Jessica Hammer » Choons http://jdhammer.com Jessica Dowling Hammer's Personal Blog Wed, 28 Jul 2010 05:16:48 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 I recommend: Radio http://jdhammer.com/i-recommend-radio/ http://jdhammer.com/i-recommend-radio/#comments Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:03:43 +0000 admin http://jdhammer.com/?p=124 Aside from the usual Pandora, Last FM, Pure Volume, Lala and other music aggregators, there are loads of places to get streaming music…Radio Stations!
Real, old fashioned radio with DJs and all! But the only way that RADIO is bearable is for it to be foreign. Overseas radio is even interesting with ads because of accents and languages, and a lot of our socialist neighbors have taxpayer funded stations with NO ads at all! Bonus.
The downsides are the weird time alignments. UK radio starts the night shift as I am driving home from work, and Australia is always a day ahead (hearing “How is your Monday Afternoon” on a Sunday evening is depressing)

But here are the stations I listen in to
Absolute Radio : UK (London)
Great music, funny DJs and news. Lots of ads are balanced out by lots of music. Their website is a great source for band interviews and podcasts.
Triple J : Australia (Sydney)
Public ‘Youth’ radio so completely ad-less! Cutting-edge, indie, and sometimes quite weird, you won’t hear these songs elsewhere. Famed for their early backing of Florence and the Machine, Tegan and Sarah and others, they have heard of all the cool bands before you have.
NRJ France (Paris)
Yah, it’s in French, and they speak 100mph, but they play good solid pop and have great dance hits party songs on the weekend.

]]> http://jdhammer.com/i-recommend-radio/feed/ 0 Bands I’ve Seen Live http://jdhammer.com/bands-ive-seen-live/ http://jdhammer.com/bands-ive-seen-live/#comments Mon, 15 Feb 2010 23:18:37 +0000 admin http://jdhammer.com/?p=122 This is a sad little list. Not because of content, but brevity. I feel like I’ve seen more live shows. It is however, a diverse little list

  • Meatloaf

    My first ever concert. I was about 12, and a big fan because my Dad was

  • Oasis

    Live in the Point Depot, Dublin in 1997. Their ‘Be Here Now Tour’

  • Boyzone

    A week after seeing Oasis, Ronan Keating gave us tickets to see his show from the third row of The Point

  • 311
  • Sum 41
  • Our Lady Peace x2
  • Skindred
  • Lady Sovereign and Gwen Stefani
  • Vampire Weekend
  • Spice Girls

    Flew all the way to New Jersey for this one (Aged 25) . SOO worth it

  • Coldplay
  • Flight of the Conchords
  • Panic at the Disco
  • The Roots
  • The Arctic Monkeys
  • Aventura
  • Brad Paisley
  • Jessica Simpson and Alan Jackson
  • Britney Spears
  • Radiohead
  • The Living End
  • Everclear
]]> http://jdhammer.com/bands-ive-seen-live/feed/ 0 Best Album of the Year http://jdhammer.com/80/ http://jdhammer.com/80/#comments Sun, 13 Dec 2009 23:59:24 +0000 admin http://jdhammer.com/?p=80 NME put out their list of the best albums of 2009. As I expected, it’s full of noisy, obscure Indie bands whose hipster factor outweighs their actual musical talent. I hadn’t heard of most of the bands (not surprising. I’m not British and I don’t read the NME) but I had a few of the albums on the list. Here’s my rankings, based on the music and how much I listened to that album:

Artist Album My Rank   
NME Rank
Franz Ferdinand Franz Ferdinand Tonight: 1 43
Lily Allen It’s Not Me, It’s You 2 25
Kasabian West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum 3 11
Arctic Monkeys Humbug 4 12
Yeah Yeah Yeahs It’s Blitz! 5 3
Phoenix Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix 6 34
Florence And The Machine Lungs 7 26
Empire Of The Sun Walking On A Dream 8 42
Passion Pit Manners 9 37
Bat For Lashes Two Suns 10 22

So me and the NME don’t agree… At all. I listened to the top 10 and was not impressed. Methinks their writers are just trying to one-up each another in an inter-office indie battle of artfullness, disregarding what the listeners think.




]]> http://jdhammer.com/80/feed/ 0