A week of Davids

This week has been quite surreal to me, I feel like so much happened in such a short space of time, and whilst I'd love to talk about them all, I think the events of the past week can be better summarised in 3 Davids.

DAVID CAMERON 
Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn's Twitter was hacked resulting in, what I believe to be, the first meme of 2016 (correct me if I'm wrong, I'd hate to be misinformed on the world of memes) and that is the tweet 'davey cameron is a pie', alongside a couple of other ones, one of them being a topical 'f*ck trident' and the other one saying 'here we... here we... here we f*cking go!!!'. 'Davey Cameron is a pie' has quickly become one of my favourite phrases of all time, so we started off well...

DAVID BOWIE
... That was until I woke up on Monday morning at 9:00am, all set to go to my lectures and have a productive day, and I go onto my phone to check my Whatsapp and I have a message from my friend saying 'OMG BESS DAVID BOWIE DIED!!!!' and my immediate reaction was that it was a hoax, and I refused to believe it. That was until I read the articles and heard it was true, and proceeded to stare at the ceiling blankly for 2 hours (I missed my lecture.. not good). This is the first celebrity death to really affect me, of course there have been other celebrities who have died and it affected me but David Bowie was one of my favourite artists. He contributed so much to music and film, as well as bringing a lot of attention to gender identity and gender fluidity and sexuality and all that jazz which was quite unheard of at the time which shows how bold he was as a person. I'm still in disbelief, I won't lie - you could say 'the stars look very different today'...

DAVID MITCHELL
This was one of the highest points of the week. I went to a recording of The Unbelievable Truth with David Mitchell (as well as other comedians like David o'Doherty... hey that's another David!) which would've been cool enough, but to top it all off, we got to sit in the front row! I can't believe I was so close to David Mitchell, like it hasn't really processed, but it was amazing nonetheless.

A bunch of other cool things happened this week but they're not David related, so I'll just list 'em real quick:
- had a night of watching all the weirdest videos the internet has to offer with friends (as if I hadn't seen them before, but you can't go wrong with Shrek is Love, Salad Fingers, and Don't Hug Me I'm Scared)
- got tickets to see Marina & The Diamonds next month with a couple of friends, we've wanted to see Marina for so so long and it's finally happening so I'm super excited!
- found the house I'm moving to for my next year of University and it's 10 minutes away from the beach, pretty fab!
- got the module I wanted for next semester so I'm going to be learning about social welfare and slightly more political shiz

Music of the month - January 2015

We've reached the end of January, so this entails failing your new years resolutions and spending bans (goddamn the spending ban, I haven't bought any makeup or clothes this month!) but staying inside and away from the shops has it's positives, it means I've listened to a lot of cool music, so let's have a looksie at what I've been listening to, eh?

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

1. Triumph of Disintegration - Of Montreal

Wikipedia describes this band as having 'evolved from vaudeville late 60's Beatles and Kinks-influenced psychedelic pop to a mixture of electronica, funk, glam, and afrobeat music influenced by Prince, Talking Heads, Os Mutantes and David Bowie' - if that's not a recommendation, I don't know what is. This song is quite upbeat and catchy, and it was recommended to me on Spotify, if Spotify doesn't know what's best then who does?

2. I know it's over - The Smiths

You may or may not know that I am a devoted fan of The Smiths, so this isn't a new song. However, when I first listened to the whole The Queen is Dead album this song just didn't stick out to me. Maybe because all the other contenders on the album are so mindblowingly brilliant (literally track after track of perfection) I never had an instant rapport with this song, but I listened to this song again because my Mum kept saying how she believed it to be better than This Charming Man - I disagree, but I'm glad I gave this song another go because it is definitely one of my favourites now.

3. Born too late - Dent May

Okay.. WHY DID NO ONE EVER TELL ME THE GOD-LIKE MUSICAL TALENT OF DENT MAY? I have fell head over heels for him, I may as well mention the entire Warm Blanket album because I love every single track on there - imagine The Beach Boys crossed over with The Smiths and an indie band of your choice from this day and age, and that's Dent May. This is probably the song that's been stuck in my head most but the whole Warm Blanket album is astonishingly brilliant.

4. Oh! You pretty things - David Bowie

Oh! You catchy sooooong... Again, not really a new song but I've been listening to the Hunky Dory album a lot this month and I just really like this one, but Kooks also deserves a special mention - can't go wrong with a bit of Bowie in my books.

5. The Masterplan - Oasis

Another song that isn't new haha, but this is an Oasis song that I've never really listened to all that much. In fact the whole album is one that I haven't listened to too closely before although the songs I do like on that album, I really really like. The issue I have with Oasis (that I'm constantly reminded of because I have a Dad and a brother who are team Blur all the way in the Battle for the Britpop crown) is that a lot of their songs can be a bit samey, which is fine if you like those songs, which I do, but they aren't as diverse as some of the greats *cough cough The Beatles* but I'd still say this song is different from your Wonderwall, Don't Look Back in Anger, and Champagne Supernova - the instrumentation is a lot better, and it's just darn good.

I've got to give a mention to Rage Against The Machine too (literally everything), I've been feeling the cold winds of teenage angst over the last couple of weeks of January and frankly RATM have been what I listened to most for the last half of the month. Also, if you want to follow me on Spotify so you can see what I'm listening to and listen to playlists and stuff, you can click here.

What music have you been listening to this month?

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Book review - Autobiography by Morrissey

Hello there readers, although I'm sure there aren't many of you as this is my first post on my new blog. As you can see by the title of this post I am starting off with a book review of a book that caused quite a hoo-ha a while back because it was made a penguin classic, but enough on that. I am a massive Morrisey/The Smiths fan so when Morrissey came out with his autobiography I knew I had to read it (after my Dad read it of course being the ultimate fangirl). Anyway, keep reading if you want to hear my thoughts on this book and if you're interested in what I read and my 2014 book challenge then please feel free to add me as a friend on goodreads :)

Look at Morrissey's little face aw - the book is a bit battered whoops

Synopsis: 

Steven Patrick Morrissey was born in Manchester on May 22nd 1959. Singer-songwriter and co-founder of the Smiths (1982 - 1987). Morrissey has been a solo artist for twenty-six years, during which time he had three number 1 albums in England in three different decades.

Achieving eleven Top 10 albums (plus nine with the Smiths), his songs have been recorded by David Bowie, Nancy Sinatra, Marianne Faithfull, Chrissie Hynde, Thelma Houston, My Chemical Romance and Christy Moore, amongst others.

An animal protectionist, in 2006 Morrissey was voted the second greatest living British icon by viewers of the BBC, losing out to Sir David Attenborough. In 2007 Morrissey was voted the greatest norhtern male, past or present, in a nationwide newspaper poll. In 2012, Morrissey was awarded the Keys to the City of Tel-Aviv.

It has been said 'Most pop stars have to be dead before they reach the iconic status that Morrissey has reached in his lifetime.'

My thoughts:

I think this book is beautifully written in some parts, the description Morrissey gives is astounding, it literally sounds like song lyrics. I do recommend this book for a super fan of Morrissey or the Smiths but I would say that unless you are a fan and a big fan at that, you will find this book to be rather tedious. I'll be honest, I was let down by this book. Parts of it were very interesting for me, like how he met Johnny Marr and how he felt about growing up in Manchester, his musical influences and I enjoyed the mentions of David Bowie too. However, I found parts quite dull to read and truthfully when I finished it, I was relieved that I could move onto something else because I found the last section to be a bit difficult to get through. Again, if you're a super fan do give it a go because then you can say you've read it and it gives you an insight into Morrissey's life.

The thing that annoyed me the most about this book was the total lack of structure. Firstly, there are no chapters whatsoever so it makes it difficult to know when to stop reading and put the book down. Secondly, sentences and sometimes even words are divided over pages making it even harder to know when to put the book down. On the other hand, most of the events in the book do flow into each other so I suppose it would be difficult to divide it into sections but it still really frustrated me.

Overall rating:

I would give this a 3/5, I feel terrible about that rating because I love Morrissey so much but this book was just frustrating for me to read because of the lack of structure and the detail in events that I wouldn't have thought to be necessary to mention, but if you are a fanatic do give it a go.

Have any of you read Morrissey's autobiography or planning to read it?
Do you like Morrissey or The Smiths?