Top Ten Bands/Artists of the Week

W/C 01/03/2011

Here's my top ten for the week, although it may be slightly skewed due to problems scrobbling from my iPhone.  All sorted now though.

1. Elbow

2. Cage the Elephant

3. PJ Harvey

4. Anti-Flag

5. Arcade Fire

6. Gil Scott-Heron

7. LCD Soundsystem

8. R.E.M.

9. Tim Armstrong

10. Art Brut

A bit different from last week.  I'd never even conciously listened to Elbow before but thought I'd give them a try due to my current lack of options listed for Glastonbury and the fact that they have a new hyped up album out.  I wasn't overly impressed first listen through but it looks like it's a grower.  I took some advice and listened to 'The Seldom Seen Kid' album and I've definitely pencilled them in to watch at G.

Cage the Elephant, another band with a new album, really liked their last one but grew out of it eventually.  The new one, 'Thank You, Happy Birthday' has a very different sound and is a fantastic album.  The song 'Shake Me Down,' (single from the new album) is quite possibly the best song I have ever heard.  I'm praying for a Glastonbury performance.

PJ Harvey I explained last week and still can;t get enough of the album.

Anti-Flag are my protest song/noisy punk band that I listen to when I'm feeling energetic.  I also seem to favour them in the summer for some reason so todays nice weather is probably behind them being in my top ten.

Arcade Fire are still keeping me entertained with Suburbs, I would love to be going to one of the gigs but perhaps foolishly decided to rely on festivals.

Gil Scott-Heron is quite frequently heard from my iPod since discovering him only last year through a phantom Glastonbury TBC on eFestivals.

LCD Soundsystem are another fine weather band for me, think we had some nice weather a few days back where I played them loudly from the car.

R.E.M. New album, not at all impressed, might give it another go though.

Tim Armstrong quite often gets a few plays as a bit of a mood lifter, a very happy sound with music from The Aggrolites.

Art Brut, listening to them after reading a thread on eFestivals speculating whether they'd play the G.  One of my fave peformances of G2008.

Here's a spotify playlist with a random song from each Artist/Band where available (No Arcade Fire) -----> LINK

Ancient Human Remains, Fascinating but Creepy . . .

So today was the day of the human remains practical in Environmental Archaeology.  I've been looking forward to it for a while, just because it sounded cool.  Not only was it cool, it was very very interesting.
We were presented with a set of bones from a few thousand years ago, Bronze Age I think and tasked with determining the age, sex and height of the person when they croaked.  We had to look at things like bone fusion, wearing of the teeth, shape of the pelvis etc . . .

As cool and fascinating as it was, it was also a little creepy to be handling human remains.  Leg and arm bones were fine, as were toes, knees and vertebrae.  It was when handling the skull that the hairs started to twitch on the back of my neck.  Upon turning it over and viewing it from the inside (like a mask) the hairs on my neck were fully erect and I started to wince as I noticed the brittlness of the eye sockets.  Then came the part where we had to look for exposed dentine on the teeth.  Holding a human skull and examining the teeth, watching them wiggle and shake around as I rotated the poor blokes loaf in my sweaty hands, sent shivvers up and down my spine and caused a tight knot to form in my gut.  I soon put it down and moved onto measuring the far less creepy femur, thinking of how nice it would be for the dog to toss around the garden.

Despite the creepiness factor, it was fascinating and amazing to have the opportunity to work with something from so far back in history.  A clay pot or an arrowhead would have been sufficient to give me the wow factor, but ancient human bones were something that I thought I'd only ever see on the Discovery channel.  I'm actually quite looking forward to doing the write up for it and hoping to learn a lot more about the things that we can determine from thousands of years old remains.  I'm hoping there is another archaeology based module that I can take next semester.

Tuneful Tuesdays W/C 22 Feb 2011

Hey peoples, I'm considering making this a weekly feature of my blog.  Basically a run down of my  top ten most listened to artists of the preceding week according to Last.fm.  I'm also going to try and create a spotify playlist of the featured artists (where available).  I'm hoping over time it'll be quite interesting and perhaps fun (for me anyway) to see how my musical tastes change and what factors might affect what I'm listening to.
It'd also be nice to have a bit of a discussion about the artists that pop-up so please share any comments or information that you may have on any of them in the comments section below.
Anyway, here's my most listened to artists from the week commencing 22 Feb 2011 . . . .

1. Operation Ivy
2. PJ Harvey
3. HIM
4.System of a Down
5. Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie XX
6. The Aggrolites
7. Beady Eye
8. The Casualties
9. The Exploited
10. Reel Big Fish

Wow, a lot of ska and punk in there this week.  I think that's perhaps to do with me joining the forums at www.punkrockers.com.  You never can have too much ska though. 
New albums (for me anyway) from PJ Harvey, Beady Eye and Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie XX have caused them to appear in my top ten.  I'm loving the new PJ Harvey album, it'll make my Glasto if she plays.  Beady Eye album is predictable, but I've picked up a few decent tracks on a quick listen through and the Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie XX album is out of this world!  A festival appearence for GSH and JXX would be most welcome however unlikely.

Here's the link to the Spotify Playlist, feel free to comment below :-D