"Tell me..the words to say, the road to take to find the way back to your heart..."

When I was 10 I was a massive pop music fan. I wore fluffy clips in my hair ala Britany Spears in 'Hit me baby one more time', I pestered my parents until they played my CDs in the car and I plastered my walls with posters from TV Hits.

The stand out boy band in my eyes was the Backstreet Boys. I spent a good chunk of my day searching for picture of them on the internet - and waiting for dial up speed photos of appear on the screen. I knew every members full name, age, musical influences, hobbies, favourite foods, what they liked in a girl, blah, blah, blah, blah - you name it, I probably knew it. I listened to their albums (I owned ALL of them) on repeat all day errr day and I bought every bit of paraphernalia, no matter how big or small.

Unfortunately for 10 year old me, they never toured New Zealand in their height of fame, BUT fortunately for my 29 year old self they came a few weeks ago. I was skeptical. I've hardly listened to an album by them for years and I hadn't listened to any of their new stuff. Plus, as much as my sense of humour hasn't progressed, I'm no longer 10 years old.

Even with those set backs the concert was AMAZING! And I don't say that lightly. I've been to a lot of concerts and my musical tastes have completely changed over the years.

Even so, I'm happy to say that this was THE BEST CONCERT ever, like ever. They played a great mix of their old stuff that I remember - around 90% of the songs I knew. They were insanely interactive - coming out into the crowd and posing for photos on the stage. My best friend and I danced all night. It was awesome. I would totally go if they toured NZ again!

These last photos are my two absolutely favourite shots of the night...

 One of Brian posing for my photo on stage.

 And one of me getting the bestest hand shake ever from my favourite backstreet boy. Yay!

"Music is what feelings sound like"

 Day 10: Put your music player on shuffle and write the first 10 songs that play...

1. Rise Against - Fainst Resemblance

2. James Blunt - Wisemen (how embarrassing is this?)

3. The Living End - So Lonley

4. Live - Lakini's Juice

5. DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince - I wanna rock right now

6. Default - One thing remains

7. Dashboard Confessionals - July

8. Bone thugs n harmony - If I could teach the world

9. Pink - Crystal Ball

10. The White Stripes - Icky Thump

What's on my iPod?

Day 18: What on my iPod?

In terms of music I have a ridiculous range on my iPod. I can listen to most things quite happily, but most like something I can sing to or something that is quite heavy.

I'm very lucky that a couple of years ago my lovely husband installed a new stereo into my car that has an inbuilt USB connection that can run my iPod without it hanging around in the car - I hate those in front Aux inputs. Too messy for my OCD. This, coupled with a fairly long commute each day (40 minutes each way) I've decided to download the audio versions of the 'Harry Potter' series and listen to these as I drive.

This week I'm back to school and on to the 2nd Harry Potter Novel. I reckon I can be done all of them by the end of this term - 9 weeks. Whoop!

30 Day Blogging Challenge - Day 1

In the hopes of blogging on a more consistent basis (which FYI is one of my 52 goals in 52 weeks) I plan to do another 30 day blogging challenge, perhaps more than one (another goal). I was pleasantly surprised by so many examples on the net that it was difficult to choose just one!

The first I have chosen to do has some really interesting but easy to blog about topics (videos/photos etc) so I thought I'd ease myself into it with this one. Here we go!

 Day 1: Your favourite Song.

I haven't reviewed my favourite song in a while, this has just always been my favourite song. I love Green day and this song, being entitled '86' is my birth year...gotta love that.

This is what the song means....according to the internet.

"I believe I've waited long enough Where do I begin?"

At the end of last week I was given a great surprise and am now attending the Foo Fighters concert on the 13th of this month at Western Springs Stadium. Woo hoo! I haven't been to a concert since seeing Green day in December of 2009, hence the title of this blog - think I've waited long enough!

To celebrate I chose this weeks (they're really turning into fortnights or 3 weeklys) album to be the new Foo Fighters one to get in the spirit.  Thank you iTunes! I am downloading 'Wasting Light' as we speak.

Remember when I spoke to you all about earlier in This Post about my albums looking shocking in iTunes after the big hard drive hissy fit?  My Foo Fighers albums were in pretty much the same state, but now...they're looking like this;

Now my homework in the next few days is to commit the new album to memory and brush up on the old ones.  Hard task huh? :P

"After silence, that which comes closest to expressing the unexpressible is music."

Writer's prerogative:  I'm skipping day 9 and 10.  I feel like I've covered day 9 already and my first kiss was about as boring as they come.  My iTunes library on the other hand...

Day 11: Put your iPod on shuffle and write ten songs that pop up.

1) Incubus, Light Grenades - Dig
2) Crowded house, Crowded house - Don't dream it's over
3) Michael Buble, It's time - Quando, quando, quando
4) Lily Allen, Alright still - Smile
5) Foo fighters, In your honour - Resolve
6) Metallica, Death Magnetic - The day that never comes
7) Van Morrison, Blowin' your mind - Brown eyed girl
8) Frank Sinatra - New york, new york
9) Christina Aguilera, Stripped - A voice within
10) Stone temple pilots, Core - Creep (half the man I used to be)

“Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.” - A.A Milne

Number 26 of my 101 challenges is "Download 1 album a week from iTunes, add to iPad/iPod and learn about the artist during the week."

Seeing I haven't officially started my challenges I'm just getting into gear with this and I suppose I should stipulate that I might not always download an album but sometimes might use ones that we already have on iTunes but I've never listened to them very well or I don't know much about the artist.

Cue what I have been doing with this challenge so far. I have been intently listening to 4 albums for the past two weeks - two Queens of the stone age ones; Songs for the deaf and Lullabies to Paralyze, and two Nirvana ones (both of which I'm already quite familiar with, as well as knowing a lot about Nirvana, hence why I have done 4 in a two week period rather than 2); Nevermind and MTV Unplugged in New York. This week is starting late as I'm only adding the album(s) to my devices today but I already know all the songs, just need to learn about the artist.

This week: Paramore - All we know is falling and Riot! Next week I plan to buy my first album, also by Paramore, 'Brand new eyes', and then I would have listened to everything by them :).

Now.  To get ready for this I have been doing a lot of organising.  Having both mine and Mr. Man's albums put onto one machine as well as having the hard drive changed in our mac a little while ago, our iTunes lists were looking a shambles.  So I've begun to organise things a bit better and will do so as I go through albums we already have on our machine.  What an angel I am!

From this...

To this...

 

"If the queen loves music, it is well with the land"...

...or in this case the princess, clearly I'm the Queen!

Little miss got her first taste of music last night.  I'm sure she's been hearing me sing to her and lots of other noises from the womb (as she is almost 27 weeks currently) but this was the first time she had it directly on my tummy, all for her.

Now I've read in lots of different publications that classical music is the way to go so we started off with that but then we got into the real stuff - Pink Floyd.  She liked the Pink Floyd much better (or not, depending on which way you look at it!) and 'danced' around a lot more when this was on.  I liked it a lot more too!

I'm extremely keen to get my  hands on some of this - http://rockabyebabymusic.com/ - contemporary rock and alternative albums made into baby lullabies.  They're GORGEOUS!