shipwreck

Right. I am back in London blogging from my couch. All in all a damn good weekend. The gigs were awesome. Saturday I was really tired, I’d had about 5 hours sleep the night before and it was a really long day. So I don’t think I enjoyed the gig that night as much as I should have. The support was, well I want to say shite but I won’t. It wasn’t my kind of music at all so I won’t comment. 45 minutes of it however really killed a lot of the mood.

It’s worth noting that every single person there booked tickets through a Radiohead email in a matter of hours. So there was no-one there who was not a Radiohead fan. Well, I did see one grandmother escorting her young grandson but you know what I mean. The gasps of surprise from ever single person who walked in the door as to how small the venue was. It was tiny. I was lucky on both nights, I was standing really close the stage and had great views. The build-up was phenomenal. Everyone was there to see this, the excitement was building. Support came on and killed a little of this but then at around 8:45 the Radiohead lads come on stage and go straight into There There. Man those drums just rocked. As soon as they started the crowd just moved and didn’t stop. Two nights, two long sets, two different long sets, two great gigs.

There Glastonbury set should be the highlight of the year and I think those Point tickets will have to be mine.

Hail To The Thief which I always enjoyed has grown on me so much over the past couple of days. I’ve been listening to it all day and I’m loving it lots. Especially the tracks which I wasn’t so hot on. In particular Myxamatosis is a great tune.

Other than that, the weekend was good. I had dinner with my family on Sunday night and other than that just chilled a little. Weather wasn’t great, lots and lots of heavy rain so I didn’t get to walk around as much as I had hoped but ah well.

Noticed this last time I was home but it was worse this time. Sleeping in a single bed is a little uncomfortable after sleeping in a double for so long. It was a tad alarming to wake up Sunday morning inches away from waking up painfully on the floor.

Having had some time to think over the weekend, I’m going to be London based for another while. As much as I dislike the city itself, I don’t really and I just need to get over it. So there.

Buffy finale is downloading and should be ready for my viewing tomorrow night. That would be a good thing

Interesting piece in the NYT entitled Dating a Blogger.

Saturday night was the first night of the small tour and there hadn’t been any touring in a while, so looking back it was just a warmup.

Sunday blew it’s fucking socks off. Quite a different set list from Saturday night and highlights were No Surprises, Street Spirit and Paranoid Android moving straight into Idioteque.

So again we got about 23 new songs, 10 new songs (not all the same as last night) and 13 old songs.

The Europe tour later in the year sold out in hours except Dublin. I am so very tempted to book tickets for the Point two nights running.

Oh and spotted in attendence, leading a standing ovation none other than U2’s Adam Clayton and The Edge.

So um yeah. Pretty much in the front row for over a two hour set of Radiohead last night in a venue holding about 2000 people. Two encores, 10 new songs, 13 old songs. Nothing from Pablo Honey but songs from every other album. The night kicked off with There There and went onwards.

Roll on tonight.

Yesterday was a good day.

Today is shaping up to be a good day too.

dsdd

I am so far away from being ready to get up at 7 in the morning and go to the airport that it’s unbelieveable.

I shall pack shortly and then sleep and then I’ll be in transit.

My head hurts and I’m starting to not look forward to everything that comes with being back home for a weekend. Hmm there has to be some irony there I’m sure.

Oh and add in a Bjork gig in Hammersmith next week too.

It was sold out when I realised that I wasn’t going to be able to make it to Comics 2003 that weekend but a ticket just became available through someone in work. Sweet 🙂

just because you feel it doesn’t make it true

When OK Computer was released in 1997, NME called it “one of the greatest albums of living memory”. I on the otherhand had barely heard of Radiohead. I knew Creep and thought it wasn’t a bad song but that was about it.

One night my dad came home from work with two albums on cassette. In it for the Money by Supergrass and OK Computer by Radiohead. They had been left in a phonebox in a local music shop bag. Someone must have made a call and left them there. Well, anyway, there was to be one for me and one for my sister. I got to pick which one I wanted. I picked the Supergrass album. I was much more familiar with them and liked some of their stuff. It was a good choice, it’s a good album and I did replace it with the cd version sometime afterwards. My sister not being very into music at the time never listened to OK Computer. After a few months I think I actually borrowed the cassette from her and listened to it. I never gave it back. It is still on my shelf back in Dublin and she’s never having it back.

Looking back it’s one of the defining albums of my life if not the defining album. As I’ve mentiond before I just missed out on Nirvana and there was nothing else really iconic I guess is the word at the time which I fell for. Queen will always be up there as the first band I really loved and U2 will of course always be U2 but nothing will ever be like Radiohead. It might have taken six years, but tomorrow night I’ll be seeing them live for the first time. I figured I would see them at a festival or at a big arena gig, so to see them two nights running in a tiny Dublin venue at the kickoff of an 8 night club tour is well it’s almost like a dream come true.

Uh huh.

You know a single good version of There There live will make it all so very worthwhile. Fuckin A.

ssdd

On the good news front, I’m feeling fine and had a late dinner. Throat is still a little raw but I have some lozanges left over from my cold a couple of weeks ago and they are helping lots. A good night’s sleep and I expect to be feeling 100% in the morning. But even were I not, come hell or high water I would be at my desk tomorrow. My Radiohead tickets are in it and they are quite important to me.

Fuck, roll on the weekend. I so badly need to get out of this city nevermind this country. I was reading a new story today about a survery and it was interesting. At least it was interesting until it reached a certain point. It was a British story, the survey was hardly likely to be otherwise but about halfway through there is a line like “33% of us” *boom* That was it, I was done. I’m not part of “us”, I never want to be part of “us”. I want to not have to live here, I want to live somewhere I like.

Oh yes, I’m a litle worked up about some stuff and the severe dislike I have had for London over the past few days is more than likely a result of that. But I really don’t know what to do about it. Keep thinking about it I guess, enjoy the weekend and the fact that I’m not in work until Wednesday. I have Monday off for holiday as I am still in Dublin and Tuesday I’m at a course all day.

Then 3 days of work and a long weekend. I don’t think I’m going to make the comic festival this year, it’s just not shaping up the way I would like. So that leaves a quiet weekend with the Monday off. I also have Tyesday off as I’m off to see Springsteen in Crystal Palace. So again another into work on Wednesday week. But wait, there’s more. The download festival is the following weekend and I have the Friday off work to go and get there, followed by the Monday to allow recovery.

Guess it’s gonna be a long and interesting couple of weeks.

I was thinking earlier that maybe I just need a holiday. Maybe I should look into taking a week off work and just leaveing the country. There are a few places where I could go for a week on little or no notice, Dublin being fairly obvious but probably a couple of places in the US too and hell even Tokyo if I wanted it. Not that it’s gonna happen, but nice thoughts eh?

I watched the second to last episode of 24 season two today and it was allright. I do wonder how they will tie so much up in the last hour and I’m hoping to see Palmer snap and do a Jack Bauer on someone.

I’m more and more getting the impression from various places lately that Smallville is starting to get very watchable.. I’ve never sat down to watch it deliberatly since the pilot, there was nothing special to go back to. However the ones i have seen by flicking around haven’t been all that bad and I do want to a make a point of seeing the Chris Reeves guest star role.

So today is Thursday. This means that everywhere I go on the internet there are many Americans engaging in nerdgasm over seeing The Matrix: Reloaded yesterday or today. Bastards the lot of them. So not only on the boards, but on blogs I’m clicking very carefully and avoding the postings.

You know what’s really nice? Hot toast with melted butter and orange marmalde. That’s nice, but do you know what’s nicer? Not throwing it back up. Don’t look at me like that, you did ask!