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It's about damn time I did a proper entry on here about Da Boy's utterly fantastic band - The Jackdaws.
Some may accuse me of being biased and maybe I am, a little. I have no doubt I would still go along and watch him play even if his band was sh*t.
But I would not be such a vociferous advocate of their awesomeness if I didn't genuinely love these boys and their cracking tunes!
Da Boy is the drummer (and if I were to be openly biased, obviously the sexiest one - he's a babe) and they have Rich on vocals and guitar, Russ on lead guitar and Lee on bass.
They write what are, quite simply, the catchiest songs I have known of any band in the past decade.
While every one is very obviously "Jackdaws", they're also all very different, which I think is pretty unusual these days when so many bands play a set and you can't tell one song from another - so little of the crap out there at the moment is memorable in any way.
The Jackdaws stuff is all guitar, bass and drums based and it is simply impossible not to get up and do some dancing when you've had a couple of alcoholic beverages inside you.
Those who wish to investigate the evidence behind my claims can do so at www.myspace.com/thejackdawsuk, where there is a selection of their songs to delight your ears.
If anybody fancies checking them out live before considering coming to a gig, you can get a taster here, http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2602716.
They gig mainly across the Midlands and Manchester but have played as far afield as Edinburgh before now and honestly rock the crap out of any place they take to the stage.
So, there you have it. I have officially put aside my impartiality and shamelessly plugged The Jackdaws.
But I do so in the hope that it will enrich the lives of others by showing that there is still such a thing as great music out there if you look elsewhere than the Top 40!
Enjoy!
I found myself thinking quite seriously about the above question this afternoon.
Now, let me make one thing clear right from the off.
I love what I do for a living. I get to earn money by doing the thing I love most - writing.
Putting words down on a page in a somewhat creative manner is something I have adored doing ever since I was a young child, when I used to churn out countless random, highly imaginative and utterly crap short stories with no plot whatsoever.
As I grew older, I realised with a fair bit of certainty that I probably wasn't good enough to make it as a famous novelist so switched my attentions to the less fiction-based career of journalism (no sarcastic comments please, I never, EVER lied or exaggerated anything I wrote for my newspaper).
Anyways, the love for writing never faded and after university and a couple of years as a journalist on a local daily paper, I ended up in my current job as a media and communications officer for an organisation that I had better not identify.
And I really do thoroughly enjoy what I do. Every day is different, there are challenges that I relish and I love the fact that being 'creative' in some way helps towards funding my mad shopping sprees at Primark.
But it can also be THE most frustrating job in the world, mainly thanks to some of the people I have to deal with as par for the course.
Now, I freely admit that I'm not the best person at taking advice. I don't like being told that there might be a better way of doing something than the way I am. Then again, who does?
But if I feel that person is right or, at the very least has a point, I will think things over and ultimately take the advice to heart.
However, what I simply cannot stand is when someone effectively disagrees with how you are going about something just for the sake of it and to interfere.
My job relies on me working both as part of a team and individually. There is a big emphasis when I have been put in charge of a project, that it is down to me to do it and nobody else.
If I ask for someone's opinion, even if I don't like or agree with their answer, I will accept it.
But when what you are doing is constantly interfered with - when you are asked what you are doing, why and wouldn't you be better doing it this way - when you have been entrusted with the job by people more senior than the person asking you, it is beyond galling. It's downright infuriating!
I believe I am good at my job and I believe others think so too. Therefore, I do not feel I should have to justify myself or do it the way someone else tells me to just because they think their way is best.
If someone I work with has been given a job to do, it would never even cross my mind to ask them what they are doing, why they are doing it that way and telling them how I think they should be doing it better.
And I would never down right suggest that I couldn't really see the point of the whole thing!
Time and time again I just feel as though certain people feel they have to stick their snecks into what I am doing and throw in their two-pence worth simply to make themselves feel better.
Well, I'm sorry folks, but that's just not cricket!
I realise that this whole post is a little bit cryptic but I really can't go into specifics due to the nature of what I do - spilling your guts on the internet is more than frowned upon by my employers (although it really isn't as cloak and dagger as I'm probably making out).
Essentially, I just found myself wondering this afternoon whether my sanity really was worth the job I love. How can I enjoy my career so much when I am rather frequently on the verge of a mini nervous breakdown or fighting an overwhelming urge to stab someone in the eye with a ballpoint pen?
Journalists I can cope with when they piss me off. I get irritated and sometimes a bit short with them and I can be quite forceful and opinionated when I feel they step out of line with me.
Yet it's a different kettle of fish when it's those you work with that make you wish you had a bottle of single malt under the desk to give an extra kick to your afternoon coffee.
It has been over a week now and I am still mildly shell shocked at the sheer impossible brilliance that was Green Day's two-hour, fifteen-minute set at the Manchester Evening News Arena.
Oh my God. I've been to a lot of gigs in my numerous years on this planet but that Friday's really did top them all. They were phenomenal, the most incredible live band I have ever seen.
The day started with me meeting up with Mr B and H in Manchester in the afternoon, where my chief bridesmaid and I polished off a bottle of white wine between us and conspired to get Mr B in guyliner before the night was through.
Just a few short hours later and having met up with Da Boy, our feminine charms paid off and we adorned Mr B with black kohl. Awesome! And I still refuse to let him forget!
He did, however, resist our other plot to get his hair messed up, a la Billie Joe. That's for another day though...
Da Boy, as expected, did manage to resist me attacking him with H's eyeliner pencil, the same way he has done for the past six years! I reckon I might have to give it up as a bad job with him, I'm never going to convince him. Good job he's so damn hot without it!
Anyway, I digress...
Then, of course, Green Day hit the stage and all four of us were just blown away. Even Da Boy, who likes the band but isn't that arsed about them, said he thought they were amazing. The sound was just immense and Billie Joe's voice was well on form. I know I adore that man with a fairly large portion of my heart, even with the newly bleached blonde hair, but he was just astounding.
Music aside, the whole thing was just high octane entertainment from start to finish.
Nobody was allowed to even consider sitting down (apart from the miserable gits behind Mr B and H but who had a shit time because of it!), the delectable Billie charging up and down the stage and yelling orders at the massive crowd like a mini dictator, demanding that we clap, yell, sing, scream and "hey-oh" like a man possessed.
Involved, I think is the best way to describe it, not least with the half a dozen or so people he dragged up on stage to do everything from sing Longview to be 'saved' at the end of East Jesus Nowhere.
I have never seen any band with as much energy, they were all just non-stop and Billie Joe was like the bloody Duracell bunny! It was over two hours of full throttle showmanship and musical awesomeness. (Serious value for money too, when you compare it to the just over one hour, including the encore, we got at Avenged Sevenfold last year.)
Despite the fact that I am mildly obsessed with them, I was a bit skeptical of all the things I kept reading in things such as Kerrang saying it was the greatest live show on earth right now.
But I was wrong. Quite simply, nothing can match Green Day on stage right now and I doubt any gig I go to in the future will ever be able to top that one.
