I Just Had A Rush Of Blood To The Head

It was June of 2008, the weather was cold, and my thoughts were as dark as the clouds that continuously lingered over town. I was home for four weeks for my holidays from my first year of university, and I was one unhappy child. It was during this time that I happened to hear a certain song called "Violet Hill" on the radio. It took just one listen for me to become completely hooked. Coldplay. I'd heard of them, I'd listened to them, and I'd liked them, but I'd never loved them. They had never even been one of my top ten bands. Oh how things were about to change! I listened to Violet Hill about 40 times within a week. Just before returning to varsity after the holidays, I heard Viva La Vida for the first time, and I loved it almost as much as I loved Violet Hill. I'll never forget saying goodbye to a friend at 4am, as she left for good, the line "be my mirror, my sword and shield, my missionaries in a foreign field..." coursing through my head over and over and over again. It was an eerie feeling. By now I had acquired all of Coldplay's albums, and had taken a shine to "The Scientist". What line could express the emotions of a young, lost first year better than "nobody said it was easy, no one ever said it would be this hard, oh take me back to the start" ? It sounds horribly corny and cliche, but this song got me through many tear-filled days. So, I think Coldplay were the first band that I actually fell in love with properly. I'd always loved music, but I think they were the start of my passion for it.

Flashforward to May 2011. Throughput all of Big Concerts' announcements, I'd never once let myself believe that one could actually be Coldplay. I'd said it jokingly, I's told Lauren to hold thumbs that it was them, but I'd never actually believed that it would be. So when, through extensive creeping, I found out that there was an announcement coming soon, and that it was probably Coldplay, I could not contain my excitement. I'm sure my friends were slightly offended by the fact that I kept losing track of our conversations, getting a glazed look upon my face, and beginning to mutter "Coldplay". As as result, I thought that I'd be an absolute mess the day the announcement was confirmed: I expected to jump, scream, squeal, and perhaps cry an actual tear or two (cue shock and horror). Instead, I calmly sat in my bed, smiling slightly and immediately checking up on flights to Joburg. I am going to see Coldplay. My life will officially be complete after this. It hasn't hit me yet, I think I'm in shock. Tickets go on sale on Thursday at 9am. Oh. My. Goodness.

This Is War

Upon a visit to Twitter tonight, one will see the words "Jared Leto" under the list of trending topics. Pause, catch your breathe. This time, it's not his sheer beauty that has the world talking.

Seems Mr. Leto has gotten himself into a right pickle over his actions towards a fan at a concert. Said fan, a young Brazillian girl has become highly offended, and claims to have lost all respect for her favourite singer after seeing him live in concert. Confused yet? Read on...

The girl and her mother attended a 30 Seconds To Mars concert as a treat for the girl's birthday, they were positioned directly in front of the stage, at the barrier. People pushed and shoved, as they tend to do at concerts (It probably wasn't such a great idea to have one's first gig be 30 Seconds To Mars anyway, just saying). Jared then apparently make quite a rude sign involving his middle finger, because the girl's mom wasn't singing along. The girl began to cry as she was pushed and shoved more and more. She says Jared then proceeded to call her mom a "pain in the ass", and then just happened to call her on stage.

Videos on Youtube back up her story. Or do they? In the videos, Jared asks "is that your sister?" a voice replies to the affirmative (first sign of a language barrier, perhaps?). Jared does in fact ask if she is being a pain in the ass, and after the girl says "no", he says that he thinks she is, and invites the girl on stage.

Well then, personally I fail to see what the problem is! Perhaps he was joking and they didn't realize. Perhaps it was noisy and they couldn't hear him. Perhaps I'm wrong, I don't know the entire situation and therefore cannot pass judgement, but in my own humble opinion, it's really not worth all the fuss that is being kicked up.

[Insert U2 song title here]

Disclaimer: if you are a U2 fan, I strongly advise you to navigate far away from this page, and return to your U2 forums, where you can continue fangirling over how gorgeouslysexilyamazinglyOMG Bono is.

U2 recently visited South Africa. In fact, they might still be here. The last thing I felt the need to do was go stalk B and his cronies. Rumour has it that South African singer Steve Hofmeyer had purchased R5000 worth of tickets for one of U2's shows, but proceeded to throw them into a river after hearing Bono say that it was good to sing struggle songs. Really. I my own humble opinion, I think good ol' Steve may have a point. Go ahead and sing struggle songs in your own country, but to make comments like that in a country such as South Africa, where it is quite a volatile topic was quite an unwise move on Bono's part. Perhaps he is not as familiar as we are with the history of the country, and perhaps he was just trying to help. I can't say. It reminds me of Brandon Flowers' comment on how it was inappropriate of Green Day to Sing "American Idiot" in Europe, where fans may not have bee familiar with all of the satirical comments in the song.

I can say that I think that U2 only ever did one thing right, and that was, well, the song "One". I don't hate them, but let's just say that all the money in Las Vegas wouldn't have persuaded me to go to a concert of their's.

Love The Way You're Lost...Oops, I Mean Lie

I was impressed with Rihanna and Eminem's collaboration from the very first time I heard it. What more could a song need? Two of the most successful artists of the moment singing together in a rap-sung collab to rival B.O.B and Hayley Williams' "Airplanes". The next step was, of course, a video to match the intensity of the lyrics, and this video was as explosive as anyone could have expected.

Perhaps the trend is starting to lean towards celebrities starring in music videos. Earlier this year, animated band Gorillaz cast Bruce Willis in their video for "Super Fast Jellyfish", a few months later Killers frontman Brandon Flowers was saved from ninja's by South Africa's very own Charlize Theron, and now Rihanna and Eminem narrate the "hot love" of Lost's Dominic Monaghan (oh, and Megan Fox is there too). Controversy is sure to abound. Firstly, it's Rihanna. The girl creates controversy with everything from her haircut to her relationships. Secondly, it's Eminem. The very man whose songs one is unable to follow on the radio because 99% has to be bleeped out...

Anyway, some say that the video glamourises domestic violence. I say, get a life. Some people will complain about anything. I don't mean that I support domestic violence, of course not, but by now we should all be capable of differentiating between what is real and what is there to make a few more million dollars for the artist in question. And I see RiRi and Em laughing all the way to the bank.

Time For Africa?

The FIFA world cup 2010 was supposed to be the time for Africa to shine, and shine we did. I had never seen a country unite to the degree that South Africa did between the 11th of June and 11th of July 2010. Flags waved from every surface, and of course you couldn't go anywhere without hearing someone belting out "sum-ie-na-me-na-eh-eh-waka-waka-eh-eh" without having a clue what it meant.

"Waka Waka" was the song chosen as the FIFA world cup anthem for 2010, and of course it was an instant hit, climbing to the top of many charts, and being played incessantly on the radio. Although many South Africans were offended by the fact that a Columbian singer- Shakira- was singing the anthem for this "African world cup", everyone took heart in the fact that at least brilliant local band Freshly Ground featured in the song with her.

Imagine my horror then when seeing the video for this song on MTV and realising that only Shakira was being credited. Although Freshly Ground clearly appeared in the video, the song was cited as "Waka Waka- Shakira". Do you see my unimpressed face? I now have to question whether or not Freshly Ground were given any international exposure at all, and sadly I think "not" is the correct answer here. And thus the lyrics "time for Africa" seem extremely ironic.

On The Fringe Of Science...

A few weeks ago, a great tragedy befell the world of television; Lost ended after a run of six seasons. Being a great fan of Lost, I undertook a customary mourning period, and now I am back in the game, and ready to find a new tv obsession. But, what to watch? I enjoy comedies such as The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother, but they are nowhere near as absorbing as show which demonstrates real character development. As much as I love Sheldon, Penny, Barney and the others, it's just not the same kind of love that I feel for Sawyer, Charlie and the rest of the Losties. As for CSI/NCIS/Law & Order, and the various other criminal-type, acronym-using shows, they fail to interest me for more than one or two episodes. I guess I could try Grey's Anatomy, but do I really have the energy to start a show that already has six seasons out? No, I do not. So I turned to Fringe. Created by JJ Abrams, I decided that it could be no less than brilliant in concept, if nothing else.
After watching the first episode of Fringe, I was able to make several deductions:
1) JJ Abrams has an obsession with planes. Also, the number 108 was slipped into conversation, but that may have been an actual nod to Lost.
2) Michael Giacchino has a very distinctive musical style. I smiled to myself everytime theme music started to play in the background (hey, I am not Lost obsessed, I am just observant).
3) Fringe is nothing like Heroes, as I had originally thought it might be. If I had to compare it to another show, I would chose the X-Files.
I am trying to stop myself fom scoffing when words such as "re-animation" and "mind-control" are usesd, and remind myself that I had no problem with Heroes making use of similar concepts (although I did, at first, have a huge problem with Lost's use of time travel). Fringe seems like a good show so far, I will continue to watch it. I am trying to keep an open mind, and not to hate it as I did Jericho simply because it had replaced Heroes.

Caught In The Crossfire

In late April of 2010, a strange phenomenon could be observed when logging onto the website of my favourite band. http://www.thekillersmusic.com/ bore what could only be described as a countdown. The countdown was set to end at 8pm, Thursday April 29th local time. What was being counted down to, no one knew. Speculation was rife; a new single, a covers album, an end to the hiatus, a countdown to a break-up (but surely they wouldn't be so sadistic), and even perhaps a countdown to a Brandon Flowers solo album. I laughed the last one off, seriously, solo album? Why would they announce that on the band's official website? Well, obviously I was in for quite a shock when the countdown ended and I found out that it was indeed a solo album! Minutes later, I heard that the title of this Solo Album was "Flamingo". Uh, okay then. I turned off my computer and went to sleep, highly, highly put out. So much so that I changed my desktop background, which had been a picture I'd taken during the concert I went to last December, and even removed Hot Fuss from my car cd player, replacing it with the angry rock sounds of Bon Jovi for three whole days.
Eventually I couldn't take not listening to Mr. Brightside on my way to lectures or Everything Will Be Alright after supper, so I forgave them. However, I was still not impressed with the idea of Flamingo.
Fast forward a few months to mid-June. It's the day of the Fifa World Cup kick-off. I am South African, which means that my life had pretty much revolved around soccer for the last week or so. This meant that I was completely oblivious to the fact that a certain radio station had been claiming that they were to play Brandon's first single, Crossfire that very day. A few hours before this monumental event (and I'm not talking about kick-off), Twitter enlightened me as to the fact that I could potentially be hearing Crossfire that very day. Using all of my very limited technological know-how, I managed to stream this very station and, lo and behold, hear Crossfire! I also attempted to record it on my cellphone as it was playing (remove that judging face, please, I bet you did the same thing), but all I could hear on the recording was myself screaming (oh dear, i'm not doing much to prove that I'm not an obsessive fan-girl, am I?). I was on a complete high, I loved the song! Only later did I find out that it had been an illegal leak of the song. I felt terrrible about having listened to it, but I didn't know that it had been played without permission. I am the type of person that, had I known, I would probably have launched an active protest against the station. No, I'm serious, I actively boycott not only Chris Brown and Kanye West for their various misdemenours, but also plastic bags, for their general environmental degredation, but that's another story altogether.
Anyway, back to Crossfire. I must say that I am extremely impressed. I'm still not completely happy about Brandon going solo, it just makes me sad as I'm so attached to the band as a whole, but the song is a masterpiece. I have also managed to procure an image of the cover artwork for the single, sadi image is now the wallpaper background on my cellphone. Okay, okay, do it, call me a fangirl, I can handle it!
I greatly look forward to hearing Crossfire played on the radio once it has been released officially. I wish Brandon nothing but luck with his solo career, and nothing will make me happier than seeing Crossfire soar to the top of the charts, but really, the sooner the boys re-unite for a 4th studio album, the happier I will be.