You Won’t Fool the Children of the Revolution

Or you could do.

I got in from work earlier to the news that MP’s have voted for the tuition fee cap to be raised to £9,000. It’s a sad day, obviously, for current and prospective students and anyone working within any university, but if ANYONE says to me that they still had hope, they are lying to me. H0w could you possibly think that David Cameron would get out of bed on the right side this morning and say ‘oooo, i’m feeling quite generous today, just tell ’em we’ll keep the fees the same’? With the amount of speculation, protesting and sheer debate on the subject, it would have been an absolute miracle if fees remained the same, so I ask, why the surprise?

I’m not going to delve much deeper into the political side of it, because frankly I am not the person to do so, and when I talk about politics I get into verbal arguments with bands who got big off of a cover song. But in situations like these I think the media are hugely influencial. Ever since the speculation about tuition fees arose, the media were of course straight onto the case, with front-page articles and students being interviewed (waving to their mummies and daddies) about how they wouldn’t survive at university with the increased fees and how it’s ‘ridiculous’ and ‘stupid’ and for the Oxbridge students ‘frankly absurd!’. All in all, the media played on the situation as if we were spiralling into a black-hole filled with debts, repayments, loans and a picture of Nick Clegg’s face with a drawn-on moustache at the bottom of it. In the end, the media were bang on the money, we hit the bottom of that black hole today, and for some drama queens we hit the bottom with quite some impact. I think a lot of people go along with the mindset of the media and just ‘let it happen’, so to speak,  but if the media looked upon this in a more positive light from day one, would today have been the same outcome? Maybe. Perhaps. Probably not. In my eyes, it was so inevitable a decision that the cockroaches starting scurrying away months ago (if you understand this, well done).

Anyway, I have a great idea for Nick Clegg. Cleggy, it’s been a long day, full of hard decisions and moments where you could have pulled all your hair out. When you get home, make yourself a nice, big Horlicks in your favourite mug, sit down in your best chair and have a listen to the teaser of a remix I made for my old band, Yearbook.

That helped, right? Terrific news. Now, get an early night, tomorrow will probably be similar to today, lots of criticism and nasty comments, you need to be full of energy and alert. Get your wife to change the bed-sheets, then tuck yourself in and nod off around 10pm ish. That gives myself plenty of time to BREAK INTO YOUR HOUSE WITH A CROWBAR THEN DRIVE A WOODEN STAKE THROUGH YOUR VAMPIRE HEART, YOU BASTARD.

Has iTunes Reduced Our Musical Knowledge?

This is a blog post I had to write for one of my university units about, well, read the title. Again, any comments you have on the subject would be appreciated.

How do you become a music critic? Well, ask the majority of people and they will tell you that you would need an encyclopaedic knowledge of your subject, a passion for what you are writing about and a natural ability to be able to compare, criticize and praise. This rings true for a lot of trusted music critics nowadays, but I am worried that as time goes on, our future music critics may start to lack in the knowledge department. Why? I blame iTunes.

I do like iTunes. Over my teenage years I have managed to collect just under 9000 songs in my library and I am proud to say that I listen to at least 90% of it regularly. The beauty of iTunes is in its simplicity; you can store as much music as your computer physically allows you to and you won’t ever get a scratched CD or find that one of your precious vinyls has warped in the sunlight. That is why even the vinyl purists have slowly converted to using iTunes, but with simplicity comes disadvantages, and one these is the lack of interactivity with records. Before the MP3 revolution, people actually had to buy albums! Amazing! An individual would buy an album and play it on their hi-fi system, with no need for a computer to give them their musical fix. There were very few, if any, ways to illegally share your music, so people would have ‘listening parties’ where people met up and listened to an album together and discussed all aspects of the music. This way people became familiar with every song name, the order of the album and possibly even a bit of background history to do with the band. This kind of interactivity with music is the best way to broaden someones musical knowledge, and I am absolutely gutted that this kind of thing never occurs nowadays.

I know a lot of people who listen to music via iTunes or even a different program such as Spotify or Napster. But what I find EXTREMELY aggravating is when you ask someone their favourite song off a particular album and they can’t name the song title, for example. Or maybe when you ask someone’s opinion of the latest Radiohead album, and they aren’t even aware of the album. This is proof that iTunes has stopped people from caring about their music any more. People will play an album, send iTunes to the background and continue refreshing Facebook and Twitter. I have always had a mission statement in which I have swore to myself that I will not ignore or neglect my music. I am ridiculously passionate about my music, give me anything and I will listen to it intently and give you my opinion. Where are the rest of these similar-minded creatures?

The modern-day equivalent of these ‘listening parties’ is downloading an album off Mediafire, sending the link to a friend and then saying ‘yeah, track 5 is good init!’ on Facebook chat. It is a sad state of affairs, and I would like to see a change in this. Unfortunately, people seem to be getting along just fine the modern way, whilst I sit in my room next to my hi-fi talking to myself.

Enrollment

I am writing this on a train back to Basingstoke on a noticeably dreary Monday afternoon. I am still finding it hard to get over the fact I have been living in Bournemouth for over a week now, and what surprises me yet further is how I have managed to survive on my own without the supervision of a ‘greater being’. Nothing has struck me particularly challenging yet; the hardest task probably being getting the right bus back to my accommodation and not ending up in the darkest depths of Poole. But after a week I am craving my mum’s cooking, a night in my own bed and the company of my girlfriend. I guess it’s a gift that I only live an hour away from my university. Cleverly planned? Of course not. I would never choose to go to a university nearby just so I could be near loved ones or maintain my social circle, I will always choose the best establishment for what I want to pursue, and it is just lucky that Bournemouth University had the perfect course, facilities and activities for me.

I enrolled on my Music and Audio Technology course this morning to the delight of myself, although I did only find out that I actually started my course today last night, scuppering the plans I had made in my head to spend a good few days in Basingstoke as opposed to the single night I will now be staying. The enrolment was interesting. A dozen or so of us queued up to be greeted with a row of HP computers all fitted with webcams on the top of the PC monitors. We were told to sit down at an available PC and follow the instructions printed out in front of the keyboards. Once I sat down I realised this was to take our very own mug-shot which would be emblazoned onto our student card in a similar fashion to having the word ‘prick’ wrote on your forehead with a Sharpie pen. After one attempt at my picture I was pretty happy with it, after all it’s only a student card and anyone who judges someone on their student card picture is, at the end of the day, an idiot. Once finished, we were ushered into another queue, where once at the front we had to provide photographic evidence of ourselves (?) and proof of our grades from A-level. At this point it felt like a really bad initiation test that a gang would make you take to be granted access. I could just imagine a New York drug-lord coming up to me, “you wanna be part of this?! Show us a picture of ya own face, ya shmuck!”. Once handing the woman my photographic driving license, I got put into a final queue where our student cards were being printed out before our very eyes. Magical. I got handed mine and started to wish I could join the first queue again…

We also got given an induction timetable which is applicable just for this first week. It isn’t majorly busy, I have a jaw-dropping lecture on health and safety tomorrow, but chose to opt out of the campus tour this afternoon as I didn’t believe I could take the sheer enjoyment of it without fainting, collapsing and becoming a complete embarrassment on my first day.* As for my timetable for every week after this one, I am not too sure of that apart from the fact I don’t think I get any days off. This doesn’t really bother me but I’m hoping my days aren’t those rubbish ‘half-days’ where you have a lecture at 9 and then another one at about 4 in the afternoon, meaning a very long sit-down in the university cafe´ reading the student magazine whilst secretly pondering over which hot dish would be best to inflict death upon the dinner-lady. I will forever vouch for the sausage roll.

After a week and a bit I am still enjoying university and think that I will continue to enjoy it for a very long time, perhaps for the whole 4-year duration I am there. But time will tell. It will take something rather major for me to stop enjoying it, such as the canteen ceasing the sale of sausage rolls. Jacket potato?

*I really hope people will pick up on the sarcasm.

Results

This morning I looked online to receive the one result I was waiting to hear about so I could finally confirm my place at Bournemouth University and book my accommodation (finally).

Bournemouth University set me a conditional offer of DDM (that is distinction distinction merit, not just D) in my BTEC Music course, a pass in my Music Theory exam and a B in my AS Music Tech. I had already received my BTEC Music result as I left college which I got a DDD in, so I was chuffed with that. A few weeks ago my music theory exam result came out and I got a merit which is better than a pass; I continued to be happy. And this morning my final result made everything fall into place, I got an A. So all in all I am pretty chuffed, not only have I met Bournemouth’s conditional offer but I have exceeded it, and now I have finally been able to apply for accommodation. Good luck to everyone else getting results today and I hope you all exceed your expectations!