This is Fooyah communication number 900. I can’t believe I have waffled on for so many years or communications. I can guarantee that if you read all my “posts” you would be bored very quickly.
Enjoy.
Summer Decided
There was a little debate a while ago about which music festival to attend. The decision has been made.
I am quite excited about this. It should be good. Having been last year I now know where we are going and what to expect. The festival is based at the airport of Hildesheim. This town has some wonderful buildings in the centre and is one of the oldest cities in northern Germany. Maybe this year Andy and I will get into the town centre to see what it is like.
The line up has some pretty awesome bands although, once again, I’m not sure if we’ll stay for the final Sunday night band. There’s plenty of time to decide.
Roll on August.
G’n’R Lies – Guns And Roses
So, it has taken a while and we are finally into the Gs of my album reviews. These reviews have been organised by album title and also don’t include a lot of the aggrotech that I have bought over the last two years. I doubt I’ll get around to those, also I am starting to stream music more than just buy or download albums. I’m not sure how that will turn out, I like the idea of “owning” an album rather than knowing it’s there to listen to via streaming. Let’s wait and see.
There’s an overriding problem with all of the cock rock from the 80s and G ‘n’ R is one of the main culprits. The lyrics are very sexist, bordering on obscene. I don’t think that the music alone can justify these lyrics. We could use the argument that society of the time was embedded within these albums but I’m not sure about that either. There have always been people working towards equality. Let me make this clear: equality means everyone being treated the same, it’s that simple.
Anyway, on to the album. This was released after Appetite For Destruction but has songs from before those days. It’s a pretty good rock EP and displays the destructive talent that was Guns and Roses. Patience is a pretty good ballad. Used To Love her is a great song. It reminds me of a time I saw Guns and Roses at Milton Keynes with a recent-ex-girlfriend. I may have sung along to Used To Love Her very loudly. The acoustic version of You’re Crazy is a delight.
The biggest problem is the song One In A Million. Whether we should judge the entire output of a band upon one song and the lyrics it contains or their behaviour off stage is something I haven’t got an answer for. I do know that I don’t listen to any LostProphets any more, it makes me feel ill. So, the dodgiest lyrics in One In A Million are:
Police and Niggers, that’s right
Get out of my way
Immigrants and faggots
They make no sense to me
Radicals and Racists
Don’t point your finger at me
I don’t know if these lyrics mean Guns and Roses are homophobic, racist or just trying to be controversial. Maybe it’s something we can’t know. They seem immature and a poor decision. The sort of thing a young person would write when trying to connect with the world.
Deadpool
Went to see Deadpool earlier today. As ever I have rated a film on IMDB, see my rating guide here. I went to the Cineworld cinema at Rochester, although it’s on the wrong side of the river to be in Rochester.
I rated Deadpool (2016) 6/10 #IMDb https://t.co/WLDjpfD54z
— Ian Parish (@iparish) February 28, 2016
So, here’s what I thought. It was a superhero movie, which don’t really bother me, and it was entirely like all the other superhero movie except this one included breaking the forth wall and general slutty humour.
Was it funny? Yes.
Was it laugh out loud funny? No.
Was it a good film. Not really. If you remove the humour it wasn’t that great. Just another superhero revenge movie with fights and crashes and stuff. There, I said it.
Fuckit – :wumpscut:
This was the first album by :wumpscut: that I bought. Along with my descent into aggrotech and hellecktro I started searching and reading Wikipedia about the genre trying to find new artists. There also seems to be cross pollination within the genre as quite often songs are re-mixed by other artists so by reading credits on albums it’s easy to see which bands associate with others. For instance Rotersand have remixed stuff for Aesthetic Perfection. Another method for finding new bands is to read the gig leaflets given out at venues [even if the mostly end up on the floor like a carpet of unwanted postcards].
So, :wumpscut: has been around for ages. This is a nicely produced album with some great tunes. It’s never going to make the mainstream but all the songs have a good beat and it’s well worth a listen. Youtube carries plenty of the music with people adding their own images. Go have a look.
The Fragile (Right) – Nine Inch Nails
NIN. The place to go when you want dirty industrial with haunting melodies and lyrics that speak to you. Along with the Left this album is great for me to listen to while working. It has all the usual NIN experience and hasn’t been overplayed by me so always sounds fresh.
I’ve seen NIN twice, once at Wembley Stadium [the old one] when they supported GnR and also at Brixton Academy [or whatever it is called now]. The Brixton gig was damn brilliant.
The Fragile (Left) – Nine Inch Nails
It’s been a while since I posted anything about album reviews. In fact it’s been so long I can’t remember the format I worked on. That doesn’t matter. I wrote about Broken and also Fixed. Nine Inch Nails are an awesome collective who write angry industrial sounding music. Trent Reznor follows on from the Revolting Cocks and Ministry and others and creates a niche sound. Everything NIN is clearly him.
This album is good. If I want that sound then this is where I come. It’s not an album I have over played and so I can listen to it and it always sounds fresh. A good start point although you should really go to The Downward Spiral first.
It’s Where I Am
So, I have written about music a lot. If people ask what sort of music I like I answer: metal. It’s the easiest answer and everyone pretty much understands what it means. I wrote about my descent into metal here. Something strange happened since I saw Rammstein at Wembley Arena in February 2010. My music tastes shifted after seeing Combichrist. I wrote about that here as it distressed me somewhat.
Now, to give you a taste you can listen to the music here:
There’s plenty of stuff here that I know and quite a bit I don’t. It’s all good by association. It makes me happy, smile and want to dance. It’s new and different.
XM655
Wellesbourne Airfield in Warwickshire. Home to a flying school, a Saturday market and an AVRO VULCAN: XM655.
This Vulcan is the most complete of all the Vulcans remaining. Although XH558 was the last airworthy Vulcan they had to remove stuff from it to get the airworthiness certificate. Hence, XM655 is more complete and still does high speed taxi runs.
I wrote about XH558 here when I saw her perform for the last time over Coventry airport.
I think the most amusing thing about XM655 is that when it was bought from the RAF it landed at Wellesbourne, but the runway isn’t long enough for it to take off again. That does seem a touch short sighted.
If you get the chance on a Saturday to visit you most definitely should. For a donation the members of the preservation society will give you a tour of the cockpit and tell you wonderful stories about the Vulcan and her history. Did you know that all the money went into the airframe and so the navigation equipment was pretty much the same as the Lancaster? For long flights the crew had a sextant.
With a crew of five, but only two ejector seats there were “design” issues I guess. The three crew facing backwards had to jump out through the entrance door in the floor. That was probably an issue when flying low!
So, the Vulcan is a beautiful plane. It’s very loud and imposing. I am curious as to how good it was compared to other planes of its generation. We Brits love to imagine that our stuff is the best. I just wonder how much that is true.
This beast is graceful and wonderful. I am glad she never was used for her intended mission.
Bad Traffic
Not sure this counts as the worst traffic ever, but it does look pretty bad.
I think there must be a site out there with historic traffic data. Will search.