Harry's Blog

It seems that guitar maestro Joe Satriani is sueing the exceedingly dull Coldplay for ripping off one of his songs. The story is being reported over on BBC Online.

Satriani alleges that Coldplay's Viva La Vida takes considerable portions from his own track If I Could Fly.

And here is the proof...

There's still no official announcement from Metallica over the appaling brickwalled mix of Death Magnetic that's been sold on CD. But it seems that some parts of the music industry media are picking up on the story.

You can read an interesting article on the problems with the Death Magnetic CD over at musicradar.com.

Thankfully it seems the awful audio problems the CD displays were not introduced when the tracks were laid down in the studio. They seem to be the product of a terrible studio master by Rick Rubin's engineers and then a hot master from the record company on top.

How can we be sure?

It's just been announced that Pink Floyd co-founder Richard Wright has died. The keyboard player and vocalist had been suffering from cancer.

He was just 65.

Shit.

I remember listening to Metallica's last album, St. Anger for the first time. I was working at an ISP and the Entertainment Editor received an advanced copy from the record company.

We sat and listened to it in stunned silence. This was really the new Metallica album? But it sounds like it was recorded in a shed. And instead of Lars drumming they've let a five year-old have a go with two wooden spoons and some pots and pans. And where is Kirk?

We all know how that ended. St. Anger was therapy for a band at war and bloody torture for those of us who heard it. The record was a failure in every sense - in terms of composition, performance and production.

The new album - Death Magnetic - features some similar problems. Somehow it seems to emerge from the other side as the band's best effort since 1991's Black Album.

Yes after much waffling about it I've now started the project to rip all my CDs to my PC hard drive. I've a big box of disks in front of me and I reckon ripping them all is going to take two or three days while I work.

Yes it all seems rather mad but as I'm ripping them to WMA Lossless at least I won't ever have to do it again. But ten disks in I'm already completely fed up of disk swapping.

The first disk ripped was Paradise Lost's rather excellent Draconian Times.

Update on Saturday afternoon: Well I completed the project yesterday evening. I had to do a few re-rips due to errors, but only for three tracks. It was a very dull task but one I'll never have to do again.

A big thanks go to Bill Door for his invaluable advice regarding the subject of mp3 player capacity and file sizes.

You see I've been labouring under the misaprehension that the mp3 file format was any good. But it isn't. It's old, flaky and takes up way too much room. There are much better options around.

Both my mp3 players support Microsoft's WMA format. And while the sort of saddo who types M$ instead of MS may scoff, the fact is that it's an excellent format. I've just done a listening test and a 64kbps WMA file sounded just as good on my iRiver Clix 2 as a 192kbps mp3 file. That's the same sound with a file a third of a size.

You can see where I'm going with this can't you?

I've been on a bit of a music kick for a while now. A new guitar and amp (thanks darling) mean I'm basting in creative juices. The side effect of this is that I'm listening to a lot of music now - often listening to an album before going to sleep rather than reading for a while.

And the result of this has left me in a pickle, albeit a small one. Or two small ones even.

The first is pretty simple. I've decided I want to rip my entire CD collection to hard disk. That's not a major problem. We have a fast desktop PC with plenty of room to spare. The major issue here is putting in the effort to do it. My solution is likely to be taking a small pile of CDs to the study every time I work in there and rip while I work.

The more pressing issue is that I've no room on my mp3 players for all the music I'd want to carry around. This isn't a problem I've come up against before, I've always said that no-one needs to take more than 4GB of music with them because you just don't have that many favourites.

Crikey the new Coldplay album is bland. We've just sat through the whole thing and I've had to put on something with a bit of bite to cleans my ears afterwards.

It's the production that is most shocking. What on earth was Brian Eno thinking? The record sounds like a U2 off-day played down a very deep dark well.

And what's with all the mumbling Chris?

And the annoying thing is that it'll sell more than the new Whitesnake album - which is ridiculously (and frankly surprisingly) good.

As you may have read - I've picked up the guitar again, my excitement reignited thanks in part to the new guitar and mostly to the encouragement of my wonderful wifey.

Over the last year or so I haven't played that much. My technique is a bit sloppy now and my fingers rather slow. In some ways I actually think I'm a better player than I was in my uni days where I played regularly.

That's down to having a bit more taste, experience and having listened to a lot more music. Yet the truth is it was around the time I started uni that I stopped learning and practising technique.

I reckon I'm getting quite a handle on this photography lark. Over the last week I've been learning how to make judgements on manual exposures depending on the subject I'm trying to capture.

But something has defeated me. But to be honest it's also defeating the brain in my Canon 40D too. Even its advanced electronics can't cope with the subject I wish to photograph.

It's my new guitar. A Yamaha RGX A2. But unlike the one you can see by following that link - the model I bought is black.

Not just black. But the kind of black that sucks in light around it. There seems like some sort of gravitational lens effect around it that prevents photography. Certainly with an advanced DSLR.

Those of you who've known me for a long time are aware I have this annoying habit of playing guitar and there's not much people can do to stop me.

Even worse, I've a habit of accompanying this racket with my pretty terrible voice.

When the old version of this stie was set up it was to host our Lancaster University reunion articles, but also the songs I'd written and recorded.

Thanks to the installation of a new plugin, I'm now able to host these songs on here once again. Though why you'd want to listen to them is beyond me. Aural masochists¹ will find my songs right here.

¹_{No that's not meant to sound dirty. Wash your mind out.}

_{Update 14/06/07 - have just been listening to a lot of these songs. Crikey I've written a load of rubbish haven't I?}

_{Update 01/02/08 - Another bump for this post as the new version of this blog software now features an integrated mp3 player, so once again you can hate my songs through this site.}

Most Christian music makes me want to puke, but I must admit that Josh Turner's oddly beautiful Long Black Train is one mighty fine country record.

It's been around a few years now - but I've only heard it in the last few months thanks to radio play by Danny Baker.

So here it is as today's groove of the day, and don't worry that it will suck out your soul, there are some hot chicks in it to look at. And that cinematography is great.

And remember girls, if you wear a short skirt or dare to get pregnant outside wedlock - you're going straight to hell slut!

Radio One has decided to play a censored version of The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl's Fairytale of New York this year, editing out the words slut and faggot.

It seems totally ridiculous that the nation's pop music station is the most reactionary.

Radio 5Live has just spoken to Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Holly Johnson who said the editing of this "work of art" is totally "absurd" and although the words are offensive in many contexts, they are not in this case. As Johnson said, this is a song about two drunks arguing, you can't expect them to obey social niceties.

A spokesman for the Pogues said the band "found it amusing that a song that has been one of the best-loved Christmas tunes should suddenly have been deemed offensive".

Update: Seems all the furore over this today has caused Radio One to change its mind and play the track unedited in future.

For you know who...

I'm all for starting the twins' education rather early and today we looked at the subject of modern hard rock and heavy metal.

So instead of the baby channel it was Scuzz that the TV was tuned to for a little while.

The results were rather interesting.

I've just listened to 327 different drum patterns, auditioning them for a song I'm writing. I feel like I've been in a tumble dryer full of rocks.

Surely it would have been easier to just audition a drummer - but then, I'd have to get something to clean the dribble off the carpet.

I'm sure you're all familiar with the 1992 Sir Mixalot rap Baby Got Back, at the time it drew a lot of criticism for misogyny. Looking back it now it almost seems like a defense of women from the evils of the Size Zero culture.

You may be also familiar with the hilarious Baby Got Book version about girls with big Bibles?

But you probably haven't seen the following version – which takes the Sir Mixalot original and gives it the sparkle of a Gilbert & Sullivan musical.

Some times the tune and the weather combine to make one of those brilliant summer moments that can't help but make you smile.

So there I was an hour or so ago walking back from the High Street listening to Kendel Carson's debut solo album Rearview Mirror Tears and the wonderful track I Like Trucks started playing.

Last weekend Iron Maiden played a brilliant headlinging set at Castle Donington's Download Festival 2007. Here's a taster from the gig, which I managed to watch in full via the live online stream. This is a terrific version of Fear of the Dark.