Here Is The News: September 2018 Edition

He-hey, it's September (well, nearly October) so here is the news!

K.K. DOWNING "STILL UPSET" OVER STARBUCKS ARGUMENT

Former Judas Priest guitarist K.K. Downing has stated in a recent interview that he still harbours some resentment to the way the band treated him after a friendly get-together at popular coffee chain, Starbucks. According to sources and comments from members of the band themselves, Judas Priest were celebrating a successful tour at Starbucks years ago when the table was accidentally knocked over by one or more of the band members, spilling K.K. Downing's milk-based beverage all over the floor.

After the accident, K.K. Downing (pictured left) was certain that it was drummer Scott Travis who nudged the table and caused the spillage. However, according to multiple band members, it was K.K. himself who nudged the table upon standing up with Scott. Either way, the spilling of the milk is still a sore subject for the guitarist and he claims that he has yet to receive any kind of apology for his ruined drink that cost him in the region of two to three dollars.

When asked for comment, K.K. stated "I'm not angry or annoyed about it, I'm actually completely over it. I just think that it says a lot about the characters of Rob, Glenn, Scott and the other one that they accuse me of doing something like this when it was clearly untrue. I'm not mad at all, I'm just still upset that everyone else keeps making a big deal out of it". K.K. then continued to talk about his upcoming musical projects, only bringing the conversation back to the spilled milk drink a couple more times before the end of the interview.

This is one of many accidents and incidents that K.K. Downing has spoken about when reflecting on traumatic times with the band. A previous incident arose when footage of K.K. Downing viciously attacking an already deceased horse surfaced on the Internet. When asked for comment on the video, K.K. claimed that he was only beating a dead horse to such a degree to prove that he wasn't angry about his exit from one of the UK's biggest Metal bands to pursue a career as a solo guitarist.

K.K. Downing is currently preparing to embark on a solo tour of Europe, starting in the UK and ending in Germany. The tour is expected to contain a mix of Judas Priest tracks he heavily contributed towards and recent material K.K. has written for his new solo album. The album (and promotional tour) was inspired by classic Judas Priest track "Riding On The Wind" and fans will be delighted to know that tickets for the upcoming "Pissing In The Wind Tour" are still very much available.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN FINISHES 148 HOUR CONCERT

After a gruelling six days, Bruce Springsteen has finally finished one of his live shows. The concert in London, United Kingdom was originally supposed to last a mere seven hours, due to Bruce dealing with back ache that day, but after getting his second wind he continued to play for another 141 hours to a mostly enthusiastic crowd of Bruce Springsteen fans, their sleep-deprived children and a rotation of available paramedics.

The show started off like any other; lights dimmed, band members shuffling on stage until Bruce (pictured left) joined the action to an eruption of cheers. It's believed that the first song played was "Born In The U.S.A." but since the band ended up repeating multiple tracks throughout their set (including 18 renditions of "Glory Days", 25 performances of "Hungry Heart", 11 documented moments where he played "Because The Night" and seven acoustic covers of "The House Of The Rising Sun"), nobody can remember for sure exactly what the first song was.

Once the gig had finished, the remaining fans still able to walk or remain conscious after almost an entire week of listening to a Bruce Springsteen concert returned home via the nearest hospital. One of the concert goers stated "It's definitely one of the best shows I've ever been too. Bruce really makes sure you get your money's worth, even though I've missed five days of work and had to buy new jeans to replace the ones I soiled to hear him finish a six-hour version of "Thunder Road". I can't wait to see him again next year!" just before falling back into his coma.

Fans rushed to nearby hospitals due to dehydration, partial loss of hearing and mild cases of rickets due to lack of sunlight were offered a discount on a DVD recording of the concert, expected to be released around the holiday season of 2019 once it's been edited down to a tight 28 hours across 10 discs. Footage from the concert has yet to surface online due to the death of almost all smartphone batteries at the gig but according to people at the venue, the general consensus is that show was "pretty good until the smell became unbearable".

When asked what could've possibly possessed him to play a single show roughly twice as long as the average music festival, Bruce Springsteen commented "Sometimes when you're on stage, you just feel unstoppable. You get up there and the crowd cheers and it's the best feeling in the world. I didn't want it to end...so it didn't! I just kept giving it my all and although I've been told that I stopped singing actual human words around the 103rd hour, I'm just glad I made it through all the way to the end without fainting like my band mates". Bruce Springsteen's tour has been postponed until the band's fluid levels are back to non-lethal amounts again, although Bruce still intends to complete shows at all remaining venues in the tour. His fans allegedly cannot wait.

LOCAL BLOG REACHES 200 POSTS

A blog about Rock/Metal (and occasionally Pop/Video Game) music has recently uploaded its 200th post since starting in 2013. The blog, entitled 'Riffs And Raffs', celebrated its 200th post with a self-referential article that may or may not come across as futile, masturbatory self-promotion depending on how much viewers keep reading after the initial restrained chuckle emitted from finishing the opening paragraph subsides.

The blog (pictured literally in front of you right now) was started after creator, IaSg14, decided one day to focus his passion for writing, creative opinions about Rock/Metal and natural aptitude for memorising music trivia into an outlet that he would have control over with the possibility of being available to literally a bunch of people online. However, instead of choosing Wordpress or Tumblr, he continued to use Blogger as if it was still 2005.

The blog contains a variety of post formats, ranging from straightforward album reviews for the newest releases that IaSg14 wants to listen to that more often than not the average reader doesn't care about right down to in-depth discussions about all the Guitar Hero and Rock Band setlists that people have already made their minds up about after playing/hearing them. It also features regularly edited posts about Rock music terminology and a personalised "Scale Of Greatness" linked at the top of the blog, both of which are in dire need of updating.

IaSg14 had this to say about writing his 200th blog post: "A blog about Rock/Metal (and occasionally Pop/Video Game) music has recently uploaded its 200th post since starting in 2013. The blog, entitled 'Riffs And Raffs', celebrated its 200th post with a self-referential article that may or may not come across as futile, masturbatory self-promotion depending on how much viewers keep reading after the initial restrained chuckle emitted from finishing the opening paragraph subsides". He went on to provide more information about the blog's inception, his chosen venue for posting writings about music and some of the post formats on 'Riffs And Raffs' before offering a relatively pointless quote about the blog simply reaching 200 posts and how it celebrated such an achievement, followed by a paraphrased and headache inducing repetition of information and a glimpse into the future of the blog itself.

The future of the blog is uncertain, as personal issues and a newfound love of streaming video games online via Twitch have taken up portions of IaSg14's time that was previously dedicated to planning and writing blog posts (hence the delivery of all the month's posts typically in the last week or so). However, according to sources close to IaSg14, he has no intention of stopping writing or lazily phoning it in any time soon and has absolutely nothing planned for the 300th post in 2020 or the bulk of the 99 posts that will come before it. What will those posts be about? If the last 200 posts are anything to go by, probably more of the same with a few surprises here and there. One thing's for certain though; IaSg14 will continue to write (and entertain) as long as there's an audience for it, be it 1 or 100.


In other news, it's been a pretty frickin' slow month for Rock/Metal news. Here's hoping October will have more going for it!

Future Updates

Just a small post to let you guys know what my plans are for the future of Riffs And Raffs.

In the past, I stuck to posting once a month (twice if one of those posts was about video games) but I want to try and flex my creative muscles a bit more so my aim now is to post once a week/four times a month.
If I can't maintain that then I'll work on posting twice a month. However, I don't give up that easily, even if barely anyone reads these reviews. I even have a rough schedule for what I want to post each week, although I'll probably end up deviating from the plan if I choose.

Across the month, I'll try to post the following: A review of a new album that's come out during the month, a review of an old album that I've listened to recently, an opinion piece ranging from some kind of musical rant to Tenology and a random post that might be any one of the above...although it'll probably be another opinion piece different to one already written that month.

So that's all, just a short update on future updates. Sorry for making it sound like I was shitcanning this blog in the first sentence.
Anyway, starting next week, expect to hear more from me...on this blog, that is. I talk plenty on Twitter.

IaSg14

Rather than get straight into blog posts about music, I'm gonna do a little one about myself and my musical tastes so you have a rough idea of the sort of albums I'll be listening to and writing about. If you can't be arsed to read this, it's Rock and Metal. If you want to know the different subgenres of Rock/Metal I favour, carry on good sir/mam/Mumford & Sons fan.
But first, a little about me in general.

Some of you might be wondering what IaSg stands for, although I imagine most of you don't give a shit.
It's a name I thought up years ago when I was still in school. I took the first letters of four words and added 14 at the end because I liked that number (don't ask). The four words were a sort of in-joke between me and my best friend.
I Am So Great.
It's not so much an arrogant boast but more a self-esteem boost. For a while, on different sites like Last.FM, I went by names like IASG14 or I-A-S-G but I remember having to sign up to one particular site that had both of those taken. In the end, the first combination that I was allowed to use was IaSg14. It just sort of stuck with all other websites so yeah, that's what IaSg14 is all about. And now that that boring fucking anecdote is over, I can talk more about music!

Like most kids in the UK, I grew up surrounded by shit on the radio. By the time I was old enough to remember songs by their name and band, it was getting on towards the late 90's. Grunge had pulled a Nancy Kerrigan on Metal and Britpop was a thing we all just accepted as a tolerable irritation in our lives, like mosquitoes or Confused.com adverts. Luckily for me, my Dad was a fan of 60's Rock bands. He played me songs by The Beatles, The Hollies, The Kinks, etc and I loved them.
However, when I was in Junior school, I was introduced to contemporary Pop. Granted there were some songs I liked and, every now and then, I still find myself listening to Mambo No. 5 - Lou Bega all the way through but I never really found myself a "fan" of anything. I would just listen to it and not feel unhappy. That's about as far as my taste went when I was 8 and I regret to say it carried on until I was about 16. I used to be one of the "like a bit of everything" tossers although I don't remember ever using those words to describe my tastes.
When I was in high school, I discovered the Guitar Hero series and it opened my world to a genre I'd previously disregarded like a Vince Vaughn film. The sort of music that I knew existed but wouldn't go out of my way to experience. Rock music. The game in question was Guitar Hero 3: Legends Of Rock, featuring a soundtrack with tracks such as The Seeker - The Who, Ruby - Kaiser Chiefs and Welcome To The Jungle - Guns N Roses. Those were the 3 tracks that I remember listening to before I decided that I wanted the game.

Within a year, I was playing on Expert difficulty and had bought myself a starter kit of Rock and Metal to listen to on iTunes. Scorpions, Living Colour, Blue Oyster Cult, the list goes on. It was from there that I started to listen to Rock music a lot more, buying Guitar Hero games as they came out and opening my taste to the various genres within Rock. However, it was my decision to make my own Guitar Hero setlist that really got me not just into the sound of Rock but the history of it too.
I looked into how Psychedelic Rock would go onto inspire Prog Rock and even Metal, or the decades and their most popular genres along with bands and songs that defined an era. I loved it, and I still do it just because I enjoy it so much. Years later and I'm sat at home on Spotify brushing up on the catalogues of different bands whilst other teens are out clubbing or getting STDs. I started several music related projects (which I'll probably go into another day on here) and the latest of which has been this blog. Hopefully it'll be just as decent as my others.
So what bands was/am I into? It's all well and good saying Rock over and over again but that's like saying your favourite food is Meat. The Rock I'm into is Rock from the 70's-80's, BUT I also like bands from the other decades. I tend to go off the original 50's Rock & Roll just because I dislike the Blues pattern that most of the songs tend to follow. However, 00's or 10's Rock songs can be found on my iPod, although the majority are probably from the 70's and 80's.

Whenever people ask who my favourite band is, I usually reply with several simply because I have favourite bands from different genres rather than one all-round #1 band. My favourite Metal band is Iron Maiden, my favourite Rock band is Lynyrd Skynyrd and my favourite Pop/Rock band is ELO. However, I also like Deep Purple, Saxon, Tenacious D, Judas Priest, Maximo Park, The Cult, Metallica, Rush and Motorhead, among others. So that's a snapshot of the crop of bands you can expect to see on here. Saying that, not all of my posts will be on old albums. Sure, I'll look into 80's albums every now and then but fortunately for me, the 10's seems to be the decade for revival.
We've had new albums from Black Sabbath, Rush, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Whitesnake, David Bowie, Def Leppard, Saxon, Deep Purple, Megadeth and others with more on the way so I've got plenty to discuss here and you've got plenty to read! If you have any other questions about my taste in music OR a request for me to listen to and review, feel free to leave your comment and I'll look at it as soon as possible. In fact, I should get some kind of gadget for this blog where you can type the name of a band and album for me to check out if I don't find the request fucking despicable (e.g. asking me to review Noah And The Whale's latest dreary puddle of cat piss).

And with that, be seeing you!