Thursday 25 June 2009

Forget the jokes. Forget the rumours. Forget the ‘weirdo’.

Remember the legend.


The man who taught me what real music was.
The man who made me understand what talent was.
The man who inspired so much.

Mislead, misunderstood and a little lost, but still the king.

Rest in peace MJ

Reno

Wednesday 24 June 2009

We will never sleep, coz sleep is for the weak!

Despite the changes that Bring Me The Horizon have made to their sound (mainly Oli’s punkier gollows-esque vocals) they can still pack a punch on their latest record Suicide Season. The track I love the most from this album has to be Diamonds Aren’t Forever – it’s just so brutal and ultimately cool. One for the record books in my head regarding how good Deathcore can be – if that’s what BMTH are these days? Who knows.

Anyway, check my full review of this album on Ciao here.

Anyway, here’s the track I want you to hear, it’s epic!

 

Reno x

Saturday 20 June 2009

It’s about time…

So it’s taken me a while to get my arse in gear and finally do this but I’m going to tell you about an album I’m absolutely fascinated by at the moment. As you may be aware, I have strange habits with music, the main one being that I will find an album I like and listen to it religiously for an undetermined amount of time. This obsession can last for months or just days, but when it comes to an end I will stop listening to it outright and will generally forget about it or refuse to listen to it for a year or so. The latest album to be sucked into this black hole of musical endeavour is Folie A Deux by Fall Out Boy.

Unsuspectingly, this album is full of absolutely fantastic songs. I’ve always been a ‘relaxed’ FOB fan from the outset, thinking their singles were alright but not interested enough to buy or even download an album. This trait continued when I heard I Don’t Care – the debut single from the album. The video to the single was really fun and I enjoyed dancing around to it when it appeared on Scuzz over Christmas. Then at Easter I saw the video for the second single – America’s Suitehearts (yeah I spelled it right, take it up with them!) and liked the song even more than the first. So I thought “screw it, 2 good songs, might as well get the whole album”. For a while I’d play the two tracks and then jump down my itunes ladder and play something different, but once I let the album play on after Suitehearts and was suprised by the catchyness of the next song. I still lacked faith in it, but last week gave the whole album a good listen and about half way through the amazing ballad that is ‘What a Catch Donnie’ I heard a familiar voice pop up. It was Elvis Costello. I couldn’t believe it. The song also includes cameos from singers like Brandon Urie from Panic at the Disco and a few others too.

Anyway, simply put, there’s nothing that can be put down about this album. Every song is a corker, though it does admittedly get successively better as it develops (that’s right, I Don’t Care and America’s Suitehearts are now my 2 least favourite tracks on the album now!!). Great sound all the way through, it is a tribute to the ways in which bands can successfully develop and mature without turning shit. Get the album, you won’t be dissapointed!

Best tracks: What a Catch Donnie, 27, The Shipped Gold Standard, 20 Dollar Nose Bleed

I’ll leave you with my favourite song – listen out for Costello’s cameo at about 3 mins in!

 

Reno x

Thursday 11 June 2009

Classic

Lots of stuff happening recently, but not really stuff for a personal blog, so instead I’m going to write about classic TV from the old days, lets see how many of these intro’s you remember and how many “oh my god I forgot about that!”s these bring to you!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I swear TinTin is actually a russian cartoon, look at the characters!!

 

The Moomins have always scared the living crap out of me, but I could'nt leave it out!!

 

Nice little 9 min clip of The Demon Headmaster to finish us off there :)

Catch you later boys and girls, here’s today’s song…

 

Reno x

Monday 1 June 2009

And so it begins…

Summer has, by the looks of it, arrived in the UK. It’s only a few days of ultra sun and heat but I’m hoping it’s a sign of things to come. If this is the case, 2009 could turn out to be one of the best years yet. It’s strange, because 2009 should really be a stepping stone year for me, I’m still getting back on my feet after the travesty of bullshit I went through during 2008, so I’m not amazingly optimistic about what this year can offer; things have been good and bad so far, but it would appear that it’s going to be more good than bad – I hope.

Friday – Party!
Some people are already leaving the uni area to head home to start their lives, Katie is already gone (which made me pretty upset) and others are going all the time. On Friday we had a house party to see everyone off, I didn’t attend all of it (due to 24 related commitments), but I was there for the second half. Had a wicked time, here’s some stuff…

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At 4:30am I planned to head off to meet Dax, we were going to finally see the sunrise – the sky was crystal clear and we were totally up for it. Just before leaving, it dawned on me (no pun intended) that the rest of the house party survivors might want to come. It turned out EVERYONE wanted a piece of the early morning action, so we headed off in the direction of Dax’s halls and then the park! :D

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In fear of missing the sunrise, Dax and I walked off ahead and the rest of the gang lost us! Sorry dudes, we were just a bit anxious about missing it. We got to the car park at the bottom of Dickson house and awaited the return of daylight…

After the sun arrived, we took some cool pics. Among them came this one, which turns out to be my fave pic of me and Dax ever…

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Best buds to the end, dunno where I’d be without that guy.

After a while we headed back through the park to go home, there we found the rest of our group, playing on the kids playground, having given up on trying to find us earlier.

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After that, we all headed back down towards Shelton and said our goodbyes.

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The night had been awesome, little did I know what was going to happen less than 12 hours later…


Saturday – Assaulted.

So let me explain what happened on Saturday. So I wanted to do what I do every summer; grab my ghetto blaster and hit the sunshine. The other week the batteries were starting to fail on the blaster so I decided I’d go to wilko, buy some batteries then go to the park on the way back. However, upon leaving the house, the batteries were holding up nicely so I had no reason to go and buy some more. Instead I went straight for the park. A few people made positive remarks about my blaster as I went past them in Shelton, as they usually do, such as “Yeah man! Bring back the 80s!” etc. When I got into the park I was shocked to see how many people were there, the sun had brought out a hell of a lot of people. I walked around the big pond, passing Nikki as I went – I should have taken up her offer of chilling with her, but I didn't. Instead, I headed for the exit, passing a group of middle eastern chavs – I tell you this simply so you can get an image in your head, not for the sake of racism or anything like that. Anyway, as I passed them, I heard something being shouted at me but I ignored it as I always do with chavs back home. A few seconds later, something cold hit my arm, as far as I’m aware it was an ice lolly. Again, I ignored it. The next thing I know I’m being pushed from behind, I stumbled forwards and the ghetto blaster fell off my shoulder; hitting the ground and smashing. I turn around to see a guy coming towards me with some friends a few metres behind. I calmly asked him what was wrong and why he’d just done what he did, he said something in a foreign language, I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. I said “what?” and he repeated me in a sarcastic tone, i turned to walk away, suddenly I’m being grabbed around the neck, spun around and thrown to the floor. Then he kicked me in the back. I got up and ran as fast as I could, my shoes had fallen off and I was shaking with shock. Couldn’t get my head around the situation, the attack was unprovoked and just unnecessary. I called 999 on the way home and had the police sent out, they came round quickly and they were really nice guys, they listened and went looking the guy. Unfortunately he, his hang and my blaster were gone. Strangely enough they found my shoes under a tree! So it was good to get them back. I didnt have any major injuries, just some bruises and a cut on my arm…

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How ironic that this happened on the same day that Stoke held the "’Love music, Hate racism” concert. Oh well. What really gets me about this is the fact that nothing was stolen from me – I could put some rationality behind the attack if they needed my stuff for the money, but the fact is they did it just for the fun of it, which in my opinion shows signs of a clear mental problem. Who gets off on stuff like that? It’s f***ed up.

 

Sunday – Healed.
Didn’t let the shit of Saturday stop me going back to the park and having fun on Sunday, I won’t be intimidated or forced to feel fear where I live. So I headed to the park to meet Ben and Dave, bumped into some of the other crew there too, had an awesome day, even avoided sunburn!!

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Varsity Radio – Developments!!
Currently, Anthony and I are working our asses off to get Varsity off the ground. We’re working hard to land a HUGE partnership with another student company, more news on that coming very soon – we’re really excited about it. We’re working on a new flash website and we’ve also just set up a forum for the station.

See the flash website here.

See the forum here.

Please bare in mind that they are still very much under construction! Lots of stuff needs to be added and changed etc. But please join the forum and add a post to the introductions page about who you are which uni/college(s) you’re attending/attended.

Today’s song is a fun bit of hardcore!

Reno(sXe)core ;P x