Month three of the year

I've decided to stop self pitying.
Next month begins with a week off.
I'm going to spend a day not playing on my Playstation.
Not watching reruns and cartoons.
Not lazing on the sofa.
I'm going to dedicate a few days to recording.
Every little riff that pops in to my head.
I'm gonna record it all.

Lost my Mojo.

I've found of late I cant write music anymore.
I cant set my mind to it.
Every time I sit down, and get to it my mind goes blank.
I cant focus.
No matter how hard I try.
Nothing.
I cant seem to get a beat in my head.
No riffs.
Nothing.
I cant seem to make anything.
It sounds self pitying I know.
But it's gone.
This month I haven't really touched my guitars.
I've been dusting therm today.
I picked one up and couldn't think of anything to play.
So back it goes.
Think I need a direction to go in.
But I cant find that either.
I think I want to make some beats.
Something in the vein of Royksopp or Portishead.
They might be a bit out of my league.
But I need a challenge.
Something to get me going.
If it works I'll post the results if their any good.
If their not, they'll get deleted.
Like so many others over the past month.
Not that I'm self pitying or anything.

Whatever their saying their saying it well

I was always told that you should never get a band tattoo.
There are so many in their forties that regret their Iron maiden tats.
There are so many modern metal kids covered in Ollie Sykes tattoos that will live to regret it.
As i was told when I was younger by all the bikers in the bar was,
"Never get a band Tattoo."
The reason is bands can get shit.
When I was seventeen I saw this guy at a Korn gig with a righteous Korn tattoo.
Nowadays, even as a die hard Korn fan,
their work with Skrillix is just plain embarrassing.
If you have a tattoo of Korn,
Their shame is your shame by default.
I digress.
The reason I say this is I have a band Tattoo.
My third favourite band of all time is Sigur Ros.
I love their music.
People always say when you die you hear Enya at the end of the tunnel.
She got bumped.
Heaven is now soundtracked by Sigur Ros.
Their music will always make me smile when ever I feel down.
I had to stop listening to them as I used to walk to work.
It took me to Track four on brackets to get to work,
and just as it started I'd always wonder,
what is down that road?
If I kept on listening on the way to work,
one day I wouldn't make it.
I would have walked down that road.
Seeing them live for the first time was like a religious experience.
They swapped instruments,
The lighting/back drop was just plain brilliant.
They had a marching band come on and a violin section.
They played their music just as it is on the record.
The first time I saw them was the same week I got in to them.
I had brackets before the gig.
I had everything else after.
I've been a die hard fan ever since.
Converting others.
Including my parents.
I even took my Dad to see them.
They released a DVD called Heima.
on the video the same viola section played with them in an abandoned factory.
The same marching band marched through their home town.
Sigur Ros played in a valley that a week later would be flooded for all time.
They played my Favourite song"Hey Satan" in an abandoned fishing village.
The DVD summed up every feeling I have for them and their beautiful, hypnotic music.
I have two tattoos.
One is a skeleton of a frog tattooed on to my back.
The other is the word Heima tattooed on to my left wrist.
Its tattooed so I can read it without having to bend my wrist at a silly angle.
If I'm having a shit time at work.
I just look at my wrist and think of their music.

As February drags on

I was watching a count down of Thirty seconds to mars's videos on mtv.
I remember when they used to be cool.
I know a lot of people like to pretend to have been in to a band from the beginning.
But with them I really was.
I first heard about them in a guitrist magazine.
They had an artical about actors in bands.
They had the crap.
Dogstar, thirty odd foot of grunts.
The funny,
Tenacious d
and the interesting,
Thirty seconds to mars.
I got hold of their first album years before they blew up everywhere with their second album.
I used to DJ them when I was playing music to a half empty pub on a Wednesday night.
I went on their website around the same time.
They had a stream of the kill.
It wasn't called that back then.
I cant remember what it was called.
it sounded ace.
finally,
years later the new album came out.
I got it straight away.
it was a crowd pleaser.
I loved it.
Then all the fans came out of the wood work.
God I hate them.
I started to get asked to play them at the night club.
I used to joke that I'd been playing them for years.
They'd just call me sad for pretending to have been a fan from the beginning.
The place was filled with hundreds of them.
Whatever.
At least they got up and danced.
Then the third album came out.
kings and queens.
Great single if a little pompous.
Then I got the joy of hearing the whole album.
God wept.
Firstly.
The whole thing is just one big ego trip for Jared.
Secondly.
That god awful teenage, mega chorus.
Yeah it sounds cool.
Dont put it on every bloody track.
...
I dont think I just spontaneously started to hate them.
I think it started to happen when I saw them live for the first time.
The band came on looking cool.
dressed in faded, worn down black clothes.
very prog/goth/industrial.
Then came Leto.
I guess his mum does use Daz.
head to toe white.
the spotlights shine on him.
"LOOK AT ME, IM GREAT, IM THE CENTRE OF THE FUCKING UNIVERSE..."
I'm not saying they wasn't bad live.
I just couldn't get past Leto.
Well to be fair it was like looking directly at the sun.
It was Leto acting at been the front man of a great band,
as opposed to just been the front man of a great band.
...
I write this as I listen to the first album again.
I just had to listen to it again.
Remember what it was like been the fan of a band that no one else in my dead end town knew.
Though if you ask any of them they where fans from the beginning,
one and all.

When I grow old

I turned Twentynine the other day.
Not one of the land mark ages.
Last chance to be in your twenties before your in you thirties.
I have a plan to go to one last festival this year before I'm thirty.
Anyway,
the new rock sound is out.
I wont go on about how much I hate Skrillix.
I'm pretty sure we all hate him.
I'm almost convinced that people just pretend to like him because someone decided he was hip.
But anyway,
Rock sound is one of my favourite music magazines.
The only other one I read is Stool Pigeon.
But there are less bands in that, that I can relate too.
Rock Sound always has a free cd on the cover.
This is great for discovering new bands.
One of the things I do is that as I listen I cross of the ones that I don't like.
Normally its only one or two.
This months it was more than half.
I picked up the pile,
what do you do with free cd's of the front of magazines you don't want to keep?
and checked.
the number has risen over the past few months or so.
It seems I like less and less new music.
Is this a sign of getting old?
God I hope not.
I need that high of discovering new music.
Or at least new to me.
Which brings me nicely up to the black Keys.
Got there new album El Camino.
Its great.
I love it.
I havent listend to anything else they have done for risk they might ruin it.
Just Like the Editors did by making good singles, boring albums.
I love the production,
I love the sound,
I love the songs.
I would love to be in a band that sounds this good.
Which is my problem.
Yesterday I wanted to be in a band that sounds like Clutch or Sleep.
I just cant make up my mind where I want to be.