GRINSPOON!

Last night I went to see Grinspoon play at the arena in the valley. Originally when I was walking to the door I saw a heap of emo’s sitting out the front of the door. My first though was that they must think Grinspoon is an Emo band, but then I realised that this was the normal hangout for them. Being a new ‘attendant’ to the arena every moment was a new experience for me.
When I initially walked into the building the floor was solid, by the time I got to where I was going to stand for the night, the floor had progressed to a sticky carpet texture which I was afraid to jump on in case is sticky contents would spray onto the people near me. By the end of the night I couldn’t care what I was standing on as long as I could see the stage. This was the first time I saw one of my favourite bands live and I was enjoying every moment of it. While attempting to see what I could write about, mostly I was only thinking about the people that were attending the event. I was not expecting to see so many ‘normal’ people there. By normal I mean people like you and i. I half expected the concerts attendants to be all ‘rock-star’ dressed in leather and the other stereo typical things you can think of , but when I thought about it more, the people that I know that listen to Grinspoon, including myself, do not reflect the rockers image, so why should anyone else.
Overall the night was so awesome! I enjoyed every moment of it. After growing accustomed to the surroundings, not concerned about everything and everyone around me I could actually enjoy and get into the music i have loved played live.

RnB or Model

A few weeks ago I saw a battle of the bands competition at a local youth group. The youth group was raising money to help homeless people in the city. At this battle of the bands, there was one punk rock band and the rest were RnB or rappers. The lead “singer” of one of the RnB bands was a guy that I have seen at church. During his performance he was dressed in what a typical RnB group member would wear, Singlet with hoddie jacket over the top, accompanied by jogging pants and Doc Martin style boots. His mannerisms too, reflected a RnB members. What confused me is the way he dresses when he performs is not the way he dresses when he is in public, it is almost the exact opposite. So this raised the question, Is he only maintaining the RnB rapper personality and appearance when he is performing? When I saw him perform I could only laugh because it was nt what he usually wears and it seemed that he was only wearing that so other people would recognise him as a member of the “band”. I do see the sense behind the difference in dress because I think no one would have taken him seriously if he were to wear his normal dress, which consists of some brand of expensive tight long sleave shirt with pants and shoes to match. So my understanding of this whole situation is that the clothing that the members wear represents the level of respect for them, maybe not as seriously as it seems in writing but in principle. As mentioned, the clothing that the member normally wears would not be ‘accepted’ as he performs on stage.
(the picture shown is not o the person i am relating to, just another 'happy snap' from the night)

Is a DJ a Musician?

I saw a DJ perform a few weekends ago and he was extremely talented at what he does. At this time I had not seen very much work from djs but knew enough about it to see that what he was doing was difficult.
Many people say “Djs are just people with no musical talent, that is why they use other peoples music to create their own mixes.” But I have to disagree with that because although yes, they are not using their own music, but they are mixing them together to make a seamless gap between them or creating remixes of the songs, taking one beat from one song and mixing it with the bass and singing of another. People that tell me that it takes no talent to do that obviously have not experienced DJing and therefore cannot appreciate it.
As someone that has just started to dabble with DJing, I can tell you that it does require a certain amount of musical talent. A DJ has to interoperate the music he is mixing, by knowing the BPM or the key of the song. Where certain parts of the songs are similar to others and they also have to be able to read a beat. A dj that cannot predict where anther beat can be placed or a key that can be changed is going to struggle with his mixing.
Also people that say that DJs have no musical talent have only heard the work of some DJs, what about Tiesto who makes a lot of his music over the top of classical music, or Armin van Buuren who makes a lot of his own music to mix. Look at the top 10 djs in the world, many if not all make and use their own music in their mixes.
If that does not show some musical talent I don’t know what does.

Making an Impact

Well here is the first post on my blog for MSTU2000, of you havnt noticed it is on the day of the first assignment. Basically this assignment was a great learning experience, usually i do an essay because i have to but for this assignment i wanted to just becuase i found it really interesting to read about the roots of punk and the reasons behind it. When i was younger i was always facinated by the 'idea' of punk and taken in by the style of music. But i never REALLY understood why it was what it was. I knew that they were rebels and such, but i thought it was just another phase. It is obvious from what i have read and learned over the last couple of weeks that punk has definately 'sofened' under the media spotlight. I will post again soon when i can post the reasons whay i think that.