Albums of 2009

Yes, I know, albums of the year, sorry. There is a million of these coming out at this time of year, and by no way is mine meant to compete with them, but I thought that I would just share it.
In no particular order:
Alexisonfire - Young cardinals/Old crows

For me, this was probably my most highly anticipated album of the year. And yes I know I should have grown out of this screaming shit, but I havn't and I don't care. One of my favourite bands ever and having seem them recently live for the first time, my affections towards the Canadians continue. Like any great band, the album is a clear progression from the old but with Alexisonfire still scribbled all over it. Starting the album screaming "We are not the kids we used to be" they burst into what they do best, ever so slightly maturing this time. I never want this band to stop.

Jay-Z - The Blueprint 3

Probably one of the most anticipated albums of the year full stop. And with anticipation comes hype and expectation. And yes of course Jay-Z lives upto it. I'm not claiming I love every single song on here, but others more than make up for it. Empire State of Mind has dominated the latter part of 2009, with Run This Town also having huge success. Many of the songs have collaborations, some big names, Kayne, Rihanna and Alicia, some are new on the scene; Drake and J Cole. But you know if Jay Z has picked them, they are some thing special. Something to watch out for. Blueprint 3 sees the Jigga Man boasts his albums success slamming Elvis and The Stones, some may see this as arrogance and disrespectful, but boy can he back up his claims.

Bombay Bicycle Club - I Had The Blue But Shook Them Loose

BBC fully exploded onto the scene in 2009, mainly due to a big helping shove from BBC R1 introducing. Having only just left school, these guys produced an unbelievable album of clever riffs and equally lyrics. Songs such as Magnet and Always Like This will never grow tired to me. There surely has to be even greater things to come from this band, and going on this album, that is very exciting.

Miike Snow - Animal

As soon as I heard 'Animal' it had something special and different about it. There was a lot of mystery surrounding the two-eyed Miike Snow initally, however their credentials soon appeared. The Swedish pair have produced songs for Madonna, Kylie and even Britney's Toxic. However do not let this put you off. The indie/electro/pop group pack in a mixture of tunes, giving a good variety, not something that you get from most albums. It produces some huge tunes such as Animal and Black & Blue.

Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More

Again when I first heard the single of this stunning album, "Little Lion Man" I instantly wanted to hear more. Accompied by the autumn months, this acoustic folk produced some of the most beautiful music I have heard this year. The array of instruments offered something different from the other indie and acoustics acts around, and in this case different was definitely better. Beautiful playing matched with an amazing rusty voice is perfection.

Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus

This insanely happy French electro indie pop act are going to be big very soon. Already featured in big advertising campaigns, this catchy album is simply a pleasure to listen. It will make you smile, nod your head and ears happy.

Florence and The Machine - Two Lungs

Like many of the artists here, Florence and The Machine suddenly burst onto the scene and possibly Florence more than any other, dominating 2009. With fiery red hair, an amazing voice and individual style, Florence and her Machine produced an amazing debut album. Many of the songs have been played to death on radio and TV, forcing me to tire of the album. But listening to it just the other day reminded me of just how damn good it is.

Passion Pit - Manners

After hearing the song "Sleephead", that has turned out to be one of my singles of year, I quickly got my hands on Chunk of Change. This EP was written for the lead singer's girlfriend for Valentine's Day. Soon followed was the album, Manners. The electro pop act is something pretty new and fresh to me. With a strangely good voice, and family of synths this is a very, very good album.

The Maccabees - Wall of Arms

There a so many great, great songs on this album, No Kind Words, Love You Better and Can You Give It? to name but a few. This is a fantastic piece of mature indie pop, with great riffs and uniquely beautiful voice, it all comes together very nicely.

Biffy Clyro - Only Revolutions

I will be the first to admit that I jumped on the Biffy bandwagon along with everyone else this year. I've got friends that liked them when I was in year 9, but I shamefully did not give them a listen until this year. Puzzle is a fantastic album, I loved every single song. Is Only Revolutions better? No, not in my opinion. But its very close. There are some massive songs on there, Bubbles, Captain and of course, Golden Rule. Puzzle set a very high standard for me and Only Revolutions is almost up there, which is no way a bad thing.


So there you are. My top 10 albums. I think. Its difficult to remember albums from the first half of the year, and I strongly relied on my Last.fm. I don't claim this is a definitive list or a fantastic review, but I'd like to hear what you think. If you havn't heard any of these albums, I obviously strongly suggest you do, and if there's any you think I've missed, I'd love to know.

The Phonebox Experiment - A Good Theory

The website reads (http://phoneboxexperiment.com/): "There is a phone box in the middle of nowhere. Rob's camping next to it for as long as he can hold out, just so we can see who calls. This is the Phone Box Experiment".

Rob Cavazos, a 27 year old, who is fluent in English, German and Spanish, was selected from a host of applicants to become the ‘Wilderness Man’. From the little introduction clip, he appears to be a normal guy who just wants a bit of adventure, and Skype are looking to give it to him. As well as a bit of publicity and free PR for themselves no doubt.

Great idea right? A 24/7 live feed when people can call this random guy using Skype and talk about whatever they want for as long as they live. You can also watch him stay within the frame of the camera and listen to his side of the phone calls. So all is good yeah? No.

Orignally, I thought that this was a really cool concept and a great piece of viral work. However when you actually interact and go on the website all you see is this:
There Rob is, chatting away to some random person, it happens to be in French now which is completely useless to me. Also I can only hear his side of the conversation. And what is the conversation going to be about?
Hi
Hi, where you from?
Russia!
Excellent, I've already spoken to a couple of people from Russia.
Oh cool... I probably don't know them.... So what you up to?
Just sat on my sofa chatting to loads of random people, many of which I don't really care about.
Oh right... isnt that abit boring?
Um... yeah.

It can't be that much fun for poor old Rob! It probably sounded exciting, and for every great conversation he has with a random person, there's got to be at least fifty mundane, pointless conversations.
Unless you ring him and have a short, random chat, you just sit there and watch him. Great. It's not the sort of brand experience that you can really get involved in and immerse yourself as a consumer.


I admit that if I was in the room when this idea was being pitch, I would've thought, this sounds amazing! Its online, its viral, its original, consumers can get involved; perfect!
In reality: not so much.

Spoofing

In our Interactive Media Strategies seminar this week, we were talking about how internet culture is used as an influence to advertising and as a result spoof adverts are made. We have all seen these, some a clever, some are obvious, but most raise at least a smile.

Anyways we were asked to come up with our own version. He is one I put together last night. Excuse the poor photoshopping, but I hope you can understand the message.

The original:




And here is my version:




Hope you like! Please comment!!

The BlackBerry and iPhone: Keeping Twitter alive.

Ah, yes I have had a change of name. I am now www.jamieadamwatson.blogspot.com. I've decided to drop that Jammy stuff, my Twitter username is now JamieWatson_ incase you would like to know.

Speaking of Twitter, I shall write a blog about it.

We all know that Twitter is the success story of the year (see below).



Whether you are a fan of Twitter or not, you have to give it some credit. In one year, it has grown from 3 million to 23 million users still tiny compared to Facebook's 200m users, but give it a chance). It has refused to turn commercial by selling its pricey space to advertising, unlike almost every business in the world. Despite being value from $60-$150 million, it refuses to be sold.
And more than anything, it is simple. Like Google it hasn't need to advertise itself, it has no gimmicks such as games, music or videos, its very simple. This beast has grown more or less by itself, admittedly it may have had some nurturing from the likes of Stephen Fry and Ashton Kutcher.

However in my opinion, Twitter has worked because of phones such as the Blackberry and the iPhone. It's not like these were the first mobiles phones to have the internet or 3G, but they were the first that people really used. People expect to receive emails on the move and do not have to wait until they get home and fire up their PC to surf the web. People are now online all the time. Whether it is on the train, in the lift or in bed, people can Tweet whatever they want, whenever they want and where-ever they want.

This has played right into Twitter's little birdy feet. Twitter is not a site that you generally spend hours on, not in the same way as you might on Youtube or eBay, but you dip in and out of during your entire day. You tweet a little something here, read a tweet there and re-tweet a couple of things. In the same way that texting has becoming a normality, Tweeting has. It takes 30 seconds, does not require vast amounts of attention and is something you can do through-out the day whilst carry on your everyday life.

I believe that this has only become such a social norm now because of the use of 3G mobile technology made popular by the iPhone and Blackberry. Without these two smartphone heros, Twitter would have never caught on to the masses in the way that it has.

Twitters owes them big-time. Maybe some free ad-space... I doubt it.

Few new songs I've picked up this week.

I feel almost as though I cannot write out a full blog as I really should be dissertating. Although spending hours on Facebook and Twitter seems slightly more acceptable. There I am just spending a couple of minutes at a time, rather than 20 minutes or so writing a blog post. I won't add up those "couple(s) of minutes" for you.

But whilst I've been 'working' I've been listening to a whole host of new songs which is nice. Here they are:

Plan B - Stay Too Long


Fall Out Boy - From Now On We Are Enemies


DL Incognito ft. Dallas Green - Fight This


The Maccabees Feat. Roots Manuva - Empty Vessels
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/zanelowe/2009/11/hottest_record_the_maccabees_f.html


Think that's about it. They're all well worth a listen in my opinion.

The effect of Last.fm

I have been a member of Last.fm for just over a year now (http://www.last.fm/user/JammyJamster). I have started to look at my profile every couple of days now just to see what I've been listening to, because apparently I can neither remember or look at my iTunes Recently Played. I really do like Lasf.fm, whether its just checking my own play count, listening to a band's radio station to find similar artists or my friends' radio stations to see what they've been listening to: There are many great features of Last.fm, however one aspect of Last.fm that you might not consider when signing up is the guilt factor that it brings to your musical life.

There appear to be two types of guilt: The Guilty Pleasure Guilt and the Play Count Guilt.

Its a shame that I havent had Last.fm for more than a year, then it would provide me with a more accurate play count. However this means that artists that I may have just like for a couple of weeks and listened to loads during that period, appear very high, like high HIGH up my most played list. Although I probably still like this artist, its a little cringing to see them all over my play count (see FrankMusik and Enter Shikari).

The second is the slightly more annoying guilt, although it really shouldn't be. For example. I have liked Alexisonfire for literally years now, and having only recently seen them live for the first time a few weeks ago, I have been listening to them a lot, both before and after the gig. It makes sense. Alexisonfire have the pleasure of being my most played artist, and now I feel guilty to listen to them. Its hard to explain, I want to listen to them, but I don't want to keep building my playcount up. Not because I'm embarrassed, but because I feel it is unfair on my other artists. I feel I should listen to Fall Out Boy, Enter Shikari or The Maccabees some more to level out my play count. And that's strange.

As much as Last.fm simply tracks what I want to listen to, it also makes me consider what I listen to a bit more carefully, which is stupid I know, and I try to ignore it. But sometimes I cant.

Songs of the week:

Not anything that different I suppose, but its a very nice tune. Indie/electro/dance/pop a sweet combination:


And a dirty bit of dubstep I found this week, real good tune and some dirty, dirty beats in there:

There are somethings only black people can pull off...

I know racism is very on trend at the moment, with Adolf Griffin getting his ass kicked on QuestionTime (not that he really had a fair chance, but like fuck did he deserve one). But something struck me today, black guys can pull off cool handshakes, white guys really REALLY cant. All you do it make yourself look every more white.

I was walking out from the library at uni today and was going up the narrow stairs next to the Allesbrook lecture theatre, and I saw a couple of black guys pulling off mental handshakes. They had hand clapping, shoulder bumping, click, the whole works, and I was about to ruin it. I was like shit, I'm gonna walk through right in the middle of handshake, get caught in a meale of hands and THEY WOULD NOT BE HAPPY. No man wants his handshake interrupted, especially a carefully crafted piece of art that I was witnessing. I got closer, saw a gap as one man moved to another and went for it. I stepped closer and another handshake had started. SHIT. I was beyond the point of no return, so I just went for it and ruined it.

I apologised. They said "don't worry mate". I know, what drama! I've already started drawing up a script for the movie. (It probably would be better than our radio script advert we worked on today. Actually no, that's a lie, it's brilliant. Fact.)


Tip of the blog: Ricky Gervais Podcasts. I know, I know, I'm well behind. But if you havnt listen to them, seriously get a torrent download or go to Pilkipedia and get them on the download. Karl Pilkington fucking mental ramblings, Gervais' laugh and Stephen Merchant's cheeky jokes are a work of art.

People are dicks.

I think that most people will agree that people are dicks.

Ok, that is a slight generalization. Most people are lovely and think that most other people are lovely too, however some people are dicks. And some people are lovely but just decided to act like dicks sometimes. Most people decide to do this at gigs.

I've been to quite a few gigs over the years, perhaps not a massive range of artists, but have seen Bon Jovi, Lostprophets and Calvin Harris, bit of a mix. However at all of these gigs there appears a great deal of dicks. I dunno what it is but when people are at gigs they either think that they can start mosh pits to songs that don't require or encourage them, scream loudly down the phone to their mates who clearly can't hear them, or give a shit or just sweat all over you. And most of these people are about 14. They just can't wait to tell all their friends at school, who's parents wouldn't let them go to the gig, about how they started a mosh pit and punched someone in the face, or "omg did you hear them play "Don't cha" (not that I have ever been to a Pussycat Dolls gig) "umm... no, well it was really loud and you trying to scretch the words down the phone like a fucking cat (excuse the pun) being thrown around the room didn't help...LOL".

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who feels like this, although I really don't feel strongly enough about it to do anything about it (I'm surprised I managed this), I'm pretty sure it would be quite difficult to get a ban passed on this anyways...


Recommendations this week:
Song - Kings and Queens - 30 Seconds to Mars - Surprisingly catchy, pop and good!
Video -
Vintage Cera, in form as always.
Film - Bruno, hadn't seen it before. Loved how funny I actually it is, how outrageous it is and how homophobic and stupid some of the American public are.

Back to business

After a somewhat damning blog from our new Interactive Media Strategies teacher (http://paidia.wordpress.com) about how our course, the kids of the internet, are merely passive users of the internet, I felt compelled, and somewhat embarrassed to blog again. He moaned that we do not blog, upload to flickr or edit wikipedia. We are lazy.
We are students!
But do we need to contribute to the internet? It's not like it's missing us. It's not like there's not a blog to read, or you've run out of videos to watch on Youtube, it's still going, with or without us.

However, I think Mike was more bemused by our lack of internet input was because we are Advertising and Marketing students. We need to understand patterns of human behavior and consumption. This is even more important now advertising expenditure has overtake that on TV for the first time...ever?! Advertisers need to know how to reach people, what they're doing, or "what they're eyes are doing", as another simply put it.

Therefore, I will endeavor to keep this little blog going, especially after a friend shamed me by his five year blog (http://www.losingsleepandsight.com/).

Boring is boring.

I seem to have lost the ability to do nothing. Having worked solidy for the last 2 months, I thought I would have a few days off before I start the dreaded CMR, and I really don't know what to do with myself.

I created a twitter account...http://twitter.com/JammyJamster
I created a last.fm account...http://www.last.fm/user/JammyJamster
I found new bands...Augustana (a mix betweent The Frey and Jack's Mannequin) and Metro Station (with a very heavily tattooed and pierced Miley Cyrus brother)
I applied to various placement places...nobody has replied.

What else am I do to? Start my CMR probably, but that can wait. So I'm just waiting for little brother to finish his interview at the Arts Institue in Bournemouth. I say little brother...


Thats Gavin on the right...
A lot of ellipses today. Anyways I'll get cracking on with being bored some more.

Jade Goody is dead.

Surely there can be no greater event in modern history to revive my blog. Mass news coverage, an impersonal condolences from the Prime Minster and an entire edition of OK! magazine dedicated to her deem to be a fitting tribute.


Seriously?
Seriously? Does anyone care? It may seem as if I am being harsh, of course its sad that she has died, she was young, had kids, its a great shame. But its Jade Goody. Everybody was more than happy to call her a ignorant, stupid racist just a few months ago and now everybody is moaning her as it were their own sister, with the British press leading the hypocritical way as usual.

I havnt written this for a while due to the lack of time I've had, as well as the battering the lovely Rebecca Willmore gave my blogging skills. Lovely she is. My last few weeks have been filled with 4,500 account planning assignment, when half of my group decided to drop out of uni, leaving just two of us to do the work, however I cannot complain with 68%. Being my highest mark so far I was pleased, however every other group picking up theirs around me getting 70%+ did put abit of a dampner on events. Oh well. Then came the marketing planning and budgeting assignment on Ryanair, another cheeky 4,500. And then just 2,500 on Volvo's communications. I say just, because I was literally bullet pointing at the end. Just a rather large research project, finding a 6 week placement, revising for exams, doing the exams, doing the placement left. Then summer.

The highlight of my past few weeks of assignment pain has getting...wait for it...Michael Jackson tickets!! Getting up at 7am with my pre-sale code was worth it. Well, it wasnt, as I didn't get tickets untill 1pm, but I got them :) And my god I'm excited. I don't admite to doing a MJ nut, but I'm quite a big fan, having all of his albums and liked him since I was about 8. I hope its going to be everything it's hyped up to be, but is everything? Will he sing? Will he dance? Will he cancel? One thing is for sure though, he will entertain.