Review: Ghostpoet - Some Say I So Light

Ghostpoet’s twitter bio states that he ‘could he happier.’ This feeling of restlessness coupled with the desire for something better seeps through all parts of his second album, the elliptically titled SomeSay I So I Say Light.

The Mercury award nominated artist (he doesn’t like to be referred to as a rapper or a MC for that matter) opens proceedings with the rather sombre and morose ‘Cold Win.’ The track begins with an ominous and throbbing electro beat as Ghostpoet pleads for someone to ‘show him the way.’ This desire to escape his surroundings is dealt with again on the album’s second track ‘Them Waters’ as the lyricist pleads for a mysterious higher power to ‘send him down the Thames.’

Despite some more upbeat moments like the sprightly guitar riff at the beginning of ‘Plastic Bag’ the album as a whole is a journey through the mind of a young man dealing with the topics that most young men struggle with, relationship failures (the catchy ‘Meltdown’) and a search for meaning and purpose in life (‘Sloth Troth’). These are heavy topics for sure but Some Say I So I Say Light is a thought provoking if slightly over long 52 minutes.

Musically the album takes its queues from Radiohead albums such as Kid A and Amnesiac or even more accurately Thom Yorke’s solo offering Eraser. ’12 Deaf’ is reminiscent of Amnesiac’s ‘Pyramid Song’ as Ghostpoet talks about ‘sleeping with the ocean’ over a menacing and portent piano. His delivery is similar to that of fellow Englishman Roots Manuva although some lyrics remain indecipherable even after many listens.

This seems like a deliberate decision and an attempt by Ghostpoet to maintain a level of intrigue and eeriness throughout the record. The landscape he paints is one of mystery through his opaque lyrics and industrial style production. His world is, by and large, filled with hardship in both his working and personal life. This might seem overly pessimistic but Ghostpoet is a man in touch with the general mood around him. He is aware of the economic doom and gloom that currently surrounds us and Some Say I So I Say Light is the album to listen to if you want to ponder on the difficulties of living in the current climate.

One positive note is, however, found right at the album’s end. Despite lyrics like ‘I feel like the whole world has turned its back on me,’ closer ‘Comatose’ finishes with a positively upbeat string section that could almost be described as euphoric. A pointer to happier times ahead perhaps.

7/10

Originally published here although I have now taken a mark off, mainly because I haven't listened to it a huge amount since the review.

http://campus.ie/ents/music/ghostpoet-album-review

Baseball, why do you hurt me so?

Baseball is ridiculous. Well, let me rephrase that. Baseball is ridiculous when you're trying to pick the winners of 15 baseball games in a row. That's what I've been doing on and off for about 3 summers now. It seemed so obvious and straight forward in the beginning. Baseball is a game where one player on each team has an enormous effect on the result, namely the pitcher. The pitcher has the power to influence the game more than any other one player in sport. More than a QB in American football, more than an out half in rugby.  The pitcher's influence is so great they end up with the win or loss against their own name. So in a game where 9 people compete against each other, one person get a W or L on their own personal record. When pundits discuss baseball they talk about a teams win/loss record in the same breath as a pitchers win/loss record. There is also the fact that, like all other American sports, a draw as a result does not exist in baseball and so only two outcomes are possible. Of course, this is factored in to the odds set by the bookies but still, it shouldn't be too hard to pick 15 winners when pitching is weighted so heavily, and then of course there's this:

In case your eyesight isn't what it used to be, that says potential returns of €10,197.82. Ten thousand one hundred and ninety-seven euro and eighty-two cent. All for the investment of €1. They are investment returns I like. So when I first stumbled across this I thought yes sir I shall invest €1 a day until I hit the the jackpot. Now I know that also means the odds of me winning are over 10,000/1 but still, there were only two outcomes, pitchers rule games so I just needed to do enough research, keep on slogging away with my euro a day and then eventually I'd be quids in, right?

Wrong. Well wrong so far that is. Now I wasn't naive enough to think I'd actually get 15 predictions spot on straight away or anything but I was naive enough to think I would eventually get lucky one day. Or I dared to dream at least. And that's where I am coming to the conclusion that baseball is ridiculous. It is incredibly hard to predict. I guess it is the sheer volume of games. All teams in the major leagues play 162 regular season games over the course of about 6 months. That's a game every 1.13 days. That's a lot. In those 162 games, players on the best teams are going to have bad days and vice versa for the players on the poorer teams. No one can keep up performance levels over that period of time. The best regular season record is held by the Chicago Cubs with a regular season win/loss record of 116/36. That was in 1906. The Washington Nationals ended up with the best regular season record last year which included losing 64 games!

I don't claim to be a baseball expert or anything, although I have watched my fair share having spent some Summers in America, but there seems to be an inordinate amount of luck involved in winning any one game. Even what seems like a sure thing (as much as that can ever be in sports) can blow up in your face. Take Justin Verlander. Widely regarded as one of, if not the, best pitcher in baseball. He won both the AL MVP and the Cy Young Award in 2011. He's not having the best season ever but his E.RA. is still a very respectable 3.50. 1 He also plays for the Detroit Tigers who are either the 5th or 9th best club in baseball at the moment, dependent on your view.  Last week he was pitching a game against the rather poor Chicago White Sox. The Tigers were at home. Verlander was 1/3 favourite. I had them picked as one of my bankers in my 15 team accumulator. They lost

Of course upsets can and do happen in every sport but they seem to happen with alarming regularity in

baseball.2 The St. Louis Cardinals currently hold the best record in baseball at 57 wins and 36 losses. The Houston Astros have the worst at 33/61. To put this in context, Man United ended up with just 5 losses all last year while QPR finished with just the 4 wins. The worst team in baseball could beat the best team 3 times in a row. No big deal. There's barely any rhyme or reason to it. But still I solider on.

Last Summer while I had a scary amount of free time I got to thinking. I knew I couldn't possibly cover all possibilities for 15 games and I'm sure no bookmaker worth his salt would make that financially viable but I wanted to know just how many outcomes there actually was. Not being too au fait with statistics I asked my brother. 32,768. That's how many outcomes there are in 15 games of baseball. Unperturbed, I spent a whole evening drawing up a plan of sorts. Not mathematically or statistically based, just on gut or a 'surely if I cover enough possibilities, something will hit.' Some might term it generic gambler I guess. I think I invested between €30 and €50 (I'm not willing to go back through my account to find the actual figures) and got so confused by all the possibilities I didn't really know what I was doing by the end. Still I went to bed that night thinking well there's always a chance, I've covered more possibilities than normal, all I need is a bit of luck and I'll wake up to a couple of thousand quid from Mr. Power. I didn't. It wasn't even that close as far as I remember. So maybe it's me who is ridiculous rather than the sport of baseball but regardless, I'm off to put on my €1 accumulator. 

Though of the day - Coughing and sneezing at the same time results in the most unsatisfying sneeze ever.

---

1 If you don't know what these stats, acronyms and funny names mean then why are you reading a blog called 'The Usual Baseballs'? I'm kidding, I don't have enough readers to do that. The AL MVP is the American League MVP. The Cy Young Award is the award for the best pitcher, there is one for both the American and National leagues. Finally an ERA is an earned run average. There are better and more accurate pitching stats but this is still seen as the go to grab all stat for pitchers.^↩


2 I use 'alarming' in a completely personal sense as no one cares a huge amount about what happens game to game in the regular season.
^↩

Tennis and the question of silence

Wimbledon's just finished. I watched it in passing until the final rounds when the British sporting public's desire for triumph began to reach new heights as Andy Murray looked like he might actually win the big gold pot. As you probably know, he did, and good for him. My natural British sporting bias made me cheer for Djokovic but I didn't really care and I was actually pretty happy for him in the end. 'Warrior' is one of those over used words in a sporting context but god, you could not fail to be impressed by his sheer desire to win coupled with his astonishing athletic ability. There will be hundreds of articles about the 'wait' being over (yes yes I know all about the Virginia Wade story) and how he now has a chance to become the world's best but I am more interested in something quite removed from Murray and his triumph. Something that I've often wondered about. Why do the crowd at a tennis match have to remain silent?

You tend to take these things for granted. People go bat shit crazy at football, rugby etc. People mix levels of boisterous activity with a more tranquil feel at games like cricket and baseball and then all of a sudden the crowd are required to be silent at snooker and tennis events. Snooker seems more obvious as there are very rare levels of noise during the game itself from the players involved, but tennis is just a noisier game in general (and getting noisier, anyone see Sharapova's 2nd round match against Larcher de Brito, Jesus wept).

Coming off watching a huge amount of NBA playoff games, I found it increasingly strange that the audience had to be quiet when you have people screaming, shouting, booing and waving those crazy balloon type things when a player is trying to make a free throw. It's similar to football when there's a penalty awarded. In a pressurised moment when a player has time to think and analyse what's going on, instead of just acting on instinct, the crowd do whatever they want which often involves trying to distract the player. Same as a hitter trying to concentrate on hitting a 90mph fastball in baseball. The crowd are not told to be quiet. Why are tennis players afforded such luxuries?

On first glance it seems like history, tradition and class have a lot to do with it. From a casual glance of the history of tennis Wikipedia page it seems the game was enjoyed by royalty, nobility, the military, and even the Bard himself, William Shakespeare, was a fan. The history of the game is rooted in upper class society. Shouting and screaming would have been frowned upon by those taking part in, and watching, tennis matches since the game was invented way back in the 12th century. Things have changed of course, but tradition has a way of sticking around. It may not be as elitist and as expensive to take up as golf but Wimbledon is attended every year by members of the Royal Family. Put it this way, the Queen does not go to Wembley for the FA Cup Final. A different type of person attends a tennis match than a football game and they are expected to behave in a slightly more reserved and controlled way.

So there's the class, etiquette and tradition factors which seem relatively obvious after some cursory research. But there seems to be other more technical points involved. The obvious one is that players need the silence to concentrate, but I don't think this holds much weight when you compare what players have to contend with in other sports. A more interesting reason could be to do with the importance for players to hear the ball as it connects with their opponents racket? Could this in some way affect how they move or set up for their next shot? Possibly, I haven't played the game enough to be able to speculate. This does, however, seem like the only obvious difference between tennis and other sports where a high level of concentration is required in particularly high pressurised moments.

And then I think about golf. It's an outdoor sport where the audience don't have to remain silent throughout a player's full round. They are, however, required to keep quiet at certain moments. Exactly like tennis. The players often get cranky when spectators make noise at inopportune moments and it is also a solo sport. Tennis players and golfers are out there on their own with no one else to get annoyed with except for the spectators and occasionally their opponent. Tennis and golf are also sports which require pin point accuracy and precision when it comes to striking a small ball with a larger object and obviously, they are both sports that attract (and I'm generalizing of course) a more upper to middle class clientele who might frown upon boorish or loutish behaviour.

So there are multiple reasons it seems. And after careful consideration, I don't buy any of them. Tennis and golf are two sports where the elite players are rewarded with some of the largest pay cheques in all of sports. Andy Murray got £1.6m for winning Wimbledon. Justin Rose got $1.44 for winning the US Open. That's huge money in any sport. Plenty of other players in all other sports deal with and overcome distraction, abuse, and general mania from fans. Tennis players should be no different. If anything, constantly requesting the fans to be silent makes it more likely that a player really will be distracted by a random scream or shout that they wouldn't even notice if there was general crowd noise. And if there was a constant level of noise we wouldn't have to hear the idiots who scream 'I love you Andy" and think they are hysterical. So come on tennis players, lighten up and deal with the odd bit of noise from people who adore you and pay huge sums of money to cheer you on.

Thought of the day - If you work in Boots and a perfectly nice person asks you where a certain type of deodorant is, wait till said person is out of earshot before you tell your co-worker that the deodorant in question is 'rotten'. 

The fun of starting a new job. Or not.

I started this blog with the idea of posting something new every day for the month of July. I thought they would be whimsical musings about every day life with smatterings of wit and insight cropping up on a regular basis. I thought I would sit on mountain tops and ponder the meaning of life while staring at the sun going down on another beautiful day and riff on the obvious metaphorical comparisons of the sun rising and setting each day and that of the life of a human being. Well for today, screw that.

The scene of the crime.

Today I want to write about an experience I had recently with the fine people of Eden Bar & Grill on South William Street. I wandered in there the other week with c.v's in hand and a smile on my face. To my surprise I was granted a quick interview with the manager as they happened to be looking for new staff. An uneventful interview followed wherein I answered standard interview questions with standard interview answers coupled with the usual amount of truth embellishment. The woman conducting the interview was professional and to the point, without being particularly friendly. (This was in stark contrast to another interviewer later in the day who seemed to be a bit too fond of me and at one point touched my knee with his hand, yes it was a man). Anyway, the charmless woman invited me back in to work a shift later in the week. There was no mention of money. No big deal I thought, just get your foot in the door, don't come across as crass and pushy by mentioning money straight away. She'll bring that up when you come in for your first day I'm sure.

A few days later I came back with another smile on my face and a crisp white shirt in place of the handful of c.v's. (As a quick aside, the decor and atmosphere of the place seemed lovely and the food certainly looked pretty good but as should be clear by now I didnt set out to write a particularly positive piece.) I got to work almost immediately by hauling bottles of wine from the cellar to the bar and then spent the majority of the evening making coffees, pouring glasses of wine, cleaning glasses etc. As I got to know the girl who was training me in I eventually realised I was on trial and I would not be receiving any payment. Now, I've started new jobs before, plenty of them in fact and there is always a trial period of some sort. However, it usually consists of more than one 8 hour shift and is also usually compensated by payment. Eden Bar & Grill do things differently.

Heartless manager not pictured 

As the night began to quiet down the 'woman devoid of personality' otherwise known as the manager approached and quickly told me I could leave and that she would call me the next day. No thank you. No mention of how I did, or indeed of how I had found my first night. About a half an hour before this I saw her having a  clandestine meeting in the corner with the girl I had worked with. At one stage there was a glance my way and suffice to say I didnt think things were going to end with a full time contract and pension benefits.

Now the thing is, I might not have been the greatest barman/cocktail waiter/glass cleaner they had ever seen as I just dont have the experience. I also made some rookie mistakes such as serving a chardonnay instead of a merlot (to a waiter I might add so no real disaster), forgetting to place a cooler with a bottle of white wine and just generally being a bit slow. So if they didnt feel like committing the time to train somebody then I suppose I cant really argue with that. (Although the girl who I worked with did mention she received two months training in cocktail making etc. before she started).

My point is that I did a night's work. I provided a service, a tangible effect on their business, a minuscule one of course but I didn't just stand behind somebody watching them work. I created value for them in my small way, by completing tasks that someone had to complete for the night to run smoothly. This deserves a certain degree of respect, of which I feel I was not the recipient of. I left that evening wondering whether I would receive a phone call asking me to come back the next day and I didnt feel too optimistic about my chances. Well, I'm still wondering. And that's bullshit.

Ok I'm not still wondering at all. They never called. They obviously decided they didn't want to hire me and couldn't be bothered to pick up the phone to extend me even the smallest degree of courtesy. Is that laziness?  Forgetfulness? Or just a general lack of respect shown by an employer to a potential employee? Was the fact that they got a free nights work from me not enough, did they feel the need to leave me waiting on a phone call for a few days as well? This whole 'trial' stuff is crap anyway, if somebody works, they deserve to get paid but that's not my main grievance. If you say you're gonna call somebody to let them know if they got the job. Just call them. Dont be a chicken shit. The first day in a new job is awkward enough and it doesn't need to be compounded by no pay and a complete lack of respect.

It feels good to have gotten that off my chest, however, this whole post could be summed up in a neat sentence. Eden Bar & Grill, Fuck You.


Thought of the day - Don't walk for over an hour and a half in suit shoes that you havent properly broken in, it will result in multiple blisters.

A new blog for a new month

This blog has been a while in the making. Well at least 6 months or so, which seems long enough when it's something that you can do pretty much any day at anytime. It's hard to blame other people for your lack of motivation in setting up a blog that you yourself want to do. Anyway, its here now, and again only I can be blamed for not keeping it updated regularly. Unless I get a fulltime job that pays me a huge salary with a built in section that strictly forbids blogging, then you can blame complicated work contracts if you feel the need to do so.

Which bring me on to my first topic. Probably a topic of first blogs everywhere - it's strange writing a blog to an audience that you positively know does not exist - I have only just come up with the name of this blog, it hit me while playing online poker (make of that what you will) and so there is not one other person on this planet who is aware of its existence. Maybe this is a platform to say something radically controversial and intentionally offensive. Or maybe not, not this week at least. I suppose the hope is that when I have graduated to bigger and better things people will flock to this first post and chuckle and guffaw at how witty and insightful it is, and how of course I was destined for bigger and better things. Much like I did with Ezra Koenig's old college blog recently. Or else it will end up as a common 21st century relic that litter the unforgiving planet internet - the enthusiastic blog started by a bright eyed and brushy tailed blogger only to be dumped by the wayside and left loveless after a few months or years.

I think this blog will be about sports mainly, possibly some thoughts on films and filmmaking and (in the style of Adam Carolla who I have been listening to a lot recently) a healthy dose of complaining about things, cos why not, it's my blog I can do what I want with it. I plan to post something every day for the month of July along with a post on Vine. Maybe the posts will interlink or refer to each other in some way but if i were a betting man (see above) I would say they probably wont.

That's about it, I wanna work out how I can get this noticed in some way so if anyone does end up reading this and is well versed in the area of blogging do let me know if there are some special techniques or skills I need to know about.


Thought of the day - If there was any chance listening to an ipod on an airplane could in any way affect  the safe landing of a plan, they wouldn't let you bring them on the plane.