Intro

Testing...testing...is this thing on?

Hello, this marks the beginning of my first ever blog, a small place on the Internet that I can call my own. I've finally resigned myself to the idea that blogs are a good thing, and that I should embrace this medium and the Internet in general and do something worthwhile with it. I've also got a great deal of time on my hands at the moment (i've just graduated) and I've managed to convince myself that doing a blog constitutes being creative and is in some way wholesome. I've come across a few blogs in my time as an Internet surfer, they seem fine. This blog will be about music, mostly music which falls under the description 'rock'. But rock music covers a lot of ground, right? I don't really care for the huge number of descriptions for music out there, the lines are so blurred between 'indie', 'rock', 'blues' etc that it really doesn't matter and it's pretty irrelevant. I also don't think a lot of people care for labelling in music, ask most people what music they listen to and they'll more than not say they dislike such a question and explain that they listen to a wide range of music. Most people don't really identify themselves as a fan of just one style of music and don't want to, but I think 'rock music' covers enough styles of music to describe what sort of music this blog will be about. I think more people should use the term 'rock', I think they're worried they will come across as a fan of Nickelback, Eric Clapton or The Enemy.

What matters is if something is good or not (that's pretty obvious).

I'm not quite sure where I stand on posting 'rapidshare', 'megaupload' or whatever other filesharing web links up on this blog. In some ways I think it's fine to pinch music off the Internet, the music industry has been ripping people off for decades now and it's pretty funny to onserve the state of panic those in charge of such a changing industry seem to be in at the moment. Downloading music from the Internet for free gives people a chance to find out whether or not the music is right for them which is great. Music blogs are great places for people to read and discover new music. Without the ability to obtain music for free, people would listen to a lot less music and wouldn't be willing to take a chance by parting with money for music they might dislike. In short, I think the Internet allows individuals to gain a broader taste in music, which must be good.

I also think however that it would be quite nice for my favourite bands and artists to be able to eat and support themselves off the great music they make. I think people should act at their discretion regarding this, buying a record by a small band probably means a lot more to them than it would do to Green Day or dead people such as Hendrix, Buckley etc, etc...

So yeah, I don't know my stance on this and I'm beginning to care less and less about the subject. It isn't up to me to figure out how to solve this problem so for the mean time I'm going to do what I feel is fine. I thought it would be best to explain how I feel about such a matter before I inevitably start posting links to downloading websites.

You might or might not be wondering about the name of this blog. It'll probably make more sense when there are a few more posts on this blog but basically, 'rad' is a great word to describe good music and 'Radstock' is a place in Somerset that me and my friend drove through once. 'Radstockistrad' is a reference to the band Pavement's 'Pavement ist rad' slogan. I'll try not to use 'rad' too often.

My name is Tom by the way. As I said, i've just graduated from Sheffield University and I'm currently watching the world go by in the great void one finds oneself in post-university. I plan to go and live in Leiden, Holland in August with my band Hyperbowl. More on them later...

As for now, I'd better go and listen to a record...