1124th
Aug

It’s been a busy week already, what with packing for Reading Festival, planning schedules for Reading Festival, talking about Reading Festival… did I mention I’m excited for Reading Festival?! I’ve also managed to cram in a gig and a show, CSS at XOYO on Tuesday and Batman Live at the O2 Arena tonight. It was also a nice little test of my new camera’s abilities, so hopefully you should see a return of photos with my gig reviews from now on.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the CSS gig, as they had been away from the music scene for a while and their last album was not too well received, but the tickets were cheap and I decided it would be a fun night regardless. I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised as their newer stuff seems to be a return to form and I’m definitely considering buying the new album, La Liberacion, after seeing bits of it live. There was also the usual selection of crowd pleasers and the audience were clearly having a blast dancing along. Lovefoxxx has ditched her trademark catsuits but she is still ever the eyecatching frontwoman and was frequently clambering into the front row and throwing playful banter at the crowd. It was a nice gig, better than the last time I saw them, and I hope I manage to catch them again soon.

Tonight I went with my brother to see Batman Live, which is billed as a kind of family show loosely telling the story of Batman with lots of lights, costumes and acrobatics. I was quite pleased to see that around half the O2 were without children, so clearly Batman has universal appeal! It was a very impressive show with the outfits and fight scenes being the particular highlights. The acting and script for Batman and Robin were pretty laughable, but it was all still very good fun, and the Joker and Harley Quinn’s scenes more than made up for it.

There are a few more pictures on my Flickr set.

Tomorrow we go to READING, so expect my writeup and photos in a week or so.

113rd
Jun

I got paid on Tuesday, which seemed to be just in time as every gig ticket in the world appears to have gone on sale this week or last. I have spent a large portion of my wages on tickets for Friendly Fires (Brixton Nov 26th), Robots In Disguise (XOYO Jul 27th), IAMX (Heaven Oct 13th), CSS (XOYO Aug 23rd) and Death From Above 1979 (Brixton Oct 7th). Unfortunately I missed out on Incubus and Miles Kane, but that’s what ebay and Scarlet Mist are for.

I have also booked our dealer table for the London Film and Comic Con, so I need to work on building my stock back up again. I got a bit excited when I visited their site and saw all the guests they have (Karen Gillan, Christopher Lloyd, Walter Koenig, Sean Maher, Mark Sheppard, Brent Spiner to name but a few) and I have booked myself photoshoots with Karen Gillan and the TARDIS, and Christopher Lloyd and the Delorean! I may also get some things signed by a few people. How will I even have time to sell jewellery inbetween? Come over and say hi if you are planning to attend, we will have free lollipops on the Saturday.

Lastly, I went to see X-Men: First Class on Wednesday and I was so pleasantly surprised. I’m a massive X-Men nerd and X-Men: Wolverine pretty much shattered my confidence in the films. I was dubious that they would be able to pull First Class off, but they did and I’m so pleased with it. I can ignore the usual canonical issues (Some of the mutants would be the wrong age and wouldn’t even be in the first class, Moira has been bastardised and they are ignoring the fact that Havok is Scott’s brother) and focus on the tasty bromance between Erik and Charles. It has gotten me in the mood to read some more of the comics so I have ordered volumes 5 and 6 of Astonishing X-Men from Amazon. Now I just need to see Thor and I will be happy.