All posts by Kev Brock

I'm a musician, singer/songwriter, blogger, writer, poet, bodybuilder, movie lover, music lover, video gamer, history/political buff, conservative/republican, etc. I like to do a lot of things.
music

Amy Winehouse death gets mixed reactions online…

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Some are sad and they grieve over her death. Some just don’t care. Some are glad that she’s gone. I look at all of this, and I’m thinking to myself like, “Really?” To the ones that don’t care, I find it pretty disrespectful in Amy’s honor. Yet, everyone grieved over the death of Heath Ledger, when he had a drug addiction too. Heath died of a drug overdose, yet people seem to feel sorry for him and not Amy. See what’s wrong with the picture?

I’m sad over her death because it reminded me of someone in my life who died of drugs at a young age. Drug addicts can’t help for what they are. It’s a hard demon to get rid of.

On top of that, folks, I wouldn’t call this a drug overdose yet. You shouldn’t really jump into speculation, because what if she didn’t die of drugs at all? Maybe she had a terrible accident and got really sick. I thought it would be drugs sure, like everyone else, but you never know when they do the autopsy and get the toxicology reports in. She may have even died pretty clean, ya never know.

I’m sad over her death because I loved her music and a die hard fan. Like her or not, she was talented. Her death was tragic. She’s a sad loss in the music world, agree with it or not.

Drug addicts are human beings and they should be treated like one, despite the problems.RIP Amy.

Kev

Celebrity/musician deaths

RIP: Amy Winehouse 1983 – 2011

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Amy Winehouse began singing at the age of 9, after taking interest in singing after her father, Mitchell Winehouse would sing around the house. Mitchell would sing Amy, Frank Sinatra songs as a child and her interest in singing grew from there. Her family later sent Amy to Susi Earnshaw Theatre School for further training on Amy’s singing. Amy began playing guitar at the age of 13 and started to write her own songs. She was mostly interested in jazz and soul music.

In 2003, she was signed to a major label and released her debut album, “Frank”,  which was pretty successful and critics gave it positive reviews. In 2006, she teamed up with Mark Ronson and they wrote two songs together, “Rehab” and “You Know I’m No Good”. Those songs were later included on Amy’s album “Back To Black” which went to No. 7 on the Billboard 200.

For years, she had struggled with drug addiction & alcohol. She also had problems in her personal life with her ex-husband, Blake Fielder-Civil and she suffered mental health problems. Amy Winehouse was found dead today in her London home, she was 27 years old. She now joins the list of musicians who died at 27 such as Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain.

Sad loss to the music industry but she had it coming. She’s in a better place now.

Kev

music, Uncategorized

Did social media change the way we all look at music???

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Whether it’s local music or national music, seems like all bands and artists have joined the social media bandwagon. All musicians & bands seem to have their own official website, blogs, twitter, facebook, etc. In the past, myspace used to be a big hit with music, but people are no longer interested in myspace anymore. These days it’s all blogs, twitter, and facebook when bands are promoting themselves.

What is it about everyone joining the social media bandwagon?

Not only that it’s an easy way to promote yourself like your gigs, project announcements, etc. Bands & artists see it as an opportunity to interact with their fans in a more personal way. Bands have been chatting back and forth with their fans in social media pages lately.

Back in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, and even the 80’s, when there was no internet around, it made music promoting a lot harder. Back in those days, you had to use flyers to hang in town and mailing lists by regular mail if you wanted to promote your music. Newspapers and magazines were also used to  promote music in those days. Today, it seems that music promoting is much easier.

I’m not trying to sound negative, but I’m going to be honest here. I think the internet pretty much killed the music business. Nobody is buying records anymore because of it. Everyone is doing everything online these days.

It seems that more bands are getting record deals because of the internet but is that a good thing? No, not really. I miss the old days of music when the A&R guy used to go to a band show and just sign a band to a major label because he/she likes their music, that’s how it used to be done in the old days, but it’s not like that anymore. These days labels sign bands based on their popularity alone, not caring if their music is good or not.

I miss the old school ways of promoting music and wish it was still like that. I know I’m sounding like a hypocrite, that I do this social media thing myself, but I do it because everyone else is doing it. I’ll never forget the quote from John Mellencamp, “I think the internet is the most dangerous thing invented since the atomic bomb.”, or something like that.

It’s easier for bands online to make themselves look popular when in reality, a lot of them are nothing. Bands have been releasing free music to the internet like what Radiohead have been doing as of late and a lot of bands have been making their own youtube videoblogs.

Self publicity is great, don’t get me wrong, but I believe the internet has taken the love of music away from bands & musicians itself. Social media has certainly changed the way we all look at music, but honestly, it didn’t help, it only makes the music business much much worse.

Kev

TV

Cool Video: “Walking Dead – Season 2” looks way better than the first!!!

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Oh hell yeah! Oct. will be a great month for TV. “Walking Dead” and then “Dexter”!!! WOOT! I’m very excited for both shows! The “Walking Dead – Season 2” trailer you see here was shown at San Diego Comic Con which is happening this weekend.

Enjoy. The trailer is a good long 4 minutes or over with plenty of great footage! Man, I can’t wait! Psyched! Love this fucking show!

Kev

movies

Cool Video: Steven Soderbergh’s “Haywire” looks like a great action flick!!!

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Wow! Steven Soderbergh’s new movie, “Haywire” which stars Strikeforce fighter, Gina Carano looks very very good! I’m sold! I will definitely see this one in January! I’m a big fan of Steven Soderbergh films, he’s the same guy that made films such as the “Oceans” trilogy, “Traffic”, and many other films.

Enjoy! Looks badass and a lot of fun!

Kev

Videogame news

Report: Freddy Kreuger will be playable character for new “Mortal Kombat” game Aug. 9th…

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On Aug. 9th, Freddy Kreuger will be a playable character for you to download for the new “Mortal Kombat” game. It will cost $4.99 to download from the PSN store.

More on it, here.

In my opinion, it doesn’t really fit, and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense at all. Freddy is only seen in people’s dreams but whatever, it’s only a game, I guess.

They need to make a new Freddy Kreuger game somewhere down the road.

Kev

 

TV

Cool Video: “Dexter – Season 6” trailer is finally here!!!

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Well, here it is. “Dexter – Season 6” trailer finally hits the internet this weekend. Looks pretty good. Even though “Season 4” is the best season so far, I don’t know if any other season will be able to top it. I still haven’t seen “Season 5”, but it’ll be coming out on DVD in late August.

Dexter Season 6 will start airing in Oct., so I’ll make sure I order the Showtime channel before then. I’m such a huge fan of the show.

Kev

movies

Film Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 2 ***spoilers***

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Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham Carter

Directed by: David Yates

Last night, I finally went and saw the new Harry Potter flick, “The Deathly Hollows – part 2”, here is my review…

Plot/Synopsis: Leaving right off from part 1, Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley continue their adventures on the hunt for the last of Voldermort’s horcruxes, which are the items that turned Voldermort immortal. Voldermort finds out about their mission and continues his obsession on wanting to kill Harry Potter.

I thought it was pretty good, but honestly, not the best of the Harry Potter franchise. I was most impressed with the action scenes and the special effects. The action scenes were a lot of fun to watch. They were pretty violent action scenes too.

The special effects were very impressive. Yes, all of the Harry Potter films had great special effects, but the special effects in this movie was the best. There is one scene where you have to watch out for, that will give you this blinding special effects. I don’t want to give out spoilers but this is just a hint. The special effects will open your eyes for sure.

Other things I liked about the film. I thought the Neville Longbottom scenes were the most impressive, in fact, that character was the most important plot point of the whole movie. I also thought Severus Snape was very well done. In this movie, we see a different side of Snape that we haven’t seen before in the earlier movies. This movie will reveal more stuff about Snape that we never knew about before. I also liked the final confrontation of Harry Potter and Voldermort at the end, their fight scene was good, but wish it could have been a little longer and more intense.

The things I didn’t like about the film was that the writing had some slight problems. It really didn’t follow the book. It changed things around the story and left some stuff out. Things they left out: Fred’s death, Harry & Luna in the common room, Snapes & Dumbledore’s memories were rushed and left out the most important stuff, they didn’t show the death of Bellatrix Lestrange in which the book Molly Weasley was the one who killed Bellatrix (I couldn’t believe they left that out), in the books Harry teams up with Draco Malfoy at the end and they really didn’t show much of that in the movie.

Harry Potter and “Deathly Hollows part 2” was pretty good, but nothing special. I just wish it could have been written better. If I was to pick which is the best movie of the whole series, I would have to say, “The Half Blood Prince” was the best film.

Score for “Harry Potter & the Deatlhy Hollows part 2” = ** (2 stars as in “okay”)

Kev

movies

Film Review: “Transformers: Dark of the Moon”

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Starring: Shia Labeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whitelay, John Turturro, John Malkovich, and Tyrese Gibson.

Directed by: Michael Bay

Today on this extremely hot day, I decided to go to the mall to check out, “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” in 3D. I wasn’t going to see this one in theater, I was going to wait for DVD, but since this movie is getting great reviews, I decided to check it out anyway. I’m a huge Transformers fan. Loved the action figures and the cartoon series. It’s just that I felt that Michael Bay ruined the Transformers legacy by making crap movies. The first two Transformers movies weren’t that good at all, I didn’t like them.

On with my review…

Plot/synopsis: In 1961, The Ark, a Cybertronian spacecraft has been found on the Earth’s moon by Autobots. President John F. Kennedy orders NASA to go to the moon to investigate this spacecraft. In present time, Optimus Prime finds a comatose Sentinel Prime (voiced by Star Trek’s, Leonard Nimoy), and Optimus Prime goes back to Earth to help revive him. Optimus Prime tries to talk Sentinel in rejoining the Autobots but Sentinel refuses and betrays the Autobots, joining the Decepticons of the Cybertronian race. The Cybertronian race is where the Autobots vs. the Decepticons race to the moon to see who gets to discover the secrets of the Ark first.

Enough with the plot. On with my thoughts…

Since I didn’t like the first two “Transformers” films, I’ll have to be honest that I was very impressed with “Dark Of the Moon”. This is definitely a winner for Michael Bay. I guess he re-watched the first two films and thought to himself, “Geez, I better make the next Transformers movie a good one”. Well, he did exactly that. I absolutely loved, “Dark of the Moon”. It’s a major improvement from the first two movies, so congrats to Michael Bay on a job well done.

Why was it so good? Well, it’s less family friendly. The film was very dark and violent all the way through. The reason the first two “Transformers” films didn’t work because they were too family friendly comedy, that’s NOT Transformers. Plus, the second movie was just so bad and the material was so offensive and racist.

In “Dark of the Moon”, while I don’t like Shia Labeouf as an actor, he was actually enjoyable in this movie, plus he didn’t hog too much screen time like he did in the first two films. Other things I liked about the film, I loved Leonard Nimoy voicing the villain of Sentinel Prime, Leonard did a great job. I also thought the CGI and special effects were very visual and realistic. It wasn’t as cartoonish.

Plus, the whole movie is just a lot of fun overall. It was action packed, all the way through. The plot and the writing was decent as well. The plot for the third movie actually stayed true to the Transformers franchise. I also love how the movie is 2 and a half hours long. Michael Bay finally did his homework and made a Transformers movie the right way, the way it’s supposed to be.

I really loved it! Good job, Michael!

Score for “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” = **** (4 stars as in “excellent”)

Kev

Health and Fitness

All I want to be is a happy person these days…

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It’s true. That’s all I ever want to be is a happy person these days, so I’m doing my very best to keep my life as positive as possible. Life is too short to be around negativity. Well, there you go, there’s another reason right there, why I got into fitness & bodybuilding. It’s a good stress reliever. Exercise and fitness helps you get away from the negative things in your life. If you get too much drama & bullshit in your life, fitness will make you feel happier. It really does work. Bodybuilding takes your mind away from everything else.

Yes, there are still negative people and haters online, that will try their best to put me down, but notice how quickly I brush all that off? It’s because I don’t have time for negativity anymore. I want to concentrate on positive things from this point on. That’s why you’ve been seeing me being a positive person as of late.

Karma is the word. You do or say bad things, bad things will happen to you. If you do happy & positive things, good things will happen to you. I choose to be a good person because I choose to be that way. Of course, there will always be some people that think I’m a badguy, but I don’t have the time to care.

I’m just being myself and being who I want to be. Bodybuilding sure did made me a different person. It made me a more confident and stronger person.

Kev