Thought I’d give this stuff a go. So, for the sake of your amusement and mine, I give you: My Bedroom!

Opinions are always nice, so if you think I should keep video blogging, please let me know. More importantly, if you think it’s stupid, tell me, and I might listen, or I might say fuck you.

Well, not really shit… And certainly not all. But here is a list of the number one hit singles on the UK charts in 2009 (list copied off Wikipedia):

With the exception of a very fortunate few, this is almost exclusively dance music. Club music. Don’t people want something to listen to in this country? Don’t they want something with substance? Granted, it’s impressive that a Rage Against the Machine made it on there. The only rock tune that did, even if it’s old as dirt, so I don’t quite get it… The Children in Need song was also very sweet, and I like it that people care enough about their charities and their kids to get it on there. I also don’t mind Lily Allen. But apart from those specific examples, I can’t say there’s a thing on there that I like. Some of it’s tolerable, and I don’t mind them so much, but mostly, I think these tunes are shit.

Which shouldn’t matter to you. My opinion affects you in no way at all. But the thing that really bothers me is that apart from two or three of these tracks, even among the ones I can stand to listen to, there’s hardly a single real instrument between them. So many fantastic instrumentalists out there, and these blood sucking record producers won’t spend a dime on them. They’ll get someone to programme a few loops instead, and that’ll be that.

I have no vendetta against electronic music. I quite like electronic music, when it’s done well, and when the computer is played like an instrument. But that’s not what this is. It’s cheap sound for an instant hit. It costs less and it makes more money for the record companies than most “real” musicians can ever dream of.

I’d like some music, please. Is that too much to ask?

EDIT: Regarding Rage Against the Machine, according to Wikipedia:

“In 2009 the song was part of a successful Facebook campaign to prevent The X Factor winner’s song from gaining the Christmas number one in the United Kingdom. The campaign provoked commentary from both groups and other musicians, as well as gaining coverage in national and international press. The song became the first single to reach Christmas number one spot on downloads alone.”

So today I had my first real lecture. I’m doing two modules this semester: The Improvising Musician and Songwriting Analysis. Today we started on the former.

The basic idea is obvious enough. It’s all about learning to improvise. So basically, what we’re gonna do is learn songs, improvise around them and then put on a show. We’ve been divided into bands, and are to play 6 songs each. Four of them have to be chosen from two lists we’ve been given (two songs from each list) and the final two are to be chosen freely. This means we can pick cover songs or write songs for ourselves, perhaps jam out a couple of songs. These are the songs we get to choose from:

List A
Phish – Birds of a Feather
Susan Tedeschi – Hampmotized
Grace Potter & The Nocturnals – Medicine
Dave Barnes – Chameleon
Jon Cleary (& The Absolute Monster Gentleman) – Sometimes I Wonder
Larry Carlton –Inkblot 11 (inst.)

List B
Steve Lukather & Los Lobotomys – Party In Simon’s Pants (inst.)
Derek Trucks – MaybeThis Time
String Cheese Incident – iBam (inst.)
Phish – Punch You In The Eye
Dave Matthews Band– Trippin Billies
Umphrey’s McGee – The Fuzz

My group has two guitarists, bass, drums and keys, and we’re one of the lucky ones cause we also get the saxophonist. Yay! I love the sax. It’ll add such a nice level to the amount of improvisation we’ll be able to do as well.

We took some time listening to some of the artists on the list. I was especially impressed by Grace Potter. Not her band quite so much, but she was amazing. We watched a video, and she just rocked the house. She had so much emotion and feeling, and you could just see that she really loved being on that stage. That’s what I want to be like!

The Jam-band genre isn’t really a genre per se… It’s more of a way of playing. The bands we listened to played rcok and blues and funk and all sorts of stuff, but what they all had in common was that a large portion of each song was dedicated to improvising. And improvising isn’t just soloing, either, it can be so much more. These people just throw themselves out there and play whatever they feel like, together. I hope that at the end of these weeks of rehearsals we have ahead of us we’ll feel comfortable enough to put on a show as good as what these people do.

The concerts will be on the 29th and 30th of November at the Newhampton Arts Centre. I don’t know which of the dates I’ll be playing yet, but more details to come. If you’re in the area, it would we absolutely brilliant if you’d like to come watch!

I’m beginning to look forward to this year. Hopefully I’ll manage to do a lot of cool stuff, and get to know these other musicians as well. I feel optimistic right now.

One of the strangest things about being here is how different things actually are from home. You wouldn’t think that the differences would be so vast, but they really are. People are different, and the culture is different. One of the biggest culture shocks for me so far is probably ASDA.

The one closest to campus is a HUGE supermarket that’s open 24 hours a day on week days, and closes at 10 pm on Saturdays and 8 pm on Sundays. This place literally has everything from single malt whisky to kitchen knives and I haven’t even explored the whole place yet. This means that you can literally come in at 2 am, buy a bottle of whisky and a kitchen knife, down the whisky and go stab someone. WTF???

For my international readers, let me explain why this is strange to me. In Norway, no shop is allowed to sell beer after 8 pm on weekdays and 6 pm on Saturdays, and beer sales are closed on Sundays. Only special, government controlled shops are allowed to sell alcoholic beverages above 5% or so, and these shops close at 6 pm on weekdays and 3 pm on Saturdays. Quite apart from all this, only kiosks and things are allowed to be open 24 hours a day. NO WAY would ANY shop selling knives be allowed to stay open after 11 o’clock in the evening in Norway.

I’ve got to know some more music students. On Tuesday we went out for Karaoke, which was lots of fun. My flat mate Grace is AMAZING!!! Best soul voice I’ve ever heard in someone her age (she’s 18 years old) and definitely the best microphone technique! Karaoke was fun. I sang Africa by Toto and Supermassive Black Hole by Muse (which made Abi really happy). Some of the people there were pretty good, some were awful, but regardless it was a great evening. We all had fun, at least.

On Wednesday I went to Birmingham with a handful of first year pop music students for a concert. A Master student called Denis had his graduation show at a place called Jam House or some such thing. It was a reggae concert, and it was brilliant! I’m not even a big reggae fan, but I had a great time. All the music students who decided to stay behind really missed out, cause it was a great show. I talked to some more new people (I impressed myself by managing to discuss indie rock with one person, jazz with another and metal with a third in the space of about an hour or so), enjoyed the music and had a generally nice time.

Last night I stayed in and watched My Fair Lady with Emma. Seems like tonight is gonna be another one of those quiet nights. Abi’s got Jodi over, and Grace’s boyfriend is coming so he and Luke are gonna sit in Luke’s room and play guitar. Emma and I are in the kitchen with each our laptop. Annette is the only one who’s gone out tonight. Still, I’m feeling pretty good. I’m eating normally again, no longer nervous and panicking… I hope I can keep this up.

I’m taking a trip home on the 29th. That helps, too.

I borrowed the photo from Grace, hope it’s okay. Left to right: Me, Emma, Luke, Annette & Grace.

So here I am. Yesterday I got up at 5 am (Norwegian time), took a shower and headed to the airport at about 5:30. My parents picked me up to take me there, and my boyfriend came with us to see me off. We had a sad goodbye, I went through security and got on the plane just before 7:30.  Plane took off on time, arrived ahead of schedule, but was delayed when it reached Heathrow because its “parking space” was occupied. I got my luggage quick enough and made my way in to London by express train.

Then I got lost at Paddington, but did find my way to Euston station in the end, where I procured a rail card and a ticket to Walsall. The train to Birmingham was quicker than I’d feared, and the train to Walsall left shortly after, so I arrived here at about 2 pm.

When I’d got my room key and been showed to my accommodation (Mathias from NISS was an angel and helped me carry my very heavy luggage up the stairs), I had a brief panic attack, took a shower and went out to the kitchen to meet my flatmates.

I’ve been very lucky. They’re all friendly people, and two of them are music students, albeit first years. I tried to eat something (which failed miserably), and we went out to a club in Wolverhampton where I drank ridiculously cheap Stella Artois (no way I’d ever find it in a pub in Norway for less than the equivalent of £4 or £5). I’ve never been clubbing before. It was fun, though. I hung out with the girls from my hall for a while, dancing, and then I found Mathias, Espen and a guy called Glen, who’s also from NISS and who studies sound engineering. We sat down in a quieter room, an imitation of a French Budoir or something, where they played mostly jazz tunes, drum and bass and other pleasant music, and less loudly.

It was here that I met new friends (not counting Abi from my hall, whom I already get along with really well and who’s really friendly and who gave me toilet paper when I’d forgotten to buy some). I got into a conversation with a guy called Louis, who turned out to be both a goth and a commie. He introduced me to a bunch of his friends, the most immediately fun of whom was this guy named Paul who had the most fantastic all over the place fuzzy styled hair. I had a great time talking to all of them, and my spirits lifted slightly in finding that there are people here who are, you know, my kind of people, as well.

I’m really, really homesick, and it’s unlikely to get any better for a while, but I think I’ll manage. At least now I’ve met some people and I know what I’m getting into. I’ve signed up for modules, completed my enrollment, just need my student card now… Gonna talk to Espen and Mathias about it as I’m not entirely certain how to get it, but I suppose it’ll all sort out. I am, at the very least, now officially a student at the University of Wolverhampton. I live here now. This is to be my home. And as soon as I get round to hanging up a few posters and making this room more my own, I might just feel it, too.

Still scared.

It’s hard to find the time to blog sometimes. Or, more like, it’s hard to find the energy. My travel nerves have turned more to apathy than anything else in the last few days, and I haven’t been doing much of anything. I’ve started packing (found that my MIDI keyboard won’t fit in my suitcase, so I need to figure out some way to ship it), I’ve bought everything I need (travel adapters for my electronics and such), and I’ve said my goodbyes to most people. I leave on Sunday.

Despite the apathy, today was a good day. This morning I Skyped with my best friend and wee sis KayKay, who’s studying in Japan. It was good to see her face and hear her voice. Made me feel happy to see her well (with a nasty cold, apparently, but, you know, alive and in the flesh and all that). She seems to be doing really well, and I’m happy for it. Makes me think, if she can manage on her own in Japan, it shouldn’t be such a big deal for me to manage in the UK, where I do after all speak the language and know the culture. Makes me feel like a big sissy, too, for being so scared.

Then I went to NISS, talked to some of my old school mates who are second years now, and then I had a chat with Audun, the head of the music department, in his office. He’s meeting up with Espen and Mathias, the other two guys who are going to Walsall, in Wolverhampton on Friday, but since I’m not leaving until Sunday I won’t be able to join them. So, we talked for a little while, discussed the future and my expectations from the school, etc. It was rather pleasant.

After that, I went out for beers with my friends. I got presents from Stephanie and Chris, and Linda gave me one of the bracelets she was wearing, which was very sweet of her, I thought. Loads of people turned up, actually, and I had a great time chatting with people I haven’t had a chance to talk with for a while. I might be seeing some of them on Friday as well, if I feel up for it, as there’s a birthday party then. I’m going to my mum’s for dinner first, though, so we’ll have to see.

The hardest part will still be to leave Morten. He’s been really sweet about it all, but I think it’s starting to sink in for him that I’m leaving, too. It’ll be so sad to leave him here and go off on my own… But I suppose it must be done. We have to do difficult things sometimes.

Right now I just love all my friends so much. I was so touched that so many people turned out to something I’d only advertised as a Facebook status. They’re all wonderful people.

I’ve started writing again. Or, I got this idea a couple of weeks ago and started writing a little bit. Haven’t had time to do a lot with it yet – I’ve been so busy being nervous and apathetic. I’ll try to get cracking again once I get settled in at Uni, though.