Happy Birthday to:
Happy August, friends! August is my birthday month, and this one is looking especially awesome. Check it out, my birthday is just one day after Bruce Dickinson!
Happy Birthday to:
Happy Birthday to:
Happy Birthday to:
I got my signed All Time Low album in the mail today and it’s beautiful 💛 I panicked because I thought it wasn’t signed at first, and I actually contacted Amazon to tell them it wasn’t. I didn’t want to open it because I thought I might have to return it! This is an album I preordered in February specifically because there were a limited number of signed UK copies, otherwise I would have ordered it from All Time Low’s own merch store. Anyway, I opened it up, and the signed card was behind the cover booklet. Amazon’s customer service was awesome about it, despite my blunder! 😂
Happy Birthday to:
As you may know, I love CDs. I adore my vinyls. I worship my iPod Classic, baby, not to mention my badass pig iPod dock. But now I’ve “discovered” Spotify Premium and it’s like my head exploded.
You know when you get an awesome birthday stash, and you don’t know what to play with first? That’s kinda how it is, but with music. Endless, oceans of wonderful music which demands to be listened to. So I’ve been flitting about, listening to a bit of this and a bit of that, revisiting beloved old favourites, which included a helluva lot of Hoobastank, and it eventually it got to the point that I was like, ok, I need to take a break and go, like, eat something.
I know I’m late to the party, ok, very late, but now that I’m here I am never ever leaving! I mean, it’s music heaven! The app is just so convenient and aesthetically pleasing, not to mention it’s like a music genie. I’m like, Spotify Premium, play me that ol’ Metallica track that I love from 1991 (idc, I love the Black Album), and Spotify Premium is like, Your wish is my command! And I can listen to it and forward it and play it over until my hearts content. I’m a kitten in a sea of catnip.
I suppose also that having regular old free Spotify makes the contrast even more prominent. I mean, it’s just so annoying! The adverts seem to be specifically designed to annoy the hell out of you, because they grate on your nerves much longer than they should. You can’t listen to a track twice, let alone five times, in a row. You can’t pick tracks individually to listen to.
No, I can safely say, Spotify Premium is a super clever invention.
It’s okay, all you rockers still a bit stuck in the awesome 90’s, you can hang out here, too. As long as we remember to still support the music industry and lift her up. Because we are music fans. Because we love our bands, and we love our live shows. And either we simply put up with, or we’ve just became so used to, the endless queueing to get into the venue, at the merch stand, the loos, the cloakroom, and then standing around an awful lot, but it’s all bloody worth it because you get to see them. Because we can still love Spotify Premium, as well as be hella nostalgic about buying cassettes and CDs, cool vinyls, the just-one-more band T-shirt that we don’t technically need because we could shroud our whole house with our band tee collection. And we wanna get all that stuff signed, too, because that at least triples the object’s awesomeness.
The point is, many people say that stuff will one day be entirely replaced by streaming and downloads, but I’m not worried. We’re still gonna love all that stuff longtime, and we can still have one foot in the future.
Happy Birthday to:
Happy Birthday to:
The music industry was always going to take a big hit with the onset of the coronavirus, and countless bands have had to cancel tours because of it. Amazon has also temporarily stopped shipping out vinyl records and CDS, in an attempt to prioritize sending out more essential supplies to customers during the outbreak. So that’s two primary sources of income down for musicians. It’s a blow to music fans, too, because it takes away any illusion of normalcy that buying these items would give them, and not being able to attend concerts makes the whole self isolation drama even more real. I’m definitely struggling with it myself as going to gigs and mingling with other metalheads is one of my favourite things to do and I miss it tremendously!
The rock and metal community, however, has always stood together during difficult times, and the solidarity of music fans has always made me immensely proud to be part of it. It’s one of the reasons I always feel so safe at metal concerts, because you know there will be someone to pick you up, even if things get a bit rough. Now is the time for us to stand together. So, here are a few ways you can continue to support the bands and musicians you love.
Let’s do our bit and continue to support the things we love.
Stay strong.
