Rock Radio - Final Look

How long have I been promising to look at the Real Radio XS output? And yet, I keep going back to the Rock Radio data. I think this will be the last visit... I hope.

Outside Rock Radio FM, a photo by 
DavidDMuir on Flickr.

Why are we back here again? Well, as I did the analysis on genres and broke it down by DJ (see What genres of music did Rock Radio play?) it occurred to me that Tom Russell is the link between the old and the new. Since I concluded that DJs had an influence on the output of Rock Radio, it occurred to me that one test of Real Radio XS would be if Tom could still make a difference to what was played. Now, there are differences beyond just a change of station of course. Most importantly, Tom has moved from drivetime to breakfast. That could well have an influence on what is played but it should still be instructive to compare what Tom played on Rock Radio with what he is playing now.

So, I promise this is the last time I look at the Rock Radio data before I start publishing stuff on the Real Radio XS... probably!

Going back to the first post on this topic (Rock Radio Playlist) I gave an overview of what was played. Here then is the same sort of analysis but broken down by show.

Over the thirteen shows, 427 tracks were played altogether. This breaks down as 205 tracks over the six breakfast shows and 222 tracks over the seven drivetime show. This means that on average, Billy played 34.2 tracks per show, or 8.5 tracks per hour. Over the same time period, Tom played 31.7 tracks per show, or 7.9 tracks per hour. I'm assuming there's a similar number of adverts in both shows and no significant difference in the length of the news and traffic reports etc. (although it feels like there is a bit more traffic news in the morning). If, however, the non-music sections are of similar length in the two shows, it appears that Tom played fewer tracks than Billy. There could be a few reasons for this: Tom talked more between tracks than Billy (not my impression); Tom played longer tracks (possible); or I'm just wrong and there was more non-music stuff in the drivetime slot (also possible). Having noted the difference, it is worth saying that it is only a difference of roughly two extra tracks per show. I know enough about statistics to know I should really check if this is a statistically significant difference or just down to random chance... but I know enough about my own limited understanding of statistics to know that I would have to spend more time than I am willing to give to it to work out how to check for statistical significance! All offers of help from statisticians will be gratefully received.

As for what they played, direct comparisons are tricky because I missed one of the breakfast shows. The headline figures though are that Billy played 124 different artists and 186 different tracks over the six shows while Tom played 129 different artists and 210 different tracks over his seven shows.  It is worth noting that although (allowing for the extra show) Billy and Tom played a similar number of different artist, Tom clearly played a much greater range of songs. This can also be deduced from the tables shown below.

These tables display repeated tracks. Presumably, the most repeated tracks were down to the station's playlist obliging the DJs to play them a certain number of times.

Artist (Billy)	Song (Billy)	Number of Plays
Mr Big	Undertow	4
Sixx A.M.	Lies Of The Beautiful People	3
Whitesnake	Love Will Set You Free	3
Michael Monroe	78	2
Extreme	Get The Funk Out	2
Bad Company	Good Lovin' Gone Bad	2
Led Zeppelin	Houses Of The Holy	2
Guns N Roses	November Rain	2
Gary Moore	Out In The Fields	2
Kiss	Rock And Roll All Nite	2
Foo Fighters	Rope	2
Dr Feelgood	She Does It Right	2
Aerosmith	Toys In The Attic	2
Bob Seger & The Silver...	Turn The Page	2
Metallica	Turn The Page	2
Manowar	Warriors Of The World	2
Pink Floyd	Wish You Were Here	2
Artist (Tom)	Song (Tom)	Number of Plays
Mr Big	Undertow	4
Michael Monroe	78	3
Ozzy Osbourne	Bark At The Moon	2
Ramones	Blitzkreig Bop	2
Saxon	Dallas 1pm	2
Bad Company	Feel Like Makin' Love	2
Sixx A.m.	Lies Of The Beautiful People	2
Whitesnake	Love Will Set You Free	2
Foo Fighters	Rope	2

Finally, the table of most played artists for each DJ is shown below - only artists played three or more times are displayed. Again, direct comparison is tricky because of the missing Breakfast show data.

Artist (Billy)	Number of Plays		Artist (Tom)	Number of Plays
Ac/dc	7		Ac/dc	7
Aerosmith	6		Aerosmith	5
Foo Fighters	5		Bad Company	5
Pink Floyd	5		Def Leppard	5
Deep Purple	4		Free	5
Def Leppard	4		Rolling Stones	5
Guns N Roses	4		Guns N Roses	4
Mr Big	4		Kiss	4
Who	4		Led Zeppelin	4
Bad Company	3		Michael Monroe	4
Free	3		Mr Big	4
Kiss	3		Queen	4
Led Zeppelin	3		Ramones	4
Metallica	3		Saxon	4
Sixx A.M.	3		Thin Lizzy	4
Steve Miller Band	3		Van Halen	4
T Rex	3		Deep Purple	3
Whitesnake	3		Foo Fighters	3
			Foreigner	3
			Jimi Hendrix	3
			Joe Elliot	3
			Journey	3
			Ozzy Osbourne	3
			Red Hot Chili Peppers	3

Surely there is no more to be milked from the Rock Radio data at this stage, so the next post will have to look at Real XS? Time will tell!

What genres of music did Rock Radio play?

In my last post about Rock Radio (What did Rock Radio play? An explanation) I tried to justify how I allocated each of the bands played by Rock Radio over a seven day period to a particular musical genre. You may or may not have been convinced by the method I adopted but it at least gives an indication of the range of styles played.

The reason I wanted to do this was because the range of music played was one of the regular discussion points about the Rock Radio output. Discussion (i.e. complaints) usually focused on one of three questions:

1. Why do they never/always play [band X]?
2. When they play [band Y], why is it always/never [track Z]?
3. Why do they play so much/so little [type G] music?

I tried to address the first two questions ages ago when I wrote the Rock Radio Playlist post (although I may say a bit more about that topic before moving onto look at the Real XS output). This post though will focus on question 3 by looking at the genres of the music played over the seven day period when I collected the data.

So without further ado, here's a graph:

As you may be able to see if you have particularly good eyesight, even allowing for the occasional dodgy classification of a track, the dominant musical forms on Rock Radio were Hard Rock (33%) and Rock (23%) with Heavy Metal some way behind with 11% of the plays. The complete table of genres is:

Genre	Times Played
Hard rock	143
Rock	100
Heavy metal	47
Alternative rock	34
Blues-rock	24
Punk rock	16
Glam rock	15
Progressive rock	14
Psychedelic rock	13
Roots rock	10
Funk rock	8
Alternative metal	3

This more or less matches my experience of listening to Rock Radio. I always said I was reasonably relaxed about what they played. Obviously, they should have played more Rush, but in general I liked what I heard. I liked hearing stuff I wouldn't normally listen to and they introduced me to bands that I might have otherwise missed: Airbourne, Apocalyptica, and Black Stone Cherry to name but three. Of course there was stuff I didn't like but in general there was more that was rocking than was shocking (to borrow from Tom Russell).

But to get back to the numbers above, for a station calling itself Rock Radio, I think that's not a bad balance of styles; especially since I was looking at the Breakfast and Drivetime shows which will inevitably aim to appeal to a more general Rock listening audience than one of the speciallist shows such as the Metal Hammer show. I might liked to have seen a bit less Punk and a bit more Prog but otherwise I can't really complain. What do you think? Unbalanced or about right?

Before I leave this analysis of styles, I think it is worth putting the output from Billy Rankin beside Tom Russell's output. I think it shows that individual DJs were able to shape what was played, at least to an extent.

Tom played a bit more Heavy Metal than Billy and Billy favoured Blues and Prog a bit more than Tom. Again, this reflects my memory of the DJs output and probably explains why I preferred Billy over Tom. (Not that I dislike Tom you understand!)

So bottom line as far as I'm concerned is:

• The output from Rock Radio was not unreasonable for a rock station
• DJs make a difference

But what does the data say to you?

What did Rock Radio play? An explanation.

This post was supposed to give a bit more analysis of the old Rock Radio data but as I wrote it, I discovered a good bit of explanation was necessary first...

In my original post, I noted the number of tracks played, the number of artists that featured and how often the different artists were featured across the Breakfast and Drivetime shows over a period of seven days. (Although I missed one of the Breakfast shows, so I only have the data from 13 shows.) The next thing I wanted to do, but never got around to, was to look at the genres of music that featured. But, before I can look at genres, I need to make a couple of disclaimers.

First, I realised after collecting the data that not everything that is played on the radio features on the website. It seems that if the DJ played something that was not in the station's database of songs, it didn't feature on the "what was played" page. Sometimes the webpage claimed that the same song was played twice in a row and my guess is, that when a track was played that was not in the database, the system just reported the previous track had just been played again. It looks like Real XS does something similar - it has solved the repeated track reporting problem but there are still gaps when a DJ goes "off piste". For example, on the last Friday before Christmas, I submitted a trio of festive songs for Tom's Godfather of Rock feature (or Godfather-Christmas in this case). I asked for The Black Crowes - Back Door Santa; The Darkness - Christmas Time; and Black Stone Cherry - Santa Is Back; but as you can see from the screen dump, Back Door Santa is conspicuous by his absence!

So any analysis of what the station played will be incomplete because I am relying on what their website says they played rather than listening to the output and recording what they actually played.

From Wikipedia entry

The second disclaimer relates the the way I have decide on the genres of music played. Picking a genre is, inevitably going to be subjective, so I tried to assign a musical style in a way that was as fair and transparent as possible. But the main problem was that I had data on 361 different songs. I quickly decided that I had neither the time nor the inclination to go through 361 songs and assign a musical genre to each one! Since there were only 185 artists ("only 185" - ha!) I decided to assign a genre to each artist and then assume that each track of theirs that was played was an example of that genre. Clearly this is daft, for example I have classified Kiss as "Hard rock" (for reasons I'll explain in a moment) but had the misfortune to hear the abomination that is I Was Made For Loving You on Tom's show the other day, which couldn't be considered Hard rock by any stretch of the imagination! I hope though that reporting on genre by artist will give a reasonable view of what the station played since it is as good as I can manage in the time available.

The last piece of the puzzle therefore is how did I allocate genres to artists. The problem is, of course, that if you got five Rock fans in a room, you are likely to have seven different opinion on how to categorise any given artist. Also, some artists defy easy categorisation and over the course of their career, or even the course of one album, they can range across umpteen genres. I decided therefore to rely on the wisdom of crowds and turned to Wikipedia for help. Pretty much every artist listed in Wikipedia has a number of genres associated with that artist listed in a sidebox along with basic information such as when and where they were formed; years active; and past and present members. I decided to allocate the genre listed first in this sidebox as the genre for the artist. So, to take Rush as an example, I would probably have categorised Rush as "Progressive rock" but accept that they are a band that are difficult to pin down to one style. As you can see from the screen shot here though, the sidebar in Wikipedia, while listing "progressive" as one genre, puts "Hard rock" first in the list. In this instance, the list happens to be in alphabetical order but this is not always the case. I cannot find any information to explain the convention in the order of listing genres but have assumed that the first listed is the one that is considered by the Wikipedia community, to best categorise the artist and in general, on the face of it this seems to be a reasonable assumption to make. There are one or two exceptions I made to this method. If an artist does not have a Wikipedia entry (and the overwhelming majority do) I chose a genre based on information either from the artist's own website or (preferably) a site such as AllMusic. The other main exception was where the first stated musical genre in the artist's Wikipedia entry would have left them in a category of one. In those instances (again this applied to fewer than ten artists) I chose the next listed genre instead.

I hope this makes sense and that you don't disagree too violently with the approach I have adopted but let me know what you think. And now, after this long attempt to justify myself, I hope to actually post some new analysis of the old Rock Radio data in the very near future.

Rock Radio and Real XS

Some time ago, I wrote a post about the Rock Radio Playlist. I always meant to go back to the data and do a bit more analysis but somehow I never got around to it. A lot has happened since April 2011, not least the transmogrification of Rock Radio into Real XS.

Moving at the speed of rock!,
a photo by DavidDMuir on Flickr.

Had Rock Radio continued on, the data was so old that  it would not have been worth digging it up but, with the changes, it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to poke the data a bit more and then compare it with an analysis of data from the current Real XS output. So, over the next couple of posts, I'll look again at the old Rock Radio data and over the next couple of weeks I'll collect data from the Real XS breakfast and drive time shows to see how it compares.

First though, four observations I should have made at the time of the switchover:

1. I understand the station had to save money but cutting DJs may be a false economy. I don't tune into radio to hear uninterrupted music - I use my iPod for that. The DJs are the glue that keeps me stuck to a show; them and the community of listeners that grows around a show. For example, Billy Rankin used to regularly get hundreds of comments on his facebook page and I am still in contact with a number of people that I only know because of their contributions to his programme. You don't get that loyalty and community with an uninterrupted rock block!
2. Rock Radio had the Metal Hammer show and the Classic Rock Magazine show both of which have now gone. I don't know how much money the sponsorship of these shows brought in but I wouldn't have a problem with more sponsorship if it allowed the station to hang on to more DJs. (Poor Tom Russell seems to be given no time off. Are there no employment laws about exploiting national treasures?) Perhaps the Classic Rock Presents Prog magazine would have sponsored a show, or a Blues/Guitar magazine. Or, the station seemed to have a good relationship with Roadrunner Records - would a company like that not have been willing to sponsor a show? (I'm aware here that I may be trying to teach my rock radio management grandmother how to suck eggs but thought it was worth saying.)
3. I became increasingly uneasy about the Real XS trails that were supposed to reassure us. They kept telling me not to worry because they would be playing Kylie. It never occurred to me that they would not be playing Kylie! Why did they feel they had to keep telling me they wouldn't? In fact the more I thought about it, the more annoyed it made me because if Kylie ever produces an out and out belter of a rock track, I hope they would play it! For example, look at the people that collaborated with Slash on his recent album - would you have anticipated hearing someone from the Black Eyed Peas or Nicole Scherzinger on rock radio? Yet, the Slash tracks fit perfectly with a rock radio playlist. So, bitten from both ends: if they are a rock station it should go without saying that they wont play pop; but if a pop artists starts producing great rock songs, of course they should be played!
4. I've kept the one that annoyed me most to last. At the time of the changeover, the people in charge appeared to treat their listeners with contempt. (Thought long and hard about that, but I think "contempt" is not too strong a word.) This seems odd since up to that point, they were a station that knew how to connect with their listeners with (as mentioned already) the DJs facebook pages; a great website; and regular events such as the birthday bashes, curry-oke nights and secret sessions. Yet when the rumours about the changes started circling, the management kept a stony silence. Now, there may be commercial reasons why they could say nothing but when the news broke "officially" on another website there was still nothing from Rock Radio management. It was Father Ted who understood the listeners and broke the news a couple of days later - against (I suspect) the wishes of management. And it was Father Ted (of blessed memory) who caught the mood of the listeners and when he thought: Rock Radio's going down the tubes, so let's party! Meanwhile, Rock Radio management's response was too little and too late when they finally put a corporate-speak announcement on the website and tried to pretend that it was business and usual: "Nothing to see here, just move along and keep listening." Bah!

That was then, but where are we now with Real XS? A while down the line, it's fair to say that it is not exactly business as usual (the complete destruction of the evening schedule is particularly upsetting) but it is also fair to say that the popocalypse feared by some has not taken place either. There is a feeling abroad though that the playlist has changed somewhat. I hope the next few posts will shed some light on that...

Rock Radio Playlist

I am a member of a couple of facebook groups where there has been discussion of the Rock Radio playlist. Some people seem very grumpy about what is and isn't being played. Me, I'm more relaxed.

The legend... and Tom Russell :-)
A photo by DavidDMuir on Flickr.

Obviously, I'd like them to play more Rush but it's a radio station, not my iPod: to a certain extent you have to take the rough with the smooth. As long as there is more that I like than there is that I dislike, I'm happy to stick with them. Certainly, there is no other radio station I can receive in the car that I'd rather listen to on a regular basis.

However, it got me thinking... so I decided to collect data about what tracks were played over a a few days and then do a wee bit analysis just to see what was being played. I'll present here some of the more obvious conclusions now but there's loads more I could look at, so I will probably return to this data again in future posts.


Data Collected

I decided to concentrate on the Breakfast Show and the Afternoon (drivetime) Show. I focussed on these shows because I guessed that they are the two most listened shows and that they probably best reflect the station's playlist. The tracks played on both shows are published on the website but unfortunately (unless I'm looking in the wrong place) they are not archived so you have to collect the data each day or you lose it! I was aiming to collect data from 14 April 2011 to 22 April 2011 - seven week days, 14 shows. Unfortunately, I missed the Breakfast Show data for 18 April, so I only have six days of Breakfast show data.


First Observations

Over the thirteen shows, 427 tracks were played altogether, that is an average of 32.8 tracks per show. They played tracks from 185 different artists and 361 different songs. Inevitably some songs will get more airplay at particular times, just as they do on my iPod, but 361 different songs over a seven day period is not bad.

The list of artists played more than three times is shown below:

Artist	Plays
Ac/dc	14
Aerosmith	11
Def Leppard	9
Bad Company	8
Foo Fighters	8
Free	8
Guns N Roses	8
Mr Big	8
Deep Purple	7
Kiss	7
Led Zeppelin	7
Pink Floyd	7
Rolling Stones	7
Michael Monroe	6
Thin Lizzy	6
Van Halen	6
Who	6
Foreigner	5
Queen	5
Ramones	5
Red Hot Chili Peppers	5
Saxon	5
Sixx A.M.	5
T Rex	5
Whitesnake	5
Doors	4
Eagles	4
Jimi Hendrix	4
Joe Elliot	4
Metallica	4
Rainbow	4
Rush	4
Steve Miller Band	4
Tom Petty	4

The full list can be found in a public Google Doc I've created called RockRadio Artists.

Mostly, it is no surprise who is at the top of the pile and the data confirmed my suspicion that, while it could be argued that some bands get more than their fair share, there is a fairly good spread. There are, however, a few oddities some of which can be explained but some I find more puzzling. For example, Joe Elliot was interviewed on both shows and the station was promoting the gig where he was supporting Paul Rogers so Def Leppard and Joe himself both feature strongly (as do Free and Bad Company presumably for the similar reasons) but I'm not sure why Mr Big had the same track played eight times!

So, at first glance, I'm encouraged. What do you think? There are a few more things I want to look at and report on but is there anything you'd like me to investigate? (I also have data on what songs were played.)

Free Download Friday #77: Apocalyptica

Just last week, this would have been a When Musical Worlds Collide post. This week, thanks to those nice people at Rock Radio, it is a Free Download post instead because I won tickets to a Secret Session they hosted last week.

I have won tickets to Secret Sessions before (see the Secret Session tag), so I knew how they worked. There is an intimate venue, a small but select audience and a band playing a short unplugged set. This time, the band in question was Apocalyptica. If you have never heard of them, try to imagine three classically trained cellists from Finland playing Rock and Metal. Struggling to imagine it? Then have a look at this video from the band's website:

Their secret session was outstandingly good! They only played four songs, two with a vocalist and two where it was just the three cellists. The stripped back nature of the Secret Session and the intimate (i.e. small) venue allowed you to concentrate on the music and the musicianship... and both were excellent. Even the drummer sounded great and his "drums" were the box he was sitting on!out

Rock Radio videoed the event, so you can see and hear for yourself what it was like.

So when are we getting to the free download I hear you ask? Well, I'm glad you asked because when I won the invite to the secret session, I had a look around to see what I could find out about Apocalyptica. One of the things I found was, that in exchange for signing up to their newsletter, Apocalyptica are currently offering a free download of At The Gates Of Manala. So sign up, download, enjoy!

Coheed And Cambira Secret Session

Once again, thanks to Rock Radio, I won the chance to go to a Secret Session. (See Dommin Acoustic Set Review for details of my previous win.) This time, I got the chance to hear Coheed and Cambria.

This is a band I'd heard about but hadn't really heard! (I have read about them in Classic Rock Presents Prog but only heard a couple of tracks on the radio.) This was a mistake because they were excellent and I really need to track down a CD as soon as possible.

The venue seemed much busier than the last time with people packed in and many of them were going on to the gig at the ABC afterwards. The band were crowded onto the tiny stage and although they apologised for not really having rehearsed an acoustic set, they sounded excellent. The guitarist, Travis Stever was impressive and the vocalist, Claudio Sanchez, had a really interesting and distinctive voice. The bass player, Michael Todd, kept things moving along and introduced the songs. I did feel sorry for Chris Pennie, who was squished in at the end doing the best he could with a single snare drum.

As well as being impressive musicians, they seemed to be really good chaps too. For a start, after the session, they stayed for ages signing stuff and posing for pictures. I was even more impressed when I saw them outside the venue later on. Claudio got out the tour bus and was approached by fans. The minder/roadie/person who was with him tried to hurry him away but Claudio stopped and posed for the photos. Very cool! (See the photo taken by my daughter.)

A full report, with videos, has been posted on the Rock Radio site. Have a look and let me know what you think.

Free Download Friday #56: Shinedown

Sometimes you hear a track on the radio and, even though you don't know the band, it catches your ear. That happened to me recently with a track called Sound of Madness from the band Shinedown.

Brent Smith & Eric Bass, Shinedown
Originally uploaded by Tomi Mikola

Rock Radio has been playing this track for a while now and the first couple of times I heard it I thought, "I like this. I wonder who it is?" but this changed fairly quickly to, "Excellent. The Shinedown track again. I must find out more about these chaps.". So I went for a sniff about the Internet and was pleased to discover they have a four track package available as a free download from the wonderfully named Grabatrack service. Even better, one of the four tracks is Sound Of Madness!

The band hails from Florida and I can detect a Southern Rock element in their sound but it's Southern Rock delivered with Hard Rock power and passion. I have seen their style described as melodic rock and post-grunge (not sure what that means!) but from what I've heard I'd just go for hard rock.

Before going any further, it is worth noting that AllMusic is pretty sniffy about the band claiming that they "...play every post-grunge cliché as if it were dogma", "Nothing is left to chance so nothing surprises..." and "Shinedown serve up what they always have: active modern rock embodying the sound of post-grunge in the new millennium without offering much that is memorable, either for better or for worse." It is clear that the AllMusic reviewer is less than impressed! There may or may not be some truth in their criticism but I find I disagree completely with their conclusion. Clearly, for me, Shinedown were memorable and distinctive otherwise they would never have attracted my attention on Rock Radio in the first place.

So, I am saying AllMusic is wrong. You can make up your own mind by checking out the free download... and if you disagree with me, you're wrong too!

Brief review:

There are four tracks for download: one from each of their first two albums and two from their most recent release.

Fly From The Inside comes from their first album (Leave a Whisper) and there is an element of power ballad here but concentrate on the music rather than the lyrics for a while and you'll hear a solid rock track underpining it. I like Brent Smith's vocals - a rough edge to them that works well with the strong guitar sound.

Save Me comes from their second album (Us and Them). This has a (relatively) quite start and a brooding hook that draws you in to a soaring chorus.

Cyanide Sweet Tooth Suicide and Sound Of Madness round off the package and both come from Sound of Madness. Cyanide blasts off at full pelt and sweeps you along at that pace only slowing down for a feedback filled conclusion. For me though, the standout track is Sound Of Madness. Brent's vocals sound positively menacing. The guitar solo leads into a section where Brent almost chants the lyrics as the rest of the band fades down in the mix before coming back for a final, noisy, run at the chorus. Time money and effort has clearly gone into the production.

Package problems:

Far be it from me to look a gift horse in the mouth but there are one or two problems with this download. On the plus side, the four tracks are bundled into a single zip file which makes downloading easy. However, the mp3 files are not tagged in any way: no album art; no artist name; no nothing! In fact, even the file names are mixed up with the names of the two tracks from Sound Of Madness swapped. A bit disappointing but not disastrous.

Summary

Four great free tracks from Shinedown. Download them and enjoy!

Dommin Acoustic Set Review

This is a long overdue review of the secret Dommin acoustic set I saw last week (see Rock Radio Win for details). I've already posted a bit of this response on the Dommin website but thought it was worth cross-posting here and expanding slightly.

Dommin live
Originally uploaded by DavidDMuir

As I said in the Rock Radio Win post, at first I didn't have any confirmation that I had won, other than hearing my name on the radio. No text. No phone call. Just a name. However, I needn't have worried because, as Billy Rankin said when he announced the winners, Lisa contacted me on Friday to tell me the time and location of the performance. It was to be in The Box in Sauchiehall Street. (I know a joke about Sauchiehall Street... but it's so bad, I probably shouldn't tell it.) I'd never been to The Box before but it turned out to be a wee narrow room with a stage at the entrance end that was just perfect for the type of gig Dommin put on.

When I arrived at the venue, there were about half a dozen people already there and we stood outside in the freezing cold for a while waiting for the doors to open. We didn't have to wait long though before they started to let us in. The problem was my pal Tom had a bit of trouble finding a parking space, so I got to the front, checked my name was on the list, but then had to wait outside for Tom to arrive. I saw pretty much everyone as they went in and, although I was worried that I'd be much older than Dommin's usual audience, that wasn't a problem for this event. (Probably says more about the demographic of Rock Radio listeners than it does about Dommin!) The Rock Radio people have posted some pictures of the event, one of which will give you an idea of the make up of the audience! (I'm the numpty in the t-shirt at the front of that photo.)

Kristofer Dommin wrote a bit on their night in Glasgow on the band's website. He said:

"The audience seemed to really enjoy it. I always feel like the acoustic performances are something special."

Speaking as one of the 30 or so people lucky enough to be invited to the acoustic set, I can confirm that it was indeed "something special"! Clearly he was worried about his voice but as far as I'm concerned he sounded great - perfect for the small venue. I loved the informal nature of it all. For example, Kristofer's reaction when he realised he hadn't plugged in his guitar for the first song, or the banter as Konstantine wrestled with the keyboard before they could start Dark Holiday. Brilliant! And it was great to speak to them afterwards. (Although the lady from Roadrunner was clearly worried that we weren't going to let them get away!)

There was a bloke who was there with a boy of about 14 (father and son I assume - see the Rock Radio photo and draw your own conclusions). My pal Tom pointed out the look on the boy's face as he walked out the venue clutching the signed card - he couldn't have looked more chuffed! Clearly a satisfied fan and the event probably confirmed him as a lifelong supporter of the band.

It was such a great night, it seems petty to make two complaints... but I'm going to do it anyway. :-) First, it was too short and second, it was a shame the bass player and drummer couldn't be there too. It should be clear therefore, since they are my only complaints, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

I've posted a few photos from the event on Flickr and Rock Radio had published a few of theirs. (The last four of the Rock Radio photos are mine, - which is brilliant!)

I'm looking forward to the UK release of Dommin's album.Have you checked them out yet?

Rock Radio Win

I have done reasonably well out of Rock Radio competitions in the past although I was scunnered not to get anything out of the recent Rocktober - despite them giving away bucket loads of prizes every day.

296/365: Shaking hands with Kieron
Originally uploaded by DavidDMuir

However, yesterday I sent in a text and it was announced on air that David Muir was one of the winners of a pair of tickets to see Dommin at a secret gig next Tuesday. My only concern is that I've not had any confirmation yet... I suppose there could be more than one David Muir listening to Rock Radio.

I was aware of the name Dommin and had heard My Heart, Your Hands on the radio but didn't know much about them beyond that, so I've put myself on a crash course, for example by hitting their YouTube channel.

It has to be said, it's not the kind of stuff I usually listen to but I'm enjoying what I'm hearing and I'm really looking forward to the concert. My only concern is that they all look like they're barely out of short trousers. I fear that as a fat, baldy old man, I'll look well out of place!

Any fans of Dommin want to tell me what their best track is? What should I make sure I listen to so that I'm ready to see them live?

Free Download... er... Tuesday?

I really wanted to keep this until Friday for a Free Download Friday post but I'm not sure exactly how long the offer will be available. The first time I read about it, I thought it was only going to be a week but Tom Russell seemed to suggest today that it was going to be available for a fortnight...

The legend... and Tom Russell :-)
Originally uploaded by DavidDMuir

What am I taking about? Rock Radio are currently offering the new GUN single - Let Your Hair Down as a free download. Follow the link, enter your email address and download their new single. Excellent!

I generally like GUN's stuff but I must admit that on first listen, this one is only OK. Three stars on my iPod - which means it's earned it's place but isn't particularly special. However, as I say, it's only had one listen so far. It may be a grower...

The other reason I wanted to keep this until Friday is that the Rock Radio link takes you to the Townsend Records' site, which is currently offering a thirteen track sampler album as a free download. I've not had a chance to listen to more than a couple of tracks yet, but the names of the artists I recognise makes it look promising. For example, it has two tracks from Thunder and one from Ian Hunter. Interested?

Update: I added the following in a comment...

On subsequent listens, I decided I did like the GUN track and I'm not sure why I was so grumpy after the first listen. Of the Sampler album, I'd say the two Thunder tracks are the best but I really like the Toby Jepson track too.

Free Download Friday #26: Dave Arcari

Another short and sweet post today and more free downloads from last.fm.

The artist is called Dave Arcari and I came across his name because he writes a blog for Rock Radio. The tracks available on last.fm are Got Me Electric and Soul Of A Man. They should give you a good idea of what Dave sounds like. Essentially we are talking dirty slide guitar, gruff and gritty vocals and a style of blues that borrows heavily from punk, country and rockabilly.

Check him out and let me know what you think.