Today I was offered my first 'real' job as a marketing assistant in an interactive media company. I start next week and I'm very much so looking forward to this new step in my life. As I was getting the tube to the interview (hello long commute across London), a track popped up on my mp3 player that reminded me that even if this opportunity didn't work out for me, everything would eventually fall into place, much like it did with university three years ago (that was an ordeal if I ever saw one).
So for all my friends that are currently panicking about finding jobs/internships, or for those that are just trying to figure out life. It's going to be ok and you will eventually find yourself doing what your supposed to be doing, it might just take a bit of time.
Yesterday I finished my last exam for my undergraduate degree. Three years of university have gone by incredibly quickly and right now I'm living in a period of uncertainty since I have no set plans (so far) for the remainder of the year.
While I know that ultimately I should be celebrating, I've decided to spend a couple of hours tackling these binders - throwing away notes that I no longer need and keeping essays that I'm proud of.
Well after the last week I've had it would be a mere lie about my musical listening life to post anything but a Two Door Cinema Club track. Recently reentering my life over the last week I have fallen in love all over again with an album that got lost in the mix about eight months back. Tourist History defines Two Door Cinema Club's sound, however, in the eighteen months since it's release I can only assume that there has been much more growth musically and lyrically. Some of this is displayed on a track 'Kids' which can be found on the deluxe version of Tourist History (worth every penny of its £8 pricetag). I eagerly await their next effort.
Given that I live in London and most bands that tour the UK will ultimately gig there, going to Radio One's Big Weekend was a pretty special experience. For those that have never heard of The Big Weekend, the idea is that BBC Radio One take a weekend festival to different locations across the UK, usually to places which don't have large concert venues and are often left off the map for inter/national tours. There are only 20,000 tickets available for each day and usually over 75,000 applications are sent in. To say that I was lucky to get tickets for BOTH days is an understatement.
My friends from Fuse Fm and I got our tickets through the Radio Academy Masterclass. The Masterclass is a great opportunity for anyone who wants to get into radio as a career. Throughout the day of lectures you meet some influential people and get to pick their brains for any information that might help you break into radio. While radio is not really my passion in life it has been important to me in the last three years as it something that has allowed me to develop skills within an area that I would like to branch out into career wise - marketing.
Anyway, it was an interesting weekend to say the least. Because of the Masterclass taking up 4 hours into festival time, we unfortunately missed the Arctic Monkeys set. However despite this we still saw the Foo Fighters headlining as well as Swedish House Mafia. Both sets were good for different reasons: Foo Fighters were good because they knew that the audience was mostly Foo Fighters illiterate and gave them the 'for dummies' set - a good mix of old and new tracks. A number people had hyped up Swedish House Mafia for me throughout the day and I was pleasantly surprised that I got quite into the set despite never really liking house music.
The odd thing was that the most fun I probably had that day, perhaps even over the weekend was during a Pete Tong set on the outdoor stage. Absolutely high on life and the atmosphere, it was just ridiculous.
Come Sunday and it was much more my scene on the In New Music We Trust Stage: Two Door Cinema Club, Noah and the Whale, and The Strokes.
Two Door Cinema Club
Two Door Cinema Club are a band that I've known of for about a year and a bit, but only began to love quite recently. With only one album under their belt, and five singles (one released three times in 18 months), they - in my opinion - are only going to get better.
Some might argue that seeing the same band twice in two weeks is excessive. I say that it's awesome. Especially when it's my favourite band - Noah and the Whale. They played a good range of stuff across their three albums. While I can't say anything bad about these guys in regards to their music, it would be nice if they could play more stuff from First Days of Spring in their festival set.
Noah and The Whale
After side-stepping to the main stage to reclaim my youth while listening to My Chemical Romance for twenty minutes, we returned to watch a pretty decent set by The Strokes in the INMWT stage. I like the Strokes, I do, but they are a band that I often forget that I like and I usually have to be in a very 'Strokes' mood in order to sit down and listen to them. I did however really enjoy their set and since last weekend I have been making the effort to listen again.
The Strokes
In all I think there were a couple of highlights, musically there was nothing extraordinary about Two Door Cinema Club, but with their set came the push I needed in order to get back into loving their album. Additionally the other highlight was just having one final Fuse send off before I graduate. Fuse has been a big part of my life for the last three years and I think it was good to end on a high.
This week I've found something completely new for the mixtape. This beautiful song by the relatively unknown HoneyHoney, reminds me of one of the first days of this year when I returned on the Amtrak train to my Dad's home in Los Angeles from San Diego. For some reason this song makes me feel as contemplative as I felt that day. Even more so, it makes me miss my second (third?) home in LA and all the people that I know and love there, so this is also for you guys.
Tiger was a pretty awesome cat - he used to let me dress him in my doll's clothes when I was little, and as I got older he was often subject to me lifting him up a la Simba from the Lion King.
On Tuesday I was spontaneously taken to see Noah & the Whale - my most favourite band in the world, by Jeremy - one of my most favourite friends in the world. It was the fourth time I had seen them live and after turning in my dissertation (over and out Hungarian refugees!) it was the perfect surprise. In honour of their awesomeness (because I interviewed them in 2009 and they were super awesome) they have this week's mixtape track.
I wake up to our next door neighbour's dogs barking on a daily basis. However yesterday I was surprised when the barking seemed a little louder than usual. Turns out it was because they'd knocked through the fence separating our gardens and decided that our garden was a fun place to have an adventure.
