CHOCOLATE AND SEX WITH THE 1975

Now before you go jumping to conclusions, thinking I've ditched college to become a roadie in order to enjoy some rather frisky past times, involving Cadburys Dairy Milk and Manchester's finest new addition to the indie/rock scene, lemme explain.

On Wednesday I was lucky enough to go watch these guys 

The 1975, at Nottingham's Rock City and can I just tell you now it was AMAZING.

With an ever expanding back catalogue of incredible tunes, such as the mighty 'Chocolate' and the saucy little

number 'Sex', to keep the crowd rallied and as high as a certain Mt. Everest, the atmosphere,

 as you can probably imagine, was electric. And when the beginning chords of those numbers in particular began wafting around the room, everyone, including myself, seemed to

 get an insatiable injection of life, courtesy of Matt and co. and just went absolutely crazy in the best possible way.

As always seems to happen, I found myself on the very cusp of a brewing mosh pit and for once I

just let myself go completely and got stuck right in there, being thrown to and fro like a I was stuck in a human pinball machine.

It was the best feeling ever.

You close your eyes. You listen to the music, let it fill your veins, let it take you higher. 

You sing the words and you come alive, and before you know it you're bouncing up and down like a pogo stick, crashing your body into the unfortunate soul next to you and feeling like life could not get any better than it is right there and then in that beautiful moment. 

You aren't alone. You're surrounded by a huge crowd of people who feel what you're feeling too and you're all in it together, in this instance, singing about sex, petticoats and what do you know, chocolate.

And it's the most incredible thing.

They played a variety of songs from their excellent LP and self titled debut and put on a truly phenomenal show, complete with flickering lights, a buzzing atmosphere and a turtle neck clad Matty who looked

effortlessly cool with his half shaved head and youthful, energetic and beautiful voice.

So in their role as musicians and makers of tantalizing tunes and magical moments, it's

safe to say The 1975 have well and truly outdone themselves.

Even if you don't know that many songs, like me, I would get yourself down to one of their remaining

gigs (that's if it hasn't sold out yet) and experience all this for yourself.

This is a band that has been working their arses off for the last eleven years and who

appreciate and deserve every piece of success rightfully coming their way. They make fantastic music,

they're impossibly cool, intriguing, unique and to top it all off, they're genuinely nice people too!

Lead singer Matt Healy has the crowd in his hand, commanding them effortlessly

to do as he pleases "don't start a mosh pit or I'll f***ing kill you", and after the gig 

my friends and I were lucky enough to meet him.

( Bad angle of course, but nevertheless, one cannot complain when one is meeting the lead singer of an incredible band)

Living up to his other alter ego aside 'Mr Cool' - 'Mr Nice Guy'- he made the effort

to greet every last one of us who stood adoringly in his presence and enforced a sense of world peace and ensuing harmony as if he were Nelson Mandela himself, telling us "not to get crazy and start pushing and shoving one another or I'll get scared and I'll get on that bus and go home. I'm not going, I'm staying right here and I'll make sure I meet every single one of you."

This caused one of my best friends to express her overwhelming love for Matty in the only way she knew how, by screaming happily, and who can blame her?

As a fan, to hear that was just the nicest thing and it goes an awful long way.

If I didn't already love this band, I now just want to go around with their name tattooed on my forehead,

free advertisement and all that, because they took the time to meet us and thank us and show that our support is appreciated. 

So as I said, GO, GO RUN LIKE THE WIND AND BAG YOURSELF A TICKET FOR THE 1975 RIGHT NOW and me? I'm off to the tattoo parlor....

LINK: http://the1975.com/tour

SEX

CHOCOLATE

THE CITY

GIRLS

SOUNDBITE: CATCHING COLDPLAY- THE NEW SONG

COLDPLAY- ATLAS

Been suffering from Coldplay withdrawal symptoms? 

The Mylo Xyloto blues? 

Well my dear readers, Chris & co. are back, at least for now anyway,

and they've brought with them an exciting new record to keep us all satisfied

until the highly anticipated follow up to 2011's phenomenal worldwide success 'Mylo Xyloto',

which many expect to be released sometime in 2014.

And this little beauty is called 'Atlas'.

It's the first soundtrack to be released from Novemeber's second installment of the

incredibly succesful Hunger Games series, 'Catching Fire' and co-incidentally

it's also the first song Coldplay have ever written for a film soundtrack.

Pretty cool huh?

The song itself is pure Coldplay but as we all know, that's exactly

 what they do best. It's beautiful, it's haunting yet uplifting, it's stunning and 

absolutely captures the whole feel and essence of the 'Hunger Games'.

'Atlas' could easily stand for a single in it's own right,

and you can't help but speculate if this indicative of what is to come.

It bares no relation to hits such as 'Paradise' or 'Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall',

in fact it's probably a relative of 2002's 'A Rush of Blood To The Head' or 2005's 'X&Y',

but it's still very original and I don't know about you but I love the entwinement between

haunting and uplifting.

It shouldn't work, but it does. 

It really, really does.

Judge for yourself right here....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh3TokLzzmw&hd=1

HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS

First thing's first, imagine me opera singing this: "Happy New Year 2013 to all you wonderful people" Done that? Okay now cue the applause and the desperate hunt for a kleenex because my voice is just that beautiful. Oh yeah, you know it's true.

Now all that aside, it's a new year, wahey, so whack out the 7-up and Bombay mix and all that and let's get down to the matter at hand, the music.

The first Tee Pot post of the new year is not going to be about new artists or songs or albums or anything in that vein, nuh-uh, no today is going to be a little different. Today is all about the idea of home. Not my house or your house or your best mate's house, no this is a metaphorical home and it is the one you are transported to when you hear that one particular artist or that one particular song.

The music that possesses a peculiar and magical ability to make you feel like you have found where you belong. That music.

Now I began thinking of music feeling like home after reading an article on rookiemag.com.

The writer spoke about Bob Dylan in particular and how for her, discovering him felt like finding home and it diverted me on to this particular trail of thought. 

Why do certain artists feel like home to us? How can they make us feel this way? Who feels like home to me? What is home in this sense anyway?

Well to me, home is essentially the one place you truly belong.

And it isn't just a brick and mortar structure in the town you grew up, no home can be anywhere.

It can be your friends, your family, your boyfriend/ girlfriend, your favourite band, book, artist, football team, shop, hobby, city.

And I think you know it's home because you can almost feel it in your heart, your soul, your mind, that sense of 'this is right, this is where I belong'.

In this post, I wanted to follow the line of music feeling like home and so if it's alright with you, I wanted to talk about my experience with music feeling like home and how I knew I'd found it when I heard a certain song by a certain artist.

Hopefully you too will then start thinking about the artists that represent home to you and if you want to, you can tell me all about it because I want to know I'm not the only one, that I'm not crazy for thinking like this.

So here goes. For me, that artist, the makers of that special kind of music, are the Arctic Monkeys.

I briefly mentioned my adoration for them way back in April in one of my first postings but unfortunately due to 2012 being an unproductive year for the Monkeys, you didn't get to see quite how much I adore them.

And in that case, you were actually, probably, quite possibly very, very lucky.

But alas my friend, your luck has run out.

My love for the Arctic Monkeys began in Autumn 2011 and I guess you could say it was like love at first sight, except it was a song I heard and fell in love with. 

The more I think about it, the more I think it's kind of crazy how you can stumble across and fall in love with one song, one boring, average day, and within a matter of weeks, that song leads you to a whole body of equally amazing work that just sounds like perfection to you.

It's like you've found exactly what you didn't know you were looking for.

 It's like this music fits you like a perfectly crafted glove, it fits like a missing puzzle piece, it's like someone knew exactly what you wanted and needed to hear and made that music specifically for you. No-one else.

And as soon as you hear that one song, you just know in your heart that this is the music you've spent your whole life waiting to hear.

The first song I heard by the Monkeys was 'Suck It & See' off their fourth album of the same name, and seeing as this was their fourth album, not their first, I was pretty far behind in making this discovery.

They'd already cracked the music industry, in fact they were reveling in it, reigning kings, and everyone seemed to have jumped on the bandwagon five years previously.

Everyone except me.

Yet there I was in 2011, feeling like I'd just stumbled across something close to utter perfection and wondering how on Earth I hadn't taken notice of this utter perfection previously!

How did I miss this?!

Now swap the above song with the one that holds the same meaning to you and I'm sure you'll remember that first encounter like it was yesterday. And I'm sure that like me you'll remember what happened next.

For the fifteen year old me, it was jumping on You Tube thinking "I need to hear this again, I need to find this band and listen to every god damn song they've ever made!" and in this modern age, that lead to downloading song after song like I was catching drops of a sacred, holy potion in a vial.

Within two weeks I'd bought tickets for a gig the next month, which was absolutely amazing in case you wanted to know, and by new years I had every CD.

Looking back now, it sounds like one of those relationships you dive into without thinking, you rush into it giddy on love and it's like your running and you just can't stop,despite everyone thinking it won't last, it's just a silly phase, burned out within the year.

 I myself can't quite believe how quickly I did things. Normally it takes me at least a year to get round to seeing an act I love live in the flesh and for that full blown love to develop. Yet with the Monkeys I jumped right in there, giddy on that high, and even though I knew I was going too fast, I also knew that this band was 'the one', cheesy as that sounds. 

I knew that I had found that artist that sticks with you your whole life, the one you never tire of, the one you listen to when you're down, when you're happy, when you feel like an outcast, the one who's band tee you will most probably be buried in when you die. That artist.

The ones in your eyes never make a bad song, could never do any wrong, the ones you idolize, they are everything to you and you don't quite know why that may be.

I had found that artist, my beloved Monkeys, and I just wanted to run around everywhere proclaiming my love, showing everyone that I'd found that artist. 

It was awesome.

And one year later, I am convinced that I have every song by the Arctic Monkeys and related projects, such as The Lost Shadow Puppets, Submarine soundtrack, covers, EP's etc. on my I-Pods ( I have a lot of music...). It makes me sound as bad as those crazy 'Directioners' or 'Beliebers' (dammit) but in all honesty I just never tire of Alex Turner's croon, the crazy, metaphorical lyrics, the stunning guitar. I listen to these songs all the time and they never get old. My love and appreciation never dies, even when I'm also convinced that I have indeed overplayed those songs, so much so that I won't be able to stand them ever again in my whole entire life ever.

It's crazy, utterly, utterly crazy, and yet we call this craziness love.

Now I know that not everyone loves the Arctic Monkeys in the same way I do, just as I think other artists, for example The Wanted, are really, really, really bad, and I accept that. You yourself might be reading this post and be thinking the whole time about how crap the Monkeys are, or how I'm deluded for idolizing them like this, and again, fair play to you.

But when it all comes down to it, we each have an artist that means the world to us, and maybe more. 

We each have our own taste, view, opinion, ears, and so what's utter, undeniable perfection and amazing-ness to one person may be utter, undeniable crap to another.

But the important thing is what that music means to you, no-one else, how it makes you feel, and if to you, that music is your everything, don't let anyone take that away from you. Never be ashamed or embarrassed because finding a connection as powerful as that is a truly wonderful thing,

Even if it that connection is with One Direction....

hehe ;)

WHO'S TOURING? APRIL/ MAY/ JUNE 2013

It's about time we had a new update on who's going to be where and when, so feast your eyes below because it's looking like one of the best ones yet...

APRIL 2013

• BIFFY CLYRO- http://www.biffyclyro.com/2013arenatour
• ONE DIRECTION-http://www.onedirectionmusic.com/tourannouncement/ (most likely to be sold out however may be worth a try if you really love them that much)
• EMELI SANDE- http://www.emelisande.com/live-dates/
• IMAGINE DRAGONS- http://www.imaginedragonsmusic.com/events/
• LOWER THAN ATLANTIS-http://www.lowerthanatlantis.com/Live
• PINK- http://thetruthaboutlovetour.com/
• FUN.-http://www.ournameisfun.com/tour
• LEONA LEWIS-http://www.leonalewismusic.com/gb/events/
• OLLY MURS-http://www.ollymurs.com/gb/events/
• WILEY-http://www.songkick.com/artists/262139-wiley
• TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB-http://twodoorcinemaclub.com/gigs

MAY 2013

• THE VACCINES- http://www.thevaccines.co.uk/gb/shows/
• ALT-J-http://www.nme.com/news/alt-j/65901
• ALICIA KEYS-http://aliciakeys.com/alicia-announces-european-tour-dates-for-girl-on-fire-the-tour/
• LANA DEL REY-http://www.lanadelrey.com/live/
• JOURNEY- http://www.journeymusic.com/pages/tour
• WHITESNAKE- http://whitesnake.com/2012email/index-2013TourAnnounce.html
• MUSE- http://muse.mu/tour-dates.htm
• ATHLETE- http://www.athlete.mu/tour/
• ERIC CLAPTON- http://www.ericclapton.com/tour
• DISCLOSURE-http://disclosureofficial.com/live/

JUNE 2013

• RIHANNA-http://www.rihannanow.com/live/
• BON JOVI- http://live.bonjovi.com/tour
• ELVIS COSTELLO-http://www.elviscostello.com/dance-card
• KINGS OF LEON- https://www.kingsofleon.com/home
• MAROON 5-http://www.maroon5.com/shows/
• ROD STEWART- http://www.rodstewart.com/category/uk-news/
• DOWNLOAD FESTIVAL- http://www.downloadfestival.co.uk/
• THE STONE ROSES- http://www.ents24.com/web/artist/79966/The_Stone_Roses.html
• ISLE OF WIGHT FESTIVAL-http://www.isleofwightfestival.com/
• GREEN DAY-http://www.greenday.com/tour
• IRON MAIDEN- http://www.ironmaiden.com/tourdates.php
• RAMMSTEIN-http://www.rammstein.com/tour/en/
• SLIPKNOT-http://www.slipknot1.com/tour
• THE KILLERS-http://www.thekillersmusic.com/showtime

-Please note that these are artists who currently have their tour dates up now. It is very likely that with new releases over the new year, more artists will announce tours for Spring/Summer 2013 in the new year so stay tuned.

CLASH OF THE GENRES AND GUITAR GRENADES

After flicking through a recent copy of NME magazine, I noticed how the musical geniuses there made predictions that a new wave of rock and guitar based front runners, for instance Jake Bugg, Lucy Rose etc. would amass the music top spot in the next couple of years.

We all know that music seems to work in a cyclical pattern, where one particular genre reigns supreme for a said number of years before another knocks it out the water with an almighty bang.

It's like a wrestle in the ring for musical supremacy that seems to pop up every four to six years, like the Olympics, and everyone tunes in to see if the current music champion can hold on to it's crown or if it loses it to the next best thing to happen in music ever. 

There's no telling who will win the crown but we can predict who is in favour of this prestigious title a few years into the current genre's reign. Take for example the 90's run-in to the noughties: the decade began on a high with the likes of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins most definitely holding onto the steering wheel after the all amazing classic American Rock dominance of the late 80's.

A new breed of rock, punk, indie, metal smash-ups were leading the way and they soon gave into the Brit Pop era of the mid 90's where bands like Oasis, Blur and Radiohead popped up to say hi, bleeding that new found rock styling into the pop stratosphere.

Meanwhile America were honing the formula for the perfect boy band which saw the classic five piece with mostly average voices come together in a tsunami of hunkiness to churn out hit after hit full of that cheesy pop music that we all secretly love. Forget Nirvana, Green Day, Goo Goo Dolls; America was saying goodbye to the guitar bands and hello to the pop world, Backstreet Boys, N-Sync, NKOTB, a transition which soon filtered into the UK. It wasn't long before our own Brit pop/ rock smash up gave in to the almighty power of Gary Barlow's dancing and soon Take That, Boyzone, Westflife and the Spice Girls (girl power, boom) were the people that everyone wanted to hear.

The rock beginnings of the 90's lost it's reign pretty quickly to the all too dominant pop stratosphere, so by the time the noughties rolled in, S-Club 7, Steps, Aqua and Bob The Builder (how did that even happen?) had the perfect platform to broadcast their pop offerings to the world. 

But whilst it seems that all the other genre's have vanished off the face of the Earth, alas the truth is very much far from it...

You see, whilst the biggest genre of the day flaunts it's stuff like the new Kate Moss or Naomi Campbell or the hottest club in London town (where all the Royal's like totally go and get wasted), there is always an 'underground' scene of which the majority of people seem to forget.

In the 90's, the underground movement was R & B, hip-hop, soul and the beginnings of dub-step, dance-hall and electronica, all the genre's that we've heard nothing but of the last eight years. If you were remotely pop or rock related during the 90's, you were swept up in the tidal wave, no underground beginnings for you.

 But if you were anything outside of that bracket... well lets just say you were given a first class shove in the direction of the underground door.

It seems to be that whatever is currently not in the charts, the airwaves, the magazines, but is big in the world that exists outside of the ' pop culture', that is what will soon be supreme in a few years time. 

I mean, look what happened to dub-step, grime, R&B etc., after the underground years of the 90's, rappers and soul singers like Kanye West, Dizzee Rascal, Wiley, Jay-Z, Mary-J, Alicia Keys all found their way to the top of the pack. Cheesy Pop was definitely on the out and suddenly this movement of music had it's well deserved and long awaited moment.

Of course two or more genre's can easily co-exist in the top spot, for instance now it seems to be a mix of electronic/ dub-step and pop, however it does seem that pop is always going to be the 'blueprint', the underlying construction or basis, and the next biggest genre provides the brick work, the decoration, the fleshing out of the over-used structure.

So will the day ever come when one genre finally kicks pop off the top spot, to which it has clinged to like Madonna clings to her long gone glory days and youthful looks?

Well in recent years, it has looked likely; hip hop and R&B definitely had it's moment in the last decade when it co-existed alongside the very powerful new rock/indie scene of 2001-2007 which was full of the likes of Arctic Monkeys (woo!), The Kooks, Coldplay, The Strokes, Snow Patrol, The Killers, Razorlight, to name but a few.

But of course like that ever so frustrating fly, that has idiotically flown into your house in the hope of claiming that last bit of chicken salad you ate last night, and which you just can't squish, pop always finds a way of fighting it's way back and it probably always will.

But the way in which we embrace new sounds, artists, genres is changing, allowing artists outside of the pop bracket to get the recognition they deserve. Artists like Ed Sheeran, Tinie Tempah, Labrinth and Adele have really come in to their own and shown us what true artists should be like, look like and sound like.

Meanwhile the mega maestro's of dance, electronic and dub-step, such as the almighty Skrillex, Chase & Status, Swedish House Mafia, Avicii are hogging all the airplay and they have clearly been rubbing off on the pop offspring of today. Faster tempo's, powerful bass beats, electronic riffs and auto-tune are a rife and when done well, the product is something literally out of this world.

So I guess the question now is which is direction will music turn to next?

If you ask me, I believe that there are still a few more years left in this current genre mash-up; the Skrillex sound still has enough electric spark to keep the fire blazing, and of course today's culture has fully embraced both this electronic sound and the notion of rap and R&B. If anything, it encourages it; this once foreign concept of speaking words as fast Felix Baumgartner sky falling to Earth instead of singing them, is what we all know and love.

You could say it's part of our culture.

Now being a rock and indie slave, I'm not going to lie that despite my own new found love and appreciation for the likes of Avicii, Drake, Jay-Z, Skrillex and so on, I really want the guitar age to be as powerful as it once was. For me, 2006 was the only year in my sixteen year life where all the bands I adore were triumphantly on top. My Chemical Romance, Arctic Monkeys, Snow Patrol, all on the airwaves, magazines, internet and despite being only ten years old,  I loved it.

I long for a repetition of that time so badly that it's almost an ache in my chest. Of course the guitar and indie movement never lost it's touch, it's always been there, always will be, but unlike pop, it does get pushed to the sidelines and sometimes, all I want is to turn on the radio and have the Foo Fighters, The Killers, My Chemical Romance and a whole host of other fabulous musical instrument and songwriting enthusiasts dominating the country, the world, just like they once did.

So to conclude this awfully long post, I predict that this current age will last for the next three to four years and will begin to bleed into other genre's, such as the new 'Rock'n'Rave' output, just like back in the 90's.

But from 2016 onwards, I believe that rock, indie and the good old guitar will have it's time once again.

Anyone with me?