Articles

Know Your Enemy

Green Day is the band that started making me think. Before that I was just like any other teenager. I listened to Eminem, I had my hair shorter than Verne Troyer, and unknowingly I was *gasp* mainstream.

I was thirteen, hormones, testosterone and all that. Picked up American Idiot in Tesco for €14.99 (a lot of money for me, even now) and played it on my CD player when I got home. It expressed me well, showing political anger with people of the US for electing the lovechild of King Kong and Sandra Bullock, and helped me vent my boredom in the Limerick suburbs.

Now I’m a bit older, I don’t listen to them much. Its not that I don’t like them anymore, it’s just that I like different things. I’ve evolved and varied into different styles of music, some of which were songs I actually couldn’t listen to when I was 14. I don’t mind good Electronic music anymore. But I’m going off the point now

Green Day’s latest record “21st Century Breakdown”, an album that kicks off in May 2009 should be interesting for me at least. This being my first favourite band’s newest album, I want to see if a group can successfully grow up along with the audience it played for back in 2004.

“Know your Enemy” should be their first opportunity. I want things to be different, yet recognisable, fun yet mature.  Green Day were a big thing for me when I was 14, I just hope they can wow me again, more so than their side projects.

Know Your Enemy is released in Mid-April.

Albums On Repeat

Each week I will try to give you a bit of information about me, and what better way than a good ol’ fashioned list. This week? Albums.

There are some albums that you pick up, and the moment that last beat finishes, you are left emotionally distraught. So much power, depth, funkiness crammed into 60 minutes or so, and you have what it takes to have a great album. The albums that I choose are not necessarily ones I listen to, but ones that changed my musical tastes, distorted my views of the world, and made me smile at the end of it.

My top 5 are as follows:

Oxegen needs Change

Year after year I get a swarm of emails from the cool people at Oxegen 09, but I am seldom impressed. MCD, the organisers, lack innovation. Year after year, they do the same thing, with almost the same headliners. This year they have yet again Snow Patrol, Kings of Leon, and The Killers. We’ve seen them all before, doing their same 10-song set. While we are all too drunk to truly appreciate it, the organizers are taking our cash with open arms, and now I’m sick of it. Here are a few ways they could help spice up future festivals