Everything new about Bon Jovi right now!

Well it has been an INCREDIBLY exciting week for me and everything going on in Bon Jovi land. It all started with a special live event at Bon Jovi which featured some scenes from their documentary When We Were Beautiful. And then, a live stream, again online, as they announced the start of their new tour from the parking lot of the new Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey before performing a secret gig. And THEN as part of that tour, the band announced their ONLY European dates; a 5-night residency at the o2 Arena in June in London (see picture above)!

The new album, The Circle, is out here before anywhere else, on Monday 2nd November, but I learned ALSO tonight that the band will be performing their new single We Weren't Born To Follow on the X Factor next weekend! On Tuesday 3rd November, they'll be recording a live session for BBC Radio 2 and the book to partner the documentary is out this day too.

It is one very special time to be such a huge Bon Jovi fan right now, and I have tickets for their final show at the o2 on the 13th June 2010!

In other news: Uni is going great and I'm keeping on top of the work well, I had a full on intensive training weekend ahead of becoming a mentor for school kids in the Isle of Whight, and am going to see Green Day in Birmingham on Wednesday next week!

Hope you're all well in bloggy land :)

All at Sea

Jools Holland has restored my faith in Popular Music. I think there must be some kind of criteria for performing on his show, something along the lines of 'no regurgitated junk'. But when I had almost lost faith in our current chart-ranking wannabes and the music movement of today, Jools came along with a cracking line-up on his weekly show; a show I've always dreamed of one day performing on.
Tonight's show featured such an eclectic mix of musicians, each with totally differing backgrounds and styles but each with the same levels of appreciation for one another's perception on music today. Paloma Faith for example, is a breath of fresh air for the female vocal market. She sounds like an American songstress, a showgirl from the 40s with an image to match, and even talked about regularly playing music through the decades at her shows, starting in the 1920s and working her way up. Her brand of motown-pop is catchy yet inspiring, displaying a great awareness of writing a modern song whilst capturing the sparkle of age-old magic. The riff-tastic Wolfmother also played, not a band I'm aware of much but certainly worthy of their spot on the show; they have a great sound with bags of energy and a greatly unique sounding front-man. But the real saviour tonight was living legend Seasick Steve. He manages to strip music down to its very core, the very genuine foundations on which popular music is built on, yet with all the passion and feeling of now. His simple soapbox songs are probably note-perfect to those he used to sing around the fire when travelling in his Gypsy caravan, of which he still lives in, and I love that this, let's face it, old man has been given this shot so late on in life. The very fact that he has sold so many records and is performing at all kinds of events, from Glastonbury Festival to Later... prove that there is hope for anyone with any dash of creativity and any glimmer of hope. I can only imagine the culture-shock he gets when thinking back to how different life used to be as he sips champagne at award ceremonies, but he tips his cap to anyone with a dream, living proof that you don't need to 'know the right people' or, more accurately, 'line the right people's pockets with Daddy's money' to get somewhere in this fickle business. As an aspiring musician still in education, I love what I do and know that one day I WILL make a living making music, whatever form that might take, but I also know that this is the hardest thing to get into and it's going to take nothing but hard graft, a topic all too familiar in Seasick Steve's songs. The man is fantastic, a real awe-inspiring performer with so much originality and awareness of timbre and texture in his delicate yet foot-stomping songs. If I had a hat likes yours Steve, I'd be tipping it.

New Bon Jovi Album Art

Well this is something that I just have to share. There is literally nothing better than when your favourite band has a new album coming out and, with the months leading up to it, the tiniest little hints at its greatness leak out one by one. I steer clear of anything that isn't on the official website, but a few weeks back the tracklisting for The Circle was released. Imagine my sitting down at a computer routinely checking www.bonjovi.com when I see suddenly it has been redesigned and, after no hints at all, a new single is waiting for me to hear. And of course, I was in an internet cafe, when I first moved to Southampton, and had no way of listening to it without headphones, which I did not have on me. That was excruciating!
Anyway, tonight, the album art has officially been shared and its looks FANTASTIC! What do you think?! The tour dates can't be far behind! Unfortunately I cannot share the image directly here as it does not show up when I save it from the source, but you can see it officially HERE!

What MORE Bob Dylan?!

Today at uni we had our first real music workshop. We have these once a week and they are seperate from the other stuff I was telling you about before (John Mayer and James Morrison) although we are playing in the same bands. These are workshops where we're given a song each week and we have 2 hours to listen to it, work it out, perfect it, and then perform it to the other 7 bands on the course. It's all good fun, and today we started with Positively 4th Street by Bob Dylan. Now, I'm not the biggest Bob Dylan fan in that I don't own any of his records, but I can totally appreciate his song-writing and the depth of his career. It's just that we spent a very many months performing Bob Dylan songs at College thanks to an avid-Dylan fan who also served as our teacher!
Anyway it was the first chance we had to really see and hear each other play, although it's such a simple song that there's not much room for embellishment. But we nailed it pretty quickly and all went well. Next week is Come As You Are by Beverley Knight which I've just had to Youtube!
So that's uni over with today, as the week goes on my timetable becomes more and more sparse. Next week we are given our assignment briefs so I'll have a real feel of what I'll be doing for the next month or so.
Well the flat needs a clean because the Estate Agents are coming round tomorrow, so I've got an hour of hoovering and polishing with Dylan going round in circles in my head. Not literally of course, that would be mental. Imagine that, on a bike and everything.

Uni Life

Well I'm ashamed to say I have left it almost a month since my last post...but everything has been a bit mental recently what with settling into a new city and starting uni this week. Anyway, I'll hopefully get back into it all properly soon and have some more meaningful posts to talk about. It was Freshers Week last week which was lots of fun, and I am now suffering with the inevitable post-party illness; Fresher's Flu. Tonight is the big grand Freshers Ball with celeb DJs etc which promises to be lots of fun, assuming I can ignore the elephant sat on my chest. I'm not much of a club-music person but have certainly enjoyed the dancing since moving to a city; the gigs I go to are less about 'dancing' and more about tapping your feet, nodding your head, maybe swaying a little but it's great to be on a dance floor with loads of students, beer (or now exotic cocktail) in hand and properly going for it! You probably look stupid, but everyone does and as long as it feels right, that's all that matters!
Anyway I start uni properly this week and attended my first lectures today. I'm quite pedantic and enjoy writing essays so aim to do well on this side of the degree, and the playing part I can't wait to start; we were divided into 8 bands (there are 60 of us on the course) and have been set a gig date of 9th December. In the rehearsals leading up to this, we have to produce a 20 minute set consisting of covers and originals, so today our band decided to take on James Morrison's 'Broken Strings' and John Mayer's 'Waiting on the World to Change'. We will obviously consider lots more but decided on these as a start, and the prospect of playing with new people is exciting. In fact, any playing at all is exciting as it's been far too long since I've been able to sit down at a kit and play!
Anyway, enough of my uni life, this is basically the reason I've been a bit rubbish and not blogging much but once everything settles down and I establish a routine I'll get back to this properly. So stick with me and I'll let you know how it's all going soon :)

Live Review: Arctic Monkeys/Reading

I need to start this 'live review' with a footnote to say that I wasn't actually at the Reading Festival, my review is taken from the live footage of the Monkeys performing, but I think on this occasion, this will prove to be more honest. Taking myself from the crowd itself takes me from any created atmosphere that only an anticpiated festival-headline slot can bring, and I need to remove myself from any atmospheres in order to concentrate on the performance as a whole. And as another footnote, I'm not a Monkeys hater, I am in fact a big fan; I've seen them live and have BOUGHT (not a downloader) their first two albums and thoroughly enjoyed them. So here goes.
I'm afraid that our once dubbed saviours of popular music have jumped on the bandwagon of what it is to be 'cool'. These guys used to be so original; a cheeky four-piece with short hair and witty lyrics. Onstage they were fresh and exciting, and their music was just that. Their melodies were completely original, something that is now so difficult to produce in order to stand out from the crowd. They started the 'accent-singing' for this generation, the drums were outlandish and dared to be different, the entire package of the band was such a breath of much-needed fresh air.
But then I watched the band perform at Reading Festival, and I am scared. I am worried we've lost something that could have been great. Where once stood the short-haired, tight, energetic scamps reaking havoc with witty, dancy pop-rock songs now stood a gormless looking front-man, barely able to see through his mop of hair, strumming his guitar so slowly and painfully like it hurt everytime he moved. Alex Turner was fronting a band of zombies. The new songs were all so slow and depressing, where are the exciting rhythms?! It's not like they've never written a slow song but these guys aren't a ballad band, it's all about the energy and it's all been lost. I'd read reviews of the new album saying the same kind of comments, that the band's once-loved originality had been lost on Alex writing slow songs for his dear Alexa Chung and it seems to be the case. I respect the band for trying something new, but I actually had to turn the television off after fifteen minutes; the set was that slow and gormless and boring. So much for the birth of the saviours of popular music, I guess it's still down to me...

Housework and Hangovers

So, I can't iron. It sounds stupid but it's true. Ironing is what Kirsty does, but she went out this afternoon and a part of me was bored whilst the other part realised that the flat could do with a good clean. I actually quite enjoy sticking on some good music nice and loud and really cleaning properly, although apparently you could hear the music and my accompanying singing down the street. Whoops. I then decided to attack the growing pile of ironing and, although coped well enough with the easy clothes, soon struggled with various pleated and layered dresses which will probably have to be done again...sorry Kirsty!
Anyway the result now is at least a very clean flat; all dusted, hoovered, wiped, sprayed and everything else -ed which fills me with a sense of achievement.

We had friends come to stay on Thursday night; I've missed friends and the silly sense of humour we share. Anyway it was great to go out, drink lots, find all sorts of funky bars and clubs and just generally have a good time. Until I spilt a table full of drinks. Then it was time to leave... but watching then curl up uncomfortably on the floor as I got into bed was quite funny. Alas I am still counting the days until I start uni; 20 to go in fact! When I get hold of the photos from Thursday I'll get some on here because it was definitely an eventful evening and certainly a lifestyle I can't wait to get used to. Besides, the hangover wasn't that bad...I guess I need to try harder next time.