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- Help us tweet Reading and Leeds festival 2010
Can you control a mobile phone while imbibing cider and listening to Guns N' Roses? Then the Guardian needs you on Twitter duties!
After the triumph that was Guardian.co.uk/music readers tweeting Glastonbury for us, we're doing it again at this weekend's Reading and Leeds festival. Which means we're on the hunt for loyal Guardian readers who want to join our list of bands and journalists to tweet mini reviews, gossip and banter direct to our music site.
So if you're going to be at Reading or Leeds and can control a mobile phone and a pint of cider at the same time, send a tweet to @guardianmusic and let us know (in 140 characters of course) why your tweets will make for essential reading at Reading and Leeds. We'll pick the best ones and – who knows – we may even see you in the moshpit.guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Переслать - Ask the indie professor: Why does Reading festival rock?
You like Reading festival because of the music, right? Wrong! According to our indie professor, you may also get a kick out of the mud, sweat and fears
I've lived in Reading my whole life and have never been even remotely tempted to visit the festival despite the fact that most of my friends go annually. What's so special about it? I presume it's nothing to do with music and everything to do with necking beers.
LinkyLee
Reading is about music and about necking beers.
For any festival to be successful in the current climate, it needs to express a musical point of view or have a good track record. You know Reading is going to skew towards indie and rock, with at least one day where the main stage is rock/metal and with up-and-coming indie bands on the smaller stages. Being part of a community of music is key to festival participation: you meet people with the same taste, share the emotional experience of listening to music you like together and experience Altered States of Consciousness (better known as "drunkenness").
Profound bonding may occur due to the difficulties of the festival experience. Often, the relatively simple act of listening to music in a field can be extremely uncomfortable or even scary. Festivalgoers are sometimes crammed into a confined space, and being near the front of a stage when 70,000 people surge and you are lifted from the ground, dependent on other festivalgoers for your safety, can be truly frightening.
The facilities are limited, meaning that much of the time you are dirty and sweaty. Even if you get the upgraded VIP tent with a raised mattress, camping is not usually comfortable – and that's if your Altered State of Consciousness has permitted you to find your tent. Also, there are few experiences as awful as waking up hungover at 6am because your tent is boiling hot or flooded.
These things might make you think that festivalgoers must be deranged to pay good money for them, but the extreme highs and lows are in fact what make the experience remarkable. Pronounced hardship or suffering is said to produce "communitas" – the feeling of closeness with others due to having shared an ordeal. Discomfort can be very important when the aim is to conjure a group spirit – pain is, for instance, often the fundamental component of an initiation ceremony. It's the euphoria of communitas, due to the unique cocktail of mud, heat, sleep-deprivation, claustrophobia and your favourite music, that makes Reading so special.
Why are so many bands (even the mighty Arcade Fire) best on their debut album? Exceptions are rare.
Kettles
A number of posters asked me to identify why so many bands have a great debut and then decline. I have a problem with the providing an answer because I don't buy the premise. There are many great follow-ups to debut albums: Pulp took ages to grow into their finest work; Elbow won the Mercury prize with their fourth album; Belle and Sebastian's If You're Feeling Sinister far exceeds Tigermilk, in my book. And what about Bright Eyes?
In the west, we believe that creativity manifests itself in original and novel expression. A new band is therefore always going to get more attention, especially if they are doing something different. As they progress, they maintain the same sound – which eventually appears stale and predictable – or they change direction à la Bob Dylan and their fans call them "Judas".
But innovation is not universally prized. For the Navajo Native Americans, there is only one correct way to sing a song and new songs are not desirable. Similar is true for the wood-carvers of the Trobriand Islands, who show superb artistry in reproducing an ideal template in uncooperative materials.
Why do journos refer to second albums as "sophomore" and how can we stop them before it spreads further? We don't want sports reporters calling the second half the "sophomore half", theologians referring to the "sophomore coming", etc.
dothebathosphere
This is an American expression that has infiltrated music journalism across the globe. In the US, the second year of high school or university is called the "sophomore" year (it goes: freshman, sophomore, junior, senior). The term itself is fairly appropriate for a second album, deriving from the Greek words "sophos", meaning wise, and "moros", which provides the root for "moron". Thus, a sophomore is essentially a "wise moron". Perhaps this explains why second albums are so variable – they can be remarkably well done or sadly disastrous.
Another commenter, mrparnsip, offers another theory: "Sophomore sounds remarkably like 'suffer more'", he writes. So there you go.
• Please post a comment below if you'd like me to answer one of your questions, or feel free to email me at theindieprofessor@gmail.com.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - New music: Björk – The Comet Song
A song by Björk for the Moomins film. We said, A SONG BY BJÖRK FOR THE MOOMINS FILM!!!!
When it was announced last year that Björk would provide a brand new song for a brand new Moomins film, we thought it sounded like the most perfect marriage of aural and visual sensibilities since Celine Dion stood wailing on the end of that big boat. In the UK, the Moomins (large, hippopotamus-like trolls with big snouts who inhabit Moominvalley, in case you'd forgotten) represent something simultaneously alien yet oddly lovable, much like Björk herself. The Comet Song – co-written with Icelandic poet, Sjón – summarises the film's plot, which involves our intrepid explorers trying to find out more about a giant comet that's on course to land right in their back garden. The chorus – if you can call it that – is brilliantly blunt: "Comet, oh dammit." Musically, it's all clanking percussion, creepy crawly basslines and that crystalline voice adding gravitas to lyrics such as "we need milk and cakes and a warm bed".
The Comet Song is released on iTunes today. All the funds generated by the track go to Unicef Pakistan children's charities.guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - The X Factor isn't 100% authentic? Hold the front page!
Bloggers and MPs are up in arms about X Factor contestants having their performances Auto-Tuned. But given the nature of the show, does it really matter?
The surest sign of the onset of autumn is a new X Factor scandal for us all to get hot under the collar about. Yet, in keeping with Simon Cowell's insatiable urge to improve the show each year, this time the internet was in uproar before the summer months had even expired.
The cries on Twitter of "Auto-Tune!" drowned out even Shirlena Johnson's unfathomable reimagining of Duffy's Mercy. The accusation was that certain contestants – notably Gamu Nhengu, who performed Walking On Sunshine – were given a helping hand by Auto-Tune technology, which enhanced the quality of their performances. Luke Lewis has already criticised the use of Auto-Tune over on the TV blog. And this being silly season, a number of MPs have even waded into the row, apparently in need of causes to get angry about.
But does it really matter? The idea that The X Factor manipulates contestants is hardly front-page news. Anything from emotional manipulation through editing (although the sob stories appear to have been dropped) to giving out-of-favour contestants duff production in the live shows can manipulate the outcome to the producers' ends.
In the 2008 final, favoured winner Alexandra Burke was paired up with Beyoncé while Eoghan Quigg got Boyzone; last year Joe McElderry sang with George Michael, leaving Stacey Solomon to warble along with Michael Bublé. Cowell only stopped short of making last year's winners' song his original choice of Don't Stop Believin' – a track McElderry had already performed. "Primetime ITV talent show isn't always exactly honest about everything it does" isn't exactly the sort of scoop that's going to win anybody a Pulitzer prize.
If anything, the whole fiasco shows just how far The X Factor has come. Back in the bad old days of Steve Brookstein, I doubt anyone would have batted an eyelid. It was simply a tacky talent show and a platform for Sharon Osbourne. But post Leona, JLS and Alexandra, it's proved itself as simply the way pop music is conventionally A&Red now. The show is no better or worse – no more or less corrupt – than the casting couches of yore. The fact that the artistic integrity of The X Factor is now considered a legitimate topic for MPs to debate – now that really is news.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - New music: Esben and the Witch – Marching Song
Raw emotions. Searing pain. An extremely gory video. It's time to let the good times roll ...
This Brighton-based trio might have a moniker that brings to mind a lost CS Lewis novel, but the music they make has less to do with talking lions and worlds behind wardrobes than raw emotion and searing pain. Admittedly, this doesn't sound like a barrel of laughs, but there's something about this slow-burning cacophony that reels you in and holds your attention. Marching Song was first released on the 33 EP late last year, but this re-recorded version (due in October via Matador) ramps up the tension, the whole thing teetering on the edge of explosive emotion yet somehow reining itself in.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать
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