Friday

It's the end of another week. I have quite a few things to do this weekend. I have to pick up some new hi-hat cymbals from a drum shop in Rotherham. The manufacturer's website describes the cymbals as having an "Explosive, clear and open sound with a meaty and cutting chick", which is the kind of sound I'm going for (I like reading descriptions of cymbal sounds like this, it's interesting to see sounds put into words).

It's been surprisingly hard to get hold of the exact cymbals I want, and as I've ordered them by putting down a deposit I have to purchase them without actually having a chance to test them out beforehand (I have listened to some audio samples on the manufacturers website, but it's not the same). In my experience, specific drums and cymbals are quite hard to get hold of. Shops generally carry only popular lines, are often more expensive than internet shops and there aren't that many drum shops around. The alternative, buying through internet shops, means you can't test items out before purchasing them though. This shop in Rotherham is relatively big, and it's good to see so many drum related objects in one room.

Also this weekend, I have the podcast to record and I should be going to an all day metal festival in town with a friend.

Recently, a friend and I restarted work on a documentary we originally conceived just under a year ago. It's going to be a documentary about what's fashionable and cool, much inspired by the work of Morgan Spurlock, Michael Moore and other similar documentary makers. We did some filming a while back, but we've been too lazy or had too many commitments to make any real progress on it. I've always liked documentaries - they can be much more engrossing than movies because they're dealing with real life - and I'm quite excited to start work on this project again.

Also, I read recently that Rage Against The Machine, one of my favourite and most personally influential bands, are reforming for a performance at a Californian music festival called the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in April of this year. I was really surprised to hear this. Maybe it's because I wasn't a fan of RATM whilst they were together and have no experience of them being part of current or new music. In a way, I kind of like the fact that they're not together any more. Their last album really wasn't that good.

My friend Ben Nuttall recently put up a link to this blog on his blog, so I thought it'd only be fair to mention him back. In fact, it might be a good idea to put up my own 'blog roll'. Ben's cool, he's into parkour and Tenacious D.