Month: February 2018

For a while now I’ve been on a mission to discover new music. That might just be music that is new to me, or it might be actually new up and coming bands that I’ve not heard of, but I’ll happily admit that the recap of my musical year that Spotify provided was a bit of a shocker. We all have our own self-image but, musically at least, I didn’t think I was quite as mainstream as all that… stats never lie though, right?

For the last few years I’ve tended to rely on the same few sources; a mixture of random recommendations from friends and colleagues, the occasional blog post or album review here and there, but I always seem to fall back to the same two places for ‘new music’. namely BBC 6Music and Spotify.

6Music is definitely my touchstone and the place I’ve picked up new favourite artists the most. More recently though the “Discover Weekly” playlist by Spotify has thrown up some gems, but I know that, as it’s driven by my listening habits, it can get a bit samey and it’s not really expanding my musical tastes/vocabulary/library.

Looking at my upcoming gigs for the first half of the year I also realised my desire to find new artists isn’t just about finding new music to listen to, it’s about finding artists to connect with and the new experiences to be had there. With that in mind, and whilst I’m not against massive auditorium style (I have a couple planned already) I have found myself more and more drawn to smaller venues towards the latter part of last year and I can see that trend continuing.

Luckily Glasgow has a myriad of such places, the type of venue where you are never more than 40 feet from the performance (for Glasgwegians I’m classing King Tuts as the top ‘size’ end of this scale), places like The Hug & Pint, Broadcast, Stereo, and the 13th Note.

So how do I find these new artists?

Emails from ticket vendors helps – hat tip to See Tickets here as their ‘if you like X, you’ll like this band’ listings – and of course scouring Facebook has also turned up some gems, and when I say ‘scouring’ Facebook I of course mean I stalk a few people who are always out and about at gigs for bands I’ve never heard of, it’s great fun (and just in case, hi Stevie W, hi Angela B!). Equally, more and more artists and businesses use Facebook Pages to promote gigs, so I’ve started following as many of those as I can.

With all that in place I’ve now got quite a few more bands to listen to, and a rapidly expanding playlist of tracks to sample. Sure, it can be a bit hit or miss, but it’s fun spending time of an evening listening to random tracks and letting myself disappear down musical rabbit holes.

So far I’ll call out Cherry Glazerr, Car Seat Headrest, Gurr, Ghostpoet, Vultures and Zoe Bestel as ‘new discoveries’ that are worth a listen, and I’ve already got tickets to see one of them when they hit Glasgow.

How do YOU find out about new artists? Any tips or tricks to share? Or any new artists I should be checking out? Leave a comment, share the love.

Gym wanker post alert.

Last year I started going to the gym. I was doing a ‘BootCamp’ which was less ‘being shouted at by angry army types’ and a lot more ‘encouraged to push yourself during HIIT sessions’. There were two sessions at week, including a 9am start on a Saturday, and once I got into the habit, I got used to and, SHOCK HORROR, started to enjoy myself!

This year, they’ve changed the format and the name. Now it’s all about Team Training, which still includes HIIT within each session but with the addition of more ‘lift heavy stuff’ type training. It’s also moved to three sessions a week, and joy of joys we don’t start until 10am on a Saturday morning!

I’ve done a little bit of the ‘lift heavy things’ training in the past and each session is focused on a different discipline; Tuesdays are for deadlifts, Thursdays are for squats, Saturdays are for bench presses. Each coach has taken the time to make sure our technique is right (so we don’t injure ourselves) and the challenge each week is to add a little more weight; around 2.5kg is all they are looking for which is very do-able (so far!).

To keep track of our progress we are logging what weights we are lifting so it’ll be interesting to look back in a few months and see some difference as we start to build more and more muscle tone. We are already a month in and it’s been good to mix things up a bit.

It’s also been interesting over the past year to look back at my original goals and see what matters to me now.

When I signed up for the first BootCamp it was all about losing weight. I was sick of being 17st (almost 18st at one point). In the first couple of months I lost some weight, but since then I’ve plateau’d but importantly, I realised I didn’t care. Whilst my weight has remained about the same, my trouser size has dropped from a ‘tight’ 40″ waist to an ‘almost there’ 36″. Ohhh and I can do press-ups now, like, more than 1.

I still weigh myself, just not every week, and the less I care about that number, the more I seem to be noticing other changes. As new muscles develop and my body slowly changes shape I can start to focus in on the main goal; goodbye beer belly!

I have quieter aspirations for my fitness – get to the gym 4 times a week if I can – and I’ve also signed up for Pedal for Scotland again so I’ll need to juggle getting out on my bike for some training runs (and yes, I’ve no doubt I’ll be cycling to and from the gym at some point too).

As a baseline then, I’m hoping that attending Team Training three times a week should help me break the current plateau I appear to be stuck on. I’m eating better and, as part of the Team Training classes includes help with Nutrition goals then in theory all bases are covered.

And yes, I’m deliberately posting this in February because this is not a New Year resolution, this is a journey that I started last year and which, by this time next year, I’m hoping still to be on.

I wonder what my goals will be then?

If you are interested in attending a gym that is focused on inclusivity, has no mirrors, no grunting muscle men, and supportive, friendly, realistic trainers then I can highly recommend AG Fitness.