3.5 out of 5 stars
You may recognize James Blunt from your local radio station – currently, he’s the one they play 200 times a day, singing ‘You’re Beautiful’ to some unknown lady-friend he probably met during his days in the army.
Category: Music Page 4 of 5
4 out of 5 stars
Glasgow quartet Franz Ferdinand struck gold in late 2003 when they released their debut single Take Me Out, and followed it up with their debut self-titled album. Its fair to say that, if acts like White Stripes or The Strokes pioneered it, then Franz Ferdinand’s debut album perfected the dance-rock style.
Normally I’m categorically against individual members of a band doing side or solo projects – think Wes Borland leaving Limp Bizkit, Ozzy Osbourne leaving Black Sabbath, or Gary Barlow leaving Take That. There generally ends up being friction between the artist, and his regular band, the side/solo project is normally a disaster anyway, and all involved agree it should never have happened.
Have you ever watched one of those riveting mini-series on TV that goes over 2 nights? You know the ones – they play the first night on a Sunday, and the second part the following Sunday, a week later; you spend the whole week thinking about the first part, and hanging out for the second part, and when you see the second part, you are thankful because you’ve just witnessed one of the marvels of modern entertainment.
You always hear about the biggest artists in the world – like ACDC and the Rolling Stones having a concert in Toronto with over 500,000 people in attendance, or Michael Jackson selling 27,000,000 copies of his album Thriller, or David Bowie having one of the highest grossing tours of all time. But being big enough to affect the business efforts of a record label the size of EMI? It sounds unlikely.
Its been a solid 2 years since System of a Down released anything to the public, but their latest release, Mezmerize, was worth the wait. The thing is, its not worth it for the reasons you would think – and this isn’t the System of a Down you rocked out to 2 years ago.
Head Automatica is the [apparently] much anticipated collaboration of vocalist Daryl Palumbo (formerly of hardcore band Glassjaw), and electronic whiz Dan ‘The Automator’ Nakamura (formerly of Handsome Boy Modelling School and Gorillaz). Their debut album, ‘Decadence’, was released in the States in August 2004.
The one key thing to remember about this BDO is that I wasn’t actually planning to go – its just that when the time rolled around, I had talked myself into a bunch of the bands, and had heard more from them all – like, during December and January, leading up to the festival, I managed to pick up copies of Black Eyed Peas’ ‘Elephunk’, Lostprophets’ ‘Start Something’ and ‘The Fake Sound of Progress’, Muse’s ‘Absolution’ and ‘Origin of Symmetry’ (all of which now rank among my favourite albums of the last 10 years), as well as Metallica’s ‘St Anger’ and The Strokes’ album. I ended up buying my ticket about 2 days before the show, and catching a ride down to it with my Mum (she was going to Aucks anyway). Oh, and I was by myself as well. Here’s what I managed to see:
Determined to put the past behind me, and on my own for the first time ever, I headed to Auckland for my 6th consecutive Big Day Out. It was a pretty good day in all. Even though nothing much happened.
Just another standard day at the Big Day Out – this year I went along with my sister, and my buddy Nate again. Not too much transpired – except for when my wallet got lost with $200 cash inside it. I was pretty hungry and thirsty for the rest of the day. Oh – and it rained, which sucked.