Saturday 1 January 2011

Happy New Year, Popular Music!

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

Hope you all had a happy Christmas and hope the music you choose to play today wishes you another great year of making memories..

Last year was pretty basic, on the blog front. My tags were either Hole or Nirvana... this may continue for the rest of the new year!



I am buying more into music that isn's the grunge era, and just the day before yesterday, I remarkably bought a CD from HMV that was actually produced in 2010!! A remarkable fate for me, and my close friends would even let out a shriek of surprise.



No Age's "Something Inbetween" is produced by Sub Pop and was the band was hopefully helped by Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe inviting them on his show and stating them as a "fine band". They were good, so I bought the album. That's how it should go! No downloading necessary, just make the effort, and for me definitely I feel that that is SO much more rewarding!

It's a great album, and I had a great year, plagued by the same music, always influencing me.




My Grunge Box is the epitomy of my obsession, and I hope it never dies anyway...



But now I move onto a new obsession: the music of the O.C.

The O.C. is, of course, A brilliant pinnacle of California dreamy drama, where there's loads of rich kids that somehow have more problems than you. But the commercial impact of this show were amazing; although it ended nearly 4 years ago now with Season 4, the producers brought out multiple "mixes" of music with the music featured on various episodes, depending on what series you were looking at. Mix 2 and Volume 2 were from the first series (which I successfully finished a week ago; known to be the best season, that was a full 20 hours of my life I spent watching that- time spent well, for me!) and these include some best music moments and the songs I favour at the moment. Thanks to these compilation discs, my iPod will now have more variety. Songs like South's "Paint The Silence", the Killers' "Smile Like You Mean It" and obviously the theme tune "California" by Phantom Planet are all, with the exception of The Killers, songs from pretty obscure bands. This is VERY CLEVER. The musical director of the show really knows her stuff, and by putting these previously unknown mainstream acts there's lots in it for her (You can tell I've been reading a book with a guide to the music industry and record labels, huh?) It fits the situation, makes the show look even more gorgeous than it already is, and it also means bands like Death Cab are known. Death Cab For Cutie practically made themselves on the use of their songs in Season 1.



So the main resolution for this year is new music. My music library is rapidly expanding, so your should too. Maybe just impulse buy an album because you're curious? Link bands with other bands you already like. It's the only way you can start on the million of unheard music in the USA alone.



Happy New Music!



P.S. Will post pics of the ever famous "Grunge Box" soon, or you can access them on Twitpic from my twitter shown on the top of the page on the left hand side :)

^ Mix 2 features the greats like The Killers, Death Cab For Cutie and a great cover of "Maybe I'm Amazed" by Jem, orginally from that of Paul McCartney. Enjoy!