Robyn Writes

So this is the new year (resolutions of 2009) by Nox

What is a new year’s resolution? Why do people seem to make such a fuss over it? Moreover, how come the only time we ever hear about these resolutions besides at New Year’s is when they’re broken?


Well.

A New Year’s resolution is a goal a person sets for themselves, something they want to improve or achieve in the year, after reflecting on the previous year and realizing their mistakes, priorities, or what they would like to better in their lives or themselves. Usually, there are the generic ones such as cure cancer, bring world peace, stop world hunger, etc., but here at Two Beats Off we’re not trying to win a beauty pageant. Therefore, here are our New Year’s Resolutions!

Ripper:

My New Year’s resolutions are always completely and utterly ridiculous. Some of the ones I achieved last year were getting a better haircut and completing a Final Fantasy game. This year, I might be a little more serious though. This year, I aim to make sure this zine keeps going one way or another, because well… TBO is kinda cool. There’s the usual ‘get fit’ one, because no matter what, I’m always unhappy with my appearance. There’s a special condition for it – being female. I want to make sure I get into a good university, so actually studying would be a good one, instead of relying on just sheer luck and talent. I want to finish a novel this year, considering I have about three half finished ones on the go. And, because I can’t not make a geeky one, learn how to play Dungeons and Dragons properly!

ninthandash:

I always find it difficult making resolutions, but here goes. This year, I want to start doing things again. I feel like I put things off too much and waste a lot of my time. I want to make good use of it. I want to look back and feel like I’ve achieved things. I’m also going to try be less of a commitmentphobe, and stop pushing people away because I’m scared of where it might lead. I don’t want to be a coward. Finally, I want to get a job, go to uni, and I want to start a band. Here’s to ’09, baby.

Nox:

I have a few things I would like to do this year. Mainly, I plan to let go of one particular hopeless cause I have been clinging to for too long. On a different level, I’m going to try to be less introverted. I think I’ll take more chances. I decided I play it too safe and honestly, it gets quite boring. This year I would like to see Chicago, New York, and Denver. Also, I plan to be less of a heart breaker. It’s bad karma you know? Seriously though, I will be more cautious around others. Finally, a quick run down of lesser things: read a lot of books from my list, sing louder, write more, keep my straight A streak, keep up with my friends better, and hopefully get a baby turtle named Ringo.

fightclubsandwich:

fightclubsandwich was unavailable to comment at the time, so we’ve decided that we’re going to give her some. Whether she likes them or not. So, we reckon that she’ll want to start or join a punk rock knitting circle and make jumpers filled with revolutionary stitching, be able to co-ordinate better with Ripper when they go to gigs, start a band and write some kick ass fiction.

soufex:

I’m not an advocate of New Year’s resolutions. I’ve always held the belief that if you really want to change yourself, you’ll change it now, and in my experience, most people manage to keep their resolutions for about five minutes. However, it’s nice to feel like you have a clean slate and a new year for a ‘new you’… or at least a ‘slightly improved you’.

Now, I am an angry person, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Henry Rollins makes a living out of being an angry person. Anger is a good thing, it’s a healthy thing. Good things have come from being angry; revolutions have changed the world we live in!

The problem is, too many of us – myself included – don’t use this energy and passion constructively as often as we could. It’s far too easy to sit around and complain at length and volume about something we disagree with, but not use the opportunity to change or better ourselves or the world around us.

So that’s my New Year’s resolution – not to be a less angry person, but a better angry person!

But, we decided to get you involved this time, and we’ve had some pretty cool responses. So, here’s our readers’ New Year’s resolutions!

Richard’s resolution:

My resolution is not to make a resolution. That way I can break it immediately and not have to worry about it, while having a laugh at all resolutions’ expense.

Hab’s resolution:

To learn to control my drink. I think a few people can vouch for that!

Alice’s resolution:

To bag myself a surfer. It could happen, you know.

Ben’s resolution:

1) Quit masturbating (I failed this one on the 2nd January)

2) Get the girl, get the job, get the car

3) Get fit for summer.

Hannah’s resolution:

Find a rich man at university… or marry Fernando Torres!

Mike’s resolution:

To quit that nasty oxygen habit I have… no, really, I want to learn to be more
understanding of people this year.

Heather’s resolution:

I want to learn to dance, because I’m a big fan of Strictly Come Dancing and I think it would be sweet if I could pull off some of those moves. Also, quitting smoking would be good.

James’ resolution:

Read more books. It might be a smart idea, considering I want to go to Oxford University!

Megan’s resolution:

I want to find myself a wench. It’s been too long since I had a girlfriend!

Apparently, My Chemical Romance have returned.

I used to be an MCR fan. I was never in the MCRmy and I didn’t follow Gerard Way and his crew around like a lost puppy, but I had the shirt, I knew the songs, I enjoyed what they had to offer. When The Black Parade came out, one of the most terrible excuses for a concept album ever, I lost faith. It was such a mediocre effort from a band which had such potential. The first two MCR albums were visceral, exciting, interesting. They were well crafted and highly intelligent. The Black Parade, in stark contrast, was a steaming pile of self righteous shit that did its very best to be Queen. That said, most people disagree with me and it shot MCR to catastrophic heights. The only time I have ever seen them live was on The Black Parade Is Dead! tour and I won’t deny that they put on a very good live show. Now, the band have announced a new album and put up some hella artsy trailer for it. And it kind of made me think, what’s the real reason that I don’t like this band any more?

Sure, I still like (and listen to, on occasion) the first two albums. But I just can’t bring myself to touch The Black Parade, despite there being a couple of gems on there, where MCR show us what they once were and still are capable of. And to be honest, I think it’s the fans. I am not one to complain about going a bit mental over something – we all know that the minute AFI or Transformers are mentioned, I turn into a little ball of spaz, spewing out a load of pointless knowledge and opinion to anyone who will endure it. But I’ve never got that obsessed. I’ve never followed a band on tour and I’ve certainly never made them the centre of my universe, and that’s what I’ve found with MCR fans – they go unnecessarily gaga and it terrifies me. When I saw MCR at the NIA, I was surrounded (and crushed) by obese fourteen and fifteen year olds, wearing badly applied makeup and the kind of clothes I am desperately trying to get rid of on eBay, screaming to Gerard Way that they want to bear his children. On the new 30 Seconds To Mars video, a bit pops up saying “Yes, this is a cult,” and Jared Leto is wrong, quite frankly – the diehard MCR fans are a cult. I suppose a few years ago it was fashionable – if you were a bit ’emo’ (and I can’t stand what that word has been bastardised into), you got into all this Black Parade stuff and went around pretending you were dead in stylish military jackets. A lot of those kids will have forgotten about MCR and will have now moved on to Rihanna. It’s the natural order of things. The rest will be going batshit insane over this news. Am I jaded for only caring a little bit when my favourite band releases an album? Jaded I may be, but I’d rather be that than caught up in the hysteria.

The trailer itself is… interesting. Take a look, see if you can spot Grant Morrison:

It’s certainly different. It’s very stylish. It’s not exactly clever and it might be a bit pretentious and confusing, but it’s fun and it is highly ridiculous. It shows that My Chemical Romance have retained their sense of humour – after all, the video for I’m Not Okay is brilliant. It’s also got echoes of a new beginning; is this a more grown up MCR? Has all that stuff Gerard Way’s done for The Umbrella Academy mean that he’s now a better story writer and if this is a concept album, does it mean it might actually be good? It hardly answers any questions. But it’s a teaser trailer, that’s what you want. A taste, just a little excitement. That said, it’s hardly making me piss my pants in anticipation. All I can think of is how they’ve been playing Borderlands and Fallout 3 too much and laugh at the little kid who’s part of ‘the Killjoys’. The most important part of it is the music; after all, that’s what we’re waiting for, right? We haven’t been waiting for Mikey Way to dye his hair blonde (although, he does look damn attractive) or to see that Frank Iero has put on just a little bit of weight. We’ve been waiting (if we’ve been waiting at all) to see if the songs are going to be any good and well?

…It’s a bit mediocre, isn’t it?

It’s faster than Welcome To The Black Parade was, it’s a bit pop-punky, it sounds fun, but it’s not exactly an epic. And again, here is where my faith started to return and then ran off again, because I know, deep down in my heart, that MCR are capable of so much more. I want to believe that this is going to be a good album, that this will be MCR’s glorious return to my CD rack. But, I’m just not grabbed. My heart didn’t skip a beat. The lyrics sounded like typical MCR fare, but no line stood out. I don’t want this band to fade into mediocrity, not after they came so close last time. MCR were one of my gateways to other bands that I now adore – I’m not ashamed to say that I started listening to the Misfits after seeing Frank Iero wear one of their shirts (it was first album MCR though, any later than that and I’d have no credibility at all). They weren’t a vital part of my teen years but they helped make them a bit more interesting. I really wish that I had more to say about this song but, I just don’t. The mere fact that I don’t kind of says it all, doesn’t it?

NaNoWriMo – Only The Insane Need Apply

It’s only the 4th of November, and already, NaNoWriMo has consumed my life.

NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is an event thought up by Chris Baty in 1999. It takes place from the 1st to the 30th of November. Out of the huge amount of participants (number in total), three out of six TBO writers (myself, fightclubsandwich and ninthandash) are taking up the challenge this year, and we’re already finding it difficult to hit the daily average word count.

You might be thinking “Wait, word count? What does that mean?” It means that you have to complete a 50,000 word novel (although they never frown upon more) in thirty days.

And now you see why we’re crazy.

In order to hit the goal, you have to write 1667 words a day. It’s not impossible, and I’ve been hitting that target or beating it over the last couple of days. In fact, in order to catch up, I wrote over 3000 words yesterday. But, this took me around two to three hours when I was meant to be doing a history essay. I stayed glued to my pen and paper instead of talking to my friends during lunch time. I know that during the course of this month, I will be staying up late into the night in order to catch up. The novel doesn’t have to be perfect, which is something that many NaNo writers stress about. After all, you can call NaNoWriMo the first draft. You’ve then got time to perfect it and turn it into that best seller. In fact, many NaNo writers have used their NaNo novels and become best sellers in America.

So, all of the stress and tears and self-deprecation for what? The gratification of knowing that you’ve written a novel. The feeling of completing something on such a massive scale in such a short time span is incredible. I’ve written a novel once before, but over the course of around a year. I couldn’t believe how I had managed to put so much effort, sleepless nights and cups of coffee into a piece of work. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be exactly the same with NaNoWriMo. Except with a few more cups of coffee and sleepless nights.

We all have our vices. Mine aren’t sex, drugs and rock and roll, they’re video games, caffeine and literature. So for the next thirty days, goodbye, free time and hello, unpredictable characters, a faulty plot and overstyled dialogue. I can tell I’m going to love every minute of it.

Review: My Preserver – Revolutions In The Head

To be honest, until I’d been handed the CD, I’d never heard of these guys. But as it is, TwoBeatsOff likes new music and well, it’s nice to write about stuff I’ve got no preconceptions or assumptions about. And of course, new bands are always a plus. So, I had to do a bit of digging. It turns out that My Preserver are tagged as ‘electro-rock’ on Last.FM by their listeners, which makes sense, and that they’re from London. Googling their record label came forward with nothing, so I’m presuming that debut Revolutions In The Head is in fact self released (which was then confirmed by their Facebook page), which fills me with a fair bit of joy – it’s always great to see bands do it themselves, particularly when those bands get shot to fame, much like My Passion, who are one of the UK’s hardest working bands right now. However, despite their similar names and circumstances, their music is nothing alike and My Preserver wear far less eyeliner. Instead, it’s time to let the music speak for itself and determine if My Preserver have that same edge in order to propel them to atmospheric heights.

Opening track, King Jesus is a great starting point, full of energy and excessively catchy. It’s the sort of thing you’d catch on MTV2’s former excellent afternoon slot, “Text, Drugs and Rock And Roll”, and reminds me a little bit of US band Acceptance, who have the same knack for creating riffs that get in your head. The Green Wash starts in a fairly similar way to the previous track, and perhaps here, some variety would have been nice. They’re certainly not the same song – The Green Wash is actually more interesting and shows more musical depth, deviating from the repetitive but effective formula of King Jesus, but is kind of let down by its length. Third track Terrorist slows the affair down with its piano opening, and a theme of religion and politics echoes through; while this isn’t a political album, there is certainly more depth here than in the average chart release. Meaning, you wouldn’t catch songs like this on the latest Vampire Weekend record. It’s a refreshing change to hear something more lyrically interesting than boy-likes-girl-and-writes-song-about-her in something that isn’t political punk.

Dancing With Bricks is as danceable as its title suggests, but not as impressive as You Know Something I Don’t Know which follows it. This is the best song on the album by far – it’s aggressive, it’s got one hell of a synth solo and fully displays Plowright’s potential vocal talent. Not to say that the vocals are awful for the rest of the album, because they aren’t, but often, when vocals should be more forceful than they are, they turn out a little whiny. It’s okay though – the Americans were doing it before these guys and got away with it. Puzzles is a slow, burning affair, driven by the simple but beautiful underlying guitar riff. It slowly builds and lifts, ending on an echoey note. Children Of The Capitalists is more of the same – synthy synth, distorted guitar, etc, but has some interesting backing vocals in the form of what sounds like actual kids. Guys With Spikes is again, let down by its length – with this kind of stuff, a song over four minutes can be sort of pushing it, and has some very repetitive keyboardy drone before the guitar solos kick in. Otherwise, it’s a perfectly good song, and fits well with the rest of the album’s tone. Change The Blue Bag brings the excitement levels up again and is again, very very catchy. It’s Just A Game is a bit too similar to a few of the other tracks on the album, but is fun all the same. Finisher Loose Change has echoes of Muse in it, especially in the way that it attempts the grandiose. While it’s not the best finisher – the best song on the album should always be reserved for this – it certainly does represent what is best about the album and shows potential for the next release.

Although generally this isn’t my kind of music, I can certainly see that My Preserver have grand ambitions. You don’t attempt music like this if you don’t. While I enjoyed the album, I found it to be reasonably repetitive, which was a real shame. There are moments of brilliance and then… back to the same formula. On the whole, it’s quite similar musically to a lot of bands who came out around the mid 2000s, if not lyrically. It’s almost like the album wants to be its influences, when it doesn’t need to be. It doesn’t stand out like it should and doesn’t stand up to the shuffle test – when I put my iTunes on shuffle and it came up, I had to look up who was playing, I couldn’t guess who it was on my own. And while I may have over 7000 songs on my iTunes, I can certainly tell if it’s something spectacular.

It’s a great attempt for a debut and I’d like to see what happens next for My Preserver. It’s certainly worth checking out if you happen to like chunky synths and some fun guitar. The suggested genre on my iTunes was ‘alternative and punk’ and well… I suppose it is alternative. But next time, let’s hope it’s a better alternative to what’s on offer instead of just blending in.

3.5 out of 5 high fives!

Live: Motion City Soundtrack – O2 Academy Birmingham 2, 28/3/10

This show almost never happened for me. As a planned birthday present for my father (because he is rad), I asked him whether he would like to go, seeing as he’d have to drive there. He initially said no, but about a week later, he popped his head around my door in the middle of a busy FF session and said ‘let’s do it’. So, being in the middle of FFXIII, I decided to wait until the morning to book tickets where I found, much to my chagrin, they were all sold out. Bummer. However, my dad is an absolute hero and got us tickets anyway, and I bought him some Jason Statham DVDs for his birthday instead. Everyone’s a winner.

I had a much less arduous journey on my hands this time, but we still ended up late, as is my family’s tradition whenever we attend anything. However, in the case of Jenny Owen Youngs, this wasn’t exactly a bad thing. Indie rock with a touch of country and the most irritating vocals I’ve heard in a long time. Even more irritating than the guy from Kyoto Drive the day before. The rest of the music wasn’t too bad – a little cliché, but on the whole, it sounded pretty okay. Just… bleh, those vocals! Something was dying up there. She had bitchin’ hair though. Do want.

With that out of the way, next band up, Free Energy were pretty sweet. Now, they had the most awful lyrics I’ve heard in possibly forever (“bang bang, pop pop”? What the, what the fuck?) but on the whole, they were good! An odd choice to support a band like Motion City Soundtrack due to their general hippie rock feel – doubly defined by the hair on show – but they had some seriously feel good songs. There’s too much negativity in rock music these days and we need bands like Free Energy to shake it up a bit. Lots of finger tapping, cowbell and an extremely skinny singer strutting across the stage. Possibly a throwback to the 80s, but let’s face it… they were the best decade.

I was pretty excited for Motion City Soundtrack to be coming out. Having listened to My Dinosaur Life a couple of times before the show, I knew that in the studio, they hadn’t changed at all. In fact, it was even an improvement on Even If It Kills Me, despite that being a brilliant album. It turns out that I was entirely right to be excited as Motion City Soundtrack are just great performers. My one lament is that Jesse didn’t have his bendy keyboard stand, but on a stage that small, I can see how that might not have worked so well. Asides from that notion, they were so good. They played one of the best sets I’ve seen any band play, with a shit ton of stuff from I Am The Movie (my favourite), including “The Red Dress”, which I never imagined would happen, and the rest of the songs came from across the board – in fact, here’s the setlist. The new material sounds great live, except the keyboard is a little lacking live, but I think that’s a problem to do with levels and seems to be consistent whenever anybody with a synth is playing anywhere. Justin still has crazy hair and is the perfect gentleman, and I wish to steal his Keyboard Cat shirt. One thing I really appreciate about Motion City Soundtrack is that they actually look like they want to be there – there were smiles all around the band and the crowd! It’d been four years since I’d seen Motion City Soundtrack, all the way back when Give It A Name was still being done in Birmingham, and in fact, four years since the band had toured over here. At the end of the night, Justin told us “it’s been far too long and I promise it’ll never be this long again”. Let’s hope not, because the UK needs Motion City Soundtrack.