Skummy

Bwahaha.

Generally a graphic novel is considered, in my opinion, an extended comic. Whilst a comic book is your weekly/monthly/whatever release, the graphic novel tends to work as a standalone story, although they are often made up of a series of comics. That's a godawful explanation, but basically it's a big comic.

Didn't one of The Melvins collaborate with SunnO)))? Or am I making that up?

The "I Earth" thing was never officially confirmed, it was one of many examples of Final Fantasy obsessives trying to read far too much into the symbolism of the game, considering they could also have chosen "I Heart" or "I Hater".

I'd go for Dropkick Murphys and Life Of Agony but seeing as it's free, then there's no question about it. Go!

How? One has a "th" and one ends in "s"! I don't get it...? ← It's the Japanese pronunciation, apparently. I don't know enough about it to go into detail, but this is what I've picked up along the way: Apparently the "th" in Aerith is pronounced as "s" in Japan, so they changed the name to Aeris on the US release so that it would have the correct pronunciation.

"Aerith" is supposed to be pronounced exactly the same as "Aeris", though, so it makes no difference anyway.

On the subject of James Blunt, I vehemently dislike him. His middle-of-the-road tripe is churned out in shops everywhere, so he's fairly unavoidable too. I hate hearing people say how he's an amazing songwriter...it's just "I saw a woman, she was beautiful"...yeah, really fucking deep and inventive there.

Wow...I just got in from the Jersey Live Music Festival, and I have to say it was probably the best night of my life. It was opened by a load of (fantastic) local bands, followed by The Black Velvets. Now, aside from being fairly naff anyways, I dislike the Black Velvets on personal grounds because they were dicks to my friend's band when he supported them in Exeter, so I wasn't too fussed about seeing them. I ended up lounging around with one of the local bands, when who should wander over and start chatting to us but Eddie Argos and Ian Catskilkin from Art Brut?! I got them to sign my program, and we ended up spending a good hour and a half chatting to them, before The Futureheads came on, who were just fantastic. Art Brut then played, and they were fucking incredible, probably the best live band I've EVER seen. As part of his between song banter, Eddie mentioned me and all the other guys he was with, amongst other things, and they were just tremendous, I've never seen anyone quite that good. At the end of one song, Eddie lept into the crowd and my friend Gavin jumped on him, and he just hugged him then grabbed me and hugged me too, then raised my arm in the air! After that were The Ordinary Boys, who rocked out fairly impressively, and The Bravery and Kasabian, who are naff. Basically...I met, spoke to and touched ART FUCKING BRUT! End of story. EDIT: I also spoke briefly to Pete from the Futureheads.

Johnny, the drummer from Gorerotted, grew up in Bishop Burton, the village I was born in, and he used to be my half-brother's best mates. Last year I ate veggie sausage rolls with him in my Gran's kitchen.

They've only had the one EP so far, and it's all early recordings, so the production values aren't great, and their sound isn't nearly as refined as it is now, but they've got a new EP coming out the end of this month and an album hopefully by Christmas. It'll be difficult to track anything down, so I'll link some files here (the EP was distributed for free, with the express intent of being distributed further, so it's all perfectly legal), and edit in links once I've got them uploaded to Rapidshare. EDIT: Welcome To The Show - Set opener, fairly catchy little ditty. NYC's Like A Jegard - A cover of The Moldy Peaches' "NYC's Like A Graveyard", with "Graveyard" altered to "Jegard", which is the singer's surname. Disfunctional - My favourite track they've recorded so far, a fantastic indy ballad. Your Rendition - Probably the weakest track, but still not bad. Droog Boogie - The "anthem" track, the one song that always gets the crowd going. It's a throwback to pre-Valentines, when they used to be called The Droogs and were a bit crap, but it's a fantastic song.

As I said, I'll be more than happy to eat my words, as I'd love to see Arctic Monkeys make it big, they are a fantastic band. Also, look out for The Valentines, they're my tip for the next year. Not necessarily getting huge, but they've got the potential to make waves with the way music's going. Really sleazy New York punk, but with really melodic, almost lounge singer vocals, and the whole "art rock" image. Absolutely wonderful.

:'( I'm upset. Hold me.

I dunno...there's something about Arctic Monkeys that means I can't see them getting huge. Admittedly the whole "art rock" movement (Kaiser Chiefs, Franz Ferdinand et al) is a big thing at the moment, but I'd put Arctic Monkeys in the same boat as the likes of Art Brut, in that a lot of their lyrics are quite referential to that music scene (specifically "Fake Tales Of San Francisco, in Arctic Monkeys' case), which could go over the head of the general public. I'd be more than happy to eat my words, though.

Arctic Monkeys are awesome, but I doubt they'll ever be huge, they're too quirky.

Only song I know that includes walking in on a girl masturbating...

Darling Nikki by Prince? Or the Foo Fighters?

I don't think there's any "Revolution" happening any time soon. Having the Internet and a wide range of music channels means that the general public are being exposed to a lot more music than they were ten years ago, and as such there's no one world-straddling band that defines the time, or one genre that's skyrocketing, everything's pretty much on a level. And I much prefer it that way.

I'd love to do this of all bands/artists ever, but I'll do it out of (to the best of my knowledge) currently active bands instead... Main Stage The Pixies (Headliners) The Stooges Rufus Wainwright Second Stage Tom Waits (Headliner) Pink Grease Dead Men Walking Adam Green The Arcade Fire The Futureheads Third Stage Art Brut Arctic Monkeys Maximo Park Nouvelle Vague Antony & The Jonsons And assorted others...

True, "Old School" gaming had the iconic characters in Sonic and Mario, which have been lost in "New School" gaming, with Pokémon and Lara Croft being arguably the last icons of the industry. However, I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, rather that it's a sign of where the industry is going. Whilst in the days of Sega vs. Nintendo, Sonic and Mario summed up the companies different approaches, and essentially the two types of gamer...Mario and Nintendo were more family-friendly, Sonic was the edgy newcomer...nowadays gaming has become much bigger than that, it's no longer just child's play. In the "old days", games consoles would be promoted as a "every kid should own one" commodity, whereas now it's "every home should own one", and gaming isn't child's play any more, it's a much more socially acceptable and much more advanced form of media, and the lack of just one or two identifiable figures pretty much cements that. There's no one figure that people think of that defines "Film" or one that defines "Music", but people could probably think of one for the sub-genres of those media formats, much like they can now with games. RPG fans will be able to reel off a list of recognisable RPG characters, fighting fans a list of recognisable beat 'em up characters, and so on and so forth. That said, whilst the "new school" is exciting as computer gaming moves further into the world of "legitimate" media, I will personally always enjoy playing the Master System and Mega Drive games I grew up with more than most "next generation" games.

T2 > Terminator, although only just. Godfather II > The Godfather Empire Strikes Back > A New Hope X-Men 2 better than X-Men, though? Nah. The plot is good, but there seems to be no real pace to the film...I don't know why, there's just no feeling of excitement at any point, it's just odd. But, yeah, Battle Royale is far superior than Battle Royale II, IMO, but it's well worth watching both.

But if he sounded amazing doing it, doesn't that mean he COULD play a guitar? You could also say Picasso couldn't paint because it wasn't exactly what art was "supposed" to look like. Maybe Hendrix didn't play like you're "supposed" to play, but music is art, and how you do it is all up to interpretation. ← True, as I said, I was only playing Devil's Advocate. I appreciate that Hendrix was a truly incredible musician, but judging on a purely technical level, he admitted himself that he didn't know how to play a single scale or chord. Meh, I'm backing out of this now before an argument starts.

I was only speaking from a technical standpoint. I'll admit that Hendrix's songs sound amazing, but on a literal level, the guy COULD NOT play guitar. He didn't know how. I'm really just playing Devil's Advocate here, but it's true.

Kilo is part of the phonetic alphabet, I've heard it used by police before.

Jimi Hendrix is by no means a good guitarist. He sounded amazing, but he didn't know what the fuck he was doing, by his own admission. Purely going on technical merits he's one of the worst guitarists to ever score a record deal. That's all irrelevant, though, because what he does sounds amazing. He is, however, heavily over-rated. The problem with the likes of Jimi Hendrix is that so many people are of the mentality that he's the greatest guitarist of all time, and that no one else could ever surpass him, that when someone inevitably does (and has), they don't see it, they still herald Hendrix as the best regardless. EDIT: And your friend sounds a bit of a flapjack to me. Trying to influence someone's music tastes is one thing, ridiculing bands they like is one thing, but directly telling you what to and what not to listen to is shit.