Research into Indie genre.

Indie is a term used to describe independence from major commerical record labels and has a "Do It Yourself" attitude.
During the 1950's and 60's major record companies had so much power that it became virtually impossible for independent labels to become established. This was due to the best artists on the independent labels either failing to make it commercially and dieing out or by being snapped up by the big money spending major record companies.
Punk rock gave independent labels a huge boost during the 80's as there were hundreads of different acts pouring into the music industry this resulted in the first UK Indie chart. From this point onwards the independent music industry became better organised.

Jamie T Analysis

Jamie T

Jamie T is an english singer/songwriter from wimbledon in south london. He is currently signed to Virgin Records, but released his Betty and the Selfish Sons EP on his own Pacemaker Records label. His backing band are called The Pacemakers and he has lately been touring, advertising and releasing material as "Jamie T and The Pacemakers".

He supported both the Ordinary Boys during their 2006 tour, and went on to defeat Jarvis Cocker and Thom Yorke to win the Best Solo Artist at the 2007 Shockwave NME Awards. He has also been nicknamed "one man Arctic Monkey". Canvas Magazine have described him as "like the bastard lovechild of Billy Bragg and Mike Skinner doing his best Joe Strummer impression"
On 17 July 2007, Jamie T's debut album Panic Prevention was shortlisted as one of the 12 nominees for the Mercury Prize. Panic Prevention has also received frequent name-checks in the ‘best albums of the decade’ lists, including: #13 out of 50 in Observer Music Monthly and #53 out of 100 in NME magazine.

Analysis of The Charlatans.

The Charlatans



The band originally formed in the West Midlands by bassist Martin Blunt, who recruited fellow West Midlanders; Rob Collins (keyboards), Jon Brookes (drums), John Baker (guitar) plus vocalist Baz Ketley, who was almost immediately replaced by Tim Burgess. They formed in 1988 and released they're final album in 2006.
The band are famous for having an heavy essence in the Madchester scene. The band are known as being a bit naughty and often were in the press for mis use of drugs or other areas of crime. This peaked with the band suffering a major setback when Rob Collins was charged with armed robbery after his friend had robbed an off licence while he was waiting in the car outside. He served four months in prison as a result of this.

Analysis of The Twang

The Twang



The Twang are an indie rock band from the Birmingham area. They formed in 2001 and are still going at the present. The band consists of vocalist and lead guitarist Phil Etheridge, bassist John Watkins, drummer Matt Clinton along with back up vocalist Martin Saunders and guitarist Stu Hartland.
The band first hit national stardom when they were interview by acclaimed magazine NME in an article about the best bands to come from the west midlands and they were only second to The Enemy.
They belong to the record label B-unique which also has acclaimed bands Kaiser chiefs and the ordinary boys. They're live shows are acclaimed for violence between fans of the band and security staff and doormen, this is possibly due to the style of the music that they play appeals to people involved in football hooliganism, since however the band has released statements saying they don't promote violence and that they're is a need for higher security measures at their shows.
They have released two albums named "Love it when i feel like this" and "Jewellery Quarter" enjoying notable success with both despite the heavily controlled charts of todays music.

Analysis of Oasis.

Oasis



Oasis formed in 1991 as a branch of a different band called "The rain" as a result of a partnership between siblings Liam and Noel gallagher. The band recently split in late 2009 and liam has gone on to create a band called beady eye with the remaining memeber of oasis due to the departure of Noel Gallagher. The band hope to release a single in late 2010 and an album in early 2011.
Liam is famous for his onstage antics such as using a star shaped tambourine similar to that of Ian Brown and lead singer of The Jam Paul Weller. He had a troubled childhood and was only interested in music in his late teens. he began an obsession with John Lennon of the beatles and was once quoted as saying he was "John Lennon re-incarnated", this offended some as it was seen as an offence to John Lennon and some saw it as an insightful comment.

Analysis of The Stone Roses

The stone roses

The stone roses we an alternative rock band formed in the late 1970's playing through to the 1980's. They were a pioneering band in the madchester scene. Which since has evolved into the rave scene. Additionally the madchester scene was synonmous with drug use often through ecstasy pills heightening the "lovey dovey high".
Frontman Ian Brown has since gone on to produce several singles album that have been highly acclaimed by his fans. In previous years his attitude gave him a self acclaimed "god like status", his antics gave him a reputation of being a love me or hate type of person.
Ian's right hand man was lead guitarist John Squires. He was said to be able to play chords and riff's that not even an angel could compare with. He was always joining in with Ian's antics and used the star shaped tamborine as a prop on stage which is now often used by people such as liam gallagher frontman of stone rose's style band oasis.

Review of skills.

Strengths
During my first year of sixth form I underwent the As Media course. I had no done media at GCSE level so i had alot to learn. I eventually managed to learn several key skills and aspects of media and i will now talk about each of these in depth.

Camera Work

When i came to the practical element of the subject, we were asked to make a 2 minute beggining to a film of our choice. We chose to do a team comedy and we had to take into account he types of shots that we would need to film. This included using the correct equipment to set up the shot such as tripods or dolly cranes. I feel that this will be useful for our second year of media as we may have to go into deeper detail with several aspects of camera work in order to create representations amongst other ideologies.

Analysis

For the exam section of the course i learnt how to analyse clips so that i would be able to comment on them into great depth and comment on how they represent people and create different situations and atmospheres. The fact that i consider this a strength became evident when i acheived a B grade in the January exam.


However there are several aspects of media that i need to improve in order to gain a similar grade in this section of the course. Most notably is:

Time management

Last year during our practical work, as a result of poor time management i ended up having to do alot of work towards the backend of the course and having to rush it. This possibly has prevented me from gaining a higher grade than the C i got. We had to do the majority of our filming during the last week of term. Aswell as doing a half hearted blog that was merely 10 posts. This is something that i need to address and i have taken oppurtunities given to me through free periods to do as much work as i can.

Double Checking Work

Through re-reading my blog posts from last year i have noticed that there are several aspects that i should have included with ease. I did not give in depth accounts of what went wrong during my evaluation and through a sheer lack of organisational skills i forgot to upload several pieces of work such as storyboards. This is a major flaw as i could have acheived much higher grades through simply uploading work.