I keep a spreadsheet of my music collection and out of interest just checked the number of CDs I have which I bought in 2010.

Turns out it’s 150, which seems pretty high at an average of 1 about every 2.3 days, during a time I was trying to actually downsize my collection!

To be honest I am well behind on a big stack of stuff to listen to properly so I guess I’m not surprised that I’ve managed to procure a lot.

I get a lot of stuff very cheap one way or another, usually via overseas mailorder (NZ dollar has been strong for a while particularly against GDP & EUR and is pretty good against USD as well), second hand CDs, and purchases funded by trade-ins and/or Real Groovy club bonuses (accelerated by ‘points for trades’ credits which gets store credit to spend plus accelerates toward the next bonus credit).

In 2010 I made a concerted effort to offload stuff in my collection mainly to make shelf room, and as a side effect ended up buying more than I would have thought (aforementioned Real Groovy trade-in credits) mostly of cheaper stuff that I figured ‘what the heck I’ll give that a go’.  And recovered a small amount of money by bundling some mostly crud CDs together and hocking them off on Trademe.  I’d rather get them to somebody else to listen to them and maybe give them a good home, rather than chuck ‘em out, even though the $5 or so profit (on a lot of 4 CDs on average) I make is hardly worth the effort.

Going back in time shows I got 152 CDs in 2009, 147 in 2008, and a mighty 242 in 2007 after only 120 in 2006.

Those numbers don’t count those that I’ve traded in, sold, given away, or simply chucked out between then and now.  But in reality that will only be about 5% [edit - actually probably only about half of that] of the totals on average.

No particular point to this posting.  Just took me by surprise that I’d picked up 150 discs in 2010 when I thought I hadn’t necessarily got a lot of stuff.

Apparently bands like ZZ Top have announced that they will be dropping down ticket prices to their gigs in 2011. It seems that the high prices are keeping people at home. The quote says that ZZ Top will be dropping prices and making them under the US$55 average, with some as low as US$10. (Fair warning: I didn’t read the whole thing because it’s Fox “News” and most of it’s about shitty pop bands).

While I don’t imagine this will happen across the board, it’ll probably happen first for those bands who can’t pack venues out. After a couple of years, punters will start to notice and start wondering why the big name bands are so much more expensive.

But I have to wonder… big name metal acts like Metallica charged NZ$170 last time they were here and sold out so fast that the band had to add dates to the tour. All four (?) shows sold out in minutes. Literally. AC/DC played here recently and sold out one concert with ticket prices of NZ$160, or came so close to selling out that they announced a second date. Then had trouble filling both gigs, so started giving tickets away with cornflakes. But if they had kept the one date, it would have been a stupidly-high priced sell-out.

No, there was no way I was fucking paying that, even as a die hard AC/DC fan. That’s just stupid money. I got my tickets free. Had the tickets been $100 I probably would have gone to both gigs, but at $160, I decided on a big fat “fuck you” to AC/DC and their promotors.

Iron Maiden came here a year or two ago and they were only $120, which considering how long it’s been since they were last here, that was fairly reasonable. Of course, the price of the concert was several hundred dollars more than that because we all had to pay for petrol to travel across the country, book rooms to stay in, and buy lots of extra food and beer.

Same for Exodus. Concert tickets Nz$80 (the perfect price in my mind, even though they were playing in a bar), $350 on petrol, $130 for accommodation each night (stayed an extra night because Airbourne played the night before), beer and Drambuie money, exorbitant food prices at eating establishments, and all up I must have paid close to $1000 for two concerts.

That’s a planned holiday I had to explicitly save for. It’d be fucking awesome if the ticket prices would come down so we can go to more gigs. And it’d also be nice if the bands played here in Wellington a bit more frequently. Having to travel 800km to Auckland won’t happen too often. And Christchurch I don’t tend to go to at all because it’s expensive to get my car across the Cook Strait. Maybe I should consider flying more often because flights are quite cheap these days, but I really feel freer with my car.

But yeah, lower ticket prices would be an excellent start.

This past Thursday I travelled up north to Auckland to go see a couple of concerts. The first on the agenda was Exodus, but since that was announced, Airbourne announced a NZ tour and they were playing in Wellington on the night that Exodus played in Auckland. So I extended my stay an extra night to catch Airbourne in Auckland the night before.

Airbourne

So Thursday night was Airbourne at the Powerstation. It’s a fair sized venue for a “bar.” It’s a dedicated venue for music gigs and it’s much bigger than anything of the like in Wellington. There’s a moshpit front and center, with an area around the walls which have couches, and there’s a mezzanine floor which looks down on the stage and moshpit.

The audience seemed to be split evenly between males and females, and at first I thought this might just have been because of the “safe” nature of Airbourne as a metal band. They’re fairly middle-of-the-road hard rock. If you’ve just beamed down to Earth and aren’t aware, Airbourne are for all intents and purposes a clone of AC/DC. They’re from the same place, they’re a bunch of young yobbos just like AC/DC were when they started, and they play good rock music with good catchy beats.

However, once the music started playing, I started to form another hypothesis. You see, being inside the Powerstation is like being inside the planet’s largest sub-woofer. Literally being inside it. There was so much bass, the ground under me was shaking, and I could feed the pressure from the bass speakers shaking the very core of the hair follicles on my head. I’m pretty sure that this is what it would feel like to have a brain aneurysm. But the girls would like it for a different reason in a very different place.

I made the comparison before to AC/DC, and this very much holds true for their live act, not just their musical style. Not to say it’s bad, but it is unoriginal. Of course, for the young’uns today it’ll all be new innovative stuff. Joel O’Keefe is practically a mirror image of Angus Young when he’s playing the guitar. Joel is the lead singer as well, but as a guitarist, he imitates Angus in almost every way. It’s like he’s spent his entire lifetime watching Young and has intentionally or unintentionally picked up the same body language and moves. Even the way he points his finger at the crowd. Part way through, he climbed up the speakers on the right side of the stage, ran around the mezzanine floor among the crowd, then climbed back down the left side after pausing on each stack to show off his fingers dancing on the fretboard. I can’t deny he’s a shittingly good guitarist, but he just doesn’t seem to have any of his own moves. Or if he does, they were lost among his mimicking of his idol.

They are a good live act and certainly didn’t disappoint, but I just wish that the Powerstation would turn down the bass a bit so that the music was clearer. All in all though, a great band with some great songs, and well worth seeing live.

It wasn’t until the next gig that I appreciated the difference in sound. After seeing Airbourne my ears were ringing into Saturday. And it was very bad immediately after the gig. Walking across Auckland, I could hardly hear the traffic. (more…)

In response to “If your house was burning, what 10 CDs would you save”

This is, of course, impossible.  Therefore after I’ve done this and 5 other impossible things, I’ll be off for breakfast at Milliways.

So, I’m going to cheat a bit.  I can elect a double CD, or Best Of, or This Album OR That Album (of the same artist).  About the only rule I’ll give myself is one selection by any given band – one needs to maintain a bit of variety.  This list will reveal my love of melodic and/or doomy metal.

In no particular order for the first nine selections… The tenth is trickier…

Black Sabbath – Paranoid

An obvious choice but it does have the highest concentration of classic tracks on one Sabbath album.

Katatonia - Viva Emptiness

Their best album by a (great cold) distance in my estimation, not that I don’t like most of the rest of their stuff.

(more…)

Some people like to think of a desert island top 10, which is the 10 albums you’d be stuck with for life if you were on a deserted island. In the same vein, if my house was burning, these are the 10 albums I would save. The difference is that I’m restricting myself to albums I actually own. Naturally, that list is very similar to the albums I think are the best on the planet, but not quite, as you’ll see later.

1. Suicidal Tendencies — Suicidal For Life

This is just hands down, the heaviest album ST have ever produced. Not as fast as their earlier punk-influenced work, but still with a lot of fast, heavy riffing. If I had to choose one album to listen to forever, this would be it.

Their first album, the self-titled Suicidal Tendencies, is also a fantastic CD. Fast, thrashy as hell, and has some great tracks like I Saw Your Mommy, but I think that over the years, I’ve listened to Suicidal For Life more.

2. Manowar — Louder Than Hell

Like Suicidal Tendencies, picking one Manowar album is tough for me to do, but ultimately Louder Than Hell would have to be it. Honourable mention would have to go to Fighting The World; however, my favourite Manowar song is still Kingdom Come, which is on the Kings of Metal CD. But overall, Louder Than Hell delivers a more consistent experience and keeps my head banging for longer. (more…)