Every little helps

Earlier this month I spent 90 minutes of my life trying to access (and subsequently crashing) the Tesco Clubcard website. Why? Well, they had a deal where £12.50 of your hard-earned points could get you a £25 iTunes voucher. I was so excited I bought two, looks like lots of other people had the same idea because the might of the Tesco website was brought to it's knees under the rush to get one of the 25,000 vouchers on offer.

I don't generally buy electronic music, I rather opt to buy the physical entity that is a CD and then rip the CD to my laptop - this deserves to be the subject of a blog all of it's own, don't you think johnjsills? One thing that does annoy me though is when a track is played on the radio and I think "Wow, I want to own that" and low-and-behold, it's not available for another month or so. This could be the reason why "some people" borrow tracks from the internet, and when they become available (i.e. when the CD comes out) then "they" buy that and "their" conscience is clear.

There are some tracks, however, that cry out to be owned as soon as possible - this is where I'm hoping my fifty quids worth of iTunes credit will come in. I'm sure my purchases may well appear on this blog over the coming year.

The last digital track I bought was a few months ago. I'm his girl by Friends was one such track that made me get off my electronic arse and buy it via iTunes - mainly because they'd done a great job in ensuring that "some people" couldn't get hold of it by any other means. I'm drawn in by the desperation of the need for ownership in the lyrics, and the bass is class. Enjoy.

Friends - I'm His Girl by LuckyNumberMusic

A Manifesto

It's taken me (Schönberg) a while to understand blogs. The ones I read are probably read by thousands of people and they're usually telling me something I didn't know. I kinda feel that normally I don't have anything to say that would be useful or interesting to others, so it puts me off posting. Anyway, I now realise that you don't need thousands of followers, if you're getting through to just a few people then the whole experience can be worthwhile.

Each January I set myself some musical objectives for the coming year, some people may call them resolutions. Last year it was to go to more gigs and buy more albums. This year I want to set an objective that covers both my love of music but also satisfies another objective on embracing social networking. I want to share with the followers of this blog some of my favourite music, mainstream or otherwise.

So here's my pledge to you (yes, YOU. You singular. You, the person reading this). I pledge to post on this blog at least once per week during 2012, starting from next week. Sometimes it might be something really ground-breaking, sometimes it might be something I liked on the radio, sometimes it might simply be my earworm. So, if you're reading this and you want to support me, then why not leave a message to show that there's someone out there listening?

Music bloggers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your credibility.

The Smiths - Shoplifters Of The World Unite by EmergencyBroadcastSongs

Alexander - Million Years

A Million Years from Alexander

Alexander, he of Edward Sharpe fame has just released his own album and the stand out track for me is A Million Years plus the video is pretty good too. If you enjoyed the Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros album then check this out. They seem to a have spent a bob or two on the video...

MP3: A Million Years - Alexander

Thank you to his label Vagrant for letting me post this, you can buy the album at iTunes now.

Band of Skulls

With a name like Band of Skulls and a single called The Devil Takes Care of His Own you can already tell where this band are coming from. Heavy rock from the glory days of BRMC or you could even say a UK version of Kings of Leon with PJ Harvey adding extra vocals. This band are taking no prisoners and I'm looking forward to hearing their second album when it is released at the start of next year. Until I can give you more check out the video for the single...

Cocabelle

A while back I mentioned that The Jones were coming back. Well sadly that never materialised by Kris and Kev "Jones" haven't left the industry. They are involved with a bright star who might just go one step further and make it in to our charts. The soul / blues influenced lady named Cocabelle is being co-managed by the former lead singer and guitarist of The Jones as well as them writing for her. I certainly recommend checking our Lion's Den and my apologies go to Kris for not bringing this to your attention sooner.

MP3: Lion's Den - Cocabelle