Month: June 2005

An awesome weekend overall. I’m completely shattered right now. I would go straight to bed but I have to hang on and get my sleeping patterns back to some sort of normality. Anyway, a whole fuckload of highlights and pretty much no lowlights so I’m fairly pleased with all that.

A quick round up with most to be expanded on later.

Two absolute standouts for the weekend, both fairly unexpected.
System of a Down. That was just amazing, I thought they would be ok but the entire set from start to finish was astounding. Very disappointed that due to time problems there was no encore, the set to then was mind blowing. I had major doubts abot them being a headliner. Slipknot before them were so fucking good (more on that later), I didn’t think SOAD had a chance to top them but they just came out to Soldier Slide and straight into B.Y.O.B. and the crowd lost it. Loved it and I’ll happily happily go and see them again.

This one I suspect will come as a bit of a surprise. It did to the lot of us, we just went along because it was that or Feeder and so it wasn’t much of a choice. Billy Idol headlined the second stage and he was the fucking business. A whole ago Holy Moly said that he’d be the comeback of the year and of course everyone scoffed. About 3 songs in, the whole tent was with him and then there was the pure genius that was a cover of Van Halen’s Jump. It was sealed, I don’t think another act was even talked about for the rest of the night and all around the campsite was the question; “did you see Billy Idol?”. Fucking sold, he’s touring here later in the year and I’m so there.

Honourable Mentions.
Slipknot. Awesome show, more than deserve a headline slot. Joey Jordison on stage right after Dave Lombardo and he just drummed him away. Stunning piece of work.

Bowling for Soup. Wow, Just an excellent set. Not so much about the music as about the people and making the crowd have a good time and leaving people with a smile on their faces.
My Chemical Romance – Lots of buzz, pretty well deserved. Good solid stuff, lots and lot of crowd going for’em
Trivium – Fantastic start to the day. Some proper metal
Velvet Revolver – ‘Nuff Said.
Henry Rollins – Standup for about 30 minutes. Good good stuff. I wasn’t into him at all before but I’ll go check him out next time.

Good stuff.
Queen Adreena.
JJ72.
Mad Capsule Markets.
Garbage.
Megadeth
Anthrax
Slayer
Helmet – vaguely early Metallica with ramped up vocals. Good good stuff, I want to check ’em out some more.
Shadow’s Fall – looked and sounded like goth wank. We were going to head off but had to wait for someone and ended up staying. Glad we did, good solid proper metal.
Papa Roach –

Shite
The Dwarves
Altered Bridge.
Nightwish. Fuck off you late pricks. Slayer got bumped for this last year and we have to wait for you?

I have had such a shitty couple of days, its just not funny.

My flatmate, bless her, noted a comment I had made elsewhere and dragged me to the Washington within minutes of getting home where I proceeded to bitch about stupid fucking Americans for an hour and felt a whole lot better.

It’s been a horrible couple of days, it really has. This weekend should fix most of that and I cannot wait.

I was walking home from down in Camden and feeling pretty miserable to be honest. Then there was one of those moments where you just have to smile. As I was coming up Chalk Farm road, the weekly Wednesday night London Skate passed me by. A blur of arms and thighs and hundreds of people swarming by. Everyone walking passed was grinning and I was grinning and just for that moment, I liked the world again.

Anyway, away. Back Monday.

Oh and I think… although I’m wavering, I’m not wavering but I want to, I think that a friendship is more important than a pipe dream.

The last line of an email I just got.

Timecales are the usual… i.e. yesterday would be ideal, failing that now is good 🙂

And I’m going away tonight.

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of they friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
–John Donne

As requested by Cath.

6 songs from the past and the present which are right now, this moment, favourites. Blah blah disclaimers.

Under Pressure – Queen & David Bowie
Iris – The Goo Goo Dolls
We Have All The Time In The World – Louis Armstrong
Arc Of Time (Time Code) – Bright Eyes
Radio_Video – System of a Down
Like A Stone – Audioslave

Narrowing even this down to 6 was painful. I don’t dispute the Chris Isaak love but I would probably go with Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing.

While on the music front, this is an excellent step by the BBC; Beethoven’s 9 Symphonies. I’ll have the 9 of them for my iPod which I would probably have never done otherwise. It will be interesting to see if this is follow through for other BBC commissioned work.

After today, karma really better get back on my side damn soon.

Not happy and very very stressed.

I cannot wait to leave the office tomorrow.

Why is it that some people can bring out such extreme reactions in me?

Yesterday was both an excellent day and a piss poor day at the same time. The weather was lovely and the office was quiet so Friday lunch was excellent. We went early to get a seat outside at the Old Parr’s Head and had a lovely Thai, a nice pint and good conversation. It was really nice. A long lunch but not too long…long enough for me to get sunburnt on both my arms. Not badly, it’s already fading to a tan but it was sore for a brief while.

The rest of the day was kinda meh. The afternoon dragged by and there was quite a bit of socialising going in the office. Whole loads of people were out and no-one was stressy busy for a change so we wandered the floor talking. It’s something that we don’t do enough of and nice when a decent Friday afternoon comes together like that. I’m much happier within the whole greater team now and so anything that helps along those lines is a good thing.

Hit the Comedy last night to meet up with the V. Strange night but not so bad in the end. Not a late one at all, home at a reasonable hour and a quiet one today.

Some faffing around on the internet and a walk into town to pick up some comics. No rain after all that. Nothing too major comics wise with the exception of the second volume of Age of Bronze which I’m looking forward to getting into tomorrow. Dinner out and then home still fairly early.

Music wise there is a whole lot of interesting stuff going on. System Of A Down’s latest Mesmerize is excellent and I’m playing that lots. I wasn’t a fan of the last album so only now looking forward to seeing them at Download next weekend off the back of this one. Also Audioslave’s second: Out of Exile is awesome, love the acoustic live version of Like A Stone. The Duke Spirit finally got their first album out and I like that a whole lot. Very much on a Queen kick at the moment too so some of them mixed in between all that.

I’m reading My Life by Bill Clinton, finally out in paperback. It’s allright, I dislike intensely how from the start he writes about something and then says that’s why I did something when I was president etc. The way he says it all comes out very wrong and every second person he talks about get some fancy job down the line. Saying that I’m enjoying it and as I’m only coming up to the mid-eighties now, quite a lot to go!

I like fixing things. I’m not always very good at it, but when it does all work out it’s a lovely feeling of satisfaction. My email client in work died on me Thursday afternoon, very badly. It would load right up and then the entire exe would just die, not recoverable and no useful info in any logs I could find. Saved my profile elsewhere and reinstalled with no joy. Put the profile back in and then started taking bits and pieces out. Eventually when I edited my inbox in a text editor I found the cause. The top email was an image of somesort and as soon as it tried to render boom. So deleted it in the text file, saved it and bingo, all was good. Ok, so that was fairly minor and some of you are scoffing and perhaps rightly so, my only point is that I figured it out and made it work again and that felt good.

As I mentioned above, next weekend is Download. A half day Thursday and then I’m all off on the train to Donnington. Hurrah for a weekend of camping and rocking. It should be good fun. A couple of the lads from work are headed there and a couple of other friend of friends. We shall all hook up and have a good time. A good bit of music to get excited about. Garbage again should be awesome, never let me down live. Sunday night should be the perfect end, Slayer, Slipknot and SOAD. Monday will hurt, a lot. Can’t wait.

I was sitting here thinking, yay Post Secret will update soon and it just has! It’s a small joy but one that I look forward to each and every Saturday night. Mileage can and does vary but such is the way with everything. Perhaps someday I’ll send something in. I’m sure I can cover the secret part but I’m not sure I can cover the artistic part. Probably not for either actually.

I love it when a plan comes together! I hate it when a plan comes apart! Everything was all setup and ready to go and then all of a sudden boom. Given the amount of effort that went into that plan, I’m not sure there will be another one anytime soon 🙁

I started going to Primary school in 1984. As it happens there were three kids my age living in the house next door to us going to the same school. So I use to get a lift in from their dad most mornings. It was all pretty handy for a few years. There was always a tape playing in the car in the mornings and there was a song that I loved that it took me several years to find out who played it. As it turns out having just done some googling, the tape was Queen’s The Works. One of my older cousins while babysitting for us told me at the time that it was Queen and the song was I Want to Break Free. I would look forward to the journey every morning, hoping that in the short time I was in the car, it would come around again. I since have the album and a whole lot of Queen’s other stuff. Fantastic band, I’d love to have caught them live. There is an awesome version of the tune on Live Magic, it just opens with the crowd singing and I love love love the first 5 seconds. It captured what the expierence of seeing them live must have been like.

Bored and feeling somewhat down.

I go walking in the park with a part of me hoping to get rained on.