Am I a Music Snob?

On Sunday night I was lucky enough to be at Jason Mraz's concert at Hammersmith Apollo. As with the gig I attended last year, it was an amazing night full of energy and excitement. From the brilliant Song for a Friend as the opener to the closing Butterfly, the set was awesome, and while the much larger venue (compared to Cambridge's The Junction where I saw him last year) meant we weren't so close to the stage, we did get a more impressive light show. I was particularly impressed that Mr Mraz himself came on stage to introduce each of the warmup acts, rather than hiding backstage until his own set.

However, what was really different to last year was the crowd. Clearly it was a much larger group of people, but it was also much more diverse; younger and older, chavvier and posher. I certainly don't begrudge Jason becoming more popular, god knows I think he deserves it. But I have to confess to just a little musical snobbery... some of the people at the gig will have been about 6 when Mraz's first album was released, and I just couldn't quite help wondering whether people who've only got into his music since the relative popularity of I'm Yours really count as fans.

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2008: A Year In Pictures

As a year draws to a close, its always tempting to look back over the last 12 months and consider how they've been. 2008 has been an eventful and enjoyable year for me, and I'd like to share a few snapshots of what my year has been like. These aren't necessarily the best photos I've taken, or even the most important events of the year, but they're a set of windows into the last few months which I hope you'll enjoy.

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Funk at the Junction

Here comes the third and final part of my series of posts about 10 days of intensive gig attendance I undertook at the end of last month. My friend Sarah and I went to see Jason Mraz at The Junction in Cambridge. OK, so the title is a bit misleading - Jason's music is not exactly funk. But there's definitely elements of funk, and I find Jason Mraz hard to categorise.

You've probably never heard of Jason Mraz (at least if you're reading in the UK), though he's aiming to change that soon I think. For the uninitiated, he's an avocado farmer in California.

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