Saturday, May 28, 2005
Stayfun - the Return
It's been a while since the last update. The emails begging me to review albums or singles or demos haven't particularly eased in the time I've been gone, although, there's not been one email querying if I was still alive.
Well for a good portion of the spring I was living it up by the Sonora Desert in southern Arizona. I could have announced my absence here in advance, but you know, if you're going to be vacating your house for a prolonged period and leaving all your valuables behind, it's not the brightest idea to announce it on the internet.
My absence from the Netherlands hasn't been the only reason to stay quiet though. Stayfun's webhost has been driving me crazy in recent months and so far I've yet to replace them. If anyone can recommend a fairly priced hosting package which offers basic ASP options then please let me know. There's also the factor of working. I simply don't have as much free time as I used to and feel like I have a limited weekly word count in my brain.
Yet I'm proud of this website and refuse to let it die, therefore changes are in store. Until now I've tried to maintain it more as a webzine depending on contributions from a number of people all over the world. While hopefully that will continue on some level, my personal writing contributions will probably become more blog-based (see the Arcade Fire piece below this to get an idea). All of the image and file preparation takes its toll and it's just not such a viable option currently.
Band promotion will continue though. I'd just prefer that it was on my own terms, writing about music I want to listen to rather than having bands all over the world sending me stuff. It becomes like a hostage situation, having to force out reviews to appease others to justify their postage costs.
The gig guide will be greatly altered also. I haven't updated the database since March, and probably won't be updating it again in its current form. The simple reason is that I spend about three days each week entering agenda information into a database for the Amsterdam Weekly. To finish up that, then to switch over and work on my own database is just asking too much. So I'll present gig guide alternatives, as well as operating more generalised recommendations for what's happening in the Randstad area - apologies to the rest of the country, but there are plenty of other sources out there already.
It all means the site needs a good reworking, so it's going to be an ongoing process. Hopefully any changes will mean the site is more active than it has been. I know from the statistics that loads of people are still stumbling upon Stayfun. Likewise, people keep subscribing to the mailing list (which I don't really use), so I'm sure the site will still serve a purpose.
:: Posted at 5:11 pm by Steven McCarron ::
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The Arcade Fire / Final Fantasy
A couple of weeks ago I went off to see the Arcade Fire in Nighttown. I'll admit that for months I spent my time wondering just what all the fuss was about. It seemed MP3 blogs all over the world only existed to talk about the band, yet the couple of tracks I'd heard just weren't jumping out as special. Where was the impact they all wrote about?
Unusually for me, I felt the need to persist. I got more MP3s and just kept trying. One day, a song finally hit home ('Rebellion') and I began to believe in the hype a little. Next thing 'Power Out' suddenly had me excited as its opening chords erupted. So as the album Funeral slowly began to win me over, I opted to purchase it in the US.
But the album is only part of the hype, and on the live front, the band really didn't disappoint a heaving Rotterdam crowd. Mixing up influences from Pixies to Pulp and Afghan Whigs to the Flaming Lips, they're an impressive and powerful outfit. Of course I prefer them when they're rocking out, but their brief back catalogue already showcases a great range of dynamics and they pull it all off with great ease.
It's likely the Arcade Fire phenomenon will only continue growing throughout the second half of 2005, and if the venue sizes and prices continue increasing, then it's quite possible I'll never see them live again. I certainly won't begrudge them further success now, but I still don't regard them as the saviours of modern music which many do. However, if they can save some youngsters from the horrors of the mainstream industry then I wish them good luck.
There was of course also a support act that night - Final Fantasy. A solo musician using only violin and voice, it's ingredients that I love. I just wish I could be more positive about it. You see, it's not so much that Final Fantasy is bad. It's just that he's not good enough to justify fawning over.
Like singer-songwriter Andrew Bird, a large part of his show involves using the violin with a looping pedal, creating a false orchestra in the hall. Unfortunately, that's as far as you can take the comparison. Bird mixes in guitar, xylophone and whistling with such ease, putting it all together maturely with a level of songwriting I haven't heard matched in 2005. Final Fantasy sounds teenage in comparison. There's no real depth to the songwriting, and while the audience seemed to be wowed by the novelty factor of this man filling a room with only violin, I just want to take each person aside and explain how much better it can be.
Final Fantasy really isn't terrible. As he got a few members of the Arcade Fire onstage to fill out the sound, I actually found myself liking him more. But there are better musicians and better songwriters doing it, well, better.
:: Posted at 5:05 pm by Steven McCarron ::
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