Welcome to this week’s IAAO email

What makes a perfect tune? Every day we listen to music, some of it is good and some of it is bad, but what makes it good? How we feel when we listen to it? Is it the beat? Is it the vocal? Is it the style or genre?

I’ve touched on this before but closing ourselves to certain music because “we don’t like that style” is being very closed minded. Think of a particular genre you don’t like, let’s say R&B, think of how many years that genre has been going and think how many songs that genre has churned out over those years. We are talking thousands, hundreds of thousands. How can we say we don’t like it when really we haven’t listened to every last song that the genre has given to us? Could it be that maybe there is at least a few songs that if we heard we might actually like?

Classical music for instance all sounds the same (correct me if I’m wrong here) so if you say you don’t like classical, it generally is true, but, how many of you watched the film platoon and heard “Adagio for Strings” by Samuel Barber and liked it? I know I did because it was a very powerful piece of music for that particular scene in platoon. So for me to say I don’t like classical music is a contradiction.

Look at the genres that have sub genres, there isn’t actually that many. How can we say we don’t like that music if we haven’t heard it all? If we haven’t heard the different elements to the various sub genres? For someone to say “I don’t like that genre” really annoys me because you have probably heard one style and not all the sub genres.

I remember once when I said I didn’t like Techno. The reason is because I heard a techno track and instantly put a label on it that I didn’t like it. That was until I heard a track and really liked it. I found out what it was and when I also found out it was a techno track I was really surprised. For all those years I put the “I don’t like it” label on it, I could have discovered a massive amount of good tracks. Techno of course has many sub genres and each sub-genre is unique and doesn’t sound like (what I thought) a typical Techno track should sound like.

Could it be that really, we are fans of all styles and genres if the mood and circumstances are right?

The long Good Friday charity event kicked off in Fine style on Friday 22nd April, as I have mentioned before it is all for charity and every donation however big or small makes a difference to someone’s life. If you haven’t donated already or haven’t checked out some of the shows and DJ’s playing this 4 day event on Renegade Radio, then it isn’t too late to get involved. More details can be found here: Renegade Radio Presents: Long Good Friday Charity Event, Episode 4 - A New Hope

A few of the shows from Friday and Saturday are now available to download if you missed them. I did a show on Friday and it was a 2 hour megamix, you can grab it here: http://www.its-all-about-oldskool.co...-radio*-18948/

Curly;s show from Friday can be had here: Curly & Cautious - The Long Good Friday...

And dodders show from Saturday can be found here: Dodders - Long Good Friday set 23-04-11

Robbie Dee’s show and DJ Nee’s show will be available soon. If you missed those then make sure you grab them.

Don’t forget if you are on Facebook and haven’t joined our new Facebook page yet, then point your browser here: Its All About Oldskool | Facebook and get joined up.

IAAT had a database crash today due to a few corrupt tables. Luckily I was able to restore it from a back-up which I had. It made me realise the importance of a back-up. I usually back-up IAAO and IAAT on a monthly basis but I think one every 2 weeks is now in order. I certainly don’t want to risk losing the site and its content if it can be helped. We had a scare last year which got sorted out. At least if something does happen, we can always rely on the back-up that we make.

This will be the last weekly email for a few weeks as I’m off to China this Thursday (28th April) for a few weeks. I can’t wait. I’ve mentioned it before but if you do run into any problems, then please get in touch with Danril or RenegadeGenius who will only be too happy to help.

Have a great few weeks and I’ll see you when I get back.

China