If you like it please share that you like it via Facebook, Twitter, blogs etc.

Here’s the lyric video for the song

Tonight the awful X-Factor will announce the winner of their 2011 karaoke competition and it’s more than likely that this time next week some depressingly unimaginative cover of a song that’s not really old enough to be covered properly will be released however the Christmas number 1 slot of no longer a given to the X-Factor winner following the success of the incredibly exciting campaign in 2009 which saw Rage Against the Machine get the number 1 slot (and raise a lot of money for Shelter (not Simon Cowell) in the process).

Last year’s attempts were more copies but this year there seem to be 3 equally credible and deserving contestants to go alongside the X-Factor and so here’s a summary.

1 – Alex Day – Forever Yours

My favourite of the contestants is Alex Day (pictured above), I’ve been following his YouTube channel for a while and he posts amusing videos and is also a full-time independent musician…the bookmakers William Hill have given his catchy pop-song ‘Forever Yours’ 16/1 odds of getting the slot.

Forever Yours is a fun, catchy electro-pop song which will easily get stuck in your head…on top of that Alex Day is independent which means that actually his growing YouTube and music popularity is because he is a genuinely talented guy and not some karaoke singer auto-tuned to hell in a studio.

On top of that Alex all money raised for the song goes to providing water to people in Africa!

You can listen to the song here

 2 – Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit

Following in the footsteps of ‘Rage Against the Machine’ a Facebook campaign is aiming to get Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ to number 1…with currently over 100,000 likes on Facebook and the promise of a vinyl re-issue of the single from the record label this campaign seems to be growing with momentum.

On top of that the campaign is raising money for charity ‘Rythmix’ who (as the story goes) protested to the X-Factor girl group stealing their name only to be told ‘you’d better find some lawyers then’…although since the name has been changed.

You can check out the campaign on Facebook here and Twitter here

3 – Military Wives – Wherever You Are

The Military Wives who have been coached by Gareth Malone are releasing their song ‘Wherever You Are’ also in contest for the number 1 slot raising money for the British Legion….the song isn’t to my taste but I think they’re equally deserving of the slot.

Conclusion and Buying Info

So…there you have it. 4 options for Christmas number 1 in the form of X-Factor, Alex Day, Nirvana and Military Wives and all but the X-Factor are raising money for charity so there’s clearly 3 out of 4 which are better but which will get it?

Personally as a fellow independent musician I’d love to see Alex Day get the top spot but only time will see!

You can buy the Christmas number 1 songs from the 18th December for them to count but only buy a song once or none of your purchases will count.

Get involved, raise some money for charity and let’s make music about music and not winning some competition!

So after yesterday’s post about Orange and various calls to them I decided it was still worth complaining to Ofcom simply because ifenough people complain then this clause in a contract which allows them to put up prices based on inflation may be looked into.

Here is the full e-mail response from Ofcom. Hopefully it’s useful…to make your own complain to Ofcom go to this page

(Also thank you to everyone who’s commented on my last post…it’s great to get some discussion going)

Dear Mr Tiddy

Thank you for contacting Ofcom on 29 November 2011 about increasing line rental charges.

I understand you have been told that Orange can increase their line rental charges from January but you were not made aware of this at the point of sale. When a provider sells a contract it is unlikely they will explain every term of the contract and will only explain core terms i.e. minimum contract period. Also, whilst costs may be increased during a contract, this may also not happen. Any provider is able to make changes to a contract at anytime.

However, it may be of interest to know that, if a provider intends to make changes they should give at least one months notice – as per Ofcom regulations. If the change could make a substantial increase in your bills (and thus a material detriment) it is possible you could cancel your contract without penalty. However, if the change will not have a substantial impact it is likely you can be held to your contract.

If Orange will not let you leave without penalty, you may wish to follow their complaints process at:http://www1.orange.co.uk/documents/about/Orange-complaints-code-20110118.pdf.

If you exhaust this process, or if your complaint has been ongoing for over 8 weeks, you may be able to take your complaint to an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) scheme. An ADR scheme is an important piece of consumer protection as they are free and independent for consumers like you. Orange must abide by their decision but if you remain unhappy you are free to consider legal action

Orange’s ADR scheme is CISAS (Communications & Internet Services Adjudication Scheme). CISAS can be contacted at:

CISAS
24 Angel Gate
City Road
London
EC1V 2PT

Phone 020 7520 3827
Email: info@cisas.org.uk
Website: www.cisas.org.uk

Although we do not deal with individual disputes I can confirm I have made a full record of your experience. This feeds into statistics we collate to help monitor trends and, where appropriate, the information can inform future policy in consumer enforcement and investigations.

I hope this explains our position and is useful to you.

Yours sincerely

Consumer Contact Team

So Orange sent me a text this morning stating that:

Hi, from Orange. We’re increasing the price of your monthly plan by 4.34% from 8 January 2012. For more information please visit orange.co.uk/planupdate

Other than the rather cheery greeting to pass on some bad news the text didn’t tell me why and so naturally annoyed me…clicking to their link I found this:

Why are Orange introducing these price rises?

We know that price increases are never welcomed by our customers. Unfortunately, with inflation at a 20 year high it has been necessary to increase our monthly service charges.

Can I cancel my contract because you’re increasing my monthly service charge?

Five Iron Frenzy had this habit of drawing you into the music and then hitting you with the most profound God-lyric ever! We even had the worship band at our wedding adapt their song ‘World without End’ adapted to be played as a worship song.

Over the last few months the bands website contained a mysterious countdown and their Twitter and Facebook came to life, building hype around something that would happen at 2am this morning (or 7pm in the USA!)…having toyed with the idea of staying up or sleeping through and checking out twitter in the morning I opted in for a 1:55am alarm and hoped that it would be something worth disturbing my sleep for.

And it was!

I’d spent my day telling myself that it would be a greatest hits or rarities album and not a reform or anything new but how wrong was I?

Five Iron Frenzy announced (with a slightly bizarre video of Reese Roper in the desert) that they were getting back together and would be recording a new album (to release in 2013…10 years after their break-up) and possibly playing some shows….oh and they put a new song online!

Now the latter doesn’t excite me as much unless they venture to the UK (I wish!) but the thought of a new album and a chance to hear a new Five Iron song really got me excited. To make this new album the band were asking for pledges in return for a variety of things ranging from a CD of the new album to the band writing you a song…I went for the former and amazingly the band aimed to get $30,000 to make, master and release the album and amazingly they got that within 55 minutes and less than 24 hours later they’re on $80,000.

Turns out I’m not the only one excited about the new Five Iron Frenzy.

I was also pretty excited about the new song titled ‘It was a dark and stormy night’ and it’s so good! It’s like a mix of ‘Electric Boogaloo’ and ‘Our Newest Album Ever’ and I think will please all FIF fans.

So why the blog?

This blog is simply to express my burst of excitement…share the word and tell you to listen to Five Iron Frenzy…they’re amazing and so much fun but also seriously challenging.

Go listen, support and download at: www.fiveironfrenzy.com

Note: I also had a worship blog in mind to write which also included some stuff about FIF so this blog might end up a little FIF obsessed for a week or so!

Having had the last theme for a while I fancied a change to something a little more creative. This one takes slightly longer to load but I think it’s nice…Hope you like it!

New Song!

Over the last few months I’ve been re-recording, mixing and mastering ‘Escape this Town’ to fix some of the things that slipped through the net last year and I released the first new single from it a few weeks back.

You can download the fully re-mastered track ‘Escape this Town’ for free here or if you’re feeling generous it’s on iTunes and Amazon (You can also listen for free on Spotify)

Geography Rocks EP

Finally in half term Dave came up to stay and we spent 2 days trying to record, mix and master and EP of Dave’s geography songs (which he actually sings to his classes) and we did it!

Geography Songs is available to download here or on iTunes here

They’re pretty catchy and it was great fun to try and do something of good quality in 2 days…and I think we managed it. I also got to play drums and record some bass and guitars on the record.

You can watch a ‘Making of Geography Songs’ video below

The Making of Geography Songs from Mark Tiddy on Vimeo.

A few months ago myself and Lee Kirkby (Youth Minister at Beverley Minster) were having a bit of the grumble about church…if I’m honest even though I’ve made it through youth groups, I’ve trained as a youth worker (and explored theology at university) and I work for a church I still often find church irrelevant…alongside this the lack of 20′s and 30′s in our church is frustrating when I know there are some people of that age range in our village.

The outcome of this grumble with Lee was that we both went away and thought ‘hang on…we should really do something about this rather that just moaning’ and so we have!

Next Saturday from 10am until 1pm at Beverley Minster we’re running the East Riding Youth Summit. An event aimed at getting young people aged 15-25 and church leaders (Ministers, PCC Members etc.) together, joined by the Bishop of Hull to spend some time discussing how the church needs to change to welcome in more young people and what both church leaders and young people can do to influence that.

As a follow-up we’re going to write up everything that’s said into a report format and send it to the young people and to their churches’ PCC’s as a way of saying ‘there were young people from your church at this event and this is what they think about bringing more young people into the church’.

Personally I’m really excited about this event and think it can have a big impact…if you’re in the East Riding come along!

Finally…

I know I don’t usually use this blog for work stuff but this seems to combine work and personal passions…also if you’re interested you can click here to hear me talking about the Youth Summit and young people in the church on BBC Radio Humberside this morning.

Like many people I remember where I was when I heard the news of big events…I remember where I was when Princess Diana died and when September 11th happened.

I also remember where I was when I heard the news of Blink 182′s Indefinate Hiatus back in 2005 (not that this is anywhere near has tragic as the 2 previously mentioned events).

I was in Sixth Form, working at a computer (or at least pretending too) when a friend who had the same love for their music linked me to this article on the MTV site.

I remember at the time feeling really quite sad…the thing is somewhere along the lines in my discovery of pop-punk Blink 182 had become (and if I’m honest probably still are) my favourite band.

It was listening to Blink 182 that inspired me to learn the guitar and their song ‘Dammit’ was the first that I’d learnt…even now I pretty much never bother to learn songs on guitar but can play at least 7 Blink tracks. The music of Blink 182 may not be the most musically or lyrically challenging but there’s something about it that I love.

The follow-up of the Blink break-up led to Tom forming ‘Angels and Airwaves’ and releasing 3 albums (4th this November) and Mark & Travis going on to form Plus 44…I followed and love both bands but they’re not Blink 182.

So when Blink 182 announced that they were reforming and that they’d put aside their problems around Travis’ hospital bed (after a plane crash) I was excited and the last 2 years as Blink 182 have been writing and recording their album I’ve got gradually more excited about it.

Anyway onto the album…

Neighborhoods was released on Monday in the UK in 2 formats…a normal edition and a deluxe edition (which Mark Hoppus counts as the actual album). The deluxe edition has 14 tracks and the latter ones are certainly worth having!

In previous interviews Hoppus had stated that they were all bringing what they’d been doing in their time outside of Blink 182 into the Blink 182 music and that’s the feel of the album.

Neighborhoods feels like it continues where their self-titled album left off but without as much production and so there is more of a punk rock feel to this album with the lyrical maturity that Blink 182 reinvented themselves with self titled.

The album opens with ‘Ghost on the Dance Floor, a catchy Angels & Airwaves-esque track with Tom’s vocals giving you the feeling that Blink 182 is really back!

The whole album seems to mix the Blink 182 pop-punk sound with some of the darker sounds of Plus 44 and more stadium-rock style sounds of Angels and Airwaves and it seems to all fit together very well…lyrically it’s a pretty dark album (but with all the stuff that’s happened since the Blink 182 break-up who can blame them!) and it works.

Some of my personal favourites on the album so far…

Ghosts on the Dance Floor – It’s good fun, a fantastic album opener and so catchy I woke up with it in my head yesterday morning!

After Midnight - For me this song represents Blink 182 past, present and future…Tom’s vocals in the verse with a very Angels and Airwaves guitar and Mark taking over in the chorus with a heavier feel makes this song everything you’d want from a Blink 182 song!

Hearts All Gone – This song feels a lot more like punk-rock and is probably best compared to ‘My First Punk Song’ off the Boxcar Racer album although totally different lyrically and in length. Hoppus’ punchy vocals and Barker’s agressive drums make this song awesome!

Kaleidoscope – This song reminds me so much of some of the more mellow Plus 44 songs like ‘Little Death’ and ‘Weatherman’. There’s something about the sort of lyrics that Mark Hoppus writes for these songs that’s brilliant.

Even if she Falls - This song is the last song on the deluxe edition and I’m amazed it’s not on the normal version. It’s a very Blink 182 song very similar to some of the more simple songs on their self titled album. The whole song is just Tom on vocals but it works really well with his lower verse vocals and higher chorus vocals making it a fantastic end to the album.

Are Blink 182 back on form?

The brave step that Blink 182 took with Self-Titled was to re-invent themselves and move on to more serious music and as they return with Neighborhoods 8 years later with all of the band having done a variety of projects Neighborhoods is everything I’d hoped for as a Blink 182 fan, it’s catchy, it has the best of Plus 44 and Angels & Airwaves blended with Blink 182 and is definitely worth buying…but make sure you buy the deluxe edition.

If you’re not convinced by my pro-Blink ramblings you can stream the entire album here

This is especially exciting as the last thing I’d heard (over a year ago) was that Mars were signing up to Rainforest Alliance and certified Cocoa and not Fairtrade but the press release today suggests this is just a step to making more products Fairtrade (rather than Nestle’s ‘token fairtrade product’ nonsense).

Hopefully Mars will follow in the footsteps of Cadburys in expanding their Fairtrade range…I’m looking forward to a Fairtrade Mars bar!

Which Fairtrade Mars product would you like to see? Why not click here to contact Mars and suggest a product you’d like to see Fairtrade.

Here’s an exert from the press release. You can read the full release here

LONDON, UK (27 September 2011) — Mars Chocolate and Fairtrade International today announced an agreement to introduce the first Fairtrade labelled Mars product. As part of the initial phase of the agreement the first Mars product to carry the FAIRTRADE Mark will be MALTESERS®. The move, which will appear in stores in 2012 in the UK and Ireland, will contribute in excess of US $1 million in annual Fairtrade Premium funds for cocoa farmers to invest in their farms, business organisations and communities. MALTESERS® is the third biggest confectionery brand in the UK, and its switch will  represent more than a 10% increase in total UK Fairtrade sales.  (see Note 3 in Fairtrade Foundation section below).

At the heart of the agreement is a shared ambition to make commodity certification that supports sustainable livelihoods for farmers the norm in the cocoa industry. Over the long-term, Mars will explore how best to scale up its purchases of Fairtrade cocoa, and will support Fairtrade’s continued efforts to develop measures that would allow more confectionery companies to increase their commitments to purchase more Fairtrade cocoa with the aim of impacting the lives of more cocoa farmers than ever before.

This blog will also appear on my new Ethical Living UK blog – Read the ethical blog here

Not Trying To Say – Live – Written by Mark Tiddy

Mark Tiddy – Not Trying To Say – Live/Acoustic from Mark Tiddy on Vimeo.

Umbrella – Live – Originally by Rihanna

Mark Tiddy – Umbrella (Cover) – Live/Acoustic from Mark Tiddy on Vimeo.

So last night at the youth event I’m involved with running alongside Luke Leighfield who was headlining and a variety of young people performing myself and Rob did a short acoustic set consisting of covers of Plus 44′s ‘When Your Heart Stops Beating’ and Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’ and we performed an original song called ‘Not Trying To Say’ which I wrote a few months back as part of my ‘Thirteen Months’ project which I wanna start recording next year.

It wasn’t as scary as I expected, we sounded pretty good and hopefully it’ll be the first of many gig-type-things!

Here’s a photo (more here)…there’s also a video someone took which I’ll upload to my YouTube when I get the video

Ethos

The ethos behind the youth club was always to be something run by us as a church and therefore with Christian leaders with the aim of not babysitting but building relationships with the young people we get along. My link in school meant that a lot of the young people recognised me anyway and add into this Christian assemblies which I do and all the young people know I’m a Christian and even ask me why I had an egg smashed on my head (an Easter assembly on sacrifice!).

Bridging the Gap

Of course ultimately it would be fantastic if each of these young people ended up with a relationship with Christ however there is no faith-based input within the youth club other than the occasional conversation based on things that have been left in the hall from church or something I’ve done or said in assembly at school it seems unlikely.

The jump between our unstructured youth club and our faith based groups is huge and so the question that I remain with is:

How will these young people make the jump between coming to a church-run youth club and a relationship with God?

I don’t really have the answers but I do know there are some fantastic inbetween events which I’m hoping to encourage young people along to…by this I mean events which have some Christian input but are perhaps filled with live music or an event at a theme park (such as Alton Tower’s ‘Big Event’ or the Diocese of York and Lightwater Valley’s ‘XLS’). These events seem to provide an opportunity for young people to have a taste of spirituality at the same time as being somewhere exciting and maybe they’re where it’s at (whatever ‘it’ is!).

I guess biblically Jesus didn’t do that much converting just conversing!

Out of the ten guys who Jesus casts demons out of only 1 comes back to say thank you and even then we’re not told that this man gave up his life to Christ and repented of his sins…the woman caught in adultery doesn’t become born-again but is simply told by Jesus to ‘go and sin no-more’.

I wonder if rather than aiming for conversions we should be aiming to build relationships, to show Christ in our own lives, to show love, compassion and care to these young people, to engage them in conversation about faith and to see where their journey leads…I have no doubt from my work in a chaplaincy project in school that young people want to know more about faith and that they’re asking the questions…it’s just a case of whether their asking has to lead to us praying ‘the prayer’ or not?

At a PCC I spoke at for one of the supporting churches of Hunsley Christian Youth Trust I was asked how many people we’d had ‘coming to the LORD’ as a result of the work and the honest answer is none but young people are engaging with questions about faith and hopefully that will ultimately lead somewhere.

I guess the general conclusion might be conversation not conversion!

Anyway those are just some thoughts…comments?

On Thursday we have the opportunity to vote for a new way of voting for politicians in this country and whilst there has been division in all the political parties as to whether it’s a good idea I personally think that it is.

Im not going to turn this into a political post because whilst I’ve read a lot on it I don’t think I have the knowledge to do so however I do know enough to know that the ‘No to AV’ leaflets we’ve received through our door are almost complete works of fiction. Talks of costs, voting machines and making a link between AV and Australia are entirely unhelpful and inaccurate.

However the reason I like AV is that I think it would change the way I vote. With the current system there are realistically 2 choices; conservative or labour and whilst there are a range of other parties I don’t feel (as a voter) that a vote for another party is really worth it…however with AV I’d feel far more comfortable voting for a smaller party. I like the idea that who-ever ends up in power would be wanted by the majority…ok perhaps they might not be every-bodies second choice but they’d certainly be preference to most.

I’m not going to write much more but I will recommend a couple of links…firstly the link below is fantastic at pointing out all the lies that have been told by the No to AV campaign

An A-Z of rubbish arguments from NotoAV

The second thing I recommend you watch is especially good if you’re confused by AV and it’s a short, simple video

Make sure you vote!

Whether you are pro or anti-AV I believe the opportunity we have is a fantastic opportunity to say whether we want our current system or not so if you’re planning to not bother voting please go out and vote! It’s not difficult to find some simple information to help you make a choice so please take this opportunity.

Both of ‘The King Blues’ previous albums have had a political feel about them and ‘Punk and Poetry’ is no different. I guess the obvious comparison is that Punk and Poetry is to the coalition government what NOFX’s ‘War on Errorism’ was to George Bush’s administration.

The King Blues have always had a more acoustic punk feel about them and whilst some of that remains on this album there’s a lot more electric, over-driven guitar giving a real punch to this album and making ‘Punk and Poetry’ a little more edgy than their previous releases.

In terms of lyrics you get exactly what you’d hope from Itch’s writing…passionate, well thought out and challenging lyrics, alongside that the album features a couple of Itch’s poems (with musical accompaniment) including the powerful ’5 Bottles of Shampoo’ which was regularly used as a encore during their tours last year.

A few of the stand out lyrics for me are

‘cut the bankers, cut the police, cut the rich and the riot police. Cut the state and cut the war. But they cut the poor’ from ‘We are f***ing angry’

‘well I’ve seen the rules that you call fair, when it’s profit you keep it but debt we share, the cycle of fear goes around forever, the very idea that we’re in this together’ from ‘Does anybody care about us’

‘Integrity is what black eyes were invented for’, ‘Stuff the man who thinks it’s ok to give his wife a punch, Stuff the judge who says it weren’t rape cos she was drunk’ from ’5 bottles of shampoo’

To be honest picking stand out lyrics is difficult when the whole album is lyrically beautiful and when sung with the passion that Itch puts into the music you can tell that this is an album The King Blues are really genuine with.

Overall Punk and Poetry is a fantastic album, it feels like a progression for ‘The King Blues’ and is simply beautiful both in production, lyrics and sound.

Ignoring the pro or anti homosexuality debate this court ruling is ridiculous!

In this country we are short of people willing to adopt or foster children by tens of thousands and here is a council turning down a couple based on one view that they have.

In my work as a youth worker I’ve met broken young people…young people beaten by their parents, young people introduced to drugs by their parents, young people who’ve stole (as taught by their parents) and plenty more bad habits picked up from their parents which they believe is okay.

To top that off some of those young people have children and you’ve only got to watch the Jeremy Kyle show to see that the cycle keeps on going.

Yet here we have a respectable couple with experience of looking after children being they can’t foster because they don’t agree with homosexuality…seriously if we put the best interest of these children in place rather than calling the thought police then perhaps we’d have more people fostering, more happy children and a few less problems in the world.

Rant over!