Green Man 2011 Highlights

So A month ago today I was watching this bloke on the main stage of the Green Man Festival.



Iron & Wine was the initial pull to buy the tickets for me. I've wept alone in my bedroom to this guy. He was stunning.

My next highlight is Dry the River. I had seen one video of them on youtube before the festival and decided to watch them on the back of that. The energy and raw emotion these lads put into each performance was staggering:



James Blake was fantastic. I lay down on the grass and just felt that shit. The bass was .



One of the pulls for me was Explosions in the Sky, but unfortunately they clashed with this next guy who could not be missed. Though I couldn't find a video of him at Green Man, this was the last show I saw of his andthe reason I missed half of EITS. Ben Howard...



As well as too much good music to appreciate fully in four days, Green Man was a carnival of merriment and one that didn't have to be realised through a chemical haze. A refreshing festival whichI will be going to next year. And the next year. Indefinitely.

Bright Eyes - HMV Birmingham 08/07/11

A good few months ago I reviewed their new album and a few days ago I got to see them preform it along with a load of old stuff too.

I would have reviewed the gig but I don't like to be taking notes unless I'm getting paid - or getting some benefit out of it. I find it takes away from the experience and feels a bit too much like work. So I'll summarise for you:

Birmingham HMV Institute was a mid sized venue which is set out a bit like a small Albert Hall, decorative walls and balconies creating a semi circle around the stage. When we arrived there was a cue around the corner and halfway down the next street. So we went to a pub with a couple of cling-ons from Preston who were most certainly underage. We had a couple of £1.79 beers and by the time we had finished, the cue had gone and we walked straight into $4 pints and the support act: Jenny & Johnny, who were pretty rockin'!

For the feature act I'll start with my only slight complaint which was Conor's dancing, which was a little odd... picture a diminutive, white, floppy haired bloke impersonating Snoop Dog (work on it Conor). Other than that every song gave me the shivers (the good ones), the man has a voice that could break diamonds. I'm not ashamed to say I cried when they played 'Poison Oak' and by the last song I was up doing the 'G' dance with my modern musical hero Mr Oberst.

Highlights of the set were:



...



and...



If you ever find yourself, accidentally or otherwise, in Birmingham (why you'd be there out of choice I don't know) the only inhabitable place I found was called The Victoria. They played Dylan and sold ale (albeit blonde).

Manifest Masterchief

Masterchef Manifest

Ten million Brits are locked to their television sets. They will Darren’s sorbet to set. They spur Suzy on as she blow-torches the surface of her crème brulèe.

The collective thoughts of the British people take to the air almost as a common prayer.

Outside ten million misted windows the Earth retains its shape and solidity and the sun scorches gardens brown.

http://www.teaganlucas.co.uk/prose-poetry.html

I have been thinking about TV quite a lot lately and how it affects us. I was talking to my Dad about it after he came in to find my whole family watching masterchef. I explained to him ‘It’s the final (or something),’ and he expressed the thought that it's weird to think that right now millions of people are watching the same thing, thinking the same thing. He also said he thought it was a bit like brainwashing. I don’t know if I really agree with the brainwashing part (not in regards to Masterchef), but I think it is interesting that so many people could be forced into thinking the same thing at the same time.

I’m not sure whether I believe in the whole manifesting things for yourself, thing. It’s the belief where if you think something then it will come into existence. I believe it on the level that if you want something to happen and you’re confident it will, you are more likely to make it happen. But there needs to be an action as well as a thought.

Why this is relevant to television; if millions of people are thinking the same thing then that thing is going to have a heightened importance. Take Masterchef for example, if everyone is watching masterchef, more and more kids are going to grow up wanting to be chefs and various types of food (which feature more heavily in the programme) will become more popular pushing others out of business - everyone will be eating creme fraiche and mayonnaise will become obsolete.

These thoughts collected in my brain simultaneously made me think; what if a mass watching of a single programme, one thought streaming through the heads of everyone on the planet, what if that caused more than just a collective thought? What if it caused an actual physical manifestation? So, I’m planning to write a story on that. How a collective thought could change the world for better or for worst... I feel a novel coming on!

Tim Key

A poet with the best delivery I have ever seen. Enjoy!


"What a bad film."


This reminds me watch Deal or no Deal on the 13th and 15th of May, you may see a familiar face...

Bright Eyes – The People’s Key

Four years since Cassadaga, Conor Oberst returns to Bright Eyes for their tenth studio album - heavily suggested to be the last we’ll hear from the band that first brought him into the public eye. He’s been hailed as the poet of the post-emo generation and the Dylan of the noughties as well as being named song writer of the year 2008 by Rolling Stone magazine.

Oberst has spent the last four years focusing on his side projects; The Mystic Valley Band and Monsters of Folk.

With ‘The People’s Key’, Oberst has released an album that on the surface will sound familiar to any Bright Eyes fan. His pain-drenched warble never fails to give all his songs just the right amount of melancholy and the radio samples give the feel of a multi-media art installation, something more than just a rock album. But it seems just another album was not what Oberst wanted to go out on, if this is indeed goodbye; there is a definite change in style, a lean towards electro with the introduction of synth and kraftwerk-esque keyboard. The question is does this improve the sound that we had become so comfortable with?

Although the album lacks some of the subtlety of earlier albums; Fever & Mirrors and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn to name a couple, one thing you can expect from Oberst is the unexpected. He is consistently unpredictable. To be honest I’m surprised he didn’t release an acapella album or a purely instrumental album – surely that would have been a more apt sign-off for this discriminatingly arty band.

The album has an eclectic feel; there are highs and lows: ‘Triple Spiral’ – a festival of exuberance and energy is followed immediately by ‘Beginner’s Mind’ starting out downtrodden and building to an emotive crescendo on Oberst’s fight against his own pessimism; “The sun is so clichéd, just like love and pain”. The diversity is something that makes this album worth listening to, but it also means it lacks the strength of identity of previous albums. ‘I’m Wide Awake, it’s Morning’ is such an emotive album because the theme throughout is loneliness, it makes listening to the album a journey. Similarly with ‘Fever & Mirrors’ the theme of madness and self examination captures you from beginning to end. With no obvious central theme (just a few loose references to Rastafarianism and 'Oneness') ‘The People’s Key’ doesn’t allow itself to become as affecting as previous albums.

Though there is very little fundamentally wrong with the album it has left me unsatisfied. It has some very memorable songs; ‘Jejune Stars’ and ‘Beginner’s Mind’ are the two that stick out for me, but as a finale I was expecting fireworks and ended up getting ‘Firewall’. A song about a bloke chatting about pomegranates and reptilian humanoids, and a message of timeless wisdom “When there is total enlightenment there will be peace,” delicately thrown in at the end to remind us what a thoughtful and brilliant mind Oberst is. Interpret as you will.





Here is the album in full, accompanied by a video of Conor and the rest of the band wandering around his livingroom.

Of Monsters and Men - Little Talks

Concerto for Matilda

In the spring he bought a battered old piano and sat every night in his candlelit room playing Beethoven and Bach until his fingers grew tired. He would fall asleep at his stool to dream of his beloved Matilda for whom he practised.

By the next spring the man’s fingers had grown so dexterous they would jump from key to key effortlessly in a joyful dance.

It was May when he woke one morning and knew he was ready. He wrote a letter to Matilda:

The Cavern

Friday 10^th - 10pm

An Admirer

The night sky was cloudless and full of stars as he walked the half mile to The Cavern – the local club for musicians and appreciators of music. He was nervous, not to play in front of a crowd for the first time, but to perform in front of her.

His nerves soon dispersed as he touched the magnificent grand piano, centre stage. His fingers came alive. They flew from note to note with such delicate precision that the audience were entranced. Through the crowd a pale face shone, eyes aflame with lust under auburn curls. He played for her, his Matilda.

That night the two side-stepped their way home to his apartment, already intertwined - and so began their love affair. Their passion was unmatched; every night instead of the piano he would play her soft warm skin.

Every morning he woke beside his beloved, his fingers a little stiffer, a little clumsier. Months passed and every night he would wake half out of bed, arms stretched longingly towards his piano. Matilda would pull him back into the confines of her loving embrace. She covered up the piano with a cloth saying it was old and dusty, saying ‘You have me now, am I not all you’ll ever need?’

The day came when his hands couldn’t take it anymore, they took Matilda by the hair and threw her out the sixth storey window.

Too much his fingers missed the cold hard ivory they had become so familiar with.

This is the first flash fiction piece that I wrote and though it is a story that I am very fond of, I have decided to not try and publish it and instead self-publish it here and on my website. So, I don't know, people might see who I am... or something.