Tag: music

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A Guilty Pleasure?

Yes! I admit, I watch X Factor. Do you think I’d get away with calling it a guilty pleasure? I like to think so, because it will let me off the hook for liking it. This week saw the start of the show “for real” with the final 12 acts chosen to sing live to the public. This year there are 4 categories: Males (aged 14-25), Females (aged 14-25), Groups and Over 25’s mentored by four judges: Simon Cowell (groups), Louis Walsh (+ 25’s), Dannii Minogue (males), and Sharon Osbourne (females).

This is what I thought of the final 12’s performances tonight (and what I have thought of them up til this point).

Females:
Kimberley – totally robbed tonight. Thought she gave a good performance. Not the strongest, granted, but it was high energy and she definitely has a strong voice.
Alisha – probably will end up stronger vocally than Kim so deserved to stay, but both ladies should NOT have been in the bottom two. Her performance wasn’t strong, especially the second time round (but hard as she knew she was in the bottom two at that stage) and the song choice didn’t let her show of her vocal capabilities.
Emily – tough stuff for someone who’s only 15, but she did well. It wasn’t the strongest performance, but hey, she’s 15 and she’s singing to an audience of about 7 million people so, you know…in the grand scheme of things. I’m sure she’ll get better.

Males:
Leon – he sounded fantastic, if a bit TOO much like Michael Buble`! He was totally slagged off by the judges. Yeah, it was a bit messy musically, but the bloke can sure sing.
Andy – a bit cheesy for my liking. There are strong parts to his voice. It’s unique, but a little weak to me. We’ll see what happens with him. Maybe it was just song choice letting him down.
Rhydian – OMFG! What can I say? Well, the guy is a knob as far as I am concerned. I totally agree with Sharon there. He’s WAY too OTT for me. He’s got a great theatrical voice. Great for the West End, not for X Factor.

Groups:
Hope – bleah! Pussy Cat Dolls wannabe’s. They did Rihanna’s Umbrella. It seems the only freakin’ song they can do, seeing it’s the only bloody one I’ve seen the perform! I mean, YAWN!
Futureproof – like the name, but that’s about it. Just another turgid boyband. Even more so considering they didn’t actually exist as a group at the beginning of X Factor, but were the “reject” boys that were the rejected 6 from bootcamp. And that’s also how Hope were formed.
Same Difference – OMG! Get me a gun, now! Like a brother and sister Steps – and predictably end up doing Tragedy (a Steps cover of the Bee Gee’s song). And it was as the song title suggested. I was sure they were going to be in the bottom two with Rhydian…but what do I know?

Over 25’s:
The best lot…
Beverley – Fantastic, and more so ‘cos she’s a Luton girl!!! Great voice, good performance. Simon slagged her off for not being able to dance…erm, it’s a SINGING contest isn’t it?
Niki – best performance of the night. Great voice. She’ll do well.
Daniel – not the best performance, but heart-felt. He’ll do better. I’m sure I’ll have more to say on him as time goes on.

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Five days and counting!

I am SSSOOO not prepared for it this year. Not so much in the sense of being ill-prepared re: decorations, present-buying, card-sending, etc (having said that, I have a sad selection of decorations out – a fluffy Santa fibre optic with advent calendar that I keep forgetting to change the date on, a anamatronic dog that sings the first chorus of Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody, and a 1 foot fibre optic Xmas tree – haven’t really bought or sent any presents – haven’t sent out any Xmas cards), but being ill-prepared as in I am just not mentally prepared for the Xmas period.

I keep trying to get into the spirit, but this year I just want it to go away! There’s nothing to celebrate really. We’re stone broke, our car’s gone to pot, and I just don’t feel in the mood for “seasonal cheer”.

This is quite funny. They have been showing this ad for the last week or so, and it just cracks me up EVERY time! The best advertising campaign I’ve ever seen a charity do.

There is such a lovely sentiment behind it too. There was a catalogue that was delivered to our place at the end of their summer with a whole load of “Oxfamunwrapped” gift ideas in it. I thought it was brilliant. Especially the idea of instead getting wedding gifts if you were getting married, having all your wedding guests buy stuff from an Oxfam wedding list. Some things like a whole classroom or a whole village market could be bought with the proceeds.

[viddler id=51b95e49&w=437&h=370]

Well, as predicted by many pundits, Leona won X Factor on Saturday night. Her single gets released today and will no doubt be No. 1 for Xmas. Unbelievably she was in the final with Ray, which meant Simon Cowell had two acts competing in the final. Before anything else, it meant Simon had already won! Her single is a cover of Kelly Clarkson’s A Moment Like This. I think they could have given her an original song! Seems a bit of a cop out to give her a cover.

Here’s her performance of the song on the final of X Factor.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/i8rg1kreNtk]

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It’s the silly season.

I’m a not-avid follower of the snooker. Sometimes I watch, other times not. I’ve not really been keeping up-to-date with the latest competition, but couldn’t help but hear what happened in Ronnie O’ Sullivan’s match with Stephen Hendry. Hendry was up 4-1 in frames and Ronnie was trailing in the sixth frame by 20 odd points. It was his pot, he failed to pot a red and just left the table, went over to Hendry, shaked his hand and left the hall! He’d conceded defeat just 5 frames into a 17 frame match?!

Strange.

Speaking of strange…but DEAD funny! Em and I got onto the subject of an ad that was on TV here until last year. It’s for a product called Crusha, a flavouring you add to milk to make a “milkshake”. It looks like it’s made of radioactive material when you see it in the bottle – and I must admit I’ve never bought the stuff, but the ad is a hoot!! I HAD to go and try and find it on youtube. Amazingly it was there! lol

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR7RYKPJBdo]

Add milk, or we’ll Crusha!
Another festive treat for you. Here is the Baarmy Army sheep singing Jingle Bells!

[youtube=http://youtu.be/iMMExZnK0Z8]

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‘Tis The Season…

To be sad maybe? Sad as in “I have no life!”

I really do look forward to this time of year, although heaven knows why! I live thousands of miles away from my immediate family. My partner is not exactly in what you would describe as a “close-knit” family. We have LESS than no money (we exist primarily on credit cards). I could go on, but I’ll only depress myself. Does the Christmas period account for more suicides than any other time of the year? If it does, I can well understand why. Despite all that…I’m STILL looking forward to it!! I’m a freak, I know!

OK, here is why: The Pros…

Lovely food! I like to spoil me and Em at this time of year. Usually that would mean some M&S food as well, but probably not this time. What it will mean is roast dinners, chestnuts (the best nuts on the planet), deserts, alcohol and lots of warmth.

Presents…when you can afford them. We don’t really do gifts for each other much these days, but rather splash out on a big joint gift. Last year it was a Freeview box with recordable hard drive of 40gb. This year it has been jumping up to a 26″ LCD TV. But I still love getting little personal gifts.

Christmas TV. A chance to see all your favourite old movies and lots of Xmas specials. It’s a dead time for Australian TV, but absolutely prime in the UK. I suppose it’s the weather that makes it that way.

The chance of snow at Xmas!

New Year…an excuse to p!ss up! And have lots of prayers that the New Year will be a better one for all.

The Embassy World Darts in the New Year!!! I LOVE IT! It’s like WWF, but darts! I love the “walk-on’s”, they are brilliant! My two favourites are Ted Hankey, who dresses up as Dracula (he has a darts nickname – The Count), cape and all, with spooky music and sounds playing (he even has the receding hairline – but not a widow’s peak, it’s too far gone) and he picks out plastic bats from under his cape and throws them into the crowd – it’s pure pantomime!!! My other fave is Martin “Wolfie” Adams. He comes out to Duran Duran’s Hungry Like The Wolf and howls and the crowd howls back!! I assume he’s called Wolfie ‘cos he has a lot of facial hair?!

The cons…

We feel compelled to buy presents.

We have to worry about decorations. Normally I’m the first to put them up, but I haven’t got a tree up yet. I’d love a fibre optic tree, but money dictates.

You can’t really be with the ones you love…or you are forced to spend time with family…depending on which side you look at it. I haven’t had a Christmas with my family for 8 years now.

There’s probably actually TOO much to watch on TV.

No snow and just horrible, cold, wet weather.

Running out of some kind of foodstuff and having to go to the supermarket on Xmas eve! aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggggggghhhhhhhhhh

Sending cards by snail mail.

For those of you getting into the spirit, here are my two fave Christmas songs….

[youtube=http://youtu.be/P8Ozdqzjigg]

[youtube=http://youtu.be/DiXjbI3kRus]

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Out!

The MacDonald Brothers.

SANITY PREVAILED!

The MacDonald Brothers are out of the X Factor!!! Yay!!!

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Tittybangbang2!

I LOVE Tittybangbang. Everyone loves stuff like Little Britain and the rest, but I really love this show.

I loved 3 non-blondes when it was on and never thought that BBC3 would have anything on that would top it, but I adored the first series of Tittybangbang! And now a new series just started 3 weeks ago and I am loving it. My absolute favourite character is the Italian maid dust-bustin’! The very first show was brilliant. They had her singing Nut Bush City Limits in a crude Tina Turner stylie. Just the whole “Don’t look at me! Don’t look at me nut-bushin’ and dust-bustin’! I’m really shy!” is great.

I’m going to try and get the clip of it, but in the mean time here is some 3 non-blondes to enjoy.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/eHsx15AykUw]

I am finally getting into the new Killers album. Took me long enough. I’ve had a copy of it since September!!! It’s really good. I SSOOO fell in love with Hot Fuss that I am not quite as impressed with Sam’s Town yet, but there are certain songs that I do love so far. I love Read My Mind and Bones for starters…it’s very quickly growing on me!

Here’s Read My Mind (taken Later…with Jools Holland)

[youtube=http://youtu.be/4E8jy94j1HE]

And here’s Bones

[youtube=http://youtu.be/4Ot4sQoCJDY]

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I fell for the “shop-brand” er…bargain.

So I see an ad in the Daily Mail (newspaper…trust me, I do not buy it, it’s my in-laws) for Currys own brand Matsui MP3 player 2gb for £24.95. Too good to pass up me thinks. I have a 1.5gb MPman, but it has its own built-in battery, so it needs charging with its own charger. I hate that, so wanted to get one that takes 1 AAA battery. So I see the Matsui and think great, for that price I’ll have that. We go to Curry’s on Friday afternoon, in the pissing rain! Plenty of stock (just not on the shelf, so had to ask for it at the service counter). I checked that it indeed took a AAA battery, which it did, and bought it.

Get it home, test it. Already pre-loaded with some tracks, so was easy to test. Sounds OK for the price. Seems to be able to deal with varying bit rates, even tells you the bit rate of each track. Then I see what the major let down of the product is when I load some of my own tracks onto it! It doesn’t really have a proper folders/files structure, so it doesn’t create a list of albums/artists to play. There’s no folder hierarchy. Anyway, that slightly pisses me off. Some other people out there in Internet-land tried to rectify it by formatting the hard drive in the player, but then it stopped working all together. Other people just took it back to Currys to get their money back. I’m gonna keep min, but I’m going to dupe it by using software to change the ID3 tags (the code used to name mp3’s for players to recognise the songs). At the moment if I do nothing to the ID3 tags, the player will just be like a huge shuffled jukebox because it plays all the songs in alphabetical order. So I’m having to change the ID3 tags so all the songs are by artist first, so there’s a little bit of structure.

Nothing’s ever straight forward is it?  Still, I suppose I can ask myself what do I expect for £25? I still would rather spend £25 on a Matsui system than £129 on an iPod. As much as I love Apple and Mac systems, I don’t think I would ever own an iPod, unless I won one.

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British “Reality” TV, Saturday night feast.

OK…

So we were “spoilt” for choice tonight. We had X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing (aka Dancing With The Stars in other areas of the world) and I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here!

You can’t watch everything in one night, so I plumbed for X Factor (which I’ve only been watching since the final 12 acts were chosen) and Celeb. Strictly Come Dancing I can watch in highlights form tomorrow night (as I would never waste my money to vote anyway, not on any of them).

Am I the only person out there that agrees with Simon Cowell about the MacDonald Brothers?? I mean, seriously! There is just no contest between them and the other acts! If it’s all to do with Scottish votes then all I can say is WAKE UP SCOTLAND! If it’s patriotism influencing votes, you (Scotland) had a great act in Nikkita, why waste your votes on the MacDonald’s? Tonight they performed one of my pet hate songs…Love Is All Around by Wet Wet Wet. It was abominable! So then they survive the public vote by SO MUCH they’re not even in the bottom two! I was astounded! The bottom two were Eton Rd and Robert. And then, despite of the two, Eton Rd giving the weaker performance, they survive and we say goodbye to Robert! It must be bloody rigged for the MacDonald’s to carry on surviving week after week. Just so all of you out there in blog-land can see what I’m talking about, here’s the MacDonald Brothers performance for you to endure.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/q4v93_2iBRY]

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I finally got the bush-tucker trial I had been waiting for with the arrival of an extra celeb to join the others’ in the jungle, Dean Gaffney. A rather sad person at any other time. Has been actor that was in Eastenders for a number of years, that would turn up in the odd celebrity reality programme like The Club, with Samatha Fox. So I didn’t really hold out much hope, but give him his dues, he stuck to the task at hand, and probably managed to surpass Paul Burrell’s BTT on pure entertainment value! Here is a highlight package of Dean Gaffney’s trial. If you are squeamish, take heed, there is a bit of retching to be endured.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/iZsk_vch434]

Dean Gaffney’s Bush Tucker Trial

They are all going nuts in there man. The only sane ones seem to be Matt Willis and Myleene Klass. Jan Leeming is just about the most annoying moaner ever to be put in there. Still, until she’s booted out, she’ll be put through more BTT’s so there you go. Tonight’s one that Jason and Phina had to do was back to lameness. Jan’s one that we’ll see tomorrow sounds promising, if she even starts it! Tell you what, I wouldn’t want to be bitten by a bunch of angry snakes, non-venomous or otherwise!