Archive
Eurovision 2010
Here’s my scorecard for this year’s Eurovision – I’m taking it appropriately seriously this year. I’ve decided (perhaps recklessly) to post this online before the voting starts.
Joe’s scorecard 2010 (pdf download).
My personal favourite – just for the chorus hooks really – is Denmark – though on numbers my top three are Denmark, Iceland and Norway. I liked Azerbaijan and Germany, and got quite carried away to Greece’s ‘Opa!’. Germany had the best lyric this year.
If you’re reading this on the night itself, you can look at my Twitter feed, where I’ve tweeted a live commentary on most of the songs…
The Ivors 2010 – winners
- PRS for music most performed work – The Fear, Lily Allen
- Best television soundtrack – Desperate Romantics (composer Daniel Pemberton)
- Best contemporary song – Daniel, Bat For Lashes
- The Ivors inspiration award – Johnny Marr
- Best original video game score – Killzone 2 (composer Joris de Man)
- The Ivors classical music award – Sir Peter Maxwell Davies
- Best song musically and lyrically – The Fear, Lily Allen
- Album award – Sunny Side Up, Paolo Nutini
- International achievement – Imogen Heap
- Best original film score – Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (composer John Powell)
- PRS For Music outstanding contribution to British music – Trevor Horn
- Special international award – Neil Sedaka
- Songwriters of the year – Lily Allen and Greg Kurstin
- Lifetime achievement – Paul Weller
- Academy fellowship – Sir Tim Rice
Gorillaz and Eddy Grant – you decide
You might have read recently about the Eddy Grant/Gorillaz case; Grant claims that the Gorillaz track Stylo bears a melodic resemblance to his 1982 song Time Warp.
Have a listen for yourself and see what you think, then vote in the poll at the bottom. The alleged similarity can be found at 0:42 (in Stylo) and 0:18 (in Time Warp).
For the record…
Was communication technology better in the 1980s?
I’ve started doing some interviews for my PhD study. The plan is to speak to experienced songwriters about process, goals and challenges relating to collaborative songwriting. Trouble is, some of these people do five or six collaborations per week, almost all in London, so it’s kind of difficult to find a slot when we’re both available. Being a remote-working fan and general Internet evangelist, I’ve decided that when meeting up isn’t possible I might still be able to do the interviews by phone. I’m getting all the interviews transcribed as eventual appendices to the PhD, and had found what looks like a decent online transcription service. UK Transcription offers transcriptions of digital audio files, so I’ve uploaded an MP3 of the first interview (with Jez Ashurst) and await an MS Word file next week.
Then it occurred to me – how, technically, do you record a phone conversation? I used to know how in the 80s – some of the old mini-cassette based answerphones had a record button. But in an all-digital, iPhoned and Voicemailed world, is it even possible?
I called some mates and various work colleagues including the University’s IT dept, but no-one seemed to have a simple answer. So here’s my slightly tortuous workaround – if anyone has any better (Mac-based) methods, let me know.
- Do the call via Skype phone, buying Skype credits so I can call regular landlines and a headset to keep the audio file as high-quality as possible.
- Use Audio Hijack to extract the audio stream from the Skype conversation.
- Convert the AH file into an MP3 and upload it to the transcription service.
There is a plug-in for Skype that seems to do the same thing called Call Recorder, but that’s another $20, and I’ve already paid the shareware fee for Audio Hijack. Here’s hoping it all works out…
