Step on...

After 15 years of stepping to Drum and Bass I've decided today that it's time to step back and let it pass me by.  I'm not saying that I've fallen out of love with the music, rather that I should stop following the scene and concentrate on more important things in life.  I still love breakbeat, I just don't see myself as one of the scene any more.

The main reason I've reached this decision is due to Hospital Records.  They've been a main player in the D&B world for many a year but over the last year or so I've felt that they have been concentrating more and more upon the youngest section of the raving community and to the exclusion of long-time fans such as myself.  This impression has been exacerbated by their involvement on new technologies like podcasting as well as social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

When I first started listening to the Hospital Podcast it was really amazing, instead of reading about up-and-coming tunes in Knowledge or other D&B magazines I could hear those tunes straight away, I could hear the great Tony Coleman telling us which tunes he liked and I was comforted in the knowledge that there were people like me around.  However Hospital has attracted a lot of young "casual" fans in the last couple of years, middle-class students and emo's who are more interested in getting plastered and moaning about how terrible their cosseted little lives are than actually following and understanding the music which underpins the scene.  Every episode of the podcast has more and more emails read out from kids who think that the odd exam and finishing a month-long relationship is cause for utmost depression and that "D&B has saved their lives" rather than being what it really is, a distraction from life's troubles; instead of being interesting and uplifting it has become more and more onerous to listen to as Tony panders to the little kiddies rather than tell them to stop whinging! (yes, this is me whinging about whinging)

Twitter for me isn't social networking, I don't follow that many of my real friends and instead use it to keep up with the gaming and D&B scenes I love through the eyes and ears of the main players in those scenes.  However I find that those working in the music business find it hard to differentiate between their professional and personal personae, I've faced a constant barrage of irrelevant, personally motivated tweets from DJ's, producers and even record labels when all I want to hear about are tweets related to the business. I'm not interested in hearing that DJ Friction was up til 5am and overslept, that London Elektricity was put in a three-star hotel rather than the four-star ones to which he feels accustomed or that Goldie is watching some football match, I just want to know which tunes are out, which are coming and what they're all playing in their sets.

I recently "unfollowed" accounts used directly by individual producers and DJ's and instead stuck to those run by the labels themselves.  However even this tactic has failed, every tom, dick and harry working for the label seems to use their label's accounts to have conversations with their mates or play TT (trending topic) games such as "Food DJ's".  So rather than have to winnow through the crap I've decided that I'll stop following the scene entirely and become a D&B "casual" rather than the "head" I have been since 1996.

So it's time I sold the decks, uninstalled all of the music production programs from my PC and concentrate upon more important things in my life: my family, my job and my future.  I'll still listen to my back catalogue of amazing albums from Hospital Records, Shogun, Metalheadz and other great labels, but I'm throwing in the towel in thinking I'm still the sort of person who labels, DJ's and producers consider to be their fans.  Sounds extreme but I know where I'm not wanted.  Maybe when D&B ceases to be flavour-of-the-month with the little teeny boppers and proper fans are again seen as the true supporters of the scene I may start listening again, but I won't hold my breath... we'll just have to see...

Wanna ride on camera?

Well I've finally been able to upload a video to YouTube from DiRT 3, I've been waiting to do it since the game came out the other week but have had to wait until the PlayStation Store opened to redeem my online VIP pass.

So the bottom line is that it's not the most impressive video, especially as there are tons of similar videos from others who're equally impressed with their own performance, getting a World Record on the same track with the same car!  I don't care, I'm pretty pleased with it and will be posting some more soon.  Hopefully the next one will be a little more exceptional ;)

Now that I've posted from two different games (see here for my COD: Black Ops upload) I fancy messing about with some captions and audio stuff, so check back soon if you want to see a version with occasional "VRRROOOM" captions and a comedy soundtrack haha

The Store is back!

So I woke up to a tweet from @Playstation at 06:08 saying that the Playstation Store is finally online!  However the Welcome Back downloads (detailed here) are not available yet.

I jumped straight on to redeem my DiRT3 online pass as well as to download the inFamous 2 demo, but have had to leave it running and come to work.  Hopefully I'll get time later to try things out, download some of the Playstation Plus games and see what else may have been published in the meantime.

Apparently the Welcome Back package is still undergoing testing.  I for one am glad it's still not available, because it means I've got chance to use the Store without it being bogged down with all the "vultures"; people who have never shown the slightest interest in the Store but are now circling, waiting for their free stuff.  I thought it would be fairer to allow proper customers (i.e. PS+ subscribers and people who had bought stuff prior to the outage) first access to the Store, but by delaying the freebies Sony have done exactly that.  To be honest the freebies are a bit naff, they are all games I've either bought or passed on already, so to know that all the beggars have to wait a little longer fills me with glee.

I can't wait to post my first DiRT3 video to my YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/andy9beans).  Sounds sad, but when you're told to upload one after every completed race it starts to get annoying that you can't!