November 19th, 2008 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Music
I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to avoid blogging on the various activities of ex-blink 182 members including the plain crash that killed 4 and only left Travis Barker and DJ AM surviving, however the lastest post on Mark Hoppus’ blog himynameismark.COM is too much to resist!
in the midst of everything else that has happened lately, tom, travis, and i have all spoken together. first through a number of phone calls, and then a couple of weeks ago we all hung out for a few hours. they’ve all been great, very positive conversations. we’re just reconnecting as friends after four years of not talking. it’s a good thing. obviously the first question for a lot of people will be “does this mean a blink-182 reunion?” the answer is none of us know. we haven’t talked about it at all. right now it’s just good for the three of us to see one another, reconnect, and let the past be the past. the events of the past two months supersede everything that happened before. life is too short.
It’s good to hear they’re talking again, I know it doesn’t mean a blink 182 reunion but who knows what the future holds, at the moment from the ashes of Blink 182 we have Angels and Airwaves (Tom) and Plus-44 (Mark & Travis) who are both really good…however there is still something missing from pop-punk world without blink (although apparantly Good Charlotte are aiming to fill the void - link)
I know I never even said I was going but it’s been such a busy 8 days…last thursday I went to Sheffield to see Jo for the weekend, I returned home at 11:30 on Monday and left for Letton Hall at 12:30 on monday!
So the last few days I’ve been a leader on The CROPS Trust’s Letton Hall houseparty with around 70 young people and it’s been a brilliant funny and challenging few days.
I had the opportunity to lead worship on the first night which I really enjoyed, it’s great to lead in different settings and it was nice to have a bit more freedom on songs, styles and repeats!
I was also asked to lead a seminar on ‘How to read, understand and apply the bible’ and in planning that I found myself challenged and hopefully the seminar provided some useful stuff for young people…at some point I shall try and post all my notes online!
One of my favourite bits of Letton was the ‘Half Hour Hold’…a half hour slot each day of silence…It was great having a chance just to listen to nothing, to be able to read the bible a bit more and just ponder various thought…I highly recommend silence!
Anyway usual blogging should resume from now on!
September 22nd, 2008 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Music
I’m not a massive fan of pop music however having spent a week of having ‘Fascination’ stuck in my head I thought I’d purchase Alphabeats ‘This is Alphabeat’ and I feel like I made a good choice. The album is fairly standard pop with a bit of a 70/80’s feel however it has such a feel good feel about it you can’t help but like it!
Most the tracks on the album are good with ‘Fascination’, ‘10,000 Nights’ and ‘Boyfriend’ (the three singles from the album) really standing out.
September 15th, 2008 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Music, Worship Leading
Last night I was leading worship at church and in order to try something that little bit different I decided to try an ‘unplugged’ worship set.
So the usual singers, pianist, drummer (usually me) and bassist were given the night off and with 2 guitars and a bongo we did a more chilled out worship set.
I also introduced the song ‘You never let go’ by Matt Redman which seemed to work well.
If you’re remotely interested here is the ’set list’ we used for worship unplugged.
How great Thou art, You never let go, Strength will rise, the highest and greatest, You chose the cross & Who is there like you?
If you lead worship in a church give a unplugged evening a go sometime!
September 12th, 2008 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Just For Fun, Music, Worship Leading
Recently I’ve been leading more worship at church and also I’ve been listening to a lot more Five Iron Frenzy and it strikes me that worship songs tend to be very similar, all full of the same kind of language and all making very similar (yet worthy) points about God, however very rarely do you find a worship song with anything profound….I should add that by worship song I’m thinking of people like Matt Redman, Tim Hughes, Stuart Townsend, Ben Cantelon etc.
Although musically Tim Hughes and Matt Redman’s current albums are brilliant and will set a new goal for quality in Christian worship music the lyrics lack anything new.
This is where Five Iron Frenzy come in….I’ve been listening to a lot of their ‘Electric Boogaloo’ album which I believe is one of their best and the lyrics of the song ‘Far, Far Away’ have really struck me, they’re not overly profound but they seem to take a very different angle than the lyrics our average church songs take…so here they are:
Staring at the shoreline
wishing for some hope
the weight of empty fishing nets
is more than twisted rope
And underneath stern faces
they wait with baited breath
with broken hearts from hoping
while casting out their nets
See the figure on the shore
He speaks His words like plain men sing
His hands they still have holes in them
glory to the King
[Chorus:]
Can you hear the bells are ringing
far, far, away?
Can you hear the voices singing
far, far, away?
I know that one day soon a song shall rise
you’ll hear it with the sleep still in your eyes
And Peter was a liar
a traitor just like me
and Judas was a hypocrite
and Paul a Pharisee
When truth can be so distant
and hope evades our reach
Peter swam across the water
and found it on the beach
I hear they’ll hang you upside down
stretched across two boards
for hearing distant voices
and crossing to the Lord
The thing with this song is that theologically it’s brilliant, at the same time I think it puts things in a very different way….I hope you like the lyrics as much as I do.
I wonder if there’s a place for songs like that in church worship?
July 10th, 2008 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Joanna, Music
On tuesday night Jo and myself saw Ben Folds live in Sheffield, it was a brilliant gig with Ben playing all the classics, making up some spontaneous songs and taking requests…it’s the best gig I’ve been to in a long time.
I got some good videos too and i’m working on youtubing them, however there’s some photos in the photo section of this blog and here are a couple of the best ones I took.
July 8th, 2008 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Joanna, Just For Fun, Music
I’m in Sheffield and now heading down to the Carling Acadamy with Jo to see Ben Folds!
YAY! …Pictures to follow soon
July 2nd, 2008 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Just For Fun, Music
I got back to sunny Hemsby yesterday for the summer…it’s nice having a break and being back around.
I shall be spending my summer working at Haven, however have a week until then so have been spending more time playing with instruments and microphones.
My plan for the summer is to record 12-14 tracks in full using my trusty mac and a variety of instruments and weird noises….today the fun began!
I managed to get all but vocals done for one song (I’m going to have a vocals day where I do loads of vocals), I’ve also started playing around with concepts for another song, the intro for which has involved two guitars and a packet of breadcrumbs (which made a brilliant shaker), it’s all getting experiemental…but very very fun! 
I like music!
June 3rd, 2008 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Just For Fun, Music
I have excitedly just pre-ordered the new Relient K EP ‘The Bird’s and The Bee Sides’, I say EP but actually it’s over 70 minutes along because the band have packed so much onto it…plus they are giving another whole host of songs away as downloads when you buy the album…they have been busy boys!
In other news I’m seeing Ben Folds in Sheffield in just over a month which I’m pretty excited about too….so much musically is happening! yay!
May 21st, 2008 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Music
One disadvantage (perhaps) of my MacBook transfer (see this post) was that I no longer had the use of Macromedia’s Dreamweaver which I used to use for all my web design in Windows…however every cloud has a silver lining and the lining here was that since using a text editor to edit sites rather than Dreamweaver my hand coding and knowledge of HTML, PHP, CSS and MySQL has improved which I’m so happy about.
I’m still in the process of making the new Stand For Christ however today got distracted with updating all the coding for Park Baptist Church’s website (my home church for which I run/build the website), as a consequence all the icky dreamweaver code has been replaced by more simple yet more effective Tiddy-Code! Check out the slightly new looking Park Baptist Church website here
May 13th, 2008 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Just For Fun, Music
May 10th, 2008 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Just For Fun, Media, Music
April 19th, 2008 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Just For Fun, Music
I’m having a bit of an Oasis portfolio day today and a day of work wouldn’t be complete without background music! Most readers will know for a few months now I’ve been listening to my itunes A to Z, it’s been a crazy adventure so far…I’ve had the chance to listen to some awesome music I’d completely forgotten about, rediscovered some bands and realised the the occasional band actually only have one good song!
However as I portfolio my day away I am on L and L is for Less than Jake…who are the most awesome Ska-punk band ever…Five iron frenzy are great as are Reel Big Fish, the O.C. Supertones are okay but none of them have the rawness that Less Than Jake…it’s such happy music…everyone head over to www.myspace.com/lessthanjake
March 25th, 2008 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Music
Today my itunes tour has me on the letter H (one of my shorter letters) and currently I am being played some ‘Hawk Nelson’. Everytime I hear them I seem to have forgotton how good they are…smile it’s the end of the world is such a great punk rock album…and Hawk Nelson are Christian so it’s all good!
Give them a listen…they have a new album out april!
January 21st, 2008 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Music
You may remember that a few days ago I commented that I was listening to my itunes library A to Z…yesterday I hit B and so I’ve been listening to Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys. I remember being slightly dubious about buying the album, initially I purchased it for two reasons. 1- Matt Thiessen of Relient K lists it as one of the best albums of all time and 2- It has Sloop John B on…a song relient K covered in their acoustic set at the Capitol Records Studios.
The more I listen to the album the more I realise how advanced it is for the time it was made…and more to the point how much of a masterpiece it is, every song on the album is amazing, it’s so much better than all the commercialised beach boys stuff like Good vibrations.
