So for those of you that know me, you know that I am a HUGE music person. It pretty much is the driving force behind me as a person and my lifestyle. If you don’t know me, you’ll learn this pretty quick. And this is why I decided that I absolutely had to have a whole page about music.

Here I’ll highlight my favorite bands. You’ll find a band bio, some pictures, and other sweet things. You can also check out the ones that have been highlighted in the past. So, check it out:

The Kooks

‘The greatest records in the world can be put on in any situation: you can put them on at a party and they’re going to sound great, you could put them on in a club and they’re going to sound great, you could put them on on your headphones and listen in bed. That’s when you get a great album,’ says Luke Pritchard. ‘And that’s how I like to think of this album.’

The Kooks are back. 2006’s Inside In/Inside Out was a huge hit, selling some 2 million copies worldwide, spawning massive singles ‘She Moves In Her Own Way’, ‘You Don’t Love Me’, ‘Sofa Song’, ‘Eddie’s Gun’, ‘Ooh La’ and especially ‘Naïve’ – after which the album took on a whole new life of its own. The Brighton quartet quickly rang up sell-out shows not just in the UK but in America and all over the world, earning a support slot with The Rolling Stones along the way and categorically establishing themselves as A Great British Band.

Singer/guitarist Luke, lead guitarist Hugh Harris, bassist Max Rafferty and drummer Paul Garred quickly came to be regarded as a classic British song-writing outfit, able to stand alongside The Kinks, Oasis, Coldplay or any number of others you care to mention, simply because they understand what makes pop music great.

‘If it doesn’t make you feel good, then what’s the point?’ says Luke. ‘There’s too much drab shoe-gazing shit around. I hate all that cack. You’ve to push through it. That’s where you get great songs.’

‘Music should make you happy,’ concurs Hugh. ‘It should change you in some way. That’s why our fans are so crazy and committed. There’s that connection.’

‘We give people a great night out,’ continues Luke, who’s still only 22. ‘That’s the whole point. And I probably buzz off the crowd more than they buzz off us. Music’s all about getting everyone together. How can you be cynical when you’re at a festival and there’s 20,000 people – all different kinds of people; young, old, black, white – and everyone’s singing the same songs?’

Anyone who’s ever enjoyed (a) pop music or (b) a good night out, has plenty of reason to cheer when it comes to Konk, The Kooks’ second long-player, recorded over six weeks at the tail-end of 2007 in Ray Davies’ Konk Studios in north London, plus a week at Los Angeles’ Sound Factory. The sessions once again united the group with esteemed producer Tony Hoffer (Beck/Air/The Fratellis). Luke: ‘It was brilliant. It was like a school reunion. Tony’s a genius; he’s a really talented guy and he’s fun to be around. We had the best time.’

While James Brown’s Live At The Apollo classic ‘I’ll Go Crazy’ provided daily in-studio listening, end-of-session downtime was spent in the local Irish pub, The Kooks’ soon making friends with the locals. ‘The owner would give us a lock-in,’ says Luke. ‘We’d end up having a drink with all the Irishmen.’

‘I just started thinking how cool the studio is,’ says Hugh, by way of explaining how he came to suggest the album title. ‘And how much of a part of our sound it is.’

Indeed, in Konk The Kooks’ fanbase will find plenty to recall the freewheeling spirit that made Inside In/Inside Out a true word-of-mouth success – one of those rare cultural phenomena that grew and grew the more people heard it – while others will be aware just how much they’ve subtly upped their game. ‘It sounds big,’ says Luke, someone not given to over-analysing the process, preferring to let the songs speak for themselves. ‘We thought a lot more about production. It’s a second album and we’d done a lot more touring and recording [by that stage]. We tried to make a dynamic album where every song has its own little world. That was the philosophy.’

‘We always have so much material,’ says Hugh, of the set that includes songs dating back to Inside In/Inside Out to others written a fortnight before the sessions ended. ‘As a songwriter you need to get things down. Making an album has become such a big thing now. The Kinks used to do two albums a year. The Rolling Stones would go and cut a single – plus a b-side – between tours. Some of that immediacy gets lost today. But we’ve made a really great record that I’m really proud of it. I’m not ashamed to say that.’

While ‘Gap’ is classic Kooks, a song like ‘Shine On’ finds Luke exploring hitherto unchartered lyrical territory over the loveliest of melodies. It’s destined to become another lynchpin in The Kooks’ live set. ‘We’ve never done a song like that before,’ he says. ‘A lot of people might think its quite standard, but when you listen to it, it’s not. It’s a really weird little tune. I’m really pleased with it.’ Then there’s ‘Always Where I Need To Be’ a tumbling rocker with a ‘do-do-do, do-do-do-do’ refrain that might just be the catchiest thing they’ve ever done. ‘Sway’, meanwhile, provides an early album highlight. ”Sway’ is one I always go back to,’ says Luke. ‘Hugh’s guitar solo is genius – I don’t even know how he did it, even though I was there. And obviously the words hold a certain thing for me.’

2008, then: it promises to be another stellar year for the fourpiece. ‘We came through [in 2006] with some great acts – Arctic Monkeys, Amy Winehouse, Beirut – but, for me, last year was a really wishy-washy time for bands,’ says Luke. ‘It feels like the time’s right for us to come back.’

With shows already lined up in places as far afield as Dubai, Brazil and – oh yes – Hawaii, not to say some very special UK venues (’We want to do things differently,’ says Luke. ‘Some of those arena venues… who wants to see a band in a tin shed?’) plus a truly magical slot at The Isle Of Wight Festival, the outlook for the boys’ 2008 is sunny.

‘We’ve made a really good album,’ concludes Luke. ‘I love the idea of people putting it on in their bedrooms, then going mental.’

‘I hope that everyone puts it on,’ he says. ‘And it makes them feel great.’

Let the good times roll.

Discography:

Inside In/Inside Out		Konk

Metro Station

Band Bio:
Metro Station is an electronic pop/rock band from Hollywood, California signed to Columbia/Red Ink Records. The band consists of four members, Trace Cyrus (vocals, guitar), Blake Healy (keyboards, synthesizer), Mason Musso (vocals, guitar) and Anthony Improgo (percussion).

Metro Station was started by Trace Cyrus and Mason Musso in 2006 after their mothers introduced them to each other on the set of the TV series Hannah Montana in which their younger siblings Miley Cyrus and Mitchel Musso perform. Since they both shared musical interest, they decided to use it in the creation of a band. Shortly after, Cyrus recruited Blake Healy from Synthetic Joy (over a Myspace message) as a keyboardist and synthesizer, while Musso remained the lead vocalist, and Cyrus the lead guitarist. The trio together recorded the demo track “Seventeen Forever”, which they released on their Myspace Music website. It became an instant hit. The track gained the attention of percussionist Anthony Improgo, who was soon added as the band’s drummer. With the four of them, they quickly became popular on Myspace Music, topping the Myspace Music Unsigned Band’s charts. An intern in Columbia Records’ Walking Eye program discovered the band while looking through the Myspace Music charts, and they were signed shortly thereafter.

In the July 2007 issue of Alternative Press, an indie music magazine, Metro Station was listed as one of the “22 Best Underground Bands (That Likely Won’t Stay Underground for Long)”.

Discography:

METRO STATION (SELF-TITLED DEBUT)

Matchbook Romance
(my ALL-TIME favorite band!)

Band Bio:
Change is unquestionably a constant in life. When Matchbook Romance began in 2001, the idea of playing music for a living felt like a dream, a romantic fantasy that dwelled in each member of the band’s imagination. And, for years, anyway, it seemed like it would remain that way. “We never thought it was something that could actually come true for us,” says vocalist/guitarist Andrew Jordan who, at the time, was living at home and working as a waiter at a local restaurant. “We had seen so many other bands try and reach for that place in the world only to fall short. We always thought, ‘What are our chances?’” Still, people believed in the band-their friends, families and peers-and they encouraged Matchbook Romance’s just-stepping-into-the-world rank and file to drop their impending classes at various community colleges in and around Poughkeepsie, NY that fall, in order to concentrate on the band. Which, they did. Thankfully, for us, they did.

Matchbook Romance spent the next six months recording a group of demos that would attract the attention of Epitaph president Brett Gurewitz-a man who would later sign the relatively green band (literally the day before stepping on a plane to finalize contracts with the longstanding punk label, the band’s then-18-year-old drummer Aaron Stern graduated from high school). Gurewitz also produced their first real recording, the West For Wishing EP, in 2003, but it was Matchbook Romance’s debut, Stories And Alibis, that the world would really take to. The album’s list of successes now speaks for itself: following its late 2003 release came the video for “My Eyes Burn,” a run on the cover of scene bible Alternative Press and a slot headlining the first-ever Epitaph Tour.

In between, Stories And Alibis sold over 200,000 copies and the band absolutely lived on the road in support of it.

As Matchbook Romance began writing the initial version of what would become their second album, VOICES, they began to take their musical ideas to a variety of new levels. The band was writing constantly. If you were to have walked into the back lounge during one of the many tours behind Stories And Alibis chances are the mirrored walls in their tour bus would have been covered with ideas for lyrics and ideas for new songs. Matchbook Romance knew their next record would have to stand apart and the material they had begun self-recording while out on the road behind Stories And Alibis-all of it decidedly more sparse, moody and meditative-was significantly removed from the sound they honed on their debut. One significant factor, as Jordan puts it poetically, is that they “declared war on power chords.”

Though distorted, muscular major chords are still present on VOICES, the songs they recorded at Longview Farms Studios (an honest-to-goodness barn in rural Massachusetts that’s rumored to be haunted and keeps horses on the facility) contain a sort of cinematic yearning that was only hinted at on Stories And Alibis. Which, says Jordan, was all part of the vibe that Matchbook Romance spent so long trying to conjure. “I wanted to create new dynamics, I wanted to mimic an orchestra,” Jordan explains. “We had to overcome Stories if we were going to get any attention, and set ourselves apart.” Getting to this point, however, wouldn’t happen overnight.

Months-even years-of writing preceded the final version of VOICES that was recorded at Longview with indie music vet John Goodmanson (Blood Brothers, Blonde Redhead), and for a while there it seemed like Matchbook Romance’s ambitions might have gotten the best of them. “I could see a little bit of what Andy was going for,” bassist Ryan Kienle says of the material that Jordan would occasionally bring back to the group. “But in my mind it was like, ‘I don’t really know exactly where he’s going.”

While VOICES, an interlocking mix of complex balladry and forward-thinking rock, is a huge change for the members of Matchbook Romance, it’s also a necessary one-and after weeks of recording the album’s dozen songs with Goodmanson it was clear that huge leaps had been made. If Gurewitz, who had persistently tracked the album’s progress, was ever worried, now he was elated. “I don’t know if Brett ever expected something like this, I think we had him a little worried” Jordan says. “But after he heard the final version of the record he told me, ‘I can’t explain how much this record means to me. It’s as if you guys put a man on the moon.”

That’s a pretty great approximation of how VOICES works as a whole. It’s a staggering idea at first-how could the same band of suburban kids who started years earlier rise to the challenge of something this unapologetically ambitious? But then the idea begins to grow with you and on you over time. In life and in music, all things must change. But that doesn’t mean they necessarily get any better or worse-they just create new experiences that you’ll find familiar emotions in along the way. “We could’ve talked about this 24 hours a day, seven days a week and we still couldn’t have fathomed it. It was such a long shot to accomplish something like this, but we had to have reason to step aside and allow our imaginations enough room to come out. ”

Discography:

VOICES		STORIES & ALIBIS