I've been going to gigs and music festivals since I was in my early teens, and I absolutely love discovering new music and seeing it performed live in front of big and small crowds.

But what I love seeing at the moment is how strong our UK music scene is, it's amazing right now. I went to Hevy Festival this year and it was really championing strong British rock, hardcore and pop punk bands, it was really great to see.

The main headliners on the main stages were American - Dillinger Escape Plan and Four Year Strong, but victorious on the various stages were bands from the UK and abroad making an amazing impact on the music scene.

British rock and hardcore bands like Architects, Your Demise and Funeral For A Friend have been making a name for themselves worldwide for a while now, but there are so many new bands breaking through and making us proud.

Bands like While She Sleeps, Feed The Rhino are up and coming but making one hell of a racket on their way up.

We should all be getting off our bums, out from in front of the tv or r4ds and out to local shows to support our own homegrown talent!

Photo: Midnight Mixtape

We Need To Talk About Kevin is an absolutely wonderful film I saw very recently in the cinema. The film concerns a mother who has a psychotic son who commits the heinous act of killing a large number of his class mates. The film is about the relationship between the mother and her son, whether it’s the mother’s fault that her son came out the way he did, or whether there is such think as being innately evil. The film begins with the mother’s life in ruins, we know something bad has happened but we know not what. The film tells the story in the form of memories that the mother, Eva, reflects upon. Through this way, we are shown the events that led up to her son’s violent criminal act, starting from before her son was born.

It is a fantastic film in which the time old question of nature versus nurture is called upon. The mother’s failure to bond with her son is evident from his very birth where she had post-natal depression and later could not stop him crying. Yet can one blame his violent actions on an absent relationship with his mother? I can’t wait till it’s released onto our televisions, I will go straight to sky.com/hd and watch it!

Green is a colour that lies between yellow and blue on the visible spectrum and has a wavelength of between 520 nm and 570 nm. The etymology of the word ‘green’ is rather complex, though we certainly know it does not derive from ‘gu10’. The word derives from the Old English ‘grœni’ which derives from a Common Germanic ‘gronja’. One can see the common derivative from ‘gronja’ in that Old Norse used ‘grænn’ and Old High German used ‘gruoni’. The Common Germanic ‘gronja’ from which ‘green’ was derived stems from the PIE root ‘ghre-’ which means ‘to grow’.

In the Romance languages, the word for ‘green’ stems from the Latin ‘viridis’, hence ‘verte’ in French, ‘verde’ in Spanish and ‘verdure’ in Italian. The Germanic, Romance, Greek, and Slavic languages all have very old terms for ‘green’ which all derive from terms for fresh vegetation. There is no single identifiable Proto-Indo-European term for ‘green’, hence the Sanskrit ‘hari’.

I went to see Take That last night at Wembley Stadium and OMG they were amazing!

It started with the four of them, then Robbie did some stuff on his own then the five joined back together!
It was brilliant they sung some classic songs and Robbie’s Let Me Entertain You was immense! My favourite song though is Rule The World and they sung that wonderfully!

However, the crowd did get a little intense. When the boys were in Manchester the police said that some of the fans were worse that football fans!

So as I was dancing away with my friend we got shoved from an over excited fan and my red win went all the way down by new pair of Diesel Jeans! I was not impressed!

But Take That singing Patience did cheer me up!

Picture: Andrew_D_Hurley

Shunning the guitar led DIY bands of the moment for a far more elegant and mature sound, LOTL are something unto themselves in the Newcastle music scene. It’s hard to believe that this band exist largely underground and rarely play live. Something unbelievable when you take into account the bands astonishing catalogue of songs which can be readily heard for free on LastFm. Each song is carefully and lovingly composed using a multitude of instruments and flawlessly interweaved with the hypnotic and breezy vocals of lead singer Hazel Wilde.
Such is the bands comprehensive understanding of music that comparisons easily fall short. Sure, there are some obvious influences within their music, the ambient pop of Sigur Ros can definitely by heard as can the lyrical influence of Bob Dylan and Conor Oberst but ultimately, LOTL have their own sound which transcends all of this. Simply put LOTL make brilliant beautiful pop music that could easily soundtrack your life.
LOTL’S debut self-release, The Starlight EP is available through both iTunes and Myspace. (www.myspace.com/lanternsonthelake)
image:lanterns on the lake
2010-09-24