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

Here’s the lyric video for the song

Blink 182 – Neighborhoods (Deluxe)

The album I entered into 2011 looking the most forward to was the new Blink 182 album. I’ve been a huge Blink 182 fan for years and when they announced that they were getting back together a few years back I was really excited and have spent the last few years waiting to see what the new Blink 182 would be like.

The deluxe edition of Neighborhoods contains 14 tracks and shows more maturity than Blink 182′s previous stuff and really shows Mark taking aspects of Plus 44 and Tom aspects of Angels & Airwaves back to Blink.

It’s a fantastic album and my personal highlights include Kaleidoscope, Heart’s All Gone, Fighting the Gravity and Ghost on the Dance Floor.

You can read my full blog review of the album here

Avril Lavigne – Goodbye Lullaby

I’ve been an Avril Lavigne fan since she first released ‘Let Go’ when I was a teenager and all of her albums feature in the ‘guilt pleasures’ section in my music collection however her follow-up albums since ‘Let Go’ have been a bit hit and miss. In typical pop-fasion they’ve included a handful of good tracks and then some fillers.

Thanks to Spotify I was able to give ‘Goodbye Lullaby’ a proper listen before deciding to buy it and it’s turned out to be one of my favourite albums of the year.

The album has a more mature feel to it and still follows Avril’s ‘pop-rock’ style but she seems to be more comfortable in her own genre rather than occasionally trying to be something else. The album is pretty much all good and my favourite tracks include ‘Wish You Were Here’, ‘Smile’ and ‘Darlin’.

Kristopher Roe (The Ataris) – Hang Your Head In Hope

One of the bands I’ve got into the most over the last few years has been ‘The Ataris’. In the midst of all the synths and over production of newer pop-punk I’ve found the more simple yet effective side of their music refreshing.

On top of that they’ve been in the process of recording a new album for the last few years and without a record label they’ve been doing it pretty much on their own.

In order to support their new recording process Kris Roe (lead singer/guitarist) released a ‘pay what you like’ acoustic album called ‘Hang Your Head In Hope’. The album is pretty much him and a guitar playing the best of ‘The Ataris’ songs and I love it!

For me Kris Roe’s slightly edgy voice and aggressive guitar style makes this album fantastic. The whole thing is worth downloading and you can get it here for whatever you want.

Owl City – All Things Bright & Beautiful

Owl City have been one of my favourites for a couple of years now and since their success with ‘Fireflies’ the follow-up has always going to have been interesting as artists tend to either dramatically change after a hit or stay the same…often there isn’t anything in the middle.

All Things Bright & Beautiful breaks this rule. The follow-up to Ocean Eyes is the beautiful pop that Adam Young has always produced but seems to have a bit more edge…the drums in particular on this album seem to have more kick. If you like Owl City’s previous stuff you’ll love this…some of the best tracks include ‘Deer in the Headlights’, ‘Galaxies’ and ‘The Real World’.

Yellowcard – When You’re Through With Thinking, Say Yes

Yellowcard’s first album ‘Ocean Avenue’ is one of my favourite pop-punk albums ever. The bands unique blend of pop-punk with a violin makes them always a refreshing listen however despite trying to get into them on Spotify their follow-up albums have never quite cut it.

Their new album ‘When You’re through with thinking, say yes’ however changes this and returns to the style that they had originally. The album is energetic and a fantastic listen. Some of my favourite tracks include ‘The Sound of You and Me’, ‘Be The Young’ and especially ‘With You Around’ (because it references a song off Ocean Avenue).

So there you have it…my top 5 albums of 2011. In 2012 I’m really anticipating the release of Luke Leighfield’s new album ‘New Season’ and getting to listen to plenty of other new stuff.

This is amazing because he sits there above the likes of Coldplay and Rihanna and with acts such as Little Mix with the full force of the X-Factor in front of them only just in front.

Whether he gets number 1 or simply in the top ten surely this has to be a game changer!

Think about it. Alex Day has no major record label and has only really got where he is thanks to his own hard work via YouTube and the handwork of his fans which have been building up over a number of years.

Much like the 2009 campaign of getting Rage Against the Machine to Christmas number one people power and social media is having an impact.

The difference between the RATM campaign and Alex Day is that as a musician Alex Day has no major label, no real money behind his press yet is in the Top 10.

Surely this is good for the music industry? Surely this means that actually you no longer need a major label to do well but you need to put a lot of effort into your music and actually have talent?

I don’t think if this changes the entire game but it certainly means that with the internet and social media a major label isn’t the only way to do well in the charts.

Hopefully this campaign will encourage more musicians to get out there and do self promoting!

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!

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.

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

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

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.

However when I was 15 I went on my own direction. A friend of mine from youth group introduced me to ‘Sum 41′ in his car and I purchased ‘All Killer, No Filler’…then a few weeks later thanks for the CBBC Chart Show I was introduced to New Found Glory (NFG’s Sticks and Stones album remains one of my favourites to date).

From that moment I was off…search the internet for similar bands and downloading through WinMX (a less virus infected Limewire) and inevitably when I liked what I heard buying their albums…quickly adding The Offspring, MxPx, Goldfinger and Reel Big Fish to my collection. The free Sky Channel P-Rock introduced me to bands like [Spunge] and Rancid and my rock CD collection grew.

Buying Music

At that time Play.com was my main source of music but when I was 18 and moved to Peterborough being within 10 minutes walk of Virgin Megastores and HMV meant that I could buy an album on the day of release and spend several times during the week making impulse buys, scaring my bank account and browsing the rows of music in store.

I have to admit whilst being a huge fan of computers and Apple digital downloads have never got me. I like that with a CD you get the artwork, the lyrics and a list of thank-you’s from the band…I like having the physical object over the song even though the majority of the time I listen to my music through my iPhone or iTunes.

Spotify & Myspace

Since deciding to clean up my music 5 or so years ago Myspace and Spotify have been my source for listening to a band and often buying their album….mostly online. The availability of music online, for free is awesome.

Over the last 2 weeks I’ve been listening to the Foo Fighter’s new album, Avril Lavigne’s new album and ‘Teenage Dream’ by Katy Perry and whilst they’re all on my amazon wish-list their online availability means that I can wait until the album is in the next sale!

The King Blues & Owl City Albums

All that aside there are a few albums which have me massively excited for their release…so much so that I’ll be buying them straight away.

The King Blues album is one of them. The politically minded London punk band’s new album is out Monday and we pre-ordered it 2 weeks ago. Having already heard the angry, powerful lyrics of ‘We are *very* angry’ and ‘Set the world on fire’ I don’t think I’ve been this excited about an album in a long time.

Alongside that the next release from Owl City is also exciting me. Ocean Eye’s got me hooked on the music of Owl City and the project from Adam Young may just be one of my favourite ‘bands’ around at the moment.

The Demise of Record Shops

Alongside my love for music which has caused me to ramble on for far too long on this post I’ve been sad to read that HMV are struggling to make money and are closing shops.

It’s far less a love of HMV and more the variety that HMV offers. If I’m being honest most my music is purchased through their website rather than stores (so I’m probably part of the problem) but having a highstreet music shop where you can browse a wider range than Sainsbury’s offers is fantastic and it’s probably the only part of high-street shopping trips that keeps me sain.

At the same time shops like ‘That’s Entertainment’ which sell 2nd hand CD’s are equally awesome…I’ve managed to lose roughly 45 minutes a visit just browsing through all that they have looking out for a bargain!

Perhaps the future of record stores is 2nd hand and new music will be purchased online…but I hope that the CD has a future and I hope we’ll still see music on our high-streets.

So…what does 2011 hold!

Youth Work Resource

My first real aim of 2011 was to give my other website (youthworkresource.com) a much needed overhall and content update. I last did some work to it early in 2010 and just haven’t had the motivation to update it but I committed chunks of last week to it and most of today and finally have loads of new stuff on there including sessions, games and video plus I have the new template working (oh and a twitter account too) – You can visit Youth Work Resource here.

I’m also going to try and make it more of an ongoing project…so I’m going to actually update the blog and add resources on a regular basis!

Music

Just after Christmas I managed to accidentally buy a stage piano which I’m trying to improve with…my piano skills aren’t bad but I’m by no means a Benny Fingers, so in 2011 I’m hoping for a lot of time with hammers and strings (all be they digital!).

On top of that my 1 and only new years resolution is to play at least 1 gig, which might not sound much but for me it’s huge…considering 5 years ago I wouldn’t go near a microphone and the amount of takes vocals on ‘Escape This Town’ took it should be a good but challenging challenge!

Writing

Finally and perhaps more on a musical note I have a new project going on called ’13 months’…the concept is simple…for this year (last December counts) I will write at least 1 song a month with the aim to recording them in January 2012 onwards…it’s an interesting challenge but I love the concept and the idea of capturing a year in music is awesome!

So that’s me and 2011 lined up….let’s begin 2011 week 2!

Alkaline Trio – This Addiction

Earlier this year I reviewed this album as one of my favourite punk rock albums in a long time and now, even at the end of the year I stand by that. This Addiction is a fantastic blend of melodic pop-punk with deep lyrics. It’s energetic and fun and the bonus version including a DVD and a whole host of bonus acoustic tracks makes it such a good listen. This album has been everywhere this year…it’s accompanied me during my gym work-outs, it kept us company on the journey to France and it’s been played endless times around the house.

Good Charlotte – Cardiology

Once again this is an album I reviewed earlier this year and is certainly an album which both myself and Jo love (so much so about a week after buying it Jo put it in her car and I haven’t seen it since!). Cardiology sees Good Charlotte returning to the pop-punk that first sold me to their music 8 years ago and is a fantastic album and certainly worthy of my top 5 of 2010!

Ben Folds & Nick Hornby – Lonely Avenue

Lyrics have always been important to me in music…whether they’re just ‘blow you away’ challenging or something simple that you can relate to I’ve always appreciated the words within the music I listen to and this is why Lonely Avenue is such an awesome album. The concept is simple; well known author (High Fidelity, About A Boy) Nick Hornby wrote the lyrics and Ben Folds (king of the piano!) wrote the music. The result is an album which is simply stunning both musically and lyrically.

Owl City – Ocean Eyes

2010 was the year a campaign tried to get a Christian number 1 however the campaign organisers failed to catch on that we’d already had a Christian at number 1 a matter of weeks earlier. Owl City’s ‘Fireflies’ is probably known by millions of people and the album it’s taken from makes it into my top 5 of 2010. Like ‘Fireflies’ ‘Ocean Eyes’ is light, catchy pop which cannot fail to bring a smile to your face. This album was pretty much all I listened to solidly for the 2 weeks when I first brought it (much to Jo’s annoyance)…it’s a fantastic pop album…good, clean fun!

B.O.B – The Adventures of Bobby Ray

As a big Paramore fan and follower of the amazing Hayley Williams on Twitter when I head she’d collaborated with a rapper I headed straight to youtube to check it out and it feels like I’ve heard it almost everywhere since. I am of course talking about the song ‘Airplanes’ which mixes a beautiful chorus lead vocal part done by Hayley Williams with the rapping of B.O.B. Unusually for rap songs I like I actually brought the album and ‘The Adventures of Bobby Ray’ was certainly a good buy. It’s got plenty of catchy tunes and some clever lyrics and takes the final place in my top albums of 2010.

A couple of years ago I decided to re-write ‘In The Bleak Midwinter’ and actually add some theology to it and so all reference to snow went and keeping 2 original verses I added two more before them.

Since then I’ve used it in worship sets the last couple of years at ‘The Point’ and at ‘SPARK’ and the worship group here in South Cave are using it on Christmas day this year however I’ve never made a recording of it….until today!

This afternoon I went on a massive distraction and made a recording of it…and the result is probably a light stadium rock carol!

I’ve uploaded it here so click to have a listen and download

Here are the lyrics too… (1st 2 verses by me, 2nd 2 originals)

Mysteries surrounding, prophecies come true
Jesus, God incarnate,  God, yet human too
Mary trusted You, O God, always good and true
Giving birth to Jesus, For Him we worship you

For Jesus, God we praise you, died to save our souls
Stepped out into darkness, as it was foretold
Suffered death, was crucified, Jesus took my shame
For Jesus, God we praise you, death He overcame

Our God, heaven can’t hold You, nor the earth sustain
heaven and earth shall flee away, when You come to reign
in the bleak-midwinter, a stable-place sufficed
the lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ

Oh, what can I give Him, woeful as I am
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb
If I were a wiseman, I would do my part
Yet, what can I give You; I will give my heart