, Annihilator, Taint, Arch Enemy, Bert Jansch, Primus, Edguy, Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier, Pineapple Thief, Afro Celt Sound System, AC/DC, Weather Report, Led Zeppelin.

The big ones right at the top there, PT and Karate. Porcupine Tree have to go down as my all time favourite band. Still when I listen to them now I love them as much as when I first heard “Where we would be” amazingly, a song that is very different to much of their work is what brought them to me and I love it. PT did actually drop to 2nd to Karate whilst I was still in the US and indeed Karate deserve a mention.

They are a band that came around at exactly the right time. “Some Boots” somehow captured me exactly as I was when I first heard it, listening to “Airport” in my guitar lesson, it’s smooth main idea just took me away, combined with lyrics that filled me with what I like to refer to as “future nostalgia” and a unique delivery. They are a band completely different to any other, I’ve listened to their number one similar artist on last.fm and they sound nothing like them. Spectacular. Indeed, “Airport” is currently the number 2 most played song in my iTunes library, the only song in the top 50 to have been added to my library in 2008. Every other song there is there because, yes, I love them but I listened to them over time. This is one of the only times I can say that a single song got me through so much but it’s true. It’s an absolutely magnificent achievement but I can only do so much to sell it to others. It has such a personal connection to me that I love it as much for the memories and comfort it gave and continues to give me than for the music itself (which is still very good).

There it is, for all to enjoy.

A shout has to go to Ayreon too, for the music of Arjen Anthony Lucassen has taken me on many adventures in the soundscape. I do really enjoy his music, as demonstrated by the number of plays he has. It’s also down to how much of his music I have due to his tendancy to always produce double albums and my tendancy to like all the songs on them.

Number four is a band that have captured my attention for a little while now but are still fairly recent additions to my regular listening; Riverside. Their style of progressive rock is one that I can really connect to and they do a great job of balancing good song writing with interesting musicianship. Somehow their music manages to be appropriate for being happy, being sad and everything in between. That in itself is a bigger accomplishment than I think many would realise.

Turisas and Finntroll remain strong as my favourite offerings that folk metal have. To me, these two are the quintessental folk metal bands. They have the perfect combination of folky melodies and rocking metal riffs that are what define the genre, as well as the little bits of extra epic cool fun that folk metal should be full of.

Clutch have been entertaining me with their breed of stoner rock for about a year now and I’m still loving it, “Blast Tyrant” remains an incredibly strong album, an unrelenting onslaught of rock. I haven’t delved much further into their offerings but do enjoy a good portion of “Pure Rock Fury”.

Then comes Seth Lakeman, the only indication of the oncoming of more folk influence into my spectrum. I was delighted to see a few BBC shows at the cambridge folk festival which introduced me to a few folk artists, the one that stuck being Seth Lakeman. I really struggle with folk because as a genre it’s just so varied. I absolutely love strong folky melodies and strong story telling vibes mixed with top notch vocals but so much of folk is just same old acoustic guitar chords with a bit of singing on top, just not enough for me. I want to hear violins and vocal harmonys, I want engaging stories not just crappy love songs that I can hear on any pop record. Seth gives me a great mix of the stuff I love and I’ve been continuing to listen to his music on a regular basis since seeing those tv pieces.

Wow, I seriously have waffled on here. I’m not entirely sure what this was supposed to be exactly, but I think it’s collapsed in on its self. Still, I put quite a lot of time into writing it so I mayaswell post it. You’d have to care quite a lot about my personal musical motives to really find it interesting though, and I get the feeling that audience is very small.

Like, 1 person max.

Phase 7.0.1 August 25, 2008

Posted by Sharny in : Life,Ramble,Work , add a comment

I just took the time to do something that I have been needing to do for a little while, that being organise my life properly into phases. Said organisation puts me now at the very beginning of Phase 7, which I am very creatively naming Gap Year Quest. So, I consider where I am now to be 7.0.1, simply because I think there will be quite a lot to this year and I’m barely into it. I’m not even sure it counts until the school year starts again, which is just around the corner.

It feels very strange that all my friends will be going off to sixth form and here I am doing something completely different, preparing for adventure no less. In some ways, it’s nice to be a bit of a pioneer, doing something a bit special. Of course, there are the ways that will potentially make me an outsider again and there is nothing I want less than to drift away from what Phase 6 was all about. I can’t really dwell on that though, only hope that it doesn’t happen, as there is very little I can do.

This part of this phase is very much defined by the mundane, I’ve completed my first week of work, things are feeling more comfortable now but with 25 hours a week things are different and ultimately quite boring. I have no weekend to speak of so social events are difficult to manage. It’s not gonna be much fun. I’m fine with that.

The bit I like less is that I feel a little like I’m living a lie. Obviously, my friends know of my plans, that in a few months I’ll be off. But that’s not what my employers think, nor is it what I’m gonna be telling my colleagues. Of course, nothing stops them from finding this post. I haven’t really explicitly talked about my plans on here I don’t think but it’s not too hard to find really (although, google searches I just conducted don’t really lead here, so I can probably speak reasonably freely). That element makes me feel uncomfortable, although I suppose there is a small allure of not quite being fully free with the truth in that I could reinvent myself, I’m really no actor. I’m not sure I really know how to be anything other than me, although I can push forward different facets of myself as I please. I don’t know really, I’d rather be able to talk about the my ski instructing prospects freely, it’s such an exciting thing.

Actually though, my biggest worry right now is how I’m going to quit. It seems quite scary in itself, I know I need to give a week’s notice but how exactly I quit I’m not sure. Some sort of letter I guess. The other question is when. Nothing lines up with my pay schedule really, and if I’m going to continue working up until the week before I go then there are 2 days I need off in order to be there to play at Monday Mayhem (something that needs to be spoken about in more detail here really). In some ways, it would definitely be nice to have that last week to prepare, there’s also one of my favourite bands playing the Saturday before, so it would make sense to hand in my notice the Thursday a week before then I suppose. I’m hoping that however it goes, I leave on terms good enough at least for a reference but possibly for future employment, as there isn’t really any reason why I couldn’t work there whilst at university for some extra money. I don’t know, I guess planning is good.

This post is a bit of a ramble really, which makes sense given the times. My conclusion is basically that things are quite different now and this phase is rather defined by the mundane but luckily, improvements are just around the corner. If they weren’t, I’m not entirely sure how I could cope…even though it’s not really that bad.