While perusing through Facebook one evening, I was prompted from the Pendulum fan page that they were playing a live spot on something called the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge. Lacking the necessary funding to purchase tickets to the up-coming concert, this appeared to be the next best thing. Naturally, I was intrigued. I clicked through a series of links which then lead me to the number one UK radio station's website.
I’ve never ventured into the realm of streaming radio online before. Why would I? I don’t waste my bandwidth listening to what good old New Zealand has to offer live on the airwaves. We get the latest pop hits and good hard man-rock from the 80s. If I’m not feeling the radio buzz I’ve got a selection of my favourite MP3s to keep my fist pumping.
Soon enough, I was listening to prime time UK radio (they’re 11 hours behind) where the DJ is promising me some live Pendulum within a matter of minutes. I was suddenly excited. When the fuck would get an opportunity to listen to world-wide DnB superstars live listening to 91FM? From what I last heard, ZMs latest offering was a phone call to Zac Efron from Australia about his latest fucking movie but then again, Australia is almost New Zealand, right? Yes, I realise there is about 20 times more people in the UK but that fact is I now know that there is an alternative to what we’re offered here in God’s own. Now we just have to wait until we can steam this in our cars without being charged $10 an hour (I’m too lazy to research this.)
After a quick interview, Pendulum (the full band) jumped straight into their latest single The Island (Part 1) and followed that up with a cover of Linkin Park’s new single The Catalyst which I admit, is really quite good. The Live Lounge is renowned for bands covering artists which are very off-genre and generally aren’t expected from them. Last time Pendulum were there, they covered Coldplay’s Violet Hill.
BBCs Radio 1 delivered a great first impression leaving me keen for something more. A friend directed me to listen to Zane Lowe’s show, this time pre-recorded, from a few nights before. From what I can see, Radio 1 runs two hour slots in which DJs can pretty much do whatever they want. Of course they have a theme to their show, for instance, Top 40, hip-hop etc and there doesn’t seem to be an annoying ad in sight, apart from advertising shows within the radio network.
Our fellow Kiwi Zane Lowe plays at a prime time of 7-9 Mondays through to Thursdays. His show centers on the best of new music. Zane Lowe plays host of the world premier of some of the world’s biggest tracks, most recently the new My Chemical Romance and Kings of Leon tracks. He played a dub step remix of Claire Maguire’s Ain’t Nobody from Breakage (think Skream vs La Roux) which he dubbed the world’s biggest track right now. After the song was over, he was struggling trying to get through the overload of texts he was receiving. He then stopped the whole show to play the song again. Once again, the texts wouldn’t stop. He read as many as he could out and said fuck this, and encored the song for a third time. After realising he was in critical danger of playing the track for the next 1.5 hours on repeat, he forced himself to stop it and chuck on some Architects, some pick-on-guitar, stick-on-skin, mouth-on-mic action. I was shocked at the shear range of music this guy plays. I have never had such a great time listening to the fucking radio.
In other news, it’s the time of the year where the first announcements for New Zealand’s great music festivals are posted five hundred times on Facebook. Rhythm and Vines go-ers have recently received the good news of DnB heavyweights Chase and Status joining the already promising line up and there is only a matter of hours before we get our first real Big Day Out news (2am Tuesday morning). After some questionable years of BDO since ’06 (the Tool year), I think it’s safe to say that we’re old holding out for something worth-while. Some rumours are currently pointing towards Blink-182, Deftones, Weezer, MGMT, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots and many more big names.
While this really does sound good and great, I couldn't help but cry when I saw the confirmed line up for Soundwave, a festival only a couple hours away on a plane as the crow flies. From what I hear, they're working on bringing this one over to New Zealand, touch wood. I’m not going to list them for the sake of the word count, but fuck. Check out the magnitude of what the UK gets to experience at Leeds, Reading and Download. And don’t even get me started on America’s Warped Tour. Sigh.
Encore, turn your subs up.
No comments:
Post a Comment