Stop The Earth!

Stop The Earth is celebrating it’s 2 year birthday with over 12k unique visitors and visitors from over 100 different countries I couldn’t be happier. I know the numbers sound rather small, but when you consider that STE is a silly little hobby of mine I’m rather proud.

Using the data from google analytics I have compiled the top 10 blog posts from the past 2 years.

10. Interview With Danny Smith - Danny Smith played Merton Dingle in Big Wolf On Campus alongside the legendary Brandon Quinn. When the show ended Danny went on to form a band called The City Drive who broke up last year. He is now persuing his own artistic endeavours.

9. Our Future as Humans - As a Neuro-Psychologist with a strict focus on Evolutionary science I have always had an interest in where the human race might be going, I posted this so long ago I had to go dig it out. Human evolution may go in various ways but here are just two of those possible ways. 1) The human race will split into two distinct races and 2) The human race will voluntarily become extinct.

8. Clark Kent Look a Like Andrew Fenlon - Andrew Fenlon auditioned for American Idol and pissed pretty much everyone off. I love him though, so much so we are now facebook friends. I defend him here and take a psychodynamic look at the lead attacker Kara Dioguardi.

7. Interview with Chris Ramsey - I met this HE-LARIOUS chap a good while ago now. I saw him on Russell Howard’s good news before seeing him, but at that moment I knew I needed to meet him. If only to discover the secrets of how his hair remains so perfect.

6. Vice Blog Network - In 2010 I joined the Vice Magazine Blog Network which has and always will be a great source of inspiration to me. The opportunities are amazing and seemingly endless.

5. Red Ender Alert! Set Phasers to Fun! - This is brilliant! It’s a blog post about star trek porn. One of the funniest and most bizarre things I’ve ever seen in my 22 years on this planet.

4. Interview with the Lostprophets - This interview was the first in my music journalism frontier which is quietly fading away now. It lead to other interviews including; OK GO, Less than Jake, MC Lars, The Blackout & others.

3. Infest 2010 Review - Cyber Goth Madness - This was the first time that the festival had come to the newly refurbished student union of bradford university. It was pretty fit. This was a total culture shock to me, seeing men dressed like women and women dressed in nothing. I had a really good time though and enjoyed the sheet out of myself.

2. Keanu Reeves - Vampire? - This is obviously one of my more silly posts but has been viewed so much so that it just reminds me the internet must be full of silly people. Basically, it’s me proving beyond a doubt that Keanu Reeves is infact the walking dead.

1. Interview with Zebrahead - This was one of the most fun interviews I’ve ever done. The guys were watching porn as I asked questions. It did not get uncomfortable.

Well that’s the top 10 blog posts of the last two years! I hope 2012 will bring even more good times and good posts for you all to love and masturbate over.

How many people does it take to open a window that is already open?           Seven and a piece of string.

Yesterday I went along to the first day of BML to review the event and the bands, little did they know how predatory I am, I managed to also rangle interviews with the Welsh sensation The Blackout and Dans Le Sac VS Scroobius Pip.

Before I entered I was subject to a horrendous wait, why? Because the window in the press box wouldn’t open far enough for them…Here is “Stop the Earth!” giving you the scoop, that window was open far enough! It then took a large group of people and a piece of string 15 minutes to deduce that they should abandon the press box and get a table outside…but even then, they didn’t have a paper list…only an electronic list…so someone had to sit inside the box as names were shouted out because they couldn’t bring their laptop outside (Probably didn’t have a battery, probably). So press were late in by 20 minutes, but that’s not a complaint, more of a fact, I’m still super grateful to be given the gig.

The festival was situated in Mertyl Park in Bingley, accessible via a large number of trains. The stage itself was located in a pretty sexy area of the park, with people going around selling pints of Tuborg for 4 star hotel prices. The first day was blessed with amazing weather, 18 degrees at around 5 o’clock isn’t to be messed with here in England!

First up was Dan Le Sac VS Scroobius Pip, I’d never heard of them until I heard them doing a rendition of Fix Up Look Sharp by Dizzee Rascal, it definitely made me turn my head. Just before their final song they commented on how the EDL (English Defence League) used one of their songs in a promotional video. I managed to catch up with them backstage to arrange an interview to discuss this a little more.

When asked about what their response was to the video was, their comment was that they immediately contacted Youtube who are more than scared of copyright law suits. Youtube took down several of the videos quickly. Dan then started up a discussion on lovemusichateracism.com which started a big discussion, because whilst the song “Steak a Claim” has a political message of freedom, the EDL were using it to deliver a message the lads did not agree with.

Dan & Scroobius said on stage and backstage that they loved the way in which the city of Bradford celebrates cultural diversity and on one occasion said “the edl can fuck off”

I took some questions from the crowd, the question I took to these guys was aimed at Scroobius, “How do you maintain your beard?” and the answer was “Persistence and a lot of leave in conditioner”. The questioner won an autograph from the guys! I asked Dan why he had a plaster on his forehead…He did not comment.

I also ran into The Blackout backstage and had a sit down interview with them that nearly involved giant jenga…nearly. Again I had a question from the crowd, the question was “Why is Sean Smiths twitter name SeanSmithSucks?” the answer came from the sucker himself, and the answer was “It saves time, if I go ahead and say it, others don’t have to”.

I also asked them about High Tide and how they liked working with Ian Watkins, they said they have a really close relationship with lostprophets and that when they all get together it is like having 12 brothers together on a lads holiday, however I don’t know of any lads holiday that would involve an around the world trip!

Sean told me that the new album, whilst currently unnamed might end up being called Dog Porn, which would be quite shocking really.

Somehow the band got talking about Gareth Gates and Will Young, and whilst Gareth Gates came second, he got the most media attention. That may be the case lads but Will Young is still making music and Gareth was dropped from his label. The response then was, yeah but anyone who has slept with Jordan is a winner to me. Gary then said, but I bet Will Young has slept with Jordan, just Jordan with a cock.

The guys are going on tour with LimpBizkit and commented that it would be “2002 every night!” Apparently, 2002 was a good year for these welsh boys. They put themselves forward to tour with Limpy but didn’t expect anything and then one day got told that they would be and were like “whatttttttttttt?”

That’s the end of the day 1 review, the weather drew cold and the sun set upon the festival before the buzzcocks hit the stage but the crowd grew incredibly large, and people were arriving non-stop all night so they had a lot to live up to!

Photos courtesy of the wonderful Allesia Cifali

That’s right, it’s that time of year again when all the creatures of the night come to the university of bradford for infest, a cyber-electro goth 3-day festival which is run by mainly german DJ’s. I was given a press pass and was super excited to see the new university of bradford students union in action.

Just before the event began I ran into a few attendee’s and we discussed people’s prejudice to the goth sub-culture. One guy with a WW2 hat said that most of the time the mainstream community just assumes everyone is gay, but he laughed pretty hard when he mentioned the “what is it” game. The rules are simple, stand outside the toilet and when people leave the bathroom, try to guess the gender.

I met a few really sexy cyber-goths who said if they could summarise the event in 3 words it would be “oh my goth” and the same group had notified me that the transvestite count as currently at 11 and rising.

A steampunk dude I spoke to about cyber-electro music let me know about an interesting story. In 2004, lights of euphoria were playing and for some reason the fire alarm had started going off in the venue, but because the sound of the fire alarm was so similar to the sound of lights of euphoria the crowd just kept dancing.

Just before the first act went on stage I managed to push through the crowd and see probably the greatest and rarest sight on the planet…The goth macarena, it’s basically the standard macarena but with glow sticks, 10 inch heels and a kick arse attitude.

Mandro1d were the first act, they hit the stage and begun singing about the EDL and all about what they want for christmas, I come from a completely non-gothic musical background but it was absolutely grand! I found myself singing along before half the song was over.

Day 1 had skirts, bikinis, tank tops and then there were the girls (haha), no but really, everyone that attended had put so much effort into what they were wearing, there was a guy with hair at least 2 feet into the air…I pray nobody lights a match near him. So far the music has been sexy as hell, heavy and hard electro-beats with the strongest electro-static baselines I’ve ever heard.

The consensus so far seems to be that this annual festival is more about being with friends and people who share similar interests rather than the music.

Anyone else feel old?

It seems fitting that the title of this entry is “Big man on campus” since my last interview was with one of my childhood heroes…Danny Smith! From Big Wolf on Campus. But alas, this entry is about Gordon Brown, a pretty big man, who turned up at my university campus! He turned up at the University of Bradford, met the student union staff, made a speech and answered some questions.

Photos courtesy of @Jamy30

Here’s a video I got :D

I found a whole bunch of these, selected the best ones and boom, here you go.

This last one is possibly the best, all the way from the man upstairs…

Here are some pictures gathered from various photographers, of the icelandic volcano eruption 2010. 

1. Now can you see why they closed british airspace? I can. Checkout the smoke trail.

2. Another view of the ash coming over the UK.

3. The clouds of ash polarised causing lightening to form.

4. More lightening, very impressive work, god.

5. It looks like gold ^_^

6. Thank the lord they closed airspace ^_^

7. Time elapsed pictures, as the stars move…the ash barely moves…thick?

Some pretty sexy stuff they came out with. Here’s a few snaps…Watch it:

Here are some snaps…

He read my blog entry about him and his audition…and he was good enough to give me this quote in response…

“Sure, it was a gag on my part, but it should be clear from the audition that Kara over-reacted and the problem was not with my voice. Later, I let Kara know that I am the rightful person to be administering spankings.”

- Andrew Fenlon

I asked him if he did…like, really…he said yea…”on the radio in atlanta”

Images were aquired with permission from Andrew.