XFM have announced the shortlist for their New Music Award, designed to recognise the best UK debut album of 2007. Listeners have been voting for their choices recently, and the shortlist is:
Air Traffic ‘Fractured Life’
The Enemy ‘We’ll Live and Die In These Towns’
Frank Turner ‘Sleep Is For The Week’
Kate Nash ‘Made Of Bricks’
Klaxons ‘Myths Of The Near Future’
The Maccabees ‘Colour It In’
The Pigeon Detectives ‘Wait For Me’
The Twang ‘Love It When I Feel Like This’
The View ‘Hats Off To The Buskers’
The Wombats ‘Proudly Present.. A Guide To Love, Loss and Desperation’
Weird to see Klaxons on a list of “new” albums - feels like they’ve been around forever already, doesn’t it? Anyway, if you shuddered at the mention of Kate Nash’s name, or vomited at the thought of The Pigeon Detectives receiving an award, there may be something you can do.

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Posted by mofgimmers on Tuesday November 27th, 2007 at 10:47 am

The Music Choice Census 2007 is “the most comprehensive survey of European music taste and consumption”. These words must be true because they appear in Music Choice’s press release. Music Choice is apparently Europe’s longest-standing legal digital music service. I should probably know that.
Here are six key findings from said census. Why six? It just turned out that way:
1. The number one song to bump uglies to is, not all that surprisingly, Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing”. Rather more disturbing is that George Michael’s grunty “I Want Your Sex” is also in the Top 10. Can I get an “Ew!”?
2. The song most people want played at their wedding is “Wonderful Tonight”, by Eric Clapton. Respondents may have missed the suggestion in the lyrics that this number is about a lady helping her soused partner into bed while he slurs his whisky breath into her ear.

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Posted by mofgimmers on Tuesday November 27th, 2007 at 9:45 am

Nashville is well known as the home of country music, and pretty soon people will be heralding Kilburn as the home of metal. OK, maybe I’m jumping the gun slightly, but if The Good Ship and The Luminaire continue to relentlessly support live music, it will at least become a well known live music hot-spot. This Wednesday The Good Ship presents a night of up-and-coming metal talent featuring the likes of Savage Messiah, Divine Chaos, Damnas and Dr Death.
If the inspired band names are not enough to hook you in, consider the motto of Dr. Death - “Thrash or be Thrashed” - and you’re probably more thoroughly convinced (and scared). Savage Messiah take inspiration from bands old and new including Testament, Judas Priest, Arch Enemy, Lamb of God and many more. The line-up includes ex-Dragonforce/Marshall Law drummer, Pete Hunt.

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Posted by laurasilver on Monday November 26th, 2007 at 3:56 pm

Since skateboarding first appeared way back when, it has been associated with music. I mean, they were developed by surfers wanting to practice on land… I can hear the ten-part harmonies from here! Of course, skaters went on to discover rock and punk, creating an identity around being a stoner drop-out and digging the sounds of snot. So with that, you can now combine the two without tattooing Sham 69 on yer forehead.

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Posted by mofgimmers on Monday November 26th, 2007 at 1:17 pm

At almost every gig, and in almost every record shop, you’ll find the old hippie. Flicking through dog-eared copies of Making Waves by Focus and Flying Teapot by Gong, the hippie will occasionally raise a weary head and jangle the beads around his head in disapproval at just about anything modern. Raised on psychedelia, cutting his teeth on prog, this hippie longs for the halcyon days when bands wore their hair long and their guitar solos even longer.
Often found dressed in stonewashed demin, unruly hair and tie-dye tees, the hippie can sometimes be seen at gigs, wasted on cheap cider, informing anyone who will listen that he can still rock it with the best of them. Sadly for the hippie, he peaks at around 10pm, leaving the young whippersnappers taking the piss and partying on ’til dawn. One lift home off the wife and a Toblerone later, and it’s back to weariness for the old boy.

Posted by Stuart Waterman on Monday November 26th, 2007 at 1:05 pm

Over the weekend, I found myself sat in a taxi. I’d done the old “pacing around my living room with my coat on waiting for it to turn up for 40 minutes prior for absolutely no reason”… and when it finally showed, in I hopped and was greeted with a bona fide taxicab classic.
Yessir, in the dark days of the 1980s, every two-bit soul singer fancied a bit of Michael Jackson’s action and, as such, any bloke with a falsetto and a set of hair straighteners got a job (think Terence Trent D’Arby). One bloke was the squeaky spinning top of Jermaine Stewart who graced the airwaves with his We Don’t Have To (Take Our Clothes Off).

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Posted by Stuart Waterman on Monday November 26th, 2007 at 12:43 pm

Shoegazing perfectionists My Bloody Valentine reckon they’re going to release their allegedly forthcoming album online, free of record company input. Will it ever see the light of day? They’re not the most prolific of bands…
Check out Tech Digest for the full story

Posted by mofgimmers on Monday November 26th, 2007 at 12:11 pm

It’s such a pain asking real people for help, especially when it comes to musical instruments. What, you know what a diminished seventh is? YOU THINK YOU’RE BETTER THAN ME??
Well scream no more, wannabe fretmasters. A website called nowplayit.com will show you how to play your favourite songs (uh, KT Tunstall is your favourite, right?), possibly even with a tutorial from the original artist.
Paul McCartney, Supergrass, Blur and the aformentioned Tunstall are among the artists who contribute to the site, with a full tutorial of at least 15 minutes costing £3.99. You can also purchase “lite” tutorials, or versions without sparkly celebs, for slightly less.

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Posted by Stuart Waterman on Monday November 26th, 2007 at 11:04 am

Got too much money? Want to spank some of it on a multi-fireplaced Beverley Hills mansion? Well, good news - Kanye West’s pad is on the market for just $8.69 million. He only bought it in March this year, so maybe he’s discovered it’s got rising damp or something. That, or he’s astutely about to make a cool $1.69 million profit on the price he paid for it.
Meanwhile Flea (not his real name) of Red Hot Chili Peppers was probably rather pleased not to have been at his Malibu home recently, as it got caught in the path of the recent wildfires and was “burnt to a crisp”.
Flea doesn’t seem to spend any money on shirts, so let’s hope those savings were put into an insurance plan of some kind. And let’s also hope the insurance people don’t get all tricksy about paying out. And let’s hope that if they do get all tricksy Flea doesn’t attack them with a ferret, like he did to The Dude in The Big Lebowski. That’s not the way to settle insurance disputes.
[via SOHH.com & Gigwise]

Posted by mofgimmers on Monday November 26th, 2007 at 9:43 am

I mentioned earlier the heartbreak caused by Morrissey’s January gigs apparently selling out online in a nanosecond. Kat from Tech Digest was so outraged she did what any self-respecting nerdlinger would do - she cried and drowned her sorrows with weak lemon squash took to her blogging platform! Read her article, which appeared on Tech Digest earlier today, below. For a Mozza fan, it’s pretty rational…
Katherine Hannaford writes:
Excuse me for five minutes whilst I vent and rant about how angry I am with Ticketmaster and other online ticket-sellers. You may be aware that this morning, tickets for six London Morrissey gigs went on sale at 9am. Or you will be, when tonight’s papers come out proclaiming the gigs as being the fastest-selling concerts since the guitar was invented.
Like all die-hard Morrissey fans, I logged on at 9am sharp to buy two tickets to just one of the gigs. I was actually using my HTC Touch on the bus, navigating through the pages with GPRS, which was actually behaving itself for once. Not only that, but I had someone else attempting to buy tickets for me as well, on a computer at home. By 9:04am however, we discovered that our attempts to see the quiff-tastic Mozfather were in vain, as all the tickets were sold out.
Hang on - a 3,300 capacity venue, sold out on all six nights, within minutes of the tickets going on sale? It reeked of ticket tout exploitation, and has angered me to the point where I’m urging Ticketmaster and the like to implement new measures to block touts from ruining actual fans’ chances of purchasing tickets. For the love of Morrissey and all good music!

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Posted by mofgimmers on Friday November 23rd, 2007 at 3:45 pm