The NME Radar Tour Starter Pack Pt. I

The radar tour (formerly new noise and new music) is my favourite nme event. It kicks off tomorrow night in my native Oxford. Now I've never gone to an awards tour or the one that had arctic monkeys, franz ferdinand and this year glasvegas, entirely through choice as the they sell out really quickly and it all seems a little too organised and above all, commercialised.

The radar tour on the other hand tends not to be so much the bands that are going to be winning brit awards and that johnathon ross is going to say is the "best band i've heard this year" but more bands that you'll fall in love with that one night and have as your little secret for the next few years, seeing them many times for around £8. The epitome of this for me is young knives, the long blondes and rumble strips all of whom have nice healthy, devoted fanbases but if you talk to a lager drinker or a rnb enjoyer, they'll have no idea and will probably call you out about something knowing them.

You may have noticed that there was already a radar tour this year and it had popstar la roux on it. Well yes i suppose that did kind of happen but the autumn season is kicking off with four great artists, no clear headliner, all with some glorious tunes to get you in the winter mood and by that I don't mean cold and depressed..
















Marina and the diamonds

I've blogged about her 3 times already so if you follow this blog you should really be quite well acquainted with her by now. I said it quite well in my original post-

"I haven't written about this girl before because I wasn't sure if I was being swayed by just how stunningly beautiful she is. She's getting comparisons to kate nash because like she says, "I've got a keyboard and I've got a vagina". She has a deeper range which I personally dig and darker themes which are a huge plus. Some of her stuff is quite theatrical which I can only imagine will make for a great stage show, Kate Nash seemed to have very few places to go with her stuff but I can Imagine MATD will make for a killer time."

I've listened to her a little bit since then and really dig new single Mowgli's road. Seventeen gets stuck in your head easily and i am not a robot is great plus there's a couple of other nice tracks so it makes for a pretty sweet set that will definately win over a few people who pretended not to like kate nash.

Mowgli's road
Obsessions
I am not a robot
Seventeen















Golden Silvers

Yeah kinda just using the pics with the poorest lighting up in hurr. I'm pretty sure these guys will be the "headliners" as they've had an album out for a few months and there was a lot of hype about it. Describing what to expect at this gig to someone I said it would be very 80's and this is exactly where golden silvers are, a lot of keyboards and singing where there might be guitars and shouting on another day, this is of course not a criticism. We forget bands pretty quickly and the one i'm trying to remember now... Umm oh yeah- the wombats! This is so reminiscent of them and if they were to spawn with the mystery jets this is what you would get. It's all quite nice and good times, maybe not a whole lot of substance but not everything has to be dark to be morbid. "Wouldn't it be sweet if you could die from a broken heart". Besides, I'm absolutely in love with "another universe" right now, I'm pretty sure it'll be closing the night and that'll live long in the memory.

Another Universe
True Romance
Magic Touch

shuffle.

Every now and then I'll be holding in my hand my gigantic, throbbing, insatiable ipod and feel like i don't know what I want to listen to, this is where the shuffle function comes in handy and is also always the moment when i'm like fuck me i have good taste in music. I have over 17000 tracks on there and to be able to trust in it randomly pouring out awesomeness definately makes all the work worthwhile, as indeed, life.

So i'm just going to post whatever is playing through the speakers! I'll even go to the effort of uploading things that aren't on the net. Also this'll mean this blog won't just be all death cab, pinback, babyshambles etc!

Aqueduct- Hardcore Days/Softcore Nights
The cranberries- I can't be with you
Blue October- Calling you
Gregory & The Hawk- Blame Qui
Nirvana- Swap Meet
Motorhead- Bite the bullet
Daphne loves Derby- Stranger you & I
Andrew Bird- Fake Palindromes
We Start Fires- Wicked Spell

This was a lot of fun! Got to listen to great music and share it. This should be all my blog is then I wouldn't have to think, just put Simon D4 (that's it's name, the 4 is because it's had to be replaced 3 times. I think this ones... actually i won't jinx it!) on shuffle and just write down what happens! Great tracks for real.

But bottom line, library wise, everyone's gonna have some stuff they'd probably be a little embarassed about if they put it on shuffle at a party and it came on. When I was sort of 16 I went through a bit of a "listening to female artists who i think are hot" phase artists like delta goodrem, avril lavigne, bic runga, in a way these chicks were still cool and good lyricists so you can indeed nibble on my nuts. And if you're thinking of bagging on avril lavigne, may I present her defence-

I'm with you
Tomorrow
How does it feel
Losing Grip
Keep holding on

Yeah so please do suck on my sack. She also triggered my post-adolescant enamouré with canadian accents and girls. So excuuuuse meee if i get defensive!

The best advice I can give anyone who has a hard time finding new music and I'm aware that it happens but i'm like how the fuck there's so much. If I was to give a 22 step program it'd go-

1. Get a 120gb ipod classic
2. Don't get obsessed with putting your cds on it'll happen eventually
3. Think of the artists you like and download their libraries
4. Download last.fm
5. Go to the reccomendations page and download those libraries
6. Look on your neighbours pages and download their libraries
7. Download every indie/rock playlist that was made by chriznittle
8. Subscribe to blalock's playlist
9. Research the support acts when you go to gigs
10. Listen to what music people like rather than telling them what they should (yeah fucking hard!)
11. Put your ipod on shuffle and download the libraries of anyone you like and don't know
12. Rate you music intelligently and use genius to find what you'll like on there
13. Download those libraries
14. Read NME the magazine and website
15. Use NME as your bible
16. Read blogs
17. Use the hype machine
18. Be aware at the very least of under the radar
19. Go to as many gigs as possible
20. Talk to as many people as possible
21. Be open minded
22. Have your life become a constant quest to find new music to the point of obsession

= Killer itunes library!

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I've also fallen in love with this track a bit recently-

The Killers- Romeo and Juliet

Getting reacquainted with the english..

So like I say I spend alot of time in north america although my influences are english, modern music that I listen to tends to be more local. Anyway I was watching crappy freeview music channels on sky the other day, the kind where people send in their own videos of them miming over songs and like a elephant man midget dancing in a bikini it's horrible to watch but impossible to turn away! So it kinda reminded me of the songs I was in love with back in england when I was younger and while I was last there, so today I'm featuring old favourites like blur, oasis and freakin' beautiful south! These are just a taster of the tunes I heard that day, i'll post way more at a later date!

So champagne supernova is a masterpiece, every englishman in his 20s knows the words. I've recently become a reborn fan of Oasis after neglecting them for a while... mainly because they were making shit music but NME reminded me they're about more than music. Apparently there was a cover of this on the o.c. but like many things on the o.c. it was crap, this is the timeless original and the best-

Oasis- Champagne Supernova

So obviously everyone remembers the whole blur -v- oasis thing, sometimes it's easy to think oasis were the way better band but I was looking through blur's back catalogue and seriously they have crap loads of amazing tunes, the album that this was off is flawless-

Blur- Charmless Man

Beautiful South, I remember hearing them through various stages of my childhood, don't marry her struck me as unique at the time and I bought perfect 10 for the bassline, this one i remember hearing on the late bus on the way back from high school, good responsibility free times. The song now has taken on a whole new meaning, Canada is my new home and I love it there and I kind of resent being back in england, i'm back for my family but it could be anywhere-

Beautiful South- Rotterdam

Pete Doherty's due to play the EMA's tonight. I'm starting to like Shotter's nation more than Babyshamble's first album and I LOVED that, this is i think track 4 on the cd and it's where you start to realise that this is a pretty immense album- (bilo is pete's nickname btw)

Babyshambles- Unbilotitled

O.k That's it for the english bands today, I just have a couple more tracks i wanted to post, the first is by Blonde Redhead and the music in this song has haunted me so many times the past couple of months and I didn't know what the track was I searched it out like a bitch i nearly exploded when I found it! The second is mushaboom by feist, just cos I think all these covers are taking away from the original, although some great artists such as postal service and bright eyes have covered it- some have been balls!

Blonde Redhead- Maddening Cloud

Feist- Mushaboom

Well some of those were english right?!