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Showing posts from August, 2020

2024-07-05 Sugababes - Iveagh Gardens, Dublin

I've been a Sugababes fan since I first heard Overload way back in 2000.  It was, and still is, a pop classic.  Over the years, I managed to catch them live a couple of times.   The first time I caught Sugababes live was way back at Creamfields 2002.  Unfortunately Siobhan had left the band by then and been replaced by Heidi, so I never got to see the original lineup.  Did it matter much at the time to me?  No, not at all, I was just their to party!  As a side note, post Sugababes, Siobhan went on to release two solo albums, Revolution in Me in 2003 and Ghosts in 2007. The next time I saw them was at Oxegen 2008, and by then Mutya had left the band and was replaced by Amelle, leaving Keisha as the only remaining original member.  It was a tad strange seeing the band with only one remaining member, but again, it was a festival and all we were looking for was a good time, which we definitely got! Another side note, just like Siobhan, Mutya went on to release her own solo work, a gr

A Whole Lot of History...

Back in the day (by that I mean the mid 80s and early 90s), music came on Vinyl and Cassette Tape. Yeah, CDs were just starting to make headway, but CD players were still expensive.  Me, being a poor student, stuck to the humble cassette tape.  They were rugged, cheap, easy to record on and best of all, easy to create your own mixes. You could, if you searched, get C120 tapes, on which you could fit up to 120 minutes of music! Why do I mention this?  Well, this week I collected my old tape collection from my parents house.  It had been living in their attic, undisturbed, for the last 21 years.  Actually, not only did I pick up the tape collection, I picked up my vinyl collection also!  There were some absolute gems in the tape collection, Dignam and Goff , Power of Dreams , The 4 of Us , Blink , The Golden Horde , The Dixons , Ghost of an American Airman ...  and that was just in one bundle! Only another 170 something tapes to get through! As for the vinyl, I haven't really gone th

Bandcamp Friday

Bandcamp Friday... If any online music company comes out of the Covid19 Pandemic with honours, it looks like it will be Bandcamp .  Why?  Well, it's quite simple, it's down to Bandcamp Friday. What's Bandcamp Friday? Well, on the first Friday of each month, Bandcamp waives its fees on album and merch sales (on both physical media and downloads), meaning more money goes to the artists. This all kicked off in March as the world ground to a halt and with it, the music business.  OK, the waiving of these fees won't make up for the loss of earnings from not gigging, but y'know, every little bit helps. Today, being the first Friday of the month, I did some shopping.  I picked up a copy of the  Sowing Acorns Limited Edition EP by Emma Langford on cassette. Yes, you read that right, on cassette.  Look, don't ask why, just go with it! I also picked up a copy of a copy of The Swedish Railway Orchestra LP by, well, The Swedish Railway Orchestra on vinyl.  Yeah yeah, I

Bye Bye Spotify...

I ditched Spotify Premium this weekend. Why?  Well, I read an interview with Daniel Ek , the CEO of Spotify, and I profoundly disagreed with what he said and his attitude towards musicians in the interview.  So I said 'F*ck it', and closed my premium account.  I still do have a free account* as many bands choose Spotify to release their music, so I'll keep it for that reason. What now though?  Well, I'd created a large library of music on my home server over the last 20 years or so.  Every time I bought a CD, it got ripped to the server.  Every time I bought digital music from Bandcamp , Google or 7 Digital , they too got stored on the server, and that was fine for home use, it worked well.  But now I'd dumped Spotify, what could I do, how could I access my music outside the house? I'd played around with software called Plex a few years back, but had no use for it. I ended up doing nothing with Plex, but for this project, I decided to revisit it.  I knew that i