In Your Honour
I’ve had a pretty damn busy week, so much so that I can’t even remember everything I did….Monday and Tuesday seem ages ago. Wednesday I went to see the Foo Fighters at The Astoria with my brother, it was class!
We arrived at the venue at about 6pm and there were two queues, the usual MASSIVE one stretching down the side of the Astoria and beyond, which was people who’d collected their tickets earlier in the day and were waiting to get in. For some reason this gig was ticket collection only, so you had to collect them from the venue on the day of the gig….which is a daft idea in my opinion. As I said, we got there at around 6pm and joined the second, smaller queue which we established was for people still needing to collect tickets (us), after about 25-30 minutes they opened the doors and started letting the big queue in, this cause much moaning from people in our queue as it looked like they were going to let however many hundred people in before us. And it was raining. But 5 mins later they started letting our queue in and within 10 mins we were in the venue – ages before the majority of people who’d been queuing for whoever knows how long outside! I quickly made my way to the spot I always try and blag at Astoria gigs – front-centre of the balcony. It’s the best view in the venue, because the balcony comes really far forward over the standing section below and because you’re above everyone the view is great. I’ve stood there several times before and it’s always a great view, so I was chuffed to get there again. All the other people queuing early had gone straight to the barrier in the standing downstairs, so we had the balcony to ourselves for a while.
Death From Above 1979 supported and they were pretty cool. A very crazy Canadian duo consisting of a Drummer who sings and a bass/keyboard player. They play a mix of speed metal, disco, punk. Sounded like a cross between QOTSA, Metallica and Beck! I really enjoyed their set and will be purchasing their album soon.
The Foos strolled out and before playing a note Dave announced that they weren’t going to do their usual rock show set, but that they’d decided to play a bunch of songs they don’t normally play very often – music to my ears! They then started with ‘Hell’, which is probably my least favourite Foo Fighters song! But it actually worked much better live than on record, or so I thought anyway.
Having seen them so many times now, I knew what to expect….they are one of the best live bands around today, with no exceptions. Considering they’re more hard-edged than Coldplay or U2, I don’t think you’ll find a better live rock band on the planet. The set was brilliant, as was the performance – which was being filmed, which in turn prompted an amazing light show, which was cool in such a small venue. Personal highlight for me were ‘Hey, Johnny Park!’, ‘Cold Day In The Sun’ which saw Taylor Hawkins singing and playing guitar and Dave Grohl on drums, and ‘Aurora’ which they hardly ever play nowadays, but is breath-taking. It was a real goosebumps kind of gig, and such a special night. I love the Foo Fighters!
Like A Hurricane
I’ve had a pretty uneventful week. Had engagement drinks with Steve & Catherine and about 50 other people on Wednesday. Steve is already worrying about how the hell he’s going to be able to invite everyone he knows the wedding (not that a date has even been set yet!). I told him they should just have a small wedding and get everyone to come to The Wharf for the reception. But girls don’t like things like that do they? So telling his fiancé that he thinks they should have their wedding reception at the local pub may not go down to well. But you never know.
Thursday was Scrat rehearsal as usual. It went well and as well as running through the set and trying to figure out how we can’t end on of the songs we’ve been playing for months (my fault), we were all pretty happy with it I think. Bashed out a new cover which we’re going to do, and we’ve got a set of 13 songs now, which is pretty good going. The gig is October 1st, so we only have 6 weeks to go!
I am still enjoying 24 season 4 with Stat & Dicko. It rocks.
Today I went into Birmingham on a bit of a solo shopping trip. The city centre is really nice in the sun (see moblog) and even nicer on Sundays when there’s a much more chilled out vibe, nowhere near as frantic as Saturdays, or weekdays. I walked around in the sun, mooched in record shops….bought Neil Young’s greatest hits album for 7 quid and was recommended two studio albums by the guy on the till in HMV. He has 15 Neil Young albums, so I shall take his recommendation to heart! I also bought a cool new polo neck t-shirt type thing and some sandy coloured cords, which I really like. I *almost* managed to lose my sunglasses, but realised I’d left them in the fitting room at Debenhams, and luckily when I got back someone there had found them. The last pair of sunglasses I lost ended up at the bottom of the Norfolk Broads somewhere after I looked over the side of our boat whilst on holiday! I was not the only one to lose their shades that holiday!
This coming week I shall be working on promo stuff for the Hotel Cafe Tour (see above flyer) which Imogen is taking part in over in the US of A. It’s a travelling tour with an assortment of solo artists, all sharing a tour bus, a ‘house’ band and ‘house’ crew. Kind of like a travelling musical circus! Shame I’m not going really.
I’m also going to see the Foo Fighters at a tiny ’secret’ (read: worst kept secret EVER) gig at The Astoria in London. The last time I saw them was at this venue and it’s nearly 3 years to the day – the capacity is under 2,000, as opposed to the 10,000+ shows they tend to now play, so I’m really glad I got tickets, can’t wait!!
Oh and I went to see ‘The Island’ on Tuesday – I thought it was really great, but then again any film with Scarlett Johansson in is great in my book ;-) …..But seriously I really enjoyed it….Euan McGregor is wicked and their on screen relationship worked really well. Only a couple of OTT Hollywood moments, defintely worth seeing.
Foo Fighting
There’s some amazing photos of the Foo Fighters (and other great bands) by Brantley Gutierrez HERE.
Sun Hits The Sky
I haven’t posted for a few, what have I been up to? Well…
Wednesday night I went to see The Presidents Of The USA. They were class! Really tight and very amusing. They played all the crowd pleasers from their early albums and a load of new stuff. I love them when their debut album came out back 1995, so it was really cool to ‘rediscover’ them last week, when I noticed they were playing locally. They were really, really, good and definitely don’t deserve to be branded a ‘novelty’ or ‘one hit wonder’ band. They made everyone sit down at one point, which wasn’t easy as sitting down people take up a lot more room than standing up people and the venue was packed – they even had a solo on “the world’s smallest invisible harmonica” too! Brilliant!
Thursday afternoon I had drinks and lunch with Steve and Paul (who cooks up some mean meals at The Wharf), then headed over to see Stu about borrowing some cymbal, which I tested out later at our Scrat rehearsal. It went pretty well and I think I might purchase a couple of cymbals from Stu, as I need some new ones desperately.
Friday evening I went to The Flock with some mates and had a few JD & Cokes. Nice. Steve was due to meet us, but mysteriously didn’t come out – very odd behaviour for Mr Social Animal.
Saturday morning revealed why – he only went ands proposed to his girlfriend on Saturday night! He called me on Saturday and just dropped it into the conversation casually! I think my first word was “cool”! I hadn’t expected it, but it’s great news! And he’s already worried that we’ve all go so much dirt on him, we’re going to give him hell during the best man’s speech – I can’t wait! But seriously, I’m really pleased for him and Catherine. Steve getting married. Who’d have thought it!
Later on Saturday went shopping and succeeded in purchasing the ‘24′ series 1-4 boxset on DVD for only 75 quid! Nowhere had it apart from MVC, and I figured it was going to be expensive, as it was 90 quid online and MVC are usually expensive…but they surprised me and helped me indulge in my habit that afternoon. Myself, Stat and Dicko began watching that evening.
Sunday was pretty uneventful, I was bored shitless, spent most of the day in bed, and even watch about an hour of cricket with Stat & Dicko, but that made me feel tired again. In the evening we watch some more of Series four of 24…we’re about 5 hours in and hopefully we’ll get some more watched tonight. It’s so damn addictive!
Today I woke up at 5:45am with a start. I’m not sure why, but I was dreaming. On Friday I got cocked around royally by See Tickets over my Foo Fighters tickets I ordered, but it got sorted on Saturday (or so they’re telling me). The Foos are also apparently doing a ’secret’ show at The Astoria in London on August 24th as a Reading/Leeds warm up. It’s about the worse kept secret in the music business, cause everyone know about it. I think this morning I was dreaming about tickets for the gig on the 24th going on sale (they haven’t yet) because I woke suddenly and was panicking that tickets had gone on sale and were going to sell out fast. So at 5:45am, I turned on my computer, to check they’d not gone on sale in-between going to bed at 12:45am and waking up at 5:45am. Unsurprisingly – the hadn’t gone on sale! So I went back to bed! Weirdo.
All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.
All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.
All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.All Work And No Play Makes James A Dull Boy.
In case you couldn’t guess – I’ve just been watching ‘The Shining’! I really like it, it’s got a real darkness and feeling of dispair…yet at the same time Jack Nicholson is hilarious in it at times!
