All posts by Armin Grewe

Hi, it's just me.

Bass Drum of Death – Get Found

The song is over a decade old, but I only came across it a few weeks ago. It’s been on heavy rotation ever since and probably will be for quite some time. I love the “dirty” sound, the guitar riff, the banging drums, the pounding bass. And the band name is pretty cool as well.

Bass Drum of Death – “Get Found” (Official Video)

What do you think, do you like it?

PS: I probably should write a Bands New To Me entry about them, they have a few more nice tunes…

Ugly Pop: Skating Polly

I’m not entirely sure when I discovered Skating Polly (Kelli, Peyton and Kurtis), I think probably somewhere around 2018 or 2019. In other words, before I started my Bands New To Me series/category. But with their latest song having just been published I decided to give them a dedicated entry with some of my favourite songs by them, starting with the latest:

Skating Polly – Hickey King (Official Video)

In a similar noisy style, but also with beautiful layered vocals:

Skating Polly – Hail Mary (Official Video)

But they also have a different side, voice, piano and guitar:

Skating Polly – Don’t Leave Me Gravity (Official Video)

Back to noisier sounds from their New Tricks EP with two famous guests, Nina Gordon & Louise Post of Veruca Salt:

Skating Polly – Louder In Outer Space (Official Video)

Enjoying Hollywood life while not moving to Hollywood or joining the Hollywood crowd:

Skating Polly – Hollywood Factory (Official Video)

Another of their older songs, I love the bass line in this one, as well as the pounding and rattling drums:

Skating Polly – Pretective Boy (Official Video)

The second to last song is another quiet one with just Kelli and Peyton singing while playing the piano (and some light drums):

Skating Polly – A Little Late (Official Video)

And to close some pure simple noise from before Kurtis joining with just a basitar and drums (and of course voice):

Skating Polly – Stop Digging (Official Video)

I could have picked many more, but I had to draw the line somewhere and leave you to discover more yourself: Skating Polly website, Skating Polly YouTube channel

Yay, a new Skating Polly song!

It’s loud, it’s noisy, it has guitar, is has bass, it has drums. And a fun video. All is good.

Skating Polly – Hickey King (Official Video)

Unfortunately never wrote a Bands New To Me post about them (I started that series later), so can’t link to more from them (yet). Have to think about a series Bands I Discovered A While Ago series. And catch up on 2022.

Social media digging its own grave by prioritising paid customers?

A few days ago I was reading a Bloomberg Tech Newsletter with the title Meta, Twitter Subscription Plans Risk Turning Off Everyday Users. Twitter had its paid subscription for some time, since the Elon Musk take over that’s been accelerated. Meta (Facebook) is implementing a similar plan now. Both apparently driven by shrinking advertising revenue. So far, so understandable. What I’m wondering about is hidden in these two paragraphs:

Still, what I find most telling about these subscription offerings is that the platforms will soon prioritize content from paying users over others. It’s a reminder that social networks have evolved away from the original premise of being a place to see mostly posts from your “friends and family.” They are instead focusing on attracting a certain kind of person – the creator – who makes fun skits or videos or blog posts.

Professional creators seeking more eyeballs have historically had to pay for advertising. Now, there’s another way — and the content that rises to the top because it was made by subscribers may not actually be as entertaining or interesting.

Meta, Twitter Subscription Plans Risk Turning Off Everyday Users

Both Facebook and Twitter are already full with advertising (or as they call them, “sponsored posts”), often of very dubious quality. If to that the algorithms will add the posts of paying users, or as they call it, will prioritise that content, will that not make the timeline of the average non-paying user even more unappealing as the updates from their friends will almost disappear?

What are the chances of this turning off the average non-paying users? Which in turn would mean the paying users hoping to get more impressions not getting what they are hoping for as well as the advertisers not getting their ad views, further reducing advertising revenue for the social media companies.

Are they hoping to convert more non-paying users to paying users in order to improve their timeline? I doubt that, considering they have been conditioned to “free” for many years, even decades. So could this make average users to reduce their social media time? Which in turn could also turn off the above mentioned paying users as their prioritised posts are reaching fewer people? Making the social media companies losing even more revenue?

Will be interesting to see how this develops over the coming years I think.

Wide Eyes – The Big Moon

Two years ago I mentioned The Big Moon in my Bands New To Me series. They are obviously not new to me any more, but I still love them just as much as when I discovered them, if not more. Their third album is about to be released and even though the topic of it isn’t something I can relate to I love the first single from it:

The Big Moon – Wide Eyes

The Guardian has a great interview with them, a very interesting read I think (explaining why I can’t relate to the topic of Wide Eyes). The first two singles released from it (Trouble is the second one) make me look forward to the album release in October.

PS: if you were to ask me for my favourite artist for their videos, The Big Moon is most likely to at least be among the top 3, more likely the winner. It is mentioned in the interview, the video to Take A Piece I think is brilliant. But there are plenty other brilliant videos by them. Don’t know how they do it, but they just continue to deliver as far as I’m concerned.