This Music Monday, I’m featuring a Fall Out Boy video: Headfirst Slide Into Cooperstown On A Bad Bet off their latest album, Folie A Deux (and you can check out my review of Folie A Deux from earlier this year).

This is already one of my favourite Fall Out Boy videos, and it also features Brendon Urie and Spencer Smith from Panic At The Disco. If nothing else make sure you watch the video at 4:20 when they take the “dead” Pete Wentz on a roller coaster ride!

It’s not so much about the music (although this is one kick ass song) but really about the video. If you read the description from Vimeo, this was “filmed in four hours with no budget and no crew”. Gone are the days when music videos required extensive green screen effects and mindblowing budgets. The democratisation of media has really just made it dead simple to shoot and publish a video any time, anywhere, which hopefully scares the crap out of the music industry.

Folie a Deux

I’m a huge Fall Out Boy fan, so anytime a new album is released, it’s good news. As much as I enjoyed Infinity On High, I have a strong fondness for earlier albums From Under The Cork Tree and Take This To Your Grave. Musically, Folie A Duex is closer to them than Infinity On High, and that’s actually a good thing.

I didn’t have much time to listen to the whole album before my Vaio got knocked out and sent to the “doctor” but as a whole, the album is definitely a throwback to the old days.

My favourite track is “What A Catch, Donnie“, which has a section where the choruses of songs like “Dance Dance“, “Grand Theft Autumn“, “Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down” and their other bigger hits, and the choruses are sung by frontmen from other bands like Travis McCoy of Gym Class Heroes and Brendon Urie of Panic at the Disco. It’s a nice memoir to their earlier days, if you will.

The other thing I like about Folie A Deux, was how singles were released prior to the album on iTunes, in an attempt to build up interest and anticipation for the album. Also, a couple of days before the physical album was available, the entire album was available on MySpace, which I think was a fantastic move because it allows the hardcore fans to listen to it and direct their friends to the MySpace page to listen as well.

Fall Out Boy is also coming to Singapore in February. Give me a shout if you’re attending!

So over the weekend I caught the “Rockband live” tour featuring Panic At The Disco, Dashboard Confessional, Plain White T’s and The Cab in a faraway location in Toronto. It’s so faraway it’s technically not even Toronto anymore, but Missisauga.

My main issue with the concert was the amount of advertising shoved down our throats, but removing that from the equation, I still felt the concert was largely a disappointment.

The star of the show for me were the Plain White T’s. They really played their stuff with enthusiasm and I’m definitely going to check out their new cd.

Dashboard Confessional was… well, disappointing. I was never a big fan of theirs in the first place with the exception of “Hands Down”, which thankfully he sang, or else it’ll be Epic Fail.

It says a lot that I felt the best song by them was a cover of Pink’s “So What“, where they were joined on stage by the Plain White T’s and one member of The Cab.

I didn’t watch enough of Panic to say anything (had to catch the last train back to Toronto, which further pissed me off because if not for the ads, I could’ve watched the whole concert), but I guess they were okay.

The one thing the concert had going for them was the slick live videoing that was going on. This made sure that even if you’re not the type who likes to stand right in the middle of the “mosh pit” (like me), you’d still have a good view. (Watch the next video to get an idea what I’m talking about).

All in all, it has to be hands down the least enjoyable concert I’ve ever been to. It wasn’t bad, but I definitely feel like my money could have been better spent.

Wow this is obviously four days late and I can’t believe it. My excuse is that I had an assignment due on Monday and a presentation on Wednesday. Not truly excuses but anyways…

I’m going to break the format since this is a quick post.

First, I must say the idea of blogging all of this down was a good one. Whether or not anyone is reading, I did feel the pressure to get it done and write it down. Guess there’s an accountability involved when blogging.

Next up, I did get my work (at least the academic stuff) done for the week. I’m a little bit behind blogging for the personal site, but I should make up for it over the weekend.

On the social/weekend front, I’m traveling to Toronto tomorrow for a weekend of concerts, including Panic At The Disco, Dashboard Confessional, Plain White T’s and Metro Station. I’m going to try as much as possible to make it a “no work” weekend.

And on that note I’m going to wrap this up and hopefully the WR schedule will return to normal this Monday!

I’m posting this a day late because I did all this on paper but forgot to blog about it! Terrible me!

Reviewing last week’s goals:

• I did find an omlette recipe that worked well on Sunday, so I fulfilled cooking

• Earl Grey cookies were swapped for cranberry orange cookies which turned out fantastically. I really outdid myself this time.

• I’ve settled all the concerts, or at least the dates. Jason Mraz, Cobra Starship, The Hush Sound, Panic At The Disco and a very, very unlikely Metro Station (and I’m bummed about that)

• Managed to shove all the academic work into one Saturday afternoon and got that out of the way

• I literally went through and cleared about 200 bookmarks. Rss pruning will have to be pushed to this week.

All in all, I’m really happy about stuff last week!

On to the reviews:

1) Expenses Review
I didn’t blow my budget this week. Which is a good thing.

2) Social Review
Ottawa on Saturday is a possibility, but I haven’t decided yet. 4hrs to and fro in a cramped bus gets me really grumpy.

3) Learning Review
I finally did my Cult Of The Amateur review. Haven’t managed to read much of Web Analytics: An Hour A Day, but I should be ploughing through it this week slowly.

4) Goals for the week

• To marginally study for my Film 240 midterm in two weeks. It’s the same week as the Mraz concert, so I gotta start early

• Finish Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb, do a review, and move on to Saving Charlie (the Heroes book)

• Trim my RSS feeds

• Try making Nadnut’s potato salad

• Find a good multimedia theme for my personal blog (pictures, rss feeds, videos). Any recommendations?