Swine Flu Bands
A couple of weeks ago, as the world was gripped with Swine Flu fever (forgive the pun!), a great game emerged on Twitter. Feeling somewhat disillusioned with the mainstream media’s attempt at convincing us we were “all going to die”, a bunch of twitter users began various games based around a swine flu theme.
My favourite game to emerge was the ’swine flu bands’ game, where you had to come up with as many musician/band names that played on words related to swine flu as possible, and tag them with the Twitter hashtag #swineflubands – these could then be viewed on Twitter Search.
I got rather carried away one afternoon and came up with a bunch, whilst laughing my socks off at some of the names that other Twitter users had come up with.
Check out the #swineflubands I came up with here, and everybody else’s here.
(Pic: ‘Swine Flew’ album cover by One Bad Pig, originally released in 1990, well before swine ‘09!)
So long, Astoria
The Astoria in London is one of the capital’s most loved music venues, and unfortunately it’s being pulled down next week in order to build a new Crossrail train system. Whilst being a bit of a dump (it’s the kind of place you can’t stand still in for too long without becoming stuck to the floor) it’s a really great, dirty rock ‘n’ roll venue, and there aren’t enough venues like it left these days – mainly thanks to the increasing corporate sponsorship/stranglehold of venues.
I’ve been to several stand-out gigs at the Astoria, gigs that have really stuck in mind as being some of my favourites ever. These gigs were usually to see bands that can fill much bigger venues play small, low-key shows. I remember seeing the Foo Fighters (supported by Ash) playing 24 hours after seeing them headlining the Leeds Festival – I travelled over half the length of the country to see them at the Astoria – one night they were playing to 60,000 people, the next 2,000! I was lucky enough to see the Foos play there again a couple of years later and will never forget them playing ‘Aurora’ – it was awe-inspiring.
I also saw Audioslave’s first UK gig which was at the Astoria – they were never the band they could have been on record, but live they were something else – the energy of Rage Against The Machine, with the vocal power of Chris Cornell was outstanding! Then again a few years later I saw Chris Cornell perform solo – another great gig with many highlights from his career, including several Soundgarden numbers.
And in 2006 I attended what was (and still is) the best gig I’ve ever been to. After not touring the UK for 6 years (and me never having seen them) I saw Pearl Jam perform the first show of their ’self-titled’ album world tour at the Astoria, and by a bizarre twist of fate met all of the band afterwards. That gig has to be one of the loudest I’ve been to – maybe it was just my emotions running away with me, but you could feel the balcony swaying up and down that night as they played ‘Alive’ in the encore. This one stands out as my most vivid Astoria memory and I’d like to think that dark, dank, old building brought me a little bit of luck that night. So long, Astoria! Gone, but never forgotten!
Home Sweet Home
We’re back after 2 fabulous weeks of sun, sea, and sand in Tunisia. Back to home sweet home, with the rain, wind, and cold. Oh well. Hundreds of photos and videos are set to follow, but for now check out Andrew Dubber’s “If music was sport” post, it’s pretty interesting/amusing!
London Trip (Updated)
We went on a little trip to London last weekend to do some of the touristy stuff we never get around to when visiting for gigs.
I’ll post more photos soon, but for now check out Steph, The Blonde Kid and the in-laws surveying the Dome from East India Docks in Canary Wharf.
UPDATE: More photos can be seen here.
We’re all off to Hesfes 2008!
Tomorrow we head off to Hesfes 2008 for the week. We went to Hesfest last year and had a great time, for a while it looked like we weren’t going to be able to go this year, but lady luck was on our side and Steph got a new job which meant she could book the time off, and we could all go!
Hesfes is great family orientated event, short for the ‘Home Educators Seaside Festival’ it involves hundreds of Home Educators camping on a huge campsite, with lots of workshops and activities, along with live music and seminars on all aspects of home ed. As someone who was home educated along with both of my brothers (the younger of whom is also coming), it’s a great oppurunity to catch up with some like-minded people, many of whom have a similar outlook on life. Our clans constsits of my parents, my younger brother Al, Steph, The Blonde Kid, and Me – there’ll also be lots of other people we know on site.
Despite going to school The Blonde Kid had a brilliant time last year and made lots of friends, so much so that he was already talking about coming this year during the car journey home! We also came to an arrangement with the new school he started at last September that they will mark him as ‘educated off site’ (as opposed to an ‘unauthorised absence’) when we chose to take him out of school during term time for Home Ed events, which is great.
Steph and I will be blogging in varous forms whilst we’re away (after all geeks take their techology on holiday with them!), so should you want to, you can track our activities below…
- See out photos on the joint Hesfes Moblog here (includes some of last year’s photos).
- Follow our Twitter updates tagged ‘#hesfes08′ here.
Check back for updates and 1000s of photos from Steph on our return!
(If you’re twittering from Hesfes, follow the user @hashtags and include #hesfes08 in your tweets and they’ll appear here.)
#hesfes08
