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Justin Hawkins recommended Powerage by AC/DC in Music (curated)

 
Powerage by AC/DC
Powerage by AC/DC
1978 | Metal, Rock
8.7 (3 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I think that most people got into AC/DC because of Back In Black and that happened to me as well, but I really wanted to explore the Bon years because Highway To Hell was a great album too. So I wanted to go back from there. I loved all of it actually. I was completely obsessed with AC/DC for a long time in fact, but the one album that really for me was head and shoulders above the rest was Powerage. It’s got songs like ‘Down Payment Blues’ and songs that people would say, ”Oh that’s my favourite AC/DC song”, because they’re trying to be cool and try and talk about their poverty and their roots and that sort of stuff, but it shows that it has a deeper poetry to it – the fact that people want to think of Powerage that way. For me it’s also got the best Angus solo of all of them. It’s on ‘Up To My Neck In You’. It goes on for ages and it’s essentially the same solo twice, but played a bit harder the second time around. It’s really good: him using proper dynamics. He has a lot of phrases that he often goes to, but it’s just the way he uses them on that solo that makes it really special. I’m definitely a Bon enthusiast. I went to Fremantle near Perth in Australia to visit his grave. I’d never been to visit any famous graves before, and we only did it because we were in Australia and had the day off, but you have an expectation of what you’re going to see tribute-wise from other people that had gone to visit it. And there was one guy had written something that had really stayed with me. You can imagine that it’s sort of like a pilgrimage out of town – there’s nothing really around the graveyard. And there’s a bench on the concrete and you can just imagine this guy there with a Sharpie going, “hmmm, now what can I say that really sums up my feelings at this point?” And he had just put: “Love your work Bon.” Ha ha, it was really powerful."

Source
  
40x40

Natasha Khan recommended Bleach by Nirvana in Music (curated)

 
Bleach by Nirvana
Bleach by Nirvana
1989 | Rock
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I have a Polaroid of Kurt Cobain on my kitchen corkboard. It's him holding a kitten, two of my favourite things in the world: Kurt and kittens, the two 'k's! I was deeply in love [laughs] with him, on a hormonal level, for a long time. But I think in terms of what he taught me as a budding creative person and an angsty, very troubled teenager. It sounds really cheesy, but he got me through many many days of bunking school. When I think of Bleach, I've just put [points to phone] "bunking school", that's basically what I did. Just that first track 'Blew', there's that bass sound [sings], and it was just so dirty and rank and then there's feedback and his voice - [sings] "NO RECESS!' - on 'School'. What was so exciting about the fact that they had become so loved and so big was that they didn't compromise any of that aggression, anger and rawness. I just love people that become really successful by not compromising anything, and being completely true to their own spirit. At that time, I was starting to writing books of poetry and play guitar in my bedroom. I'd pretend to get the train to school, and then come back in and climb through the window and just spend all day with Bleach and Incesticide on a tape, and I'd just turn them over and [listen to] 'Dive', 'Love Buzz' and 'Floyd The Barber'. It was just the ability to play this album as loud in my bedroom as I possibly could and just scream along to it, and just feel there was a little soulmate, who had this similar thing, just guiding me through. I think that visceralness really gave voice to something that I was finding difficult to express and because I was finding my own singing voice, and very shy about it, it was like really nice to be able to not have to sound, as a girl, pretty and nice - all the female musicians like that, they're very beautiful, but to get that kind of guttural, animalistic scream was really liberating."

Source
  
    Eufloria HD

    Eufloria HD

    Games and Entertainment

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    App

    ** Apple Best Game of 2012 Runner Up ** Achieved #1 Paid App and Top Ten Games Worldwide **...

The Marlowe Papers
The Marlowe Papers
Ros Barber | 2013 | Fiction & Poetry
6
8.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
I thought this was a really interesting idea; a 'novel (if that's even the right word!) written entirely in Blank Verse. Obviously the subject matter was also one that interested me.

The book apparently formed part of Barber's PhD and her central theory is the one that playwright and intelligencer Christopher Marlowe did not in fact die in Deptford as supposed. Subsidiary to this is the idea that William Shakespeare was just a front man for a whole host of plays written by an exiled Marlowe. Despite appearing in a production of Doctor Faustus as a teenager, I will admit that I am not terribly au fait with the details of Marlowe's life but having read Barber's work and the notes at the back, I can see there is some mileage in the idea of him having not actually died as reported; certainly there appears something fishy going on. I'm less convinced by the idea that someone else 'must' have written Shakespeare's plays. If Marlowe could be successful as the son of a Kentish Cobbler, why can't we believe the same of the son of a Stratford glover? Be that as it may, that is the stance Barber has chosen to take and I can accept what she gives me for the purpose of her 'entertainment' of 'what might have happened'.

As to the book itself, it's about 400 pages long and I think it took about 100 of those before I felt I was really getting into it. I'm not sure if it was adjusting to the style of the work (I read some plays in Blank Verse, but I'm not a great poetry lover) or if the early section was more chronologically disjointed and more tricky to get into the swing of the action? I am glad I persevered though, as I did end up enjoying it. On the other hand, I can more than understand that some people won't find it their cup of tea at all - I don't think there is any other work, at least not in English, that is written in quite the same way. It certainly must have been a labour of love getting exactly the right words to make all that Iambic Pentameter work, so hats off to Barber on this score.

Now I feel like seeing if I can find a decent biography of Marlowe, and surely that can only be a good thing.