After 2 and a bit years, we’ve decided to move Unreality Music to a new location – our new community site, Unreality Shout.

I’ll be running the site as Community Manager for want of a more high-fallutin’ title. Maybe I’ll think one up eventually. In the meantime, let me tell you a little bit about Shout and invite you to join the community:

• Great for music fans – create a fan group for your favourite band or singer and invite other fans to join and chat.
• Start your own blog – you can write about anything entertainment related: music, movies, TV shows, books and more.
• Contribute to wiki pages – are you the ultimate authority on a band, an actor or a TV show? Share your knowledge by contributing to wiki pages on your favourite subjects!
• Buddy up – you can invite your friends to join in the fun and build a network of friends and obsessives on Shout!
• Share pictures – got any pictures from gigs you’ve been to recently? You can upload them and share them with the world!
• Earn points for contributing – each contribution to the site earns you Shout Points which earn you a placement on the list of most active members!

As for me, I’m excited about growing the new community. I’ve been blogging for easily 4-5 years now, and Unreality Shout is our way of giving fans and bloggers a platform where they can share their opinions about their favourite subjects.

Anyway, I hope you’ll join me over on Unreality Shout – and if you need any help getting started, we have a help forum where you can ask for assistance!

For RSS subscribers, stay tuned – the feed will automatically start showing new music posts from Unreality Shout in a day or so.

OK, it’s the first I’ve heard of this so-called rock supergroup named Chickenfoot. And I’m guessing you’ve missed the newsflash too.

Chickenfoot is a band made up of guitar-whiz and Coldplay-litigator Joe Satriani, ex-Van Halen members Sammy Hagar (vocals) and Michael Anthony (bass). And long-time Red Hot Chilli Peppers drummer Chad Smith. It seems to be a strange, giddy mix, as evidenced by the video on chickenfoot.us, their official website.

Satriani describes their music as:

The style is high-energy, kick-ass rock n’ roll. We all bring to the table some unusual influences and then we also share a lot of roots. We’ll draw from funk, blues and experimental. We know what we want to get out of it. We want passages in songs that develop and we want everyone’s personality to be able to come out.

You can keep up with bassist Michael Anthony’s blog for more Chickenfoot news. Sammy Hagar’s blog is on his official website.

Anyway, the group is planning to release a self-titled debut album this summer. It’s due out in June, and will feature 11 tracks.

The band will commence touring Europe in support of the album. The first date on the tour is Austria on 20th June.

Track Listing

1. Avenida Revolution
2. Soap on a Rope
3. Sexy Little Thing
4. Oh Yeah
5. Runnin’ Out
6. Get It Up
7. Down the Drain
8. My Kinda Girl
9. Learning to Fall
10. Turnin’ Left
11. Future in the Past

As a fan of all these guys previous ventures, I’m looking forward to hearing what they’ve cooked up together. From the snippets on the Chickenfoot website, it’s sounding good so far. I need to hear more though.

Hey, Chickenfoot – get in touch! I want a review copy of that album!

Chart watchers will be pleased to know it’s safe to come out now – Alexandra Burke and Leona Lewis have left the top 10.

Nothing against those two wonderful vocalists, of course, just that the whole Christmas period is drenched in X Factor generated schmaltz. I lose all faith in popular music when shows like X Factor dominate the charts. Oh look, you got a number one after being promoted for 13 weeks on primetime television! Hallelujah indeed.

1. Lady Gaga – Just Dance: My cynicism for the industry machine made me want to hate Lady Gaga before even hearing this song. But it’s just not possible. I did think it was a Christina Aguilera video for a moment, but Just Dance is just great pop.
2. Kid Cudi v Crookers – Day N Night: My initial response to this is ‘interesting’. Understated electronic groove and very repetitive lyrics, but still good. I hear this is the guy who’s been influencing Kanye West to (over)use vocoders…
3. Tinchy Snider ft Taio Cruz – Take Me Back: Funky, synth-heavy (isn’t all the best music these days?), but grammatically incorrect – “I’m sorry I misleaded you pretty lady” Still, we’ll overlook it this once.
4. James Morrison/Nelly Furtado – Broken Strings: Just when I was losing all hope in James Morrison, he comes along with a damn fine duet with Nelly – who for the first time in recent memory isn’t warbling about being promiscuous.
5. The Saturdays – Issues: I’m hoping Issues is winning The Saturdays new ground. While we were declaring the rise of the girlband a while back, it looks like this year is swaying back to strong solo females instead.
6. Kevin Rudolf ft Lil Wayne – Let It Rock: Been hearing a lot of this tune on music TV: big chorus, lacking in content elsewhere and an eye-catching video
7. Beyonce – Single Ladies: Good tune, naff Beyonce man-hating lyrics. She’s like a stuck record. Stop banging on about Independent Women already.
8. Kings Of Leon – Use Somebody: I’ve been getting into Kings Of Leon quite a bit lately, and while this isn’t the best thing they ever released, I can now appreciate it in the context of their back catalog. Hooray!
9. Pink – Sober: Another introspective Pink track. I’m told this is one of the best tracks on her new album, but it’s a bit moody for my liking.
10. Kanye West – Heartless: You know in cartoons when somebody swallows a whistle, and every time they talk, they make a whistling sound? Any day now, Kanye will announce that he swallowed an autotune device, which will explain his last couple of singles.

What are your favorite chart tunes this week?

The reason Unreality Music’s been so quiet is a combination of a couple of days being sick and a weekend in lovely Prague.

There don’t seem to be any Czech pop stars, or I would devote a post to their work. Needless to say, the place was very beautiful and very cold.

Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programming. I’ll repeat the call for contributors yet again – if you love music and you can write witty, interesting words about it, get in touch with me. We’re always looking for other bloggers to help out on the blogs.

Pundits are predicting a big year for pop acts in this year’s Brit Awards, and the voting so far implies that Take That are on course for the gold. If you haven’t voted yet – now’s your chance!

Where’s all the good music?

It’s not in the charts. Much as I love the pop charts, sometimes they bore me to tears. The most exciting band I’ve heard this year were the Diablo Swing Orchestra. They pretty much blew everything else out of the water for me.

Anyway, I’ve decided to try and find more good music online. Which is where you come in.

Friends

In the immortal words of Led Zeppelin’s Friends:

Without a friend, there’s no denying,
You’re incomplete, they’ll be no finding
Looking for what you knew.

I usually hang out around a number of social networking sites focused around music. If you’re on any of the following services, look me up and give me your recommendation for new music:

1. Virb.com
2. PureVolume.com
3. MySpace.com
4. Last.fm

So come on dear readers…enlighten me with some good new music that won’t make me feel like the whole scene’s a-crumblin down. Blues, rock, metal, opera, pop, hip-hop, gangsta rap. I don’t care. As long as it sounds fresh, let me have it.

Otherwise, I’ll just have to look for myself….

Because of my absence, this blog hasn’t been updated in over a week.

I’d like to make sure that doesn’t happen again – if you’re interested in becoming a contributor to Unreality Music, then drop me a line to gerard at unrealitytv.co.uk.

In Hot, she’s taken the tempo up a bit and dabbles a bit in S&M lyrics – “I wanna lock you up in my closet” etc. Apparently, the song’s a dribbling tribute to her new husband Deryck Whibley (of Sum 41 fame).

“You’re so fabulous”, she croons, “You’re so good to me. Bay-bee. Bay-bee…” It’s all very cutesy. Don’t you just love all this lovey-dovey stuff? No? Me neither.

On a positive note, the chorus isn’t too bad: a kind of stomping, arms in the air type of track. Unfortunately, that edge that you associate with Avril Lavigne is nowhere to be found. What’s replacing it is lacklustre songwriting and performing. Avril’s becoming more the manufactured pop star with each new release – despite the perfect punk princess facade, she’s failing to convince us anymore.

This single’s not so much Hot as lukewarm.

Here’s video evidence for you…from The Friday Night Project:

I think legally no publication in the UK is allowed to criticise the Gossip or Beth Ditto at the moment. Ditto seems to have become an overnight sensation and media darling in the UK. It’s not without substance either, because while you’ll read a lot about her view on weight issues, she’s a disarmingly funny and entertaining personality. I watched her guest stint on the Friday Night Project, and loved her sense of humour.

Having addressed the cult of Ditto, Gossip are in the unfortunate position of having masses of tabloid coverage, but little in the way of musical legacy for us to refer to. The biggest release to date was Standing In The Way Of Control, a punk/disco anthem that had virtually universal appeal.

In fairness, if Gossip had released another song like Standing In The Way, I’d have written them off as an unimaginative gimmick act. Other commentators have said that Jealous Girls lacks the substance of the other track, but I’d argue that it shows they have some diversity.

This song is much more minimalist, with a basic drum beat and basic bas and guitar backing, allowing Ditto’s excellent vocal to shine through. It may not have the immediacy of its predecessor, but I reckon folk will warm to it.

By the way, loved the quote over on Fake DIY about how

finally ‘Jealous Girls’ is seeing the light of day, and hopefully about to rescue Gossip’s much-touted credibility. Or, at least convince Beth Ditto’s New Look fanbase she’s not just ‘that girl what sings that song off tv’”

The Jealous Girls Video

WTF? Venetian blinds and a red and blue lighting scheme from the 80’s. Denim jacket and white bow in Ms Ditto’s hair. The Jealous Girls video is a celebration of all things lo-fi.

The bowl haircut makes her look a bit too much like her mucker, Kelly Osbourne:

As well as being able to search for music via the website, you can download a piece of software that plugs into your iTunes or Windows Media Player and it’ll give you recommendations based on your MP3 collection.

I tried a random sample and chose some old Alice Cooper songs in iTunes and it trawled my music database and pulled out related material I’d forgotten I even had! And I have to say, the relevance was pretty good.

As well as determining the related music, The Filter helpfully creates a playlist for you in iTunes and it looks like it can export your music to an iPod or any connected USB storage device.

The interface has some neat tricks to help you find related artists, albums and reviews on the web. For music discovery it tied into my iTunes music store and found the albums I needed to complete my collection. All very neat tricks.

The Filter seems to avoid unsigned, non-mainstream bands though. That’s something I’ve like to see addresses at some stage, perhaps also with social voting to allow good quality music to rise to the top whether it has big label backing or not.